This group is comprised of respected U.S. scientists from a variety of disciplines. According to their web site, the USGCRP “coordinates and integrates federal changes in the global environment and their implications to society.” They’ve been conducting heavy peer-reviewed research in this field and reporting their findings since 1989.

In this article I’ll share with you some of the latest findings from this report. This report is limited to how climate change is affecting the USA, but some of these impacts can be generalized to other parts of the world as well.

Is climate change happening?

The USGCRP scientists report that climate change is already occurring in a measurable way, and those changes are primarily caused by human activity. They were very clear and direct about that.

During the past 50 years, average U.S. temperatures have risen by 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit. This change is due to human activity, most notably from the rise in greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. During the 50-year period before that, there was no net change in average temps.

This recent increase isn’t due to natural fluctuations — the scientists were able to rule that out as the cause. Human activity has caused this increase.

Even a slight increase like this is causing measurable side effects, including more heat-related deaths (especially in the elderly), melting glaciers and permafrost, more flooding, more demand for energy used for cooling during hot months, stronger and more frequent wildfires, and more insect problems.

The scientists concluded that climate change isn’t merely something that threatens to create consequences decades from now — those changes are already taking place, they can be measured, and they’re a result of human activity.

Predictions for the future

The scientists shared their collective predictions for the next 50-100 years. To do this they employ a variety of predictive models. Where multiple models agree, they have stronger confidence vs. when their models disagree. Consequently, many of their predictions deal with general trends where they have high confidence as opposed to specific details where confidence is lower.

Here are some of those predictions, in no particular order:

• Average U.S. temps will rise by 2 to 11.5 degrees over the next 100 years, largely depending on what we do or don’t do to slow global warming.
• Cities in warm climates will see more days over 100 degrees. (According to the maps I saw, Arizona will be especially hard hit by temperature increases.)
• Oceans will become more acidic.
• Coral reef destruction will continue.
• We’ll see fewer fish in the ocean.
• Wet areas will become wetter; dry areas will become dryer.
• More precipitation will fall as rain; less will fall as snow.
• Snow will begin to fall later in the year, there will be less of it, and it will melt sooner.
• Ski resorts will have fewer days to run their operations.
• Some crops may become ungrowable in certain regions where they’re currently grown, such as maple trees and apples in the NE. This will especially affect crops that require a certain minimum number of cold nights per year.
• Problems with invasive insects will increase.
• There will be more and potentially larger wildfires.
• The demand for cooling energy during hot months will increase.
• We’ll see more heat-related deaths, especially in aging baby boomers.
• Destruction of wetlands will increase.
• Coastal homes and buildings will be threatened by rising sea levels and storm surges.
• There will be more droughts in the SW.
• There will be more torrential downpours and flooding in the Midwest and NE, especially near the Great Lakes.
• We’ll see hurricanes that are more intense.
• If sea level rises by up to 3 feet, large portions of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico will be underwater. Global warming causes sea level to rise for two primary reasons: (1) warmer water expands in volume, and (2) hotter temps melt more ice that flows into the oceans.
• Many shipments, including much of the country’s oil, come through ports and railways in the Gulf region. These transportation gateways will be threatened by flooding from encroaching sea water.

If you want to see a list of the top 10 findings of this report from the scientists, you can find it here.

If you want to know how this report was specifically prepared and who was behind it, you’ll find that info on this page.

How to cope with climate change

I watched a press conference where these scientists delivered their report to the media. They delivered these findings rather matter-of-factly, not with the sort of passion or appeal to emotion you might see from Al Gore. The main emotions I picked up from them suggested that they were proud of the hard work they did to analyze the data and prepare this report. I didn’t detect any hidden agenda from them other than wanting to share what they believed was the truth, so that our political leaders can use their information to make better decisions.

The scientists who created this report are not politicians, so they don’t set government policy. Their role is limited to an advisory capacity.

A member of the media asked during the press conference if the scientists were influenced by the White House to alter their findings. The scientist who answered the question responded, “There was no political pressure for us to change anything in this report. This is about scientific integrity. None of the authors would participate in that kind of a process.”

Their advice on how to deal with climate change focused on two primary strategies: corrective action and adaptive action. They gave some examples of each.

Their main suggestions for corrective action to combat global warming were to: (1) reduce usage of fossil fuels, (2) increase energy efficiency, and (3) increase the supply of clean energy. They concluded that any or all of these actions would help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, thereby helping to slow global warming.

They indicated that climate change happens naturally too, and that such change isn’t necessarily a problem. Problems arise when climate change happens too abruptly, and societies or species don’t have sufficient time to adapt. Even if we can’t reverse global warming, slowing it down is still a worthy pursuit because it gives populations more time to take adaptive action.

The scientists also suggested that government and businesses can use the information in this report to make better adaptive decisions in preparation for expected climate changes. For example, one sewage plant on the East coast is being built a couple feet higher in anticipation of a rise in sea level over the next 50 years, which is the expected operating life of the plant.

How can individuals deal with climate change?

At this point I’m shifting from sharing the scientists’ findings to offering my own thoughts about what we as individuals can do to deal with climate change.

First, there are many competing interests that have an agenda with respect to influencing what you believe about climate change. This unfortunately spreads misinformation and half-truths, which creates confusion. For the most part, confusion benefits those in favor of maintaining the status quo.

I recently shared a small piece of data from the climate change report on my Twitter and Facebook accounts, and I saw some very strong opinions offered in response. Some backed up the data, while others claimed that climate change is a myth promoted by the green industry.

Since I’m not a climatologist, and since I have no interest in becoming one, I have to rely on others for much of my information in this area. In that case the challenge becomes figuring out whom to trust. Personally I think the USGCRP is a strong source to get at the truth with minimal filtering and bias. They’re the people who are actively researching climate change, so I’m inclined to trust their findings more than what is shared by a politician who may have serious conflicts of interest based on who’s financially backing him/her.

My first suggestion then is to be skeptical of information that comes from secondary and tertiary sources like the media, your friends and family, from politicians (including Al Gore), or even from me. Get your information as unfiltered as possible. Visit the website of the USGCRP and have a look around. You can read their reports for free, and I believe they update their findings every year. They do a good job of making their information digestible — after all, they have to present their findings to politicians — so you don’t have to worry about drowning in incomprehensible terminology.

Now let’s consider the corrective and adaptive changes you can make to your own lifestyle. How can you as a conscious human being respond to the challenge of global warming?

What can you do to help mitigate the effects of climate change?

What’s the most significant corrective action the average American could take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Go ahead and take your best guess, and then I’ll share the answer with you.

Is it to buy a hybrid or alternative-fuel car? Nope. That’s not a bad guess, but we can do better.

What about changing your home to use only clean energy, such as by installing solar panels? Nope.

The answer is actually quite simple.

The answer is to reduce or eliminate your consumption of animal products.

Do I say this because I have a hidden agenda to turn you into a vegan because I care so deeply about the pigs, chickens, and cows? No, if you want to go out and hunt down your breakfast, be my guest.

In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the main problem isn’t that animals are being killed and eaten. The major culprit here is the factory farming system and the Americans who fund it.

What contributes to global warming is how you decide to get your fix of animal foods.

If you still want to eat meat, as far as global warming is concerned, that’s okay. Go out and hunt some wild game that forages for its food, or pay someone to do it for you.

The worst thing you can do from an environmental perspective is to regularly consume factory farmed animal foods. Meat and meat products are the worst by far. Dairy and eggs aren’t quite as bad. It’s estimated that dairy consumption increases greenhouse gas emissions by only 2%, and most of that is coming out of the animals’ behinds. However, by giving the cows less gas-producing foods, even those emissions can be reduced significantly.

The real greenhouse gas monster is commercial meat production. You can look into the facts and figures like many others have done to reach the same conclusion I have, but if you prefer not to do that, I don’t think it’s necessary for most people to recognize the truth of it. Just employ some basic common sense, and consider how the process works.

Think of all the resources that must be expended in order to raise a food animal to maturity. First you have to give it water. Lots of water!

To produce one pound of meat requires, on average, about 5000 gallons of water. Compare that to 25 gallons for a pound of wheat. To produce their daily food, a vegetarian needs 300 gallons of water per day, while a typical meat-eater needs 4000 gallons. It takes energy to transport all that water too, and this means more greenhouse gas emissions.

Then you have to feed the animal. The vast majority of commercially grown animals don’t just roam around grazing on grass. Most animals eat a lot of grain. This requires fields to grow the grain, fertilizers, and lots and lots of water. It also requires transporting and refining the grain, often over vast distances. Growing grain requires tilling the soil, crop dusting, transporting the grain in gas-guzzling trucks, running feed mills, and transporting it to the factory farms.

Then there are the hormones and antibiotics the food animals are injected with. It takes resources to manufacture, transport, and administer those too.

Moreover, you have to transport the animals too. They have to be trucked to the slaughterhouse — more fuel. It takes energy to operate the slaughterhouse. Then the animal flesh is taken to processing plants — more fuel. Those plants require energy and maintenance to operate as well. Then the meat has to be trucked to grocery stores — more fuel. Then it has to be frozen or refrigerated — more energy. Every step in this lengthy process consumes massive energy and causes enormous pollution.

And this is what we get when everything is working properly. When it goes awry and there’s a problem like a mass recall of contaminated meat, all of this energy is wasted completely, and even more energy and pollution are required to conduct the recall.

Snaring a wild bunny rabbit and snapping its neck is starting to look a whole lot better.

Compare this unwieldy process to growing an apple tree in your backyard. You pluck an apple from the tree and eat it. More apples grow back. You don’t even have to snare the apple. Apples are such easy prey.

Growing grain is energy intensive enough. To feed that grain to animals reduces the efficiency of the operation by an order of magnitude, and that loss is irrecoverable.

Now imagine if you don’t buy the meat directly, but you buy it in the form of a prepared food, like a burger at a restaurant. This adds even more waste. Now you’re basically bitchslapping the atmosphere.

It’s hard to design a more wasteful and polluting process than this even if you try.

Consider the massive scale on which this polluting operation takes place. The majority of Americans consume animal products daily, including children who can’t drive a gas-guzzling SUV for the first 16 years of their lives.

These billions (yes, billions) of farm animals also produce tons of waste. The EPA reports that the run-off from factory farms pollutes our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. Food animals in the USA produce 45 tons of animal excrement per second. That’s 130 times as much excrement as our human population produces. Some farms have so much excrement to deal with that they actually liquefy it and spray it into the air, so it gets carried away by the wind. This can cause serious health problems when people breathe the polluted air.

One third of all fossil fuels in the USA are used to raise animals for food. 80% of our agricultural land is consumed by that industry as well.

A 2006 United Nations report found that the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all the SUVs, cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world combined. If we’re going to combat global warming, doesn’t it make sense to work on the #1 source of greenhouse gas emissions? Shouldn’t we strike at the root of the problem instead of just hacking at the branches?

The University of Chicago reports that going vegan is 50% more effective than switching to a hybrid car in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Imagine how much better it gets if you incorporate lots of raw, unprocessed, and/or locally grown foods too. You can be vegan and still eat mostly processed foods that require more energy to produce, but you’ll still be causing much lower emissions than someone who buys commercial animal foods.

In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, eating one pound of meat is equivalent to driving an SUV 40 miles.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) isn’t the only greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Two others are methane and nitrous oxide. Methane is 20 times more powerful than CO2 at trapping atmospheric heat, and nitrous oxide is 300 times more powerful than CO2. EPA reports show that animal agriculture is the #1 source of methane, and the United Nations reports that it’s responsible for 65% of the world’s nitrous oxide emissions.

It’s reasonable to conclude that you cannot be a committed environmentalist these days without eating a primarily vegan diet. Otherwise you’re clearly not walking your talk. How can someone claim to care about reducing their emissions if they won’t make the single most important change an individual can make? To eat commercially produced meat these days is to say “F— you” to the environment with every bite.

The good news is that eating vegan will save us all money. I could get into issues like reducing health care costs and the strong links between animal products and preventable lifestyle diseases, but fortunately we don’t need to go that far. The true cost of meat and the wastefulness of the animal products industry is largely disguised because of government subsidies; the meat and dairy industries have deep pockets to fund their lobbyists. This makes their products less expensive in the stores, but we all pay for their kickbacks in the form of higher taxes. If there was ever a good time for the government and individuals to start saving money and cut waste, this would be it. Who do you think pays for all the resources that go into producing animal products? We all do.

It’s good to make other changes to your lifestyle too, but your diet is the #1 place where you can reduce your personal contribution to global warming. If you want to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions, you need look no further than your dinner plate.

I don’t expect you to change overnight, but you can certainly make some reductions if you eat a lot of animal products or processed foods. Eat foods that are closer to nature, foods that required less energy and which yield less pollution. Even better is to eat locally grown foods if you can. Although I live in Las Vegas where the temps can get pretty extreme, I have a small garden in my backyard. It’s nice to walk to my garden and pick some produce instead of having to buy items at the store which were transported from California or South America. It saves me a little money too.

I’m definitely not perfect when it comes to reducing my greenhouse gas emissions. There are surely other things I could do to reduce my environmental impact. However, this is an area where I apply the 80/20 rule. What’s the 20% I can get right that will yield 80% of the value?

I’ve been vegetarian for 16 years and vegan for 12.5 years. Erin has been vegan just as long, and both of our kids have been vegan since birth. Based on the feedback I’ve gotten over the years, it’s safe to say that I’ve influenced hundreds of people to make dietary changes that will significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Consequently, I’m confident that my net environmental impact is positive, and my lifestyle and influence are creating a net reduction in our usage of water, energy, fossil fuels, and other resources. I’m sharing this to point out that you don’t have to be perfect to make a difference. You just have to care, and you need to focus on making the most beneficial changes you can. Use your common sense to reduce or eliminate the most destructive elements of your lifestyle, and don’t get distracted by trivialities. If you can influence your family and friends to try eating lower on the food chain too, that’s a very positive and constructive influence indeed. It means that your lifestyle is producing a net gain for the planet rather than a net abuse.

I think the best thing you can do here is to lead by example. Live as consciously as you can, so you can serve as a positive influence for others.

A great place to start is to kick off a 30-day trial of a specific lifestyle change. Even if you decide not to continue beyond those 30 days, your temporary trial will still produce a net gain for the environment.

What can you do to adapt to the effects of climate change?

What if global warming continues as the scientists predict? How can you prepare for the future?

Whatever you do, do NOT move to Florida!

If we can’t fully prevent global warming, we can still adapt to the expected climate changes.

I suggest you review the regional impact assessments from the USGCRP. You can click on the region where you live and see a summary of the expected impacts from climate change. Let those assessments inform your decisions regarding where you plan to live.

If you don’t like the trends where you live, consider moving to a region where the impacts won’t be as troubling for you. For example, if you have serious problems with the heat, you probably won’t want to live in Arizona.

The most extreme changes will happen in the coastal areas and in the northernmost and southernmost states. The area near the Great Lakes is expected to see a lot more precipitation and flooding.

In Las Vegas where I live, it looks like we can expect fairly mild changes compared to some states. Most likely we’ll have more days over 100 degrees in the decades ahead (today’s high is 107). Nearby Mt. Charleston might not see as many ski days. The most serious problem for this city is going to be water, especially if the population keeps growing and Lake Mead keeps shrinking. There may come a time when the city’s population will outstrip its water resources.

Most likely you’ll review the changes that are expected to affect your area, and you’ll say to yourself, “I can cope with that.” All in all, it doesn’t look like the U.S. will be hurt by global warming nearly as badly as some countries. But the big picture is that we need to consider how our actions as individuals are affecting the rest of the planet. Just because our hometowns may not be hard hit doesn’t mean we should ignore our responsibilities to Mother Earth.

Regarding Al Gore

As you can probably guess from the above, I have my doubts about Al Gore. I loved An Inconvenient Truth, and I’m glad to see that he’s been raising awareness about climate change. I think he deserves his Nobel Prize for his efforts. However, I question the advice he’s suggesting for individual action. He’s wasting time hacking at the branches and isn’t serving as a good example of how we can realistically tackle this challenge. We Americans in particular must change our lifestyles. We can’t blame everything on the energy sector.

Apparently Al Gore is still a heavy consumer of animal products, and I know that some groups have been pressuring him to go veg, to talk about going veg, and to set a proper and congruent example. His apparent unwillingness to walk his talk gives me serious pause. I cannot fathom that he’s ignorant of the massive negative impact caused by animal agriculture, so I must conclude that (1) he’s intentionally misleading people for some hidden agenda; (2) he lacks the knowledge, motivation, or support to navigate this lifestyle change; or (3) he thinks it would be political suicide to tell the whole truth. What do you think the reason is? I suspect it’s a combination of (2) and (3).

Al Gore helped organize and promote the Live Earth concerts. Their official handbook stated that “refusing meat” is the “single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.”

Clearly something doesn’t add up here.

So here’s my offer to Al Gore. If he’s so inclined, I will personally help him transition to a vegan or mostly vegan diet. He can stay at my house for a while, and I’ll bring in some experienced vegan chefs and educators to prepare food for him and teach him how to live as a vegan, at my expense. I’ll pay for all the food too.

Whether he succeeds or not, just for making the attempt, I’ll give him the opportunity to make a guest post on my blog about anything he so desires. Perhaps he’ll be interested in sharing a positive message with a couple million people, half of which are Americans.

Al, if you happen to read this, my phone number is on my contact page. This offer has no expiration date.

Home

If you haven’t already seen it, I encourage you to watch the movie Home (it’s free). It’s a fascinating 93-minute documentary on the ways in which human activity is impacting the planet. After my daughter Emily watched it, she asked Erin, “Mommy, will the planet still be alive when I’m a grown up?”

Let’s intend a yes.

Use the 7 universal growth principles to achieve major breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Get the book Personal Development for Smart People today.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

At previous potlucks I’ve brought guacamole, nori rolls, and garlic “bread,” but by far the most popular item I’ve made was a raw fruit pie. I’ve brought raw pies to three potlucks, and I always brought home an empty pie plate. People always compliment me on how good they are.

Raw fruit pies are very easy to make. Depending on what kind of fruit you use, it can take as little as 20 minutes from start to finish, including making the crust from scratch. And it’s a lot healthier for you than a typical cooked pie.

I want to credit Jennifer Cornbleet for getting me started on the path to raw pie nirvana. I began with one of her blueberry pie recipes and have been gradually tweaking it to make other fruit pies.

Here’s a photo of a raw strawberry pie I made, so you can see what the end result looks like. This one took about 30 minutes to make from start to finish. I made it for a raw potluck, and it quickly disappeared.

How to Make a Raw Pie Crust

Making a raw pie crust is easy and only takes about 5 minutes once you get the hang of it. There are lots of variations on how to do it, so I’ll start you off with one of the simplest.

There are only three ingredients:

• 2 cups raw nuts (almonds, walnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, etc) – don’t soak the nuts
• 1 cup dates, pitted
• 1/4 tsp sea salt (optional)

Put the raw nuts in a food processor, and blend with the S-blade until the nuts are reduced to small crumbs. (This will be very noisy when you first turn on the machine.) Add the dates and salt, and blend again until there are no more chunks of dates. The end result should look like loose crumbs.

Pour the crumbs into a 9-inch pie plate, and use your hands to press them into the form of a pie crust. It may take a little practice to get it to look symmetrical, but it isn’t difficult. I usually start by pressing straight down to get the bottom flat, and then I press around the sides as I turn the pie plate. You can make the pie crust flush with the top of the pie plate, or you can create a lip around the edges. The strawberry pie shown above has a lip; the other photos show pies without the lip. Sculpt it however you like.

Put the pie crust in the freezer for about 15 minutes. This helps it become more firm and solid. Fortunately this is just enough time to prepare the filling.

There are countless variations on the ingredients you can use to make the crust, but generally the best place to start is with raw nuts and some kind of chewy dried fruit. Instead of dates you can use raisins or figs. I suppose you could even use dried apricots, but I haven’t tried that one yet.

The salt is optional, but I find that a little salt in the crust makes for a nice contrast to the sweet fruit mixture that will fill the pie.

You can also add some spices like cinnamon or nutmeg. If you like the taste of coconut, try adding some shredded coconut as well.

As a side note, if you’re strict about using truly raw ingredients, then you should know that many nuts that are labeled raw are not actually raw.

For example, thanks to the (idiotic, paranoid, and otherwise dumb) ruling of the California Almond Board, California almonds have to be pasteurized by law. This means that the nuts are heated/cooked at temperatures well above 110 degrees. In my opinion it’s totally unethical that they should be labeled and sold as raw nuts when they are actually cooked, no longer a living food, and nutritionally not the same as raw nuts. I’ve read that roughly 98% of the almonds sold in the USA come from California, so if you buy raw almonds from a grocery store in the USA, they’re probably not raw.

Lately I’ve been using raw organic almonds which are imported from Spain. These Spanish almonds are larger and more flavorful than the California almonds, and they make a better pie crust too. It’s unfortunate that I have to get my nuts from 5500 miles away instead of 55 miles away, but I’d rather use the best ingredients available. I’d be happy to help out the (crashing and burning) California economy since California is my birthplace, but I can’t help them if they’re going to make stupid choices like cooking their nuts and trying to sell them as raw. I doubt that the deep cuts in education they’re planning will improve their vocabulary. Cooked and raw are not synonyms. Nor are actor and governor.

How to Make the Fruit Filling

Making the filling is quite simple and only requires three ingredients:

• 6 cups fresh fruit such as blueberries, strawberries, cherries, peaches, apples, etc.
• 2 tbs fresh lemon juice
• 1 cup dates, soaked about 10 minutes

Blueberry pie is the easiest to make because the blueberries don’t require any prep work other than washing. If you’re using larger fruits, you’ll need to cut them into smaller chunks. If you’re making strawberry pie, cut off the stem part, and cut the strawberries into quarters (into sixths or eighths if the berries are very large). For cherry pie, pit the cherries and then quarter each cherry. For apple pie, cut the apples into thin slices or small chunks.

Put 2 cups of the fruit, the lemon juice, and the soaked dates (minus the soak water) into a blender or Vita-Mix, and blend until you have a smooth liquid. Put the remaining 4 cups of fruit into a large bowl, and pour the blended mixture over it. Mix it together.

Take your pie crust out of the freezer, and pour the fruit mixture into it. Use a rubber spatula to spread the filling into the crust.

Viola! Your pie is done. You can actually eat it right now, but it’s best if you refrigerate it for at least an hour or two.

The blueberry pie is easiest and tends to come out best because the blueberries hold their moisture well. If you use strawberries or other fruits and cut them into small pieces, they’ll release some of their moisture as the pie sits in the fridge, so the crust will become wetter. This isn’t a big deal for my family because our pies rarely last more than a day anyway.

You can make pies with frozen fruit, but you’ll need to thaw and drain the fruit first. Personally I prefer fresh fruit pies. One time I made a blueberry pie for a potluck with organic frozen blueberries, and everyone still loved it.

Use your imagination to create different flavors and textures for the filling. You can add other ingredients to the sauce, like adding cinnamon for an apple pie. You can also mix and match different fruits. For example, you could use a strawberry sauce for a blueberry pie and vice versa.

Here’s a photo of a blueberry cream pie I made. I began with the original blueberry pie recipe, and then I made a cream sauce from soaked cashews, soaked dates, water, and vanilla (I think). I used a spatula to swirl the cream sauce into the pie filling. This one was actually a little too rich for my tastes.

The final photo is a slice of raw cherry pie. Erin and I made this on Saturday using fresh cherries. Erin used a cherry pitter to pit the cherries while I made the crust. Fortunately she managed to snap a photo of it on Sunday before it was all gone. This pie tasted better on the second day because the cherries weren’t as tart.

These pies are so good that you can even eat them as a meal. After all it’s just fresh fruit and nuts. My daughter Emily and I ate some of this cherry pie for breakfast yesterday.

Have fun, and enjoy the pies!

Use the 7 universal growth principles to achieve major breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Get the book Personal Development for Smart People today.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

An event is something that happens at a given place and time. An event is essentially a point or interval in space-time.

Place and time are both relative concepts.

To define a place, you need a reference location. Places are defined by relationships, such as by coordinates (relative to a coordinate system) or directions (relative to a starting location).

To define a time, you must also use relationships, such as a time’s relationship to the present moment or to another date and time.

When you try to define events in objective terms, you internally translate them into subjective terms anyway.

If someone gives you a date and time, you’ll naturally interpret it relative to your present moment or relative to some other event in your past or future or in your memories. If someone tells you a location, you naturally interpret it relative to your current location, your home, or some other location you’re familiar with. When and where only hold meaning when they can be translated into terms relative to your when and your where.

Events and Perception

All the dates and locations you have stored in your memory came from your perceptions. Maybe you experienced those events directly, or maybe you learned about them from another source. Either way that knowledge came via your perceptions. So it stands to reason that your entire knowledge of space-time comes through your perceptions. Hence, anytime you consider an event in space-time, you’re considering that event as filtered through your perceptions. You’re considering that event relative to yourself.

We like to think of objective frames of reference as things that exist outside of ourselves. When you say, “Let’s be objective about this,” it’s a suggestion for everyone to step outside their personal perspectives and to consider reality from a perspective that exists outside of them. In truth this is merely an illusion, however, since objectivity is always ultimately translated into subjective terms. We can’t escape the fact that all of space-time comes to us through our perceptions, including the memories we rely upon when we’re trying to be objective. Objectivity is something you had to learn about through your subjective senses.

You see… objectivity is simply an extra layer of abstraction on top of subjectivity. When you talk about objective events, what you’ve actually done is defined a space-time coordinate system relative to yourself, and then you placed events within that coordinate system. But if you remove the abstraction layer, you can see that you actually plotted events relative to yourself.

Even if you try to define an event that exists outside yourself, you’re still being self-referential (i.e. “outside of me”), and therefore you’re still being subjective.

The point here is that all events are both self-referential and subjective. You cannot have an event which is completely outside of you. You are in fact a necessary component of every event that occurs. You are the observer.

Objective Events

Suppose a bomb explodes in another city. You read about it in the news the next day. What is the actual event that occurred?

You might be inclined to say that the event was the explosion that happened the previous day. Its place is the other city where the explosion occurred. Its time is some particular time of day yesterday. This is how you would plot the event in space-time.

But if you define events this way, you aren’t paying attention to what really happened.

The actual event was your reading the news and learning about the explosion. Then you plotted that event in your memory. You imagined it and stored it.

Later on you may create new events by accessing your memory to recall that story. Memory is re-imagination.

The actual event occurred within your imagination. In fact, this is the only true location where events can occur.

Consider this: What if there was no bomb and no explosion? What if the news story was false? What if you read a retraction about that story the next day?

According to the original interpretation of this event, you got duped. The event never happened. The story wasn’t true.

And yet, you reacted as if the story had been true. Maybe it affected you emotionally. What caused that effect? It wasn’t the explosion, since no explosion actually occurred. Now if the explosion really had occurred, can you still claim that this was the actual event you were reacting to?

If this is how you interpret events, then you have to acknowledge that your mind is probably littered with lots of false events. You picked up untrue information through mistakes or intentional deception here and there, but you memorized it in the form of real events. This means you can’t really trust the contents of your own mind. Some of it is true. Some of it is false. And a lot of it is probably a mixture of truth and falsehood.

What effect will this have on you? It will create doubt, won’t it? If you know you’re capable of storing false events in your memory, then you can’t fully trust your memories, can you? You can’t be too sure of anything.

When you hear a report of a new event, how will you respond? If the event seems significant, you’ll probably want to verify the truth of it. You’ll be naturally skeptical. In fact, that would be the most intelligent approach because you wouldn’t want your mind to get cluttered with false memories. So skepticism is a natural result of a belief in objective events that occur outside of you. If your root assumption is that reality is objective in nature, then skepticism is a sensible strategy.

So if I tell you the President of the USA was assassinated today, you’ll want to verify that independently. It would be unwise for you to assume I’m telling you the truth. You’ll have some measure of doubt upon hearing such a report from just one person. It could be a lie, a trick, or something else entirely.

Also, it stands to reason that your mind will be filled with knowledge that you consider fuzzy. You’ll experience a lot of uncertainty in terms of trying to nail down what is true and what isn’t. What exactly happens at Area 51? What’s the real reason the USA invaded Iraq? Does your girlfriend really love you? Does your boss think you’re doing a good job? What’s the best diet to eat? Your life will be filled with such uncertainties.

Digging to uncover the truth becomes an endless quest. You can never eliminate uncertainty. The more you dig, the more questions you discover. The quest for objective truth is a metaphysical snipe hunt.

Am I suggesting that this interpretation of events is somehow wrong? Not at all. It’s a perfectly valid interpretation. I simply want to point out that this interpretation leads to certain natural consequences. It generates an endless loop of skeptical questioning and lifelong uncertainty. That isn’t a good or bad thing per se. It just is.

Subjective Events

Let’s return to our bomb story. What’s the subjective method of interpreting this event?

In this case we would say that your awareness of the story is the event. The story arises within your consciousness, and you perceive it. You imagine the explosion occurring. Your imagination impacts you and gives rise to other thoughts and feelings. This act of perception is in fact the event.

So what if the story turns out to be false? Does this invalidate what you experienced? No. You never objectified the explosion to begin with. There is no “out there.” Your perception is the event.

When you discover that the explosion never occurred, it doesn’t invalidate anything. Now you’re experiencing a new present-moment. You experience new thoughts and emotions. You’re still in the present moment experiencing the unfolding of a present-moment event.

Events are perception. If there’s no perception, there’s no event.

Since perception is a present-moment phenomenon, technically there are no events outside of the present. There is only one event, and it’s what’s happening right now.

When you learn that the bomb story was false, and you recall your reaction to that false story, you’re still in the present moment. You’re accessing your memories in the present. You’re experiencing your thoughts and feelings in the present.

Objective Truth

In objective reality we must deal with the duality of truth and falsehood. There can be true events and false events, and you can’t always tell the difference. If I tell you a story, you can’t be immediately sure if the story is true or false. Did it really happen or not? You can never know for certain because truth is something that exists outside your perceptions. Therefore it is unknowable. Consequently, you can never be aligned with truth as long as you believe in objectivity. The more objective you are, the more doubt you have.

If you really hold fast to an objective frame, then you can’t even trust your own memories. Objectively speaking, human memory is hideously unreliable. Much of what you think you know may turn out to be patently false, but you may never come to realize that it’s false. How much false information do you currently believe to be true? To be truly objective, you must hold serious doubts about the contents of your own mind. And that means you must also be doubtful of your belief in objectivity. Ultimately, the more objective you become, the more doubt you’ll experience. Eventually you will come to realize that you can know nothing and trust nothing. Some philosophers have gone that route, and perpetual doubt was the ultimate conclusion.

What’s the consequence of this philosophy?

Since you cannot discern objective truth from falsehood with total certainty, you’ll probably feel somewhat ungrounded and insecure. At first it may be a nagging feeling, but the more objective you try to be, the more this feeling will grow. The only way to really handle it in the long run is to release your need for certainty. Unfortunately this is a natural consequence of assuming that reality is objective in nature.

Subjective Truth

Now how do we define truth from a subjective perspective? First of all, truth can only exist in the present moment. Truth is whatever you’re experiencing right now. That is the only place you can have certainty. Your experience of your thoughts and feelings right now is true. You can trust your subjective experience. It is real because you perceive it as real. The now is your truth. This is the best place to ground yourself. You can trust this moment. It is real.

This is why so many meditation practices have you start by focusing on your breathing. Paying attention to your breath helps you re-connect to the present moment. Conscious breathing grounds you in what is real. You can experience truth simply by witnessing: I am breathing in. I am breathing out. I am breathing in. I am breathing out. This is real. This is truth.

From a subjective perspective, there’s no point in objectifying your memories. Recalling a memory is a present moment experience. Therefore it is real and true. A memory doesn’t have to be true in an objective sense. It only has to be true in the sense that you are experiencing that memory right now. It is true because it is a real, present-moment experience.

Using your imagination also gives you an experience of truth. When you imagine something, you’re having a true perceptual experience.

What is the long-term result of living within a subjective frame? Technically that question is nonsensical because the question is framed from an objective frame? Long-term implies living in the future, which cannot be aligned with subjective truth.

To phrase this question in subjective terms, we would need to ask, What is the present-moment reality of living within a subjective frame? Whereas objectivity is concerned with past and future, subjectivity is concerned only with right now.

When you ground yourself in the present moment, you can live in a state of certainty. You can know that your present moment experience is real. Consequently, you can become strongly aligned with truth when you hold to a subjective frame of reference. You can gradually let go of doubt and feel very centered in your experience of reality.

The Best Tool for the Job

Understanding the contrast between the objective and subjective lenses is a key to conscious living.

Let’s bring this abstract gobbledygook down to earth with some practical application by considering a few scenarios.

Career

How would you choose a career?

With an objective frame of reference, it’s about predicting the future. Where is the path going to take you? How will you get there? What are the risks? What will it be like?

With a subjective frame, the question doesn’t make much sense. You don’t really need a career. Instead your focus will be on what you can do right now. What would bring you joy in this moment? What will make you happy right now? What would you like to experience here and now?

For example, objectively speaking I can say that I’m a blogger or a writer or a personal development expert. I can talk about the projects I’m working on and the goals I’ve achieved. That would be one way to define my career.

Subjectively I could say, “Right now I am writing, and it feels good. I am happily writing.” I can tell you about the ideas flowing through my mind that I’m finding ways to express.

Which definition is more valid? Technically neither. But personally I like the subjective side because it’s a better fit for my real experience. It is more true. I do not know what tomorrow will bring. But right now, I know with certainty that I am writing. When I know I am in the here and now, I am aligned with truth. I feel certain and centered and harbor no doubts.

Relationships

How do you define your relationships?

Objectively your relationships are defined by their history and by your future plans. In order for a person to be a family member, friend, or lover, they must satisfy certain historical criteria.

Subjectively your relationships are defined by your feelings and your sense of connectedness. There’s no need to satisfy any particular objective requirements. A family member is anyone with whom you feel a familial bond. A friend is anyone you feel friendship towards.

I can talk about my relationship with Erin in terms of our 15-year history together. Or I can simply pay attention to the feelings I have for her right now.

This is another area where I find the subjective lens more empowering. I see a lot of pain in people who cling to the objective lens. For example, they remain stuck in relationships that do not feel good to them, partly out of loyalty to the past history together and the expected future obligations. Even in an objective sense though, it’s easy enough to predict that this is a path of long-term misery.

Health

How do you make sound health decisions?

Objectively you would have to learn a great deal about nutrition and the human body. And you’d still be riddled with doubt because so much of that information is contradictory. So you’d have to conduct lots of personal experiments and measure the long-term results to discover what works for you. With any luck you might figure a few things out before you die.

Subjectively you need only pay attention to the present moment experience of being in your body. When you eat notice how each food makes you feel? Observe your food cravings, and notice which ones feel good to indulge and which don’t.

I just took a short break from writing this article to eat a small apple.  Objectively I could talk about the vitamins in the apple, the health benefits of raw foods, the environmental consequences of eating apples, and so on.

Subjectively I can pay attention to how the apple makes me feel. I noticed that I was hungry, so I decided to eat the apple because it was visually attractive to me. It was sweet and crunchy and juicy. I don’t feel guilty for eating it, knowing that the apple tree that spawned it can continue to live out its life, none the worse for wear.

I can choose to monitor my health objectively, and I can also choose to monitor my health subjectively. I can get a medical checkup to see how all my organs check out. I can also notice when I’m stressed and do things that relax me. I can notice when my body feels sluggish and do things that energize me. If I’m depressed I can do things that make me laugh.

In this particular area, I’ve also gotten the best results from following the subjective path. I eat the foods and do the exercises that feel best to me. I avoid doing things that would make me feel guilty.

This morning I was going to go the gym as usual, but I checked in with myself and felt more inspired to go for a walk. So I walked around the neighborhood for 80 minutes, exploring some streets I’d never traveled. I discovered a small park, an elementary school, and a Hindu temple within walking distance that I never knew were there. I sat in the park for several minutes and watched the beautiful sunrise over the mountains. It was a perfect morning, subjectively speaking.

Living Subjectively

I’m not saying that the subjective frame is always the best tool for the job. However, more often than not I find it very valuable to view situations through a subjective lens instead of adding that extra layer of abstraction to consider them objectively.

Ask yourself: What am I experiencing now? What am I feeling? What would I like to experience now? What would I like to feel? Let your feelings inform your decisions. Then act on those decisions.

When you are not feeling good, you’re on the wrong path, so get off it! Stop doing what you’re doing immediately, and try something else. Test thoughts in your imagination by dreaming up other things you could do right now. Keep cycling through different thoughts until you find one that feels good. Then act on that thought. Then repeat.

If something feels wrong to you, it is wrong. If it feels right, it is right. Let that be your truth for a while. See what it’s like to live that way. You’ll soon discover that what you assumed would feel right sometimes feels wrong when you try it, and vice versa. But the more you live this way, the more you’ll discover what feels good to you consistently.

What fascinates me is how living subjectively actually causes life to work well from an objective perspective too. When you seek to create enduring happiness for yourself in the present moment, you will find yourself doing the very things that will take care of your bills, your relationships, and more.

Use the 7 universal growth principles to achieve major breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Get the book Personal Development for Smart People today.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

I did not suffer from that particular problem myself since my parents are both pretty bright intellectually. But I can still relate to the challenge of being raised by people with values that differ from your own.

I’ve also had some friends who were raised by — how can I say this tactfully? — intellectually challenged parents.

Some parents simply make some very dumb decisions and not just with respect to parenting. Some make dumb career choices and bad financial decisions. Some make poor health choices. Some are socially inept. And some are spiritually bankrupt. When parents make bad choices, their children are stuck going along for the ride.

In many cases, by the time the child is a teenager, they’re starting to realize that Mom and/or Dad are a few bits short of a byte. Then the kid is left wondering, “How the heck am I supposed to deal with these people?”

This situation can create a lot of conflict and stress during the teenage years. The teen is still dependent on the parents, but the parents aren’t doing a very good job as parents… or as human beings for that matter.

What do you do if you find yourself in such a position? How do you prevent dumb parents from making a mess of your life while you’re still dependent on them?

Here’s some advice on how to handle the situation of feeling trapped as a teenager by your own parents’ failings.

Accept the truth of your situation

Don’t resist or deny your situation. Accept it for what it is. Say to yourself, “So I don’t have the brightest parents in the world. That’s okay. It might be difficult, but I can deal with it.”

If you still have a few more years to live with such parents, it’s tempting to go dark and pretend they’re smarter than they really are. After all, you’ve trusted them to guide you this far. What’s the harm in continuing to put your faith in them?

Loyalty is a good value, but it’s best to direct your loyalty toward principles and key character qualities, not to individual people. Be loyal to the truth.

Being too trusting of people who don’t deserve your trust can lead to all sorts of problems. Even if you don’t have much control over your life situation, you’ll still share the burden of dealing with the consequences of (bad) decisions made by your parents. So it’s wise to limit your exposure to such risks when possible. And you can’t limit your risk if you deny that the risk exists.

Bad decisions made by your parents can create very real problems for you. For starters this can make your life very unstable, unpredictable, and stressful. When they screw up, you may have to deal with the aftermath.

It’s unfortunate to find yourself in a situation where you have limited authority but still must deal with the consequences of decisions made by others. In truth that doesn’t change even after you become an adult, so you might as well get used to it. We must all deal with the consequences of actions taken by others. It’s part of being a member of the human race.

If you deny the reality of your situation, you become truly powerless. Only by acknowledging and accepting your situation without resistance can you summon the power to deal with it appropriately. As tempting as it may seem in the moment, don’t allow yourself to go dark. Keep your eyes open.

Take responsibility and exercise your personal authority

After you accept the situation you find yourself in, assume 100% responsibility for it. Even if someone else is supposedly in charge, your life is still your own. If someone else makes a decision that affects you, you have to live with the consequences.

Your authority may be fairly weak as a teenager, but you can still exercise it to some degree. You can learn how to influence your parents to make better decisions. The skills you build to make this possible will serve you well later in life.

Whatever you do, don’t complain. Complaining only makes things worse. Don’t attack your parents for making decisions you don’t agree with. Learn to negotiate with them instead. Do what you can to help them make better decisions. That’s a lot to ask of a teenager, but again, this is a skill you’ll need later in life anyway, so it can actually be a blessing to develop it at a young age.

In order to become a good negotiator, you must learn to see reality through your parents’ perspectives. You need to understand what they value and why. Once you gain a sense of their values, you can use that as leverage to help get your own needs met.

Instead of getting angry and frustrated and throwing teenage tantrums, try to understand your parents as human beings. They aren’t perfect and they make mistakes. See your situation as an opportunity for you to learn and grow. If you can figure out a positive way to deal with your parents, it will help you out later in life because you’ll surely encounter others who are similar to your parents in at least a few dimensions of behavior. If you can’t handle them, you’ll probably attract others like them later in life until you learn this lesson.

For example, if your parents value peace and quiet, what can you do to make that a reality for them? How can you help them meet this need? Don’t guess. Just ask them outright. It may take a bit of massaging if they aren’t very expressive, but take your time. Keep feeding their answers back to them in your own words until they verify that you understand them.

If your parents are having financial problems, what can you do to help out? Can you help cut back on expenses? Can you pick up the slack by taking on more responsibilities at home? Can you encourage them now and then to help them feel a little less burdened? Can you start a simple web business to bring in a few hundred extra dollars a month?

Instead of blaming your parents for whatever ails you, step up and exercise your own power to make things better. Do what you can to improve your collective situation. You may not have as much societal leverage as your parents do, but surely you can do better than remain aloof. Whatever is testing your parents is a test for you as well.

Communicate your desires and don’t complain

It’s almost a truism that teenagers love to complain. They have an almost infinite capacity for talking about what they don’t like and don’t want. However, this practice doesn’t serve them at all. It merely turns other people against them.

Don’t succumb to the destructive pattern of teen angst. Instead, get into the habit of clearly expressing what you want. Then ask your parents what they need from you to make it happen. By all means assert your independence, but do it constructively if possible instead of lashing out recklessly.

My daughter Emily is only 9 years old, but she’s pretty good at letting us know what she wants. She can be a bit of a spitfire and doesn’t always express herself in the most tactful way, but I respect her more for communicating her desires so clearly. It makes it easier for me to parent her because I have a good sense of what she wants.

Emily loves thrill rides like rollercoasters. She practically equates good parenting with taking her on such rides frequently. As soon as she hits the minimum height requirement for another rollercoaster, she lets us know that we must take her on it ASAP. She recently hit 54 inches, which was the minimum height to ride the big rollercoaster at the New York New York Hotel on the Vegas Strip, so I took her on it, and she really enjoyed it. Since she’s so clear about what she wants, I don’t have to guess. I know that’s how she receives love.

It would be harder to parent Emily if she complained about what she didn’t want and never communicated what she did want. Sometimes when I pick her up from school, she vents about what went wrong that day, so I keep coaching her to shift her mindset. If she has a bad day at school, I ask her to tell me about what was good about her day. If she starts complaining about what she doesn’t like, I teach her to tell me about what she likes most. I still listen to her problems, but I try to keep her focused on overcoming those problems and turning them into positive growth experiences.

As a teenager, don’t waste your breath complaining about what you don’t want. It turns people off and conditions them to regard you as a whiner. It makes them less likely to want to listen to you. Complaining is negative personal branding.

Instead, take the time to clarify your desires. Make it clear to your parents what you want and need from them. Give them a clear picture of your personal boundaries. Ask them what is required to make your desires a reality. Open a negotiation with them about how to make your family life better for everyone.

Be persistent. Give your parents time to come to grips with your personal boundaries. Don’t expect their perspective to shift overnight. It may take many weeks for them to come around and be willing to negotiate with you. Just keep re-raising the issue once a week or so until they’re ready to deal with you as a more independent individual instead of as their dependent child.

If your parents are able to fulfill your needs, great. Do what you can to help make that happen. But if they aren’t able to come through for you or if they keep disappointing you, either due to unwillingness or incompetence, then don’t beat a dead horse. Accept that what you’re asking for is more than they can give you. They don’t have the capacity to fulfill your needs, so you must get your needs filled outside your relationship with them. There are plenty of other people on this planet who can help you out.

When you’re very young, your parents may be your whole world. But during your teenage years (if not sooner), you’ll learn that they can’t satisfy every need and fulfill every desire of yours. They have their own lives to manage, and you are probably quite a handful.

See the true intelligence of your parents

Maybe your parents aren’t very bright, but do they have any good qualities you value?

There are many forms of intelligence, and IQ is only one. People that aren’t very bright in one form of intelligence are often gifted in other forms. Social intelligence, interestingly enough, is a greater predictor of lifelong success and happiness than IQ.

If you have a conflict with your parents with respect to their apparent intelligence, perhaps it stems from connecting with their weaknesses instead of their strengths. Is it possible to shift your relationship in such a way that you can connect more often with their strengths?

For example, if you have a father who’s not very bright IQ-wise, but he has very high kinesthetic intelligence, then don’t ask him to help you with your math homework. Instead, try to relate to him on the basis of his strength. Perhaps you could ask him for advice on becoming more fit, or take up an interest in sports that you can share with him. When you have a personal challenge to deal with, maybe you could explain your problems to him using more physical language and body metaphors that he can understand.

When I meet new people, I like to probe them for their strengths, so I can relate to them on that basis when possible. For example, when I met someone with Asperger’s Syndrome that other people found to be socially awkward, I soon learned that he had a keen interest in video games, and I was able to connect with him easily when we talked about games. He was actually very bright, but he did poorly in school because school is pretty limited in the types of intelligence it values.

Society typically values some types of intelligence more than others. So if you have parents who struggle with seemingly basic aspects of living, such as being able to support themselves financially, it doesn’t mean they aren’t intelligent. It may simply mean that society hasn’t yet learned to harness the value they can provide.

Adopt substitute parents

It’s unrealistic to expect your parents to successfully fill all of your needs. That hardly ever happens in the real world. Most of us grow up with physical or emotional deficiencies to one degree or another. That doesn’t mean our parents are bad people. It just means they’re human.

It’s perfectly okay to befriend other adults who can serve as surrogate parents for you in some ways. If your parents can’t meet your needs, other people can. Your real family includes billions of people, not just the few who share your household.

When I was in high school, I had interests that my parents couldn’t fully support because they lacked the ability to do so. I didn’t hold that against them; I just found other adults who could serve those roles.

For example, when I was about 16 years old, I got really interested in fractals. I programmed my Atari 800 to graph color fractals pixel by pixel. My program would run overnight just to produce a single image. My parents didn’t know anything about fractals, so they couldn’t help me in this area. To get the mentoring I wanted, I made friends with a couple math teachers at my school who were both curious about fractals. They were able to guide me in ways my parents never could, such as by sharing books and resources with me that I otherwise never would have found on my own. Thanks to their help, pretty soon my bedroom wall was covered with fractal artwork I produced. I even invented my own fractal algorithms and produced artwork unlike any else that existed. I actually still have some of those images in a folder in my closet.

For a less nerdy example, when I was 12 or 13 years old, I joined a local Boy Scout troop. (Okay, so maybe that’s still nerdy, but in a different way at least.) My troop had an amazing Scoutmaster and assistant Scoutmaster who worked as professional search and rescue guys. I learned all sorts of cool things from them, such as first aid and lifesaving techniques, some of which I still remember to this day. Our troop went on camping trips once a month, so that gave me a much needed break from my family. That troop became like a surrogate family that allowed me to express and develop other aspects of my personality. I learned so many things that I couldn’t learn from my parents, such as snorkeling, cliff diving, building overnight shelters, archery, metalwork, wilderness survival, and so on. These mentors helped me face and overcome challenges that I’d otherwise never have encountered.

You can apply the same general idea to fill in the gaps in your own family life. Don’t whine and complain just because your parents are unable provide exactly what you want. Be proactive. Go out and find other ways to fill those voids. Recruit some substitute parents to help you.

Recognize that your parents are still right sometimes

Even if your parents seem to be lacking in brainpower, they probably have much greater life experience than you, and experience is often superior to raw intelligence. Adults can call upon their greater life experience to recognize patterns that teens haven’t yet internalized.

If your parents seem to be giving you bad advice or making inappropriate demands, ask yourself where their decisions are coming from. Do they know what they’re talking about? Are their conclusions coming from personal experience? Or are they making leaps of bad logic in areas where they have little practical knowledge?

If you see that parental decisions are coming from real life experience (i.e. street smarts), you may want to give your parents a little more leeway. Ask them to share some of the experiences that led them to their conclusions. Take a deep breath, and realize that it’s possible they may be more right about this than you are.

When I was young, my parents were very financially conservative. They both worked full time, they avoided credit card debt like the plague, they paid down their mortgage, and they saved money year after year. Consequently, my Dad was able to retire at age 55, and now ten years into his retirement, he still has lots of time for his personal pursuits such as gardening. When I was a teenager, I wasn’t particularly keen on saving money, but I bowed to my parents’ will because I figured they had a lot more experience with money than I did. Whenever I got gift money, I saved most of it and only spent part of it. Consequently, by the time I turned 18, I had plenty of money saved up for college. Since I went to a state school  in California, my two degrees only cost me about $2K total for tuition, plus maybe another $500 for books. By saving money for years and by spending conservatively, I didn’t need any students loans, and I graduated debt-free. Given California’s current multi-billion dollar budget deficit, perhaps they should have charged a bit more.

On the other hand, I recognized that because my parents were both lifelong employees, I shouldn’t take their advice with respect to starting and running my own business. That was beyond their personal street smarts. So in that area, I had to dismiss their advice, trust my own intelligence, and learn from other mentors. I’m glad I didn’t follow in my Dad’s footsteps since he worked for a GM-owned company. That might not have turned out so well in the long run, given than GM’s stock is currently worth about 1% of what it was a decade ago.

Move out when you turn 18

The practice of living with your parents well into your 20s is rather loserish in my opinion, and it’s especially bad if your parents are none too bright.

Living at home for too long into adulthood delays the maturation process and holds you back from embracing adulthood. You become a child in a grown-up body. It’s rather depressing to see people who are 28 years old who still live like they’re 18. They may look like adults, but they’re seriously lacking in maturity. By staying at home for too long, their transition into adulthood has been retarded.

I understand that people mature at different rates, but seriously… if you’re still living with Mommy and Daddy at age 25 and beyond, it’s time to get out on your own and grow up. Put the online orc battles on pause, and give adult living a chance. There’s no substitute for holding the reins of your life. Delaying this transition only makes you weaker.

It’s unfortunate that modern society lacks strong rituals for transitioning from childhood to adulthood. It’s not like you have to go out and kill a lion with your spear or take a mate and have your first child at age 15. The borderline has become fuzzier. Celebrating your 18th birthday isn’t much of a transition. Society may grant you more privileges at that age, but otherwise your life looks pretty much the same it did the day before, and you may not feel that much different. Spearing a lion is a much more significant boundary crossing than gaining the right to vote.

When social constructs are lacking, it’s up to you to craft your own rite of passage into adulthood. For me it was moving out when I was 18. It wasn’t an easy transition by any means, but it got the job done.

A good part of transitioning to adulthood is to assume full responsibility for your finances. Put all your accounts in your own name, and start paying your own bills. If you can afford to, get your own vehicle. In my family it was common to get hand-me-down vehicles from other relatives. When I couldn’t afford a new car, I bought an old Pontiac off my parents for $3K (the Blue Book value at the time), so I didn’t have to spend a lot on transportation (other than paying for gas, insurance, and repairs). When I couldn’t afford a car, I rode my bike everywhere.

Is it okay to move back with your parents once you’ve moved out the first time? I think that’s alright under certain circumstances — as long as it’s temporary, and you maintain good boundaries to ensure that you continue living like an adult. Lots of people move in and out of their parents’ home during their early 20s when they need to save money. It’s especially common in places where rents are very high, and it can be quite expensive to secure decent housing on your own. When this happens, however, you need to assume full responsibility for elevating your financial situation to the point where you can move out again. It’s okay to use family as a safety net when necessary, but make sure you don’t get too cushy with it.

What about the opposite end of the spectrum — moving out before you’re 18? In general I don’t recommend that except in severe cases like where you’re being violently abused or seriously mistreated. But it’s hard to make a one-size-fits-all call here because there are so many variables. I’ve seen people move out at 16 years old and thrive. Louise Hay, founder of Hay House (publisher of my book), moved out before 18, but she suffered a lot of abuse, including being raped at age 5, so that’s a lot more serious than merely dealing with parents you don’t respect.

When possible I think it’s better to maintain the stability of staying with your parent(s) until you turn 18, assuming you do gain some stability from it. People mature at different rates though, and some people are clearly capable of managing their own affairs at younger ages. In practice it’s a bit of a gamble no matter when you move out. For some people it works well, but for others it turns out rather poorly. A setback isn’t the end of the world though. You have to learn how to take care of yourself sooner or later.

I think the biggest risk these days isn’t moving out too soon. It’s staying at home too long. People get too comfortable staying at home, having their bills paid by Mom and Dad so they can delay adulthood by playing video games and surfing the web.

Even if you’re going to college, I think it’s better to move out and live on campus if you can afford it. Get a side job to make ends meet if you have to. But give yourself the gift of independence. Start making your own decisions, and cut the umbilical cord.

Be patient

Realize that the passage of time will eventually solve many of your problems. Your situation isn’t permanent, so the worst case is that you must wait it out.

A very empowering perspective is to consider that on a spiritual level, you chose your parents. Perhaps you incarnated with them for a reason. What can they teach you? Why on earth would you pick such people if you had a choice? Hmmmm…

This can be a hard perspective to maintain when you’re in the midst of chaotic teenage experiences. Sometimes the passage of time is required to clarify the valuable lessons learned.

I was raised in a family that my siblings and I used to openly label as dysfunctional. We revered the Bundy’s from Married With Children as a more loving family. But my parents did a great many things right that put me in a strong position later in life. I had a superb education and access to cool learning resources like a home computer and programming books at a young age (not terribly young by today’s standards, but certainly back then). By the time I was 16, I could write very well, and I could code interesting computer programs in BASIC and Pascal.

When I turned 18, I was glad to be out on my own and breathed a sigh of relief. It took me years to see the value of my upbringing as it played out. The passage of time helped to broaden my perspective.

If you’re a teenager right now, feeling stuck in an oppressive situation with parents you don’t respect, you may not be able to see the value in your experiences. You may simply regard them as chaotic or unfair. But time will surely shift your perspective. Be patient with yourself and your family, and allow your life to unfold as it will. In any event, resistance is futile.

Use the 7 universal growth principles to achieve major breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Get the book Personal Development for Smart People today.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

If you don’t employ such a practice, it’s easy to lose sight of your goals. You get caught up in day-to-day activities, and the most important long-term items fall by the wayside. Instead of leading your life, you merely react to whatever comes up.

When this happens to me, I start getting an empty, sinking feeling. A week goes by, and I feel like I didn’t really get much done, even though I may have been very busy. Unimportant tasks consume my time and multiply, and my goals don’t seem to be getting any closer. Have you ever felt that way?

On the other hand, when I’m very focused on my goals and working on them actively, I usually feel great. I have more energy and motivation, and I end my week with a major sense of accomplishment.

Some people think that motivation spawns action, but action also spawns motivation. Motivation is the feeling that comes from building and maintaining momentum. When you can see your goals getting closer day by day, it’s very energizing.

There are lots of ways to keep your goals in front of you. Creating a belief board, which I mentioned a couple posts ago, is one way. Here are some other ideas to consider:

1. Use a digital photo frame to display photos of your goals.

I’ve gotten two of these as gifts, but they sat in my closet unopened since 2006 or so. I didn’t want to add more clutter to my desktop.

But a cool use for these devices is to load them up with positive imagery that reminds you of your goals. For example, if you want to go on a vacation, put up photos of the places you want to visit.

You can also create your own images like affirmations (with or without background pics), and add those to the rotation as well.

You might even add a few reminders of the things in your life you’re already grateful for. You don’t have to remove all the pics of friends and family. Just add to them.

2. Add goal pics to your sidebar widget.

I’m not currently using any sidebar widgets, but Erin has one on her Windows sidebar that rotates through photos from her hard drive. It would be very easy to add some pics that represent your goals to this widget.

3. Choose an inspiring desktop background.

You can add a list of your top goals to your desktop background image, so they’re always visible on the screen. Just load up the pic in an image editor, add some text to it, and re-save it.

4. Write your goals on paper and post them everywhere.

Print your goals in a large font (like 100-pt), and post them around your home and workspace, so you see them often.

If this sort of thing would embarrass you if someone came to visit and saw your goals posted everywhere, then you really need to get over yourself. Plus you need better friends who will respect people with goals. If anything, you’ll be doing your visitors a big favor by reminding them to think about their goals more often too.

If you can’t even summon the courage to do this, then what chance do you have of achieving your goals? I’d bet against you.

5. Tell other people about your goals.

There are multiple schools of thought on this one. Here’s my viewpoint:

I think it’s okay to share your goals with other people openly. Now when you do that, some people will support you, some won’t seem to care, and other people will criticize you as say stuff like, “Yeah, right. You’ll never pull that off.”

Talking about your goals is a great way to filter your friends and family because it immediately shows you who’s on your side and who is only going to hold you back. That’s good information to have. It gives you advance warning about the people who are likely to go kittywompus as you get closer to your goal.

For example, if you tell people that your current financial goal is to earn $10K per month, even though you’re only making $3K per month right now, some people might go hyper-critical just because you set that goal. They see you as a threat to their complacency and laziness. So they’ll poke fun at you, attack you, etc. If you start working on your goal and have a setback, those will be the first people to jump on you and call you a failure.

You need to cut those people out eventually, and the sooner the better. If they can’t handle your ambitions now, imagine what it will be like when you actually hit $10K a month. They won’t be able to deal with it. They’re just going to get worse along the way, and they’ll create a psychological drag on you that could very well make you fail.

Erin and I saw this happen with some of our old friends, and it’s not pretty. The longer you try to maintain such relationships, the worse it gets and the more drag it creates. Let go of such people early, and the path to your goals is much smoother.

On the other side, talking openly about your goals also helps you identify who your true supporters are. It shows you which friends will not only be able to survive your ambitions but also thrive from it. Some people are actually turned on by their friends’ ambitions and achievements. Erin and I tend to be like that when our friends talk about their goals. It excites us. We want to see them succeed. It gives us the opportunity to vicariously celebrate their success along the way.

Some people are neither whiners nor cheerleaders. They’re just neutral. They don’t get upset or excited when you talk about your goals. Those people can still become good resources for you, so there’s no need to drop them from your life just because they aren’t super enthusiastic on your behalf. They might even be future customers if you start a business someday.

Aside from filtering your friends and family, another reason to talk about your goals is that it creates positive accountability. Once you drop the whiners, you can stop talking to them about your goals. But it’s good to keep talking about your goals and your progress with the true friends who want to see you succeed. Those people will check in on you from time to time and hold you accountable for making progress. When all other reminders fail, knowing that so-and-so is going to be asking how you’re doing on goal X can help you jump-start an otherwise stalled goal.

Keep it simple

The key is to keep it simple. Some people decide to create these elaborate vision binders and whatnot, but it takes too much time and effort, so they don’t maintain the habit. It’s better to take 2 minutes to print and post a plain text statement of your goal on the way right in front of you, or send a quickie email blast to let your friends know about your latest goal. You can always fancy it up later if you have time.

A simple practice done regularly is superior to a complex practice done irregularly — or not done at all. If you can’t get something in front of you in less than 5 minutes, you’re overcomplicating the process. It’s really not that difficult.

The benefit of keeping your goals in front of you is that you’re constantly refreshing your goal-oriented mindset. You make it hard to forget about them. You may still go dark from time to time, but your reminders will create that positive pressure that says, “I’m still here, and I’m not letting you off the hook that easy. You need to make some changes ASAP and get back on track.” With so many things in the world to distract you these days, especially online, this is an important practice to adopt.

Use the 7 universal growth principles to achieve major breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Get the book Personal Development for Smart People today.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.