Dumb Little Man - Tips for Life
3 Feb 2012 at 10:03am
These days, eating healthy has become a curiously difficult task. Despite the fact that the canons of healthy eating have not changed in centuries, the proliferation of health food products has continued unabated for years. It's become a crisis of abundance.
However, just because a product occupies shelf space in a boutique food store doesn't mean it's any better for you than its generic counterpart. Advertisers are very aware of the powers of 'mood affiliation', which is the tendency to associate familiar claims with one another. For example, consumers are very likely to believe a food that has no cholesterol is very likely to have no fat as well, even though the two are unrelated.
This cognitive bias allows the food industry to make a variety of claims that confer fictitious health benefits, often resulting in higher prices and no value to you.
Let's take a look at the perpetrators.
- Deception #1: Excessive Use of the Word 'No' on Labels.
The expectation that health foods contain no man-made ingredients is strongly held, and not without reason. However, health food manufacturers are much more likely to emphasize the lack of certain ingredients on their label, even when their commercial counterparts have the same qualities. For example, a Stanford professor compared the labels of 12 different brands of potato chips, and found that organic and specialty chips were 6 times more likely to emphasize the lack of ingredients such as soy, trans-fats, and cholesterol, even though this is just as true for Lays and Ruffles. There was no difference in health quality between the two groups of chips.
- Deception 2: Organic Food Is Always Better
Despite common perceptions, there's not a whole lot of evidence that the nutritional quality of organic food is much higher than non-organic food. This is because the term organic itself refers to particular manufacturing protocols used to make the food, and not necessarily the end product itself.
However, people frequently commit attribution errors when making judgments about organic food. A study conducted at the University of Michigan found that people assume an organic product has less-calories than a similar non-organic product, which causes people eating processed organic food to consume more calories than they would have otherwise. In some cases the inferred benefits of eating organic extend beyond nutrition, and gives people a belief that they need to exercise less because they eat organic.
- Deception 3: Fair Trade = Healthy
The Fair Trade certification industry is guilty of two swindles:
The Fair Trade certification industry is complicated to judge, mostly because it's a collection of heterogeneous agencies that have different criteria for assigning its badge. It's also become a profit channel more so than a statement of an organization's ethics.
However, it's important to realize that most Fair Trade certification agencies (supposedly) grant their certification based on production inputs that bear no direct relation to the quality of food being produced, such as worker treatment and eco-friendly business practices. Much like the organic label, people mistakenly assume that Fair Trade means a food has less calories and more nutrients because it's Fair Trade, which isn't true.
- Deception #4: Grass-Fed Beef
Grass-fed beef has become popular in America, and it's purported benefits are that it has a more beneficial ratio of Omega-3/Omega-6 fatty acids, a higher concentration of anti-oxidants like superoxide dismutase, and lower levels of nitrates, which creates healthier beef.
These health benefits are either non-existent or exaggerated.
It's true that grass-fed beef has a higher concentration of omega-3 fatty acids and anti-oxidants than grain-fed beef, but the total amount of these and other nutrients in any kind of beef is very small compared to plant sources. To get the recommended 1.6 grams of omega-3 fatty acid a day from grass-fed beef alone, you'd have to eat 4.6 pounds of beef a day. The biggest health benefits of beef is its high protein content, and the minerals iron and zinc, which have a very high bio-availibility when consumed from meat. The differences between grass and grain-fed beef for these nutrients are not different from one another.
And while it's true that grass-fed beef has a higher concentration of 'good' fat like conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), these observations are typically made with raw meat, and it's usually lost after cooking. Similarly, the nitrate content in beef is influenced by many variables in the production process, such as the fertilizer used in the soil, run off from nearby water sources, and the moisture level the grass when it's eaten.
- Deception #5: Going gluten-free is good for everyone
About 1% of the western population has Coeliac's disease, which is an autoimmune disorder caused by a genetic modification to a peptide in the intestine which breaks down when it comes in contact with gluten based molecules. The consumption of gluten causes an inflammatory response within the intestine when it's ingested.
If you are one of these people, by all means, avoid gluten. You're allergic to it.
If you're not one of these people, relax a little bit, and do yourself a favor by being more discerning about food labels. It's true that gluten-intolerance is showing up with an increasing regularity, but it's still a small percentage of the population and partly caused by people's increased awareness of it.
For the majority of the population, the presence or absence of gluten has little bearing on the quality of food being eaten. It's the diet fad du jour, but any diet approach that exclusively emphasizes a single variable is too simplistic.
If you doubt this is the case for gluten, then consider the previous 'single variable' diet fads popularized in the past: lactose, fat, sugar, etc. They've all been proven wrong.
Conclusion
The bottom line in all these myths is that people mistakenly assume various certifications as proxies for nutritional quality, but their presence bears no meaning to the quality of food you eat when you hold other things equal. The best way to ensure you're eating right is to consistently consume a diet of fresh foods with minimally processed ingredients, and spare yourself the confusion of deciphering the legitimacy of the latest fads of the health food industry.
References Used:
- Shan, Lu, et. al. 'Structural Basis for Gluten Intolerance in Celiac Sprue'. Science. September, 2002, vol. 297 pgs. 2275-2279.
- Aggarwal, Sarrabh. 'Screening for Celiac Disease in Average-Risk and High-Risk Populations.' Therapeutic Advances in Gastroentology. January 2012, Volume 5, pgs. 37-47. URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263981/ 'tool=pubmed
- Schuldt, Jonathan, et. al. 'The Organic Path to Obesity' Organic Claims Influence Calorie Judgments and Exercise Recommendations.' Judgment and Decision Making. June 2010, Vol. 5, pp. 144-150.
- Williams, Christine. 'Nutritional Quality of Organic Food: Shades of Grey or Shades of Green'' Proceedings of the Nutrition Society. 2002, pgs. 19-24.
- Comerfod, John. 'Telling the Grass-Fed Beef Story.' URL: http://www.das.psu.edu/research-extension/beef/pdf/ Telling%20the%20Grass.pdf
- Blackman, Allen, et. al. 'Producer Level Benefits of Sustainability Certification.' Conservation Biology. December 2011, volume 25, pgs. 1176-1185.
- Stoltenow, Charlie, et. al. 'Nitrate Poisoning in Livestock.' North Dakota State University, September 1998.
- Daley, Cynthia, et. al. 'A Review of Fatty-Acid Profiles and Antioxidant Content in Grass-Fed and Grain-Fed Beef.' Nutrition Journal. March 2010.
- Katz, David. 'Is Gluten-Free Just A Fad'' Fooducate.
- Schuldt, Jonathon. 'The 'Fair Trade' Effect: Health Halos From Social Ethics Claims.' Social Psychological and Personality Science. January 2012.
 | Written on 2/3/2012 by Jonathan Bechtel. Jonathan is the founder of Health Kismet, a green superfood that condenses 35 raw greens, herbs, and probiotics into a powder that can be mixed with a drink or other food supplement. He blogs about health, diet, nutrition, and culture at blog.healthkismet.com. | Photo Credit: Simon Shek |
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2 Feb 2012 at 8:55am
Looks like it is that time of year when many New Year resolutions that people set have already strayed. Attempts to kick a smoking habit for example, might have seemed successful for a few weeks but once the realities and stresses of coming back from the holidays have resurfaced, some people may have caved into the nicotine again.
Of course there is the usual health promises that get broken too. According to the fitness industry, a lot of gym memberships are sold from December to February but gym attendance significantly drops shortly afterwards when people realize that working out involves a lot of physical work.
This happens year after year for pretty well all types of New Year resolutions including health, financial and habit related ones like smoking. If this has already happened to you or if you are on the verge of letting some of your New Year resolutions go astray, here are some steps you can take to hopefully salvage them.
Think About The Underlying Reasons Behind Each New Year Resolution
First, rethink the underlying reasons behind each of your resolutions just to better understand why you set them in the first place. Are they still valid or important to you'
Sometimes a New Year resolution might be just a 'nice to do' rather than a 'need to do' and is not really all that important to your life after some time passes. If this is the case, drop the resolution to focus on more important things. If the reasons are still solid, then keep the resolutions for the next step.
Revamp Each New Year Resolution Into A Well Defined Goal
Now for the resolutions that are truly important to you, revamp them into well defined goals. Getting in shape for example is far too general. Instead, set such a resolution as a realistic goal you can measure like losing ten pounds during each remaining month in 2012 as this is something you can measure. Make sure that your defined goals are realistic by seeing what other people have done and have been successful with similar goals.
Plan Out The Steps Required
Now that you have the end results of your goals in mind, plan out the steps that you actually have to do each week in order to achieve them. This can be setting definite time periods during the week to work out at the gym or taking a course in something that will help you achieve a certain goal.
Physically enter these steps each week into your calendar just like any other important appointments that you may have each week. This must be on something that you will be referring to each day whether it is a physical calendar or electronic one in your computer or personal device.
Monitor The Progress Of Your Goals
Most goals that were previously set as New Year resolutions take time and effort to achieve. They cannot be done overnight. But accepting the fact that many of your goals will take continuous work over time, you will be able to monitor your progress over the course of the year.
If you do happen to stray a bit, take immediate action to make up for it. Track your progress and adjust your steps and goals as required. Sometimes our initial planning might be too ambitious and we have to adjust things to make them workable.
By turning your New Year resolutions into longer term, measurable goals over the entire year with actual steps and committed time allocated for them, you will be able to rescue any that strayed.
If you feel brave and honest enough to reveal any of your New Year resolutions that have already strayed, feel free to share them below and what you might do to rescue them.
Good luck!
 | Written on 2/2/2012 by Clint Cora. Clint is a motivational speaker, author and Karate World Champion. See his free 3-part Personal Development Video Series on how to expand your comfort zone to conquer even your most daunting goals in life. | Photo Credit: Allison Carter |
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30 Jan 2012 at 12:06pm
Anytime you decide on the pursuit of an important goal, you'll be faced with a series of challenges. Peaks, valleys and plateaus are par for the the course. But the thing that separates the people who make it from the ones that don't is the courage to stay the course.
At the start of any new endeavor most of us look forward to every single day with a child like excitement. We see infinite possibilities and the future appears bright. It seems as though there is absolutely nothing that can get in our way. We feel almost invincible and the possibility of failure doesn't even occur to us. We blow through every obstacle with a sense that we're invincible.
The Wall
Then we hit the first real roadblock. Our excitement diminishes and turns into frustration. The pursuit of that goal makes us feel as though we're hitting our heads against a brick wall. We keep on hitting our heads until we realize that it doesn't lead to anything other than a really bad headache, and the possibility of failure emerges. We wonder if maybe we should just quit in order to avoid the misery that failing will bring with it. But you realize deep down inside that anything worth doing requires the courage to fail. So you keep going.
The Plateau
In next phase of reaching that goal we hit what appears to be a plateau. It seems as though no real progress is being made. We go through the motions and everyday we think about quitting, but there's a little flicker inside that lingers from the fire that burns so deep inside us when we want something so bad. We search for the courage to stay the course, and struggle to find it.
The Doubt
It seems like all we can really see is how far we still have to go. But if we take a look back, the view suddenly changes. Instead of seeing how far we have to go, we see how far we've come, and hope resurfaces. As a result we find the courage to stay the course and we keep going.
Soon, the voices of dream crushers, nay-sayers and self doubt emerge and we become tempted to listen. We start to wonder if maybe they're right and that we are in fact losing this fight. But something inside tells us to drown at that noise and we find the courage to stay the course.
The finish line seems as though it's nowhere in site and even the supposed light at the end of a dark tunnel seems to be a far fetched fantasy of wild eyed crazy dreamers. It doesn't seem as though it's too long before you really hit rock bottom. But there's a beauty in rock bottom that gives you an opportunity to play the game as if you've got nothing to lose. So you look deep inside, and find the courage to stay the course.
It's in those moments when you really want to give up that the biggest breakthroughs, flashes of insight and moments of brilliance occur. But there's only one way to find out. That's by finding the courage to stay the course.
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28 Jan 2012 at 10:32am
Life and relationships aren't always perfect. Take a minute to think of some difficult people you have to deal with in your life' These may be people you work with, the in-laws that come to town throughout the year, or your neighbor who can't seem to take a hint. For whatever reason, you're just not jiving with these people.
Do you flee' Or, do you get flexible and learn to interact'
When we encounter these extreme personalities it can feel like they are trying to make our life miserable, but more often than not, it's simply learning about these peoples' tendencies and how to interact in a more tactful way. Some conflicts are unavoidable and shouldn't be smoothed over or suppressed, though it's learning to deal with our differences, and how to understand, resolve, and learn from these interactions that's important.
Tips to dealing with problem people
- Learn to recognize different personalities
First and foremost, we must develop self-awareness about our own personality tendencies. Are you more aggressive or passive' Are you more of an introvert or extrovert'
Once we know our personality tendencies we can learn to recognize other peoples' personalities and adapt and interact in a more effective way.
- Learn how to communicate with different personality types
When we are dealing with different people it requires we approach them in the way they want to be treated. Some people need more detail and clarity in communication. Some people are very direct and just want the facts, and others are more focused on relationships.
Consider how you can communicate verbally and through body language in the most effective way with these different types of people to build rapport and make them feel understood.
- Know who triggers you and why
When we know who we tend to have conflict with and what it is that leads us to get frustrated, we can begin to be more proactive. We can learn to deal with this person more effectively by managing our own emotions and not be the target of their drama and unrest.
- Learn to focus on strengths and positive qualities
A great way to deal with people more effectively in any relationship context is to focus on their positive qualities and to help them accentuate these when you can. Give people compliments, offer them recognition, and help them to use their strengths. We can empower others instead of knocking them down, and by doing so have a more positive influence and interaction.
Just because you apply these ideas doesn't mean that people will always respond in a positive manner. The only person you have control is yourself, so to make sure that an unhealthy conflict doesn't ensue work to build these traits.
Managing conflict is being there with:
Availability: Accept full responsibility for your thoughts, feelings, actions, values, and perceptions that you contribute to the conflict.
Flexibility: Offer a willingness to make some degree of change, so that both people can move toward a joint solution. Compromise may be required.
Specificity: Seek to focus the conflict of real, significant issues that point toward a practical outcome that is within the range of responsibility. Don't get personal.
Clarity: When the message intended and the impact received are nearly the same, communication is achieved. For this to happen, words, tone of voice, facial expression, posture must all be congruent with each other and context with they are said.Here are some signs of constructive and healthy conflict.
You'll know you're on the right track when the following ideas are present.
Conflict is constructive when:
- It opens up issues of importance, resulting in their clarification.
- Results in the solution of problems
- Increases the involvement of individuals in issues of importance to them
- Causes authentic communication to occur
- Serves as a release to pent-up negative emotions
- Helps build cohesiveness among people, and allows them to learn about each other
- Helps individuals grow and learn to become better in the future
- We can learn a lot about ourselves and grow as a person when we work through conflict. It can also open up new possibilities and allow us to think differently about our beliefs and expectations.
Developing patience and tact to deal with others more effectively is a skill that can be applied in many areas of life. Continuing developing your ability to connect and influence others in a positive way.
 | Written on 1/28/2012 by Joe Wilner. Joe Wilner is a coaching and writer who manages www.shakeoffthegrind.com, where he inspires and empowers people to live a full, meaningful, and thriving life. You can also follow him on Twitter at @shakethegrind. | Photo Credit: spaceamoeba |
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27 Jan 2012 at 4:16am
Are you driven in life' Do you love to excel' I believe all of us do. We are born to be the best we can be and to make the best out of our lives.
When I was in high school, I wasn't exactly the kind of student teachers would like. I was truant, didn't do my homework and did badly on my examinations. I was lazy and unmotivated in school. However, after a while I realized that this wasn't who I wanted to be. This wasn't the life I saw myself leading. People around me were judging and negative, and I had enough of all of that crap. I had enough of being discriminated against and I decided to turn everything around from then on.
So when I entered University, I began to get my act together. For the 3 years I was in Business School, I was on the Dean's List (an honor roll for the top students in the faculty). I eventually graduated as the top student in my specialization of marketing and was awarded with accolades for being the most outstanding student. When I started working, I entered one of the top companies for marketers, a Fortune 100 company, and led my business portfolios to record breaking results in the few years I worked there.
Then 2 years ago, I left my regular job to pursue my true passion in personal development. I started The Personal Excellence Blog where I share my best advice and help others achieve personal excellence and live their best lives. It has quickly established itself as a trusted and coming-to-age personal development blog, having 3-4k readers a day and being featured by prominent media, including CNN.com.
After years of striving for personal excellence, working with top people in their fields and observing top people in their fields, I realized that there are universal habits that enable people to achieve excellence. As Aristotle would put it, 'We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.'.
These habits aren't "ingrained", or "genetic"; they are habits that anyone like you and me can cultivate. Just like Stephen Covey's 7 habits will help anyone become highly effective, these 7 habits of highly excellent people will help anyone become excellent. I find that as long as anyone practices these habits, excellence is always a given. And I'm more happy to share with you these habits in this article today. Here they are:
Have the end in mind.
This is the same habit as Stephen Covey's 1st habit, and with good reason. Everything starts with the end - the goal or the vision you want to fulfill. If you don't know what the end is, then there's no way of getting there, is there' Imagine getting into a cab. What do you first do when you get into the cab' Maybe you say hi to the taxi driver, then what' You tell the driver where you want to go, so that he can take you there. Similarly, you need to know what is the end you want to reach in order to get there.
Hence, it's critical that you form clear goals of what exactly you want. What do you want' What is the end you envision' What are your personal goals and dreams for yourself' Personally, I have a vision board beside my bed where I have my dreams plastered over it. These dreams include developing The Personal Excellence Blog into one of the top personal development blogs, running my international personal excellence school, speaking to tens and thousands of people in seminars, achieving world peace, finding my soul mate, hitting the best seller's list with my books, and so on. These dreams remind me of what exactly I want and drive me forward every day.
Do what you love.
When you do something you love, it's like you have unlimited fuel that keeps you going- day after day. The hunger to excel in it is just greater than if you do anything else. Every day, I'm endlessly driven to build and write at my blog, because it's for a cause I believe in. Helping people grow and live their best life is the one thing I know I want to be doing for the rest of my life.
I have a coaching client who has tried to start 4-5 different ventures before (one at a time), and he was never able to succeed in any of them. Why was this the case' It wasn't that he was stupid, or that he was lazy. Ultimately, the reason was because he wasn't passionate about the things he was pursuing - he was just chasing money. The nature of the business didn't appeal to him emotionally. This is not to say starting businesses because you want to earn money is bad - all I'm saying is it's important that you love what you want to do first and foremost.
What is it you love to do' If you are not sure what your passion is yet, then what is something you are most eager to try at the moment' If you can choose to do anything, what will it be' Your love and interest are fuels that will drive you towards excellence.
Work harder than anyone else.
I don't know of anyone who has achieved excellent results who hasn't worked hard for them. A big component of excellence is hard work. Sheer, unadulterated hard work. We can streamline processes, choose effective strategies and steps, but ultimately the hard work will still have to come in. Fortunately, if you are doing what you love (step #2), work wouldn't even be work at all.
In the past year since I set up The Personal Excellence Blog, I have spent countless hours, including weekends, building up the blog and writing high quality articles for readers out there. All these have paid off in their own way. I'm not saying you should abandon all social life because that defeats the purpose, but you will have to dedicate yourself to making your business a success. This year in 2010, I intend to increase my efforts even more compared to 2009, and I know it's going to pay off.
Make use of every moment.
Every moment counts. Excellent people know that time is highly valuable. There's this quote by Donald Trump which I read in one of his books, and I absolutely love it. He said that time is more precious than money, because you can earn back money, but you can't get back time. That is absolutely true.
Hence, I'm always making sure that I'm maximizing every moment. If I'm commuting over a distance, I'll pick up a book or listen to a podcast. If I'm out waiting for a friend, I'll take the chance to do something meaningful for the time being. If there are some pockets of time, I'll take out my laptop and do some work.
Note that this habit doesn't mean working like a hog, 24x7. That wouldn't be a true application of this habit. Making use of every moment also refers to knowing when to rest and rejuvenate when it's needed, because this will help us walk the longer mile on the path of excellence.
Take action to achieve your results.
Living a life of excellence means being a proponent of action. Many people often say "The sky is the limit". My personal philosophy is the sky isn't the limit; we are the limit. Whatever we do or don't do will determine how much we can grow or achieve. If we want to grow and achieve great results, we need to take the equivalent actions to reach the results we want.
For example, many people agree that having press and media feature their business can greatly benefit them, but they believe it only happens when you are prominent enough. While that's usually true, I refuse to let that stop me. I took proactive steps to reach out to the press, writing my own press release and creating a strong story angle so the press would want to feature me. To date, I've been featured in the press for almost 20 times. To read more about how to be featured by the press, you can check out my guest post at Problogger: How To Get Featured By the Press (Repeatedly) Even If Your Blog is New.
Continuously upgrade yourself.
Learning never stops. There is always something we can do to become better. We may have great skills and knowledge today, but no matter how great they may be, our skills need to be continuously developed. Excellent people are always learning, reading, exposing themselves to new knowledge, new people, new contexts and developing their skills. If you have played role-playing games or RPGs before, you would know that the characters need to be leveled up to get stronger and progress to the next level. Likewise, we need to always be leveling ourselves up to achieve excellence.
Ask for feedback.
No matter how much we try to improve, we will have blind spots. Blind spots are things about ourselves that we don't know about, and we can't improve on things that we are blind to. Asking for feedback is one of the fastest and most effective ways to improve.
For everything I do, I make it a point to gather feedback. For example, when I was in my previous job, I would often ask my manager and peers for feedback on how I could improve. With my friends, sometimes I would have a random feedback session with them on how I can do things better. As I run The Personal Excellence Blog, I would invite my readers to send in their feedback, either through comments, emails or private messages. Sometimes the feedback is predictable, sometimes it's not and many times it leads to an epiphany on some level.
Strive for #1 in what you do.
... Wait, you didn't think that there would just be 7 habits in achieving excellence, did you'
There's 1 final habit to become a highly excellent person - that is, to strive for #1 in what you do. No one's going to achieve excellence if they aim for average, or mediocrity. Excellence comes from aiming for the top - being #1. This #1 should be better than whoever is #1 at the moment, because it will spur you on to work even harder. You will only achieve great results when you set high standards for yourself.
For example, I aim for The Personal Excellence Blog to be the top personal development blog, both in terms of the quality of content and traffic. Whenever I write my articles, I make sure I'm giving the best value that can ever be offered in that topic. Because of this, readers recognize the value of my articles and have spread the word to their friends and family. This has helped the blog to grow quickly and establish itself as a trusted and coming-of-age blog in personal excellence.Closing
These habits have helped me to achieve excellence in my life, and as long as all of us practice them, we will achieve excellent results. Feel free to share your comments - I'll love to hear what you have to say. If you have any questions, I'll love to answer them where possible too. I don't claim to have the answers, but I'll most certainly offer my perspective and help where I can.
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25 Jan 2012 at 7:57am
Many people cringe as they approach the age of 30. For some reason, these milestones tend to get people thinking: Am I old' What should I have done differently' Am I really happy with this person I married'
Second guessing is normal and I don't have to remind you of the 20/20 hindsight rule. However, as I approach 30, I'm taking a different tact. I am viewing age as a positive simply because I have learned a ton of lessons that not only help define me, but will make future years enormously successful - emotionally, professionally, and socially.
Often times we don't realize how powerful our lives can be until we reflect and share our experiences. That is why I took some time to write and submit this article; I want to reflect on my life and be sure to enjoy the lessons learned instead of regretting whatever outcomes I didn't like at the time.
So here goes!
- Life Lesson #1 ' Let it go.
Anger is never just anger. Anger is a cover up for fear, hurt, or disappointment. I can't tell you the number of days I stressed myself out in my 20's because I was angry at another person and did not want to forgive them. I literally made myself sick over it. The ironic thing about anger is that the joke is on the angry person. When you're angry, it hurts you more because you have to spend your precious time and energy holding on to negative energy. Sadly, that negative energy often blocks the positive energy from coming into your life. So let it go so that you can let that positive light in.
Appreciate the person that you're angry with and learn to live with them the way they are. If someone is constantly upsetting you, appreciate the fact that you are strong enough to disassociate yourself from them. You don't need to stick around!
- Life Lesson #2 ' It's really not about you.
When loved ones, co-workers, or even strangers say and do hurtful things, many times it is really not about you. People in this world have some serious issues. And, because they don't deal with their issues, they project those issues onto you. The mother who thinks she is the worst mom will project and tell another mom how bad their kid is. The teen who thinks she is ugly will project and make fun of another teen. The boss who can't manage his team will try to micromanage your work. So the next time someone does something hurtful to you, remember two things, they act like that towards other people as well, and it's not about you!!
- Life Lesson #3 ' Others have gone through the same problems that you have today.
This is one I am still working on because I am a pretty private person. But I have to believe that when you go through things, one of the main reasons is to help others at one point and time through the same obstacle. The problem is that everyone wants to put on the mask that their life is grand, secretly hiding away any perfections. If no one knows your true journey, they can't seek you out for help. It's not an easy thing to do; it's not like your Uncle Joe shouts out to everyone 'Hey Everyone, I'm in foreclosure, now let's eat.' BUT, if he did, he would attract others that have been through the same experience, and could change a life for the better.
- Life Lesson #4 ' Enjoy it now.
As I look back at my last 29 years of life, there were so many special moments that came and went. I wish I would of sat back and enjoyed the moments more. Absorb the good times because they are the first things you forget.
- Life Lesson #5 ' Power of Persistence
There is something about the power of daily focused effort that seems to be a common theme in successful people. It's the difference between ball players and NBA players, the difference between a writer and an author. While everyone else is watching TV the 'persisters' are making daily deposits towards the life of their dreams. Are you' When I look back, the times that I felt most accomplished were when I applied daily effort towards a goal and achieved it.
- Life Lesson #6 ' I get it now when people talk about having passion as a requirement for excellence.
If you want to excel as a fashion designer, working towards that goal should generally win over other other distractions. When presented with the opportunity to watch TV or hang out with friends instead of working to, if you constantly choose those distractions over working on fashion, you must consider that fashion is not your passion. I am not saying that you can't relax, but I'm saying that before you choose a life goal or a 'passion', be sure it's something that you, in your heart, really enjoy and love doing.
- Life Lesson #7 ' Relationships can be your greatest teacher.
I feel that everyone should do a lessons learned exercise after each relationship AND after every couple of years in a marriage. Each relationship is a reflection of yourself (whether good or bad). Subconsciously it's a reflection of our deepest insecurities and needs. And if you really take the time to reflect the good or bad times, it is a window into your soul. Taking the time to review your past will be time well spent.
- Life Lesson #8' Don't sleep on the power of the internet
There are thousands upon thousands of people making a good amount of money online. The BEST thing about online business is that is has no face. So you can no longer say your being judged by your race, background, lack of a degree, etc. The internet levels the playing field. Quality content speaks louder than your religion, skin color, etc. Start looking into the power of it today.
- Life Lesson #9 ' Don't be a'put off' person.
I spent many years putting off things because I was waiting for the situation to get better or for 'something' to happen first. News Flash ' I bet you can think of a hundred reasons to keep living how you are today and not changing; SOMETHING will always be in the way or be a reason to delay. Don't put off your happiness. If you can do something that makes you happy today, without ruining the lives of others, then do it.
- Life Lesson #10 ' What you say/write is your own lesson.
As I write to you, I write to myself because what comes out of us either verbally or in the written form is often the thing very thing that we (ourselves) need to work on.
Thanks for taking the time to read. While I love the fact that I was able to share my outlook with the readers of DLM, this simple list has helped me put my life into perspective and it has raised my awareness to areas that I need to constantly work on. Where is your list' Is it only in your mind and easily forgotten and overridden'
 | Written by Nashunda Bolden. Nashunda doesn't have a website or anything to sell. She just wanted to share her life with us. | Photo Credit: Mr.Thomas |
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24 Jan 2012 at 2:39am
Most of us need to exercise more. Being active isn't just important when you're trying to lose weight ' exercising regularly also means you'll have a decreased risk of heart disease, diabetes, strokes and even some cancers.
Perhaps you've tried getting into exercise in the past, but you always find yourself slipping back into your old habits. You might manage to get to the gym three times a week at first, but soon, you're back to going a couple of times a month at best.
But you're not lazy and you don't lack willpower. All you need is an exercise routine that will actually work.
Here's how:
Your Routine Needs to Suit You
Even if you played a lot of sport in college, you might struggle to exercise today. That's because your lifestyle's changed: you may have kids, a busy job, even a health condition that makes it tough to do certain types of exercise.
Your routine needs to work for you. Don't feel that you have to stick to some 'perfect' exercise plan from a magazine; instead, find ways to incorporate exercise into your life with as little disruption to your day as possible. That might mean working out in your lunch break, or walking/cycling to your workplace, instead of trying to get to the gym at 6pm.
Don't Shoot for the Moon
When you're fired up for a new goal, it's tempting to go all-out in pursuit of it. When it comes to exercise, though, you need to start small and gradually build up. If you try to run for an hour every day having never run before, you're (a) going to get discouraged when you only manage five minutes and (b) likely to injure yourself.
Any exercise is better than none. Try starting with just 5 - 10 minutes of cardio activity, and add a little more every week. For moderate-intensity activity (the kind that burns fat and keeps you healthy), a good rule of is that you should be working hard enough that you can't sing the words to a song, but you can hold a conversation.
Have a Minimum Target and Ideal Target
However motivated you are, there'll be days when nothing seems to go right. Perhaps you've got a cold, or you're really busy at work, or you forgot your exercise kit when you hurried out of the house in the morning.
This is when a minimum target comes in handy. Perhaps you'd ideally like to do a total of 40 minutes cardio, plus some weight training: but you'll settle for a minimum of 20 minutes cardio.
You can still check off your exercise for the day, meaning you won't end up thinking 'I've failed, so I might as well just give up now.'
Track Your Workouts
Keep a record of your exercise. That could mean writing down brief details of what you did during each session, and how you felt afterwards, or it might simply mean putting a check (or a gold star if you want!) on your calendar.
Keeping track helps you stay motivated: if you can see an unbroken string of days when you managed to exercise, you'll be loath to break the pattern. You may also spot patterns emerging: perhaps you find it tough to exercise at the weekends, for instance.
Switch it Around
Don't get stuck in a rut with your exercise. If you always use the same cardio machine at the gym and always lift the same weights, you'll find yourself getting bored. You may also run into problems if your favorite machine isn't available, or if you can't get to the gym at all.
Try out new types of exercise every few weeks. That might mean going for a jog, cycling, swimming, dancing ... anything new. As well as stopping you from getting bored, and helping to make your routine flexible, this also ensures that you keep getting fitter (if you do just one type of exercise, your body will eventually adapt to it, and you won't see such good results).
Are you trying to get into a regular exercise routine' Share your tips ' or your struggles ' in the comments below.
 | Written on 1/24/2012 by Ali Luke. Ali is a writer of fiction and non-fiction and a writing coach. She blogs about writing on her site, Aliventures.com, and has a free ebook "How to Find Time For Your Writing" available when you join her writing newsletter here. | Photo Credit: Joe M500 |
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20 Jan 2012 at 5:14am
One of the most important rules of happiness in life is to do what you love. But discovering that dream job and what you are meant to do in life isn't always so easy.
Take a look at the happiest, most successful people on this planet: they are all doing something they love, creating something they believe in, living a life of purpose and passion. Do that, and it doesn't matter how much money you make.
But what do you do if you don't know what you want to do' If you don't know what your dream is' This is a common problem, and many people wander through much of their life without discovering their passion, and go from job to job, unfulfilled and miserable.
If that's you, don't give up. What follows is a list of suggestions that will help you discover your dream, and start on the road to living that dream. They're things that have worked for me and many others I've studied, talked to, interviewed and admired.
While you don't need to do every step below, they are all ways for your to spend time thinking about your passion in life, your dreams, and how to accomplish them. If you spend time thinking about your dreams, you are taking the first step towards making them a reality.
The first step is to give this stuff some thought.
What are your hobbies' This doesn't just mean stamp collecting -- it means anything you do with your spare time. That could be collecting comic books, reading about history, programming Linux utilities, writing on your blog, writing poetry, cooking, whatever. As it's clear that this is how you like to spend your time, and that you're willing to do these things without pay, it's very possible that these are your passions. Give each of your hobbies some thought, and think about whether they're things you love to do, and that you'd love to do for a living.
What are your talents' It's been said that we each have at least one gift we've been given, and that the true purpose of our lives is discovering that gift, and sharing it with the world. There is much truth in that statement, and an important part of this process is discovering your gift. What are you good at' What talents do you have' What have you shown an aptitude for in your current and previous jobs, in school, in your personal life' Anything goes here.
Who do you like to work with' A dream job includes not only what you want to do, but who you are doing it with. You should truly enjoy working with these people. In this step, you can name specific people you love working with, or types of people (creative types, programmers, entrepreneurs, blue collar, etc.). Use your ideas here to help you envision your dream job (more on that below).
What do you like to work with' The tools of the job are very important. If you love working with computers (even a specific type of computer), that's a clue to your dream job. If you love working with clay, or paper, or people, or clothes, that's a clue. If you like working with a hammer, or a piano, you're off to a great start in discovering your dream.
What environment do you enjoy working in' An office, a college, a classroom, a construction site, the ocean, the forest' Where you work is also an important factor in your dream job.
When have you been happiest' Think back throughout all the previous times of your life, from childhood through adolescence, school, different jobs, different areas, different hobbies. Think about the happiest times of your life, and what you were doing, who you were doing it with, and where you were doing it. You may have dismissed some of these things for various reasons, but remembering that you were extremely happy during those times can make you realize why you were happy.
Try online tools. There are some great tools online for helping you find your purpose. Here are just a few of my favorites:
- 43 Things: A great way to see what goals others have, to list your own goals, to talk to others about common goals, to get ideas and inspiration. Also see their article, How to Choose Achievable Goals.
- Dreamminder. A site where you write down your dream, and it will send it to you at some point in the future. Use their dream wizard to discover your dream. Read the dreams of others to get inspired.
- One Question: Take a test with questions to figure out your one purpose in life. With articles to help as well.
List your top 5 passions. Now that you've given various factors some thought, and tried some online tools, make a short list of your top 5 passions. If you don't have 5, list as many as you have. Then compare your top 5 passions, and rank them from top to bottom. This will be the starting point your guide to making your dream a reality.
How can you turn your passions into your work' Of the top 2-3 passions on your short list, can any of them be turned into your life's work' What professions use those passions as a mainstay of their work' How would you get into those professions, and do you think you would love what you do if you did them'
Create a clear vision. Clarity of vision is the key to achieving your dream once you've discovered it. Take some time to think about exactly what your dream is, what your dream job would be, how you see yourself doing it, where you are, what you're surrounded by, who you're working with, what tools you're using, the benefits to you and others. Write it down, and try to make it as clear as possible. You should be able to visualize this dream in your head. The more real it seems in your mind, the more likely it is that it will become reality.
Create a roadmap. Once you've clearly pictured your destination, what's left is creating a map for getting to that destination. Try backwards planning: what's the last step you'd have to do before attaining your goal' What would the last step be before that step' Keep going backwards until you get to the first step. Then focus all your efforts on that first step.
Brainstorm. Sometimes there are more than one road to get to a destination. Brainstorm a bunch of ideas for getting there, a bunch of actions you can take to move yourself closer to your destination. Then put them together into your roadmap. Even if you don't have a complete roadmap, having a clearly defined destination, and taking the first step, are enough to get you started.
Do research. Learn as much as you can about your dream. Check out some books from the library, do some web surfing, talk to others who are knowledgeable. Become an expert on the topic.
How are others doing it' Find others who are living your dream. Read about them, write to them, meet with them. Find out what steps they took to get there, what's required, how they did it. Then use that information for your roadmap.
Practice, practice. While you're taking your steps to realizing your dream, practice your passion as much as possible. Practice, of course, makes perfect ... and you want to be as good at what you want to do as humanly possible. This isn't an easy step, but it's worth it.
Get inspired. Find others who are trying to achieve the same dream, see what obstacles they've face and how they've overcome them. Put up photos from magazines to inspire you. Read motivational quotes. If you're inspired, you will have the energy needed to get there.
Get motivated. Along those lines, find motivation to keep you on your path. Motivation and focus are the keys to achieving any goal. What are your motivations' Making a public commitment, setting up rewards, inspiring yourself, tracking your progress, and joining a support group or finding a partner are great ways to motivate yourself.
Simplify: one purpose. Once you've defined your dream, focus on it completely. That means you need to put any other goals on the back burner for now, and have only one purpose in your life. Later, you can focus on other goals, but if you have multiple goals, you will become distracted and lose purpose. Focus. Simplify your life so that you are keeping your focus on that one thing.
Use a mantra. A great way to keep yourself focused is to use Guy Kawasaki's idea of creating a mantra instead of a mission statement. Boil your goal down to a few words. Guys' mantra: empower entrepreneurs. What's yours' Once you've defined your mantra, print it out, post it up, and say it several times a day.
Set aside time each day. You will not go anywhere if you don't devote time to your dream. Set aside an hour (or at least 30 minutes) each day for working towards your dream. If you can do more, great, but one step at a time is all it takes. Set aside time either in the morning, or in the evening, or some time when you know you will do it every day. Make it a habit, and you will succeed.
Pretend you can't fail. Imagine that you cannot fail, that you may slip up and fall, but that you will get up and learn from that fall. Take away all fear of risk and loss, and believe in your success. Now act as if you cannot fail. And by acting so, you will make it happen.
Live as you want to be remembered. How do you want to be remembered when you die' This is a common method for deciding how to live your life. If you want to remembered for realizing your dream, then don't start on it when it's too late. Start on it now. Live your life so that your dream actually comes true.
 | Written for Dumblittleman.com on 06/07/2007 by Leo Babauta and republished on 1/20/12. Leo offers advice on living life productively simple at his famous Zen Habits blog. | Photo Credit: whatimom |
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15 Jan 2012 at 4:01am
Is your mindset secretly ruining your life'
And if so, is there a way to fix it'
Michael Jordan wasn't considered the best basketball player of all time when he was starting out. In fact, he was cut from his varsity team when he was a sophomore. Instead of giving up, Jordan became even more determined, and spent hours upon hours practicing on the court and improving his skills.
When people look back, they say it was obvious that he was an amazing basketball player, but hindsight is always 20/20. What made the difference was his mindset, and what will make the difference in your life is your mindset.
The Two Mindsets: Fixed vs Growth
In her book, MindSet: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck introduces two different mindsets: the fixed mindset, and the growth mindset. The fixed mindset puts their emphasis on talent. They avoid challenges, because they believe each failure reflects on who they are as a person, so they never want to 'look bad.'
This leads to excuses, blaming, and defensiveness whenever feedback is given or something goes wrong. It halts learning and leads to anything but success.
The growth mindset on the other hand focuses on learning, effort, and working hard. People with the growth mindset focus on learning from their mistakes, they claim responsibility and they constantly strive to improve.
Are You Stuck in the Fixed Mindset'
So, how do you know if you're stuck in the fixed mindset' You'll know because you avoid challenges, you give up when things aren't going right, and you think thoughts such as 'I'm just not good at this, so I might as well give up.'
It's the belief that you should be great instantly and that you cannot improve or get better by effort, so what's the point in trying. Growth minded people experience frustration, but they keep moving forward and doing their best. They aren't perfect, they just realize it takes time to get better.
What About Context'
You can have a growth mindset in one context, such as learning, but have a fixed mindset in another context, such as social situations.
For example, you may believe that you can get better at anything if you apply yourself and study. But when it comes to social situations, you're stuck being the shy and awkward. Now, does this mean that you can magically become outgoing and energetic' Maybe not, but it does mean that you can improve and get better.
Carol Dweck discovered that shy people with the growth mindset were just as nervous as the fixed mindset people, but they saw it as a challenge and an opportunity to grow.
They had fun and they improved, while the fixed mindset people accepted their seemingly bad luck and tried to avoid social situations altogether.
Can You Change Your Mindset'
If you're stuck in the fixed mindset, you probably believe that mindsets cannot be changed, and that's when a change will help you the most.
Ironic, isn't it'
Change is possible, but it happens slowly (in most cases). The first step is to become aware of how your mindset is holding you back; notice where you want to avoid challenges, criticism, and feedback.
Then start looking at how you can begin to improve. If you want to do work you love, it happens one step at a time. Most people never start because they don't know exactly where to go, but the truth is that you don't have to know, you just have to start now.
You'll get better, smarter, and faster.
Does This Mean Talent Doesn't Exist'
Denying talent would be foolish. Some people are naturally better than others, but mere talent does not guarantee success. Many who have been talented have not been willing to put in the effort to improve, while many that haven't had talent have worked hard and gone onto become world class. This doesn't mean that you necessarily have to become world class. What it does mean is that you can go after your dreams. But know that it will take hard work. However, the harder you work, the more you learn, and the more you learn, the closer you get to your dreams.
There are no shortcuts and no quick-fixes, so start learning today.
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10 Jan 2012 at 7:08am
No wonder listening is an undervalued art. Research shows that we speak at a rate of about 125 words per minute, yet we have the capacity to listen to approximately 400 words per minute. So what are we doing with that extra space in our minds when someone else is talking' Are we really listening'
I have a friend who used to multitask when we spoke on the phone. He would respond appropriately to what I was saying, but I could hear him shuffling papers or trying to quietly order food at the deli (yes, this actually happened). Even though he was following the conversation, I felt bereft as I was sharing my innermost thoughts and feelings. Fortunately, our friendship was more important than his to-do list, and now I happily get his full attention.
Listening is essential to fulfilling relationships. If you are experiencing challenging interactions or you want your connections to deepen, reflect on how you can improve your listening skills. The benefits' Consider the following:
- People will feel be more drawn to you; they will like you more.
- You will learn something new.
- You will solve problems more effectively.
- You will experience less loneliness and frustration.
- You will feel happier and more relaxed.
Learn to listen well, and watch all your relationships thrive. Here's how. Pay attention
Since our brains have the capacity to process 275 more words per minute than are actually spoken, we tend to fill up the void with extraneous thoughts. Notice how when someone is speaking, you are partially listening, while simultaneously planning the rest of your day, replaying a meeting that just occurred, or deciding what you will say next. Paying attention is the cardinal rule for good listening. Hear the words, and let their meaning in. If your mind wanders, simply re-focus your attention on the conversation.
Be receptive
If you show up with an agenda, you are not going to be available to fully hear what the other person is saying. There is no problem with having goals for an interaction, but let them go while the other person is speaking so you can hear what is being expressed. Balance your need for a given outcome with your desire to sustain a harmonious relationship.
Check your understanding
Make sure you can repeat what you just heard, and if you can't, ask for clarification. You might be surprised at how much you are missing. Most people are. When you think you've gotten it, you might say, 'So what you are saying is....' to verify your understanding.
Be an explorer
Explorers are open and curious. They are inquisitive, without knowing what they will find. So what to do with all of that excess brain power' Focus on the speaker. Notice body language, tone of voice, and rate of speaking. Then look beneath the words to see what feelings and needs are being communicated. You never know what you might find.
Show interest
If you find yourself bored and distracted, reconnect with the interaction. Maintain eye contact, uncross your arms, and ask questions that take the conversation deeper. Find out what really matters to the person you are speaking with.
Be patient
As much as you may be tempted, don't speak over someone who is talking. When you feel the urge to step in, take a breath, let your agenda go, and continue to listen. If you need to move the conversation along, do so politely, as in, 'Excuse me, I'm so sorry for interrupting, but '.' Likewise, be careful not to jump to conclusions or assume you know what hasn't yet been said. These are all signs that your inner explorer has fallen asleep. Revitalize your experience by paying attention to what is happening in the moment.
Get out of a rut
Have you ever had the same problematic conversation with someone over and over' Bring a fresh perspective to the relationship by redoubling your efforts to listen. Let go of your need to be right or your ideas about what the other person should be saying or doing, and hear them as if for the first time. This moves you from contraction and limit to possibility and potential simply by listening.
Effective listening develops empathy, which is the capacity for a deep understanding of another's experience. And isn't that what it takes for a relationship to thrive' It's as simple as paying attention.How has better listening affected your relationships' I'd love to hear your questions, insights, and stories.
 | Written on 9/24/2009 by Gail Brenner, Ph.D. Gail offers practical wisdom for clarity, freedom, and happiness on her blog, A Flourishing Life, focusing on real solutions for self-defeating habits. Republished on 1/10/2012.
| Photo Credit: ky olsen |
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7 Jan 2012 at 9:01am
I recently wrote an article on how to deal with confusion, and it seems like there are a lot of people going through this right now, so I thought I'd expand on the topic. This is a topic I hold near and dear to my heart, because just this past year, I've gone through a lot of confusion, conflict, and growth within myself.
In the end it has led me to a significantly better place. I'm happier, more at peace, and even more able to handle the confusion ahead.
It still isn't easy, but it's easier, much easier. When you stop fighting, you stop suffering.- Addiction
One of the reasons people have addictions is because they experience pain and they want to escape.
While confusion is not the only pain they experience, it is certainly one of them. This doesn't have to mean drug habits, it could be eating, watching TV, playing video games, and anything else that you feel the need to escape to in order to numb your pain.
The good news is that you can change. Research has now shown that your brain works like a muscle. When you stop feeding one habit, it slowly starts withering away, even if you try and fail over and over again.
- Denial
I'm sure you know people who are in complete denial about what they have to do. You clearly see what they need to do, but they don't.
Sometimes you have to allow people to have their own experiences, but you also have to notice how you yourself go into denial. We have an easy time looking at others and seeing what's wrong, but the truly challenging part is looking inside.
- Poor Me
I used to be great at feeling like I was the victim, and that the world was against me. Luckily for me, I've let go of a lot of that.
There's still some left that needs to dealt with, but I'm okay with taking one step at a time. This isn't about perfection, it's about constant improvement.
Kaizen.
Do you go into poor-me-mode when you don't know what to do, or what your future looks like' What would happen if you just made peace with confusion and uncertainty as states of being' Where did you learn that it's bad to not know'
- Thought Loops
Thought loops is what I call it when you lie down and start playing movies in your head of everything that can go wrong. This seems more likely to happen when you feel confused and uncertain than at any other time, because if you don't know what will happen, it will probably be bad, right'
What most people forget is that uncertainty opens up the field of possibility. And another crucial part is that even if something bad happens, how do you know that it isn't exactly what you need to get what you want in the end'
You just can't know, so you might as well accept it.
- Grasping
The more you can allow uncertainty and confusion to be, the better off you will be, because it is a time of learning on a deeper level than just your conscious mind. Each time you do this, you become more comfortable with it, and you notice that you don't have to know everything all the time. You realize that it is through confusion and uncertainty that new growth happens, because if you want certainty, you are only reliving the past.
In the end, we all want uncertainty (and confusion), but we don't know it yet.
So step boldly where you have never gone before, and, dare I say, enjoy it!
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5 Jan 2012 at 12:51pm
Do you feel like you can't lose weight because you struggle with cravings'
Has a gnawing, insatiable want hijacked your healthy eating plan'
Chocolate, candy, potato chips, pizza, steak, coffee, ice-cream, salt or what have you 'most of us battle these cravings.
But we don't have to.
Are you ready to defeat them' If so let's dive in and reveal what you can do to conquer your dangerous moments without regret.
- Drink, Drink, Drink
First off, if you're dehydrated, you're likely to feel wiped out. When you're pooped liked that, chances are you'll be craving a stimulant in the form of sugar or caffeine - think chocolate or coffee.
So drink a glass of water ' yes, plain water. By the time your body tells you you're thirsty, you're already dehydrated. And, dehydration occurs as mild hunger. So' glug, glug, glug and make it a habit to drink a glass of water every couple hours.
- Why You Need to Sleep More
If you're majorly stressed, or suffer from insomnia or sleep deprivation, you're probably exhausted much of the time.
I know about this; believe me! It took seven years and an entire collection of My Little Pony before my daughter slept through the night. Sleep deprivation is a form of torture ' don't underestimate it.
Adrenal imbalance causes your body to call upon your adrenal glands for more stress hormones to act as a pick-me-up, but over time, your adrenals become less able to respond appropriately. Chances are, you'll resort to sugar or carbohydrate snacks or coffee during the day and carbohydrates or alcohol at night, all of which exacerbate the problem.
I seriously recommend finding a way to chill and give your adrenals a break. I've found meditation and exercise such as yoga to be a blessing. A hectic cardio workout is not going to help here. Keep it on the calm side.
- The Shocking Truth About Boredom and Dissatisfaction
Being bored or dissatisfied with a particular situation, such as work or a cruddy relationship, or life in general, is the number one cause for filling up on undesirables.
'The longing for sweets is really a yearning for love or sweetness,' wrote Jungian analyst Marion Woodman and she was spot on. So often we try to fill the void with eating. Instead, take time to reflect and assess what's really going on.
Dr. Oz suggests that it helps to realize that emotional hunger onset is sudden and urgent, while physical hunger is gradual and patient.
Fully facing this kind of eating may lead to some serious soul searching. You may want to consult someone if it becomes overwhelming. But when food is masking a deeper dissatisfaction, no amount of the fix will take away the pain or frustration. Work on healing that and then the cravings will naturally disappear.
- How to Change Bad Habits
Psychology professor Debra Zellner, Ph.D., draws the conclusion that our cravings are predominantly determined by habit rather than biological need.
You know how you fall back to habit in times of stress rather than creatively brainstorming fresh approaches' Well the same is true here. When you're stressed, she argues, your generally strong restraint flies out the window and thoughts about comfort foods come rushing in.
So how do we avoid this stress trigger cycle' According to Zeller, we should:
- Indulge on occasion: By making certain foods 'taboo,' we tend to make a dash for them when our defenses are shot. The alternative is to have that chocolate once in a while and de-demonize it. Enjoy a bowl of ice cream now and then. Don't associate certain foods with the 'forbidden fruits.'
- Mix up your patterns: Just as with Pavlov's dogs, Zeller continues, a stimulus produces an automatic, virtually involuntary response in each of us. Figure out if predictable times or places make your cravings appear. Then, change your indulgence time and place, shake up the predictable and don't create a mindless pattern.
- Make healthy associations: Find healthy foods that you enjoy and make a habit of eating those at stressful times instead. For me, I've trained myself to crunch on cucumbers. Granted, we always need to have cucumbers in the house, but it definitely beats chocolate!
- A Little Bit of Yin and a Little Bit of Yang
Ever heard of Macrobiotics' Well, key to this philosophy on life is the idea of Yin and Yang, two complementary and antagonistic forces. Before you think this is some new age concept, know that Hippocrates first used this philosophy in 400 BC to describe healthy, long lived people.
In terms of food, certain foods, such as meat, chocolate, cheese and coffee have contractive or Yang qualities. Other foods, like beer, white sugar, soya and potatoes, have expansive or Yin qualities. And then foods like whole grains and veggies have a neutral effect on the body.
The body naturally strives for balance. Without one iota of doubt, what passes through your lips contributes to where your body's at and what it's going to need more of. When you're eating too much Yin or too much Yang, your system won't be happy. And hello, these extremes are the core of the Standard American Diet. Loads of meat, salt, sugar and fats.
They throw the body out of its natural balance and we crave whatever is required to regain equilibrium. Sadly though, we're putting in excessive amounts on either side of the scale.
By paying attention to what you're eating in overload and introducing more balancing foods, cravings will decrease. Remember, the key is balance ' not excess.
- Are You Malnourished'
For me, malnutrition has always been associated with the image of a starving African pot-bellied child. Painful. And don't get me wrong, that's certainly malnutrition.
But did you know how malnourished most of us 'First Worlders' are' An estimated 70% of all Americans do not consume sufficient nutrients, mainly as a result of refined and processed foods.
Why do I mention this' If the body is starved of nutrients, it will produce cravings.
Renowned physician, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, states that in order to stop the 'addictive drives and perverted cravings' we suffer from, it is essential to restore nutritional excellence.
We need to eat a diet high in what he calls Nutrient Dense foods such as green veggies, non-starchy veggies, beans, fresh fruits, whole grains and raw nuts and seeds.
The toxins in our processed fare just keep us coming back for more and so you need to oust them!
- Temptation Be Gone
Clearly, if you've stocked up on your favorite indulgence, you'll eat it. Corollary: if it's not there, you can't eat it.
That one's easy! Banish the temptation. And oh, never go shopping on an empty stomach. A full tummy is less prone to rumble for honey ' with apologies to Pooh bear.
- Spew It All Out
My final tool for you here is to keep a food journal. Track your eating habits and see if your cravings exhibit a pattern. With this information, you'll be in a far better position to understand and help yourself.
The Final Word
Cravings aren't the enemy. In fact, they can be a gift - a window into what's ticking in your internal clock. By opening a dialogue with your body, you can begin to love and support it just as it supports and loves you with every unfailing heartbeat and every unfailing breath.
But that's entirely up to you. Changing behaviors is work. No, it's not like reinventing the wheel or finding a cure for cancer. But it does take commitment and facing some harsh challenges.
If you're still reading this, that's a good sign. Nobody can or will make the changes for you. Beating your cravings is the same as anything else. You have to be focused and work damn hard. Oftentimes you'll need courage too. If you're prepared to face the challenge, your health will improve and you'll lose that excess weight. You've also got an excellent chance of feeling more whole if you confront the psychological aspects of what's driving your behavior.
Ready to tackle the task'
 | Written on 1/05/2012 by Kerri Baruch. Kerri is a Holistic Health Coach passionate about restoring excellent health in clients by supporting them as the full individuals that they are. Kerri shares recipes, blogs and Health Coaching info on her site Eat Real. Be Well. | Photo Credit: Calgary Reviews |
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4 Jan 2012 at 12:01am
Is your mind playing tricks on you and robbing you of your happiness'
Our minds are complex and are often our own worst enemies when it comes to being happy. Really. Our own brains that we know and love deceive us into thinking something is right when it is really wrong, that we're in love when we're not, etc. Recognizing and debunking these traps your mind leads you into is essential to realizing a lasting happiness, into creating stronger relationships, and to succeeding in your career.
Check out this list to see if you are being deceived by your own mind! I'd be willing to bet that you have been.
I'd be happier if I just had less to do
Our minds often try to trick us into thinking we'd be happier if we didn't have to work. We imagine a life of leisure and deceive ourselves into thinking this kind of lifestyle would make us happy. However, the truth is that idleness often leads to boredom and depression. We are industrious, creative beings. We need challenge and accomplishment to be happy. Get up and invest yourself into something significant and you will find that your happiness factor will rise!
It's not me, it's you
Many times our minds lead us to believe we are unhappy due to our spouse, parents or some other person in our lives. We throw blame around like food in a middle school cafeteria. Of course, it takes two to tango. As Dr. Phil asks, "How's that workin' for ya'" Generally, we are as much, if not more, to blame than others in our lives. We need to accept responsibility for our situation and do our part to make the best of it. Taking personal responsibility for our actions is the beginning of true happiness.
I just need to discover the secret to success to be happy
I am convinced that there are no "secrets" to happiness or success. As much as authors, publishers and our own minds would like to convince us that shortcuts exist, they do not. Living a successful life is pretty simple. You create a vision for the future, formulate a strategy and then work hard to achieve it. There are no shortcuts or secrets to this formula. Accepting this will get you much further down the path to happiness than anything else.
If I just had...
Our minds deceive us into thinking we'll be happy when we get the right job or the right house or the right car or whatever. There is nothing wrong with wanting better things or circumstances, but these do not automatically make us happy. They may create a temporary high, but this quickly wears off. Those wanting a lasting happiness must acknowledge that this is a bottomless pit that we can never fill.
I like things just the way they are and never want them to change
Believing this is just letting yourself be set up for a fall. Life is a journey of constant change. Some of which we control and some we don't. Resisting change or trying to control the change out of life is self-defeating. It will drain you and rob you of your happiness. Change is inevitable. You must accept this and learn to go with the flow. Being adaptable is very important to your happiness.
If it hasn't happened yet for me, it never will
Our minds often get discouraged and disillusioned when success is just around the corner for us. Colonel Sanders didn't start franchising his KFC restaurants until he was 65, forty years after he started serving chicken at his service station. Perseverance is very important in achieving happiness. Never let your mind trick you into giving up. You don't know what tomorrow holds. One more day may be all it will take to realize your dream!
I'll just avoid the things I don't like doing
It is usually the difficult tasks that our minds try to trick us into avoiding. Unfortunately, these are oftentimes the very things that would result in the greatest rewards for us. What do you put off doing' Why' Procrastination and avoidance of completing important tasks or resolving nagging issues only delays your march to happiness. Attack these head-on and you will find a deep sense of gratification that will fuel your happiness.
The world is scary and something bad might happen to me
Our minds tell us there are a lot of things beyond our control. For instance, the way that crime and terror is sensationalized on television might lead us to think that bad guys are lurking around every corner waiting to do dastardly deeds to us. However, crime rates have actually fallen in recent years. According to FBI statistics, violent crime is lower now than it was 20 years ago! Fear is a powerful emotion our brains use to get the better of us. We must seek and trust the facts to break free and be happy!
I'll decide when I know for sure what to do
Over-thinking every decision will leave you stymied. Weighing the risks, analyzing the possibilities and making a plan are important, but nothing ever happens until a decision is made and action is taken. We very rarely have perfect information when making choices. Stop sweating it so much! Failure is not the end of the world. Napoleon Hill writes, "Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit." Don't let your mind trap you into over-analyzing everything!
I know I shouldn't , but
Our minds try to trick us into denying the effects of our bad habits and rationalizing our behavior with flimsy excuses. This seems especially common with health issues. For example, have you heard someone say, "I know I shouldn't smoke, but it helps me keep the weight off." Or, how about, "I know I shouldn't eat this, but life just isn't worth living if I can't enjoy it." A major health issue like cancer, heart disease, or diabetes will certainly challenge your happiness. Don't let your mind get away with this trick!
Dreams only come true for those that are lucky
Thomas Jefferson said, "I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." Our minds will sometimes trick us into thinking we are victims of fate. They will lead us to believe "nothing good ever happens to me". What our brains credit as the luck of others, generally is the result of years of practice, hard work and preparation. Pursue your dream with your whole heart and you might be surprised at the "luck" that comes your way.
I could never
Our brains often trick us into thinking we can't. For example, have you heard, "I could never go back to school. I don't have the money." or "I can't learn to do that. I'm too old." Don't fall for this trick! Your mind is very persuasive in the way it uses this one. It will lead you around like a dog on a leash if you let it. You are full of potential and although your circumstances might add a degree of difficulty, it is nothing that a little persistence and ingenuity can't overcome. Henry Ford said, "Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."
Don't let these tricks steal your happiness!See how our minds play tricks on us' If you identified with one or more of the cons on this list, don't despair! The truth will set you free! You now have the power to overcome these deceptions because you can see right through them. Enjoy your new found happiness!
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3 Jan 2012 at 1:11pm
Personal development gurus tell some impressive lies in order to sell their products. That's right. Lies. These convenient little falsehoods are effective motivators because they play on primal human needs and emotions. Shouldn't people who promote personal growth for a living be uncommonly straightforward in their marketing' Sadly, this is far from true, even among the popular names in the field.
The good news is that once you understand these, you are free to grow and develop in realistic ways.
- Guru Lie #1: You can have anything you want.
It sounds so good, especially after you have been swept away by a motivational message that ignites your passion for becoming all you can be. You can do anything you put your mind to! There is only one problem. You can't. You cannot have anything you want in life. When it comes down to it, this lie is so blatant that it is downright silly.
In high school I was a gifted tennis player with dreams of playing in college and taking my shot at the pros. I lived, breathed and dreamed tennis. I'm not sure I have ever wanted anything more than to play tennis for a living. Then my shoulders went bad. One rotator-cuff injury lead to another and before long my dreams slipped away. My body wasn't up for it, so I never even had a chance to defy the one in a million odds of hitting the pro circuit. That's life.
That is life. You don't always get what you want and there are many desirable things that lie eternally outside the sphere of possibility. I want to go to the moon. I want to protect my teenagers from every lurking danger in life (as they go about pursuing those very dangers). I'll never play basketball like Michael Jordan or write like Shakespeare. I don't have those gifts.
This is actually good news. If you set out to accomplish something totally realistic like starting a new business or getting a promotion or losing 10 pounds or being a better partner, you will be much more likely to achieve it. And there are more wonderful, realistic things to accomplish than you can possibly get around to in a lifetime.
- Guru Lie #2: Change is easy.
I'm not suggesting that change is necessarily difficult. It just needs to be looked at from a different perspective, like this one: All change requires sacrifice. That line doesn't make for good sales copy though, does it' Nevertheless, it is true. Sometimes the sacrifice is relatively easy, which makes it less noticeable. At other times the required sacrifice is overwhelming. If I want to lose weight, I need to give up the donuts. If I want to stop arguing, I need to quit indulging my temper. If I want to improve my financial situation, I will need to spend less (sacrificing whatever I was spending more on) or make more money (sacrificing my time and energy doing whatever that takes).
Even when change is merely a matter of learning new skills, it still requires sacrifice. If I want the job promotion that requires additional training, I need to get that training and sacrifice the time, money and effort necessary. Is it worth it' Of course! It may be even be fun. Sacrifices are only labeled as such when they are difficult.
What do you need to sacrifice in order to get what you want' The more willingly you sacrifice, the greater the chance of success. This approach doesn't sell as many books (as a study of the history of book sales will reveal) but it puts readers in a position to actually succeed.
- Guru Lie #3: Mastery comes quickly.
My expertise lies in the realm of interpersonal communication. I have spent 25 years studying how the mind works and how people relate to each other. In that time I've mastered quite a few concepts and put them into practice. I see things about people and situations that untrained eyes are blind to. It is fair to say that I have developed a degree of mastery.
It came slowly but surely over years, two steps forward and one step back. I didn't take a crash course. I took dozens of crash courses, several long-term programs and a decade-long mentorship. I tell people who want to become masters of interpersonal communication that they need to be willing to spend at least a year studying and applying some basic yet little known principles and then practice regularly for the rest of their lives. This is what masters do. Why pretend otherwise'
- Guru Lie #4: Your mind can be programmed for success.
You are not a robot. No one can punch your mental buttons and reformat your brain. There are no magical mental codes that will set you free. You set yourself free by the choices you make, the things you learn and the character you develop over time.
What to make of all the personal growth strategies, techniques and protocols' They are wonderful. Everyone needs tools. There is no inherent power in them, however. The tools are merely helpful, albeit sometimes very helpful. Yet they are not as powerful as your determination, persistence, honesty, self-awareness and passion. These are the resources that make all of the difference, driving you to overcome obstacles and succeed. Don't put your faith in somebody's protocol. Put faith in yourself.
- Guru Lie #5: All you need to do is'
We all crave certainty and are willing to pay dearly for it. The insurance industry exists because of this, as well as many of our cultural institutions. So, when the gurus show up and, with all the confidence and charisma in the world, assure you that your life will change if you just follow their instructions, it is nearly irresistible. Here it is folks, all you need to succeed in one neat little package with a bow on top!
Sorry, it doesn't work that way. And why should you limit yourself to one neat little package when there is so much more to learn' Don't limit yourself to somebody else's methods. Learn them all! Seek answers in every book, mini-course, and seminar. Develop your intuition and spiritual power. Seek answers within and without. Don't settle on anything that will stop you from learning more. If there is an all you really need to do is solution, it is this: Leave no stone unturned until your dying breath.
Should we stop buying personal development products from people who are unrealistic in their marketing claims' Probably not. That might eliminate the entire market. I'd suggest making your decision to purchase or not based on something beyond the phony claims.
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30 Dec 2011 at 11:18am
It's the time of year when goals are made and abandoned a few weeks later. Will you be one of them, or will you set goals that have the power to change your life'
Not achieving what you set out to do means you'll yet again fail to move toward the life you desire, which leads to nothing but regret. Inertia can be difficult to overcome, but something you may overlook is the influence from friends, parents, and society in general.
Often what you believe you want is not what you want at all. The trick lies in setting meaningful objectives.
It doesn't matter whether you set goals or not, as long as you're doing something that makes you come alive.
Stay Here and Now
Before you decide what you want to do, stay present here and now. Forget about the past and the future. Let any and all thoughts pass. Don't give them meaning, and don't add to them.
It is from this blank, calm state that you can begin to look at what has gone well last year, and what hasn't.
Eliminate
The big mistake people make is they think more is better, but that isn't always the case. The more things you do, the less time you have. You want to make sure that every single thing in your life is something you've consciously chosen.
It's easy to fall into the trap of doing things that distract you from what you really want to do, because you're afraid.
Instead of letting distractions take over your life, look at what you can stop doing. Pick just one thing right now. Keep it simple, and then eliminate it from your life. It could be something small, such as a magazine subscription, or something bigger, like fast food.
Discriminate
You have to be vigilant about what you let into your life. Learn to say no and learn to respect your own time. You don't always have to say yes to friends and family. First, think about what you want to do. Otherwise you'll end up living someone else's life.
If you complain about not having enough time, you probably need to get clearer about what you want from life. And by clear, I mean really, really clear. Focus on ONE main thing at a time.
Goals
Next, set one big goal for the year. And by goal, I don't necessarily mean regular goal setting. Set a direction for where you want to go.
I simply use the concept of goals to get a point across. Goal-setting is just a process that gets you results. What matters are the results; many get stuck on the process, but the process doesn't matter.
Use whatever feels good, and take action. Start now.
Focus (on Your Next Step)
When you have one big goal, it's time to look at what your next step is. What can you do right now to move closer to that goal'
Keep the next step as tiny as possible. It could be brainstorming ideas and action steps. Whatever it is, start now. Yes, you can put it off, but if you do that, you're putting off your life. If you make it a habit, you'll end up living a mediocre life.
Do you really want that'
Living an extraordinary life takes effort, at least at first, which is why most people turn it down.
Momentum
When you focus on taking one step at a time, you build momentum. You take one step, then the next, and then the next. It eliminates overwhelm, because you don't have to try and predict the future.
Know where you're going, and keep taking the next step. Let the rest take care of itself.
The Most Important Secret
Last, but not least, remember to focus on what matters to you. Forget about what others think you should or shouldn't do. This is your life, and you are the one who has to live it.
If someone thinks you have to do something that you don't want, forget about them. If they try to push you to do it, eliminate them from your life. I know, easier said than done!
There's no one you have to put up with, and nothing you have to do, except follow what feels right for you. Always remember that, because that is what will help you create results that matter and make this year the best one of your life.
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Liz Strauss at Successful Blog
6 Feb 2012 at 7:43am
Get Serious Attention
In Amanda Valenti’s recent guest post here about Common Writing Mistakes, she made many important points that I encourage small businesses to take to heart.
If spelling, grammar, and homophones are not your strong suites, find someone who can edit what you write. It IS worth it because Amanda is absolutely correct – these types of errors will cost you visitors and business.
There is something more serious you must be aware of as well and that is what kind of image you are presenting to the world. Specifically, what you consider acceptable regarding profanity, off-color humor, suggestive images, etc. may be anything but appropriate to your potential customers.
Most people over fifty will know exactly what I mean, but those who are significantly younger may not realize that what is normal to them – whether that is dropping the f-word, cursing God, piercings or tattoos or pink or green hair – may cause many to not take them seriously.
One day I was at my ISP when an intelligent, clean cut young man walked in and asked for a job. He didn’t know anything about computers so there wasn’t anything he could do there; however, I did make some suggestions to assist him in finding work.
He was wearing shorts, sandals, and a backpack but what made me cringe was that he had a ten penny nail in each ear. I explained to him why my immediate reaction was to cringe inside (possibly visibly) and think “ouch, that must hurt”. I suggested he dress as though he was going to work there when inquiring about opens and especially to lose those nails before asking for work.
I ran into him at a local coffee shop later that week. He had found work – and I almost did not recognize him without the nails. While his peers might find that normal, the owners, managers, and customers where you might seek work may not.
That applies to tattoos, hair styles, piercings, what you wear, etc. While I am not saying you should not have your own style, I am suggesting that you consider what is truly important to you and that you ask yourself, is this REALLY me or am I doing this for some other reason.
—-
Author’s Bio:
Gail Gardner writes about why small businesses and bloggers should collaborate to improve the economy and create a better world for all at GrowMap.com (). You can find her on Twitter and other major social media networks as @GrowMap.
Thank you, Gail! You’re irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
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5 Feb 2012 at 9:11am
by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh
After the storm, creative thinking …
With all the driftwood on the beach after recent big storms, some people see debris spoiling the usually pristine sands. Others see a gift for creativity.
What do you see when everything goes pear-shaped and plans fall apart'
Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh
5 Feb 2012 at 3:00am
Many people have to wait a long time for something to happen. Tom Petty was right: The waiting is the hardest part. It's easy to become impatient, especially when we cannot see any signs that anything is happening. It's like the seed germinating within the earth. Although there may be millions of chemical reactions going on beneath the surface, from topside, the soil resembles a mute brown plane, keeping its own counsel.
Maddening.
The urge to dig up the seed to check on its progress is almost overwhelming, and yet, in order for the seed to bear fruit, we must trust that the process is on schedule. If we have chosen the correct soil for the seed, watered it properly and fertilized it accordingly, then we must have faith that something will happen.
I seldom make direct references to our nonprofit in the Successful Blog Series, but this week, we awarded a car to a woman who epitomizes the example of doing the work and then waiting.
'Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.' ~ Jules Renard
Eight months ago, she was living in a homeless shelter with her children. She wanted a better life for herself and her children. We, as a nonprofit, wanted to give it to her. But in order for the transfer to happen, she needed to first decide that she wanted to move forward and then take steps toward achieving it.
Reaching out to a caseworker. Determining the correct steps to getting her GED. Fulfilling obligations to secure an apartment. Achieving these goals constituted a symbiotic relationship between asking and effort. It's difficult to articulate, and I'm not sure that I'm doing a very good job of it. It's not a matter of 'deserving.' It's a matter of realizing.
Once we realize ourselves, we begin to see ourselves as worthy. And from that sense of worthiness, concrete and tangible results flow.
'Maturity includes the recognition that no one is going to see anything in us that we don’t see in ourselves. Stop waiting for a producer. Produce yourself.' ~ Marianne Williamson
Our applicant had to do the heavy lifting of overcoming her own inertia, developing clarity about the things she wanted and then taking action to bring about the changes she wished to see in her life. Even the most insightful and intelligent among us cannot begin to presume what another wants for him or herself. Each of us has the responsibility of divining that kernel of truth for himself or herself.
'It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide your luck even while waiting for it.' ~ Baltasar Gracian
Once you have an inkling of what you want, you must seek out the conditions and people where you'll have a greater chance of coming into contact with others from whom you can learn and grow.
- Research your desired field
- Read about people who have succeeded in your chosen industry
- Apply for internships or educational opportunities that put you in the path of those who can help you
- Do the work
Ultimately, you must also be willing to act when the opportunity for which you have been waiting presents itself. You must trust that your time spent preparing has been effective.
One of the best ways you can thank someone for giving you a chance is to take it. When have you had to wait for something' How did it pan out' Were you able to pay it forward'
''-
Molly Cantrell-Kraig is a woman with drive. Possessing an innate sense of purpose and a pragmatic, solution-based approach to empowering people, she fused these two traits in order to establish Women With Drive Foundation. Based upon its founder's personal history, Women With Drive Foundation is a means through which Cantrell-Kraig may effect change on both a micro and macro level. By providing women with something as essential as personal transportation in order to transition them from poverty to prosperity, she, through Women With Drive Foundation, seeks to empower women to help them help themselves. Through this action, the individual applicant benefits, as does society as a whole. Follow Molly on twitter as @mckra1g or @WWDr1ve (Women With Drive Foundation) or “Like” them on facebook.
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4 Feb 2012 at 9:28am
Successful and Outstanding Bloggers
Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,
   
and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.
I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.
They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.
I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.
Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.
Want to become an SOB'
If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB'! page in the sidebar.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
3 Feb 2012 at 7:54am
A Mixture of Key Personality Traits
For the entrepreneur, the early months of developing a start-up are some of the most hectic and arduous: you need to secure financing, explore legal limitations, and forecast your financials for the years ahead. You need to take your idea and turn it into a product or a service, along the way keeping a close attention to quality, profitability, and logistics. You may even need to start thinking about your personal financial future; you may want to open an IRA, for example, or conversely consider how much of your funds you can afford to allocate to the venture.
Amidst all of this commotion, moreover, you find yourself in the position to make one of the most important decisions a new business can make ' the decision of hiring employees, in the process surrounding yourself with the best talent possible designed to help your start-up grow.
While different businesses and different industries have a wide variety of talent needs, the most successful start-ups usually share several commonalities. They possess drive, motivated individuals. They hire people who are truly passionate about their work. And they assemble a diverse mixture of several key personality traits and personal attributes.
That last point is an oft-overlooked one. Unlike Abraham Lincoln, who assembled a 'Team of Rivals' in his Cabinet in order to maximize diversity and individual talents, few entrepreneurs hire their start-up team with such an outlook in mind. Don't make this mistake if you're starting a business, or plan to do so in the future. Instead, look to creative a mixture of the most important personality traits and personal attributes necessary to get a new company up and running. I believe that the most important of these are charisma, having a mathematical mind, creativity, and possessing the ability to network. Here's a quick breakdown:
Charisma: This person can be the face of your start-up and an excellent salesperson.
Mathematical Mind: This person can oversee your budgets and all your financials. A good start-up doesn't need a full accounting department ' just one talented employee.
Creativity: Whatever your product, this person is the one best equipped to turn it from an idea into a reality. They should be incredibly hard-working and driven.
Ability to Network: Along with our charismatic leader, this employee has strong inter-personal skills. However, they operate more behind the scenes and use their connections and networking abilities to market the business and secure investors.
While you certainly may possess one of these traits, don't lull yourself into thinking that you could do all of them better than a team of specialists can. To this end you want to diversify as you seek quality talent; even if you don't end up with a team exactly like the one above, insure that a variety of strengths and capabilities are exhibited in your force. Your start-up's long-term prospects will be much rosier as a result.
—-
Author’s Bio:
Alex S. writes about education and business at theeducationupdate.com
Thank you, Alex!
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
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2 Feb 2012 at 1:04pm
What Works for the Buyer
Keeping an online shop is taking your business to a completely new level. Until you had your online store, your clients were walking up to you to buy your products or services. But now, with an online facility, you are offering them a totally different experience. You are stepping forward and taking the river to the thirsty child! It's important that the quality be worth it.
There are two things that come into play here:
Your existing clients buy online.
New people come across your site and buy.
In both cases, the user experience has to be great.
Once again, there are two important factors here:
You – the seller
Your shopping cart – for the buyer
Both the factors need to appeal to your buyer. So, your website needs to look and feel authentic – in a way, that your buyer doesn’t feel he’s going to be rugged! And your shopping cart has to be user friendly, comfortable and convenient – to make the buying experience a pleasure!
Here’s how you make it happen by selecting the right shopping cart for your online business:
1. The Look
Your shopping cart should match your website layout, ideally. It should look like your cart, for your buyer! And it should be easy to use. Don’t have complicated tabs; settings features that make the buyer suspect your intensions!
2. The Display
It is important for the cart ot display all the information relevant and important to the user. Along with the products selected, the cart should show the exact price clearly. If you are offering discounts, they should be visible to encourage your user to buy.
3. The Compatibility
Server issues are the last thing you want on your online store. The user can not afford a transaction error or a compatibility problem. If you are launching on the virtual space, you need to take care of technical issues. There's no cashier sitting on the web page giving out the change! Your server and your cart, hence, need to roll together.
4. The Payment
The above discussion brings us to payment and processing questions. The payment processor on your shop online – cart should support credit and debit card transactions. Checking whether the gateways are working right for you is almost mandatory.
5. The Support
There’s always going to be something that goes wrong! God forbid, but some unforeseen circumstances can lead to problems or concerns. How are you equipped to deal with it' This is an important question that should be answered before you plunge into the virtual shopping scenario. Plus, in case there is a problem, how soon can you resolve it' Support is, hence, something that influences the strength on your online store.
There are various open source shopping cart downloads available for you to select from and install on your website. One of the key features to note here is that the premade software you are planning to use should be easy to edit or should have a template format to suit your requirements. The look and feel should go with the perception that your website creates. So, take time out to evaluate the shopping carts and find the one that suits you the best. After all, turning your e-commerce business into a profitable one could be a matter of only a few ‘right’ choices – for you and for your buyer.
—-
Author’s Bio: Divya Rawat writes about e-commerce and Website Development at SEO Company inetzeal.com. Divya also writes ezinearticles and other resources.
Thank you, Divya!
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.
2 Feb 2012 at 7:40am
A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill
Like it or not, it's political season in the United States. We must sort through the debates, talking heads, and town halls, and do our duty as citizens.
There are clear rules to being a good citizen of the US. Obey the law and vote, and you're pretty much good. Throw in some volunteering, and that's even better.
Online, in the social world, it's a different story. Depending on where you are, the rules are different, and often unwritten. It can be tricky.
But don't fear, I'm here to give you some simple tips that will keep you out of the Internet version of Turkish prison. We'll cover Twitter and LinkedIn today:
Twitter
- Fill out your bio – it's the equivalent of politely introducing yourself.
- Replace the 'egg' with an avatar – you don't walk around town with a mask on, do you'
- Don't use auto-direct messages – unless you're getting hundreds of new followers every day, you can spare 5 minutes to send a personal greeting.
- Don't order people to 'like' you on Facebook – need I say that this is rude'
- Vary your stream – don't just be all retweets, all quotes, all broadcast. Throw in some mentions, replies, original thoughts.
- Don't follow hundreds of people at once – it's best to grow your following organically, over time. Get to know them first, then add more. Also, if your ratio of following to followers is way out of whack, you look desperate.
- Help people – if you see a Tweet like, 'can anyone recommend a good Chinese restaurant in Phoenix' and you know one, jump on it!
LinkedIn
- Go in with a plan, are you open or not – if you decide to accept invitations from people you haven't actually met, you are a LION (LinkedIn Open Networker); most people do not accept invitations from strangers, so tread carefully.
- Be a contributor – when you first join a group, don't make your first post a 'promotion.'
- Webinar spam – likewise, don't make your first contribution a webinar announcement.
- Don't direct-link your Twitter stream to your activity stream – if I see you in both places, I want different content; come on, it's not that much work!
- Answer questions – go to the Answer section and help where you can; remember your manners and thank people who answer your questions as well.
- Be generous with your recommendations – this falls into the 'good karma' category. Spread your good recommendations where they're appropriate, without expectations. Trust me, it's good.
If you keep these guidelines in mind, you're well on your way to being a solid social citizen. And don't forget to vote.
_____
Author’s Bio: Rosemary O'Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Twitter as @rhogroupee
_____
Thank you, Rosemary!
You’re irresistible!
ME “Liz” Strauss
1 Feb 2012 at 10:43am
 While the old adage of 'Time is Money!' still holds true, is your small business accurately tracking employee time in order to get the most out of your workers'
In today's day and age where companies scramble to keep up with customer requirements and maintain revenues in the black and not the red, worker productivity is critical to meeting those needs.
Even though all businesses want to have the services of productive workers, certain lines of work stand out in such a need, including areas like manufacturing, accounting, law firms, auto repair shops, medical services and more.
If your small business is not up to date on keeping employee hours through the various applications available on the market or you're about to open a business and need some guidance on such matters, keep several things in mind.
First, do you understand the importance of keeping employee time'
The main reasons are to track payroll, expenses for an employee's time that is directly charged to a customer, and when your employee's time is tied to the expense of a product.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, business owners can monitor their employees’ hours however they deem necessary, provided it is correct and complete. Employers are required to maintain timekeeping records for two years at the workplace or at a central records locale.
Time tracking is also important due to:
Attention to Detail ' Those employees who arrive and leave on time daily are more likely to be your better disciplined workers. Those who test the boundaries by arriving or leaving early may lead to problems down the road;
Accountability ' Tracking employee time forces them to be accountable for their actions. While all employees should be adults about this matter, sometimes a little electronic reinforcement doesn't hurt;
Cost Effectiveness ' Employees who are productive are also going to provide your business with more cost efficiency. Having an automated system in place allows your administrative personnel to focus on other matters and not tracking who is coming and going and when they're doing it;
More Production ' When employees are aware that their time is being tracked, they are more apt to provide you with better production results. Not only will your product offerings be improved, but you are likely to see better customer service too.
Clocking Better Efforts in the Workplace
In the event your small business is in need of tracking metrics, there are different options available.
Among them are: Punch cards, paper forms, wall mount biometric or swipe clocks and web clocks.
Not only can time and attendance systems monitor in-house employees, but they can also be used for your employees who telecommute and/or are on the road a large portion of time.
Businesses that assign time-based tasks which require monitoring can utilize time tracking systems and job scheduling software to be sure their employees are hitting their requirements.
Managers, meantime, can use job scheduling software to map out timelines for different prospect jobs which generally utilize the data recorded from in-place time and attendance systems.
No matter which form of time and attendance software you decide to employ, take the time to make sure it is the one that fits best for your small business.
Photo credit: sodahead.com
Dave Thomas, who covers topics like securing small business loans, writes extensively for Business.com , an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.
31 Jan 2012 at 7:27am
You Don’t Even Know My Name
Many years ago, when telemarketers began the annoying practice of interrupting dinner, I decided to change the name on all of my credit cards. Since that day the cards read with two initials and my last name. It’s been fun to receive the “personalized” calls, direct mail, and email that comes to me with a hello that has been chosen just so the sender can’t call me by name.
Then a friend told me how, whenever she is asked to give up her contact information, she customizes her name in such a way that she will know who sold her name to that business spamming her when she never opted in.
Do you think those business count my friend and I when they quote their reach'
Yet,the basis of relationship — inside or outside of business — is credibility.
The offers that succeed are those in which our credibility is at least as big the size of the investment we’re asking.
Buying my information and marketing to me isn’t that different from starting a first conversation with “I think you’re sexy. Will you sleep with me'”
Who knows if you’re a theif, a slasher, or someone with some pernicious disease'
What good is reach if you don’t even know my name' Credibility is what makes the sale, not reach. Reach is not credibility.
How Credible Can You Be'
It’s no longer about only about how far our message can reach. Has it ever been or was that the only measure we could think up then' It’s not even about how many people will receive our message and consume it. Just because I understand what you said, doesn’t mean I’m inclined to do as you ask or even remember the message when 10 minutes have gone.
The question is whether a clear, credible message can travel far and still be believed.
Steven M. R. Covey, who wrote, The Speed of Trust, points to 4 Cores of Credibility — integrity, intent, capability, and results. Together they carry the four reasons we trust ourselves, our friends and the people and companies with whom we choose to work.
- Integrity. A guy runs up to you on the beach, opens his coat and says, “Wanna buy a watch'” Your response is likely to be negative. It’s hard to believe that watch is the deal that he says it is. A man of integrity probably wouldn’t choose that form of approach. Integrity is the ultimate of walking your talk. The etymology of integrity is “wholeness, soundness, uncorrupted virtue.” It’s a person’s character who gives “his word,” shakes a hand. makes a promise, and signs a contract. Integrity is the conviction to always choose for your values no matter what people are around you.
Do you show up as the same person everywhere people find you'
Do you live your message with the people you work with and with your customers'
Do you keep promises to yourself, your friends, your family, and your colleagues'
Do you tell the hard truth as easily as you tell your best stories'
How do your actions demonstrate what you believe'
BE what you believe. Stand for something.
- Intent. Ever get an email or a request from a friend that sounded as if it was sent just to you, then realized that he or she send the exact words to a whole list of people with a personalized greeting' A situation like that can make us wonder about what his or her someone’s intent. Intent is the reason we do what we do. It’s good intent to understand the power in partnership that is forthright and mutually beneficial. People and companies with good intent build relationships before promoting self-interest. Think of the respect Warren Buffet has earned. He’s a great combination of integrity and intent. Through demonstrations of good intent, Warren Buffet accomplishes many things that benefit others and his own companies.
Do you reflect on what motivates you and how that might work for others'
Do you move yourself outside the center to get a more balanced view of world'
Do you make the success of other people mission critical to our own success'
Do state your true intentions to yourself and to others before you act'
How do you make it easy to see what you’re up to'
Share your plan and your purpose. Focus on mutual benefits.
- Capabilities. Think of leaders who inspire. They have knowledge, talent, skills, ethics, attitudes, and identity. It’s not simply that they’re intelligent and visible. They attract us to follow because they are good at what they do. They have means and the confidence to do the job and the way they talk about their capabilities raises everyone on their team.
Do you know your strengths, talents, what comes naturally, and why people follow you'
Do you have the expertise to do what you set out to do'
Does your style attract and encourage relationships and learning'
Do you establish a culture that is open and supportive'
How do you use your abilities to inspire confidence and leadership'
Know what value only you can bring. Do the same for others.
- Results. Talent and skills are nothing, if we don’t do, produce, and respond to the right things. People and companies we trust focus on delivering right results that meet the highest expectations. They fulfill their promises — faster, easier, and more meaningfully than anyone might expect. Their record for results precedes them.
Do you show up, make clear decision, and put your best work into all you do'
Do seek out a team of people who are smarter and more experienced than you'
Do you focus on delivering outstanding satisfaction to every customer'
Do you look to consistently raise the bar higher'
How do you make outstanding and successful things happen'
Be engaged. Take responsibility with intent to win.
The difference between reach and credibility is the difference between Handing out flyers to every person who passes on the street and developing relationships with people who who value integrity, shared intent, competent commitment, and consistent performance.
Credibility is trust without fear or worry of the wrong results. Credibility means we don’t have to prepare for consequences because positive outcomes don’t hurt us. Credibility relieves us of the burden of having to build extra safety nets because we know that you’re looking out for our best interests — you’ll still be there if something goes wrong. Can’t say that about the guy on the beach offering to sell us a watch.
Reach is only valuable if it stands on a foundation of credibility.
Seriously, how credible can you be if you bought my information and you don’t even know my name'
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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30 Jan 2012 at 7:21am
I was researching in my archives when I came across this post. I thought I’d update it. But it was hours later and I’d almost rewritten it totally. So on that note. I offer you this new, old post — published once, in another form, January 30, 2010.
Do You Have It Backwards
Every day we wake up to the time of our lives.
When life is going well, it’s easy to take the day with a flying start. But that second that the ground starts to freeze over. The bed starts to seem warmer and our feet can get a little cold. That’s when we need to be invested. We need a meaningful reason to get up and make progress.
It takes a strategy to live a life that isn’t just passing time.
- Don’t try to rule the climate, but use the opportunities it holds. Enjoy when the sun is warm. Fill your sails when the wind is going your way.
- Study the terrain to choose the most efficient, least dangerous roads. Highways weren’t made for bikes. Cars don’t belong on train tracks.
- Enlist help and advice from those who have gone before us. Ask the people who’ve been where you’re going.
- Employ systems that keep things going without reinventing what works. Maintain what supports you.
- Have a mission to reach a vision on the horizon. Decide where you’re going before you go.
The last one is critical to a life strategy.
We live as if at the end of our life, we’ll know …
who we are.
what we’ll do.
where we will end up.
Somehow we have it backwards. We’re supposed to decide those things first. Then we can start down our path.
What’s Most Critical to Living Life'
Strategy is a realistic plan to advance by leveraging opportunity over time. In order to advance you have to know who you are where you’re advancing to.
Like any business, a life with a strategy has a better chance to succeed.
What Other People Don’t Know
If you ask opinions about what you should do, other people will have plenty of them. Don’t wait for other people to tell you. They don’t have to live your life. They won’t lose if you waste time chasing down a future that isn’t yours, and they won’t mind if you give up your life living it for them. Even the most well-meaning people run the risk of giving you advice better suited to them than to you.
Who knows more about you than you' Who ever will' You know what you think, dream, desire, and need. You know what you fear. You know what it would take to move you from here to there. Listen to that inner guidance system that tells you when you’re doing well, you’re learning, you’re doing something well. The one person who has a vested interest in how your life turns out is you.
Vision and mission are critical to living life. They are identity, intention, and direction. Without them, how will you wisely invest your time' It’s a shame to waste a whole life.
How do you know' How do you decide'
Rarely is the problem not knowing where we want to be. It’s admitting that we’ll have to make a commitment to get there.
Decide and Commit
Decide. It matters less what you decide than that YOU decide and that you make a commitment to that decision. Listen to the truth you know about yourself, decide what the purpose of your life will be, and know why that’s meaningful to you. Pick a vision the future that would be the best use of what’s been given you — your talents, your skills, your personality. What should you be doing more of to use them well' What life that would use your skills, the problems you can solve, and the value you have always brought to the world' Decide on a future – a vision — and make it your qiest — your mission — to get there. In other words, choose to be your best self and make a commitment to that.
You can always decide to adjust your decision.
Vision is who we’ll be and where we want to go. Vision is the context that gives each life decision intention, direction, and identity. Mission is the compelling reason that will get us there. Mission makes every minute and every decision worth getting up and investing in. Vision and mission turn living into a meaningful cause worth a life’s campaign.
If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere you never intended to be.
If you don’t know why you’re going, you’ll give up when the smallest obstacle appears.
Set your intention on a vision that describes your best identity — down to your DNA.
Put your head, heart, and feet into your mission. Make it a quest. Nothing will stop you.
Every day, every hour, every minute will keep passing whether you know where you’re going or not. Wouldn’t you rather own the hourglass than sit on the sand as ir drops through' You have to live your life. Shouldn’t you be the one who decides what it will be about'
Have you got a strategy to live a life a that isn’t just passing time'
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog
26 Jan 2012 at 7:36pm
For the past several months, I’ve been going through a social reboot. This involves consciously reassessing my social life and deciding what connections and social habits to maintain and what to change.
But this year I’ve decided to go further with this process and declare outright social bankruptcy. This is an area of my life that was far enough off track that changing it for the better is closer to starting over from scratch than making modifications to an existing structure. It’s more analogous to changing careers than it is to tweaking an existing career.
I could see that my social life was becoming exceedingly unbalanced. It was a source of many stimulating connections, but the overall big picture wasn’t working very well.
While many people have trouble with physical clutter piling up, the main source of clutter in my life has been social clutter, most of which flowed into my life as a result of having a popular website/blog and having many open doors on the Internet through which people could easily connect with me.
Initially I thought that being so accessible was a good thing. I liked having an open door policy. To do otherwise seemed like it would be too cold and aloof.
In the beginning that open door policy worked okay, but too much of a good thing can eventually become a curse.
A Gift or a Curse'
Imagine if people starting coming to your house and bringing you gifts because they want to express their appreciation.
At first, you may receive their gifts with gratitude. How nice of them. How lucky you are to receive such abundance.
Now imagine that the gifts keep coming, year after year and with increasing frequency.
Eventually you start seeing patterns in the gifts. The same types of items appear dozens, then hundreds of times. What was once a delightful surprise now becomes routine and predictable.
Soon you stop bothering to open some of the gifts. You can tell what they are from the outside packaging. You don’t need what’s inside since you’ve received similar items many times before. You may still appreciate the sentiment, but the gifts themselves no longer hold much value to you.
You start running out of space to store the gifts. They pile up. You shove them in closets and fill your garage with them. And they just keep coming.
You can reasonably expect that this pattern will continue for many more years to come. It isn’t going to stop on its own. You begin to dread the treadmill you find yourself on.
All the while, people follow up to ask you about the gifts you received. At first you really are appreciative. Then you become indifferent. Then you may feel resentful. You may try to feign appreciation from behind that resentment in order to be polite, but it isn’t always easy. After a sufficient amount of time elapses, the gifts are entirely unwanted. As new gift bringers arrive, you stop answering the door as often.
Due to the asymmetrical nature of these interactions, those individual gift givers can’t see any problem with it. They always feel they’re doing a good deed. And so if you aren’t appreciative each time, they quickly jump to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with you.
So what do you do'
You could ask people to stop bringing gifts, but whom do you tell if it’s different people each time'
You could hire someone to process the gifts for you, but why pay someone to process what you don’t even want' This would also do a disservice to the gift givers since you’d never personally receive and appreciate their gifts. They probably wouldn’t have brought the gifts if they expected their gifts would merely be processed by an assistant. They intended the gifts to be personal.
Social connections are like gifts. In small quantities they’re precious, and it’s easy to appreciate them. In vast quantities, however, they can become a curse.
I hit that curse level a long time ago and did my best to manage it, but eventually I realized that it was a no-win situation, and I had to make some fundamental changes. I couldn’t just get better at processing the gifts that arrived. I had to stop the gifts from showing up altogether. I had to eliminate the curse aspects and get back to a more reasonable level of interaction.
Declaring Social Bankruptcy
It took a while to accept it, but eventually I realized I had to declare social bankruptcy. I’d gone too far down a path that wasn’t working. I could see that it was time to get off that path entirely.
I began to think about what kind of social life I’d create for myself these days if I had the opportunity to start over completely from scratch. I imagined that nobody on earth knew who I was. What if I didn’t have email… or a website… or any social media pages… or a phone number'
What would I consciously decide to add back' What would I avoid recreating'
I still like writing, so I’d keep that. I like speaking too, so I’d recreate that as well.
But there are some items I wouldn’t recreate, at least not in the same way they’re present in my life today.
One of those things would be email. I’d keep it for some very limited usage, but I wouldn’t use email as my primary business communication tool. I’d reduce my email usage by at least 90% and check it maybe once or twice a week, with perhaps 15 minutes of usage time per week. I wouldn’t have an assistant process a bunch of messages for me. I’d set it up so hardly anyone would message me. I’d only receive emails that I wanted to receive, from people I wanted to be able to email me.
Another thing I wouldn’t recreate would be online interactions with people regarding my articles, including comments, questions, and discussions. Reading feedback can be stimulating at times, but I don’t find it inspiring or fulfilling, and it certainly isn’t necessary. Life itself gives me all the feedback I require. It’s fine if people want to discuss and share what I’ve posted on their own, but I don’t need to participate in those discussions. By the time I’ve posted something, I’ve already moved on to the next thing. For me writing is a process of letting go. To write is to release. If I get involved in discussions about my past work, my attention is pulled back to where I’ve been, and I experience greater levels of attachment. I’d rather keep my attention on where I am and where I’m going.
If I’m going to discuss anything work-related, it’s more interesting to discuss what I’m inspired to explore next. It’s easier for me — and more fulfilling as well — to have such discussions with friends face to face. So again the online element is superfluous.
In the long run, my open door approach to connecting with readers was a bust. I tried modifying the parameters of that open door — for years — but eventually I had to close that door altogether. Life is a lot simpler without all that social clutter.
Closing those doors (quitting Facebook, shutting down the forums, disabling my online contact form, etc) was tough to do at first, but now I’m far enough along with this contraction process that I wish I’d done this years ago.
I’m also revamping the way I use email, including killing off old email addresses and reserving email for a much lower volume of communication henceforth.
Obligation vs. Freedom
There are several themes that run through this social rebooting process. One involves eliminating social obligations and expectations and replacing them with freedom of choice.
My social life has been overburdened with perceived obligations. People who have a social connection with me frequently expect that our connection entitles them to something from me, such as a reply to their emails or advice when they request it.
In small quantities that isn’t a problem, but in the quantities I’ve experienced this, it’s too far over on the curse side.
So as part of declaring social bankruptcy, I’m erasing any social debt people feel I owe them as a result of our past connections.
Feeling obligated to live up to other people’s expectations isn’t how I wish to manage my social life. I wish to experience a social life based on freedom of choice by all involved, where no one feels they have the right to leverage our connection to obligate the other person.
Freedom must still be balanced with responsibility, so if I’ve freely chosen to obligate myself in some way, such as entering a business contract or making a verbal agreement with someone, I’ll honor that of course. But I’m not going to let those unspoken obligations creep back into my social life, where people feel they’re entitled to something from me just because they exist in my reality.
If certain people can’t handle this and wish to complain about it, I’m not going to maintain a serious connection with them. The types of people I like interacting with already feel similarly anyway, so I’m not losing anything I value here.
Online vs. Offline
The second shift involves doing more of what fulfills me and less of what doesn’t fulfill me.
I love connecting with people face to face. Occasional video-Skyping is okay too. But typing individual messages to people has grown pretty stale. And if I have a lot of messages to read and reply to, that just feels burdensome.
So I’m deliberately axing almost all of my one-on-one communication via the Internet. And I’m replacing it with more face to face social interaction.
I’m making this change not only for personal socializing but for business networking as well. I may use email to help maintain some connections, but I’m essentially closing the door to new business connections that arrive by email. New business contacts will have to meet me in person, and that will essentially mean they’ll have to come through organically via my existing social network. It will be exceedingly difficult for cold callers to reach me personally.
Incompatible vs. Compatible
The third shift has to do with the types of people that I connect with on a regular basis.
The bulk of people who’ve gotten in touch with me in the past were readers of my blog, Internet marketers, and the press. In small doses these interactions are normally fine, but in larger quantities it can get a little crazy.
As part of declaring social bankruptcy, I felt it wise to close the door on these types of interactions via the Internet, so I could create some space to reassess my social life without so many distractions piling up.
During this quiet time, I realized that I didn’t wish to recreate the reader-based interactions. These are too often interactions where people put me on a pedestal and place themselves on a perceived lower tier as they interact with me. It’s not a big deal when it’s a temporary thing like during a workshop weekend, but it’s not something I like having in my life on a daily basis. These interactions provide little value to me, and they encourage me to keep revisiting the past instead of focusing on new challenges. If you think my decision to cut these people off is selfish, that’s because it is.
Sometimes I’ve even said to people, “Please don’t do the fanboy thing with me.” While I’m sure some people draw energy from having others look up to them, I find it very unnatural when adults behave like that towards me. I prefer it when people connect with me as equals.
Regarding Internet marketers who approach me primarily because they want something from me, I’m not going to lose any sleep over shedding those connections. These types of approaches are very common online, but they’re much less frequent in person. And in person it’s much easier to help the person get past their fake salesy persona and behave a bit more naturally.
Connecting with the press might seem to be a wise door to keep open for business reasons, but after doing so many interviews, I don’t see much value in continuing the practice. Mainstream journalists and the publications they represent are too often a mismatch for my message. They have an overwhelming tendency to want to reduce everything to cutesy sound bites, and they frequently get the sound bites wrong anyway. These people are almost invariably over-stressed and harried, so they can only crank out incredibly shallow work that provides little or no long-term value. Most publications of this nature don’t provide a compatible medium for a message about conscious living.
So as I declare social bankruptcy on these types of connections, what’s left'
I thought about the kinds of friends I want to keep in my life, as well as new friends I’d like to attract. These include people with qualities and values such as:
Freedom – people who maintain free and flexible lifestyles and have control over their schedules (can’t connect with people who aren’t available)
Self-Sufficiency - high-functioning people who can take care of themselves (not needy, clingy, or high maintenance)
Happiness – people who are generally happy and fulfilled with their lives
Growth – people who value growth above security (security-minded people are very boring)
Courage – people who seek to identify and face their fears; people who are following their “path with a heart”
Offbeat – people whom others might label as weird, quirky, or unusual (I like social rebels; the social conformists don’t seem particularly sane)
There are lots of people in my life who will claim to value these qualities, but not as many can claim to be living them. People who are living up to their values tend to have a certain peacefulness about them that’s a joy to connect with.
I’ve been maintaining many partial matches in my social network, i.e. people who have enough compatibility to create a connection with me but not enough to maintain a mutually fulfilling relationship in the long run. These partial matches are relative dead ends though, and they crowd out more compatible connections.
As part of this bankruptcy process, I’m reassessing each connection in my social network as if it’s a brand new connection opportunity that just showed up for the first time. I’m letting go of past social baggage with certain people and asking myself if it makes sense to include them in my social map today. At the same time, I’m raising my standards with respect to the types of connections I’ll invite in and maintain.
Quantity to Quality
In previous years I’ve had lots of relatively shallow connections in my life and a handful of deep ones. But virtually all the joy and fulfillment comes from the deeper connections. So I’ve decided to release most of those shallow connections and invest more time and energy in creating and maintaining deeper connections but with fewer people.
I don’t find it difficult to create and maintain deeper connections, but when there’s too much social clutter in my life, it keeps me flailing around in the shallow end of the pool more often than I’d like.
Instead of maintaining a large but loose social network, I’m dumping that model and replacing it with a much smaller, tighter social network. I seek fewer friends, but deeper and more compatible connections.
Having an extensive social network with loose ties with lots of people may seem like a good thing to some people, but I haven’t found much fulfillment in that model. Breadth is no substitute for depth.
I think the main mistake I made here was assuming that having a bigger funnel at the top would result in deeper connections at the bottom. It doesn’t work that way in practice, however. Shallow connections rarely evolve into deeper ones. Deep connections frequently avoid the funnel altogether. When truly compatible people show up, we tend to click right away — within a matter of hours. For the most part, either we click right away, or we don’t. There is no funnel.
As part of this process, I’ve been going through my Google Contacts and making liberal use of the delete function. I figure that if I haven’t contacted someone in 6 months or more, I probably don’t need their contact info.
Having fewer contacts to maintain simplifies my life and makes it easier to focus on connections I wish to maintain. If I ever really need the info for a deleted contact, I can always get it through some other means, like searching my email archives or requesting it from someone.
After a few passes, I was able to reduce my contacts down to 64 people. My goal was to get it down to 30 or less. With a couple more passes, I got it down to 28. Smile.
I may gradually build it back up to around 40 or so, but I’m in no rush. It’s nice to see the whole list fit on one screen for the first time ever. No scrollbar.
Contraction, Then Expansion
Having been through a financial bankruptcy many years ago, I can tell you that declaring bankruptcy isn’t such a terrible thing. When you go bankrupt, you shed what clearly isn’t working for you. For me it was a very liberating experience.
I find this social bankruptcy process equally liberating. It’s obviously not the same thing as a financial bankruptcy, but the energetic effect is similar. Old obligations and expectations are released. Hope and optimism replace feelings of overwhelm and disappointment.
I’m looking forward to rebuilding a positive and supportive social life this year, practically from the ground up. Having such an active social life for so many years, even if it wasn’t particularly fulfilling, gave me a lot of clarity about what I want to experience in this part of my life instead.
Initially I hoped to transition directly from where I was to where I wanted to go. But I couldn’t get that approach to work. The old patterns were too strong, and I didn’t have enough clarity about where to go next. It’s like being in a job you don’t like, but you’re still unsure about what you might do instead or how to make it work. You have to quit the old job first, break free of its distractions and conditioning effects, and take some reflective time to get in touch with what you’ve learned and what you want. Then you can take steps to create something new. There may be some negative side effects to this approach, but they’re worth it. Staying stuck in a no-win situation is worse.
In a similar vein, I eventually accepted I had to undergo a social contraction first before I’d have any hope of creating something better. I couldn’t transition directly from planet A to planet B because planet A’s gravity was too strong. I had to leave planet A behind first, then explore a bit in order to identify planet B and plot a course to it.
I’m in that exploratory phase now, which is a refreshing change. As I shared above, I have more clarity about what I want to experience next, but I’m in no rush to get there. I’m still shedding bits and pieces of the old planet A, and I feel very relieved as I watch it recede further into the past. My social life is quieter and simpler than it’s been in years, and I’m taking advantage of this peaceful period to get back in touch with myself.
Ho’oponopono It
When I was at the Transformational Leadership Council retreat in Kona, Hawaii last week, we did an interesting Ho’oponopono exercise that included writing an exhaustive list of anyone and anything from the past that we still felt a lingering attachment to. At the end of the exercise, we tore up our lists, a symbolic way of shedding those attachments. This doesn’t mean shedding those people from one’s life. It just means releasing any unconscious attachments to them, so you can make a freer and more conscious choice about how to relate (or not relate) to them thereafter. At least that was my understanding of the exercise.
At the time I did that exercise, I didn’t sense that anything special had happened. It was a nice gesture but not particularly transformational for me. However, when I returned to Vegas several days later, I could tell that something had shifted in my attitudes towards certain people. I could more easily distinguish the aspects of those connections that I was freely inviting vs. those aspects that had become riddled with unconscious expectations and obligations. I felt a greater sense of freedom to relate on the basis of choice while releasing any lingering loyalty to the expectation side. I felt more empowered to relate to people as my true self without worrying about their reactions.
I think that deciding to stop participating in traditional holiday gift exchanges as I shared in yesterday’s post was one result of this Ho’oponopono process. I might have gotten around to it eventually, but I feel this process helped speed things along. I was able to get it done without worrying about other people’s reactions. I saw that it was more important to be true to myself and stop trying to satisfy other people’s expectations of me.
As I allow myself to explore this delightfully peaceful space of fresh possibilities, I’m already noticing new doors opening. Part of me wants to dive in and explore some of them, while another part of me wants to hold off and enjoy the silence a bit longer. I’m sure I’ll begin to explore some of those alternative paths soon enough, but the most important thing for me right now is to explore in an unattached, noncommittal way. I want to experience a social life where each relationship feels like a fresh choice made anew, not an obligation to remain loyal to the past.
When it’s obvious that some part of your life isn’t working, stop. Release what isn’t working. Then choose another path. People will squawk at you, but you’ll be happier on the other side.
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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina
25 Jan 2012 at 11:31pm
Today I told my family that I’m permanently opting out of buying/giving/receiving gifts for all future birthdays & holidays.
Many people grow up with holiday traditions that center around buying and exchanging gifts with family members. I enjoyed and appreciated this when I was younger, and I have many fond memories about it. These days it no longer resonates with me though. It’s not a good fit for my values. I feel it’s time to make a conscious choice here and drop this tradition from my life.
Gift giving is a popular love strategy that means a lot to certain people. I respect that. But it’s not a tradition that I personally find fulfilling or meaningful, either on the giving or the receiving end of it.
My primary love strategies are physical touch (like hugs and affection) and spending quality time together. I experience these in abundance, which makes gift giving feel really hollow by comparison.
I’ve never been particularly good at shopping anyway, nor do I care to get better at it. Most years I don’t even start my Christmas shopping till December 23rd. This past year I didn’t start till Dec 26th.
I know that some people love shopping for gifts, but for me the experience often feels tedious, annoying, and even creepy. I always procrastinate on it and then have to force myself to do it. Then I usually surrender before I seriously try, and I resort to buying everyone gift cards. This is clearly a path without a heart for me.
Some people like making gifts instead of buying them, but that doesn’t resonate with me either. I’d still be bothered by the obligatory nature of it. I occasionally enjoy giving someone a gift (bought or made) when it strikes me as a free and inspired choice. But when it takes the form of an expected obligation, it gives me the overwhelming urge to pummel an elf.
I told my family that if they still feel compelled to get me gifts, they can donate to charity instead. I suggested fellow TLC member Cynthia Kersey’s Unstoppable Foundation, which builds schools and wells for children in Africa.
As for how my family reacts to my decision, that’s up to them, but from my end it’s a done deal regardless of their responses. Hopefully they’ll understand though.
I feel good about this decision. It simplifies my life, which I like. And perhaps by sharing this quickie blog post, it will inspire others to consciously reexamine their holiday traditions.
Which of your behaviors are consciously chosen' Which are merely inherited'
Which practices would you discontinue if you knew there’d be absolutely no negative backlash from anyone'
If you wouldn’t continue a practice except for reasons of social pressure and obligation, then your motivation is fear-based, and fear will taint your gifts as well. If you can’t give from a place of free conscious choice motivated by love and inspiration, then is it really a gift you’re giving' To me that sounds more like a curse.
Leo from Zen Habits has a nice article about opting out of gift exchanges. Although Leo’s reasons are different than mine, he shares some insightful food for thought.
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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina
23 Jan 2012 at 7:31pm
Several months ago I was speaking with my friend Morty Lefkoe about fears and limiting beliefs that I noticed among my readers. I shared with him that one of the biggest problem areas was approach anxiety. While many readers appear to be very social online, it’s common for them to be pretty socially timid in person — I know this quite well from interacting with them both online and face to face.
Social timidity is frequently a result of approach anxiety. Instead of proactively approaching new people to form connections (for friendship, dating, networking, etc), these people often hold back. There can be a variety of reasons for why they hold back, but it typically boils down to fear caused by limiting beliefs about approaching people, initiating conversations, expressing interest, etc.
When I shared this with Morty, I figured there might be 5-10 common limiting beliefs that contributed to approach anxiety, such as “being rejected is bad” or “I’m not good enough.”
Morty grew curious about what limiting beliefs he might find if he investigated this further. Since his specialty is helping people eliminate limiting beliefs quickly and permanently, this was right up his alley. I’ve been recommended Morty’s method for more than two years now, and many people have found it an effective way to remove beliefs that were previously holding them back, so I figured the subject of approach anxiety would be a worthwhile area for him to explore, one that would be a good fit for his process. Morty agreed.
Morty also knew that if he could figure out the most common limiting beliefs that contributed to approach anxiety, he could use that information to create a new product that would help people with this specific challenge, so this undertaking made good business sense as well.
Investigating Approach Anxiety
To explore this more deeply, Morty recruited volunteers who felt socially limited by approach anxiety, those who rated their fear at least a 7 on a scale of 1-10. Then he interviewed them to discover what beliefs were making them feel anxious or hesitant to connect with new people.
To Morty’s surprise (and to my own as well), he discovered a great variety of beliefs that contributed to approach anxiety. There weren’t just a handful of them — there were dozens that he was able to identify.
The main problem wasn’t the quantity of beliefs, however. The bigger issue was that there was very little overlap between participants, meaning that each person had different beliefs that contributed to their experience of approach anxiety.
This meant that it wouldn’t be practical for Morty to create a single product to help people eliminate this problem. Morty can still use his method to help such people one on one by phone or Skype, but he can’t turn it into a product because there’s too much variety in people’s limiting beliefs. To eliminate a limiting belief, it must first be identified, and that identification process plays out differently for each person.
I was disappointed that we couldn’t use this idea to create a new product that would help people afflicted by approach anxiety. I liked the idea of helping people to permanently and inexpensively eliminate such a problem. But I didn’t want to let Morty’s initial research go to waste, so I asked him if I could share the backstory about this idea and the beliefs he was able to identify with his volunteers, and he graciously agreed.
I expect this may still be helpful to many people since identifying a limiting belief is an important first step in eliminating it. Sometimes just being aware that you have a negative belief can get you started on the path to letting it go.
Limiting Beliefs That Contribute to Approach Anxiety
For this project Morty focused his interviews on men, so all of the subjects were male. He surely would have uncovered even more limiting beliefs if he expanded this to include women as well.
The age range of the participants was 20-38 with most in their 20s. And as I mentioned previously, Morty asked people to rate their fear on a scale of 1-10 and chose people who answered at least a 7.
Here are some of the feelings these participants reported:
Anxiety when talking to a woman
Fear of being criticized or judged
Fear of talking to an attractive woman
And here’s a list of limiting beliefs related to approach anxiety that Morty and his participants were able to identify:
Change is difficult.
I can’t do anything right.
If a woman isn’t attracted to a man initially, she never will be.
I’m a bother to people.
I’m a dangerous person.
I’m annoying.
I’m a loser.
I’m broken.
I’m inadequate.
I’m inferior.
I’m not acceptable.
I’m not attractive.
I’m not good enough.
I’m not interesting.
I’m socially awkward.
I’m ugly.
I’m unlovable / not lovable.
I’m weird.
It’s wrong to show sexual interest in a woman.
It’s wrong to be attracted to women.
It’s wrong to be turned on by women.
My sexual desire is bad.
People aren’t interested in me.
People aren’t interested in what I have to say.
Relationships are difficult.
There’s something wrong with me.
What makes me good enough or important enough is having people like me.
Women don’t want nice guys.
Women don’t want to be bothered.
Women don’t want to talk to guys.
Women want more financial security than I could provide.
Women want men who are assertive and get what they want.
Women want attractive men.
Women want interesting men.
Women want men who are confident / flirtatious.
Women want men who are witty / make them laugh.
Women want men who treat them badly.
Women want men with exciting lifestyles.
Women want men with money and stability.
Women want popular guys.
Women want security / to be protected physically.
Women want successful men.
This is an interesting collection to be sure, but it’s far from exhaustive. I’m sure you can identify many more, especially if we consider limiting beliefs that women have as well.
We can loosely categorize this list into beliefs about oneself, beliefs about others, and beliefs about interactions.
Overcoming Limiting Beliefs
Many of the self-related beliefs are linked with low self-esteem and a low sense of attractiveness. Eliminating the negative belief is one way to fix those problems. Another way is to shift your focus onto your overall lifestyle, and take more action to create a life that fulfills you. When people are pleased with their lifestyles, it shows. It’s easier to attract people you like when you’re enjoying the other parts of your life. It’s also easier to attract compatible partners when you’re already living a life you enjoy.
As for the beliefs about others, the main issue there is overgeneralization. Everyone has different standards for what they find attractive and what they don’t. These patterns certainly aren’t universal.
With billions of people on earth, we can find many people who may fit those patterns and many who don’t. And in any given week, people can oscillate between matching and not matching these patterns. Sometimes people feel social and would be glad to be approached by almost anyone. At other times people turn inward and prefer more solitude.
One pattern I see here is the implied limiting belief that if you approach someone who doesn’t want to connect with you (for whatever reason), and you get rejected as a result, then you made a mistake and never should have approached in the first place.
Of course there isn’t much real danger in trying to initiate and deepen connections, but that doesn’t make the fear any less real. The fear may be rooted in false beliefs and erroneous assumptions, but it can still exert control over one’s behavior.
There is a matter of calibration involved here, so as you gain experience, you can increase your hit rate, but this doesn’t mean that getting a rejection now and then is a terrible thing to be avoided at all costs. It’s really no big whoop. You basically have to risk some rejection in order to build experience. The more experience you have, the easier it is to read people and get a sense of who’s open to connecting with you and who isn’t. Making a mistake here isn’t the end of the world.
The good news is that when these limiting beliefs were eliminated, the fear went away too. And when the fear goes away, that’s where the fun begins.
Finding Counterexamples
One of my favorite methods for eliminating limiting beliefs is to deliberately seek out counterexamples. If I can find even one or two counterexamples for a belief, then the belief tends to collapse. My mind can no longer pretend that it’s true.
A long time ago I had the belief that women aren’t interested in sex as much as men are. I also had some related beliefs about sexuality being bad or sinful. I can credit 12 years of Catholic school for installing such notions. This certainly isn’t uncommon.
Then I saw the movie Kinsey, which opened my eyes to the notion that sexual desire is a very individual thing. That helped put a dent in my overgeneralized beliefs.
Later I met women who were comfortable talking about sex openly, and they shared thoughts, feelings, and attitudes that contradicted my old beliefs. It took me a while to make the 180-degree turn from my Catholicism-installed falsehoods, but I eventually collapsed those limiting beliefs.
I also had to be careful about installing opposite beliefs like “women love sex more than men do” since that’s an overgeneralization as well. I find it more helpful to accept the notion that this is a very individual thing.
Accepting Variety
Overgeneralizing is an attempt to treat everyone the same, as if you can come up with a single pattern or strategy that works well with everyone. Generalizing works okay in some areas of life, but in other areas there’s too much variety, including in the area of human relationships.
Our brains automatically and unconsciously seek out patterns in specific data, but sometimes they make mistakes, and we need to consciously adjust their conclusions.
Deep down we may indeed have similar needs and desires, but we have different ways of satisfying those needs and desires. So what one person finds attractive, another person finds creepy, boring, or repulsive.
If you can accept this, you’ll see that it’s silly to expect everyone to like you as you are. Some people will. Some people won’t. Such are the vicissitudes of life.
Instead of trying to get someone to like you or worrying about saying or doing the right things to create attraction, it makes more sense to express your personality and preferences openly to the degree that’s possible, and then let other people self-select if they feel they match you.
Alternatively, you can focus on initiating connections with people you find attractive, while accepting that your interest may not be mutual. If the other person doesn’t feel the same, it doesn’t mean you aren’t awesome. It just means the other person doesn’t agree that you’d be a good match. Certainly that isn’t the end of the world. There are billions of other people you can seek to match with.
For the past several years, I’ve mainly been using the expressiveness strategy because I’ve had so much social input coming my way. All I really had to do was to express myself openly and shamelessly, and then I could select among the people who seemed to resonate with what I shared. If people didn’t like me, they usually filtered themselves out of my reality, and if they didn’t, then it was easy for me to decline to interact with them. If people initiated interactions with me as a result of what I shared, then I could choose to accept some of those invites, and at least I was guaranteed to have an interaction with someone who was interested in connecting.
This worked well for attracting people who are interested in me, but it doesn’t give me as much opportunity to connect with people that I find equally interesting. So for the past several months, I’ve been closing most of those open doors (like my Facebook page, the forums, and my contact form), so fewer people can approach me to connect. This gives me more opportunity to initiate my own connections with people I’d like to get to know better and to be more selective.
With my old socialization strategy, I would sometimes stray into my own version of approach anxiety, but of a different sort than the one discussed earlier. I actually worry more about being approached. Will the person be interesting' Will they be honest about their intentions' Are they just trying to get something from me'
As my social interactions became increasingly patterned, I felt I was at risk of developing limiting beliefs like “Everyone needs something from me” and “People are energy vampires.” I thought it best to turn off the flood of incoming connections for a while, so I could have more space to consciously think about what kind of social life I’d like to create and experience.
The benefit of getting limiting beliefs out of the way is that it creates more room for conscious choice.
Training Up
Another favorite way to tackle limiting beliefs is with progressive training. I see limitations as a weight to be lifted. The more you train the relevant muscles, the easier it is to lift and finally dispose of the limitation.
As a child I was very shy. In kindergarten I used to play in the sandbox alone most of the time. If I had any friends, it was just one or two close friends that I played with. I didn’t feel very comfortable socializing with other children, especially in large groups.
In grammar school what I hated more than anything else were speech contests. These were mandatory every year in my school, but I never felt comfortable presenting in front of the class. I got nervous, my hands would shake, and I was pretty bad at it too.
I improved a little from this forced practice, but I still didn’t like that I got nervous when I spoke in front of the class.
Eventually I decided to conquer this fear, and I thought that progressive training would be a good strategy. I started volunteering to speak tech conferences. Then I joined Toastmasters and later the National Speakers Association to keep making progress.
This approach took time, but it worked. The more practice I got, the more comfortable I became with speaking, and the less nervous I was. Now I feel just as comfortable in front of a group as I do playing video games with my kids. What used to be anxiety producing now gets channeled into enthusiasm and fun. I now find myself looking for ways to make it more challenging; if it feels too easy, it isn’t as stimulating for me.
Enlisting Social Support
Another important thing to realize is that you can be afraid and still take action. This is hard to do on your own, but it’s much easier to do when you have some social support. Without social support it’s too easy to succumb to fear and make excuses. But when you’ve committed yourself to people who will hold you accountable, it’s harder not to act.
For example, if you agree to give a speech, you’ll usually find that you can still follow through even if you’re really anxious about it. People do this all the time. They get up to the mike, and for the first several minutes they’re nervous. You can see their hands shaking. Or their voice cracks and they can barely catch their breath. They’re clearly having an emotional reaction, but they still do it.
What may surprise you is that many pro speakers with decades of practice still get nervous when they speak. But they’ve learned that if they agree to speak anyway, they’re going to follow through even if they’re nervous.
Think about how you can apply this idea of social support to other forms of social interactions that may be troubling you. Can you invite a few friends to encourage you along the way and to hold you accountable'
I’ve seen how well this works at some of my workshops. People who can’t get themselves to start up a conversation with a stranger can suddenly take action when they have two accountability partners encouraging and supporting them.
Further Help
Although we don’t have a singular solution that works for everyone, approach anxiety is a problem that can be overcome.
If you want more information about how Morty can help you with such challenges, feel free to call him at 415-884-0552, and ask about working one on one with him. For help in overcoming other limiting beliefs, be sure to read my blog post about this. You can also test Morty’s method to eliminate a limiting belief for free.
If you prefer a very hands-on approach to improving your social skills, I invite you to attend the 3-day Conscious Relationships Workshop (Feb 17-19 in Las Vegas). Approach anxiety is one of many topics we’ll address, both with group discussions and interactive exercises. At CRW you’ll have the opportunity to experiment and receive feedback in a positive, supportive, nonjudgmental environment.
However you decide to tackle the challenge of approach anxiety, try not to be so hard on yourself. It’s not the end of the world if someone doesn’t want to connect with you. No matter how weird or broken you think you are (or how cold you think other people are), many people would enjoy your company.
People can provide value to each other in the simplest of ways, such as by listening to each other, sharing a meal, and holding hands as they go for a stroll. If you can smile, you can provide something that millions (probably billions) of people would receive as valuable and worthwhile.
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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina
16 Jan 2012 at 1:42pm
The Conscious Success Workshop this past weekend went amazingly well, even better than I expected. I received lots of positive feedback on it afterwards as well as some suggestions to improve it if/when we run it again. It was a very rewarding weekend to be sure. It’s gratifying to know we stimulated lots of positive growth and change for those who attended.
These workshops are highly interactive and very unlike anything else out there. Each workshop is centered around a core of serious content where I share the best tools I’ve encountered and plenty of stories and examples to illustrate them. We also have plenty of social exercises so you can easily make new friends, written exercises to help you apply the ideas right away, group discussions for people to share their own stories and contribute helpful ideas, creative exercises, games, and more. At CSW we even had some spontaneous music as well.
$100 Early Bird Discount for CRW expires Jan 17
Next month we have the Conscious Relationships Workshop (Feb 17-19 in Las Vegas). The $100 early bird discount expires at midnight on Jan 17, which is tomorrow, so if that workshop interests you, this would be a good time to sign up. The group rate for the hotel will expire soon as well; the cutoff date for that is Jan 20.
Just to clarity, the relationships workshop is about more than just romantic relationships. We’ll cover that of course, but we’ll also address friends, family relationships, working relationships, networking, connecting with strangers, overcoming approach anxiety, and much more. The core of this workshop is upgrade your social skills, so that you can connect more easily with new people, deepen your existing connections, and learn a wide variety of tools for resolving conflicts and other relationship challenges.
As I mentioned at the Conscious Success Workshop, our relationships are the primary means through which we create success for ourselves and others. Without relationships, success has little meaning.
As with all of these workshops, the keyword is “Conscious.” This means that these workshops aren’t centered around what matters to me. They’re centered around what matters to you. The idea is to help you clarity what’s most important to you in life — on your path of growth, to your lifelong success, in your intimate and casual relationships. Then we help you learn and apply a variety of tools to make your desires a reality.
So for our relationships workshop, it doesn’t matter if your intention is to find a marriage partner, to deepen your existing relationship, to date around a lot, to be celibate, or to explore polyamory. Anything you desire is fair game. The point of CRW is to help you more deeply understand what you truly desire in your relationships, to help you accept those desires, and to assist you in making them real for you.
Hope to see you at CRW next month.
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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina
3 Jan 2012 at 11:51pm
The Conscious Success Workshop starts in only 10 days (Jan 13-15, 2012 in Las Vegas). We’re close to selling out, so if you’re planning to sign up, please don’t wait till the last minute, or there’s a possibility we won’t have any seats left.
I estimate that we can sell about 6 more tickets before the room is at capacity. (Update: We now have only 3 seats left.)
This is the eighth 3-day workshop we’ll be doing in Las Vegas. When I look back on our first Conscious Growth Workshop in 2009, I see that we’ve really come a long way. I especially enjoy the process of designing workshops that are empowering, engaging, social, and practical.
I’d say that the main difference between CSW and other programs on success is this: A typical book, audio program, or workshop on success usually begins with setting goals. After you set some goals, you get a bunch of advice on how to take action to move towards those goals.
This approach does work for some people, but it usually fails. The problem is that it’s too likely that you’ll set socially conditioned goals to begin with — goals such as how much money to earn, what car to buy, how much weight to lose, or what kind of job to get. Those goals may look good on paper, but they’re not enough to center your life around — they’re too shallow and too boring compared to what you can create with a more conscious approach.
If you dive into goal setting too soon, you may come up with some ideas and feel slightly motivated as you write them down, but that motivation won’t last, and those goals won’t stick. That’s because the goals you set weren’t really yours to begin with. If you find yourself changing directions every few months and not sticking with any goals long enough to achieve them, the most likely reason is that you haven’t learned how to set goals consciously. The goals you set were just surface thoughts. If you did the same goal setting exercise a month later, you’d have come up with different goals.
At CSW we’re going to use a smarter and more conscious approach. We’ll address goal setting but not right away. First we’ll help you identify and discard socially conditioned surface goals. Once we get those out of the way, then we can go deeper into what you truly desire to experience in life. We’ll help you build a solid foundation of self-understanding with a variety of exercises, with the aim of creating a holistic life vision, not a disjointed set of goals. Once you have a clear vision for your life and you understand the person you wish to be, you can set goals much more consciously, but you can also enjoy a lot of fulfillment and success simply by sticking to your vision, even when you don’t set specific goals along the way.
CSW is designed to help you discover and embrace what it will take for you to be a success, based on your values and desires. Once you get in touch with that, it’s easier to get into the mode of doing success by taking action. This being aspect is crucial if you wish to experience the type of success that results from your own conscious choices, as opposed to the socially conditioned version of success that’s promoted by mainstream media. Conscious success will fulfill you deeply. Socially conditioned success may leave you feeling very empty inside, regardless of how much you seem to have achieved.
As a simple example, I enjoy conscious success as a writer because my writing is aligned with my true desires. I find it very fulfilling to share ideas with others around the world through the medium of blogging. I write when I’m inspired to write, not because I have to. I have no deadlines, no boss, and no editor. My articles are uncopyrighted by choice, so anyone can republish or translate them.
I enjoy this type of success because I’ve shed the socially conditioned version of success that doesn’t align with my truest, deepest desires. I don’t care if I have a New York Times bestseller. I don’t care about being on Oprah. I don’t care about making millions of dollars. I don’t care what the critics have to say. This vision of writing makes me very happy, and I feel tremendously successful on this path. On the contrary, I have friends who seem much less happy as writers, even though they’ve been on Oprah and have the bestseller accolades. They’re on a stressful treadmill; I’m free.
There will be many creative exercises to help you go through this process. Some are left-brained, others more right-brained. One exercise involves crayons.
If you’ve found that traditional goal setting has fallen short for you, or if you suspect your goals have been overly infected with what society has taught you to want, I think you’ll really gain a lot from CSW. One of my intentions for this workshop is that by the end of the first day, you’ll have more clarity about your true desires than you’ve ever had before in your life. I say this because most people never learn how to differentiate between true desires and socially conditioned ones, and I don’t know of any other workshops that teach people how to tell the difference.
One of the most powerful aspects of CSW is that it will help to unload false notions of success you’ve been conditioned to believe without question. This will restore your freedom to consciously choose what you desire to experience — and to create it without getting bogged down in false desires. It will be a richly rewarding 3 days for you to experience… and certainly for me to share with you.
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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina
2 Jan 2012 at 1:15pm
After shutting down the discussion forums a week ago, I took some time to think about my major focus for 2012, as I like to do at the beginning of each new year.
To wrap up 2011 and transition to 2012, Rachelle and I went to Phoenix for Raw Spirit Fest, and then yesterday we took a side trip to Sedona to meditate in one of our favorite spots. This retreat gave me time to reflect on the past year and to understand what I want to experience next.
During the past few years, I’ve been very active in the social circles surrounding my work, including connecting with people in the forums, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, email, talking face to face, doing consultations, holding workshops, hosting meet-ups in various cities, and so on. I maintained a strong community-oriented focus for much of this time.
For a while it was my conscious choice to immerse myself in all this social energy and to bring people together in various ways. I enjoyed it.
Eventually I began to feel a bit trapped though. Instead of choosing all this social interaction, it became an ever-present part of my life, whether I wanted to engage with it or not. It no longer felt like a choice. I’d engage in social networking simply because I’d been doing so for years. It became unconscious and very routine. Consequently, I developed quite a love-hate relationship with it. When I freely chose it, I loved it. When I felt like I was being sucked into it, I resisted it. I’m well aware that this influenced my interactions with people as well.
I now understand that it’s time for me to move on from this community-centered focus. It was a nice thing to experience, and it stimulated a lot of growth for myself and others, but I know it’s not the best choice going forward. If I keep doing it, it will only hold me back, and it will also suck others into more unconscious socializing.
Getting wrapped up in other people’s energies (thoughts, feelings, beliefs, etc) on a daily basis can be stimulating and rewarding, but the endless repetition can lead to resentment. That isn’t how I wish to feel about my social life, nor do I wish to serve as that kind of model for others.
If I continue actively immersing myself in the social community surrounding my work, I’ll become a victim of my own past. People are typically drawn to my work based on what I’ve written about in the past, but that isn’t who I am today, and it doesn’t accurately reflect where I’m going. When I keep connecting with people who are interested in discussing ideas that I explored years ago, it means I’m not keeping pace with my own path of growth. It’s like trying to drive while looking in the rear view mirror — after a while you begin to hate driving, even if you’d otherwise enjoy it when looking forward.
I’m delighted that so many people resonate with my work. Last month my web traffic hit a new all-time high: 12.4 million page views. Yet all of those pages contain content that was created in the past.
Essentially I’m faced with a question of priorities. Do I continue to actively engage with the social community surrounding my work and allow myself to keep getting re-immersed in past ideas, past energies, etc' Or do I let it go and focus on my own present and future path of growth'
For quite a while, I tried to do both and strike a balance. My efforts along those lines thus far have failed. Maybe a balance is possible, but I can see now that this balancing point isn’t going to be on the side that invites daily social connections that tie me to the past, such as emails, article feedback, private messages, questions, etc.
All this social energy has been acting like an anchor. When I try to move forward, it keeps tugging me back to old ideas I’ve already explored. It re-introduces old problems I’ve already solved but that other people are just beginning to solve. It tempts me to engage in old discussions that have no growth value for me today.
This month is my 15-year anniversary of being vegan, for instance. Is there any value in having the “why vegan” discussion with someone who hasn’t even done a 30-day trial of it yet' Will it be helpful to do more interviews on polyphasic sleep' Do I care to engage with people who think organized religion is the path to salvation' No… that’s looking to the past. I’d rather connect with people who can inspire me to keep growing. To make room for empowering connections, I’m consciously cutting connections that encourage me to keep looking backwards.
I love helping people grow, but I’m not willing to do that at the expense of my own growth.
So in 2012 I want to recenter my life on my path of conscious growth. I want to disengage from all the discussion surrounding my past work and free myself to explore life on my own terms once again.
The forums are closed. My online contact form is closed. I deleted my Facebook page a few months ago. I follow zero people on Twitter, so no one can send me a direct message there. My Google+ page is now closed to comments. If you wish to discuss my work, you remain free to do so; just don’t try to involve me in such discussions.
Socially I’m only keeping open the doors that I consciously choose to keep open, such as my workshops. But I’m closing the doors that encourage too much unconscious communication, such as feedback and questions related to past articles.
Part of this shift involved preparing for the upcoming Conscious Success Workshop, which starts in 11 days. One reason I enjoy creating workshops is that they push me to keep raising my standards. My vision of success involves consciously pursuing my own path of growth, and I want to know that I’m solidly living that vision before delivering this workshop.
As I clear out the mental and social clutter, I’m feeling much lighter and more enthusiastic about this coming year. I’m anticipating new experiments and experiences. I especially love this fresh opportunity to fully engage in what captivates me without regard to other people’s feedback.
In some ways I feel like I’ve been assimilated by the Borg collective for the past few years. There were so many voices in my mind that it was difficult to stay connected to my own desires. Now that those voices are quieting down, I’m enjoying the bliss and peace of reconnecting with what I love most — conscious growth experiences.
Disconnecting from the social elements that didn’t serve me doesn’t mean I’m disconnecting from the world. I love to write and expect to continue doing so. Reading people’s feedback on my writing, however, is something I can live without. I feel I’ve digested enough feedback about my writing to last me a few lifetimes, so I’m cashing in some of those credits to opt out for a lifetime or two.
In addition to refocusing on my own path of growth in 2012 and closing the door on daily social networking, I’d like to reorient my social life to spend more time connecting with others who have similar priorities when it comes to pursuing growth experiences. I had hoped I might meet such people through the social networks surrounding my work, but that didn’t happen. One reason is that such people would rather engage in growth experiences than in discussions about growth. They’d rather travel than talk about travel… would rather speak than discuss speaking… and would rather start a business than talk about starting one.
I don’t want to connect with such people in order to have more discussions about growth. I’d rather connect with people who are up for pursuing some growth experiences together — like traveling together, conducting experiments together, or tackling projects together. We can always talk to each other in the car, on the plane, etc.
Most importantly, when I connect with people, I want to do so from a place of conscious choice, not from a sense of habit, obligation, or routine. What’s most important to me in life is pursuing my path of growth. That comes first. But when this path meshes nicely with another’s path for a while, then why not explore our paths together if it’s something we both enjoy'
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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina
27 Dec 2011 at 8:45pm
In this post I’ll share more details about the reasons I decided to shut down the discussion forums on this site. As I stated in my previous post, I closed them on Dec 26th. The forum archives are still online, and you can search them too.
Forum vs. Blog
First, let’s talk data.
After more than 5 years online, the forums had a total of 48,465 registered members. Registration was required to post messages and send private messages, but anyone could read the forums without registrering. Registration was always free and took just a couple minutes.
That may sound like a large community to some people, but the total number of forum members after 5 years online was still less than one day’s traffic to my blog.
Out of all those members, less than 10,000 of them posted more than 5 messages total, so most of them didn’t participate much at all.
On any given day, however, only about 400 members would visit the forums, although many of them would visit multiple times per day. Even if we include non-registered “lurker” traffic (which includes search engine referrals), it’s clear that the forums aren’t even in the same ballpark as the blog when it comes to traffic.
The truth is that the vast majority of visitors to my blog simply aren’t interested in our discussion forums.
How did the forums become popular in the first place' They were always attached to my blog, which fed them traffic. The forums were always busy with activity due to this connection to the blog. Without the blog it’s fair to say that the forums wouldn’t have been nearly as popular.
Some people have asked me what impact shutting down the forums would have on my blog and my business in general. The answer is that it’s not going to make any discernable difference. Relative to the popularity of the blog, the forums never had enough interest to matter in that regard one way or another.
What about all the content in the forums' Our forum members posted about 1.03M messages across 67K threads. You might think that all this content must generate a lot of search engine traffic, but relative to the blog, it’s still negligible. One popular blog post of mine will generate more search traffic than 10K forum threads.
Forum threads can help with the long tail of search, but they don’t help enough to matter. They can rank in the top 10 for phrases that aren’t competitive, but these are phrases that hardly anyone searches on. Even with lots and lots of threads, it’s like trying to earn a living by hunting for pennies. You may find many pennies, but even a lot of pennies just doesn’t amount to much.
Forum threads aren’t very good at generating human referrals either… unless it’s a thread about the forums being shut down, as I recently discovered.
I just want to point out that business-wise the forums were never a wise investment of time and resources.
However, I neither launched nor terminated the forums for business reasons. It was a personal decision to create them and a personal decision to shut them down.
A High-Maintenance Community
My vision for the forums stayed pretty much the same throughout its existence, with minor tweaks along the way. I wanted to create a place where growth-oriented people could come together to help each other in a positive and supportive environment. Overall I’d say the forums did a pretty good job of holding to that vision, thanks in large part to the wonderful moderators who helped make it a reality.
By and large our community rules were common sense — the same conventions people naturally adhere to in face-to-face conversations. Most of our members had no trouble following them. When we banned members, usually it was for spamming, and our mods were really good at catching spammers early.
This wasn’t the first forum I founded. I’d already had years of experience as an admin with a previous forum I created for indie game developers. That community is still online by the way, even though I haven’t been involved with it for 7-8 years.
The forum on this site was much bigger from the get-go, and it took a lot more admin and moderation work to keep it on track.
I had zero interest in creating an unmoderated forum — for the most part I consider such things to be junk. I knew this one would require careful moderation. The vision dictated that.
In the beginning we were definitely too lenient. Some sneaky Internet marketers got in there, and trolling was a recurring problem. But we kept tweaking things, and I feel that for quite a while, we got it mostly right.
I don’t think perfection is a reasonable standard, but it’s clear that many of our members felt there was no other forum quite as good as ours. In the area in which it worked, I believe it was the best available. You could say that was part of my vision too — to create the best personal development forum on earth.
One thing that was impressive about our community was the diversity of topics. Anything related to personal growth was fair game, including health, work, relationships, finances, spiritual development, politics, and more.
The community took a lot of work to maintain, but for much of that time it was a labor of love. I know it did a lot of good for many people. I know because people kept telling me that it helped them.
Entitlement Creeps in
As I wrote about in a previous article, we had some issues with entitlement creeping into the community. Some people seemed to feel they could annoy other members as much as they wanted as long as they stayed within the gray area of the rules. Others felt they could push further in the direction of using the forums to promote their businesses or affiliate programs. The mods and I often had to make tricky calls in this zone, but we did our best.
Some people would assume that the top standard was fairness. It wasn’t, at least not for me. Forum participation isn’t a fair trade to begin with. It’s a gift. In practice the standard of fairness doesn’t work well; it allows trolls to linger too long and to degrade the community experience for too many others.
Fairness is also very costly. It may make sense for a democracy that has tax revenues to pay for all the structures required to be reasonably fair, but a very active forum that doesn’t tax its members can’t adhere to such a standard. We’re not going to give someone a 12-person jury trial every time they break the rules and claim otherwise. Instead we have to make the best judgment calls we can, and we have to do this quickly.
The top standard I used was to maintain a positive and supportive community. When people worked against that vision, I sought to weed them out. The community rules were designed to support that vision too. Sometimes this meant doing things people felt were unfair, but usually that wasn’t necessary.
The Regulars
As often happens in online communities, ours developed a core group of regulars over time. I would estimate there were around 100 people in this core group at any one time. It wasn’t a sharply defined group though, and some people wouldn’t even be able to say whether they were in this group or not. One thing was clear though — many members felt like outsiders relative to this group.
Some members considered this group rather cliquish, but I wouldn’t use that label. I saw it as a bunch of people who participated in the forums so often that they got to know each other and became online friends. This happens in many forums and was nothing new to me.
You could also say that many of them were quite addicted. Some of them spent hours on the forums pretty much every day. I didn’t have a problem with them using the place as a social hangout too, as long as they weren’t interfering with the overall forum vision. But increasingly I found that they were clinging to the social aspects and nudging the forum away from its original vision.
I don’t think there was any deliberate intent behind it, but this core group collectively became the dominating force in the forums. Some of them served as moderators, whereby they were often charged with moderating people who may have been their friends. This had positive and negative aspects. These friends usually helped keep each other in line by exerting social pressure when someone began to stray, but they also became somewhat protective of their own, as we saw whenever one of them ended up getting banned.
How did these people dominate the community' By sheer volume of posts.
The average community member made a total of 21 posts. The top poster, by contrast, had 22,520 posts. That’s 1061 times the average. And there were many members with 100+ times the posting frequency of the average member.
If you’re willing to outpost someone by a factor of even 10-to-1, I’d say you can dominate them pretty easily as far as a discussion forum is involved.
This by itself garnered some complaints, but if the people in this group were being helpful most of the time, then I didn’t have a serious issue with it. Again, I was evaluating the forum health relative to the overall vision.
The Cancer of Entitlement
Over time I felt like this core group was developing too much of a sense of entitlement. It was detracting from the forum vision, and wasting my time and that of the mods. We spent more time managing social interaction problems with the members of this group, and it often seemed that they were posting just for the sake of posting as opposed to using the forums purposefully. The signal-to-noise ratio degraded.
The mods were pretty efficient at catching and nuking spammers, but more time was being chewed up dealing with the personality clashes of the regulars. It seemed like my job as admin was devolving into babysitting. I wasn’t interested in dealing with it, so I let things slide for a while as I focused on other projects like my workshops.
The mods easily handled the routine items, but when it came to controversial bans involving one of the regulars, they had a hard time pulling the trigger. They frequently opted to keep giving warnings instead. But this response amounts to what’s called intermittent reinforcement conditioning. Effectively this rewards the negative behavior and conditions the offender to do more of the same by proving that s/he can get away with it. So things gradually got worse during this time, and some members quit the forums because of it. I don’t blame them.
When I decided to look into fixing these problems, I tightened standards and reminded mods that we shouldn’t be giving members half a dozen warnings. The rules are simple and not at all difficult to follow. But when the next incident came up which seemed pretty clear cut, they still hesitated. I could see the mods were agreed on the right call, but it was hard for anyone to step up and take responsibility for it. So I sped things along because it would have been worse not to act quickly. Then I had to deal with the banned guy emailing me to complain and then trash-talking me elsewhere. Truth is he’d been behaving like a jerk for a long time and should have been banned much sooner. Some forum members expressed great appreciation that he was finally kicked out.
In some cases it may have been hard to ban one’s friends, but I don’t think that was an issue most of the time. I’d say the bigger problem is that too many mods were hesitant to act on their calls. They’d seen what happened to other mods who ended up having to ban one or more of the regulars. Collectively the regulars would often unload lots of whining, questioning, criticizing, and pleading upon any mods who made unpopular calls. And when you’re dealing with forum addicts who can post like there’s no tomorrow, this post-storm can seem a bit overwhelming, as if you just inflicted some grave wound upon the community. The calls were right, but I can understand why some mods were hesitant to deal with the social backlash.
I felt the mods were excellent at making the right calls, and I agreed with their calls virtually every time. Where we disagreed was on what to do about it. I was in favor of quickly pruning out the forum members who couldn’t play nice. The mods overall fell back on warnings, but we could all see that these warnings were not proving very effective. The mods were quite good at pruning new members who caused problems, but they had a hard time enforcing the same standards with the regulars. I think it’s reasonable to be slightly more lenient with people who’ve been contributing for a while, but not lenient to the point of allowing negative behavior to linger.
This reminds me of a management study I read about many years ago. Testing showed that managers who didn’t get promoted were just as correct in their decisions as managers who did get promoted. The difference is that the promoted managers were willing to act on their judgments and deal with the consequences.
If it sounds like I’m placing blame on the mods for these problems, I’m not. It was my responsibility. I could have invested more time in training them, and I could have replaced them if I felt they weren’t being too wishy washy. If I had it to do all over again, I’d have been far more strict when it came to enforcing standards. The rules worked great and remained very consistent throughout the forums’ existence. The problem was consistent and efficient enforcement.
When this lack of decisive action lingered too long, it created a problematic climate. There was a conditioning effect on the community as a whole. It taught them that we were going to be exceedingly lenient on the regulars and that they could get away with stretching the rules quite a bit. This had a deleterious effect on the community over time, and it drove some people away.
Despite these problems, I still wanted to turn things around and get the community back to its original vision. I realized that wasn’t going to be easy, but I thought it was doable.
A Turning Point
Then an interesting thing happened. Apparently some members and ex-members of our community got together to create their own discussion forum.
That didn’t bother me at all. If the circumstances by which this played out were different, I’d probably have been supportive of them doing that. After all, having some of them jump ship would have made my life easier.
Instead, the way this played out was that I learned that they were secretly using the private messaging system on my forums to send out dozens of unsolicited messages asking people to join them. This mainly involved sending the same copy-and-pasted solicitation to multiple recipients.
This is called PM spam. It doesn’t happen very often, but we’d seen it several times before throughout the forums’ history. When people do this sort of thing, we ban them outright since we have zero tolerance for spamming. Normally no one even notices when PM spammers are caught and banned, but this time the people involved were regulars and were promoting their own private project, so of course they and their friends made a stink about it, even as others thought that banning the offenders was more than warranted.
Some people seemed to think I reacted negatively because I felt hurt or betrayed that these people were sneaking off to another forum. Seriously, I could care less about that. I don’t own our members. I interact with other communities too, not just this one. What annoyed me was that they did this clandestinely by using our forum’s PM system for their recruitment. Spamming in all its incarnations, including PM spamming, has always been against the rules, and I wouldn’t tolerate it from regulars any more than I would from new members. In my book these people had clearly crossed the line.
The fact that they were promoting another forum was incidental. My reaction would have been the same if they were promoting a blog, affiliate program, Facebook group, charity, event sponsorship, school project, or any other kind of link. When the same message is sent to dozens of our members unsolicited, it’s spamming. I realize that some people felt it was okay due to the nature of the message and the fact that it came from forum regulars. I was most definitely not okay with that. It’s an abuse of our system and a direct violation of our rules. And this sneaky behavior doesn’t mesh with the forum vision either in my view. The fact that they kept this a secret was a hint and half they knew they were doing something wrong.
And so I banned some of the perpetrators that I could readily identify, and when someone in the forum asked why the bans occurred, I quickly explained the reasons. Normally I wouldn’t bother with that, but I wanted to take responsibility for the decision, so that if they wanted to hold anyone accountable for it, it would be me… and they wouldn’t start bashing the mods for doing so.
Of course since the people who did this were among the regulars, they had a lot of friends in the community. There was some outrage in response, which was predictable.
At this point I hadn’t decided to shut down the forums, nor did I have any intention of doing so. However, I began to seriously think about it as the situation unfolded.
It wasn’t the spamming that led me to think about shutting down the forums. The spamming incident was surprising and annoying, especially when I discovered that some of our mods were involved too, but I didn’t see it as a reason to close up shop by itself. I dropped the mods that I could verify were involved; they’d broken my trust, and I wasn’t willing to entrust them with such responsibilities after that.
The decision to shut down the forums resulted from a shift in perspective I had upon seeing people’s reaction to this event. A bunch of people began taking sides. Some people were curious and wanted to know more details. Some just wanted to play up the drama. It was a very divisive time. That part still didn’t surprise me.
Overall, however, I began to understand just how ridiculous this attitude of entitlement had become. I grew increasingly turned off by people who felt they should be entitled to do things that may negatively impact our community just because they want to and because they expect their friends will back them up.
At this point I felt I had two basic options. Either I’d have to get serious about cutting those members with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement — and quickly. Or we’d have to call it quits. I wasn’t willing to keep the forums going under the current climate.
Some people wanted me to open a dialog with the people involved in the spamming, but I declined. Their motivations were irrelevant. I’m sure everyone who spams can justify it one way or another, but I wasn’t interested in their justifications, and based on how they’d behaved up to that point, I didn’t trust that they’d tell me the truth after the fact anyway.
I was basing my decisions on the facts of what happened, and those facts weren’t in dispute. People disputed the various interpretations of what it meant, but in the end it was my call to make. I still feel it was the right call. If I had to do it all over, knowing what I now know, I’d make the same call.
Testing the Waters
At this point I was about 60-80% convinced that a forum shutdown was likely. There was way too much of a sense of entitlement in the place, whereby a number of members felt they could nudge the rules aside and get away with it, if only because they had the support of their friends within the community. Perhaps they perceived a certain strength in numbers.
But my vision wasn’t to provide a social hangout for some friends who wanted to chat each other in circles. I wanted a community with high standards for interaction and a core focus on growth. If people want to chat with their friends on my site, that’s okay to some extent, but not if it interferes with the overall vision. I felt that over time, they were interfering with that vision, and the forums became more of a social hangout for them and less of a place where people were really helping to support each other with serious growth in mind. So it was actually a good thing for me that some of them created their own forum since it would have made things easier for me if they just left. However, I wasn’t willing to have them secretly using our forums as a recruitment center for their own.
Of course this is a judgment call, but it’s my place to judge it. After all, I was the one paying for it.
I finally concluded that enough is enough already. I was no longer willing to host a forum on the terms they seemed to be demanding of me. Either they could abide by my vision and follow the rules and stop acting like spoiled children, or they could leave.
So I began cracking down and banning those members who tried to push their entitlement attitudes too far. Some encouraged their friends to act out, and those people were kicked out too. Some came back with fake accounts, and they got banned again.
I hear there were quite some lively discussions on Facebook about how I must have turned evil or something… or perhaps that I was evil all along. That alone makes me glad I don’t have a Facebook account anymore.
Some of the people who got booted tried to open a discussion with me, even as they lashed out in other channels, but I wasn’t interested in dialoging with them. I’m still not interested. I simply wanted them out, not just out of the forums but out of my life. Their reactions afterwards only served to convince me that I’d made the right call. They acted like I’d violated their civil rights when I was simply closing their accounts to a service I provided free of charge, and only after they abused it and/or me.
In the end they found out just what they were entitled to.
But I also realized that my efforts to finally get those people out of the forums wasn’t going to succeed. The problem had become too systemic at that point. I could ban a few more people, and that actually did help in the short term, but it wouldn’t have worked in the long run. We didn’t have a closed system. Many of those people were so outraged that they made it clear that if we ever opened up registrations again, they’d come back with fake accounts and try to destroy the place. I think that if it came to that, they would have succeeded in making things a lot harder for us. At least one person from that community was openly discussing using illegal means to damage the forums. Enough is enough.
By waiting so long to get these people out, I had lost too much of the support of the community. Getting things back on track may still have been possible, but I concluded that it wasn’t likely to be worth the effort. It would have been a major uphill climb.
The attitude of some people towards me after being banned was like that of a drug addict whose dealer cut them off. Some blew up with anger. Others begged. Some wanted to pepper me with endless questions and alternatives. And at least one person even tried to drag my kids into the discussion.
This is an online forum we’re talking about. It was a good one to be sure but still one among thousands. I knew that no matter what, I was done dealing with them.
One way of describing the problem is that many of these people were loyal to each other, but I was loyal to my vision. I don’t see any practical way I could have convinced enough of them to buy into my vision for the forums once they began treating it as their personal online home. Ultimately they wanted to make the place into something different, but it wasn’t something I was willing to provide. And they made it clear that if I was to hold to my original vision, some of them were going to fight me on it. I didn’t take that as an idle threat since I’d seen just how much time they were willing to spend online. I concluded that it was time to give it up. I’m sure there are better places to invest my time.
Partly this can be explained as a technology problem. If people were personally identifiable instead of being able to easily create anonymous accounts, we wouldn’t have to worry about them coming back after getting banned, and they’d likely behave with greater maturity. I like that Google+ requires people to use their real life identities. I think that’s one reason the discussions there tend to be very civil, and moderation is rarely needed. With different technology we may have had an easier time solving some of these problems.
I think the bigger problem was how I set things up to begin with. This was a free service to the community. Perhaps the fact that I provided this service for free led too many people to take it for granted. Maybe they figured they could behave like spoiled children and that I’d keep providing this service just because I’d been doing so for years. But when the community standards fall this low, it’s just not worth doing anymore. My terms for creating this community were that it must hold to a certain vision, and when I felt that vision was no longer realistic, closing the forums was inevitable.
Overall I think most of the community really did buy into my vision, and I believe they appreciated it. I’m not the kind of guy that needs to be lauded with “thank yous” for doing what he feels is right. But I don’t think I deserve all the “f— yous” from those who took advantage of my generosity, fell into the entitlement trap, and expected that I’d let them continue on their own terms. At least now they’re free to go develop their own community the way they see fit, and hopefully they’ll soon forget this one and won’t resort to illegal means just to get back at me for what they perceive as unfair treatment.
Overall I’m very grateful for this experience. I learned some powerful lessons about creating and maintaining a community of this nature.
If I had to do it all over again, I’d have been a lot more strict about holding to the forum vision. I’d have done a better job of recruiting and training mods who could be loyal to the overall vision, regardless of their loyalties to other members or their fears about being perceived as the bad guy. If people harshed on the mods for doing their jobs, I’d have empowered the mods to prune those people right quick too. And I’d have pruned some members a lot sooner who were clearly visiting for reasons other than to grow (such as forum addiction). Charging a modest membership fee might not have been a bad idea either.
My Community or Yours
Obviously I don’t own people’s relationships with each other, but I was the one primarily responsible for creating and maintaining the forums. I created the community vision, bought and installed the software, paid for the hosting and bandwidth, invited people to join initially, designed the categories and wrote the descriptions for them, wrote and revised the community rules, recruited and trained moderators, promoted the forums, and interacted with the community to help set the tone.
I had a lot of help along the way of course. There’s no way I could have done this alone. But if I hadn’t decided to make it happen, it never would have existed.
I created this community with the goal of manifesting a certain vision. I wanted to create a specific type of online community that would be unlike any other I’d seen. For me this was a personal choice, not a business one. I wanted to create something unique that would add value to the world. I also felt it would be an interesting challenge.
Despite how it ended, I consider this project a great success. During its existence it helped a lot of people, even apparently saving some lives. I know that many people are very grateful for it.
Once the forum reached the point where I felt it could no longer hold to its vision, I decided to shut it down. Some people say this was a selfish decision. From a certain perspective, they’re right, but then they should acknowledge that it was just as selfish to create it. You can’t pick up one end of that stick without picking up the other.
I don’t feel any animosity towards anyone in shutting down the forums. We had a really good run, and I think many people recognize that its time has come. I would rather consciously end it now than watch it die a slow death.
If you’ve been very active in the forums, then perhaps this is a good time to evaluate whether continuing that sort of activity is how you really want to spend your time. This is a nice opportunity to consciously re-evaluate your priorities. I, for one, am really going to enjoy having this off my plate. There will be more adventures ahead.
Some people have suggested handing this community over to someone else to run, but I’m not interested in doing that. When people asked about this in the forums, I usually gave them some shallow technical reason for why it wouldn’t work. But in reality I was putting them off since I didn’t want to get into it with people one on one. Some of the more technically minded people saw through my feeble excuses, but I just wanted to hold them off long enough to explain this in a blog post.
First off, I don’t know anyone with the technical skills, vision, and willingness to pay the hosting costs for this community that would inspire me to hand it off to them. Secondly, if we transfer things to someone as-is, they’ll end up with the same entitlement issues to deal with, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. And if I hand it off just for the sake of preserving the community, I can’t see it becoming any better than it was at its peak, especially without my blog constantly feeding it traffic. I wouldn’t want to be associated with something less.
So I’d rather consciously pull the plug on this. People can still retain the connections they’ve made if they desire to do so, and there are plenty of options for that (email, social networks, other forums, etc).
I think most people will be able to understand this, even if they don’t agree with my decision. It was the right decision, and I have no regrets about how it played out. Once the decision was made, I felt a speedy resolution was best, but I wanted to allow sufficient time for people to wrap up existing threads, suggest alternative forums, exchange contact info, and say goodbye. Now it’s done, and everyone is free to move on to a new chapter in their lives.
If anyone else thinks they can create something better than this, then I invite you to do so. Now that the forums are closed, I’m going to fully enjoy the peacefulness of its absence. After 5+ years, I more than deserve a break from it.
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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina
21 Dec 2011 at 2:38pm
I’ve decided to shut down the discussion forums on this site by the end of the year, sometime between Xmas and New Year’s.
The way this played out was a bit explosive I know (which you may have seen if you’ve been active in the forums), but the triggering event was only one in a long series, the proverbial straw that finally broke the camel’s back. In this case I’d say it was bigger than a straw, but it was more than enough extra annoyance for me to finally say, “Enough is enough already. This isn’t worth doing anymore.”
It feels like I’ve been using my power to hold down a coiled spring for so long (pushing to keep the forums going while being out of harmony with them), and this time I finally just let go. The result was a significant “boing” in a different direction. Lots of trapped energy finally had a chance to escape. Perhaps it was more of a “boom” than a “boing,” but either way I’m glad this energy is no longer trapped.
I’m sorry if anyone feels hurt by how this played out. This is, however, often how these kinds of awareness shifts do play out. Sometimes when people finally realize it’s time to quit, it’s not all flowers and hugs on the way out. Often it’s more of an “I am so out of here” or “I’m so very done, done, done” feeling. That’s the feeling I have about this — a feeling of just being done with this and feeling more than ready to move on. At the moment I’m not in a place where I feel particularly concerned about others’ feelings. I think it’s better to be honest about that than to feign a sense of loss or regret. I just want to make this transition happen quickly and put it behind me. It’s hard to want to build or maintain bridges when seeing ashes brings much more relief and peace.
I’m aware that this may not be the most graceful of transitions, and I accept that it’s my responsibility how this ultimately played out. I understand that some people may be upset with me, but I just need to be done with this. My attitude right now isn’t one of, “Let’s make this transition as graceful as possible.” I tried doing a graceful transition before, and it got bogged down more than once. Now I’m doing it Aries-style, ramming my head through any obstacles between me and the door while bellowing “Hulk smash!” This will require more bandages later, but it will get the job done.
If you’ve never gone through such an experience yourself, you probably can’t relate to what I’m going through, and you may think I’m out of alignment with what I teach. In truth I’m going through a very similar process to the one described in a 2008 article called Tolerance Is Resistance to Love, which happened when I transitioned from game development to blogging. Within the past day, I basically shifted from the “stop saying yes” phase to the “commit to quitting” phase.
For me this is a matter of self-love and self-care. What I actually feel most right now is… tremendous relief. That’s a hint and a half that I need to do this. I’m not angry or hurt or upset. Yesterday I was surely annoyed, but in a way that gave me great clarity about what I’m no longer willing to tolerate in my life. After sleeping on it, now I’m beginning to feel excited and happy about the coming year. You have no idea how good it feels to know that I won’t have to deal with all the headaches of forum admin in 2012.
I hope this makes some degree of sense, but when something like this goes down, I have to surrender to the notion that I’m likely to be perpetually misunderstood about the whole thing. And honestly, in this case I think I’d rather risk being labeled an insensitive ogre by many people than to spend hours and hours explaining myself and reading forum members’ public psychoanalyses of me. In fact, it’s the connection to those kinds of experiences in my life that I truly want to burn to ashes right now.
As Carlos Castaneda wrote, “When a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him.” While this path did have a heart for me when I first embarked on it, it’s clear I’ve lost the heart connection to it a long time ago. My heart is leading me in other directions, and clinging to the past has become way too burdensome to continue.
Quitting Facebook earlier this year was another step on this journey. I don’t have the clarity just yet to know what I want to do instead of these aspects I’m releasing, but I know they’re not what I want in my life, and so I’ll let them go this year, and I know that down the road something more congruent will come into my life. For me this is very much like quitting a job before I have something lined up to replace it. And I think that’s very much in alignment with what I teach. If you disagree, you really don’t know me all that well.
I believe I can turn the forums into a read-only archive, so as a resource it can stay online, at least for a while. I’m not going to transfer ownership of it to anyone else since that would violate my privacy policy, and I seriously doubt anyone would want their email addresses falling into the hands of some potential spammer.
I want to thank everyone who participated in our online community and especially our amazing moderators for doing so much behind the scenes.
Most likely I’ll shut down the forums between Xmas and New Year’s. The earliest I’ll take things offline would be Dec 26th, so you have at least 5 days. Yesterday I removed the links to the forums from my website’s header (refresh your browser if you still see a forums link), and I also closed the forums to new registrations.
If you’ve been active in the forums, this is the time to say your goodbyes, exchange contact info with friends there, and wrap things up however you wish. Since most people who read my blog never even participate in the forums, there’s a good chance you really don’t care about any of this. But if you do care, then I hope you enjoyed all the fish.
Hulk head hurt.
Update Dec 26: The forum shutdown is complete. The forum archives are still available (and searchable too).
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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina
9 Dec 2011 at 7:14pm
Note: SBI has extended this promotion through January 3, 2012.
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.
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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina
6 Dec 2011 at 6:15pm
In the mid-2000s, most of my income came from advertising. The Google Adsense ads on my website were bringing in $9-10K per month, and it was totally passive income. I focused on writing new articles, and Google took care of selling and serving up the thousands of ads that were displayed each day. It was a pretty nice way to make money as a blogger.
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.
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zenhabits
6 Feb 2012 at 11:43am
Post written by Leo Babauta.
I’ve trained for marathons, triathlons, 10Ks, a 13.5-hour challenge, Ubanathlons, and more. But my favorite fitness program isn’t one where you train for a major event.
It’s where you get fit by a thousand little actions.
When the actions are tiny, they are easy. You have no excuse. You can do them anywhere, all day long.
I fold fitness into my life, like blueberries into batter, and it becomes a part of the recipe, not just a topping.
If you haven’t found a way to get fit, try the Thousand Cuts Fitness Program. There is nothing better for those who don’t have the time.
Here’s how it works:
1. Right now, do something that only takes 1 minute. It might be a few pushups, bodyweight squats, an attempt at a pullup, a few lunges. You have time to do 1 minute.
2. In an hour or so, go for a walk if you can. If you’re in decent shape, make it a fast walk. Add some hills for challenges. If you’re not in good shape, just walk. Later, add some spurts of fast walking.
3. Later in the day, do a few more 1 minute activities.
4. Gradually build the 1 minute activities into 2 or 3 minutes. Then 4 or 5 of them. Add more of them throughout your day.
5. As much as you can, turn the activities into play. Throw your kids around. Run through a park and climb trees and benches. Race people. Play a sport.
6. Get a pullup bar for your home. Every time you walk by it, try to pull yourself up. If you can do pullups, do a few, or 10, every time you pass the bar.
7. Get a kettlebell. Swing it a few times a day.
8. Run places. Walk places quickly.
Always be active. It’s not hard, if you do it in tiny bits. You can’t say no to 1 minute, or even just a few seconds. And if you do a thousand of them, you’ll be fit.
Fitness is a part of my life now, but it wasn’t when I started. I did it in little bits, without designating a certain time as “workout time”. My whole life is workout time.
  
2 Feb 2012 at 10:20am
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Tyler Tervooren of Advanced Riskology.
I used to have a lot of bad habits. I still do, but I used to have a lot more. Here's just a small sampling:
I woke up late and went to bed early.
I procrastinated on my most important work.
I neglected my relationships.
I drank too much.
I bit my fingernails.
I slouched a lot.
I picked my nose (no joke).
I bought worthless things I didn’t need.
I chewed with my mouth open.
I dressed like a slob.
I ate tons of junk food.
I could go on, but none of that’s incredibly important. What’s important is that I used to have a lot of bad habits, and now I have fewer.
I spent years dissatisfied with my habits and never made much progress changing them. Yes, sometimes I’d make a small step forward, but it usually wasn’t long until I was back to “Old Tyler” again (thanks, procrastination habit).
I’m fortunate to have learned recently that it doesn’t have to be this way.
I always thought I could change things myself ' I’m a die-hard do-it-yourselfer ' so I never gave a second thought to any other way.
The thing that helped me finally knock out that eleven point list (plus a few other habits I’m too embarrassed to mention here), took a real leap of faith; I let someone help me.
It started as a practical matter. I decided to try vegetarianism and recruited my girlfriend to try it with me so we could eat together. That lasted more than a year before consciously changing diets. We did the same thing to stop biting our nails.
For the very first time, I was developing habits that I created on purpose. It felt great ' like I was really in control of my life after years of spinning my wheels.
How could I keep this going'
At the time, I was so fiercely independent that I hardly realized what had contributed to the success. It took a few more heart-crushing failures with other goals before finally getting the picture.
Late in 2010, a friend mentioned he wanted to wake up earlier to get more work done in the morning. I remembered how much I enjoyed waking up early when I actually did it, so I agreed to a six o'clock meeting and accountability report every morning. Almost one year later, we’re still going strong.
It’s pretty amazing what a little accountability can do for your motivation.
Since then, I’ve wised up and started recruiting partners to help me with all of my big goals:
The difference is incredible.
The secret is that, for some of us, successful habit change is a two-headed beast ' not something to be tackled alone. If you’ve struggled with habit change yourself, recruit some help.
But who do you ask' And how do you find the right partners in crime' Unfortunately, not just anyone is a good fit. Picking the right person that will compliment you is just as important as picking someone at all.
Fair warning: Friends and relatives do not always make the best accountability partners.
Through plenty of trial and error, I’ve found a few characteristics that I look for in someone I’m about to partner with to make an important life change. Perhaps they’ll help you find a good fit, too.
- They’re a little ahead of you, but not too far ahead. In a good accountability partnership, one person is usually at least a little bit further beyond the other. Though you’re both helping each other, one person stands out as the more likely mentor. Otherwise, it’s the blind leading the blind. And you don’t want your partner to be too far ahead of you, or the relationship is unbalanced and feels awkward.
- They’re a little bit competitive. You probably don’t want someone who's looking to stick it to you every chance they get, but you’ll get a lot further a lot faster if your accountability partner isn’t satisfied with self defeat and is willing to actually hold you accountable.
- They have similar goals to you. You don’t have to be working on the exact same thing to work well with a partner ' it can be great to work together on separate projects ' but there should be an obvious overlap of your big goals. There needs to be something that ties you two together beyond just “wanting to change something.”
- They’re focused. If you agree to meet for 10 minutes each day, but never seem to get anywhere because your meetings are unfocused, first look at yourself. Are you dragging things off course on a regular basis' If not, then it’s probably time to find a more focused partner.
- They’re supportive when you need it. This goes back to competitiveness. You want your partner to push you and hold you accountable ' that’s what they’re there for ' but a good one also has your best interest at heart and knows when you need a little lift instead of a scolding.
- They show commitment. The truth is that you can usually tell if a partnership like this is going to work within a week. If your accountability partner can’t even get it together at the very beginning when excitement is running high, that’s a pretty good indication they’re not committed to change. Best to get out. This doesn’t make them a bad person, but it probably makes them a bad partner for now.
If you’ve ever struggled with making an important habit change in your life, then I challenge you to step out of your comfort zone and ask for help. If you're like me, it could turn everything around.
What do you want to change' Who can help'
Tyler Tervooren writes for a team of highly skilled risk takers helping each other do meaningful things in their lives at Advanced Riskology. Follow him on Google+.
 
31 Jan 2012 at 4:03pm
Post written by Leo Babauta.
It’s something I should have created a long time ago: the Zen Habits Premium Membership, and a mini-course that’s included with it called Create the Habit of Meditation.
The membership is a monthly subscription of $19.99, but really it’s a commitment to changing your life, and the tools needed to do that.
If you’ve been looking to simplify, get healthy & fit, become more effective, do work you’re passionate about, eliminate debt, find contentment, declutter, create new habits … this new program is meant to show you how to do that.
I’ll be sharing the simple methods that have worked for me in hundreds of my experiments, have helped thousands in classes I’ve taught, and have been perfected through trial and error.
While the regular articles on Zen Habits will always be free, with this membership you’ll have bonus articles and videos, along with contributions and interviews from guest experts, live monthly webinars where you can ask questions, regular mini-courses on these topics, the ability to submit questions that I’ll answer in articles/videos, and more.
The membership is $19.99 a month, and for this first month, includes the Create the Habit of Meditation Mini-Course (more below).
The first round of registration for the Premium Membership is now closed, and will be closed for the rest of February.
Read more about the Zen Habits Premium Membership.
 
27 Jan 2012 at 4:20pm
Post written by Leo Babauta.
We are often afraid of silence, because its emptiness feels idle, boring, unproductive, and scary. And so we fill our lives with chaos, noise, clutter.
But silence can be lovely, and therapeutic, and powerful.
It can be the remedy for our stress and the habits that crush us.
If we want quiet in our lives, how do we create it'
I’ve been exploring this myself. As a father of six kids, I have to admit that I don’t always have silence in my life. That’s not a complaint — I love the messy noise that my family brings — but silence can be a welcome refuge from that noise at times.
I create silence by subtracting, and not filling the resulting emptiness withe noise or clutter.
And so my life is a constant experimentation with subtracting. When I’ve subtracted, and learn to love the empty silence, I subtract some more. Subtraction is a beautiful process.
Prefer subtraction over addition.
Learn to be content with little, or nothing.
Realize that silence is beautiful.
Find yourself in the empty space that results.
Empty a room, and put almost nothing back except that which produces quiet.
Speak less, listen more, contemplate even more.
Walk in silence. Watch the leaves quiver, fall in silence, whisper in the wind.
Sit and do nothing. Listen to your mind make noise in the silence, allow it to subside.
Eschew video, iPods, books, the Internet, mobile devices, social networks, and other purveyors of noise.
Be quiet, so that life may speak.
 
23 Jan 2012 at 12:26pm
‘Don’t panic.’ ~Douglas Adams
Post written by Leo Babauta.
Why is it that we cannot break the bad habits that stand in our way, crushing our desires to live a healthy life, be fit, simplify, be happier'
How is it that our best intentions are nearly always beaten' We want to be focused and productive, exercise and eat healthy foods, stop smoking and learn to get rid of debt and clutter, but we just can’t.
The answer lies in something extremely simple, but something most people aren’t aware of:
We don’t know how to cope with stress and boredom in a healthy way.
The bad habits we’ve formed are often useful to us, in dealing with stress and boredom. Consider the bad habits that fit this bill:
- Smoking
- Internet procrastination
- Eating junk food
- Drinking
- Being rude/angry/depressed
- Watching TV or playing video games (if you become addicted & sedentary)
- Shopping (getting into debt, building clutter)
- Procrastinating on finances, paperwork, clutter (too stressful)
- Inactivity (avoiding exercise is a stress avoidance technique)
- Biting nails, chewing hair, clenching jaw
This isn’t a complete list, but all of these habits fill a strong need: they are ways to cope with stress and/or boredom. We have formed them as coping mechanisms, and they stick around because we don’t have better ways of coping.
So what if instead, we replaced them with healthier ways of coping' We’d get rid of the problems of these bad habits, and start getting the benefits of better habits.
Better Coping Habits
How can we deal with stress and boredom instead' There’s no one answer, but the habits we form should be ones that lead to healthier results. Some ideas:
- Walk/run/swim/bike
- Do pushups, pullups, squats
- Yoga/meditation
- Play with friends/kids
- Create, write, play music, read when we’re bored
- Learn to enjoy being alone, instead of being bored
- Take a daily walk and enjoy nature
- Deal with finances, clutter, paperwork immediately, in small steps, so that it doesn’t get stressful
- Take control of a situation: make a list, get started in baby steps, so things don’t get stressful
- Learn to be mindful of your breathing, body tension, stressed-out thoughts
- Get some rest
- Learn to savor healthy food that you find delicious
- Slow down
- Take a hot bath
- Learn to live in the present
These are some good examples. Each habit above will help cope with or prevent stress or boredom. If you replace the bad habits with these, your life will be less stressful and healthier. You’ll have less debt, less clutter, less fat, less disease.
Changing the Habits
The old habits of coping didn’t build up overnight, and they won’t go away overnight either. We built them up through years of repetition, and the only way to change them is also years of repetition.
But an important start is to realize why we do them — stress and boredom, largely — and realize that there are other ways to deal with these two problems. We need to be aware when stress and boredom start to kick in, and instead of being afraid of them, realize that they are problems easily solved by other habits. Let’s take the fear out of stress and boredom. Let’s learn that we can beat them simply, and prove that with repeated good habits.
Once you have that realization, follow the usual Zen Habits steps to changing a habit:
Pick one habit at a time.
Start very small – just a minute or two, if you want it to stick.
Use social motivation like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or email.
Be very conscious of your triggers, and do the habit consciously every time the trigger happens.
Enjoy the new habit. You’ll stick with it longer if you do.
We have been crushed by the habits we’ve formed out of fear of stress and boredom. We can fight back, by learning to breathe, to smile, to go slowly. We can humble these giants that crush us by turning them into mere gnats to be shooed away with a smile.
 
17 Jan 2012 at 2:49pm
‘All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.’ ~Blaise Pascal
Post written by Leo Babauta.
Think about some of the problems of our daily lives, and how many of them would be eased if we could learn to sit alone, in a quiet empty room, with contentment.
If you’re content to sit alone quietly, you don’t need to eat junk food, to shop on impulse, to buy the latest gadget, to be on social media to see what everyone else is talking about or doing, to compare yourself to others, to make more money to keep up with the Joneses, to achieve glory or power, to conquer other lands or wage war, to be rude or violent to others, to be selfish or greedy, to be constantly busy or productive.
You are content, and need nothing else. It solves a lot of problems.
Can you sit alone in an empty room' Can you enjoy the joy of quiet'
Most of us have trouble sitting alone, quietly, doing nothing. We have the need to do something, to check our inboxes and social media, to be productive. Sitting still can be difficult if you haven’t cultivated the habit.
I’ve been learning. In the morning, as my coffee is brewing, I sit. Even for a few minutes, at first, it is instructive. You learn to listen to your thoughts, to be aware of your urges to do something else, to plan and set goals. You learn to watch yourself, but to just sit still and not act on those urges. You learn to be content with stillness.
You learn to savor the quiet. It’s something most of us don’t have, quiet, and it takes some getting used to. When we’re driving our cars or out exercising or eating or working, we have music playing or we talk with people or we have the television on. Quiet can be amazing, though, because it helps us calm down, contemplate, slow down to savor the emptiness.
An empty room, too, is a luxury. I try to empty my room of clutter, so that it’s fairly bare. That leaves only me, and the room is a blank slate ready to be filled with me, my creativity, my silence. I love a spartan room.
Being alone is another pleasure we too often neglect. When we are alone, we go on the Internet or TV to see what else is going on, what others are doing or saying, instead of just being alone. This isolation is a necessary thing, that allows us to find ourselves, to learn to be content with little instead of always wanting more.
Can you practice being alone, being still, being quiet' Just a little at first, then perhaps a bit more. Listen, watch, learn about yourself. Find contentment. Need nothing more.
 
13 Jan 2012 at 10:15am
‘Everything is practice.’ ~Pele
Post written by Leo Babauta.
When we learn a martial art, or ballet, or gymnastics, or soccer ' we consciously practice movements in a deliberate way, repeatedly. By conscious, repeated practice, we become good at those movements.
Our entire lives are like this, but we’re often less conscious of the practice.
Each day, we repeat movements, thought patterns, ways of interacting with others ' and in this repeated practice, we are becoming (or have already become) good at these things. If you constantly check Facebook or Twitter, that is practice, and you are forming that habit, though it’s usually not with too much awareness.
When you smoke, or eat junk food, or speak rudely to others, or put yourself down internally, this is something you are practicing to be good at. You may already be good at these things.
What if, instead, we practiced consciously, deliberately, and became good at the things we really want to be good at'
What if you first, above all skills, learned to be more aware of what you are practicing' What if constant conscious action is the skill you became good at'
If you could learn to take conscious action, you could learn to practice other things you want to be good at, rather than the ones you don’t.
What Are You Practicing'
Ask yourself these things throughout the day, to practice conscious action:
- Do I want to practice rushing through my morning, or can I wake a little earlier and simplify my morning routine so that I practice a slow, enjoyable morning ritual'
- Do I want to practice checking my inboxes when I first get to my computer, or can I do something better'
- Do I want to practice leaving dirty dishes out, or can I practice washing my bowl when I’m done with it'
- Do I want to practice leaving clothes strewn about, or papers lying on the counter, or can I take a few seconds to put them where they belong'
- Do I want to speak angrily to my kids or spouse, or can I speak to them with kindness and compassion'
- Do I want to practice complaining and self-pity, or can I practice gratitude'
- Do I want to practice rushing and being busy, or can I practice simplifying and going slowly'
- Do I want to practice eating fried foods, sugary foods, salty junk food snacks, fast foods ' or can I practice eating whole foods, vegetables and fruits, nuts and beans and seeds'
- Do I want to practice surfing time-wasting sites, or can I practice clearing away distractions and creating'
- Do I want to practice watching mindless entertainment, or can I practice moving my body and exerting myself in activity'
- Do I want to practice smoking, or can I learn a healthier way to deal with stress'
- Do I want to practice shopping, or can I practice giving'
These are only examples … your life will show you what you’ve been practicing, and you can decide what you might rather practice instead. Or you might be completely happy with what you’ve been practicing.
Some ideas for creative practice from Ali Edwards.
How to Practice
The first step is always awareness. When you are conscious of what you are doing, you can decide whether this is an action or thought pattern you want to practice, or if there’s an alternative you’d rather be good at.
As you go through your day, practice this awareness. It’s the first skill, and it’s the most important one. Be aware, without feeling guilty or angry at yourself, of what you’re doing and thinking. You will forget to to this, but remind yourself. You might wear a rubber band around your wrist, or carry a talisman, or make tally marks on a slip of paper each time you remember.
As you get good at conscious action, start to practice those actions and thought patterns you want to be good at. Start to notice the ones you’d really rather not be good at, and see if you can deliberately practice other actions and thought patterns.
As you consciously, deliberately repeat these things, you’ll get better at them. It takes a lot of repetition to get good at a skill, but you’ve got time.
Important Conclusions
You won’t be able to change all your habits at once, and I’m not implying that you should try. The habit you’re really changing is consciousness, and practice. Other habits will be difficult to change, especially if you’re trying to change all of them, but it’s OK if you mess up. Give yourself permission to make mistakes without guilt, and instead just deliberately practice again, and again.
If something is too hard, and you can’t get it right no matter how many times you practice, you can try it in smaller steps. If you can’t quit smoking, try not smoking once, and instead relieving stress through walking or doing some pushups or meditation or self-massage. If you can’t quit junk food, just replace one snack with a fruit, or add a tasty veggie to your dinner.
I’d like to emphasize that this isn’t about perfection. There is no perfect way of life, and you don’t need to strive to be perfect every moment of the day. I believe you’re already perfect. This is just about conscious action, which is a useful skill to have.
Remember that we become good at what we repeatedly do, and what we do repeatedly can be done consciously. It’s when we’re conscious that we are truly alive.
‘If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.’ ~Dalai Lama
—
The Power of Less, on Sale
As part of a New Year’s promotion by my publisher, Hyperion, my book The Power of Less is on sale for just $3.99 until Jan. 31, 2012.
This is actually a steal, and I highly recommend it.
Buy the book on sale on these sites:
 
11 Jan 2012 at 12:33pm
Post written by Leo Babauta.
Decluttering is a skill that you learn with practice, just like any skill. And just like other skills, there are many little questions and problems you need answered and solved as you get started.
Those of you taking the Clutterfat Challenge this month are facing these problems, and I’m here to help.
This post is a quickstart guide to decluttering — the most common questions answered. Also see last week’s Clutterfat Challenge post: How to Tackle Your Clutter.
1. Where do I start'
Start anywhere — really, where you start doesn’t matter, as long as you start. You’re going to get to all of it eventually, so pick a random spot to clear, and slowly expand from that spot. Start with a baby step — just one little space. Take just 5 minutes to clear a spot on a counter, and keep it clear. Clear a little more space later today. Tomorrow, clear a little more. It’s not difficult if you do it in small steps. Here are 18 5-minute decluttering tips to start conquering your mess.
2. How do I deal with the piles of mail and magazines' How do I handle paper cluttter'
Make a big pile of your mail and magazines. Now work through the pile very quickly. Take the top piece, and decide: can you toss it' If so, toss it in a recycling bin. If you need it, decide if it should be filed (and file it in a folder right now), or if it needs action — in which case, take action on it if you can do it in a couple minutes. Have an action folder to file things in if they need more than a couple minutes. Toss the magazines — you don’t need them. Work quickly through everything until you finished the pile. When you have more time, make another pile of paper clutter and work through it. Read more: 6 Simple Steps to Make Mail & Paperwork Painless.
3. What do I do if my family is the clutter problem'
Start with yourself. Lead by example. Declutter your personal space, and show how great it is. Start a positive discussion with them about why you’re decluttering, and ask if they want to join you. It’s a long process, educating people, but don’t ever force them or they’ll resist or be resentful. Read more.
4. I tend to keep things just in case I might need them again.
Make a list of your “just in case” stuff — or better yet, put them in a box — and see how often you actually need them in the next 6 months. If you didn’t need them, you can safely get rid of them. If you did, keep them. Read more: the just in case syndrome.
5. How do I deal with things that have a sentimental value, that bring back memories/feelings about a time you might not think about without a reminder.
Realize that your feelings, your love, your memories, are not in those objects. They are merely placeholders. You can easily keep those placeholders on your computer, or online. Some ideas:
- Create a digital photo album of your sentimental items.
- Keep pictures of your loved ones as your desktop picture or screensaver.
- Play photos in a slideshow for visitors, or for yourself.
- Create a digital scrapbook.
- Start a blog or a tumblelog with photos, notes, posts about the things you treasure most.
Read more: Letting Go of Sentimental Items and Getting unstuck from sentimental stuff.
6. I want to clean my clutter but sometimes I’m just too lazy to deal with it.
This is why we’ve created the Clutterfat Challenge — it’s motivation to finally get off your butt! But you can create other challenges: announce to your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter that you’re going to declutter for 10 minutes a day for a month. Or blog about your decluttering journey. Do it with others and make it fun. Make it a game with your family.
7. My biggest issue is getting rid of things that where given as a present by people I care about.
Free yourself of this guilt. Your loved ones gave you the gifts to make you happy, not to burden you for life, not to make you feel guilty. Allow yourself to be happy, and only keep things if they’re making you happy. Read more from Discardia and Miss Minimalist.
8. Where do I dispose of stuff'
I like giving things away to friends and family, charity, Craigslist and Freecycle. Read Miss Minimalist’s great list.
9. I don’t have time to keep things clean.
Create clean-as-you-go habits. These take seconds, and if you do them, you don’t need to do a lot of cleaning later. Read more: Develop clean house habits and 15 Clutter Busting Routines For Any Family.
10. Making time to declutter and follow through with disposal is tough.
It only takes 5-10 minutes a day — declutter one pile at a time, one flat surface at a time. Do it when you get home, and before you leave the house. Put things you’re going to donate into a box each day, and put that in your trunk. When you drive by a charity, drop it off. That takes 5 minutes.
Need more' Here are a few more articles:
 
9 Jan 2012 at 1:55pm
Post written by Leo Babauta.
Every January, people rush out and get a gym membership, set a list of goals or resolutions, and get ready to take on a new year of frenetic activity.
Unfortunately, we don’t often clear space to make room for all this new stuff.
The beginning of the year is a great time for renewal of energy and taking on the things we’ve always wanted to tackle — clutter, fitness, work we’re passionate about, debt, and so on. But it’s also a great time to clear out your life, starting out the year on a blank page that’s ready to be filled.
While everyone’s life is different, I’ll share some of what I do to clear out my life.
- Review the year to think about what I learned, what mistakes I made, what I accomplished.
- Clear my schedule as much as possible. That often means saying no to people.
- Wrap up old projects, end commitments to people, so that my work plate is clearer than normal.
- Toss out old fitness and eating plans, to make room for new experiments.
- Clear my email inbox. If I haven’t answered the email recently, it’s probably not important, so I archive it. Act on or answer other emails, so that my inbox is emptied.
- Clear out other inboxes. That might be an inbox on a social network, or a list of things I wanted to do or read, or any kind of list really. File them away under someday, or delete or archive. Anything that’s taking some mental energy because I know I need to get to it, gets cleared.
- Clear my computer files. Usually this means deleting a bunch of files I don’t need, but I also just consolidate files into one folder or put them in an online archive (like in Dropbox).
- Clear paperwork. I rarely have any papers these days — I’ve slowly turned everything digital. But I still get things in the mail sometimes, so if I have any lying around, I dispose of them to clear out any remaining paperwork.
- Clear clutter. If there are areas that have become cluttered, I clear them out. Often it just means taking a box or bag of things that I’ve been meaning to donate to Goodwill.
- Clear my errands. I’ll make a list of all the errands I’ve been putting off, and do them in one afternoon.
- Clear my finances. I’ll take a few minutes to review my checking and savings accounts, Paypal, investments, etc. and make sure everything is in order. If there are little things that need taking care of, I do them so that my mind is cleared.
- Clear pantry and refrigerator of junk. Old crap that’s been lying around. Junk food if there’s any there (I don’t usually have any anymore, but I used to). Left with just good whole ingredients for healthy foods.
This might take a couple days, working off and on in little bits. For some, it might take longer. But when you’re done, it’s amazing. Your mind is clear and refreshed. You feel like you’re ready to take on anything.
To be honest, I do these things regularly throughout the year, and it’s great to keep a clean slate most of the time. But the new year is always a perfect opportunity to clear everything at once.
 
6 Jan 2012 at 1:19pm
Post written by Leo Babauta.
So you’ve been putting off tackling your clutter for months, maybe even years. Papers pile up on a counter, shelves are crammed full of books and magazines and other things, closets are stuffed to the point of spillage, clothes pile up on the floor or furniture, boxes and furniture and other miscellaneous things cover your floor.
How do you even get started'
If you haven’t yet, start by signing up for the free Clutterfat Challenge, a 30-day challenge to reduce your clutter. I created the challenge, along with my friend Courtney Carver, to help motivate you to finally tackle the clutter.
But once you’ve decided to dive in, how do you get started'
There are two methods, both of which are great, and you can combine them. Let’s cover all three options.
By the way, last night I held a free Clutter Webinar, and a recording of that webinar is at the bottom of this post.
Also: Courtney has a post today on how to make decluttering fun. Read it!
The Surge
One of my favorite ways to tackle clutter is in a huge surge — set aside a weekend, for example, and take on as much as you can, one room at a time.
Clear your schedule for a day or two. Get some boxes and trash bags. Get excited.
Let’s say you start with your bedroom. Pick one area of the bedroom — one flat surface, such as a shelf, the top of your dresser, a drawer, the floor of your closet. Clear that flat surface, putting everything into a pile.
Then sort, making quick decisions. Take the top item from the pile — it doesn’t matter what it is, and no avoiding certain items. Just pick up the first item in the pile. Make a quick decision to place this item in one of three piles:
Keep pile — for stuff you’ve used in the last 6 months and absolutely need and love.
Donate pile — to donate to charity, give to family/friends, or recycle.
Maybe pile — try not to use this pile if you can avoid it, but it’s for ones you absolutely can’t decide on. Put these things into a box, with today’s date, then put it into storage. If you don’t need anything in that box for six months, you can confidently get rid of it.
When you’re done sorting, put the things in the keep pile back, neatly. Where you place them is now their “home” — you should always put them in that spot. Put the donate pile into a box to donate to charity, perhaps setting some items aside to give to friends. Recycle the items that aren’t good enough to be reused.
Now go through the next flat surface — drawer, shelf, space on the floor, etc. Do it one are at a time until the entire room is done. This could take hours, but it can be a lot of fun. When the room is done, you should feel great. Celebrate. Move on to another room if you still have time and energy — otherwise, plan another surge session.
Chunking
This is the baby steps approach, and it’s just as good. When I started Zen Habits, I had been reading a site called Fly Lady, who advocated starting with a clean sink. I did this: cleared the sink of dishes, scrubbed it until it shined. It was the epicenter of my clutter-free zone.
Then I spread the clutter-free zone, one chunk of space at a time, to the kitchen counters, dining table, kitchen floor, closet, cabinets. And so on, tackling one chunk at a time, maybe taking 10-15 minutes a day.
You can start anywhere, not just the kitchen sink. Your dining table is a good place to start, or a kitchen counter, or an area in your living room. It doesn’t matter — pick a spot, clear it. When you have time, clear another space near that clutter-free spot. Do your best to keep the clutter-free zone actually clutter-free as you expand.
Use the same pile-decision technique I described in the previous section — it works for chunking too.
In Combination
In reality, you don’t have to choose between the two methods above. You can surge and you can chunk in combo. Maybe you start with a surge this weekend, and then chunk during the week. Maybe you have a month filled with various surges and chunks. Whatever works for your schedule and energy level.
Do what it takes to get it done. And enjoy the process.
Clutter Webinar
Last night I held a free Clutter Webinar, where I talked about the benefits of a clutter-free life, why we build up clutter, how to tackle clutter, how to deal with some of the toughest clutter issues, and what to do *after* you’ve decluttered. I also answered clutter questions from readers.
Watch the video below (if you’re reading this in email, go to the post to watch the video):
 
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