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A Fixed Income Is a Sucker Bet

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:49:02 +0000

Do you live on a fixed income, earning the same amount of money paycheck after paycheck? Maybe you pick up a cost of living adjustment or a raise now and then (or suffer a pay cut or reduction in hours), but barring any major changes like getting promoted, fired, or laid off, is your income fairly stable and predictable? Do you have a good sense of what you’re going to earn during the next 3 months? Would it be exceedingly unlikely for you to earn double or triple – or half – of that anticipated amount?

If this describes you, then who decided to fixify your income? Who made that decision?

You made that decision, didn’t you? You decided to earn a fixed amount of money per month. You can trace your decisions back to some moment where you said yes to a fixed income.

Are you aware that saying yes was entirely optional? In fact, if you give it some thought (which I’ll encourage you to do in this article), you should be able to see that accepting a fixed income is a rather stupid choice, all things considered. A fixed income is a sucker bet.

How is that choice working out for you so far? Are you blissfully delighted with it? Do you like knowing that you’ll earn the same amount of money month after month? Does it feel comforting to know how much you’re going to make? Or is there some part of you that’s bored and frustrated beyond recognition?

Do you like the stability of it? Is it truly stable, or is your feeling of security rooted in a hopeful illusion? If some individual can decide to turn off your income with the words “You’re fired,” it’s hardly stable. If that’s your situation, it’s safe to say your income is unstable and conditional rather than stable and secure. We can say that all income is conditional, but how stable are those conditions? Does someone else wield the power to turn off your income?

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that your income seems reasonably stable, secure, and predictable. Perhaps you work in a high-demand field, and you’re really good at what you do, so even if you lost your current job, you could quickly find a new one doing similar work for similar pay. That may be a stretch for some, but for the sake of this article, we don’t even need to pluck that low-hanging fruit. There are plenty of other cuts awaiting a splash of lemon juice.

Downsides of a Fixed Income

Aside from its predictability and possible stability, virtually everything else about a fixed income is negative.

First off, a fixed income lacks flexibility. It cannot adapt well to changing circumstances. This means that fixed incomes can get pummeled in a variety of ways.

If expenses rise unexpectedly and surpass your monthly income, then you have no choice but to draw money from cash reserves or investments or go into debt. If your expenses later return to normal, this debt may be temporary, but you’ll still end up paying extra interest or losing interest on your depleted savings/investments, which takes money out of your pocket.

If you spend more, you can’t simply earn more to compensate. This turns unexpected expenses into threats. They become something you relate to with fear or worry about. What if the car breaks down? What if someone gets sick? What if prices go up? Such events are just part of life. It makes no sense to fear the inevitable. Stuff is going to break, including expensive stuff that costs a lot to repair or replace. If getting an unexpected bill stresses you out, your mindset is a mismatch for reality.

If expenses rise above net income for too long, you can sink into debt for a long time and waste a great deal of money paying interest to someone else. Many people remain stuck there till they die. If their fixed incomes are too close to their expenses, taxes, and debt payments, then getting out of debt becomes hopeless. Hope can only be restored by focusing on the income side.

For this reason, people on fixed incomes often spend an inordinate amount of time fussing over their expenses. Otherwise they may risk depleting their savings or going into debt. They want to fulfill their desires, but their income limits their ability to do that.

“I can’t afford it” is practically a mantra for fixed income people. They sacrifice their true desires in order to stick to their budgets, totally oblivious to the fact that no one is forcing them to waste their lives on expense-tracking tedium. If they desire something with a price tag, but they can’t afford it, they rule it out as possible for them – as if their fixed income is the final arbiter of their desires. Eventually resentment builds. They start resenting the unfairness of the economy, of people who set the prices, of business in general, of money, and so on. The bad guy is somewhere out there. Nope… the bad guy is the stupid choice you made to fixify your income. Wise up and stop doing that to yourself.

People look really pathetic when they act financially helpless. This isn’t how human beings should relate to themselves.

“Hi, there’s something I really want. Actually, it feels like the perfect match for me, but I just can’t afford it because I’m on a fixed income. Help me! Can you give me a price break or something? I really, really want it!”

“How about if you give me a break and stop pretending to be helpless?”

“No, you don’t understand. I’m on a tight budget. I really can’t afford to pay full price.”

“Now you’re just making yourself look foolish. Who fixified your income in the first place? You did! Why are you putting the onus on me to work within the limits you created for yourself? You’re asking me to fit an elephant inside a breadbox. Why don’t you raise your limits? Raise them high enough to be well beyond your desires, so you can easily afford whatever you want.”

“I can do that?”

“Yes, you’ve always been free to do that.”

“Well, I dunno about that. I don’t think my boss will give me more money.”

“Screw your boss then. Why do you want a boss anyway?”

“But that would mean making major changes in my life.”

“Yes, it would.”

“I don’t think I’m ready for that. It’s too risky.”

“There’s no additional risk because you’ve already lost the connection to your desires. You’re already stuck in a situation where you aren’t experiencing what you truly want. Life doesn’t get any worse than that. To do nothing ensures a continuation of the worst possible outcome – being perpetually unfulfilled.”

“But it could get worse. I could be even more unhappy.”

“If you do nothing, it will indeed get worse. That’s a given. Your desires will slip further and further away as you disconnect from your heart even more. Life doesn’t get any worse than that. The only hope lies on the path of change.”

“So it’s to be torture then?”

“Yes, until it kills you.”

“I can cope with torture.”

“Suit yourself.”

“So how about that price break?”

“Fezzik, tear his arms off.”

Foolishly Guarding Fool’s Gold

It’s funny how people strive to protect that which is worthless. The state of being unhappy and unfulfilled is worth absolutely nothing. If that’s where you find yourself, you’re already at rock bottom.

You may think that you’ll have to risk some of your stuff (possessions, money, etc) to make big changes in your life. That may be true, but if you aren’t happy right now, then all of that stuff is of zero value to you anyway. If you try to maintain your stuff at the expense of your happiness and fulfillment, then you are indeed a complete idiot. You’re trying to sell your very soul, aren’t you? You’re entering into an agreement that says, “I agree to be perpetually unhappy and unfulfilled in exchange for cash and goods worth $X.” Add up the value of all the stuff you believe you’d have to risk to make big changes. Does that value of X make this agreement a wise choice?

Risk the stuff. It’s worthless anyway. But don’t make the insane choice of sacrificing your happiness for stuff.

Switching to a Variable Income

Earning a variable income, where you have the flexibility to earn a different sum of money each month, has a lot more to do with mindset than anything else. It doesn’t matter if you have a job, run your own business, or enjoy multiple streams of income. Those are just different vehicles.

The key is to recognize who determines your income. You do. You may have financial and economic realities to deal with, but ultimately you set the prices for what your time and efforts are worth financially, you decide what skills to develop and what kind of training to undertake, and you determine what kind of value to create and deliver to people. The most powerful choices are under your control.

If you deliver pizza for a living, you can expect to be paid for that particular skill based on its market value. Pizza delivery guys are easily trained and replaced, so you can expect to earn very little from such a job. Don’t blame the job for what it pays. No one is forcing you to choose a low-paying, unskilled job. If you try to squeeze more money from a job than the job is worth in the larger marketplace, eventually your boss or customers will figure out that you’re being overpaid, and you’ll be replaced by someone cheaper.

On the other hand, maybe you want to inspire and motivate people for a living. This takes a lot more skill than delivering pizzas, but it’s in much higher demand relative to the supply. In general, people are willing to pay a lot more to be inspired and motivated than they’re willing to pay for a hot pizza (unless you live in Naples). If you develop a high ability to inspire and motivate people, and you build the means to deliver your value to a sizeable number of people, you can eventually earn more in an hour than the pizza guy earns in month.

You not only have the ability to develop your skills within a particular field, but you can also switch fields repeatedly. If you want to earn more, then keep building skills and changing up how you combine and express those skills to maximize the value you’re able to create and deliver, thereby maximizing the income you’re able to generate. The opportunities to do this are endless as long as you remain flexible and alert.

Your income is not fixed unless you decide to fixify it. It doesn’t matter if you’re getting checks from the government as your only income source. Those checks may not increase in size, but they aren’t the only checks you’re capable of earning. If you don’t like the size of those checks, go out and earn different checks.

A Fixed Income Is a Sucker Bet

Take note that while you’re receiving a fixed income, someone higher up the chain of command is enjoying a variable income at your expense. When you receive a fixed income, you’re actually creating a variable amount of value, but the income generated by your excess value is being siphoned off to line someone else’s pockets. They’re profiting from your ignorance. How generous of you! It may seem like they’re taking on more risk, but keep in mind that if they go down, you go down too. You share in the risk, but you don’t share in the upside. You do realize you’re giving away the farm here, don’t you?

If you’re going to work, then why not receive and enjoy the fruits of your labor instead of giving most of your earnings away before you even see them? You’re already creating value, aren’t you? If you want to be generous, consider giving some of your excess value away to charity. I donate some money each month because it feels good to do so. But I donate to non-profits and charities that spend their money on things I want to support, not to stock-holding officers or investors who are already making millions a year.

Stop pretending to be helpless when it comes to how much money you make. Your paycheck has no power over you – except to the degree you give your power away. You may be working in a system where the higher ups have every financial incentive to keep you powerless so they can keep siphoning the value you’re creating, but ultimately you’re the one who chooses to walk through that door each day. You don’t have to keep doing that. You can get up and leave right this minute if you want. Many people are much happier for having done that.

You are the final arbiter of your desires. If you want something with a price tag, you have the power to earn the money to pay for it. You decide how much you earn. You decide how much you spend.

When you realize that you choose your income, you can focus your energies on creating and delivering as much value as it takes to earn whatever you want. Be intelligent and deliberate about it. Make abundance a priority in your life. This is a lot more fun than fussing over expenses and nitpicking your taxes. Once you develop a modicum of skill, you’ll find that it’s a lot more fun to earn an extra $10K than to save $10K. You can earn $10K in an hour if you develop the mindset and skills to do so. No one is stopping you from doing that.

Stop Fussing Over Expenses and Taxes

When it comes to reducing your expenses and taxes, you have to do a lot of tedious work. It’s not fun, at least not for any sane person I’ve met. Yet people with a scarcity mindset spend a lot more time nitpicking their expenses and taxes than they invest in boosting their income. Not a good trade off… not by a long shot.

When you try to minimize your expenses and taxes, you’ll eventually reach the point of having to make tough calls that could reduce your quality of life. On the expenses side, you may have to do extra expense tracking and budgeting, which takes time. Or you may begin to sacrifice quality to save a few bucks on your purchases.

On the tax side, you’ll have to fill out more paperwork and do more accounting to take advantage of more deductions and save more money. Is that really what you want to spend your precious life doing?

Consider that when it comes to expenses and taxes, you have a hard limit of $0 and can go no lower. Once you’re spending the bare minimum, that’s it – you’re done. So your maximum ideal gain is to spend nothing at all. And even if you could take things that far, your quality of life will surely suffer. You’ll be wasting so much time going out of your way just to save a few extra dollars here and there. Sacrifice and scarcity will be your constant companions. That’s no way to live.

In the long run, it’s much more productive to focus your time and energy – not to mention your precious life – on the side of generating more income. You have no hard limit on that side. For all practical purposes, the sky is the limit. With commitment and persistence, you can boost your income by many multiples of what you might save on the expense and tax side.

Working on the income side is a lot more fun to boot. You get to spend your time creating value and receiving money with gratitude instead of worrying about whether or not you can afford to splurge on organic produce.

For my taxes, I pay an accountant to do all the paperwork for me. That costs extra money, but I don’t worry about it. I also procrastinate endlessly when it comes to doing any sort of accounting work. I do the bare minimum I can. I keep everything in good order, but I don’t balance the accounts very often. At tax time I let my accountant work his magic to figure out the best deductions for me, but if I have to do extra work that I don’t want to do just to save a little more money, I simply decline. That way I get to spend more time on the value creation and delivery side, not to to mention the enjoyment of life side. The pay is much better on that side, both financially and emotionally.

Last year my accountant told me I could save more money by deducting the business use of my car. All I’d have to do would be to keep track of mileage when I drive my car for business reasons. There may have been some other ways to claim this deduction, but they still required me to do more tracking, analysis, and/or paperwork. That seemed like a stupid waste of life, so I told my accountant to skip that deduction – not worth it to me. I’m not going to waste more time on stuff I don’t enjoy just so I can save an extra thousand dollars on my taxes. The IRS will surely have no trouble taking the extra money, and I’m happy to spend my time doing more of what I enjoy, which will easily enable me to earn enough money to cover that missed deduction many times over. I’d actually lose money if I tried to take that deduction. It’s yet another sucker bet for those who choose to live in scarcity.

When it comes to my expenses, I don’t maintain any sort of budget, either on the business side or personal side. Budgeting is boring to me, so I don’t do it. I simply spend whatever I feel like spending. When my expenses rise, expectedly or unexpectedly, I don’t worry about it. I don’t have to worry. I know that if I begin to overspend, I can always restore balance by over-earning just as easily.

Earning money is fun. Spending money is fun. Both activities are interchangeable. Fussing over expenses and taxes isn’t remotely fun, so that isn’t part of the equation – that kind of stuff gets triaged.

My latest credit card bill for my business is $1010, which is on the low side. Most of it is stuff that gets auto-billed each month. I was too busy earning money that month and didn’t have as much time to spend money. The bill before that was $6900. Ah yes, the Bermuda conference. I had a lot of fun spending money that month. The bill before that was somewhere in between. My personal credit card bills fluctuate similarly. Every month I pay off every balance completely, so there’s no revolving balance and no interest charges.

I “waste” money on unnecessary expenses all the time. I overspend on little things. I don’t fuss over trying to save money. I assume that whatever I can spend, I can earn. That wasn’t always the case though – it took years to train up to the level where I could earn enough to cover my desires.

Years ago I had a friend who absolutely hated waiting in line. He saw it as a personal insult. He used to say that all stores and restaurants should have a separate cashier for people who are willing to pay 50% more, just so they’ll never have to wait in line. I thought he was nuts at the time, but he was simply trying to maximize the value he got from life. Waiting in life sucked too much value away.

I really don’t know how much money I earn each month because I only look into it a couple times a year. It’s just video game gold anyway – doesn’t really matter what the exact figures are. I have a general feel/vibe for how the cash is flowing week by week, and in terms of spending I do my best to go with the flow. Is my bank account growing or shrinking? I like to see the numbers keep growing. I check my account balances a couple times a week to take their pulse. I earn money from multiple sources pretty much every day, so my checking account is perpetually refilling itself, but I want to make sure there are no big surprises like fraudulent charges. Some months it’s hard for me to guess what I actually earned within +/- $5K. I simply don’t care to keep track. It’s somewhere in the tens of thousands each month, more than enough to live off.

I do the same with my book. I have no idea how many copies it’s sold. Can’t even fathom a guess within +/- 5K copies. I haven’t asked my publisher for a sales update this whole year. It’s great that we’re up to a dozen languages for translated versions, but as for the money and sales, I don’t really care. I’ll sort it out when the royalty statements start coming. It will be more fun to be surprised.

Even though this may sound financially irresponsible, I think it’s just the opposite. My bills always get paid. I’m paying down my mortgage much faster than necessary. My car is 100% paid for. I’m sharing this with you because it actually works, even though it may sound counter-intuitive.

Managing your finances in real life – the fun way – is very much like earning gold in a computer role-playing game. Earning money is play. Spending money is also play. If you aren’t having fun, you’re missing the whole point.

I think it’s truly irresponsible to waste your precious life on things you don’t enjoy, like fussing over your expenses or taxes. Does it feel good to you to sacrifice quality of life to keep a tight grip on your finances, when you could be making plenty of money if you simply spent more time doing what you love and providing value for others? Would you rather do something creative and have plenty of money to splash around, or spend your time dealing with cheap items that keep breaking down? I think you deserve the best that life has to offer you, but you have to step up and claim it. No one is stopping you from doing that.

Cash Reserves

Suze Orman recommends maintaining a short-term cash reserve (not counting long-term investments) equivalent to about 6 months of expenses. I think that’s a wise idea. A decent cash reserve gives you a lot more flexibility, whether your income is fixed or variable.

I maintain a liquid cash reserve at all times to have a cushion for any unforeseen expenses. I like to see that reserve be at least $50K, preferably closer to $100K. That way if something unexpected happens like a wacko filing a frivolous lawsuit because he spilled boiling water on himself while attempting my brown rice recipe… or crashed his car while attempting to drive after a week on polyphasic sleep, I can easily afford a decent hitman.

When your income source is fairly vulnerable, like if you could get laid off or fired and spend a lot of time out of work, you may want to maintain a bigger cash reserve. But when you assert more control over your income and maintain more options for responding to financial setbacks, you don’t need as big a reserve.

If you have multiple streams of mostly passive income, and if it would take a major upheaval to threaten those sources even if you stopped working for a while, you may be fine with a 2-month cash reserve or less. If I suddenly need more cash, I have lots of options that could easily be implemented in less than 60 days. I could do another joint-venture promotion. I could create and sell an info product. I could do another book deal and get an advance. Even so, when I focus on feeling abundant, I naturally attract a bigger reserve than I need.

Cash reserves are useful because there’s a lag between creating and delivering value and receiving income from it. Some income sources have low lag time. For example, when someone registers for my workshop and pays by credit card or PayPal, the money is in my bank account within a few days. Some sources pay monthly, such as affiliate deals. Others pay quarterly, semi-annually, or less frequently, like book royalties. Some pay “whenever.” A cash reserve helps to smooth out fluctuations. It also keeps you from incurring stupid bank fees from bouncing checks. Having a bank balance that’s too low can lead to a lot of time wasted as well as unnecessary stress.

How do you build a cash reserve? You can get there by skimping on expenses, but that gets really tedious and boring after a while, so I don’t recommend it. Focus on creating more value, training up your value-creating skills, and building a bigger client base for whatever service you provide. It all comes down to getting better at creating and delivering value.

I certainly didn’t make sacrifices to build a cash reserve. I just kept doing what I enjoyed. I stayed alert for new ways to express and deliver value to people. Sometimes it was as simple as asking, “What else can I write about that could help people in some way?” I didn’t have to focus on earning money. When you get good at creating and delivering value, money finds its way to you.

Luck or Choice?

Why do I find myself in this “lucky” situation where I get to do what I want, earn what I want, and spend what I want? If you think luck had anything to do with this, you’re crazy, deluded, and otherwise insane. This happened by choice. I created this career and financial situation deliberately. It wasn’t easy to figure out how all the pieces would fit together – it took years – but it was definitely worth it.

How long it takes you to hit your desired financial stride is irrelevant since the time is going to pass anyway. You can spend that time creating the life you desire, or you can stay stuck with something you don’t want. You might as well work toward what you desire, unless you want sacrifice and scarcity to accompany you all the way to the grave.

Recognize that a fixed income is a sucker bet. It’s like drinking soda. It doesn’t matter that lots of people do it – that doesn’t make it any less dumb. There’s no good reason to sacrifice yourself to line someone else’s pockets. Don’t be a sucker.

You’re free to opt out of the fixed income sucker bet whenever you want. When you do this, rest assured that the other suckers in your life will bark at you for pouring lemon juice on their cuts, and the higher ups won’t appreciate that you saw through their scheme. But you’ll be free to decide how much you earn. You’ll be able to write your own paycheck, not with airy-fairy wishful thinking but with a commitment to creating and delivering the best value you can, regardless of how you choose to express yourself.

Of course having a variable income isn’t all fun and roses. It takes time to get the hang of it and to get a good feel for how to balance the flow of earning and spending. It took me about 5 years before I achieved basic competence with it. I made tons of mistakes during that time, but I learned from them. After that it was pretty easy to maintain stability.

If you pursue this path, maybe you can figure it out in 2 years. Maybe it will take 10. Again, the time is going to pass anyway. If you drop the fixed income mindset, you’ll end up in a pretty sweet place once you eventually figure it out.

As you probably noticed, I made up some words in this article. You’re free to coinify your own words too. This is your reality after all. You make the rules. Just as you can subscribe to other people’s verbal patterns, you can also subscribe to other people’s income patterns. But you don’t have to. You never did have to. Just because a pattern is popular doesn’t mean it’s the best pattern for you. Give that some thoughtification.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, October 2-4, 2009.

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Psychic Development Video Interview

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:49:00 +0000

If you’ve been following Erin’s blog, then you’ve already seen this, but if not…

Erin and I recently did a 35-minute video interview for the Alison and Jaye Show (see below). Most of the Q&A focuses on psychic development and communicating with spirit guides, including the benefits and pitfalls of receiving guidance from non-physical entities. We also discuss overcoming blocks to financial abundance near the end of the interview.

If you’re convinced there’s no such thing as psychic abilities, you can safely skip this interview because it won’t likely do much for you. This video is geared more toward people who already have some experiences with psychic phenomena as well as skeptics who are curious about this topic and want to learn more. By skeptics I’m referring to open-minded doubters but not close-minded disbelievers. If you aren’t open to this sort of thing, don’t press play.

If you liked this video, you may also enjoy listening to Erin’s recent 60-minute radio interview with Janice Marie Wilson, which covers similar topics and includes some Q&A with live callers.

Additionally, Erin is now offering an instant download of her PDF “10 Ways to Raise Your Vibration” when you sign up for her free newsletter. Raising your vibration essentially means feeling stronger, lighter, and happier and releasing feelings of depression, anxiety, fear, anger, guilt, shame, grief, etc. These techniques can also be used to boost your passion and motivation for action. The lower your vibration, the more you’ll be stuck in negative emotions, apathy, and helplessness. The higher your vibration, the stronger, happier, and more vibrant you’ll feel.

In case you’re wondering whether or not we’re going to cover psychic development during our Las Vegas workshop in October, the answer is no, not by design. If someone brings it up during Q&A, we’ll answer their questions, but this topic is too expansive to adequately cover in this particular workshop. We didn’t want our first workshop to require attendees to be receptive to psychic development. We’d have to plan a separate workshop to do this topic justice.

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Modern-Day Nazis

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:48:59 +0000

Here’s a short video (less than 4 minutes) showing some daily practices that people who eat eggs are supporting:

Realize that if you eat eggs, you’re actively and directly supporting practices like this. This video is actually pretty mild compared to what happens to the hens.

What’s the difference between being the guy who tosses the live baby chicks into the grinder vs. paying someone else to do it for you? Of course there’s no meaningful difference other than how much you distance yourself from the truth.

There’s really no difference between this level of conscience and Hitler’s treatment of the Jews. If people can justify treating animals like this for the mere taste and satiety of an unnecessary digestible, what’s to stop them from relating to other human beings the same way? The law? If you’re willing to kill and torture defenseless animals simply to satisfy a craving that you could easily do without, what more are you capable of when the stakes are higher?

Animal torture and human torture both occur at the same level of consciousness — the level of separation at which inflicting harm on another being is seen as justifiable. Distinctions between the two are made at the level of rationalization and assigned meaning, but harming animals doesn’t occur at a higher level of consciousness than harming humans. If you do either, you’re certainly capable of both, given the right conditions. Look within yourself and observe that the same consciousness that says, “I don’t care what happens to this baby chick” is the same level of consciousness that says, “I don’t care what happens to that guy overseas.”

All it takes is for you to say, “That person/animal is unimportant to me,” or “If it gives me a little more pleasure, then torturing and killing is fine,” and you can justify any behaviors you like. And as history shows us, quite often people do exactly that. Is this how you truly want to live, or do you think you’re capable of better?

Now you might think that if you eat free range eggs, then your conscience is clear. Nice try, but not even in the ballpark. Free range is no better because the hens still originate from the same factories that grind up the male chicks alive, so you’re still supporting the same practices. “Free range” is only a marketing term anyway and has no legal meaning. It’s largely a gimmick for branding purposes.

What about the excuse, “Everyone else is doing it, so it must be okay”? Hey, that line worked pretty well for the Nazis. Maybe it pisses you off to have me compare you to the Nazis. The Nazis were pretty pissed off too, so there’s another match. Perhaps you aren’t so dissimilar after all.

Obviously it’s a different story if you get your eggs from a local chicken-loving farm where the animals are well-treated, but do you get all of your eggs from such sources and never stray? This would mean never consuming any products that include eggs, such as baked goods or pasta or processed foods or restaurant foods with eggs, where the source is almost certain to be a factory like the above. If you’re lazy about it, you might as well buy a meat grinder and lend the guy in the video a helping hand.

If you give it a little thought, does it really make sense to eat the reproductive material from another species’ ovaries? I know it tastes good with certain preparation methods, but I’m sure your own reproductive organs would taste good with the right sauce. When you eat eggs, you do realize that you’re eating something that comes out of a bird’s vagina, don’t you? You might as well turn a woman’s period into pasta sauce.

Dropping eggs from your diet is actually quite easy. It’s a nasty habit that arises from social conditioning, but it isn’t hard to dump. I stopped eating eggs many years ago and never went back. Before that I often had eggs for breakfast. I especially loved omelettes. In January 1997 I did a 30-day trial with no eggs (I also dropped dairy at the same time), and I never had any desire for eggs after that. I lost 7 pounds the first week and felt a lot more energetic afterwards. You can just as easily use the same 30-day trial method to see what egg-free life is like for you.

If you like scrambled eggs, a good transition food is scrambled tofu. Google the phrase, and you’re sure to find plenty of recipes online. Scrambled tofu (or tofu scramble) is very easy to make. Tofu is a very bland food by itself, but it easily picks up the flavor of anything you mix into it such as various spices. No doubt some people would rather avoid soy, but it’s a big step up from any meal that comes from a menstruating bird.

Then again, maybe you’re one of those Nazis who really enjoys their work. Maybe you’re the kind of person who watches the video and thinks about applying for a job at a chicken processing plant. Well, at least you’re congruent.

Ultimately you have four basic options:

(1) Eat eggs and feel good about the whole process, including how the baby chicks and the adult hens are treated. This means you experience no guilt or regret about it. You’re totally fine with slaughtering baby birds on a daily basis. If baby chicks must die, so be it. Your taste buds are worth it. Heinrich Himmler would be proud.

(2) Eat eggs and turn your back on truth. It makes you feel sad, guilty, etc. to retain awareness of the reality behind your food choices, so you do your best to tune all of that out. Listen to the marketing messages, and try not to think about what goes on behind the scenes. Become dumber and more ignorant in order to create faux happiness. Distance yourself from your true feelings, and become increasingly disconnected from yourself and more of a social drone. Don’t rock the boat. Live as a typical Nazi.

(3) Keep eating eggs, but get them only from compassionate sources that fits your values. You’re willing to go out of your way to satisfy your craving, but you want to do as little harm as possible.

(4) Stop eating eggs and stop supporting a process that doesn’t feel good to you. Listen to your conscience ahead of your cravings and addictions. This is a more difficult path to be sure, but it also promises tremendous growth. On this path you may get egged by others from time to time because your actions will expose their incongruencies, but you’ll know you’ve made the right decision for you, and any resistance will simply make you stronger. The more you can summon the courage and fortitude to make such decisions, the stronger and more congruent you become as a compassionate human being.

Technically there are other levels beyond this, but at that point the solutions became less about personal growth and more about contribution.

If this post/video pushes some emotional buttons in you, rest assured it’s intentional. To whom do those buttons belong anyway, and why do they keep flashing “push me” in bright neon letters?

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$100 Workshop Discount Expires After August 31st

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:48:58 +0000

This is a reminder that the price for the upcoming Conscious Growth Workshop (October 2-4, 2009 in Las Vegas) will increase from $497 to $597 after August 31st, so you only have 5 more days to get the $100 discount. On the morning of September 1st, the price will be $100 more than it is now.

The registration rate has been steadily increasing as that deadline gets closer, with more people signing up for the workshop every day now.

Someone recently asked in the forums if I could extend the deadline for the discount. This was my reply:

I can’t afford to make exceptions. I mean once word leaks out that a pirate has gone soft, people begin to disobey you, and it’s nothing but work, work, work all the time. ;)

That’s a quote from The Princess Bride, but suffice it to say that I’m not flexing on the deadline. This isn’t a workshop that rewards procrastination. If you’re still on the fence, this would be a good time to make a decision. Why pay $100 more when you don’t have to?

Initially Erin wasn’t planning to speak at this event, but when she saw how much fun I was having mapping out the various exercises, she changed her mind. So now I expect she’ll be sharing a few personal stories at the workshop to help illustrate some of the ideas in action.

If you live outside the USA and are thinking about attending, you certainly won’t be alone. About a third of registered attendees are flying in from outside the USA. We have people coming from Canada, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Romania, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Italy, and Australia.

The workshop FAQ includes lots of information to assist you in making travel plans. Flights to and from Las Vegas are often cheaper than other cities, and the hotel rooms are very affordable, so your total trip cost may be less than you expect. Las Vegas is a fun city too. Erin and I came here on vacation about 30 times before we finally moved here in 2004.

How to Decide

If you’re still not sure about attending, here’s a simple exercise you can do to make the choice. I’m sharing this to help you make the right decision for you, so this isn’t a sneaky sales tactic or anything like that. I often use this method myself when I have to make an important decision.

Take some deep breaths and quiet your mind for a while. First, imagine that you decided not to attend. Visualize that you’re doing whatever you’d normally do that weekend, perhaps staying home or doing your usual weekend routine. You also keep the money you could have spent on the trip. Do your best not to be overly pessimistic or optimistic. Just imagine how you honestly expect to spend that weekend if you don’t attend the workshop.

Next, project the results of that weekend forward in time. What are the long-term consequences, and how do they play out? Include the consequences of keeping the money you might have spent on the trip. Just consider the most probable long-term outcomes.

Notice how that feels. What does your intuition say about that path? How would you label that feeling? Say those labels out loud.

Now take a few more deep breaths, and clear your mind. Do the same process, but this time imagine that you did attend the workshop. Imagine that you went to Las Vegas. If you’d be flying into the city, imagine seeing and hearing the slot machines in the airport when you get off the plane (there are indeed slot machines all over the Vegas airport). Imagine going to your hotel and checking in. Imagine picking up your badge at the registration table outside the room and chatting with some of the other attendees. Imagine sitting in the hotel ballroom with dozens of other people and listening to me (and Erin) share ideas with you. Imagine yourself doing a lot of interactive exercises with the other attendees. Imagine people up on stage sharing their stories. Perhaps even imagine yourself on stage sharing some of your challenges and getting help (if you expect that you’d raise your hand when I ask for a volunteer). Imagine going out and doing fun stuff in Las Vegas each evening and possibly hanging out with other attendees you’ve gotten to know during the workshop. Imagine being guided through various challenges and enduring a bit of an emotional rollercoaster as you see your life from different perspectives. Imagine yourself traveling home afterwards with time to reflect on the experience afterwards.

Next, project the results of that weekend forward in time. What are the long-term consequences, and how do they play out? Include the consequences of spending money for the trip. Just consider the most probable long-term outcomes.

Notice how this feels. What does your intuition say about this path? How would you label this feeling? Say these labels out loud.

I know my description of the Vegas weekend was more detailed — that’s because I can’t fill in the details of your normal weekend since I don’t know what that looks like for you. So you’ll have to fill in the details there based on your own experiences.

Now which path feels better to you? Pick the one that feels the most positive.

When I do this exercise to decide whether or not to attend a workshop in another city, it can go either way. Sometimes it’s clear that I should go because I can expect to gain a lot from it and meet some great people, even if it’s a bit of a hassle to get there. Other times I feel it just isn’t worth the time, energy, and cost to attend.

You may have some conflicted feelings regarding each path. Maybe staying home feels boring, but it also feels more safe and secure. Maybe attending the workshop feels scary because you can’t control what will happen, but it also excites and energizes you when you imagine yourself there. This means you have to look at the total package. How do the long-term consequences feel?

Again, try not to be overly optimistic or pessimistic. Be as realistic as you can. If this would be an expensive trip for you, don’t ignore the consequences of spending that money. Similarly, don’t overplay the hassle of getting to Vegas. About 35 million tourists come here each year, and this city was literally built to accommodate travelers.

Hope this helps you decide.

Some useful links:

Conscious Growth Workshop (all the details, who should attend, what you’ll learn, daily schedule)

Workshop FAQ (questions answered, travel advice, Las Vegas info)

Register NOW (take action, engage, make it so)

Would you rather spend a weekend with an amazing group of growth-oriented people while being pushed to think, feel, and stretch yourself in new ways, or would you rather stay home and do what you normally do? You decide.

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Why Some People Are Better Manifesters Than Others

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:48:56 +0000

Last month when Erin and I were in Bermuda, we sat down and talked for a few hours with a talented musician. Since I was curious, I asked him, “Why is it that some people can sing so well, while other people sing very poorly? Is it just a difference in natural inborn talent?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discovering and Correcting Vibrational Discordance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making Adjustments

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

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

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

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

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

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Free Paraliminal Download Expires Aug 16

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:48:55 +0000

In April Learning Strategies offered StevePavlina.com visitors a free download of their Peak Performance Paraliminal, which they normally sell for $29.95. They intended to make this offer available only for a limited time, so it’s going to expire on Sunday, August 16th. If you haven’t had a chance to download the freebie yet, please follow the link to get it now.

The feedback I received from people who listened to the free Paraliminal was very positive. You can listen to it over and over for relaxation or positive mental conditioning.

Paraliminals are personal development audio programs designed to condition your mind for enhanced results, such as greater productivity, positive behavioral changes, better health, and so on.

What’s unique about Paraliminals is that they deliver simultaneous but distinct messages to your left and right ears. One message is tailored to your left brain, the other to your right brain. No subliminal messages are used, so you can hear exactly what’s being said. The messages are of course very positive and uplifting. It feels good to listen to them.

Listening to a Paraliminal is a very relaxing experience, much like a guided meditation session. Paraliminals are recorded with special Holosync technology that uses binaural beats to put your mind into a relaxed and receptive state. This is one reason I recommend Paraliminals so highly — they never fail to put me into a deep state of relaxation.

I wrote a detailed Paraliminals review a while back, so please check it out if you want to learn more about them. I own the entire Paraliminals collection, and I didn’t write my review until I’d listened to most of the Paraliminals multiple times.

Download the free Paraliminal and give it a listen. I think you’ll really enjoy it.

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How to Network With Busy People – Part 12

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:48:53 +0000

This is a continuation of the “How to Network With Busy People” series. The first post in the series can be found here.

Continuing on with our tips…

Communicate like a human being, not a marketer.

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

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

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

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

Be authentic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be patient.

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

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

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

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

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

Realize that the rules change once you’re in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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How to Network With Busy People – Part 11

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:48:50 +0000

This is a continuation of the “How to Network With Busy People” series. The first post in the series can be found here.

Continuing on with our tips…

Don’t apologize for reaching out.

Never begin your first contact with an apology.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get to the point.

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

Never ever begin your emails with a paragraph like this:

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

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

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

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

Never send a wall of text.

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

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

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

This is a mistake.

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

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

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

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

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

Keep your personality switched on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued…

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How to Network With Busy People – Part 10

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:48:49 +0000

This is a continuation of the “How to Network With Busy People” series. The first post in the series can be found here.

Continuing on with our tips…

Meet in person.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meet people when their shields are down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connect with laughter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued…

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How to Network With Busy People – Part 9

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:48:47 +0000

This is a continuation of the “How to Network With Busy People” series. The first post in the series can be found here.

Continuing on with our tips…

Offer genuine friendship, not neediness.

This idea is more about attitude than actions. Busy people are so accustomed to being approached by people who want to vamp their energy in some way, so their shields often go up when they meet new people. In the back of their mind, they’re thinking, “What does this person want from me?”

You’ll get much better results if you approach busy people from a place of giving, kindness, generosity, friendship, and equality – as opposed to coming from a place of neediness, wanting something from them, seeing them as a potential client or prospect or valued contact, etc.

I meet a lot of busy and sometimes famous people through my work in the personal development field. I don’t approach them from a place of wanting or needing anything from them. I prefer to keep my energy flowing outward instead of trying to suck energy from them. This approach makes people feel comfortable, so they quickly drop their shields, and that’s when the real connection and deeper conversation begins. My focus is on enjoying life and having fun, and the rest flows easily from there.

I noticed that I quickly relax and lower my shields when I’m around the same type of person. As a busy person I learned to be very guarded with my energy. On the occasions when I meet someone who doesn’t want or need anything from me and they’re just happy and having fun, it’s immensely refreshing. Those kinds of interactions really stand out. Those are the kinds of people I love to spend time with.

This isn’t about giving so you can get. If you see it that way, you’re missing the point, and ultimately you’re still trying to vamp something from the other person. You’re still holding yourself in a place of neediness and lack.

This is about giving because you’re using your power to hold yourself in a place of abundance, connectedness, and oneness. You don’t need anything from anyone. You’re simply allowing your energy to flow outward, and you’re exploring new possibilities for connection and love.

When you approach people from this place of completeness, you’ll find that most of the time their shields drop pretty quickly, and they feel very much at ease around you. Comfort allows other people to be fully present and fully themselves.

A couple weeks ago, Erin and I were in Bermuda for our first retreat with the Transformational Leadership Council. This group includes a lot of busy people who are used to getting “hit on” quite often. Members of this group include entrepreneurs, celebrities, and multi-millionaires.

I could have gone to this retreat with an attitude of neediness, thinking about all the deals to be made, the potential business partners, the money to be earned, and the coolness of associating with famous people. I could have behaved like a vampire trying to suck everyone else’s energy. I could have treated them like targets instead of human beings. Blech!

Instead I went in with the attitude that we’re all one, we’re already connected, and I’m there to share, to love, to have fun, to explore, and to create. I felt so happy and abundant throughout the week. I truly didn’t need or want anything from anyone. I didn’t need anyone to accept or validate me.

Similarly, I didn’t go around trying to do favors for people or trying to impress them, since that would also require coming from a place of lack. I simply assumed that I was already best friends with everyone there and that nothing had to be earned.

Throughout the week I shared lots of love, laughs, hugs, stories, ideas, and even some tears. I made dozens of new friends – friends I expect to stay connected with for many years to come.

Will I do business with some of those people later? Sure. But the friendship is the most important part of networking.

More than one person came up to me during the week and said something like, “Steve, I just love your energy. You seem so happy.” I believe Erin got similar feedback since her attitude was similar to mine.

The truth is that at this point in my life, I’d rather form an authentic new friendship than cultivate a strategic business alliance.

And interestingly enough, genuine friendship is perhaps what busy people are most starved for. So many people try to take their energy or seek validation from them. It’s much less common for them to be approached by people who just want to connect with them from a place of love and abundance without wanting or needing anything.

In my almost 15+ years as an entrepreneur, I’ve been approached literally tens of thousands of times by people who want something from me – advice, answers, business deals, money, referrals, etc. But how many times have I been approached by someone offering genuine friendship without secretly wanting or needing something from me? I think that has happened only a few hundred times total. In fact, this year it has become a big focus of mine to have more interactions based on friendship and less that are based on want or need.

Which types of people do I want to hang out with most often? Obviously it feels best to hang out with genuine friends who already feel whole and complete and who aren’t needy.

I should mention that my experience at TLC wasn’t uncommon at all. Almost everyone there seemed to have a similar attitude. We all dropped our shields and shared our true selves with each other. If anyone there had gone into sales-minded networker mode, I think it would have creeped everyone out. But since no one did that – at least not that I saw – the experience was very open and authentic.

Of course if you network with the goal of creating real friendship, all the other stuff you could possibly want or need will arise naturally from that. People who become good friends often look for ways to do business together. I know some people say that business and friendship don’t mix. My advice is not to do business with anyone who believes that. I’ve done many deals with friends – in fact, I very much prefer it. I’m very hesitant to do business with someone I don’t feel a good connection with. Some deals just don’t perform well for one reason or another, but as long as everyone behaves with integrity, it needn’t hurt the friendship. A lack of integrity hurts a friendship a lot more than a business deal that didn’t meet expectations.

It’s perfectly okay to meet someone with a desire to eventually do business with them, but if that’s your primary motivation – if that’s truly what’s most important to you – then the relationship will develop very differently compared to when your primary motivation is genuine friendship. Your life will feel a lot emptier and less fulfilling if you value transactions above friendship.

When I think about all the wonderful new friends I made this year, I can’t even imagine putting business ahead of those friendships. I’d rather stay friends with these people and never do business than earn millions of dollars cutting deals but not have the friendships. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that way. Busy people often have plenty of business opportunities coming their way, and they don’t necessarily need more of the same.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a busy person, would you prefer to have lots of money and business partners but few real friends, or would you rather have lots of deep and abiding friendships but little money? I think that deep down, most people would rather have the love and connection. If you pursue money first and foremost, you’re more likely to end up with neither money nor friends. Human beings typically dislike being reduced to transactions.

What do you really want in this area of your life? What kind of network do you want to create? Do you want a network of great friends who like and respect you? Or do you want a network of transaction partners who barely even know you?

Is it possible that the reason you’ve thought about other people as dollar signs or “prospects” instead of as real human beings is that you think money and success will ultimately help you feel more worthy of connection and love? In truth the best way to enjoy connection and love is to connect with others on that basis instead of trying to use money as the middleman.

When you network on the basis of friendship, you take your work to a whole new level. Every deal you transact becomes an act of helping your friends achieve their goals, and your friends do the same for you. Your network transforms into your family of goal achievement partners.

To be continued…

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How to Network With Busy People – Part 12

Communicate like a human being, not a marketer.

Be authentic.

Be patient.

Realize that the rules change once you’re in.

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How to Network With Busy People – Part 11

Don’t apologize for reaching out.

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Keep your personality switched on.

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How to Network With Busy People – Part 10

Meet in person.

Meet people when their shields are down.

Connect with laughter.

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How to Network With Busy People – Part 9

Offer genuine friendship, not neediness.

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