Most the blogosphere is alive talking about his death. I want to talk about his life.

Aaron was a very smart geek. He won the ArsDigita Prize in 2000, when he was 12 years old. At 14 he coauthored the specifications for RSS. RSS is the technology the entire internet uses to keep track of blog posts, among other things—if you’re reading this in a feed reader like Google Reader, you are using Aaron’s work. He helped write the code layer of the Creative Commons license. He cofounded reddit.com, one of the biggest sites on the internet, and became wealthy around 20 years old after reddit was sold. He started DemandProgress.org. The list goes on, he was a stud.

He killed himself when he was 26 years old.

The news hit me harder than I expected. I didn’t know him personally, but I did read his blog when he wrote, and I knew his story. But that’s not the reason his death hit. I’ll tell you the reason in a moment.

Aaron was about 2 years younger than I am. Most people can just be sad about losing a genius kid too early, but I have to face more than that. He and I are not only about the same age, but we share many of the same skills. If you had compared us at 11 years old and asked: who will be more successful? Who will have more of an impact? It would have been a toss up by almost any metric.

But our paths began to diverge as he made more broadminded choices than I did. I built my first major web application around the same age that he build The Info Network. Technically they are similarly complex, but The Info Network was wikipedia before wikipedia existed, and mine was a toy for video game players who wanted to organize tournaments. He got the ArsDigita prize and got on the radar of important people. I got a D in social studies.

And the pattern continues. While I was learning similar things, and doing basically trivial things with my knowledge, he was building RSS, reddit, creative commons, demand progress, and more. And maybe it sounds like hubris, but I know that the difference isn’t that he’s a genius and I’m not. I’m confident that I could do any of the individual things that he did. The difference is that I didn’t fucking do it.

The difference is that instead of applying for ycombinator at 18, I got married and took on 2 step children, and anchored myself in a no man’s land of technology. And it wasn’t an accident: I considered ycombinator. I considered moving to San Fransisco or Boston, the tech hubs of the world. But I decided I “couldn’t” because I prioritized having a family, probably too early.

I decided over and over not to do the Big Thing because it was too big without a network, too hard without support, too much with a mortgage and mouths to feed.

And Aaron’s success also isn’t an accident. He thought very deeply about working on important problems. He was extremely circumspect when reddit sold, and wrote that people were missing the point of entrepreneurship, that it could be so much more. He thought that it was all of our duties to work on truly important problems, and that’s how he lived.

And for all the “impressive” things I get pats on the back for, none of them has had the impact of any one of Aaron’s projects. And it’s my fault. It’s not because he’s a genius and I could never do that. It’s my out of whack priorities.

Here’s why I’m really upset about Aaron’s death. Follow me here:

1. The reason his death hit me so hard is that in a different life, I imagine that I am him,
2. but I’ve made different, maybe worse, choices than he did, so I’m not him,
3. but it’s okay, because he is him, I don’t need to be him as long as he is.
4. And that’s the thing now. He’s gone, and now it falls to us who remain to take up his work.

I told myself I could skate before because people like Aaron were out there doing what I could and should be doing. And now Aaron’s not there, and I realize it’s all a bullshit cop out.

So, to honor his memory and his philosophy I’m re-evaluating my priorities and the projects I’m working on. I realize that I need to expand my support network like he did, and I need to have the courage to stick to my vision of a better world, just like he did.

Aaron Swartz 1986-2013

Thanks for keeping us honest Aaron, and thanks for all your hard work.

The perennial problem for people like me is too many options. What do I do with my time? With my life? What should I focus on?

I go through phases where I want to focus on different things, hoping I can finally settle, but it never works out. If I do too much of one thing I like, I miss the other things I like. I get bored and listless.

So I decided to embrace my inner polymath, and just do All The Things. I choose everything.

So, to commemorate my decision, I have spread my wings a little. This blog will not change, I like it talking about what it talks about. But now I’ve built two new places to support my other two major areas of interest.

The first is PeteArt.com, which has a selection of my paintings for download and for sale. Buy all the prints so I have lots of money and I can write really good posts for you.

The other is PeteMichaud.github.com. Github is where all the cool kids in technology keep their software source code, and I’m super cool so a lot of my work is there too. If you’re curious about my technical work and thoughts, check it out.

Consequences

The downside to spreading my attention is maybe that I’ll do less of one particular thing or I won’t be as good at it a someone who does it all the time. The practical reality is that if I try to do one thing for too long, I burn out, so I’m not really doing it “all the time” anyway.

The upside is that really interesting things happen when multiple disciplines overlap. I’m among a sea of software developers who can write Ruby, but how many of them are professional artists? There are lots of artists, but how many artists also have a solid foundation in physics? Blogging is crowded, but how many personal development bloggers can also write enterprise scale web applications?

I built Kenrose because I am a writer and a software developer. What will I do next? I suspect that “synergy” may be more valuable than the lack of focus costs, but that remains to be seen. What do you think?

That candy contains no nutritional value is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter that you want people to like apples instead. Candy is palatable and gives them a jolt of good feeling, therefore it’s a huge industry.

Pop music is more insidious than candy, because it can stimulate our brain on at least two levels. The first level is the same as candy, the driving beats and catchy hooks stimulate our animal brain. But the real power of pop music is to give people a jolt of the warm and fuzzies by confirming what they already believe or desire.

The Secret of Popularity

It’s not a very good secret, to be honest. It’s obvious. If you want to be popular, make everyone around you right. If you want your products or art to be popular, make it make everyone who sees it right.

Pop music is a case study in finding a market and catering to it. They sing to college kids about getting super drunk and blowing your rent money on drugs. They sing to 11 year old girls about everlasting love with a boy who is wealthy, cute, and malleable. They sing to insecure young men about how cool it is to be rich and tough and how many girls will fuck you if you are.

These aren’t revelations to anyone, they are deeply held beliefs and values that are simply being reflected back verbatim.

And it’s not just young, dumb kids who go for this, this is the human condition. Part of the reason I’m a fan of the band Tool is that they confirm my worldview that exploration of the mind and universe is worthwhile and that there’s more to experience than meets the eye. I like Alex Grey because his artwork reflects my experience of the world, verbatim, back to me.

Fox News faithfully parrots all the fear and certainty that their audience feels right back to them. MSNBC provides the same mirror for liberals.

Who’s right or wrong doesn’t matter. People buy what they want to be true.

The Anti-herd

On one hand, you’re weird because you’re reading a blog that consistently details the ways you are wrong. On the other hand, this is just another mirror. I’m just parroting your deeply held belief that that our lives could be more meaningful, and that society is flawed. I’m just supporting your value of curiosity, and perhaps your desire to feel aloof, intellectually superior to those chewing cud lost among the herd.

In what may be a feat of self congratulation, I believe there is a distinction between what we do here and pop music or Fox News. The difference is that we are capable of having this conversation.

Acknowledging this condition of perpetual confirmation would undermine the belief structures of Fox News viewers and pop music listeners, and therefore would disintegrate the whole enterprise (quickly giving way to new organizations that would gladly fill the void).

On the other hand, the same acknowledgement strengthens our worldview and method of being, much like science done correctly systemically and continuously exposes its own weaknesses, which keeps it strong. Our constant questions about what is truly real and valuable tends to fight against the entropy of human bias, even while it is driven by the very same bias.

Sales and Change

There are two lessons here. The first is never to let go of challenging yourself. If you have the inclination to join this anti-herd of introspection, grip it and don’t let go, because it can only make you stronger.

The other, more difficult, lesson is that your art, the product of your life’s work, will not be judged by you or by this tribe. It will be judged by the world. And the world wants what it wants, not what you wish it wanted.

The tastes and beliefs of the world don’t change all at once, much like an evolving species does’t change all at once. They make almost imperceptible shifts, and you can only see the effect over a long period.

If you want to be a strong person, question everything, and assume you’re not correct.

If you want to sell, confirm that your audience is correct, always.

If you want to change the world, sell, but subvert the message. Show them a mirror, but make it a funhouse mirror. Show them a reflection that’s recognizable but deliberately distorted.

Show them an apple, but make sure they see candy. You’ll sell the candy, and they’ll buy the apple.

He was with that girlfriend of his for two and a half years before finally working up the nerve to tell her about his issue because he was afraid he would lose her when she found out his dark secret.

One night Nate swallowed the lump in his throat, and practically through tears, he said he had a confession. That before they have sex, she should know that he has a birth defect.

“I have type 2 triorchidism,” he said.
“It means I have 3 testicles.”

A Heavy Burden

It’s easy to think Nate is making a mountain out of a mole hill, and tell him to just get over it. “Birth defect” is a little dramatic, don’t you think?

Not so fast though. We all have a third testicle. We all have some defect or dark secret that we think makes us unlovable or not good enough. And the thing about having an extra ball is that it feels like a big deal to the person who has it. Even though everyone else can see that it’s nothing at all, that testicle hangs heavy on the person who bears it.

The Power of Perception

The problem is that we project our beliefs onto the world. Everyone knows that Nate’s triorchidism is no big deal, but Nate doesn’t see that, and his reaction to it colors not only his perception, but also the perception of the people around him.

You might expect Nate’s girlfriend to shrug the “confession” off, but imagine that your boyfriend comes to you and tells you he has something to confess. Your mind is racing, because it obviously something horrible—his palms are sweating, he can’t look you in the eye. His speech is halting, and the tension is palpable as he works up the nerve to reveal his secret. He cheated, or he’s a murder, or sex offender, or an energy worker or something. It’s going to be bad. You’re heart is pounding, you brace yourself.

“I have type 2 triorchidism,” he said.

Confusion. Cancer? A wasting disease?

“It means I have 3 testicles.”

Nate’s girlfriend stood up without saying anything, and left his apartment. She wouldn’t answer her phone that day.

Bizarro Defect

I told Nate that what his girlfriend did wasn’t cool, but I also told him that what he sees see as a dark secret, is really no big deal.

In fact, I told him, he could make a huge, awesome joke out of it. He could play at being 50% more manly. He could say he lost a testicle fighting a bear, so now he only has 3 left. Two for babies and one for good luck.

The possibilities are endless. If you make it no big deal, I said, it’ll be no big deal. It might even get you sex with curious girls.

It’s more than just getting over it—it’s more than deciding your defect won’t affect you. It’s deciding your defect isn’t a defect at all. It’s an advantage.

He told me later that he’d had a chance to catch up with her. She apologized, but they ended up breaking up anyway because her reaction was so extreme to such a relatively minor issue.

He told me that if she couldn’t handle his birth defect how could she handle something really bad?

He was right, but the thing that struck me was the term “birth defect” again. Words have power, they shape our perception of the world.

I told him days prior to make a big joke about it, turn it into a funny curiosity. Along similar lines, I suggested this time that he stop calling it his “birth defect.” He’s not defective. I suggested he begin calling it his superpower.

Imagine having this conversation:

You: Hey girl, I have a birth defect I want to tell you about…
Her: Eh, ok…?
You: I have 3 balls.
Her: eh, ok…
awkward/fin

Now imagine having this conversation:

You: Hey girl, did you know I have a superpower?
Her: Hah, yeah? What is it?
You: I have 3 testicles. [insert bear fighting joke at will]
Her: No way! Prove it!
sex/fin

If he were abnormally strong or tall or smart or had an extra finger or something, he wouldn’t call it a birth defect. It’s a label that’s not fair, and I think it’s hurting him more than it’s helping.

Your Superpower

But we’re not really talking about Nate or his amazing gonads, are we? We’re talking about you. We’re talking about your broken confidence, your sagging body, your dark thoughts, your failures, your depression.

Your third testicle. Your superpower.

The objection in your head right now is the same as Nate’s. He also feels like his third testicle couldn’t possibly be a super power. I demonstrated in this post how it could be, but Nate has to feel it before it becomes true.

And before you decide that you’re the exception and there’s no way to turn your defect into a superpower, consider who you’re trying to convince:

Self Portrait 2012

Trust me, I know a thing or two about fully owning physical “deformities” and if you make it awesome, it will be awesome.

Western culture is steeped in Abrahamic cosmology, and one fundamental difference between the universe of God, the Father, and that of say, Brahman or Buddha, is that it only flows one direction. God created the things, the things did stuff, then God came back and everyone died or lived forever or whatever. That’s a fairly unusual perspective in the context of other world religions, who mostly go with the cyclical rebirth of the world.

So it’s no surprise that when a bunch of westerners hear about the end of of this Mayan K’atun (era), they focus on the “end” part.

But what comes after this fiery apocalypse? According to the Mayans, an auspicious time begins. 13 is a holy number for the Mayans, and 12-21-2012 by our notation is written by the Mayans as 13.0.0.0.0 (using their own numerals, of course).

H.

In the song, a snake is taunting him, tempting him, and draining him. The snake wants him to close off, to turn away. He’s also tempted by his “blood” to open his heart instead of closing off.

The conflict comes over him like a storm, and both forces, he says, are killing him. He’s living in fear of his death, until he has an epiphany:

My fear begins to fade
Recalling all of the times
I have died
and will die.
It’s all right.
I don’t mind.

With all its references to religion it’s easy to think this song is somehow religious, but it’s much simpler than that. It’s not literally about death and rebirth.

The singer and songwriter is Maynard Keenan, and this song was written around the time of his son’s birth. (Devo H. Keenan, hence the song title).

He struggles with being ready for fatherhood, until he remembers all the personal apocalypses he has had, all the times his old way of thinking and being and living have “died” before. And yet here he is, alive. Ready for the next death and rebirth into a new and better version of himself.

Apocalypse can be scary because the ego works overtime to avoid change. But the apocalypse is not the end, and in fact doesn’t mean “the end.” The word apocalypse actually means “revelation.”

Whatever is revealed changes everything, its purging fire destroys what was there before, and creates it anew through the surrender of grief.

So it is with the world, and so it is with you.

When my woman was growing up in Meru in the 70s, picking coffee and going to primary school, she walked places instead of driving. Very few people had cars, and the roads were all dirt anyway.

Sometimes she knew it was going to rain while she was walking, and she started walking anyway.

Why?

Because in Meru, if anyone wants to get where they’re going, they have to walk, and if they wait for a time that they’re sure it won’t rain, they would be waiting forever.

So many people never start walking because they are afraid of the rain. They don’t like where they are, and want to go somewhere else, but they don’t go because they might get wet.

But the reality is that when you do get wet, you normally don’t get that wet, when you do, you dry off quickly. You won’t even remember being wet in a little while, unless you unexpectedly had a lot of fun splashing in the puddles along the way.

Hint: I’m not talking about rain.

The cat’s litter box is stinky, and she’s sick of it. She’d asked her boyfriend to clean the thing, but he just didn’t do it enough. Plus when he did do it, he didn’t do it with soap and water or anything, so it continued to smell.

So the argument started when she told him the litter box was making the room smell because he wasn’t cleaning it right. It escalated when he said that he does clean it, just not to her standards, and that if she wanted it done a certain way, she should do it herself.

She told him it wasn’t her responsibility, and it devolved into a litany about the things that she doesn’t do. For example, she doesn’t do the dishes every day like she’s supposed to. But that doesn’t matter, she says, because the dishes don’t stink up the room. It’s not the same. She said it was stupid to turn everything around on her, to which he replied:

“Shut the fuck Up!“

The Wrong Game

First, his reaction was obviously crossing a line between lovers and partners that should not have been crossed for any reason. But the more interesting question is, why did the conversation escalate to such a base level in which two people who apparently love each other are yelling and angry and crossing boundaries?

It’s because they started playing the “Oh yeah? Well you’re wrong!” game.

He’s wrong for not taking care of the litter. She’s wrong for not doing the dishes. He’s wrong because the dishes don’t smell, and plus he’s stupid. Etc.

It’s not really their fault though.

Most people in the world are socialized to make everyone around them wrong. Someone wears perfume that’s too strong, they are wrong, you don’t like it, and they should stop doing that. Your wife is too clingy and you feel suffocated, she’s wrong, she should get a life and leave you alone.

But what if that perfume is the one your mom used when she was alive, and it brings back all the great memories you have of her, so you love it when that woman walks by wearing it? It’s the same stimulus, but now you feel something different about it. What if you feel special and secure when your wife wants to be around you and you feel loved when she checks up on you? The stimulus is the same, but your feel good about it.

What’s different in these situations? Only one thing is different: You.

So obviously your displeasure isn’t really caused by the other person, even though the other person stimulates it. Your displeasure is a fact about you, not a fact about them. In other words, they can’t possibly be wrong for what they are doing, since it’s you who is choosing the reaction. And beside that, no one likes to be made wrong for living their life how they see fit.

But this isn’t an essay about just “choosing” to feel good about people being shitty to you, that would just be abusive. This is an essay about how to get what you want and help everyone feel good about it in the process.

The Right Game

If she wants to convince him to do it her way, she cannot make him wrong for doing things his way. He’s perfectly satisfied with the way he does it, and doesn’t notice or mind the smell. If she were like him, she’d agree with him, and there wouldn’t be any problem at all.

But in this case, they do have clashing opinions on the matter. To come to an agreement, they need to learn a new game. The game is called Nonviolent Communication, or NVC.

The core of NVC is simple: everyone has feelings and they have needs based on those feelings. No one but the person who has them is responsible for someone’s feelings, but anyone can get help with their feelings by asking other people to help meet their needs. Feelings are never caused by other people, only by observations or experiences.

In other words, when you observe something, you might have a feeling about it. That feeling could give rise to a need, and to meet that need you might make a request of someone else.

For example, she could approach her boyfriend with that pattern:

Observation, Feeling, Need, Request

1. Observation: Sweetheart, the smell of the cat litter is becoming overwhelming to me. [It's not a judgement, it's just an observation.]
2. Feeling: When I smell it I feel disgusted, and I feel worried that that smell is going to seep into our things and our place will smell like cat poop forever. I’m also afraid that no one will want to come over to our house because it stinks, and we might not even realize because we’ll be so used to it. [Again, no judgement, just feelings about the observation.]
3. Need: What I’d really like is for that litter to smell better, so I don’t feel disgusted and I can be sure our things don’t start stinking.
4. Request: Would you be willing to help me with that? Maybe we could move the box somewhere less central, and maybe get a self cleaning box, and make sure it gets cleaned more often? I know how hard you work, so I’d really appreciate you helping me with this.

I promise you, just like I promised her, approaching it like that would not have led to “Shut the fuck up.”

I recommend this book frequently to people like her, and it’s called (surprise) Nonviolent Communication. It has nothing to do with anger or anything, it’s just a weird title. It really expands on the core concept I wrote about here, and talks at length about needs, and different strategies for communicating with everyone from your child to your boss. It’s really thorough. For about $11, this book is likely to send you on a dramatically different and better trajectory in your relationship and in your future love life. I believe anyone would be happier for their whole life if they read this book, so I really hope everyone does:

Buy Nonviolent Communication From Amazon.

(By the way, that link is an affiliate link, so if you buy the book the price you pay will be the same, but I’ll make like $0.25. Fiji here I come!)

Dad had left after a big fight with my mom. I had been talking to my mom for the whole week he’d been missing, and that morning was no different. I had to hang up with her to go to class, and I called her back afterward to keep her mind busy while we figured out where dad was driving to.

A man picked up the phone and asked who I was. The detective passed the phone to Mom when I told him I was her son, and that’s when she told me they’d found Dad at a reststop a few miles outside of town. His body baked for 2 or 3 days in the back of his Denali before someone found him. His toxicology report told me what I already could’ve guessed: cocaine, narcotic pain medication, and a bottle of red wine.

My family had been normal. In his youth my dad had been wild, but he was sober since before I was born, he was a middle manager at a major corporation. He was a good dad, always joking, everyone liked him.

When we lived in Mexico, he decided to have a taste of the old times while he could, and he got just a little coke. Five years later, his body rotted in the back of an SUV at a rural Ohio reststop.

The news literally knocked the wind out of me and knocked me off balance for a moment. That’s why people need to sit after news like this. I remember the exact view I had when I fell into my office chair, looking at my wife at the time, who immediately understood what I’d heard on the phone. Grief instantly struck her face as she fell back onto the couch. She, like everyone else, loved my dad.

A couple of numb hours later, I picked up a video game controller and pretty much didn’t put it down for the next three days. When I stopped playing, I’d start crying.

Reimagine

Grief is the process of reimagining what your life will be like now that something or someone you expected to be part of it, no longer will be.

You had one idea before your dad died, or before your husband left you, and now that idea doesn’t make sense anymore because those people aren’t in the picture anymore. They aren’t there, and the needs that were being met by their presence will no longer be met by them. Your subconscious goes into overdrive, deep down into the recesses of your brain, and has to tear that whole future narrative out from the root.

That whole process hurts like hell, and we call it grief.

I flew to my parents’ house to help with the funeral, and I was busy for about a week. I felt nothing really, I was just doing things like writing the eulogy, and arranging flowers and that sort of thing.

Someone had picked up a Stevie Ray Vaughan CD to play at the funeral, as that was some of my dad’s favorite music. I popped it in to figure out what song to play. I was sitting on my mom’s couch when “Life Without You” came on, and I lost my shit. I bawled like a heart broken toddler.

Distracting myself felt better than sitting and dwelling on my dad, that’s for sure. But remember what all that pain is for: it’s rebuilding the mental image of your life.

It’s identifying needs that used to be filled by someone, going through the pain and fear of feeling that those needs will no longer be met, then connecting with new resources to get those needs met in lieu of the departed.

So all those video games, busy work, alcohol, long work hours, only serve to slow down and stop the process of grief. You’re trying to make it go away, but the way you’re doing it is just making it stay longer.

Take breaks from the pain if you must, but let the tears, rage, and desperation flow through you until it’s said its piece. Then you’ll be free.

1.

When you look at a sphere that’s glossy, you normally see a white point of light, called the highlight. You can measure the highlight. You can see that it’s white, not, say, purple. You can say that it’s half an inch tall, and three quarters of an inch wide, and roughly oval shaped. These are empirical, verifiable, undeniable truths.

When you move, the highlight moves with you, and from some vantage points you can’t see a highlight at all.

The reason is that the highlight doesn’t really exist. The highlight is empirical, verifiable, undeniable, and also doesn’t exist. Not exactly.

There’s really a sphere, and there’s really light hitting it and bouncing into your eyes. But the highlight appears where it does from your perspective because you’re standing in the right position for a lot of the light that’s hitting the sphere to bounce off directly into your eyes. The highlight is just a coincidence—an accident of how the whole scene with you, the sphere, and the light are arranged and how your perception is built. The highlight only exists insofar as you are present in the right context to perceive it.

In fact, the light that creates the highlight in your perception is in a lot more places than you can see, and the “highlight” is just an artifact of your limited ability to see all that light at once, even though it’s definitely there and you could see it if you had the right equipment. Instead you can only see a point of that light—the point that happens to be at exactly the right angle from the light source to the sphere into your eyes. But there’s a lot more light than that.

So the highlight is more a fact about you than it is a fact about the sphere or the light.

2.

You exist in the world. You have a gender, a brain, a history. You probably have an appendix. I can see you and measure you. These are empirical, verifiable, undeniable truths.

I may have seen you or talked to you at some point, and I may see you or talk to you in the future. There was a time when I couldn’t have perceived you because I wasn’t here or you weren’t or neither of us were. A time like that will probably come again.

The reason is that you don’t really exist. You are empirical, verifiable, undeniable, and also don’t exist. Not exactly.

There’s really a world, and there’s really a vast, intelligent light that you can perceive with your ego. But your ego, your body your life appear where they do from your perspective because You the Vastness are standing in the right position for a lot of that light to project directly into the pinpoint of your trip. The ego is just a coincidence—an accident of how the whole scene with You the Vastness, the world, and your ego are arranged and how your perception is built. You the Ego only exists insofar as You the Vastness are present in the right context to perceive it.

In fact, You the Vastness that creates the ego in your perception is in a lot more places than you can see, and the “ego” is just an artifact of your limited ability to see all that you are at once, even though you’re definitely there and could you see it if you had the right equipment. Instead you can only see a point of that light—the point that happens to be at exactly the right angle from the source of your light to the world and into your ego. But there’s a lot more light than that.

So the ego is more a fact about You the Vastness than it is a fact about the real world.

A guy in the movie was preparing for a hurricane. He was running around in his yard trying to catch one of his chickens, to put her in a coop and bring her somewhere safe. He wasn’t making it easy, he was chasing after her, yelling at her, and generally scaring the shit out of her.

The thing that struck me was that the chicken was just like us.

We run away from the big, scary shit we don’t understand and that scares the crap out of us. But it’s that big, scary shit is what’s going to put us in a safe place to weather the storms we don’t even know are coming. So we get temporary relief when we somehow dodge the things that scare us, but then we’re left out in the cold when the storm comes.

I say embrace your fear. I’m always telling people to move toward whatever terrifies them. That’s where growth is.

1.

Why do we exist in the limited and disconnected way we do?

What we’re experiencing is a game of our own creation. We are playing each other by imagining new ways to love and connect. What if we loved like this or had a connection like that.

And like giggling, cosmic children, we embrace those whims and find out exactly what it’s like, by agreeing to limit ourselves in the “fun” and unique ways we’ve chosen. Why “fun” and not just fun? It’s fun if you’re operating from your vastness, but the limitations often fucking suck for your ego. Massive head trauma and eye patches are a barrel of laughs unless you take yourself too seriously.

Ideally, we’d all live in our vastness and just give the gift we were meant to give, but we resist it and fuck things up.

2.

But what does it mean to “live in your vastness”?

I mean, if we are these vast beings who are deliberately pretending not to know who they are, then doesn’t it defeat the purpose of playing the game if we are constantly trying to remember what we’ve deliberately forgotten?

First of all, this world is shiny and loud, so you will not have any trouble forgetting what you are at least occasionally. Having infrequent “First Person Vastness” experiences is a great reminder of how to live, but “living in your vastness” isn’t that. What it actually means is just trusting and accepting yourself as the gift you are. When shitty and untrue thoughts and feelings invade because your ego has forgotten it’s just a game, it’s nice to remind yourself:

Hey man, it’s just a ride. Everything is fine.

3.

Why doesn’t our “vastness” just design us to not suck at remembering it’s a game?

The short answer is that I don’t know. I suspect it’s because we’re a “technology” (in a loose sense) that just isn’t perfect at its purpose yet. There’s some necessary component of our egos that is also volatile and prone to melt down. Why do we drive cars that break down, pollute the environment, and create exhaust? Because we haven’t figured out how to build a better car yet.

Maybe what we mean when we say that the human race has to “evolve” is that we need to improve our ability to live in our vastness. We’re a self improving “technology,” and in fact I think that self improvement at giving and receiving love is the whole point of our existence.

4.

Do we have to offer our gift to shitty people?

As a corollary to the “Accept Yourself” rule you have to accept other people as well. That doesn’t mean you have to put up with people who are operating destructively from their ego. It means you have to accept those people for who they are, then make the choice from your vastness about whether you’ll interact with them or not.

Does interacting with them support or enhance the gift you offer? Is your interaction with them a gift you accept in gratitude?

If the answer is no, then remove yourself from the situation.

5.

How can I know what’s part of my gift and what’s just my ego getting in the way?

It’s possible that your gift is your ego getting in the way. We can’t really know in advance what our gift is until we see it, but as we get closer and closer to living in our vastness instead of living in our ego the picture becomes clear, and the parts of us that are bullshit stand out like a stubbed toe.

The only way to start sifting through that bullshit is to accept yourself completely. That means you’ll accept parts of yourself that are not part of your gift, and that don’t serve you. But if you could stop beating yourself up for your shortcomings long enough, you’d start to heal and see what’s beautiful in you. Then you could embrace those things and release the rest with love.

That’s why it’s like an onion, with layers and layers, instead of just “ok, I accept.” You accept the things that strike you as wrong, and when you’ve really embraced yourself at that layer, you’ll see the issues in the next layer. At the end of the process you’ll see yourself for who you are. At the beginning of the process you can’t see that, which is my point: this question is like asking to see the destination before you’ve even started walking.

Just start walking.

Why does this feel so real if it’s just a game? →

There was once a wave in the ocean, speeding along the surface, basking in the sun with the wind in his face, loving his life and playing with the other waves. He was always happy until he looked away at the distance, and saw the coming shore. He was horrified to see other waves ahead of him crashing into the rocks, breaking and dying. Another wave nearby noticed his distress.

“What’s wrong, man?” said the other wave.
“You don’t understand! None of this matters, this good life, or the sun, or anything! Look at the shore, man, all us waves are going to be crushed against it and die!”
“No, you don’t understand! You’re not a wave… you’re the ocean.”

The Gift

I remembered last Tuesday what I am. I knew it already, but sometimes it’s not enough to know, because for something this important you have to feel it in your fucking bones, your marrow, your deepest mind.

People talk about purpose and talk about their best or highest self, but not that many people know what that means, and vanishingly few live there.

Here’s what it means.

You are a gift. From whom? To whom?

You believe you’re a human being trying to make yourself better or live your life in a better way, but you are not. You are a gift.

Every person and every circumstance is created and intended as a gift, given in love, to any who choose to accept it. You are a gift given in love and accepted with love and gratitude by those who receive you.

The Vast Artist

You, the real you, the one I remembered who I am, are vast. Imagine living in an ocean of connection, dancing through that palpable love. Imagine stretching an infinite multitude of arms outward. From each arm you offer a unique gift, given in love.

You are like an artist because you create each particular gift deliberately, you design each ego, each circumstance, as an experience of connection that hasn’t been generated before, and then you make it available for others to experience. Each is a unique way to experience love and connection, which is a precious gift.

When another like you accepts your gift, she gets to experience that unique connection. She knows what unique perspective your gift offers, and just like you deliberately created it, she deliberately accepts that particular gift.

The Acceptance

The issue is that the gift itself sometimes gets in the way of the giving. Even though the vast us designed the ego’s way of being and its circumstances, that ego gets caught up. It thinks it’s important in itself, it judges itself relentlessly and resists itself endlessly.

What we need, then, is radical self acceptance. We need to realize that we are a precious gift, through to our core. All our fear, and lack of worth, all our mistakes, all our profound love and compassion, all of it is part of our unique gift, offered to meet a specific and deliberate need.

If you stop and really ponder that, you’ll realize that the only thing that can ever truly be “wrong with you” is not accepting and being grateful for yourself. If you do that, all the way down deep until the layers are peeled back, the issues you struggle with will evaporate. Your jealousies, your dark fears, or uncertainty will all make you laugh. Everything will make perfect sense because you will see yourself exactly as you really are, and therefore you’ll make yourself available as a gift of loving kindness, as you were meant to be.

Once you stop resisting yourself and remember that you are a gift offered in love, you will live in that love. You will be able to offer and accept it freely because you won’t be frantically trying to preserve your ego anymore.

The Eye

Look deep. Think of the parts of yourself you don’t like, and start joyfully accepting them as designed. The bullshit will fall away, making it possible for the shitty circumstances to melt as well.

Look at layer after layer after layer, and accept it all, while your world shifts around you. And at the end, you’ll look down one more layer with your mind’s eye, and you’ll see something different than pain and blockage and resistance.

You’ll see your vastness, and remember that your ego is just a tool, a precious gift, given freely to the world, in utter love and joy. And then you’ll live it.

I am not a man with a dream. I am a dream with a man

Update: Read more on my Vastness Q & A →

But none of that matters, because understanding your motivations in terms of those general “need areas” is useful. It helps us introspect about what we’re doing, and helps us change our behavior if we want to.

There’s very little objective truth about the psychology that you can learn from hard sciences. Ok, great, now you know about the pentose phosphate pathway in the brain, how does that help your marriage? How does it enable you to be happy?

The unscientific stuff works because it deals in subjectivity (you are the subject). The self help stuff I write isn’t meant to be a true fact about you, it’s just a new connection in your brain to integrate and see if it works.

I write a lot of stuff on this site that’s objectively redundant, but it’s always written differently. Different stories, different tones of voice, different explanations, different analogies. When I’m writing those, I think about all the people who are suffering, and some of them need a gentle hint, and some of them need to be slapped. Some people just need an example of something working. Some people need to see a mirror for their dysfunction to change it.

Depending on where we are and where we’re trying to go, we all need something a little different to get there. And that’s what “self help” is. It’s not a scientifically rigorous way to usher the 2 central standard deviations into ever greater enlightenment. It’s a nudge for the right person at the right moment in the right direction, and it only works for that person in that context and for that one purpose.

And that’s fine, I’m not trying to make it anything more than that.

The reason I’m writing this, is to say that neither should you try to make it more than it is. Nothing I write here is meant to be rigorous, object fact. It’s meant to move you in a positive direction. Don’t latch onto it, and don’t over think it. If it’s useful, use it. If it’s not useful, try the next one.

Abused men, women, and children hear these phases every day, all over the world from the sad, broken people who victimize them.

These statements undermine a person’s self-esteem and their capacity for rational thought. They lead to depression, and create a perverse dependency on the abuser, who continues to undermine the victims.

It’s a tragic cycle and it’s very difficult to break. Even if the victims escape, the deep conditioning they receive lingers. It twists their thoughts and relationships, potentially forever. The feeling of despair, emptiness, and brokenness can stay with a person long after they are separated from the abuser.

Here’s the left hook:

Christ the Redeemer

Everything I wrote above is true, but these actually aren’t phrases out of the Abuser’s Handbook. All of those quotes are actually Christian teachings.

From childhood in the church, we are taught that we are broken and wretched. That we’re nothing without Jesus’ love and forgiveness. That if we stray from the light of the church, we’ll burn in hell. That we’re not worthy of Jesus’ love or forgiveness, but he’s awesome, so he gives it anyway… as long as we submit to his loving will. Anyway, it’s because we’re shitty and we can’t stop sinning, so we need him or we’ll die an eternal death. He’s doing us a favor. And to anyone who tries to tell you otherwise, that’s just Satan trying to tempt you away, so expect it, and guard against it.

And it’s a cycle. Very few pastors, priests, bishops, etc., wake up one morning and decide to break and demoralize others. They do it because they’ve internalized it so very deeply that they don’t know anything else, and the thought of anything else scares the shit out of them. That’s why it’s a generational cycle.

It’s not just Christians, this is essentially how dogmatic religion must operate to remain “in business.” Throughout history the most quickly expanding religious sects have taken it as a sign from God that they doing good, but really all it means is that their brand of religion is the most aggressive and abusive (and have the strongest “make babies” norms). The brand that hooks people most deeply, scares them the most thoroughly, and renders them the most compliant. I think Mormonism is the fastest at the moment, but that’s not really important. It’s a fundamental feature of all similar ideologies.

Expansion

Here’s a conundrum for free thinkers who want to spread light, love, and reason. By their nature, freer forms of thought and spirituality do not spread as aggressively as the abusive ones, because they do not as strongly create a cycle. Combine that with thinking people having fewer children than religious people, and you have a generational abuse expansion problem. The abusers are multiplying faster than the lovers.

What can we do about that?

I’m not sure what the answer is, but maybe there’s some way we can subvert or commandeer the machinery of fear and turn it into a force for good.

Brainwashing Instructions

What we’re talking about here is essentially brainwashing. The basic steps of brainwashing are:

1. Assault on identity. “You were born with sin, and you’re a sinner unworthy of His love”
2. Guilt. “Jesus died on the Cross for you. You owe him!”
3. Self-Betrayal. “Admit that you’re unworthy of his love!”
4. Breaking Point. “Who am I? Maybe I am going to Hell.”
5. Leniency. “But it’s ok… We can help you walk with Christ and have a place in Heaven.”
6. Compulsion to Confess. “I’ve lived a life of sin…”
7. Channeling of Guilt. “It’s not you, it’s Satan’s grip that led you to a life of sin.”
8. Releasing of Guilt. “Maybe it is Satan who encourages my sin… maybe Jesus will set me free”
9. Progress and Harmony. “Let us show you how you can be born again and enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
10. Final Confession and Rebirth. “I invite Jesus into my heart!”

But how can light and goodwill harness such a fundamentally negative approach? I honestly don’t know. But I do know that just playing defense by inoculating our children against blind faith, and congratulating each other for how open our eyes are isn’t going to cut it. I do know that if we don’t learn to powerfully mobilize, this hopeful era of people opening their eyes will be washed away in a storm of ignorance, hatred, and fear.

I’m really looking for actionable insight here, what do you think?

An anonymous poster asked a question on reddit:

My GF has genital herpes and I don’t. I love her with all my heart, but I live day to day wondering if I should stay with her

So from the very beginning of the relationship she was honest about her condition. Her ex cheated on her and got it and then gave it to her. I was a little bit weirded out about it at first but that didn’t stop me from wanting to be her friend. Long story short I fell for her deeply and we started dating. It’s been a year and a half now and I’ve been using protection every single time we have sex but it’s just been coming to the point where it’s hard to move pass the fact that she will always have that. We’ve been talking about marriage and possibly having kids but it’s just so far fetched for me. Bottom line is, I don’t want to risk my health but I don’t want to lose the woman I’ve always wanted in my life. I don’t know where to go with this relationship. We are both 30 and yes I have brought it up to her. She says to do what’s best for me. She would understand. This woman is my other half, no doubt. It’s just that I know if I stay with her, I’ll continue to see her in a different light. I hate feeling like this.

Here is my response:

You’re full of shit.

Hear me out: I know you think you’re serious and sincere, but I’ve heard this story a billion times in my practice, and it’s never what you think it is.

You’ve been with your woman for 18 months, and you claim you are ambivalent about staying with her “because she has herpes,” but you’re full of shit. How do I know? You’ve been with her 18 months, yet a thread on reddit is shedding new light on the condition for you. All the information you could ever want about herpes is a google search away, and you don’t know jack about the disease that you claim is the central sticking point of your long term relationship. That tells me it’s an excuse.

And why wouldn’t it be? It’s a GREAT excuse! It’s nothing that anyone can solve, and it’s not really your woman’s fault, and certainly not your fault, and yet there it is, lingering forever.

She’s the woman you’ve always wanted–she’s your other half! If only it weren’t for this big, bad, unsolvable problem that you haven’t even begun researching in 18 months and that you have no responsibility for, you could commit to her fully and spend the rest of your life with her.

Total bullshit. And now that it’s in black and white like that, I think you’re man enough to realize you’ve been bullshitting yourself about this issue, and you’ve been acting like a pussy and hurting your woman unfairly.
I’m going to make a few guesses here, and they are speculation because I don’t know you, but I’m completing the pattern, so I bet I’m right:

1. You’re afraid of commitment
2. You’re afraid your youth is slipping away, as you move into your 30s
3. You’re afraid she’s not really the one you spend the rest of your life with
4. You’re afraid of telling her because you don’t want to hurt her
5. You’re afraid of telling her because you’re afraid she’ll be mad at you
6. The real reason you’re ambivalent is something you’re too ashamed to admit to her, and probably to yourself as well. Maybe she’s not physically attractive to you, maybe you’re questioning your sexuality, it could be anything

So you make a safe excuse, that you pretend is not really solvable. It’s safe because no one can blame you for being concerned about “your health” re: a disease that has stigma. If this were really the problem, you would’ve researched it to death and made a final decision within days of starting to fall for her, 18 months ago.
When your woman tells you that you need to make your own decision, and she wouldn’t blame you, she’s fucking dying inside. You are acting like too much of a pussy to just own your real thoughts and feelings and be real with her, and it’s tearing her up.

What can she say other than what she’s said? If she blames you, then you get to tell everyone what an unreasonable, diseased bitch she is when you leave her. If she begs you to stay, then you get to hold this over her head forever. And I think you sort of like that because it gives you power in the relationship: you have a free pass to leave her on a whim, guilt free. Who would give up a sweet deal like that?

I’ll tell you who: a real man. The man who deserves her will do right by her and make a fucking decision.

Get real about the reasons that you have cold feet, man up and be honest with your woman about those reasons, and stop pretending tiny, infrequent cold sores are the reason you can’t commit. Also, when you’re done, if your woman keeps you, apologize to her for being such a pussy and putting her through that bullshit. She deserves better.

2.

A lot of people took exception to my abrasive tone, my sexist language, and my presumption that I knew so much about this anonymous guy who had barely posted more than a paragraph.

My tone, and my words were all carefully chosen to drill into this man’s soul and change his life. I was confident I was right, but the proof is in the pudding:

The poster of the question responded within minutes, saying I’d hit the nail on the head, and he had a lot to think about. He followed up in another post thanking me again.

How did I know?

3.

You might have noticed a phrase in my response: “safe excuse.” That’s kind of a code word, the usual phrase is “safe problem.” A Safe Problem is the opposite of a Quality Problem.

A Quality Problem is a forward thinking decision that could have a significant impact on our identity, circumstances, or quality of our lives, so they feel risky.

Examples of Quality Problems:

• Moving to a new area
• Career Change
• Committing to a Relationship
• Leaving a Relationship
• Starting a Family

A Safe Problem is an issue that lingers even though, strictly speaking, the solution is in our control.

Examples of Safe Problems:

• Communication problems or bickering
• Procrastination
• Blaming Others
• Addictions
• Avoiding making decisions
• Time management issues

When someone is terrified of the risk of solving a quality problem, they will often replace that quality problem with a smoke screen of safe problems, that they can use so they never have to face the real, underlying issue. They never have to take any risk or face their fear, because they make themselves powerless and paralyzed by “problems” that apparently have no solution.

4.

I knew Mr. Anonymous was full of shit, because everything about his “problem” reeked of safety, in all the ways I outlined in my response to him. All I had to do was ask myself: if this problem went away, what real problem would he have to face? And I gave him a bullet point list of the real issues that I had a strong inclination to believe were underlying his question.

That’s how I knew he was using herpes as a safe problem to avoid the real issues like fear of aging and commitment.

So I put it to him to him in a way that would interrupt his pattern of using the safe crutch (shocking and abrasive language), and that supported his essentially heterosexual, gender normative frame of the world. Luckily he was honest enough with himself to take that punch and say “You know what? It’s true, I’m afraid of something else.”

That insight, combined with his level of honesty means this guy has a fighting chance to grow and change and maybe have a long, happy marriage.

What safe problems are you hiding behind?

The problem with tips and tricks is that incremental improvements won’t solve your malaise. You read articles about how to improve your life all the time, right? So why does your life still seem like 90% sitting around on the internet reading articles? When is the last time there was a seriously tangible difference in the quality of your daily life?

This is to all the people who are stuck and have been for a while, you know who you are.

I say this shit all the time, and you think I’m joking or that it doesn’t apply to you, but here it is people: If you want change then change, goddammit. Radically and permanently alter your daily life. Leave everything behind and literally, not figuratively, join the peace corps, or move to a commune, or travel the world. Cut yourself off from old patterns and old baggage.

The excuses welling up in your brain right now are so loud, I can hear them from here—shut your trap. Break your lease, quit your job, kiss your mama goodbye, and piss off into the wild blue yonder.

Come back in a little while for all I care. I’m not saying you should live the life of a hermit or vagabond forever. Layla isn’t a vagabond. She came back from Africa, and now she’s a real estate mogul in California. Why is she among the best people I know? Because she’s alive, she’s had among the best experiences I know.

There is probably something you’re working toward. You tell yourself that’s what makes the grind worth it. You want to be a big actor or writer, or a successful business person, and you’re diligently working through that between checking facebook and reddit. But if you’re honest, you’re frustrated and burned out. It’s because that one goal you have requires a huge infrastructure of other investments. Living a middle class lifestyle requires a respectable house (with, like, plumbing), a livable income, friends you can relate to and the rest. You can’t just “be an actor” because you have to maintain the rest of the web of requirements that seem to be a prerequisite, and you only have the sliver left over to act with.

The bottom line is that if you are stuck in your life, you have a choice between keeping all the shit that’s burning you out, and staying exactly as you are, or throwing it all away, all at once, right now, and grabbing life by the scruff. There’s nothing stopping you, just do it.

Lucky Diamond Rich is most tattooed man in the world. He has tattoos across 100% of his body, including the insides of his eye lids and foreskin. When his whole body was filled, he began tattooing over the black ink with white ink, and various other colors. As if not risking enough infection, he also has large, subdermal implants variously placed on his body.

I’ve personally never wanted tattoos—or bumper stickers for that matter. Why?

Significance is a fundamental human need. We all want to feel special, different, and important in some way. We want other people to notice us, appreciate us, and think about us. The lengths we go to stand out depend on how independent we are, how secure we are in ourselves, how deeply we need to belong. But we all display our positive characteristics, achievements, and associations somehow and to some degree.

Do you honestly think your COEXIST bumper sticker convinces anyone to be more tolerant than they are already prone to being? So why do you have it on your car? It’s a signal that you’re a tolerant person, which in some sense makes you special. It’s branding. It’s a broadcast to the world that you’re significant, and a symbol of the special way that you are significant.

It’s why punks have mohawks, and hipsters have handlebar mustaches, and why Lucky Diamond Rich has more ink in him than Office Max.

(If they are trying to stand out, why do they all look the same? That’s the next essay, keep your pants on.)

But maybe Lucky is just a normal guy who wants to express himself artistically, and I’m projecting something onto him that’s not really present. Maybe he leads a normal life other than his body modifications. Let’s examine his other jobs and pass times: fire eating, sword swallowing, chainsaw juggling, and unicycling. Yeah.

This is a man who has designed his life and appearance from the bottom up to draw attention to himself, and to separate himself from “normal” people. Something about the way Lucky grew up made significance a top priority for him.

I don’t know Lucky, but many people for whom significance is top priority are narcissists.

Extremes

Narcissism doesn’t mean what you think it means. A narcissist actually lacks self esteem, but not in the sense of having low self esteem. They lack self esteem in the sense of not having the necessary psychological development to have or understand “self esteem” in the way a healthy person does. They are missing the mechanism that let’s them see who they are at their core.

Instead, they simulate self esteem by projecting a persona into their social environment and using the “reflections” to decide whether they are worthy or not. So they might project high achievement or intelligence, regardless of whether they’ve achieved or are intelligent, and when they get validation by people reacting to them as though they have achieved or are intelligent, then they feel good.

So most of what a narcissist does is a projection of significance, meant to reflect back at them and tell them they are special and worthy people. I don’t know if Lucky is narcissistic, but he sure spends a lot of time signalling to everyone that he’s different and weird and special and unique.

But let’s stop picking on narcissists for a moment and realize that everyone needs to feel significant, and that the pathological cases are just a few degrees more wound up than we are with our high-minded bumper stickers and “Mom” tattoos.

I’ve personally never wanted tattoos—or bumper stickers for that matter. Why?

We are largely shaped as adults by the experiences we have as children. I spent many years wishing to God that I could slip into the crowd unnoticed. I was painfully reminded throughout my childhood that I was different, special, unique, and horrible. Through no special talent or skill of my own, I had an early overdose of significance, and it took me my teens and early adulthood to recalibrate from that. Now I don’t need a tattoo or bumper sticker, I feel just special enough.

But I’m a case in point. The problem with being weird and special, with having tattoos from god is that you become alienated and isolated from everyone around you.

When it’s party time
like 1999
I’ll party by myself
because I’m such a special guy.

Get Real

The skill is being aware of what you do to gain significance (I’m tolerant! I play guitar!), and make sure it’s

1. Congruent,
2. and In balance with your competing need for love and connection.

I’ll talk about love and connection in the next one, but congruence is important. It’s fine to talk a talk if you walk the accompanying walk, but empty projection alienates you not only from other people (because trust me, they all know you’re full of shit) but also from yourself. You can spend so much time projecting a false image that you forget what the real one looks like. Teenagers get a free pass to try on identities and see how they feel, in adulthood that’s called narcissism.

By all means, signal. Signal to everyone, as much as you feel comfortable, all the ways you’re special and different and unique. Stand up and be noticed. But make sure those signals are consistent with the reality of who you are at your core. If you want something to be true, first make it true, then signal it. And realize that the more special and unique you are, the less connection you have with the people around you. Why? I’ll talk about that in the essay number four.

I graduated from high school right around my 15^th birthday. I never liked school and I got nothing but mediocre grades until I skipped from 5^th grade into high school. Impressive (to whom?). Then I continued getting mediocre grades until I graduated. It was all very disappointing (to whom?), and I was rejected from LSU when I applied. I wrote a letter to the Dean of Admissions to convince him to let me in anyway, and he did. I kicked ass in college. I was always on the Dean’s list, and I was in the honors program, writing a thesis about international logistics chains in Mexico. Very impressive! (to whom?)

When you do well in school, your parents give you pizza. Everyone nods approvingly when you tell them you’re a Junior at Yale studying “whatever”. Did you ever notice that people in college always say “I’m in grad school,” instead of “I’m learning about botany”? Unless it’s something impressive, then they say “I’m in grad school for physics.” Wow, neat.

So it was all very disappointing (to whom?) when I dropped out of college as a senior. But I made up for it by quickly landing a job at Acme Corp writing software. I had never intended to write software for a living even though everyone assumed I would since that’s what I spent a lot of my time doing as a teen. I was a Senior Application Developer on the “Appdev Team” which was the prestigious team, as opposed to the “Proddev Team.” Neat.

When you start your career as a banker for Goldman or engineer for Lockeed, your grandparents are happy. They gloat to their friends, “Our little Timmy is all grown up! He graduated from Generic U., and now he’s a neurosurgeon!” Did you ever notice how when people talk about what they want to be when they grow up, they say “I want to be a firefighter!” instead of “I want to rescue people.” “I want to be a blogger!” instead of “I want to write.”

It turned out that I was really good at climbing the ladder and getting increasingly high profile and lucrative jobs. When I was 23, I was the head of development at a $28 million dollar software company. The CEO hired me to help him either sell the business or go public.

And it feels kind of good once you’re there. If you ignore the long hours and cloying sense that something isn’t quite right, it’s fun to have stuff. You know you can pay your mortgage, and that feels good. It feels even better if it’s a big mortgage—the bigger the better—because having money to spend means you’re winning.

You can tell how much you’re winning by how much money you spend. It feels good to pay your mortgage, then buy a surround sound system that you pay someone else to install. That way you can casually tell your friends “Oh yeah, the guy I hired to put in my surround sound he was great, I can give you his number if you want.” You’ve come a long way from telling your 5^th grade buddy that your 12-speed bike is better than his 10-speed.

All the officers and top sales guys at the company drove Porches, one of them had the most suped-up Ford GT in the world (featured in car magazines, and banned from racing). I drove a car that cost me more per month than all my current bills combined cost me now. It was part of the culture, it’s just what you did there.

Smoke and Mirrors

But that’s the smoke and mirrors of it all. At some point all these facts come together.

You did well in school as a signal to your parents that they could approve of you. When you stopped caring about what your parents thought, you went to grad school because being a grad student signals to your peers that you’re smart and going places.

Who gives a shit what you studied (unless that was part of the signal), or what you plan to do with it, that’s not the point. It’s not for you, it’s a signal to other people that you’re the type of person who does the right things.

Also not for you: hiring a guy who put in your surround sound that you either never use, or constantly use in lieu of meaningful human contact. It was a signal to your peers that you’re the type of person who can afford to have workers install frivolous things on your behalf, because you have money, which means you win.

All this feels great, in an empty sort of way. Our society reinforces every part of this system, all the way down the line, from telling us what a successful life should look like, to programming us to respond to our friends and family in ways that reinforce the status quo. Parents are happy you’re getting good grades, so they can tell their friends about how great you’re doing, so their friends know what great parents they are. Everyone has skin in the game, so no one can just stop playing.

Unless they do.

Letting Go

I used to stress about my car. Keeping it clean, and being paranoid about it getting scratched or damaged. My 4 year old son was riding in the back seat. I stopped at a stop light, and glanced back. My heart jumped into my throat, demanding to exit my body so it could strangle the little shit who was shoving a rusty nail he had found through the fine leather upholstery over and over.

Then it all came into view for me. This car didn’t matter. It wasn’t even for me, it was for my buddies at the company to know that I was one of them. I sold the car, and bought a Cadillac DeVille for $3,200 in cash, less than one month payment for the expensive one.

The car is great and fine. I still drive it today. I drove it from Florida to Austin.

And then I told the president of the heath company that he was full of shit in the middle of a big meeting, which I knew would get me fired. When I was fired, I got a job that suited me better, making plenty of money and working from home.

I’ll spare you the play by play, the point is that every time I threw something away that I had or did for other people, I felt better.

Grasping On

There’s a tipping point in that process though, and since you’re reading this, you’re probably at it, and maybe have been at it for a long time. It’s the point where you’ve let go of the impressive school and big shot title, where you’re ready to live “authentically.” So you’ve dropped everything to follow your path and then… nothing.

What do you do now? There’s no map, there are no mentors. All the signs along this road say “Wrong Way. Go Back.”

You’ve been going through the motions for other people for so long that you don’t know who you are or what you want. Worse, you don’t have the tools to figure it out. You’re just lost.

You have a choice about how to deal with this.

• I think the ideal way is also the hard way. You’ll cut ties, drop everything, and spend a year doing nothing and everything. You backpack through India, or you ride the rails in your own country. You’re a vagabond, floating in space, totally disengaged with the daily grind of our society. At some point you’ll become reacquainted with yourself and something will grab your heart. And you’ll be free to pursue whatever it is because you have nothing tying you down.
• The more realistic but less effective (and less scary) approach is to ween off the things that you do for others, and slowly replace them with fulfilling activities. The important part here is that you drop each thing, and you don’t fill the void with anything for at least a little while. Create a vacuum in your mind and life for the meaningful stuff to fill in. It can’t fit if your life is already filled with nonsense and distractions. You’ll know when something grabs your heart, and if nothing comes to fill that void, just keeping making the void bigger as you drop more nonsense, and eventually you’ll have enough to space to fit your heart’s desire.

I was a precocious kid, the kind that’s remarkably well-spoken for a 6 year old, and everyone thinks it’s cute. At that time I figured, since I got along with adults so well, I must be pretty much on par. I knew I had facts and figures to learn, but obviously I operated on a similar level.

But then I turned 10, and I could plainly see how much sophistication I lacked when I was only 6. I’ll skip the montage, you get it, this is an ongoing process.

But think about this. Now that you’re an adult, when is the last time you can remember being young and dumb? What is the oldest you can remember being, when you were a categorically different person?

I remember turning 18, and I’m talking to this girl online for a couple months, and fast forward a year and I’ve eloped with her. That was dumb.

I’m 21, I’m spending a lot of my week as an officer in this “business fraternity” at my third tier business school because I have this vague idea that it’s a “great networking opportunity,” whatever the fuck that means. That was pretty dumb.

It gets fuzzier at that point. As an adult you have fewer growth experiences than you do as a child, so it takes longer. The gap between now and when you were young and dumb gets longer and longer.

That’s a bad thing.

I have a theory that you should strive to keep that gap as short as possible. Every year you should look back and think about what a dumbass you were a year ago. That way, you know you’re growing.

To phrase it another way, if you look back and don’t see how much of a dumbass you were a year ago, then you’re still the same dumbass from a year ago.

2.

The perception of time passing is controlled by how many “salient events” take place during that time. For our purposes, salient events are events that we consciously notice. They might be novel in some way, either by being different and new, or by being exciting.

You can see this is true if you consider that a year backpacking abroad will seem in retrospect to have been a whole lifetime. So many new and exciting things happened during that year, that when your brain recreates the experience it feels subjectively “longer” than if you sat in a cubical filling out TPS reports the whole time.

When you’re a kid, time crawls by because every day you’re experiencing new and exciting things. As you age, you settle into routine and soon nothing much is new or exciting, and time is flying by.

When we are bored, we become aware of each passing second. Each agonizing moment becomes a salient event because we’re aware of them as they pass, and so time passes in a trickle. Later that day we sink four hours into World of Warcraft without a second thought.

3.

To be a new and better person means to have new and better experiences—events that shape who you are, and color your perception. Each new experience can potentially be the event horizon of being “young and dumb.” On one side of the horizon you see your young self, and on this side you find your new, better self.

The key ingredient to growth and the perception of a full and meaningful life is those salient events. Don’t sink into routine; seek out new ideas and new people, and new experiences.

The last time I clearly remember being young and dumb was a little over a year ago when I separated from my wife. That was a tremendous moment of growth for me, and I can confidently say that I’m a categorically different, better person now.

But that gap is getting too long, so I’m getting antsy. It’s time to up the ante, make a rukus, meet new people, go new places, start new projects. You should think about doing the same.

I don’t consider myself Buddhist, because I think disengagement isn’t the right answer. I think we’re here having a human experience, and we should revel in it and soak it up. I’d feel better jumping off Samsara if I knew what it was for.

Buddhists are right that your experiences as a human being are illusory and temporary, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. We don’t spend our lives obsessing over a coming sunset, or living in existential dread for when the sunset is over. We just see it, and it’s beautiful, so we sit with it a while and enjoy it.

We enjoy the moments we have with it, and we fully expect and are at peace with its inevitable ending. We know it’s not really a “thing” in itself—it’s just an arrangement of the sun and the sky and the earth, with a certain type of light hitting our certain type of atmosphere at a certain angle that only people standing near us can see. All that makes a beautiful, meaningful, and temporary experience that really only exists from your particular vantage point in the universe.

When it’s over, nothing is lost, it just means you’ve moved out that vantage point. You also know that you’re part of an ongoing cycle and you’ll see a similar, maybe more beautiful sunset, when the time comes.

That’s my philosophy. I think any experience that you become consciously aware of has the capacity to look beautiful from your particular vantage point, if you want it to.

Success and failure, and love, and anger, and power outages, and travel, and sex, and everything you experience is beautiful, and you can give whatever meaning to it that you choose, and you will eventually move out of the vantage point from which its visible, and that’s perfectly fine.

You’re part of a larger cycle, and when the time is right, you’ll see it all again. And since you’re going to be wiser when that happens, maybe it’ll all be more beautiful and meaningful than you ever knew before.

It’s hard to blame them for becoming cynical. There are only so many times you can die under your Dad’s car tire, grow up with a broken face, sink good years of your life into an abusive relationship, lose your father, your mother, your siblings, your children, your livelihood and legacy, and keep on trucking with clear eyes.

I guess it’s important to hit bottom at least once, for perspective, but the part that strikes me as really strange is that there’s nothing to do with all the heartbreak. It feels like there should be something, some outlet for it, and I think people get stuck—sometimes for their whole lives—trying to process their bad experiences, trying to find that outlet to get the hurt out of their bodies and spirits, trying to find the key that will make whatever happened acceptable so they can have permission to be happy again.

But there’s nothing there to find.

There’s no catharsis, there’s no movie ending where the bad guys get what’s coming, or the douchebag sees the errors of her ways. Life just rolls on, and you have to keep moving and just exist with whatever has happened, otherwise you stop living and growing, and burn out into one of those bitter, gray people.

Heaven & The Abyss

I was listening to that song that everyone loves “Say Hello 2 Heaven,” which is about a guy named Andrew Wood, who died of a heroin overdose after battling with depression. One of the lines struck me:

“He hurt so bad, like his soul breaking
But he never said nothing to me”

And that’s what got me thinking about all this. I’ve been broken a few times, and come back mostly better and stronger, but I wonder where the line is between that bitterness nipping at your heels but being at bay, versus being broken and just not telling anyone in the hope that if you fake it long enough, you’ll make it.

I think my conclusion is to throw out the question. That is a question framed by inevitable bitterness, and the question is about what degree you let it affect you. But I reject that premise.

I’m saying that the advice I’d give to my younger self, is that you need to remain unattached to outcomes, and just learn to exist in a state of unconditional, childlike wonder. Horrors and atrocities and soul breaking tragedy will undoubtedly hit, and all you can do in the face of that titanic sadness is shine as brightly as you know how, as a reflection to others that there’s love and hope in the world, but also as a reflection to yourself.

Don’t fake it—I’ve wept until I couldn’t breathe, until my soul ground to a halt, until I had no light to give. If you’re there, be there. The worst thing you can do is exist in limbo, between gut-wrenching sadness and the veneer of normalcy. That limbo is where people get lost—they stumble through a fog of distractions, with that sadness at their heels forever, until the day they die.

I say plumb the depths of that darkness, and stare it in the face. There’s no movie ending, no catharsis. Just you and that abyss, looking back at you. When you can look into it and stop fighting against it existing, then it loses its power over you. It exists, you exist. That’s all.

You exist. Let that childlike wonder take over.

Now you can shine again, from a place so deep inside that tragedy cannot strike, so bright that darkness cannot exist.

We’re always busy looking for signs from the universe about our path, and shit like that. We say that when we’re following our path, it gets easier because the universe says “yes” and helps us. It’s more complicated than that.

There’s a danger here of learning helplessness, groping through the dark, frustrated at not being able to figure out the path that our mother universe has laid out before us. This sense that we’re doing it wrong because we haven’t discovered it yet, and that when we do finally discover it, the mysteries of the world will unravel before us in a divine cacophony of insight. We just haven’t been perceptive enough to see the signs that are waiting out there for us.

But that groping, that clawing at the door of an imagined mother figure, is the very force in our lives that holds us back. I asked myself why, with the red carpet out before me, could I not grow and maintain a roster of clients large enough to give me a livable income?

The fire in my chest for helping people burned true, I didn’t just imagine it. But it didn’t burn because I stumbled into the sign that unlocked my life for me.

It burned because I set it on fire.

There are no signs, but those you create for yourself. Your guides aren’t your parents, and you their hapless child. Your guides are your advisers, and you are their president. You set the course. You call the shots. By your singular vision and determination you will succeed. Or by your ambivalence and uncertainty, you fail.

Your doors slam shut in your face because you are ambivalent, not because they are wrong according to some external authority or plan. Stuff doesn’t work because you change your mind, your attention drifts, and soon you’re focused on something other than the path that you had been traveling on.

There’s no trick, there’s no sign, and there’s no plan, except the one you create.

If you want something through to your core, and you focus on it with a fire in your gut that the world can’t douse, then you will create whatever you’re burning for.

The point is essentially that we project so much of our own meaning onto the world that we forget to see what’s actually there.

… Edwards calls this the “tyranny of the symbol system” because it dictates to us, forces our hand to draw symbols rather than what we see.

But it isn’t simply that we draw using these symbols; we perceive using them as well. I don’t bother to see the actual shape of a head because it was never important to; in order to see it for what it really is, I need to practice my perception. It is easy for me to see a news story as a manufactured construct, but it never occurred to me I was seeing every day objects wrong. My tilted computer monitor isn’t a rectangle; it’s a trapezoid.

You’ll never make the huge breakthroughs you want in your life if you don’t teach yourself to see what’s really there.

How To Draw (This Is Not An Article About How To Draw) →

But what am I doing that I call work? How can I look back at the end of the day and know I was “productive”?

Hours worked are irrelevant. The real question is:

What have you built today that has enduring value?

I could argue that my photo readings have enduring value because they can change peoples’ lives, and who knows what value will come from that in the long term. But using that logic, sneezing at the right place and time has enduring value.

No, what I mean is producing something that didn’t exist yesterday, that is valuable now, and will continue being valuable for the foreseeable future. I always feel like I accomplished something when I release projects like my Energy Anatomy book, which will be helping people learn about energy work for years to come. I always feel productive when I’ve published a blog post that I know will inspire someone and continue inspiring people.

And I think, assuming you follow through, it’s productive to build part of a project that will be released. Most of my days are spent working on projects that are not yet ready to be released. When they finally are released to the world, all the “potential productivity” is transformed right then to actual productivity. Before that moment though, you’re just spinning your wheels.

Research is spinning your wheels. Thinking is spinning your wheels. Half completed projects are wheels that are spinning in place.

But let’s be honest. We all spin our wheels, and spinning is necessary. It’s like training for a triathlon. Sure, practice swimming and running and biking. But then show up to the race. Otherwise you’re just spinning your wheels.

Not only that, but sometimes we take a day off and play. If you’re just running for the joy of it, don’t worry about the race. I do photo readings because I love doing them, even though they don’t meet my definition of productivity. I write software most of the time just for fun, not to be productive.

The thing is I know the difference. When I’m doing something for fun, I let it be fun. When I’m doing something to be productive, that simple question is how I keep myself honest.

What have I built today that has enduring value?

10 or 11 hour work days are well and good, but they don’t mean shit except that I’m a masochist unless I produce something that has enduring value.

What have you produced today?

In the interview I talk about:

• My background as a healer
• The path that got me to healing
• What “energy work” means to me
• The value of skepticism
• Physically seeing energy
• Analytical versus Intuitive balance in the Third Eye
• Who should go for energy healing?
• Discord among the many selves
• How beliefs form mexperiences
• How to clear your own energy
• Mistakes that student healers make
• My new book project
• The importance of not believing anything I say

Click here to listen to: Finally, a No Nonsense Guide to Energy Work →

Let me know what you think!

We get stuck because we start thinking about the domino effect. The fear that the changes we want are going to cause a cascade of changes we don’t want.

The sticking point here is that we spend all this time thinking about the aspects of our lives we want to change, but when we can’t figure out how to change those things without affecting anything else, we give up.

“Fuck yeah, fuck my boss! He can take my gray little Dilbert cubicle and shove it right up his ass!” sounds great until your car payment is due.

Leaving your verbally abusive wife sounds good until you think about finding a new place to live, and the reality of your growing waistline in the face of having to go out and date again. You stop thinking about it because it feels too painful.

Don’t do that.

Here’s what you do instead: write down the consequences of the thing you want to do and work backward to eliminate them. Get rid of the bills you’re afraid you can’t pay. While you can still afford to live in the bigger place, move into a smaller place. While you can still afford two cars, sell them and buy two bikes instead, or a clunker. Now you’re free to stay or quit without the fear of the domino effect.

It helps to think like the worst has already happened. Sit and imagine you’ve just been fired. What do you do? Do you start looking for ways to cut back expenses? Do you take some time off to relax? Do you look for a different job? Do those things now, before you leave your job: cut expenses like you’re destitute, take some time off, look for a different job (you really are a masochist, aren’t you?). Now those dominoes have no power over you.

Tah-dah! You’re free to quit your job.

Caveat: Price of Admission

There are circumstances in which you endure one thing in order to hang onto another thing, and that can be okay. I call it the “price of admission.” You might have a boyfriend who you love dearly, and he might drive you up the wall by constantly leaving his clothes on the floor. You pick them up and wash them. Price of admission.

If you’re facing something that you think might be a deal breaker but you’re not sure, then:

1. Ask yourself: What is causing my pain? I pick up dirty clothes because I want a clean room and my boyfriend leaves his shit everywhere.
2. Ask yourself: What do I get for my pain? In exchange for cleaning clothes on the floor and a small portion of my sanity, I get an intensely loving, sexy boyfriend.
3. Is what I get worth my pain? In other words, if someone proposed a deal to me to get the thing from question two in exchange for my pain, would I take the deal? Yes, I would take a kickass boyfriend in exchange for a life of uncertain laundry cleanliness.
4. No, the upside isn’t worth the downside. Then stop taking the deal: it’s a deal breaker.
5. Yes, the upside is worth the downside. Then you have two things to do. You must do the first. The second is up to your discretion and creativity:
   1. Become 100% okay with whatever the bad thing is. Even if you wouldn’t generally choose to clean up clothes after a grown-ass man, you have chosen to clean up in this context. That word is important: cleaning the dirty clothes is now a choice that I made, not a situation that I’m victimized by. If you find it impossible to be okay with a situation, then stop kidding yourself: the upside really isn’t worth the downside, stop taking the deal.
   2. Solve the problem in a different way. Hire a housekeeper. Problem solved.

   Don’t let the domino effect stop you from making the changes you know you need to make for a life of passion and fire. Eliminate the power those dominoes have over you, or fully embrace the prices you deliberately choose to pay for the life you truly desire.

   Click here to reply to Dominoes and the Price of Admission Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/dominoes-and-the-price-of-admission/feed/ 1 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/dominoes-and-the-price-of-admission/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/2PCOAcyx9i8/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/photo-reading-susan/#comments Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:22:27 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=2202 Click here to reply to Photo Reading: Susan Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   ]]> This is a photo reading I did with Susan. The only information I had going into this reading was her name and this photo. Here’s how the reading went!

   

   My Reading

   Susan,

   You’re a beautiful and gentle soul. You have an almost child-like energy.

   You feel anxious and sometimes fearful, and that you have a man that balances that by making you feel secure. He’s masculine, and grounded, pretty traditional, a “man’s man,” and his influence calms you. Good for you for finding him. You seem really stable together. 8)

   You have a budding psychic ability, and I think you’re interested in exploring that, but your fear is blocking you. It’s also blocking your profession. You’re in the allied health professions, but not in a traditional field, something a little more fringe, but it’s still helping people. Something to do with mental health, and clearing blocks. You’ve begun to get serious about it recently.

   The issue is that you feel a little fraudulent because what you do is supposed to make people feel stable, but you yourself do not feel stable. So you think “who am I?” and you question whether you’re good enough.

   The answer is a little complicated. First of all, NO, you’re not an impostor. Everyone feels like that–google “impostor syndrome.”

   But you’re going to use your talents to stabilize yourself, just like you think. But not in the way you think. The core of the issue is that you feel you lack a strong identity. When you find that identity, you’ll notice an upswing in libido, followed by a confidence you’ve rarely felt in life. When you feel that confidence, you’ll know through to your bones that people need your help and you’re just the woman for the job.

   When that happens, it’ll be an awakening for you. It’ll also mean that your strong relationship will change–it won’t be a bad thing! But your husband and you will have to adjust to the “new you.” He gains a lot of significance from being there for you, and he’ll be a little lost when you stop needing him so much. Make sure you honor him, and make him feel special, important, and needed!

   You’re going to rock the world, I’m so excited for you!!

   Her Response

   So accurate that I am practically speechless … I honestly don’t know what to say … amazing.

   Thanks so much for this.

   That was a general reading for Susan. I also do readings focused on money, relationships, health, or any other specific area you want to know about. Click here to find out more about my photo readings →

   Click here to reply to Photo Reading: Susan Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/photo-reading-susan/feed/ 5 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/photo-reading-susan/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/rZypd_VD5k8/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/you-suck-at-everything/#comments Fri, 23 Sep 2011 16:03:57 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=2193 Click here to reply to You Suck At Everything Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   Read More:

   1. Your Reality is an Illusion
   2. Benevolent Sun
   3. Sweet Release, Energy Anatomy
   ]]> People are born with talents. You better hope you get one that’s impressive or lucrative, because otherwise you’re screwed.

   Take these two artists for example:
   

   

   Artist #1

   

   Artist #2

   I didn’t choose these two artists so I could pick on the first one though. I actually picked these two because they illustrate my point, and there’s something really interesting about both of these guys: they have the same name. It’s not impossible, but “Jonathan Hardesty” isn’t the most common name to share.

   The Difference Between The Jonathan Hardestys

   I want to show you another comparison. It’s the Jonathans’ self portraits.

   

   Jonathan #1

   

   Jonathan #2

   What are the chances of these two artists’ names being identical?

   100%

   Jonathan #1 is from 2002. Jonathan #2 is from 2011, almost a decade later.

   The Jonathans have the same DNA, the same mother, the same father. The difference between the two Jonathans is time, determination, and persistence. Talent doesn’t exist; get to work.

   Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
   -Calvin Coolidge

   Click here to reply to You Suck At Everything Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

   Read More:

   1. Your Reality is an Illusion
   2. Benevolent Sun
   3. Sweet Release, Energy Anatomy

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/you-suck-at-everything/feed/ 11 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/you-suck-at-everything/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/nPbWyPoeGyA/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/photo-reading-karen/#comments Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:13:29 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=2152 Click here to reply to Photo Reading: Karen Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   Read More:

   1. Photo Reading: Lauren
   2. Photo Reading: Susan
   ]]> This is a photo reading I did with Karen. The only information I had going into this reading was her name and this photo. Here’s how the reading went!

   

   My Reading

   Karen,

   You’re beautiful, and I can see that you’re frustrated.

   You have children, but I don’t think you’re with their father anymore. I think that’s part of the frustration you’re feeling. It’s coming across as a jade about dating and men, like you’ve been hurt and you’re not sure it’s worth the heartache or effort because you’re not finding the quality partner that you so want (and feel like you need for your children as well).

   One thing you need to get straight is that you’re gorgeous. I know you have a block in this area, but when you’re at your best, you radiate beauty. People tell you that too, they notice, but you dismiss it when they say so, like they’re just being nice or whatever. They aren’t: you have tremendous capacity as a woman, and it would make me happy to see you let that shine through.

   This is a challenge to you: decide powerfully to feel love. To make decisions and hold beliefs based on love. Let the hurt and disappointment just wash away. When you feel it creep in, hold love in your heart. Think of your children. You’re happiest when you bathe in love, and you make better decisions from your heart that way.

   The reason is that you have such a powerful heart. I can see you want to help people, but I can also see you don’t feel like you’re living up to that desire and potential.

   You have a job in which you talk to a lot of people, but you’re not really set on fire by it. I’m confused about what the job is. It seems like a pretty small company, and something to do with image, like a fashion consultant (but that’s not it).

   You enjoy it to some degree, but you know it’s not your path. Again, make decisions about this path based on Love, not fear. Your love is your strength in this world.

   What will set you on fire to do? Don’t worry about what’s going to pay the bills. Figure out the fire first, then the bills. (Use your head though, don’t jump into anything before you have your ducks in a row).

   Focus on expressing love in every area of your life, and you will see the life you’ve always wanted unfold before your eyes.

   Her Response

   Wow! I’m amazed, seriously. You pretty much nailed everything dead on.

   I am very frustrated that I’m not finding the quality partner that I want. That is an excellent way of putting it. It’s nearing 3 years since my divorce and I really wasn’t expecting to still be alone at this point. I have had a few short relationships but nothing that has lasted. I guess my self image issues stem from my ex husband and the fact that I keep throwing myself out there and getting rejected.. just last weekend I decided to go out on a limb and ask this guy out that I’m friends with on Facebook. He usually starts up chats with me first and we go to the same gym. So, I sent a message casually asking if he’d like to go to a movie sometime. Not only did he not respond; he deleted his Facebook account 2 days after i sent the message. Ouch! Needless to say it’s been on my mind a lot lately. Not only for me but also for my 2 children. I’m missing being a family…. and tired of going to movies by myself. :)

   Thank you for the compliment! I believe it when you say at my best I radiate beauty.. I have had more than one person call me sunshine :) I guess it’s just kind of hard to stay with that feeling. I will give every effort to live with more love and make decisions from my heart. It’s funny because I had this same exact thought process just last week. I had decided to live more authentically, so this challenge comes at an appropriate time.

   I work in the IT department of a manufacturing company, mainly help desk and network support. We manufacture headwear, t-shirts, gloves, scarves. “Fashion” is actually in my work email address, [redacted URL of her employer, that has the word "fashion" in it] ! :) I have been there 15 years and the last few years I have definitely lost the fire. I know it’s not my path, I’ve really been feeling that lately. I’m just not sure what my path is or how to find the fire. Right now I feel obligated to stay as i’m the sole provider for me and the kids. I DO want to help people, I just have no idea in what capacity that is! :)

   I know you probably didn’t want a novel, but I thought a little background would help show how wonderful you are! I really appreciate the reading and the advice. The kids are getting ready to leave with their dad for the weekend and this is when I usually struggle with keeping the light shining. I think I can, I think I can…

   That was a general reading for Karen. I also do readings focused on money, relationships, health, or any other specific area you want to know about. Click here to find out more about my photo readings →

   Click here to reply to Photo Reading: Karen Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

   Read More:

   1. Photo Reading: Lauren
   2. Photo Reading: Susan

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/photo-reading-karen/feed/ 0 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/photo-reading-karen/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/SJ8QmqNCM5A/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/photo-reading-lauren/#comments Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:03:08 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=2147 Click here to reply to Photo Reading: Lauren Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   Read More:

   1. Photo Reading: Karen
   2. Photo Reading: Susan
   ]]> This is a photo reading I did with Lauren. The only information I had going into this reading was her name and this photo. Here’s how the reading went!

   

   My Reading

   Lauren,

   You’re a lovely girl, and very bright.

   You’re a little lost right now, which is fine. You’re not sure who you are or what your calling really is, so you’re just doing what you’re “supposed” to do according to your family, and culture. You have some ideas, but you know it’s not quite “right” though. That’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that, you’ll find your calling, and this is all part of the path as well.

   I see conflict in you. When you’re faced with emotional situations, you react in the moment, but in retrospect you don’t always like your reactions. You kind of beat yourself up about it later, like “Why couldn’t I have just been more in control?”

   The answer to that question is complicated. You are a very feminine girl, surrounded by a society that misunderstands and often maligns femininity. Being feminine is about expressing and feeling freely, which is the opposite of control. It’s about letting feelings wash over you like the ocean.

   The real issue you’re having is related to your finding that path I mentioned before. You haven’t yet build a strong sense of purpose and identity as a woman, so those feelings that wash over you are not coming from a place of feminine power and love. Instead they often come from anger or insecurity. Having those strong emotions is part of your strength and beauty as a feminine woman, so please honor that in yourself. Don’t think that’s wrong, and try to control that like a man would. Instead realize that the issue is really about the authenticity and congruency of those emotions.

   When you learn about yourself, and come into your own as a radiant and powerful woman, you will find that the feelings you have will remain intense. But instead of being frustrated by them, you will be empowered by them and learn to honor them.

   Part of that learning about yourself means finding partners. I can see you’re mostly heterosexual. When it comes to guys, right now you are most intensely attracted to very masculine, grounded men. That is natural as you are feminine and you don’t have that really strong rooting yet, as I was talking about above. Be careful with these men though: they will tend to shape and dominate your identity. Remember that you are responsible for your own growth, and be sure at all times that are comfortable and happy with the influences your partners put you under.

   There will come a time when you no longer need that dominantly masculine man. In fact that type of masculinity is the immature and insecure type that relies on bullheaded dominance and displays of power. You’ll find as you mature into that powerful feminine force I described, you’ll be turned off by the men that used to attract you. Instead you’ll seek out more balanced men: masculine to the core, but in touch with his feminine side, and ready to be true partners with you.

   Remember, as you grow, to honor yourself by staying connected to your heart above all else. Ask yourself as you think and feel and decide: am I operating from a place of fear and anger? Or from a place of love?

   If you side with love, you’ll grow into a shining example of a woman and magnetize exactly the kind of man you deserve and desire.

   Her Response

   Pete oh my goodness you read me like a book–what a beautiful reading, soo right on I can’t even say that one part was a little off or didn’t resonate it was like bam bam bam right on the mark haha!!! I can’t believe you read all of that off one photo. You’re soooooo right about me being a bit lost and every guy i have dated in the past few months have been masculine go getters who know themselves very well and I thirst for them because of my own lack of identity. I know that everything you read you provided in the reading however if you had even a tiny instinct or feeling about what i should do or what my calling relates to or even a vague idea/launching point that would be point me in the right direction I would so appreciate it. If you didn’t get anything about that cuz i know that’s probably getting specific, then no worries it was an amazing reading.

   My Follow Up

   Lauren,

   I’m so glad the reading resonated 8)

   Your path is going to be tricky for you. A person blazes a path through their life only after they’ve come to know themselves, and then create themselves to be who they choose to be. After that point of self discovery, a path normally rolls out in front of you. It’s a path that you couldn’t have followed before that discovery phase.

   So the reason I said it’s fine that you’re not sure about your path yet is that it’s not yet time for you to drive toward your mission, so to speak. Right now it’s time to discover yourself. And you’re going to create opportunities to grow and discover yourself just by living your life, regardless of what you’re doing right now. Take this time to try lots of different things, without strong attachment to any of them.

   Just be careful not to wander into a career or relationship that traps you. Be mindful of always moving and growing, and you will create yourself first, then your true path.

   That was a general reading for Lauren. I also do readings focused on money, relationships, health, or any other specific area you want to know about. Click here to find out more about my photo readings →

   Click here to reply to Photo Reading: Lauren Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

   Read More:

   1. Photo Reading: Karen
   2. Photo Reading: Susan

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/photo-reading-lauren/feed/ 0 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/photo-reading-lauren/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/KWL5bTkQ6tg/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/sweet-release-energy-anatomy-deal-for-my-favorite-people/#comments Fri, 09 Sep 2011 18:33:39 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=2102 Click here to reply to Sweet Release, Energy Anatomy Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
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   1. Powered by Intuition Interview
   ]]> Beginning in July I did a 40 day no orgasm trial. When you go from orgasming every day to orgasming never, it may seem that the energy and ecstasy of the orgasms is somehow lost. Like if you don’t use it that day, it’s lost.

   What I found out is first that that energy ends up being redirected into more intense emotions and into a spectacular creative flow. Second, when the release finally does come, so to speak, it’s as if that energy, pent up for 40 days, releases all at once in something more beautiful and intense than 40 smaller orgasms.

   

   I haven’t been posting essays for a couple weeks. You may think the energy and ecstasy of those posts is lost. But actually their creative energy was redirected powerfully into a single, explosive work that’s far greater than the sum of a couple weeks of essays.

   A labor of love has kept me very busy. I’ve actually been working on this way longer than a couple weeks. I mentioned starting this book quite a while back, but as with all major projects the first 90% takes a lot of time, and then the second 90% takes a lot more. I always forget how much blood and sweat goes into these things.

   Without further ado:

   

   I’ve learned a lot over the decades and in my practice as an energy worker, but there has always been one source of frustration for me. I’ve been interested but skeptical of the information available about energy work.

   “Let’s assume I believe all this stuff,” I’d say. “What does it mean? How does it work in real life? Why doesn’t anyone know about it like they know about buoyancy and genomes?” I won’t just believe whatever some hippy writes on the internet. Most of it is just hand waving that amounts to “because god!”

   Where is all the information about energy work for people who are intrigued but want information that’s grounded in reality?

   I wrote Energy Anatomy to be that grounded guide. I say that because I was the interested skeptic you may be now, and I wrote the book I wish I had when I began this journey. What that means to you is that your questions about energy work will finally be answered in a clear, accessible way, with minimum hand waving. What that really means to you is that you’ll be able to tap into the infinite joy and gratitude available to anyone who really gets this stuff. Your own unlimited wisdom and intuition.

   This was especially labor intensive because every spread in the book has a painting, illustration or photo, most of which I painted from scratch. The visual work is so extensive and high quality that I’m going to release an entire separate package of posters and illustrations later on. Check out a few low resolution samples:

   

   Illustration of the Nervous System showing major Nervous Plexi

   

   Diagram of a well-functioning Heart Chakra. There are diagrams for each chakra, and one of the full system interacting.

   

   Visualization of the Solar Plexus chakra (there's one of these for each major chakra!)

   Now instead of just slogging through walls of text, you’ll be able to connect what you’re learning to a visual cue so you learn faster and more deeply, and so you actually remember what you learn. It means you’ll be able to put what you learn into practical action.

   Get Your Copy

   It’s easy to buy the book because you can choose either Paypal or Google Checkout to pay with a credit or debit card, or Paypal balance. Then you can download the book instantly. Doesn’t get easier!

   Click here to Buy Now

   Other Cool Stuff

   One thing that I think goes without saying is that I’m not some slimy snake oil salesman. Even if I was, you know where I live, so to speak, because I have this blog. My point is that if you don’t like the book, then I don’t want your money. Just let me know, and I’ll give you a (fast) refund, no questions asked. I think that’s obviously how it should be done, but I want to be crystal clear, so I wrote it out.

   Something I think is cool about this e-book format is that there’s an awesome navigation bar that allows you to instantly navigate to any part of the book:

   

   That makes reading the book super fast and easy, but it also makes it awesome as a reference that you can refer to again and again.

   Deal for my Readers

   I think this book will help a lot of people, and I definitely think you should check it out. In order for it to help a lot of people though, a lot of people need to see it. So I set up a special discount code for anyone who Tweets, Likes, Recommends, +1s, snail mails, carrier pigeons, or just plain shares this with other people.

   Those people will get over 50% off the cover price, making the purchase a no-brainer. You might as well steal my underwear while you’re at it. No, actually I don’t wear underwear.

   Anyway, instead of making some complicated system, I’m just going to give you the discount code and trust that you’ll do your part by spreading the word. Simple!

   1.

   Click this link to go to the checkout page

   2.

   Once you’re at the checkout page, type the following code in the “Discount Code” box on the bottom left: SharingIsCaring

   3.

   Win!

   I’m looking forward to all your awesome feedback on this book. I poured myself into it, and you won’t be disappointed. Let me know what you think!

   ps. If this kind of book is your thing, and you have a tribe to spread it to, let me know so I can set you up as an affiliate. That way you can help your friends and help yourself at the same time!

   Click here to reply to Sweet Release, Energy Anatomy Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

   Read More:

   1. Powered by Intuition Interview

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/sweet-release-energy-anatomy-deal-for-my-favorite-people/feed/ 13 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/sweet-release-energy-anatomy-deal-for-my-favorite-people/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/oQZmiA2NTpU/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/fundamental-needs-2-hookers-bombs/#comments Tue, 23 Aug 2011 00:26:43 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=2041 Click here to reply to Fundamental Needs #2: Hookers & Bombs Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   Read More:

   1. Fundamental Needs #3: Massive Ink
   2. Fundamental Needs #1: Whipping the Ones You Love
   3. Ritual Creates Change
   ]]> The Air Force sent Ed to the AFAFRICA component of Africom after decades of flying C-130 cargo planes all over the world. He retired while operating out of Angola after 24 years in military service.

   He earned a reputation in the military for being ready, willing, and able to fly over the most dangerous territories, sometimes landing in hostile zones without adequate ground troops to protect him.

   His antics off the field were equally legendary. He once took leave in a high-end Central African hotel where he drank like a fish, took his pants off, and began wandering around the lobby naked.

   Fat on his pension, and free to relax, Ed immediately signed on with a paramilitary organization that contracted with the United Nations to move humanitarian cargo all over Africa.

   He continued to fly, unarmed, over some of the most war torn parts of the world, on antiquated and poorly maintained prop planes when he could go anywhere and do anything.

   This is the life he chose.

   

   Uncertainty, or variety, is a fundamental human need. It’s directly at odds with certainty, another fundamental need. We want to be stable, but a completely predictable life quickly becomes unbearably monotonous.

   Variety boils down to a change in emotional state. You want to have different, varied, and surprising experiences because if you don’t you’ll get bored, and boredom bleeds into depression.

   We want to be surprised by our loved ones, we want to “let loose” after a hard week of slinging paper in a cubical. We dream about scuba diving in Fiji. We swoon at meeting the love of our life, and we keep falling just as hard for each love that follows.

   We lose ourselves in the fantasies of books and movies, deliberately absorbing ourselves in fictions that make us feel happy, sad, hopeful—that change our state of mind.

   We all crave it. We all need it. Some people are content with daytime reality shows. Others create drama in perfectly beautiful relationships, just to feel that ebb and flow, that tidal pool of emotion.

   The people who value variety above all else will risk life and limb to get it.

   

   Ed met his first wife Eun Jung when he was stationed in Korea. He knew her for five months before they wed, then he brought her to Utah. He spent a month in Utah with Eun Jung, then left again, only seeing her once every three months.

   After a losing battle with gambling addiction, Eun Jung sealed her small house shut, opened the door from kitchen into the garage, and left the car running. The mailman found her body a week later when the unbearable smell aroused his suspicion.

   Ed made it back after eight days to cremate the body and sign the paperwork. He was back out in the field within the week.

   When uncertainty becomes a person’s primary value, health, relationships, finances, all go out the window. That’s true whether your state changes come from snorting cocaine cut with battery acid or doing low altitude supply drops over war zones.

   And Ed’s thrill seeking didn’t stop at bomb runs and boozing. He also slept with perhaps thousands of women over the years, the majority of them prostitutes. AIDS epidemic be damned, he sowed his wild oats far and wide from Angola to Kenya, where he met his second wife, Muthoni, a financial analyst in Mombasa.

   Ed was shocked as hell when Muthoni turned up pregnant. “I honestly thought I was shooting blanks after all the women I’ve fucked without any kids,” he told me. I didn’t clarify how he would’ve gotten all those African prostitutes pregnant if he was using a condom. You do the math. Thrill seeking. Uncertainty.

   Muthoni left Ed years ago, but their son still gets post cards every couple years from one African dictatorship or another.

   Filling the Need for Variety

   The need for uncertainty varies according to how easy it is for a person to get aroused. I don’t mean just sexually, although sex is one major way people meet the need for variety (orgasms are one hell of a state change). What I mean is how easily our emotions arise.

   If you’re the type of guy who rages when you’re cut off in traffic, and sobs like a school girl when your girlfriend dumps you after three months, then you don’t need to sky dive to feel uncertain. You’re fine with Monday night football. You’re fine with the same beer, over the same nachos, with the same buddies, and only slight variations on the same subjects. That’s enough variety for you to exercise your emotional range. Someday it may not be, but for now, it’s plenty.

   On the other hand, if you’re cool-bordering-on-sociopathic then you need more extreme experiences to give you those big feelings you crave. You free climb 500 foot seacliffs. You have unprotected sex with thousands of prostitutes and drink enough to drown a marlin.

   There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to meeting your need for variety. But here are a few ideas:

   • Travel. See new places and meet new people, even if it’s locally. Fly to Fiji and SCUBA dive with giant sea turtles. Witness Machu Pichu in Peru. Visit the Hague. Alternatively, go to the earwax museum 20 miles away. Go to the giant tree or strange rock formation or notable cathedral, or anywhere. Make a day trip of it. All these new experiences will stimulate your mind and shift your emotional states, which is what variety is all about.
   • Meet interesting new people. Search Meetup.com and go check out the local Raw Food group. Get involved in the local music or art scene. Just go to a bar and strike up a conversation with the ugliest guy you find. It doesn’t matter; people are interesting. Interacting with them will give you new perspectives, new experiences, new changes to your emotional state.
   • Try new hobbies. I’m bad when it comes to hobbies because I feel like I try so many things that I rarely get good at any of them. I am not naturally talented at anything, but I’ve learned how to program, write, paint, maintain exceptional physical fitness, cook, build houses (carpentry, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, drywall, tilework, hardwood flooring). Show me a hard thing to do and give me a month or two. Each new hobby is a new perspective, new connections in my brain, giving me access to new experiences and emotional states.
   • Self experiment. I do experiments on myself all the time. I once went two days without speaking, seeing any language at all, or thinking in any language. I recently ended a 40 day No Orgasms trial (to explosive effect). I’m working now to gain 30 pounds in 30 days (so far so good!). I’ve done radical honesty trials, social experiments, and messed with my sleeping schedule ad nauseum. Each new experience gives me brand new perspective and often radically alters the chemicals in my body and brain.

   Which, as you know, is exactly what variety is. A change in your physiological and psychological state. We all do it. The question is whether we do it in a way that lands us in a Congolese prison with Grade A jungle rot, or we do it in a way that enriches and expands our lives and relationships.

   Click here to reply to Fundamental Needs #2: Hookers & Bombs Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

   Read More:

   1. Fundamental Needs #3: Massive Ink
   2. Fundamental Needs #1: Whipping the Ones You Love
   3. Ritual Creates Change

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/fundamental-needs-2-hookers-bombs/feed/ 2 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/fundamental-needs-2-hookers-bombs/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/62Qz1owgpwY/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/stress-is-dirty/#comments Mon, 15 Aug 2011 15:27:47 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=2039 Click here to reply to Stress is Dirty Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
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   1. Your Pain is Dirty, so Clean it
   ]]> Stress seems unavoidable. But it’s a paradox because unavoidable as it may be, it also doesn’t exist.

   Not exactly.

   Your child is hit by a car, and totters between life and death. The morphine drip beeps as you hover over your broken son for weeks, hoping against hope that he’ll open his remaining eye and recognize you. A plethora of emotion overwhelms you, including anxiety and stress.

   Everything works out as well as it can for him. Later that month you receive the first of many medical bills. Your modest, middle class income is dwarfed by the high six figure bill. How can you possibly pay this, and still survive? How can you provide your son with the ongoing care he needs? Stress.

   Luckily you have a decent job with acceptable benefits. Your company can go to bat for you. Everything will be fine. Except a recent memo lets you and your coworkers know that times are tough, and there will be a round of layoffs in your department. What if you are laid off? How will you eat? How will pay those medical bills? Stress.

   

   Stress is the fear you feel as a result of a persistent threat. You don’t know what’s going to happen, but you can imagine the dire consequences.

   Your son dies in the accident, and you aren’t stressed any more. You’re distraught and grieving, but not stressed. Or maybe he survives, but you can’t pay the bills. Once you declare bankruptcy the way forward is clear, and you’re not stressed any more. Or maybe the layoffs happen, and you are passed over. No more threat, no more fear, no more stress.

   No one has time to sit and chew their finger nails, wondering if it’ll hurt, as a fist is flying toward their face. You just get punched, and it hurts. It throbs, it swells, a deoxygenated blood fills the sack of broken skin, and a purple bruise forms. There’s no fear because it already happened. You’re just experiencing the clean pain of a punch to the face.

   When a threat is bigger, and longer-term than just a punch to the face, you have time to stew over it. To pace back and forth. To let your mind run wild with the dismal possibilities.

   Stress is the dirty pain of all the looming threats in your life. It’s the killer force that converts possible hardship, into definite health issues.

   Remember that dirty pain is the pain you generate in your own mind, that is totally disconnected from your physical reality. You control whether you feel it or not.

   Relax. Or you might end up like Mark Twain.

   “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” – Mark Twain

   Click here to reply to Stress is Dirty Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

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   1. Your Pain is Dirty, so Clean it

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/stress-is-dirty/feed/ 1 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/stress-is-dirty/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/CiRhSHkggrU/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/tailgating/#comments Fri, 12 Aug 2011 10:00:44 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=2052 Click here to reply to Tailgating Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   ]]> On Thursday morning I started driving from Florida to Austin, Texas. My Cadillac was as full as it could be while still being able to make a 1,000 mile journey. I was a little stressed because the lady whose house I had arranged to rent had backed out of the arrangement. I was headed to Texas with nowhere to stay, but the wheels were already in motion, as they say. Texas or bust.

   Somewhere between Tallahassee and Pensacola I had an epiphany and I began tailgating other drivers.

   1.

   If you look the bottom left corner of my driver’s license you’ll see the phrase “Safe Driver.” I like to say that I drive like an old person. I’m not a skilled driver per se, but I am very careful. I have never had so much as a speeding ticket in all the years I’ve been driving. I drive slowly and defensively. I slow down at intersections to look for oncoming traffic, even if I have the green light. I leave plenty of distance between myself and the car ahead. I don’t want to risk any damage should something go wrong on the road.

   I used to drive a Chrysler Gem to get around town, which is an electric car throttled by government mandate to only 26 miles per hour, which is slow even on residential streets. Other drivers would get impatient with me, they would tailgate me and  overtake the car, even if it meant going into oncoming traffic to do it. They would always accelerate quickly from there, vindicated and free.

   A minute later, without fail, I would pull up right next to them again, while they were stopped at a traffic light, or if they had hit slower traffic. I learned from my Gem that it never paid to be impatient on residential streets. Speeding and tailgating are pointless even if you value the extra 10 seconds you might gain from them, since the traffic system itself will prevent you from realizing those gains.

   Just relax and go with the flow of traffic, you’ll get there in due time. Don’t stress out about jams or detours, just enjoy the moment, and get where you’re going when the opportunity presents itself.

   2.

   One of my rules with long distance highway travel is that I never exceed 9 miles an hour over the speed limit. Statistically, I’m unlikely to be pulled over for going only 9 miles an hour over, as many state statues have the threshold of “lucrative citation” set at 10 miles per hour over. I also tend to stick with packs of cars moving that speed, like a herd of gazelle hoping to avoid the blue and red flashing lion lurking in the underbrush on the shoulder of the highway.

   When you’re traveling 17 hours, those extra nine miles per hour add up to about 150 miles over the course of the trip, which is about 15% of the total journey. In that case, it makes sense to push the limits in a calculated and systematic way.

   I was driving West on I-10 through the Florida panhandle, with my cruise control set to exactly 79 miles per hour. Every time I would see a slower moving car in the fast lane, I’d either slow down the cruise control or just turn it off well in advance, so I could maintain several car lengths of space between us. The distance made me comfortable and ensured we wouldn’t disturb each other or collide.

   I would be annoyed because I wanted to make good time, but these people were in my way, going more slowly than I wanted to go. And their speed determined my speed. You know those laws that were once enforced, that people know about, but that seem optional these days? I waited for the space I needed to pass the slow drivers on the right, so I could continue my 79 mile per hour cruise. And I would stew the whole time I was going only 67 or 71 miles per hour.

   At the first available opportunity, I’d speed ahead with vindication and freedom.

   I was approaching another slow-moving vehicle in the fast lane, and I couldn’t go around him. I reflexively reached for the cruise control switch, and I thought,

   “Doesn’t this guy know that some people want to go fast in the fast lane?”

   And as soon as I asked, a smart part of me retorted,

   “No. You’re staying four or five car lengths back and matching his speed. How is he supposed to know you want to go faster?”

   Oh shit. Tailgating as a public service: “Excuse me kind sir, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m in an awful hurry, would you mind if I passed?”

   So I didn’t flick the cruise control off. I edged out of my comfort zone, and sped toward his car. I got within a car length, and just as I was going to lose my nerve, he slid into the slow lane to let me pass.

   And I was so grateful to him. Letting me pass in that moment held a strange emotional weight, like he acknowledged that I was driving forward at a speed he wasn’t comfortable with, and he accommodated my path forward just because I “asked” by pressuring him just enough for him to notice I was there.

   From that moment on the panhandle forward, when I knew the other driver could get over for me, I would drive close enough for them to notice me and they would move. I would thank them in my mind every time. In heavier traffic, when movement wasn’t possible, I simply turned cruise control off and went with the flow. When other even faster moving traffic bore down on my rear bumper, I would happily move over for them as well: you’re going faster and taking bigger risks than I personally would, but best of luck to you!

   By the way, I’m not talking about driving.

   Click here to reply to Tailgating Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/tailgating/feed/ 4 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/tailgating/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/6xGniD2YpH4/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/strong-man-and-doer-of-deeds/#comments Tue, 02 Aug 2011 04:33:43 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=2045 Click here to reply to Strong Man and Doer of Deeds Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   ]]>

   “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

   Theodore Roosevelt
   “Citizenship in a Republic,”
   Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

   Accomplish something today.

   Click here to reply to Strong Man and Doer of Deeds Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/strong-man-and-doer-of-deeds/feed/ 1 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/strong-man-and-doer-of-deeds/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/tdXw8j-nAp4/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/brand-new-problems/#comments Mon, 25 Jul 2011 21:53:13 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=2010 Click here to reply to Brand New Problems Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   Read More:

   1. Quality Problems vs Safe Problems
   2. Positive Psychology
   ]]>

   “I’m sick and tired of these same old problems. Please universe, give me some new problems to deal with!”

   If you feel like you’re in ground hogs day, experiencing the same problems over and over again— distant lovers, lukewarm career, friendships in tumult—then those things are not the problem. You are the problem.

   Your needs are being served by being in pain, you are acting out the drama of your own limiting beliefs. You are creating situations that support your negative worldview so that you don’t have to face the risk that you’re not good enough, smart enough, ready enough.

   When you let go of the problems you think define your life, you find that they fall by the wayside, and newer, more interesting problems arise. Your problem of paying the bills becomes a problem of growing your business.

   Here’s how to get New Problems

   Look at the ongoing problems you face in your life, and ask yourself: what positive purpose does having this problem serve for me?

   For example, you battle depression because you “can’t” trust men and therefore ruin relationships. In return you get to reconnect with your feelings. Your friends and family make you feel important by coming to your rescue. You get a rush every time you switch mental states into that depression. The depression feels safe and comfortable and familiar.

   You’re fulfilling four (!) fundamental needs by being depressed! Why would you really want to feel better when feeling like shit is working so well for you?

   Identify the benefits you get from your problems, and generate new possibilities for yourself to get those same benefits in a way that isn’t a problem for you. When you start filling those needs in more healthy ways, your problem will evaporate.

   And then you’ll have the golden opportunity to experience new and better problems.

   Click here to reply to Brand New Problems Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

   Read More:

   1. Quality Problems vs Safe Problems
   2. Positive Psychology

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/brand-new-problems/feed/ 2 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/brand-new-problems/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/Mjv2PKDbrzs/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/fundamental-needs-1-whipping-the-ones-you-love/#comments Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:12:22 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=2000 Click here to reply to Fundamental Needs #1: Whipping the Ones You Love Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   Read More:

   1. Orgasms are Better When You’re in Love
   2. To Ken Sharpe, with Love
   3. Fundamental Needs #2: Hookers & Bombs
   ]]> Julie loves dogs. She is a member of PETA, and a vegan. When she was a kid she had a dog named Bella. Bella was her best friend because her mother resented her in a way that most children only think their mothers resent them, and her scam artist dad had pissed off years prior.

   Julie moved every few months from one hovel to the next. Bella went everywhere with her. They slept in the same bed, and ate off the same plate.

   Also, Julie beat Bella mercilessly, until she bled. Bella yelped and screeched in that way that instantly makes your heart pound when you hear it coming from down the street.

   Human beings all share six fundamental needs. One of the needs is for certainty. When things get too ambiguous, too confusing, we look for refuge in people and situations that are sure things. Certainty is one of those needs that gets fulfilled no matter what because people can not and will not stand for too much uncertainty for very long.

   We want to know that our friends will be there for us when we need them. We want to feel that we can predict what will happen to us if we follow the laws of the land, we want to have stable employment, and a steady girlfriend.

   

   And when all else fails we want to be certain that the world really is as fucked up as it seems. When we’re buffeted around by parents who don’t give a shit about us, and have no stability from day to day, the only sliver of comfort we get is knowing that everything will always be fucked up, and everyone will always let you down. It’s a constant, so it provides certainty.

   So when you get a dog that adores you and follows you everywhere, that dog is violating the only shred of stability you have in your life. It’s giving you hope, and hope hurts.

   So you beat her. You know she’s going to leave eventually, or viciously attack you and be taken away, so you might as well speed the process along. She’s making you love her. The dog chain you use to beat her is stained red, she yelps when you touch her back from the deep bruises.

   But still she stays.

   The dog becomes a new anchor of certainty. She stays no matter what, even if you beat her mercilessly. And just to make sure it’s still true, and will always be true, you keep beating her. Just to be certain she hasn’t changed her mind.

   And then some day, many years later, you attack your husband just as brutally. There’s no way he’s as loving or dedicated as he seems. You’ve been abandoned before, this is no different. The hope hurts too much, and you’re so in love, that you can’t stand the suspense of wondering when it’ll all end. So you throw your tantrums and your barbs, and all the vitriol you can muster. The longer he stays the more it hurts, because you’re so in love, and you so want him, but you can’t have him because having him gives you hope that he might stay, and that will never happen. So you push, and push, and push until he leaves.

   Some people need more, some people need less, but you will create certainty in your life somehow. Whether the certainty comes from brutalizing those you love, or from a deep well spring of self confidence is up to you.

   Filling the Need for Certainty

   The shift required to go from beating your dog, to loving without fear is deceptively small.

   Some people look to religion as their rock. Some to a respectable career. Become a doctor and you’ll always have a job and the respect of your community. Some create large networks of close friends who will be there, in aggregate, no matter what. Those are workable solutions that may even fall on the healthy side of the spectrum.

   But the strongest, most poignant shift you can make is to certainty about yourself.

   

   When you create yourself, that self is always present, and can never falter. When you are confident that you are strong and smart enough to make a perfect and complete life no matter the circumstances, then you are always there to rely on yourself.

   I’m not advocating becoming an island—love and social connection is a whole different fundamental need that I’ll talk about later. What I’m advocating is cultivating the ability to trust yourself as a rock in the turbulence of your life to degree that your trust in other people (or lack thereof) is not crippling to you. Create yourself to be so strong that if every trust you ever created was broken, you would still be able to rely on yourself.

   Counter intuitive: when you learn to rely on yourself above all else, your ability to trust other people blossoms. That’s because the trust isn’t plagued by anxieties about being broken. You don’t need the trust anymore, you just enjoy it, and deeply appreciate it while it’s there. It frees you to trust abundantly because you yourself become a deep spring of infinite trust.

   What Julie went through as a child was not her fault, and Bella surely forgives her. Every child should have the opportunity to learn that those she loves can be relied on. When that happens the stage of development passes without fanfare into the stage where you cultivate self reliance.

   But now you’re Julie, all grown up. You learned a coping mechanism when you were a child that worked—it got you through the time. Honor it, be grateful for your resourcefulness. And then let it go.

   It’s time to cultivate new resources, it’s time to build deliberate, unshakable certainty in your life. From the ground up, starting with yourself.

   Fundamental Needs #2: Hookers & Bombs →

   Click here to reply to Fundamental Needs #1: Whipping the Ones You Love Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

   Read More:

   1. Orgasms are Better When You’re in Love
   2. To Ken Sharpe, with Love
   3. Fundamental Needs #2: Hookers & Bombs

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/fundamental-needs-1-whipping-the-ones-you-love/feed/ 7 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/fundamental-needs-1-whipping-the-ones-you-love/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/l-_ccWOD74c/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/change-the-world-no-excuses/#comments Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:00:33 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=1996 Click here to reply to Change the World, No Excuses Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   Read More:

   1. 9 Ways to Change For Good
   2. Ritual Creates Change
   3. Behavior Change Grid
   ]]>

   Thank you very much!!

   Your blog was a little spark that ignite a fire inside me.

   I don’t know if you remember, but my heart was destroyed, and the next day a I got an email from G8 (the best 8 universities in Australia) inviting me to apply for masters. It was something i have always wanted, but at that time, it could have been a sudoku or a puzzle, no difference.

   I did all the paperwork to think of something else and now I’m leaving! I’ll get my master in crosscultural communication in USydney, with a scholarship that covers everything! I think it’s fate! or maybe the spark was always there and it just needed something to ignite.

   Your blog did that to me. I looked for help and i found it in your blog. Thank you very much dude. Everything happens for a reason, I guess. Sometimes things need to be torn down and apart to build something new, better and more beautiful

   I feel like super happy now

   Thanks!

   CB

   Cristian Barrera has been a reader for a long time and this week he sent me that message.

   When I get those types of messages my heart skips a beat, I feel a rush of blood in my neck, I feel alive. The effort I put into my work here on this site changes peoples’ lives. It empowers people to create themselves and build the reality they choose. I know I’m doing what I’m meant to do.

   I could be a well-paid software engineer. My grandparents would be proud, they would understand what I do, and be able to explain it to their friends who would all be impressed knowing I had a Good Job™.

   But I chose to build this site instead. I chose to do my breakthrough sessions instead. That wasn’t an easy choice, but it was the right choice.

   Do you get messages like this from the people you work with? Are you changing lives? If not, then why the hell not?

   Click here to reply to Change the World, No Excuses Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

   Read More:

   1. 9 Ways to Change For Good
   2. Ritual Creates Change
   3. Behavior Change Grid

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/change-the-world-no-excuses/feed/ 2 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/change-the-world-no-excuses/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/QGaX1LEM0tE/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/the-art-of-honesty/#comments Mon, 11 Jul 2011 16:18:52 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=1988 Click here to reply to The Art of Honesty Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   Read More:

   1. The Art Gallery That Exists
   2. Techzing Interview Tuesday March 23rd
   ]]> Honesty is something I’ve talked about here because being honest begins with self-honesty. You can’t “be authentic,” or build the life you want without self honesty because you’ll have no idea who you are or what you want to do if your entire mental life is walls and facades.

   James Altucher is a good blogger because he’s honest. From Do You Have to be Rich to be Honest?

   For 15 years I’ve been lying. Ralph (not his real name) used to call me up at 4 in the morning. He was a client of my first business. He needed advice about his job. I couldn’t stand him. In fact, at one point he borrowed a lot of money from me he never paid back. And he never paid his bills on time. I had to worry about payroll every month. So at 4 in the morning he’d call for advice and ask, “is now an ok time? I couldn’t sleep.” And I would always say, “of course it is.” When of course, it wasn’t. I was lying to him. And it made me hate him even more. And it made me hate myself even more.

   The post goes on with specific, actionable advice about how to be more honest, and more happy. I highly recommend it.

   Do You Have to be Rich to be Honest?

   Click here to reply to The Art of Honesty Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

   Read More:

   1. The Art Gallery That Exists
   2. Techzing Interview Tuesday March 23rd

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/the-art-of-honesty/feed/ 0 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/the-art-of-honesty/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/ZP9qNdMjLjg/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/how-to-choose-your-emotions/#comments Sat, 09 Jul 2011 20:31:35 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=1867 Click here to reply to How to Choose Your Emotions Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   Read More:

   1. How to Choose a Profitable Niche Topic
   2. Thinking and Feeling
   3. How to Make Everything Better
   ]]> We think our emotions happen to us. The internal experience of an emotion makes it feel inevitable. Our language even tricks us: that phone bill made me angry.

   But that’s an illusion.

   To prove that our reactions and experiences are entirely within our control, I present one Thích Quảng Đức.

   

   Thich Quang Duc Self-Immolates (Click to Enlarge)

   Thích Quảng Đức, a Buddhist monk, burned himself alive in 1963. If you’re like me, your skin crawled and your heart jumped when you saw this picture. We project our expected internal experience on him, so we vicariously experience agony when we see him burning.

   But look again, at his face, bubbling and flaking off his skull as it is. Serenity. Centered calm. Witnesses reported that he did not move a muscle or make a sound, until his burnt husk finally collapsed forward after about ten minutes of burning.

   You should not expect that kind of adamantine self control from yourself. I’m sharing this with you to remind you that your experience of the world, and your reactions to it are entirely your choice.

   The Script

   • Some asshole with chrome rims and no door handles cuts you off in traffic. The spurt of adrenaline constricts your chest, and your head throbs as you grip the steering wheel. Asshole, you yell.
   • Your room mate is playing his music at 1am again, and you’re frustrated.
   • A friend flakes on you for the second time in a row, you’re pissed, you feel disrespected.

   All these are normal reactions. These are the kind of reactions your parents demonstrated to you while you were growing up. Your friends and family won’t think twice if you react like that.

   But the normalcy and inevitably of these reactions is an illusion. You’re just running a script, a program, that’s been passed on to you, that you haven’t thought hard enough about to stop.

   But now you will.

   The Choice

   The limbic system is the seat of emotions in the brain. Even though our internal experience as humans seems like it takes place in the frontal lobe, with language and rational thought, the limbic system is the older, more powerful part of us. It’s the reason we can’t resist chocolate. It’s the reason rape turns our stomachs, or turns us on. It’s the reason that guy cutting you off in traffic makes you so very upset.

   When people talk about choices, they usually mean a rational choice: analyze your options, then choose the one that makes the most sense. You don’t feel like emotions are a choice because they aren’t… a rational-level choice.

   Emotions are a limbic-level choice, and you can’t make a limbic-level choice the same way you’d make a rational level choice. If you try to rationally choose not to be upset at your loud room mate, you will fail. The limbic system doesn’t respond to reason. The limbic system only responds to sensation and chemistry.

   Think of your limbic system as a machine that you can put an experience into, and get a feeling out of. Loud noise in, frustration out.

   Training Your Limbic System

   Before you can train your limbic system, you have to know that experiencing, remembering, and imagining are virtually identical cognitive processes.

   So a dog scares you when you’re a child, and every time you remember that experience, you are scared as if it’s happening to you again. That reinforces your limbic-level idea that dogs are scary. That’s how phobias develop: an early experience gets trapped in an echo chamber until it becomes an overwhelming emotional burden.

   The good thing about how this works is that just like your early experience planted an emotional seed, you can deliberately choose new experiences that will plant a similar emotional seeds that can “echo” and grow in your mind.

   If that’s not feasible for your situation, you can imagine or remember differently—remember that those are almost identical to experiencing.

   Desensitization

   The first option I mentioned is to deliberately experience your fears in a safe context. People afraid of spiders can conquer that fear by looking at pictures of spiders, then video of spiders, then real spiders. Then touching the spiders.

   People afraid of approaching hot women cure their fear by approaching anyone at all, then women they aren’t interested in, then hot women.

   What’s happening is that your limbic system is learning that nothing bad happens in these contexts. The more you do it, the more that safety is anchored, the more that well-being is associated with the experience.

   It doesn’t matter that you already “know” that spiders are mostly harmless. You have to feel it.

   Emotional Anchoring

   This is a big topic that spans most of NLP, but I’ll give you a broad overview. The goal is to use “anchors” to trigger a desirable emotional response.

   Anchors can be any action or thought. Maybe for you, going back to your parents’ house and eating a meal your mom cooked triggers a deep sense of safety and love. An NBA star might feel a rush of confidence and competence as he steps onto the court.

   These are rituals that trigger emotional responses because of past experiences.

   The basic steps to creating an anchor are:

   1. Choose an emotion you want to be able to call up at any time.
   2. Relax deeply by breathing and clearing your mind.
   3. Remember a time when you truly felt the emotion you chose. Put yourself back in that moment, remember how you felt, how did everything look to you? how did it feel, smell, taste? Don’t skimp here, you must really feel this emotion deeply.
   4. While fully in that relaxed state of remembering and imagining, perform some ritual. Squeeze your left hand into a fist, say some unusual combination of words, imagine yourself bathed in light. Whatever you want, it’s up to you.

   Perform the steps again for the same emotion and ritual, but this time with a different experience. The more you do it, the more heavily the emotion will be anchored.

   So you’ve anchored serenity and joy into a phrase: the world is beautiful. Next time a jerk cuts you off, the adrenaline still spurts, but you focus and you say: the world is beautiful. You feel better instantly.

   Over and over, on your commute, you’re cut off, and each time you say: the world is beautiful. Eventually you’ll condition your mind to react with serenity and joy when you’re cut off in traffic, without even invoking the anchor.

   If you don’t think that’s possible, remember Thích Quảng Đức. A lifetime of anchoring serenity and detachment through meditation. Not even being burned alive could shake him. You can choose to be joyful in your life.

   Click here to reply to How to Choose Your Emotions Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

   Read More:

   1. How to Choose a Profitable Niche Topic
   2. Thinking and Feeling
   3. How to Make Everything Better

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/how-to-choose-your-emotions/feed/ 4 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/how-to-choose-your-emotions/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/s-nElRcZDG8/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/the-awesome-power-of-forgiveness/#comments Fri, 01 Jul 2011 22:04:47 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=1944 Click here to reply to The Awesome Power of Forgiveness Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   Read More:

   1. Words Have Power
   ]]> I wept like a heart broken child just now. It’s not a cute and shocking metaphor. I was literally wracked with sobs, convulsing in the fetal position on this couch in the San Francisco Bay Area until about 30 seconds ago. This requires some context.

   I’ll tell the whole story some day, but here’s a summary.

   The Fall

   My dad was a great guy, and a perfectly normal 9-to-5 suburban suit. That’s why the news that he had died of a cocaine overdose hit me like a ton of bricks. Actually he mixed coke, a $20 bottle of Merlot, and a shitload of Percocet.

   I had been on the phone with my mom all week from Florida, because he had gone missing after a fight with her. I hoped he was driving across the country to sleep on my couch and cool off. Instead the Ohio Highway Patrol found his sun-baked body in the back of his wine-red Denali at a rest stop just a few miles away from his house.

   I was 21 when I traveled to Ohio for the funeral, and to take care of my Mom. My wife and children were perfectly supportive, but that kind of loss is like an abyss. And my heart, tattered as it was, ripped through when I found my mother emaciated and covered in boils from the aggressive staph infection.

   The faster a drug takes effect the more addictive potential it has. Both my mom and dad had been injecting a water and cocaine solution into their arms for many months. They used clean hypodermic needles (available at pharmacies for diabetes injections), but one can only perforate one’s skin so many times before introducing infection. I’m told my dad was close to death just from the infection alone.

   Mom spent the first few days I was there for the funeral completely inconsolable and bed-ridden. When she came downstairs at a decent time one morning, chipper as June Cleaver, it scared the shit out of me like watching a zombie lurch across the room headless.

   She aggressively declined to acknowledge her drug use. After looking into interventionists, we had to depart after the funeral, leaving her behind with her coke and my two teenage siblings.

   Without her consent, there was nothing I could do, so I went home and went about the business of grieving for my dad and for them as well.

   A month later, she called.

   The Tempest Approaches

   “Pete, I want to go to rehab. Will you come watch the kids for me?”

   I was standing on her porch 36 hours later. But after a week, mom still wasn’t in rehab and had changed her mind completely. I took my brother and sister aside.

   “Guys, Mom’s doing bad, I don’t know when she’ll get better, but she can’t take care of you anymore. We have to take care of each other.”

   With tears in her eyes, my mother allowed me to fly both the kids home to Florida.

   So at 21, I bought the only house I could afford that could fit me and my wife, our two kids, and my siblings, plus my home office. And I started tearing at the walls right away.

   The worst year of my life followed. I dropped out of the honors program in college, tanked my first company, went into deep debt, drove my marriage to the brink of destruction. My brother was days away from college, but my sister was out of control. Mom undermined my efforts to help the kids at every turn. She was deteriorating into a paranoid waste case, with freely available life insurance money to fund her decent into delusion and misery.

   Then one day I could not find my brother or sister. They had disappeared. After many hours searching that day, I called mom.

   “Mom, I haven’t heard from the kids all day, none of their friends know anything, I’m worried. Did they call you?”

   “The kids are with me here.”

   “Here? Where’s here, are you in town?”

   “Here in Ohio.”

   I hear my sister laugh at me in the background, as I realize what’s happened.

   Fuck you Pete: all you did? Fuck you. Marriage in shambles? Fuck you. Boys all confused and fucked up? Fuck you. Crushing debt? Fuck you. Can’t finish school? Fuck you.

   I can’t explain the utter despair I felt in that moment. I knew my siblings were rightly and truly fucked. I knew my brother would never make it through school. I knew Mom would be an addict from then on. And I knew that my idea that love mattered and doing the right thing made a difference was bullshit.

   If I hadn’t had a family to take care of, I might have killed myself after that. I felt so completely empty, like I wanted to cry forever but I had no emotion left to spare. Emotional rock bottom.

   After a few days staring a wall, I wrote my mom a letter. I said she had destroyed me, and I was cutting her off until she was clean and sober. That was 5 years ago, and I haven’t been in contact with any of them since then (more or less, summarizing here).

   New Dawn

   In those years I’ve gotten over things. I talk about my mom with a shrug: she fucked me over, but whatever, that’s what addicts do. I’ve moved on, built a better life for myself.

   This year in particular has seen me accelerate down this path of allowing my light to shine brightly from within.

   I’m here in the Bay Area doing sessions, and staying with my grand parents. My now-adult sister happened to choose now to send my grandmother a nasty e-mail that I think is out of line. So I stew for a day, then write her. I poured out my story and my feelings to her, a harrowing but compassionate e-mail. And I was on a roll, so I did the same to my mom. Totally candid, totally from a place of longing and love.

   And today my exchange concludes with real forgiveness. Here’s the very end of what I wrote to my mother. Truer, more sincere words have never been written:

   I forgot to mention something that’s important. I love you, completely and unconditionally. I’ve let go of whatever hurt and heartbreak I harbored. There’s no room in my heart for that anymore, I’m too full of gratitude and love.

   I wrote to you once that what you did almost killed me and I wasn’t sure if my heart would ever recover. It did feel like it almost killed me, but my heart recovered, stronger and more fierce than ever. There’s a fire inside me, an intense passion and love that devours sadness and fear. It’s hot and bright like the sun inside my chest. Just like when I was a kid, I want to save the world. I’m working on it now.

   But I just want you to understand that I forgive you, and I love you.

   And then I pressed send.

   And then I stepped aside, and I wailed like a black-laced widow. I clutched my chest, and felt the pain clawing its way out through my throat. Between choking and sobbing, “I love you… thank you…”

   I love you, thank you.

   My heart overflows with love, with gratitude for my lessons, for my blessings. Today the black gunk buried deep behind my heart was overwhelmed by the unconditional love I feel. By a raging, unstoppable torrent of utter gratitude.

   A voice told me months ago, Healer, Heal Thyself. Today I’ve been baptized in tears.

   Thank you. I love you all.

   Click here to reply to The Awesome Power of Forgiveness Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

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   1. Words Have Power

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/the-awesome-power-of-forgiveness/feed/ 12 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/the-awesome-power-of-forgiveness/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/Gkn_C8iyRTc/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/the-psychiatrists-last-stand-2/#comments Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:00:53 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=1834 Click here to reply to The Psychiatrist’s Last Stand Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   ]]> The Last Psychiatrist is a blog I read because his way of thinking excites me and his way of writing impresses me. He recently wrote an article about Second Life, and I think it may be one of the last I read from him. Not because it’s bad, but because it’s so very good.

   There comes a time as a regular reader, that you just outgrow a writer. Not because they are worse, but because you’ve fully assimilated their perspective into your own, and their writing isn’t the challenging journey it once was.

   It’s like your kids going to college on their own, or like a student who bests the master. There’s no greater honor for a writer.

   Click here to reply to The Psychiatrist’s Last Stand Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/the-psychiatrists-last-stand-2/feed/ 0 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/the-psychiatrists-last-stand-2/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/sVs1gPKvZIs/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/words-have-power/#comments Fri, 24 Jun 2011 10:00:10 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=1886 Click here to reply to Words Have Power Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   Read More:

   1. The Awesome Power of Forgiveness
   2. Goal Orientation: Action vs. Outcome
   ]]> “Tiff’s a chocolate whore.”

   Ben is Tiffany’s husband, and he’s a well-meaning guy. He has a bit of a way with words.

   The three of us are walking into a Godiva store to pick up a treat for Tiffany. Ben says “Tiff’s a chocolate whore.”

   “Aficionado? Chocolate princess, maybe?” I offer.

   Ben doesn’t care about word choices, it’s all the same to him, and he’s a person who chooses the wrong words anyway, so there’s no use. What difference does it make anyway?

   “Well, one way Tiff’s a skillful, and elegant lover of fine foods. The other way you called your wife a prostitute.”

   Facts about Word Choice

   Tory Higgins, William Rholes, and Carl Jones wanted to see how impressionable people are.

   They asked two groups of people to read about, then pass judgement on fictional test subjects. One group was subconsciously exposed to words designed to “prime,” or influence, their judgement. The researchers flashed words like “hostile” or “persistent” to the participants in the experimental group, then both groups read the description of the fictional subject.

   The primed participants were very likely to characterize the subjects according to whatever word they had been exposed to. Perfectly lovely people were painted as hostile and reckless. Cads became persistent.

   They published their results in 1997 in the The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

   A year earlier The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology had published a similar study in which some participants were shown the word “elderly.” They walked and performed their tasks more slowly than the control group who had not seen “elderly.”

   These are just two examples of from a large body of psychological literature that all lend themselves to the same basic conclusion:

   Words have power.

   Choosing New Words

   The point is that when we choose to describe our wives as whores, that affects us. And her. When we choose to call ourselves idiots when we make a mistake, that sinks in. Facts about idiots become facts about us.

   This is the “L” in NLP: the language we choose triggers our brains to think in certain patterns, and cast our perceptions in certain light, rosy or shitty.

   Choosing positive words will create a positive impact on you and those around you.

   It’s just a simple choice to begin saying “princess” instead of “whore,” but you will fail at first. Don’t be discouraged, it’s just a habit, and you need to retrain your mind.

   When you catch yourself speaking or thinking in a negative or derogatory way, just consciously choose a better word to replace it. At first you’ll think negatively, and have to constantly correct yourself. Within a few weeks, the positive words will flow naturally.

   When it occurs to you after-the-fact that you transformed, you’ll try to think of a negative word or phrase and it’ll hit you like a cat puking. Dirty and wrong. You can barely think it, never mind say it.

   Ben’s a good guy, and he can choose better words when he’s ready, with only an ounce of effort. It might make all the difference. Insightful.

   (Thanks to Wes Tansey for the help with the psych literature!)

   Click here to reply to Words Have Power Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

   Read More:

   1. The Awesome Power of Forgiveness
   2. Goal Orientation: Action vs. Outcome

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/words-have-power/feed/ 10 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/words-have-power/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/I13NmblQ0CM/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/youre-right/#comments Mon, 20 Jun 2011 10:00:00 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=1911 Click here to reply to You’re Right Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   Read More:

   1. Create Your Core
   ]]>

   “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford

   Click here to reply to You’re Right Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

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   1. Create Your Core

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/youre-right/feed/ 0 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/youre-right/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/Guw2WIg_C3k/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/how-to-break-your-limits/#comments Fri, 17 Jun 2011 10:00:20 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=1890 Click here to reply to How to Break Your Limits Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   ]]> Gema is 23 years old and might be gay. She’s not sure. (Not news.)

   The problem about being maybe-gay is that Gema lives with her hyper-conservative parents, and has no legal rights as an unmarried Muslim woman in Indonesia.

   She was in a bind. Her parents expect her to find a nice boy (of their choosing probably), get married, and make lots of babies. At 23, she’s older than any of her sisters or cousins were when they all got married, and the family is starting to look bad to their friends.

   But Gema wants to get educated, wants to experiment with girls, wants to be her own person. Then, and only then, she might consider settling down with a nice boy. Or girl, maybe.

   But she’s stuck. She must live with her parents until she’s married to a boy. She’s never had sex with a boy, nor will she be able to until marriage. But she’s also never felt attracted to a boy. The couple of times she’s had sex with girls have been fraught with shame and doubt.

   Most countries expect immigrants to have a college education, something out of Gema’s reach. Even if that weren’t true, any visa she could get would require parental consent.

   She has no options.

   You knew there was a punchline…

   When Gema told me her story, the first question I asked her was what the age of majority is in Indonesia. She didn’t really know what that meant, but she knew that people were considered adults at 18 in Indonesia.

   I told her I had good news for her.

   First, I told her, you are a legal adult in your country. I know you think your parents have control over you legally, but they actually don’t. The idea that you stay with your parents and listen to them until you’re married is purely a cultural constraint, not a legal constraint. That means that if you choose to, you may leave your parents’ house whenever you want. You are free.

   I also told her that an Indonesian adult does not need parental consent to obtain a visa. Again, she’s free to make her own choices.

   Finally I told her, you are not responsible for the choices or feelings of your family members. You cannot make them happy, and you also cannot make them sad. The way they respond to your actions is entirely their choice. If they choose to feel shame as a result of you living the life you want, that is not your fault. It is entirely up to them. You are only responsible for your own choices, not for the choices of your family.

   Then, she lived happily ever after.

   Just Kidding

   Gema politely thanked me, but restated her position:

   There’s no law, she said, that specifically prevents me from moving out. But there’s also no law that specifically frees me. She said Indonesia just doesn’t have any law about the parent/child relationship as it relates to the age of the child. She told me that if she said “I’m over 18, so I’m free to decide my own life,” her parents tell her to shut up, they are an Eastern family, and she’s talking nonsense.

   So I do what I always do when faced with an inscrutable question: I scrute it. I dug into the Indonesian constitution and law.

   I told her that Chapter 10 of the Indonesian constitution guarantees that all citizens (Gema is an adult citizen) have the right to choose education, work, citizenship, and where they live. They also have the right, according to chapter 10, to express their opinion, to have freedom of thought and conscience, religion, and they have the right to not be falsely imprisoned or enslaved.

   I explained to her that “age of majority” is the age when children legally cease to be minors and assume control over their persons, actions and decisions, thereby terminating the legal control and legal responsibilities of their parents over and for them.

   That hit her like a ton of bricks. I saw the light flash across her face. She looked confused for a moment before widening her eyes. The law is on her side. She is not stuck. She is an autonomous person.
   

   Gema immediately applied and was accepted for a work visa in Singapore. She might even meet a cute girl there.

   You Are Gema

   Gema had been “stuck” for years, laboring under this false restriction. She had a limiting belief, that her parents could control her every move, and that she was powerless to stop them.

   For Gema, freedom was one google search away—just a quick glance through the actual laws she thought chained her down. Just a few minutes and Gema’s old chains were broken. Those chains were in her mind the whole time.

   But I didn’t tell you this story because I think you particularly care about an Indonesian woman named Gema. I told you this story because you are Gema. We are all Gema, in our own ways.

   Consider your desires, and think about why you haven’t fulfilled them yet. What limitations have you built for yourself that prevent you from being fulfilled?

   Click here to reply to How to Break Your Limits Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/how-to-break-your-limits/feed/ 8 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/how-to-break-your-limits/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/MuPb_4quFgY/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/see-thru-purple-panties/#comments Mon, 13 Jun 2011 10:00:13 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=1821 Click here to reply to See-thru Purple Panties Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   ]]> See-thru Purple Panties.

   Not only are they transparent, but they are embarrassing. It’s not just unadorned nakedness, it’s a type of nakedness that’s deliberate and unabashed. It begs to be seen, it calls attention to your most vulnerable self, and says, Yes, this is me. You know you want me.

   Wearing see-thru purple panties will either make someone hot or disgust them. And you’re fine with either.

   That’s authenticity. Anything less is limp bullshit.

   (Nice one, Bones.)

   Click here to reply to See-thru Purple Panties Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/see-thru-purple-panties/feed/ 2 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/see-thru-purple-panties/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/8_VRg0V9CbQ/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/make-it-obsolete/#comments Fri, 10 Jun 2011 10:00:05 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=1881 Click here to reply to Make it Obsolete Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
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   1. How to Make Everything Better
   2. Randy Pausch: Make Your Dreams Reality
   ]]>

   “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - Buckminster Fuller

   Fuller was, among many other interests, a systems theorist. When he said you have to make parts of a system obsolete to change anything he was talking about social change, and perhaps market changes.

   You can’t just kill the Big Four record companies by beating them at their own, rigged game. If you want to replace them, you have to invent file sharing.

   But this insight doesn’t only apply to society or markets. You are a “system” too.

   If you want change, don’t fight yourself.

   The parts of you that procrastinate and overeat are part of the system because they serve a useful function. If you want to replace those parts, you have to discover what their purpose is, and deliberately fulfill that purpose in a new and better way.

   Once you do that the old part will fall by the wayside effortlessly. You may not even notice it happening because once you’re successful, you’ll be a whole new person; your new way of being will feel perfectly natural.

   If procrastination is a defense mechanism against failure, and overeating is a surrogate for self-esteem, then embracing failure and finding a real reason to love yourself will make those symptoms evaporate.

   To really change you can’t fight who you are, you just need to replace the old parts by making them obsolete.

   Click here to reply to Make it Obsolete Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

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   1. How to Make Everything Better
   2. Randy Pausch: Make Your Dreams Reality

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/make-it-obsolete/feed/ 11 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/make-it-obsolete/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/u4ZS6r9CQEY/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/stop-apologizing/#comments Mon, 06 Jun 2011 10:00:30 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=1888 Click here to reply to Stop Apologizing Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
   Read More:

   1. Akrasia, or How to Stop Checking E-mail
   2. Stop Thinking and Do It
   3. 5 Steps to Stop Procrastinating Forever
   ]]> This is a note to self. I’m pretty good at not apologizing for who and what I am, but this whole energy work thing got my panties in a bunch.

   Half of my friends think energy work is obvious. A fact of nature, and of life. The other half unsubscribed from my e-mail list after the essay went out. That’s okay.

   Jenny Bones linked me to a discussion that I really needed to see between Susan Johnstone and Bridget Pilloud about the term “woo-woo” which is identical to my term “hippy shit.” It means “out there” stuff like energy work.

   They agree that the term is self-apologetic. A preemptive pejorative that we apply to our own model of the world—after all, if we look down on ourselves first, we hope to rob others of the power to look down on us as well. It’s hard to make fun of someone who is trying so hard to make fun of themselves.

   Authentically Weird

   We think authenticity sounds noble because we imagine we’ll be authentically brave, smart, strong, compassionate. Authentically successful. Authentically palatable.

   But authenticity is trickier than that. If you’re a smart person you will inevitably come to conclusions that will confuse, alienate, and upset some other people. Smart people end up on fringes because they ask a lot of questions and demand the answers. That’s how business coaches begin offering astrology services.

   If you’re not pissing people off, you’re not trying hard enough. Or you’re not honest enough with yourself. Don’t apologize for who you are.

   Click here to reply to Stop Apologizing Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

   Read More:

   1. Akrasia, or How to Stop Checking E-mail
   2. Stop Thinking and Do It
   3. 5 Steps to Stop Procrastinating Forever

   ]]> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/stop-apologizing/feed/ 11 http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/stop-apologizing/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PeteMichaud/~3/GMyvK6rnx9A/ http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/apple-announces-iuniverse/#comments Fri, 03 Jun 2011 10:00:58 +0000 Pete http://www.petermichaud.com/?p=1802 Click here to reply to Apple Announces iUniverse Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.
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   1. You’re Right
   ]]>

   Press Release
   Apple announces the latest and greatest product from the research lab on Infinity Loop. The iUniverse will revolutionize the way we learn, work, love, and grow. The iUniverse offers a totally immersive alternate reality—simply plug the device in to find yourself in any environment, having any experience of your choosing. From dragons to star ships, everything is possible with the iUniverse.

   Customers buy the new device in droves, and plug in. They choose from among the myriad environments available—everything from sex fantasies to flight simulators. They get lost in the worlds created by Apple’s elite environment designers.

   So they think.

   Having a cadre of designers was Apple’s initial plan, but production schedules were falling behind and the exquisite detail of each environment was too much for the team to handle. Luckily the company had made serious headway on a separate device, the iTelepath. The iTelepath is a device for reading minds. It wasn’t production ready because it was limited to reading paleomammalian urges—thoughts from the subconscious mind only.

   But that was enough for the iUniverse engineers, because now they could define generic situations, situation archetypes—beach front condo with smoldering hot foreign woman. The designers used to face issues like: what will the average person consider sexually attractive? How can we design a woman who is foreign to everyone? What is “ideal” beach weather?

   Now they didn’t have to design those aspects that are different for everyone. They can just use the prototype iTelepath to “ask” the customer’s subconscious mind what they really want, and generate that. One customer experiences full sun and mid 70s temperature (24°C), with a bronzed Moroccan woman. The next sees light afternoon showers from beneath a romantic canopy that she shares with a fair-skinned Irish woman who has hair like fire.

   And it works marvelously: create the essential structure of the experience, and let the customer fill in the details.

   Unleash What You Will

   Many customers absolutely love the iUniverse because it gives them exactly what they want, and surprises them with more richness and detail than they realized they could get.

   But trouble started as soon as the iUniverses were in customers’ hands. One man returned the device after finding his mother in the romantic beach getaway environment. A infertile woman had to be committed after giving birth to a demon in the pregnancy simulation. All manner of nightmare creature, personal agony, and abject humiliation skittered from the hell hole that the iUniverse had turned out to be for many.

   The shared experiences were marginally better. When more than one person plugged into the same environment, monsters tended not to erupt from the ground to devour people. The software would take an average of all the participants’ thoughts, so the environment tended to be more stable. Sharing was safer for those who gravitate toward terrorizing experiences. But customers also reported that their experiences tended to be bland and stifling—that their preferences felt crowed and ignored. They wanted to connect with people, but they also wanted to have their thoughts and desires come to fruition in the environment.

   The Solution

   The official word from Apple on the shared experience fix was: Form a clear, strong vision for the environment so the device can read your intention clearly, and connect with like-minded people. Cocreate your environment with people you like and trust to add value to it.

   People were pissed because they just wanted Apple to fix the damn issue. Apple created the iUniverse, and the customers wanted to connect to people and just have their experience work perfectly, they didn’t want to go through the effort of changing environments and changing who they connect with. Of clearly specifying what they wanted from the environment. That meant effort.

   Different Demographics

   Some customers just couldn’t muster the effort to strongly create their environment, so they settle for sharing the “lowest common denominator experience.” With all the other mainstream users.

   Some people were comfortable on their own so they went off into a corner of the iUniverse that was so very different from the shared iUniverse that they could scarcely interact with the mainstream customers at all.

   Certain groups of power-users really figured out how to push the limits of the iUniverse software to create radically alien environments and modes of being that mainstream users could barely recognize as an environment or fellow customer at all.

   Whatever the customers subconsciously expect is exactly what they find to be true in the environment they’ve chosen, and the more they find of that, the more strongly it’s reinforced.

   The Central Question

   Some people don’t believe that Apple designed it this way. Some people don’t read the company press releases, so they think the iUniverse just has prebaked environments and that what you find there is what was put there.

   Whether a customer is limited or unlimited, and no matter what environment they choose to experience, the whole simulation is running on the same underlying software that operates with knowable and essentially predictable rules.

   Remember that customers will only give themselves permission to have experiences that fit into their current subconscious beliefs about their environment. The fundamental assumption of science is that objective reality exists without regard for us observing or experiencing it, so we can do experiments to figure out what that objective reality is like.

   For those iUniverse customers who strongly expect that the environment is immutable, scientific experimentation is how they will accept new information. Ironically it seems that whatever experiments they do in an iUniverse environment will spontaneously generate exactly the result they expect: proof that the environment is objective and stable.

   Still, scientific reasoning is the bridge over the gap between those who think the shared iUniverse is immutable and those who powerfully create their own environment.

   Here’s the question I want you to really think about and then leave a comment to answer: If you were plugged into the iUniverse, how could you tell? How would you demonstrate through experiment that the device does indeed generate experiences from your subconscious mind?

   Hint: I’m not talking about an Apple product.

   Click here to reply to Apple Announces iUniverse Pete enables those ready to set themselves on fire with passion and purpose by clearing out their energetic gunk and realigning their mind with core principles so the gunk can't come back. You should follow him on twitter @PeteMichaud.

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