I’ll step out of the way and let the quotes speak for themselves:

“Fall seven times; stand up eight.” – Japanese proverb

“You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.” – Joseph Campbell

“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.” – Gandhi

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” – Jimmy Dean

“All is flux, nothing stays still.” – Heraclitus

“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.” – James Joyce

“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” – Plutarch

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” – Epicurus

“Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else” – Judy Garland

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank

“The mind can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven” – John Milton

“Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.” – Albert Einstein

“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.” – James Oppenheim

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The developers at Twitter rolled out a new retweeting feature in the last few days, and I’m not a big fan. A few people on Twitter asked me why I don’t like it, so I wanted to take a few minutes to explain why.

By and large, I agree with most of what Lisa Barone says in her post Why Twitter’s New Retweet Feature Sucks. I’d like to add more to her point that the new RT function “puts strangers in my stream.” But perhaps the first thing we should cover is…

What The Developers Were Thinking

As I was writing this, I took a look at why the good folks at Twitter made the change. I’ll summarize Evan Williams’ post Why Retweet Works The Way It Does to give the problem with “organic” retweets:

1. They make it hard to tell who’s saying what.
2. They’re mangled and messy
3. They’re redundant
4. They’re noisy
5. They’re untrackable

I agree with most of his points, but the move seems like a lot of the policy changes I see in the Army: because a few idiots do something unintended, the DA comes up with a new policy that keeps idiots from doing that – but it also makes it so that everyone else has to learn to do something “the new and better way” when it would’ve been easier to crack down on the idiots and get them in line. Granted, the Army is a hierarchical organization that can get people in line, whereas Twitter can’t – but the same mentality seems to be at play here.

It’s clear that people use Twitter in all sorts of ways, which is why some of us need to write posts showing different ways to use Twitter. So, whereas I don’t want to project my way of using Twitter on everyone else, the general frustration and dislike of the new function shows that enough of us use it in similar ways.

Organic Retweets – It’s All About Trust

That said, one of the biggest benefits I get from Twitter is that it serves as reliable content filter for me. There’s a smallish group of people who I rely on to RT good content. To use Chris’s ideas from Trust Agents, these are my trust agents, and they add a ton of value to the network for me.

With organic retweets, I don’t have to cognitively process all of the anatomy that Evan mentions in his post – when I see a RT by one of my trust agents, the “trust factor” is evaluated at an unconscious level since I see their avatar. I don’t have to look at somebody else’s mug and their content and then have to figure out whether I should trust their content.

So, here’s the difference. Organic RTs look like this:

The new RTs look like this:

See how much quicker you see what’s going on with organic RTs versus the new RTs? I doubt it’s just me that uses the avatar as a filter to determine what I should read. The processing becomes even more difficult when you have a sufficiently large network – Twitter’s web interface already doesn’t scale well, but with the new RTs, it could become even more difficult to use.

Which brings me to Evan’s third point about “redundancy.” If eight of my trust agents RT something, it’s not redundant – it’s letting me know that whatever is being retweeted is influential enough that many people in my network find it worthwhile to talk about it.

Smoothness and Ideaviruses

Let’s talk about ideaviruses and smoothness (a la Seth and Unleashing the Ideavirus) for a second. One of the factors that makes an idea go viral is the ease with which sneezers can pass it along. Organic RTs made spreading ideas really easy precisely because of the extraordinary weight that trust agents have when it comes to sneezing, and seeing their avatars instead of some random person added a lot of smoothness to people who wanted to spread a particular idea. The more a given person has to evaluate the credibility of any given content, the less they’re likely to send it along.

And while many people may be glad to see it become harder for commercial ideas to spread, we also have to remember the role that Twitter played in the recent U.S. and Iranian elections. One of the things that makes Twitter so valuable is because ideas can spread quickly – and the combination of split-second trust, RT saturation, and the smoothness of spreading ideas from organic retweets set the stage for Twitter’s rapid rise as the place to share ideas on the Internet.

Keeping Things Private

Twitter lists haven’t been around for that long, and I for one like them. It took me a while to figure out how I was going to use them, mind you, but I’ve found a few really good uses for them – the best use for me being private lists.

Given that I’m a coach, I have a list of all of my clients so I can see what they’re tweeting about; I often get very valuable information from tweets that I wouldn’t get otherwise. But I don’t want everyone to know who my clients are for privacy issues, so this is a private list.

While I was scanning that particular list, I noticed that one of my clients tweeted something that I wanted to share with everyone. Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t RT from within that private list. I had to click through to my client’s twitter page to RT.

This one baffles me. Their tweets aren’t private – the fact that they’re in my list is. Yet it seems that the tweets are being treated like they’re private because they’re in a private list. I’m not sure what this is about, but I hope it’s fixed.

Moving Past Either/Or

I’m very appreciative that the developers are adding features to Twitter and giving it some support, especially since I’m not paying a dime to use it. That said, I think this new feature is a misstep.

It’s easy for conversations like this to end up in an either/or split, though. The Twitter folks are saying “get used to it” and a growing body of users are saying “give us the old way!” This sets the stage so that one side will “win” and the other side will “lose.” In the end, someone is going to be resentful. (Telling us that we can always do it the old manual way is tantamount to saying “we don’t care if you want to use this new feature.” Just sayin.’)

But there’s a third option: the developers can give us the option in Settings to pick which way we want it to work. Those that like the new function and want to creep people into my stream can do so, but I don’t have to follow suit. I also don’t have to use a third party client, which is actually not in the best interests of Twitter since it marginalizes their ability to monetize off of the site directly.

(In case you’re wondering, I use Twitter’s web interface when I don’t want to be that immersed in Twitter. I can sneak and peak without immersing myself in the way I do when I’m using Tweedeck.)

Going this routes assures that both sides get what they want. It follows the user-generated feature path that Twitter has historically followed – after all, users generated “@username” as a way to reference or reply to another user – but it also allows the developers to make a change that will help some users overcome the pitfalls of organic RTs.

On that note, Twitter is a social network – we users share some responsibility to police up the people who are hijacking tweets and retweeting excessively. We have the ability to ignore or block people, and this is the right marrying of user action and features. A feature can’t regulate a social organism nearly as well as the individual parts of that organism can.

This feature is still in beta, so I encourage you to weigh in one way or the other. If you hate the new feature, don’t just whine and complain – send feedback, then whine and complain or write posts explaining your position. If you love it, let them know you love it.

Whatever you do, do me a favor: hit that RT button so people read this post and take a reasoned stand either way.

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Have you been needing to clean your workspace but can’t work through the resistance? This post is for you.

Implementing the ideas from this post will probably take you about 30 minutes (including reading this post), but it’ll be time well-spent. I’m channeling Merlin Mann, Pam Slim, and Jen Hofmann for this post, so this will be a complete fusion of our styles. Let’s jump right in.

A dash is a quick segment of time where you focus on just getting movement. This term was made popular by Merlin Mann, so read Kick Procrastination’s Ass later if you’d like to learn more. The key word in that last sentence was later – you don’t need to know more right now to get it.

We’re doing a workspace dash, though, so here’s where Jen comes in. Instead of beating yourself up about your piles and mess being there, ask what difference you’d like to see in your workspace. What does a more organized and peaceful workspace look like to you? What can you do to make your workspace get closer to what you’d like to look like? Take a couple of minutes or so to write down a few things you can do to get to your desired endstate.

It’s time to mix in a bit of Pam. Head over to Pandora and sign up – it’s free. Pandora is a free internet radio station that will play music of similar characteristics to any group you tell it to. When you get your account, type in “Black Eyed Peas.” You’re going to be dancing. Trust me on this. (Pam gets credit for this because she got me hooked on the Black Eyed Peas as background music.)

Now, set a timer for 20 minutes. Pull up the list you created above, put your office chair in a place where you won’t trip over it, and start dancing and working through your list. Smile, let the beat guide you, and work until you’re through your twenty minutes. Dance like no one’s looking.

When your work becomes fun, you won’t see it as work. When you don’t see it as work, you won’t resist it. Without so much resistance, you can do great things with less effort.

(I’m blessed to have such great friends influencing my thinking, online and off. And, yes, I’m listening to the Black Eyed Peas right now.)

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The More Buyers Mastermind launched about a month ago, and as I mentioned in Let Us Help You Grow Your Business, there were 11 other guest experts who contributed to the program. What I really like about this product is how much I’ve learned from it.

Let me explain: Dave was the man behind everything for the program, and when the program launched, I wasn’t able to listen to everything that everyone else said. I had to take it on faith that it was awesome – but this was easy for me to do, as many of the people who were part of the Mastermind are my friends, collaborators, and partners. I knew they’d be awesome because I talk to them regularly enough.

But, being who I am, I had to go through and listen to see what everyone else was saying because I learn something every time I talk to or hear them. This time was no different, but I wanted to share my key takeaways. My key points are heavily influenced by my experience with these people and their content, so don’t be surprised when you get something completely different out of the calls.

Before I talk about each one, though, what struck me was not how different the people are, but how surprisingly similar we are. Each and every call mentions something about personal integrity – everyone’s perspective on business was that we are in it to help people or provide solutions to their problems. As cool as it would have been to be the nice guy on the series, I wasn’t because everyone was a cool, principled person. I’m even prouder to be included among the bunch.

So, in no particular order, here we go:

Sonia Simone

I’ve made no secret that I’m a huge fan of Sonia’s. She’s slowly, quietly, but surely changing the way many people think about relationship marketing, and her characteristic compassion comes through in this call.

My 3 Key Takeaways:

1. How the farming approach to business building is better than the hunting approach
2. How to start and maintain healthy relationships with your consumers via autoresponders
3. Why giving away your best stuff works

Clay Collins

If you’ve never heard Clay on a call before, what you have to know is that he’s a spazz – but he’s also a genius when it comes to finding instantly profitable markets. What many people also forget, though, is that Clay’s also really good at finding effective ways to take your knowledge and put it to use in a way that helps yourself and other people.

My 3 Key Takeaways:

1. Why you should think of your online business as a real business
2. Why you should do something that you’d want to talk about on Oprah
3. Quick ways to get the expertise out of your head and into a product

Pam Slim

What I love about Pam is her ability to come in with rock-solid business plans and ideas that are tempered by a wholesome compassion and energy. That rang true in spades here, so to write more would just reiterate how much of a fanboy I am.

My 3 Key Takeaways:

1. The importance of making your goals visible so that you stick with them
2. How to find opportunities for development and education while working for your current employer without being a sleazebag
3. Cashflow is king

Chris Garrett

This was my first time hearing Chris; I knew who he was from the Problogger book, but that was the limit of my familiarity with him. After listening to his call, I’m kicking myself for not finding him earlier.

My 3 Key Takeaways:

1. How to become an authority in a crowded field
2. The importance of networking while building your blog
3. How it is possible to be over-exposed

Christine O’Kelly

You know how you go to a movie expected it to be good, but it was great? This was my feeling about Christine’s call. I had heard of her before, as well, but she said a lot of things that either resonated with me or that I really needed to hear right now.

My 3 Key Takeaways:

1. How looking at your time as the foundation for your prices is unhelpful
2. How to use fears and voids to get you off your butt and making stuff happen
3. The power of switching “can’t” to “won’t”

Brian Clark

I’ve always found Brian to be really interesting. He’s at once compassionate, strategic, patient, and impatient, and it was really nice to hear his perspective on the evolution of online commerce through blogging and emerging social media technology.

My 3 Key Takeaways:

1. Why relationship marketing is more effective than constantly finding new customers
2. Don’t rush into selling or providing something before you know what people want or before they trust you
3. Why getting it out there is better than getting it perfect

Laura Roeder

Laura has come out of nowhere, it seems, and it was nice to hear her take on Social Media. She has a way of getting you to think about social media spaces in a way that helps you intuitively understand what’s going on in them.

My 3 Key Takeaways:

1. Key ways to visualize the different social media spaces
2. How to use Facebook for your business without it being weird
3. How to use Twitter to effectively market products

Michael Martine

Michael and I have run in the same circles for a while, but this was maybe the first or second time that I’ve run across him doing his thing, not counting Blogworld. I was really impressed with what he had to say, especially about my first takeaway.

My 3 Key Takeaways:

1. The difference between problogging, business blogging, and gateway blogging
2. How conversion-oriented design helps you grow your business
3. Good SEO is written for humans

Mark Silver

While I got a lot out of all the other calls, Mark’s was probably the one that was the most resonant with me and helped me see things in a new way. It was also obvious that he’s one of the leading candidates for “Nicest Guy On The Internet” award. That’s saying a lot given the load of Chris’s that he’s up against (Garret, Guillebeau, and Brogan.)

My 3 Key Takeaways:

1. Why trying to get big in a hurry can be counterproductive
2. Why people trust us enough to buy our stuff
3. How having your squeak-by number can help keep you calm and clean and help you grow your business

Naomi Dunford

Naomi is another friend that I talk to regularly enough, but she surprised me on this one. Did she actually talk about NLP? Who is this woman, and what did she do with the potty-mouthed marketer we know and love?

My 3 Key Takeaways:

1. How your homebase is critical for growth – and you can probably get it set up cheaper than you think
2. Why you need to build a network of people before you need them, and how to do it
3. Why you don’t need as many buyers as you think you do to be able to get by

Chris Guillebeau

I met Chris last year at SxSW and we’ve kept in contact since. How the guy manages to hop around the world and still keep in touch with thousands of fans and hangers-on like me is beyond me.

My 3 Key Takeaways:

1. Why it’s better to preach to the choir than convert the lost
2. How to figure out what’s unique about you, even though you don’t think you’re unique
3. How to get attention from mainstream media

Charlie Gilkey

Since I can’t toot my own horn here in my review of the Mastermind, I asked Dave to write down three major things that he personally got out of the call:

Dave’s 3 Key Takeaways:

1. The only 3 business building activities that you need to be focused on
2. How to defuse stress when you have a dozen “must-do-now” projects pressuring you
3. The right way to “reset” your frame of mind when you’re burned out during the workday

Should You Buy The More Buyers Mastermind?

As I mentioned above, I’ve learned a lot from many of these people through friendships, partnerships, or just reading their blogs and content for a while, and I learned even more from this call. There’s a lot of material covered that comes from paid products, too, so one way to think about this product is that it’s the Cliff’s notes of the products that all of these experts have launched. That’s a lot of value to bring to bear.

I’ve looked at everything that comes with this program – the interviews, the transcripts, and the fast action workbooks – and there is plenty here to keep you busy. If it were just keeping you busy, though, it wouldn’t be worth your money since you’re already busy enough.

This product will not grow your business for you. Listening to all of the experts talk about how to grow your business is informative, but they won’t help you grow your business. The only thing that’s going to do that for you is you.

That said, if you’re ready to implement the information here and actually work through the workbooks, the More Buyers Mastermind is absolutely worth it. You’re armed with the knowledge and experience of 12 different experts who have taught other people how to be successful. You could easily earn the money back in one month using the techniques you’ll learn here.

You get the following with your purchase of the More Buyers Mastermind:

1. 12 information-packed, hour-long interviews with everyone listed above
2. 12 fully-edited transcripts of those calls
3. 12 fast action workbooks that help you implement the information from the calls
4. 12 follow-up group coaching calls with Dave Navarro

And you get all of that for $297. That works out to $24.75 per audio hour – not counting the transcripts, workbooks, or coaching call with Dave. And if you feel it’s not worth it, let Dave know – he has a no hassle, money-back guarantee.

If you’re interested in this product, purchase it by using the links above or by clicking this link. This is a joint venture, but the only way I’ll get any direct revenue from it is if you purchase it using my links. It’ll cost the same no matter how you purchase it, and I appreciate you helping me put food on the table and pay my bills. Thank you!

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I’ve been doing a lot of behind the scenes work here and I’d like to let you know about them. My aim was to make the site more usable, accessible, and clear – this blog has nearly 1,000 pages worth of content and I wanted to help with the overwhelm/frustration of not knowing where to start and having to poke around to find stuff.

The biggest change is the addition of three new pages:

1. A New Here? page that has a more coherent and useful picture of the different recurring themes of this blog.
2. A Products page that lists all the different products, programs, and events that you can buy or join.
3. A Reviews page that aggregates all of my reviews and product recommendations.

I’ve changed some of the content on the About page – it’s now much clearer and more resonant about what this blog is and where it’s going. There will be a lot of changes in the second component of the About page, but that’s just about me, so it’s not that big of a deal.

I’ll be reworking my categories, as they’re not all that useful as they stand now. They, too, will slim down and help people navigate through the site.

I’ve been torn for sometime about what to do about book recommendations. As I mentioned in Effective Reading and the Bottom-Line Book Club, I go through a lot of books – most of which are very good. I can’t review all of them, and even thinking about cataloging of them is a bit overwhelming. But before I get carried away in figuring out how to do this, are you even interested in book reviews and recommendations?

I’d appreciate it if you’d come take a look around. Do you like the changes?

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[If you're reading this post in a feed reader or via email, you might need to click through to watch it.]

It’s Veteran’s Day, so I wanted to do something a little different. In today’s video post, I talk a bit about Veteran’s Day and what I did overseas. And I botched the ending again – this is what happens when you get out of your video blogging groove. :p

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I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about ethics and entrepreneurship here lately. I had plenty of ideas before the Would You Buy Happiness post, but the conversations in the comment section of that post definitely gave me a lot more.

That discussion reminded me that people have certain assumptions about what goes on in business that alters their moral evaluations of actions. When we bracket a certain domain of human activity and have special moral evaluations for activities within that domain, it becomes what ethicists call a morally special category.

Let me explain: for many cases, there are salient features of the case that tip off our moral intuitions about the case. We can look at a politician who lies to his constituents and a wife who lies to her husband and see that the important feature is the lying that’s taking place, and we might agree that the lying that took place is something that is a morally relevant feature of the case. Depending on the story, we might also think that the lying was justified, but that depends on the details of the story and other upstream assumptions.

A morally special category of actions would have the same morally relevant features as other cases, but the fact that it’s within that category of actions makes us think differently about the rightness or wrongness of the action. For instance, we might excuse the politician and the wife for lying, but not an entrepreneur who does so, even though many of the morally relevant features are the same.

I don’t think that the realm of business is a morally special category – that is, I think that our moral intuitions and evaluations of what happens in the the realm of business should match the moral intuitions and evaluations of what happens in every other realm of human activity. That said, we should be able to look at cases outside of the realm of business, find the morally relevant features of those cases, and then be able to compare it to cases within the realm of business.

What’s With The Cases?

Before we move on, I should probably explain why we philosopher-types use cases to guide our discussions. Many people have heard a story about some aloof philosopher dreaming up cases and thought-experiments and it provides a lot of fodder for comedians and jokesters, and, honestly, many philosophers deserve to be the butt of jokes; I’ll save that critique and discussion for another day. But cases and thought-experiments pop up all over the place: physicists talk about friction-less planes or perfect vacuums, medical researchers assume perfect subjects, and economists assume perfectly-rational subjects. The reason we talk about these things is that we’re trying to filter out all of the information that makes evaluations and/or decisions hard to make.

We do the same thing in ethics to fix the morally relevant features of the cases. For instance, imagine that I kicked you in the shin. It doesn’t matter if I kicked you in the shin indoors or outdoors – whether we’re inside or outside isn’t morally relevant. It doesn’t matter if your hair is 3 inches long or 4 inches long or if you’re wearing a normal shirt. It might matter if your shirt says “Charlie sucks!,” just as it probably matters if you’re threatening me with a knife. You get the idea.

The trick, then, is coming up with a case that captures all of the morally relevant features and excludes everything else that doesn’t matter. You saw this at work in Would You Buy Happiness; my first model wasn’t adequate, so I had to fix it. I didn’t fix the case to prove any point – I fixed the case to focus the conversation.

What I’ll be doing in this series is picking classical or common cases from the non-business realm and then moving to the business realm. We’ll be looking to see the differences between the non-business cases and the business cases, if there are any.

When Helping Someone Else Helps You

Our first case will be an adaptation of Immanuel Kant’s shopkeeper from The Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals. We won’t really be talking about Kant here, so don’t worry – I just wanted to point out that this discussion has a precedent.

But, before we get to the shopkeeper, let’s talk about the non-business case:

Case #1: Imagine that I made dinner for Angela one evening to surprise her. It so happens that I made a meal that is our favorite meal, so I also got to have a yummy meal at the same time that she did. In this case, I did something for her (in other words, to benefit her), but I also benefited, as well.

Think about that case for a minute. Now for our second case:

Case #2: Imagine that the owner of a candy store gets a new kind of candy in that she knew people would love. She gives out free samples of the candy because she wants people to enjoy them, but she also knows that people will want to buy the candy because it’s awesome. In this case, she’s doing something to benefit others (who wouldn’t want to try some free, awesome candy?), but she also benefits from the action since people will then want to buy the candy.

Think about that case for a second. Got it? Okay, last one…

Case #3: On this very blog, I give away free planners. I believe that they’re helpful – and my belief is verified by the people who write me and say that the planners help them. But I also benefit from them downloading the planners since it could serve a marketing/promotion/business motive. (I decided to use my actual case on this one because it’d be on people’s minds anyway.)

The interesting thing in all of these cases is that one description of them is that the actions are done out of self-interest, and that’s partly true. It’s partly true because each agent knew that they would benefit, but it glosses over the (stipulated) fact that the agent didn’t do it merely out of self-interest.

Case #3 covers many of the promotion and marketing techniques that you see online. Someone might want to get you on their newsletter, so they give you something free. Someone else might have a series of high-value, sticky content or an ebook that gets interest on a product. Or someone else gives a discount on a product or service so that people buy it.

Some people are too quick to dismiss these activities as a marketing ploy, but such a quick dismissal depends on background assumptions about the character and motives of the person. (As it turns out, Naomi and I happened to write about this on the same day – check out her post on deceptive marketing. It’s not like we’ve been talking about it; okay, actually it is like that.)

In each case, the action benefits the entrepreneur. If they’re doing it right, the action also benefits others. How is it different than me making dinner for Angela?

In the next part of this series, we’ll talk about dirty hands and entrepreneurship. But until then, what do you think about this discussion?

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A few weeks ago, Cath Duncan asked me to be the guest expert for her Bottom-line on A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. To give me some more background on the Bottom-line Book Club, she let me listen to her Bottom-line on Nick Williams’ The Work We Were Born to Do. I really liked her coverage of Williams’ book, but I let her know that I didn’t know whether the Bottom-line Book Club was actually for the people that she was saying it was for.

Let me explain: the Bottom-line Book Club (BLBC) was originally pitched as something that was for busy people who wanted to get the basic ideas from influential books but didn’t have time to read all of the books to figure out what those ideas were. So Cath would read a book in the context of everything else she has read and cover the high-value concepts from that book. Her coverage, then, would let people get the important stuff from the books without them having to read the book. She also interviews the author or an expert on the topic, which is pretty fantastic when you think about it: not only do you hear Cath’s perspective, but you hear the perspective of other experts, as well.

The quality of the product was exceptional – it’s hard to imagine that she does this every month – and while I was excited by the content, I immediately sensed that it wouldn’t save me any time; in fact, after reading her Bottom-line and hearing Williams’ talk about the book, I wanted to read his book even more! So I wrote this to Cath:

I’ll have to comment that I’m probably not your Right Person for BLBC. I’m an avid reader and deep consumer, so reading your BL only made me realize that I wanted to read Nick’s book myself. If I were to take your awesomeness, his awesomeness, and then add my own experience, how much more would I get out of it? I also read 6-10 books a month, too, and reading is just a part of my holistic growth process.

We continued to talk about the BLBC and who it was for, and much of what we talked about was already on Cath’s mind, but she was also curious about how I’m able to read that much with everything else that I’ve got going on and thought that it’d be a good discussion for a lot of people. So we jumped on the phone and talked about effective reading and learning strategies and what the real benefit of it is.

Cath ended up making some changes to the Bottom-line Book Club, and, while I’ve always thought it was an awesome program, I think it’s now much clearer what you’ll get out of it. You can join one of two membership programs that give different levels of information – this’ll help you get what you need without getting overwhelmed by how much is already there. If you’d rather just get the Bottom-line for a particular book, you can do that, too. This is a great resource for coaches and people really into the personal development since you can integrate the different perspectives when you share the insights with others.

I’ve already mentioned that you get content from Cath and either the author or an expert, but you also get emails from Cath that help you integrate the ideas from the Bottom-lines. You might think this would be overwhelming, but the truth is that you really learn by implementing ideas, not just adding them to the stock of stuff you already know. If you’d rather just learn random ideas and not apply them, skip out on this program and pick up Trivial Pursuit, but if you’re interested in learning and growing, then the Bottom-line Book Club is right for you.

I hope you enjoy our discussion of effective reading and learning strategies, and I think you’ll like our discussion on a Whole New Mind, too. It’s the book Cath covers this month, so if you’re interested, run over and check out the Bottom-line Book Club.

The links to the Bottom-Line Book Club in this post are affiliate links and this review falls under my review guidelines. Please sign up for this program by using my link if this review helps you make an informed purchase. Thanks!

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A friend got me thinking about the term “turtling” that I sometimes use to describe the process that people go through to hide out and feel secure. We all turtle up in different ways, and one of the challenges of being a coach is to figure out when the turtling is instrumental and when it’s detrimental.

The reason why this is so tricky is because one of the things that coaches have to do is to make people uncomfortable so that they’ll grow. Creative tension isn’t particularly comfortable, but it’s from that position that positive change happens. Yet if you make people too uncomfortable, they’ll turtle up and start resisting you and their own growth.

And some people have a tendency to get overwhelmed and not let me know about it. Their turtling process is a coping mechanism – instead of engaging with the things that are overwhelming them, they shut everything off. If you poke at them in the wrong way when they’re turtling up, they just ignore you until something breaks. But if they’re not telling you they’re overwhelmed, you don’t know that they need help.

In other cases, people need to turtle up so that they can process what they’re feeling and figure out what they need to do next. It’s not that they’re scared or overwhelmed, but merely that they have a tendency to turtle up, plot, and then run like hell when they’re ready. If you don’t let them do their thing, they’ll never take off running, yet you also have to be careful that they don’t put their blinders on once they start running. (This is me, in case you’re curious.)

Of course, to make things even trickier, you sometimes have to recommend that people turtle up so that they don’t do things they’ll later regret. This is especially true for people who wear their heart on their sleeves. Their emotional intensity can be too much for some people to handle, and many people aren’t nearly as forgiving of the things that are said during emotionally intense times as the people who process their emotions socially and openly. It’s easy for them to resent the fact that you’re asking them to play it cool because they can’t process things by playing cool, yet you know that them emotionally unloading on other people will only make matters worse. Even though you’re saying “not here and not now,” they hear “not ever.”

Turtling up is neither good nor bad, and we all need to do it sometimes. The real question is not about whether you’re turtling, but instead, whether your turtling is helping you grow or keeping you from growing. If you’re too secure and comfortable, you’re not growing in the ways that you could, but if you’re not taking the time to process and integrate experiences – or to give people space away from your emotional intensity – then you’re also not growing as much as you can.

How do you turtle up? Can you tell when it’s instrumental or detrimental? If you know that your turtling is detrimental, do you know how to come out of your shell?

Please share this with a friend who needs to hear it.

Photo credit: Rami

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Last night it occurred to me that I’ve been holding out on you, and doing so has been a disservice to all of us.

I’ve had a brainwedgie around what to do about reviews for quite some time now, I used to do them regularly but I just stopped because I went through a heavy consumption period, and I’ve been building up a pile of Stuck every since then.

What I forgot, though, is that the reviews helped people. It let you know about the good stuff I ran across and helped you decide if it was worth your time and money. It helped the good people whose products I reviewed put food on their table. And when there was an affiliate program for the product, it helped me put food on my table and have more time to help other people. We all lost out on this.

About five weeks ago, I made up my mind that I’d start writing reviews and having them go up as pages on the blog so that I could get past the Stuck without there being a barrage of reviews on your end. But it occurred to me that this really wouldn’t be helping you any unless I told you they were there, and that created more awkwardness than just doing the reviews as posts.

I also realized that “the barrage of reviews” was mostly a myth conjured up by insecurity; though I have a backlog of good stuff to talk about, it’s unlikely that it’ll come out in a short amount of time. Or maybe it will, in which case I can clear my head and focus on other stuff.

So, if you see a bunch of reviews and recommendations hit the blog in the near future, you know what’s going on. The reviews themselves will be valuable, but if you don’t want to read them, just skip them and be patient with me as I do what I should’ve been doing for the last few months.

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