December 2013 Updates

Here are some updates and announcements to polish off 2013. This past year was one of my best ever in terms of personal growth and lifestyle enjoyment, so I’m in a pretty bouncy mood as I share this…

In case you didn’t notice, Site Build-It extended their 2-for-1 deal until midnight on January 6th, so if you thought you’d missed it, you still have one more week to take advantage of it.

SBI is a service that helps you create an online business, and they’re very good at what they do. I’ve been recommending them for several years now and have been delighted to see many people succeed with them and escape the rat race.

If you just want to make a website for fun and you don’t care about traffic or income, use WordPress for that since WordPress is free. But if you want a web business that actually makes money (to the tune of thousands of dollars per month), I highly recommend signing up with SBI because they provide an all-in-one solution that’s perfect for beginners who want to start earning passive income online. This includes your education, software, tools, resources, hosting, and social support — and it’s very affordable given what they provide. The education alone is well worth the investment.

Also, depending on what country you’re in and its tax laws, you may be able to take a tax deduction for your purchase as a business expense for the 2013 tax year if you get your purchase in by the end of the year.

For more details on SBI, see my full SBI review. You may also want to skim through my SBI holiday post from last year.

In a couple weeks, Rachelle and I will be speaking at my friend Johnny Soporno’s Successfulness workshop here in Las Vegas, which is a weeklong lifestyle makeover program. This is the 7th time he’s running this workshop and the fourth or fifth time I’ll be speaking there. It will be Rachelle’s second time speaking there.

I’ll undoubtedly be talking about 4D relationships at this event, but Rachelle and I are also planning to stretch ourselves in another way.

As I mentioned in my recent post on 4D Relationships, Rachelle and I will be sharing something at this workshop that we’ve never shared publicly before, which is the D/s play aspect of our relationship. This includes demoing some of the things we do to increase the emotional, sensual, and sexual intensity of our connection. We’re not planning on pre-scripting what we share, so we’ll be sharing and demonstrating whatever arises from spontaneous inspiration in the moment.

Johnny’s Successfulness workshop is a highly transformational experience for many people, not always because of the content but often because of the social immersion aspect. Spending more than a week with people who are enjoying happy, fulfilled, socially abundant lifestyles can serve as a major wake-up call and lead to all sorts of active changes.

I very much encourage you to attend if you can make it. And be sure to hug Rachelle and me when you see us!

I’m also happy to share that I’ll be speaking at the Awaken the Rebel: Live! event in Los Angeles in January, hosted by my friend Shereen Faltas.

I first met Shereen earlier this year, and I was impressed by her passion for helping people escape the rat race. I figured we’d end up working together in some fashion eventually, and now that’s becoming a reality.

If you’re tired of being a corporate slave and would like to engage in a life of passion, purpose, and abundance, this is a great way to kick off the New Year.

Best of all, Shereen is offering a special $100 off discount for StevePavlina.com readers.

For general admission, use the discount code ATRLiveD786 (normally $297, this gets you in for only $197).

And for VIP registration, use the discount code ATRVIP489 (normally $397, this gets you in for only $297).

These discount codes expire January 8th.

Additionally, you can bring a friend, significant other, relative, or co-worker for only $97 more if you’d like.

Visit the Awaken the Rebel: Live! website for all the details. Hope to see you there!

I’m happy to announce that Learning Strategies (a company I’ve done business with since 2006) is graciously offering all StevePavlina.com readers major discounts on their flagship personal development programs, PhotoReading and Paraliminals.

PhotoReading

PhotoReading teaches you how to triple your reading speed, so you can go through books, including ebooks, much faster than before.

The Classic PhotoReading Course is normally $245, and the Deluxe PhotoReading Course is normally $530. But you won’t have to pay that much…

With this discount you can order the Classic PhotoReading Course for only 4 payments of $30, which saves you $125.

Or you can order the Deluxe PhotoReading Course for only 10 payments of $36, which saves you $170.

For details about these courses, see my PhotoReading review.

Paraliminals

Paraliminals are unique meditative audio programs designed to condition your mind for enhanced results, such as increased productivity, greater confidence, and better health. They deliver different messages to each ear simultaneously, and they’re recorded with special Holosync technology that uses binaural beats to put your mind into a relaxed and receptive state. I’ve been listening to Paraliminals regularly since 2006, and I’ve found them very effective.

Normally the individual Paraliminals sell for $29.95 each, and the Complete Ultimate You Library (dozens of Paraliminals) is $809.40.

With this discount you can order the Complete Ultimate You Library Paraliminals collection for 12 payments of $40, which saves you $329.40 off the original bundle price and $658.10 off the individual Paraliminal price.

I own the complete set, and it’s one of my favorite collections in my personal growth library. This is a nice opportunity to get the whole set of Paraliminals at a major discount from the regular price… and to spread the payments out over a full year.

For details about the Paraliminals, see my Paraliminals review.

Both PhotoReading and the Paraliminals come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

This is a time when you’re probably reflecting back on the past year and forming your intentions for the coming year. Here are some articles to help you get into the right mindset for setting fresh and achievable goals for the New Year:

Remember that all of my online articles (over 1200 of them), podcasts, YouTube videos, and social media updates are uncopyrighted. You’re free to share them, republish them, translate them, and even turn them into products and sell them if you wish.

For help keeping track of your goals and projects and breaking them down into action steps, I recommend you check out Trello. It’s a free online service that I’ve been using lately to manage a group project as well as some personal projects. This 6-minute video will give you a basic overview of how it works. I’ve only used it for about a week, and so far I’m impressed. It’s very intuitive and flexible, so you can start using it productively within a few minutes. And it’s free. They have a paid version ($5 per month), but I think the free version is more than adequate for most people.

So check it out if you’re looking for something along these lines, and if you come up with some creative ideas for using it, please let me know what you’ve done with it.

I have to give a big thumbs up to Fog Creek Software for including a color blind friendly mode in Trello, which adds stripes to some of the color labels. As a color blind person, I really appreciate this attention to accessibility. Now I don’t have to avoid using blue and purple together. Thanks a bunch for including that, Fog Creek. I wish more software developers would include such a simple feature.

Happy New Year!

Steve Recommends
Here are my recommendations for products and services I've reviewed that can improve your results. This is a short list since it only includes my top picks.

Visionary Empowerment Training - FREE training for conscious entrepreneurs
Site Build It! - Use SBI to start your own money-making website
Getting Rich with Ebooks - Earn passive income from ebooks
Lefkoe Method - Permanently eliminate a limiting belief in 20 minutes
PhotoReading - Read books 3 times faster
Paraliminals - Condition your mind for positive thinking and success
The Journal - Record your life lessons in a secure private journal
Sedona Method (FREE audios) - Release your blocks in a few minutes
Life on Purpose - A step-by-step process to discover your life purpose

If you've found Steve's work helpful, please donate to show your support.
Get Steve's Free Newsletter to stay in touch and receive the newest updates

View the original article here

New York City Meetup and Other Updates

Here are a number of updates regarding upcoming events that may interest you.

First off, I’m heading to New York City on July 24th, and I’ll be there until July 30th. I haven’t been there since 2007, so it’s been a while.

On the weekend I’ll be speaking at Sasha’s Direct Dating Summit. If this type of event interests you — it’s for men looking to improve their dating and social skills — I encourage you to attend. It’s a lot of fun, and as you might expect based on the title, the speakers will help teach you to be direct and honest in your communication instead of being wishy washy, indirect, or phony. That may sound simple, but it’s an area where many people need help. I think the room is nearly filled to capacity already, but there may be a few seats left.

Outside of the conference hours, I intend to host a free NYC meet-up for any growth-oriented people who’d like to attend. Our last NYC meetup was in 2007, and we had 40 people attend, so it wouldn’t surprise me if we had 50+ this time. I’ve received many enthusiastic RSVPs already after mentioning this on social media.

At some of our meet-ups, people can be a little shy warming up to each other. Not so with the New Yorkers though. They dove right in and began talking like they were old friends. That’s one thing I love about New Yorkers — they really know how to talk!

Most likely we’ll have the meetup on Friday evening (around 7pm) or on Saturday morning (around 9am). And the most likely location will be somewhere in Central Park, possibly in Sheep Meadow. I’ve also received some suggestions for meet-up spots near Battery Park. I’ll scout out locations early in my trip.

I have to rule out indoor locations like a cafe because we’d most likely swamp the place with too many people. It’s best to have a location where people can move around and mingle and jump in and out of small groups easily.

These meetups are very informal. If you happen to like my work (or even just some parts of it), there’s a good chance you’ll meet plenty of people there that you have a lot in common with.

Usually what happens with the larger meetups is that people split into small groups and mingle through whichever groups interest them. I always find at least one group talking about subjective reality, another group talking about how to make a living without a job, and other people talking about veganism or raw food diets or yoga. Travel is a common topic too. Chances are that whatever topics interest you from my blog, there will be others there who are delighted to discuss those same subjects.

Even if you’re fairly introverted, I don’t think you’ll have a problem. The people who come to these meetups are usually very friendly and welcoming — and huggy!

Speaking of hugs… please do greet each other — and me — with hugs at our meetups unless you have any personal objection to doing so. It helps us create a nice warm and open vibe and makes people feel welcome. Plus it feels good!

I’ll post the specific meetup details to my blog as soon as I have them worked out. With an outdoor meetup I have to watch the weather, which looks like it’s been a bit stormy there this week but will hopefully pass in time for the meetup.

If you’re worried about missing the meetup details post, drop me an email with a request to email you a reminder about the NYC meetup as soon as the details are known (if you haven’t already done so). I’ll try to give as much advance notice as I can, but normally it’s in the 24-48 hours range.

During this trip I’ll be staying in an AirBnB apartment in Williamsburg (in Brooklyn) with some of the other speakers for the summit. The summit itself is in Midtown. I’ll probably be spending most of my waking time in the city.

Last time I was in NYC I didn’t get to see the Met museum, so this time I’m not going to miss it. I already bought a ticket to go see it while I’m in town. I saw MoMa last time I was there.

I’ll only be speaking at the conference for 2-3 hours, so the rest of the time I’ll be going out, connecting with old friends, and making new ones. No doubt this will be a very social trip.

In other news, Learning Strategies is running a free PhotoReading Mindfest starting next week. They’ll be streaming their ever popular PhotoReading program over the Internet, so you can listen to it for free on your computer, tablet, or cell phone. I expect they’ll probably offer the recorded version at a discount for anyone who wants a copy to keep.

As part of this Mindfest, you’ll be guided through the process of PhotoReading two complete books, so you won’t just be learning about it — you’ll be applying it too.

This is a nice chance to try PhotoReading for yourself if you haven’t already done so. If you want the details, go to the PhotoReading Mindfest website to sign up.

I’ll also be traveling to Minneapolis August 4-11. This will be my first time in Minnesota. On the weekdays Rachelle and I will be attending Learning Strategies’ Ultimate You Retreat, and then in the evenings we’ll be out fringing at the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Rachelle isn’t performing in any Fringe festivals this year. We’re just going for fun. Last year I saw almost 60 plays at the Winnipeg and Edmonton Fringes, so I’m quite the veteran fringer now.

This will be a pretty active trip for us already, but if we can swing it, we’ll try to host a meetup in Minneapolis too. I’ll post details to my blog as soon as they’re known.

Later in August I’m heading to Oslo, Norway to speak at the Morten Hake Summit. This will be my second time speaking there. This conference covers social and relationship skills as well as general personal growth topics, and it’s intended for men and women alike.

You can now watch many of the Morten Hake Summit videos from prior years at MHSummit.com, including (I’ve been told) my full 2-hour talk from last year. In the promo video on the first page, that’s actually me hugging Morten on stage at 1:02 into the video.

I probably won’t host a separate Oslo meetup since so many people from the area who are into personal growth will be going to the summit anyway, so that’s already an amazing social opportunity in itself. Last year there were around 150 attendees, and I think this year they’re expecting even more. It’s a great way to meet other growth-oriented people.

This program is still in the works and coming along slowly but beautiful. With all this upcoming travel, I must put it on hold for a while and continue working on it when I can.

In general, whenever I give you a time estimate for when it will actually be done, don’t believe me.

But on the other hand, I’ve also leaked out some early material from certain parts of the program in a couple recent articles about goals and personality.

Lately I’ve been feeling strong intuitive pings that it’s time to start booking some new workshops of my own. I’d really love to do them in a variety of cities, but this is a bit too much for me to handle logistically on my own right now.

So I’m putting out the intention of finding someone who’d enjoy working with me as a meeting planner and logistics coordinator. I wouldn’t call it a job per se — I’d label it as more of an adventure for the right type of person — but you’ll be paid for your work of course.

Basically I need someone who can help me schedule, book, and execute more workshops in different cities. I’d prefer to stick with the USA initially, but once we’re up to speed, I’m open to branching out to other continents.

When it comes to delivering live workshops, I’m a stickler for good organization and preparation. So I’d want to work with someone who also has a strong love of good order and solid execution. This means getting things handled in the right order and early. If you’re the kind of person who waits till the last minute to handle critical details, you’d just drive me nuts, and I’d never want to work with you. I always follow a 4-5 page checklist to make sure every detail is attended to in the proper order, so that checklist would be your starting point to use and then to improve upon.

Fortunately this is not likely to be a high pressure situation. Since I normally book workshops at least 3 months before they’re delivered, there’s plenty of time to attend to all the details properly.

I’ve already done nine 3-day workshops, and all of them have gone smoothly. I can train someone on all the specific skills they’d need to know, but it would really help to have someone who brings additional experience and expertise to the table, such as prior experience with event planning, booking venues, negotiating meeting agreements, people skills, etc. Some event marketing experience would be helpful too, but marketing isn’t as big of a concern for me as it is for others in this field. Strong demand for new workshops has never been a problem.

Much of the work could be done from anywhere, such as by using the Internet to research potential venues. But I also want someone who has the freedom to travel and who can be physically present at the workshops to help execute them. If we book workshops in 10 different cities, it means you’ll be going to those 10 cities with me. So this definitely isn’t a virtual assistant position that could be done entirely from one location. If you can’t or won’t travel, don’t bother inquiring.

This wouldn’t be a good fit for someone who’s socially timid. During a live event, minor problems occasionally arise, and I need someone who can interface with the venue staff and advocate for our needs. So if it’s too hot or cold in our meeting room, for instance, I need a proactive person who can get that handled ASAP.

Ultimately I’d like to find someone who could eventually manage nearly all of the details of putting on a workshop other than creating and delivering the content. So I could say, “Let’s do workshops in these cities this year,” and the planner would select appropriate dates, find suitable venues, negotiate the details, book the dates with the venues, post the workshop details to my website, set up the event in the shopping cart, handle questions from attendees, secure an audio tech and rent equipment if necessary, print the badges, pack up everything we need for the trip, book our travel and accommodations, travel with me to the venue when it’s time to deliver the workshop, make sure the room is set up properly, manage the registration table, and help out during the workshop itself.

It may sound like a lot of work for one person, but it’s really not bad if you follow an organized approach. Once you’ve been through the process a few times, it gets faster and easier to repeat it. For some workshops I’ve done all of these tasks myself — in addition to creating and delivering the content — and it was very manageable. I actually enjoy this kind of work too.

If this interests you, let me know. Tell me about yourself, your relevant interests, your work experience, and anything else you’d like to share. If you seem like a potential fit, we can schedule a video-Skype call to talk about it in more detail. Just be aware that with my upcoming trips, I may not be very quick at following up right away, especially if there’s a lot of interest.

Depending on your experience, we might start with something simple, like doing another Vegas workshop first. That wouldn’t require special travel arrangements for me, and I already have contacts at some venues here, so it would be an easy way to begin and see how you’re able to handle it. If that goes well, then we can gradually ramp it up with events in other cities. But with someone who doesn’t require much training (or who impresses me with their organizational skills fairly quickly), I imagine we could turn this into a full-time arrangement from the beginning.

One of the benefits of such work is that you’ll definitely meet a lot of very growth-oriented people, and you’ll surely take part in many transformational experiences on this path.

Discuss this post on Google+

Steve Recommends
Here are my recommendations for products and services I've reviewed that can improve your results. This is a short list since it only includes my top picks.

NEW PhotoReading Mindfest - Learn PhotoReading for FREE
Site Build It! - Use SBI to start your own money-making website
Getting Rich with Ebooks - Earn passive income from ebooks
Lefkoe Method - Permanently eliminate a limiting belief in 20 minutes
Paraliminals - Condition your mind for positive thinking and success
The Journal - Record your life lessons in a secure private journal
PhotoReading - Read books 3 times faster
Sedona Method (FREE audios) - Learn to release blocks in a few minutes
Life on Purpose - A step-by-step process to discover your life purpose

If you've found Steve's work helpful, please donate to show your support.
Get Steve's Free Newsletter to stay in touch and receive the newest updates

View the original article here

December 2012 Updates

This year is coming to a close, so I’d like to share some updates about what’s been going on with respect to the blog, my life, and upcoming plans for 2013.

At the end of each year, I like to pick a focus for the upcoming year. For 2013 I’ve decided to focus on product development. I’ve been blogging for more than 8 years now (about 1200 articles), and I’m feeling drawn to shift away from short-form writing to create some larger works, like I did with my book.

Blogging has been a wonderful medium for me, and I expect to continue with it for now, but I want to break the habit of using it as my primary medium for sharing ideas. For 2013 I intend to focus most of my creative energies on downloadable products, especially ebooks and audio programs.

Some false starts showed me that to do this right, I need to make some serious changes to my working rhythms. I’ve spent years working with daily habits centered around the rhythms of blogging. Those habits have been wonderfully successful for blogging, but the same patterns don’t work very well for creating larger works, at least not in the way I’d like.

While some bloggers create products largely by assembling and editing collections of previous articles, I’m not interested in doing that. To me a book is a very different artform than an article. As an ex-programmer I place a high value on elegance, unity, and coherence. I believe that the pieces of a larger work should fit together intelligently and beautifully, and that requires careful design choices. The process I use to write an article doesn’t scale up linearly to create a larger work. You don’t just stack 50 houses on top of each other to create a skyscraper.

In the past I didn’t give the scope of this challenge enough respect. I figured that since I could write, edit, and publish a 5000-word blog post in a single sitting, I could probably crank out a new book in a few weeks. I could do that of course, but it wouldn’t be a work I’d consider elegant, and I’d rather not create an inelegant larger work if I can avoid it.

I put a lot of effort into my first book, and that is a work that I’m proud of. As many readers have noticed, it’s a very original book, and it’s fair to say that it makes a unique contribution to the field of personal growth. It’s clearly not just a rehashing of previous material from my blog. Five years ago at this time I was working on that book, and I still resonate with its content today.

It took me about 2-1/2 years of careful thought and research to figure out the 7 principles for that book and to understand how they connected to each other. Putting it all down on paper was perhaps 3 more months of work. This was part-time though, and much of that time involved incubating ideas, not active work.

Now I’d like to tackle more of these larger projects. Instead of writing one-off articles or an occasional series of posts, I want to design and create more integrated works on a variety of topics.

What’s my motivation for creating these larger works? I feel called towards a greater level of self-expression, and I want to challenge myself to connect many of the dots I’ve written about in the past to clarify what the big picture looks like. Instead of sharing small ideas that can be expressed as articles or podcasts, I want to express ideas that are too big or too complex for an article or a series of articles.

I also want to tackle bigger and more challenging questions. Instead of writing about how to break off a bad relationship or initiate a new one, I’m inspired by the challenge of writing out a complete philosophy of conscious relationships, for instance.

This probably isn’t too surprising since I’ve been leaning in this direction for a long time now, and now I’m finally getting serious about it. You may have noticed that I haven’t blogged very much at all for the past 2 months. I expect this reduction in blogging to continue for the foreseeable future. I’m deliberately putting blogging on the back burner, so I can invest more time, energy, and mental focus in these larger works.

The current project I’m working on is an ebook + audio program on Subjective Reality. I don’t have a release date for it, but when I have a date in sight, I’ll let you know. In the meantime I’d rather put my head down and get to work.

Due to this reduction in blogging, it may seem like I’ve disappeared. The reality is that I’ll be doing a lot more work offline.

I put the passive income series walkthrough on hold till now, but I’ll be picking it up again soon to share even more. I may be blogging less frequently in 2013 since I’ll be putting more energy into products, but there’s still plenty more to share on this topic, and I know many people are interested.

I want to congratulate those readers who’ve already launched their first passive income streams. I’ve heard from a number of people who are already getting their first trickles of income… often in the $10-100 per month range. That’s wonderful! As you’ll soon discover, the hardest part is getting from $0 to $50 per month in passive income. Going from there to $500 per month isn’t as difficult as it may seem. Increasing the flow is largely a matter of repeating what has already worked, observing your results, experimenting, and optimizing.

Getting to that first $50 per month also gives you confidence that you have an idea that works, so you can bet bigger on your ideas the next time.

It’s been about a year since the discussion forums on this website closed down, after running continuously for more than 5 years. Looking back, I’m really glad I let all of that go last year. There were some quality interactions there, and I still keep in touch with certain people from that community, but I don’t miss the drama. People tell me that many of the old members connect on Facebook now. I’m not on Facebook, so I’m not personally involved in any of those discussions. I’m happy about that since it has given me more time to focus on my in-person social life.

Occasionally I get asked if I’ll reopen the forums. While the archives still remain online for those who want to search through old threads, I have no desire to open them up to new posts again. People are free to discuss personal growth as much as they want. I just don’t want to play host. Five years was plenty!

After quitting Facebook and closing the forums last year, I greatly scaled back my social media involvement. At the time I kept Twitter and Google+ since they’re much easier to manage. I stayed active on both of these services in 2012.

Lately I’ve been feeling that it might be best to stop using these services too, or at least to scale back my usage of them. I realize it’s practically heresy for a blogger to say such things, but I don’t use social media for traffic building like many other bloggers do. My blog predates my use of social media services like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ by several years. Whether I maintain a presence on social media services or not, people will continue to share my articles anyway. I haven’t been on Facebook since 2011, but they were one of my top traffic referrers in 2012.

No social media outlet is particularly important to me as a business or traffic building tool. Quitting Facebook and closing the forums had a negligible effect on my web traffic, and I expect that scaling back my Twitter and Google+ usage would make little difference too.

I’ve mainly used social media to share inspirational messages when I can. Sometimes I share personal updates and joke around with people now and then, but for the most part I’ve used these as additional creative outlets. One reason I’m thinking about closing these channels is that doing so will help me focus better on creating larger products. The impulsive nature of social media is on the wrong side of the spectrum from where I want to be in 2013. I’d rather share thoughts that take months to figure out… as opposed to a few seconds.

If people need an occasional reminder to check in with my blog, they can easily subscribe to my newsletter, which I send about once a month. So there’s no need for me to have a Twitter or Google+ account just to remind people that there’s some new material to read.

I know that many people enjoy the direct access to me through social media. Through those services we can interact in some fashion. I agree that this is nice at times, but it has a price, which is the potential for distraction and scattered thinking. In 2013 I’d like to tone that down even more.

So if you share something with me on Twitter or Google+ and I don’t reply, it’s because I’m cutting back on using those services, so I can invest more time elsewhere. It’s not because I don’t like you.

Someone asked me if I use Instagram. No, I never created an Instagram account since I don’t have a cat.

Socially I prefer to connect with people face to face anyway. You can’t hug a social media profile.

Perhaps the main reason I’m feeling drawn to let go of social media is that I’m rather bored with it. Perhaps when some new and exciting service comes along, I’ll give it a try, but for now the most popular ones seem to have grown stale. I love the allure of new technology and new possibilities, but the current offerings in this area seem uninspired to me. That’s to be expected since eventually these free services will start monetizing more heavily, and that’s likely to create a conflict of interest with their users (if it hasn’t already).

I’m not suggesting that my experiences with social media would apply to you. I’ve largely used social media as an extension of blogging. But for now I think I’ll stick with my blog when I have something worthwhile to broadcast instead of trying to extend blogging into other social media platforms.

After being a member of the Transformational Leadership Council for about 3.5 years, I decided not to renew my membership for 2013. I informed them of my decision about a month ago. It’s been wonderful attending their retreats twice a year, and I’ve made some great friends because of it, but I don’t feel like remaining tethered to this group going forward.

I can’t say anything bad about the people in TLC or the group itself. I hold them all in the highest regard and love the work they do in the world. Lately I’ve been seeing my life heading down a different path, and the vibe of TLC doesn’t quite mesh with it. I feel like I’m about a 60% match for TLC at this time, but in order to justify continuing my membership and paying the dues, I’d want to be at 80%+.

You might be noticing a pattern here of wanting to make some exits. That’s a normal part of personal growth. We only have so much time and attention to give, so in order to add something new to our lives, we often have to release something old. Usually when we let go of something that doesn’t quite resonate with us, something even more wonderful shows up soon afterwards.

One area where I’ve been making a bigger commitment is my exploration of social dynamics.

Perhaps the simplest summation of social dynamics that I can offer is that it’s the study of how to find the alignment between what makes you feel good and what makes others feel good, so you can create and enjoy a rich and rewarding social life without becoming a people pleaser, a jerk, or a hermit.

I did more speaking in this field in 2012, and I expect to more than double that in 2013. In a few weeks I’ll be speaking at my friend Johnny Soporno’s Successfulness workshop here in Las Vegas, which is a weeklong lifestyle makeover program. This is the 6th time he’s running this workshop and the 3rd or 4th time I’ll be speaking there. Note: There’s another Steve P who speaks at these events (Steve Piccus), so don’t confuse the two of us since we’re not the same Steve P.

Also in 2013 I’ve been invited to speak at social dynamics conferences in Rio, Berlin, and Washington D.C. Since I’d love to see more of Europe, I may also do a European road trip after the Berlin conference.

I’d like to create at least one product on social dynamics, but for now I’m enjoying the live events as well as gaining more experience in my own relationship life.

Becoming a teacher in this field has been a fun and rewarding development. With my Catholic upbringing and its shaming of human sexuality and outmoded gender roles, I had to spend a lot of time unearthing and releasing past limiting beliefs to reach the point where I felt ready to invite and accept a more conscious and abundant relationship life. It’s very rewarding to turn around and help others overcoming similar blocks, fears, and limitations.

I understand and accept that there are plenty of traditionally minded folks who just want to get married and stick with one person for the rest of their lives. I don’t have much relationship advice for them since that path doesn’t appeal to me, and there are plenty of other teachers for those people to learn from. But for most people — including those sorts of teachers — the single partner for life model doesn’t work well in practice because it’s too rigid and doesn’t adapt well to the changing needs and desires of growth-oriented people. Consequently, many couples fall into unhappiness or resort to cheating on the side — or both.

What I enjoy most about social dynamics is exploring it with other open-minded people. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see a surge of interest in this field. More and more people are observing and concluding that the traditional relationship models aren’t working for them, and they’re looking for viable and intelligent alternatives. Other people are sick of oscillating between shallow or fake relationships and extended periods alone. They may still consider themselves fairly mainstream people, so they don’t want to stretch into anything that feels too weird, but when they catch a glimpse of what else is possible, usually after meeting people who are on a similar path but further along, a spark of inspiration takes root. This is a great place to catch people and introduce them to some new ways of relating that actually work for real human beings.

In case you didn’t notice, Site Build-It extended their 2-for-1 deal until midnight on January 3rd, so if you thought you’d missed it, you still have a few days to take advantage of it. Many people who’ve been following the passive income series have been waiting till now to sign up, so they could get the best possible deal and create their new income streams in 2013.

Also, depending on what country you’re in and its tax laws, you may be able to take a tax deduction for your purchase as a business expense for the 2012 tax year if you get your purchase in today.

I’m still very happy with my life these days, and I’m looking forward with positive expectancy to another amazing year.

Happy New Year! Wishing you a very growth-filled and consciousness expanding 2013.

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Housecleaning: Be Featured in The 4-Hour Chef, Random Links, and Contest Updates

Hanoi toddler and b-boy, from a trip Ma.tt and I took in 2009. (Photo: Matt Mullenweg)

The next post will be an interview on writing process with the inimitable Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist and Aleph, among many others. His work been translated into 71 languages.

In the meantime, I’d like make a few offers and provide a few updates, as well as a few reading links:

1) Would you like to be in The 4-Hour Chef? I’d love for you to be.

Amazingly, it hit both #1 and #2 (for Kindle version) in cookbooks on Amazon when it was announced, and I think it could be bigger than the last two books. If you’ve had success on The Slow-Carb Diet™, have any before/after pics, and would like to be featured in the book, please click here!

2) Random articles from around the web that readers of this blog might enjoy (or find amusing):

- IBM Worker Email-Free for 4 Years: How to Live without Email
- Interview on travel for the BBC – Tim Ferriss: Forms of Identification
- SF Chronicle interview – Tim Ferriss has strong likes: knives, kettlebells
- Volkswagen turns off Blackberry email after work hours

3) The winner of the free roundtrip anywhere in the world, a prize from the Christmas Countdown experiment (intermittent fasting, plus training), is Daniel Kislyuk! There were some fantastic self-trackers, but Daniel gave constant status updates and then wrapped up with a summary post. Daniel, please keep an eye on your e-mail for a note from Amy.

4) For the trip to SF for all-day training with Chip Conley, I’ll let Chip deliver the message himself:

Surprise + Joy = Elation. That’s my new Emotional Equation of the day. Wow, I’m elated by the response to my guest blog and how many insightful entries were submitted. Thank you so much for diving into the deep end of the emotional swimming hole with me. It seems like this book is made for these times. The more externally chaotic the world, the more we yearn for some kind of internal logic.

There were 7 entries (of the first 100 submitted, although I did read every single one of the almost 500) that deserved extra recognition. I will give an Honorable Mention to Divya (1/19 at 7:03 am), Eric Sigfried (1/19 at 8:52 am), Marcus (1/19 at 9:18 am), Susan Dupre (1/19 at 10:19 am) and Ryan (1/19 at 10:50 am).

We have a runner-up whose dissection and use of the Anxiety Balance Sheet impressed me, and that’s Ryan Riegner (1/19 at 9:22 am). Ryan, I believe you live in the NYC area and I’ll be there from Feb 19-25 for a book launch party and media tour. I would like to invite you out to a meal with me while I’m in town. This wasn’t planned to be an extra prize, but your response deserves it. And, our winner is Diego Velasquez (1/19 at 7:54 am) who will be flying out to SF to stay at our luxurious Hotel Vitale for a couple of nights and spend a day learning what it means to be a Chief Emotions Officer. For those who’d like to continue to learn more about Emotional Equations, check out our DIY contest on the Emotional Equations Facebook page, as it gives you another shot at a trip to SF and dinner with me.

Thanks once again for the phenomenal efforts and I hope you enjoy the book if you read it!

Posted on January 29th, 2012

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