Happy New Year! 🥳

Since I ate mostly raw for 2021 – so many salads! – I can go back to eating more cooked food today.

Oddly I feel less motivated to do that than I expected. I fell into some very simple eating habits centered around fruit and salads, and that worked well for me. I’m sure I ate more greens this year than in any previous year. I got really good at making salads that I like.

There are a lot of foods that I haven’t eaten since 2020, such as pizza. I look forward to trying them again, but that feels more like intellectual curiosity than any sort of craving. I feel like my cravings for certain foods went down a lot. I got used to eating fairly simple meals this year, and now that feels pretty normal to me.

I like that eating raw makes my taste buds more sensitive, so everything tastes better than ever. I’d say that I enjoy my meals more now than I did at the start of 2021.

I ended the year about 2 pounds less than I started. I gained some weight in the beginning from being a bit too piggish with high-fat foods, but then I toned that down and wove in 2 fasting days per month, and the extra weight came off easily.

This was a strange year due to COVID too, but it’s been one of my best motivationally and emotionally. One thing I like about eating lots of raw food is that it makes me feel happier and more motivated. I also experienced a different flow of inspirations throughout the year than usual.

I think the biggest change I experienced this year was taking some back-burner ideas, moving them to the forefront, and getting them done. These projects turned out better than I expected. One idea was to flow from the Amplify course launch right into the Conscious Growth Club opening. Another was decluttering and organizing my garage and finally processing old computers going back 20 years. Another was doing our first-ever online workshop. Another was my home theater upgrade project.

Eating raw helps me tap into under-expressed parts of me, like I can hear those parts more loudly and clearly, and I feel more inclined to trust them. Instead of talking myself out of so many ideas, I find myself getting into the flow of inspired action with more ease and less friction. So even though I spent a lot of time at home this year other than a trip to Philadelphia, it wasn’t a lazy year at all. I took a lot of action.

I feel like eating this way creates an ever-spinning energy turbine within me that fires me up with endless motivational energy. It’s really easy to get into the flow of action and stay there, as if my enthusiasm circuitry gets triggered more easily. This has been a great year in terms of momentum. It’s also been nicely balanced between work and personal projects.

The downside is that I sometimes take so much action in new directions that I have a lot of loose ends to fully close, like bits and pieces of projects that need to be tidied up. That isn’t so bad though since the ability to capture new opportunities faster is worth it. I also feel that I’ve been pacing myself pretty well.

Our Next Course – Guild

For this first quarter of 2022, we’re going to launch and develop the new Guild course, which is about building an aligned social circle. This will be our 5th major course.

A lot of people in my audience struggle with misaligned social circles, such as friends and family that don’t support their goals. I used to be in a similar situation, including being the only person I knew who was into self-development. Everyone else around me was skeptical or sarcastic about it. If I talked about any kind of growth-oriented goals, I could mainly expect eye rolls and discouraging commentary from the people who knew me. So I mostly kept quiet about these pursuits till I fixed that social alignment issue.

It will be very rewarding to guide people through the reframes and actions needed to meaningfully upgrade this part of life. Life is very different when the people closest to you are all supportive of your goals, and receiving daily encouragement becomes your normal, everyday reality. I found that a key to this is to practice compersion towards others as well. Compersion is the opposite of envy – it means feeling good about other people’s gains and successes. This really helps to get past neediness and to attract more alignment.

If you’re an ambitious person, it’s especially important to upgrade your social circle to include more ambitious people, including people who keep you on your toes and challenge you to think bigger. I find that something inside me begins to dwindle when I don’t engage with high-ambition people enough. It’s so crucial to have people in your life who spike your motivation when you connect with them.

If you have some insights to share about your current social circle and how it affects you, I’d love it if you’d drop me a message via my contact form and tell me more about your situation, so I can ponder how I might be of service to you. I’d love to know what aspects aren’t working for you yet and if you have some clarity on what kinds of improvements you’d love to see in this area of life. We’re still in the formative stages of developing the course, and we’re going to co-create the lessons as we go with those who enroll. For previous courses, entire lessons were created because one person asked for help with a specific issue.

YouTubing

I also intend to get more into video in 2022. Inside CGC we’re forming a YouTubers mastermind group for members who want to upgrade their video skills and build up their YouTube channels. This has been getting some enthusiastic interest since a number of members feel the time is right for them to invest in this direction too.

I have about 55 videos on my YouTube channel, but that averages out to less than 5 per year since I did my first videos in 2009. I’ve dabbled with YouTube but haven’t invested a whole lot in it. I’d like to explore doing more with it in 2022, and I’ve already been making some upgrades and doing some prep in that direction. I’m very comfortable on camera, especially from doing so many Zoom calls and live events, but I’d like to explore how I can express more creativity through editing and other improvements too. Plus that will give me a chance to give my new MacBook Pro to the test – I’ve been loving it so far.

If getting into video is a match for you too, you might want to join us in CGC this year. We open for new members to join during just one week per year, which is always the last week of April. So mark your calendar around April 25th to check in with us then.

This is also a great time to set some goals and intentions for the upcoming year. I especially encourage you to think about your life in terms of relationships – like your relationship with your work, your relationship with your body, your relationship with your social circle, etc. Then think about what kinds of upgrades you’d like to invite in these relationships, focusing on what you want to experience internally. For instance, this year I intend to make the experience of video creation more fun, expressive, original, playful, and social.