After nearly 20 years of blogging about self-development, this year I intend to contribute mainly through video instead of writing, which is a big change for me. I want this to be the first year that I publish more new videos than articles. I’ll still share new YouTube videos via my blog, but if you’re into YouTube, you may want to subscribe to my channel there.

In this first new video of 2024, I also reveal many other intentions; recent decisions; and updates about psychedelics explorations, Conscious Growth Club, the new Engage course, and more. I recorded this one mainly for long-term members of this community who are curious about where we’re headed next.

Why YouTube?

One reason I’m committed to investing in YouTubing is that I happen to like YouTube as a user. I’m not on Facebook, Instagram, X, or other social media platforms. I used to be active in those spaces, but I dropped them a long time ago because they all seemed too misaligned to me. I’ve been active in online communities for 30 years now, and I tend to be pretty sensitive to the overall quality, intelligence, and depth of engagements. I find it partly amusing that people have been expressing recent outrage at X (Twitter) after Elon took over because I declared it a cesspool and deleted my account in 2014. I was, however, a bit disappointed when Google Plus shut down since I happened to like that service; I liked that it attracted some pretty smart people who were a joy to connect with.

Even as I withdrew from other online spaces, I found myself using YouTube more and more each year. Today I use it pretty much daily, and I’m a YouTube Premium subscriber. I especially love it for educational videos but also for music and meditations. I think it’s one of the best learning resources the world has ever seen. And it’s so versatile too. Rachelle and I often watch Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel on YouTube while having lunch. I very much appreciate YouTube as a user, and I like the overall vibe I sense from it. I didn’t like it nearly as much in the past, but I feel that it’s been getting a lot better in recent years.

I also feel that YouTube has become a really nice place for communities these days. Many years ago YouTube comments were cesspools of trolling and spam; there was little value in them. But for most of the channels I encounter these days, the comments are civil and often interesting. I find myself engaging with other YouTubers more this way too. I have to give YouTube credit for really cleaning up their act.

Since 2017 Conscious Growth Club’s private community has been my sanctuary. I love high-trust, mutually supportive spaces where people can be honest and real with each other. Outside of CGC I’m feeling good resonance with YouTube. I’d really like to invest in YouTubing for many years going forward, and I really hope they don’t fuck it up! 😛

Partway through the new video, I mentioned building new Action Spirals. An Action Spiral is a habit or routine that you seek to improve each time you run through it. For 2024 I created a new video spiral that I want to continue evolving throughout this year and beyond. For each new video that I create, I want to do something better or different than in previous videos, so I can keep stretching myself to improve at sharing in this way.

I don’t intend to rehash old blog posts and turn them into videos because that isn’t a path with a heart for me. I’m very attuned to what motivates me, and I love to explore and share what’s fresh and new, even as I’m still figuring it out. My blog captures where I was at the time I wrote and published each article, but it doesn’t represent who I am now. I know some people still love the older content and would appreciate seeing video versions of it, but I don’t have any interest in doing that, so please adjust your expectations accordingly. I hope you understand.

As I noted in the video, there hasn’t been a whole lot of carry-over from my long-term blog readers to people who watch my YouTube videos. Typically when I share videos on my blog, it doesn’t generate many extra views on YouTube. Through blogging I’ve built an audience of readers. Some have carried over into YouTube viewers, but I’d say that mostly these are separate groups that don’t overlap a great deal.

I don’t think this is just a matter of a difference in media preference. I sense that investing in a YouTubing community is actually going to attract difference kinds of people than my blog has attracted in the past. I think the vibe of the community will be different. I also imagine that sooner or later, most of the new members flowing into CGC each year will first learn about it from YouTube, not from my blog, and I think that’s going to shift the vibe of CGC too – in a good way.

On the surface this is a bit like starting over, professionally speaking. I currently have fewer than 9K YouTube subscribers, which isn’t a lot, and I’m sure many of them aren’t engaging with my channel since I haven’t been publishing videos consistently yet. I started YouTubing in 2009 and have trickled out about 60 videos since then, but I haven’t really invested much in it since I first opened my account. Half of those videos were published during a 30-day stretch of water fasting and daily video creation in 2017, and they were all shot in single takes with bad lighting, cell phone audio, and no internal editing. Yet many people still appreciated them and kept asking me to make more videos.

To Video and Beyond

You might think this would be a relatively easy transition, especially since I’ve already created dozens of videos as well as live video courses. I’ve done plenty of public speaking, interviews, and more. However, this transition has been surprisingly deep and gradual. For well over a year I’ve been leaning in this direction, but it wasn’t till recently that I really reached my internal tipping point alignment-wise.

The shift in media is just the surface aspect. I’m also wanting to explore new directions topically, especially spirituality, relationships, karma, and way more about the nature of reality. I’m a lot less interested in very objective topics like basic productivity tips or how to graduate from college faster. I am very interested, however, in spirit-level insights that can be used to create interesting changes in our human lives. In recent months I’ve been exploring and experimenting a lot more in that direction.

Exploring psychedelics has impacted me profoundly as well, especially the past five months of micro- and mini-dosing. That’s opened up a whole new world of sensory input to say the least. In all my years of blogging, I’ve never had writer’s block because I’m very attuned to idea space, but now it feels like inner antenna has extended itself much further. It’s like I’ve been gifted with a cosmic library card.

This has really changed how I think about the “self” aspect of self-development. I’m still very into learning, growth, and exploration, but my curiosity is reaching a lot more into nonphysical aspects of existence.

Recently I also read the book Autobiography of a Yogi, which was powerful, eye-opening, and even amusing at times. There are some pretty advanced yogi tales in that book, including people who could fighting tigers bare-handed, teleport to different locations, come back from the dead, create physical structures with their minds, and not eat or drink anything for 50+ years. That’s the sort of info that very objective-minded people wouldn’t likely believe, but I can see them as being possible because the more basic stories align pretty well with my own experiences and the kind of downloads I’ve been getting. I feel like my 20-year exploration of Subjective Reality was just a baby step relative to what else might be possible, and I feel like I’ve recently gone through some kind of spiritual upgrade to be able to see more truth than I was previously permitted to access. The flow of synchronicities has been off the charts in recent weeks for starters.

Next I intend to read the Bhagavad Gita for the first time ever. I got the two-volume set with Paramahansa Yogananda’s commentary (1100+ pages) – he’s the author of Autobiography of a Yogi. I liked his writing style and have long thought about reading the Gita “someday.” I have this strange sense that this book called me to finally read it when I was ready for it. We’ll see how that unfolds…

I can tell that this is going to be a very interesting – and probably very unusual – year. I totally understand that some people won’t want to continue down this path together. Since I posted the new video yesterday, I’ve already lost 11 YouTube subscribers. That is as it’s meant to be. I’ll be sharing some info on this channel that many people aren’t supposed to encounter yet (since it would mess up their human journeys), so they’re going to be diverted away from it. Let’s give them some space to vibe out – with love and appreciation – and then we’ll get into some fascinating and adventurous explorations together this year. 😄