Cart

Dreambook+Planner

Six Ways to Build a Healthy Life Structure That Will Direct You Towards Your Dreams

Last week we looked at ways to sweeten your life, a concept from my and Briana’s book, The Well Life, which also forms much of the foundation material for the… Read More

Three Ways to Sweeten Your Life

Several years ago Briana and I wrote The Well Life, a book on how to achieve wellness and balance in all domains of life – physical, mental, spiritual, financial, career,… Read More

Use Your Power to Change the World in 2021

The first of January has often felt to me like an arbitrary date to divide our lives by, since most of our projects and phases don’t conform to the calendar… Read More

Living Your Purpose

The new 2021 Rituals for Living Dreambook+Planner will be released in a couple weeks, and there’s been a huge surge of interest in it this year, so I decided to… Read More

Integrity

Earlier this week, I had a sort of heavy conversation with my wife, Briana. We were both feeling like we have more going on than we can handle. I was… Read More

Living Your Purpose

There’s been a huge surge of interest in the Dreambook this year, so I decided to share a bit more about what makes it special. It’s easy when life feels… Read More

See 20/20

A few years ago, Briana and I set out to create the ultimate system for planning, goal making, and life-sweetness-maximization. The result was The Dreambook. We launched it as a… Read More

Why Set Goals?

It’s only October, yet if you’re anything like me, you’re already thinking about the holidays and the end of the year. It can be easy to get overwhelmed or feel… Read More

We see that other people have the same stuff we do. We’re not alone in our weirdness or our struggles. It’s relieving to know that there’s little that you’ve thought, felt, or gone through that someone else out there doesn’t share.
Further, we get to see that most people aren’t alienated by our challenges. While we may tend to fear that the world would disapprove and abandon us if it knew XYZ about us (that we’re insecure, we pick our nose, we aren’t that spiritual, we’re always sucking in our belly, we yell at our kids, we use the code for bulk conventional rice when we actually have a bag of organic rice, we snort bath salts, etc.), the truth is our friends and family are unlikely to be ruffled by any of it. More relief.
We get the opportunity to be seen in our light and reminded of our strengths. While we may be hyper-focused on our problems and faults, others can help remind us that we’re so much more.
We get “borrowed benefits” (to use a term coined by EFT-creator Gary Craig) from witnessing and helping others work through their problems. In the process, our own knots may begin to loosen and/or we may get insights that can be applied to our life.
We get to be of service to others. Giving is receiving. It is as much a gift to us as it is to them.
We learn from others’ reflections of us. The accuracy of self-reflection waxes and wanes, since we’re always seeing ourselves through a certain lens. Sometimes having someone tell us, kindly and truthfully, what they see in us can illuminate our blind spots. It can be difficult to receive this feedback, but may be instrumental in our development.
We get to experience true connection. When operating from our default habits, we often relate to each other through many layers of mental static. What may look like a conversation between two humans could actually be … me acting out a personality I’ve constructed based on what I think is most impressive and approval-worthy, relating not to the real you, but to the mental representation I’ve made of you, based on my stereotypes, stories, and past experience of you (acting through your own filtered self). Miraculously, my true Self and your true Self can find a way to connect through all this fog. It’s therapeutic to do so. And it serves to dismantle all the crap that gets in the way.
It helps cure us of one of the most damaging and widely held beliefs in the world: we’re all separate. The denial of our connectedness, especially combined with the belief that there isn’t enough, is a recipe for suffering. It makes us feel alone, vulnerable, judged, and in competition – rather than collaboration – with the rest of our species. But the more we let others into our life, the less we’re controlled by this belief. This is especially true when we share with others about the very issues that make us feel alone, vulnerable, judged, and in competition.

You may also be interested in:

That’s Very Big of You

Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends

What Everyone Should Know About Pain

The Dragontree

Dreambook+Planner

Six Ways to Build a Healthy Life Structure That Will Direct You Towards Your Dreams

Three Ways to Sweeten Your Life

Use Your Power to Change the World in 2021

Living Your Purpose

Integrity

Living Your Purpose

See 20/20

Why Set Goals?

The Dragontree and its Founders have been Featured in