I attended Steve Pavlina’s Conscious Growth Workshop on January 15-17th in Las Vegas.

Before Going

I had been reading Steve Pavlina’s blog (stevepavlina.com/blog) for nearly three years, and I had purchased his book, Personal Development for Smart People. But I was reluctant to sign up. Maybe I balked at the price tag (although the workshop was only $499, I also had to pay for airfare, hotel, and food; all told, the workshop probably cost me about $900). I posted a thread on Steve’s message board, explaining that I needed some convincing. People came out of the woodwork and recommended I attend; after reading enough authentic testimonials, including a couple responses that itemized their results, I caved, and purchased. Besides, I wanted to go anyway. Worst case scenario: I discover he’s a fraud and stop wasting time reading each of his blog entries.

The Sahara

I got into Vegas a day early, and checked in at my hotel, The Sahara. About The Sahara: I paid a very cheap rate for my room. $147.59 for 3 nights, including tax. That’s less than $50 per night, and I got what I paid for. The room was poorly-lit (in order to get decent lighting, I had to turn on like 6 lamps, which at least gave it an Arabian feel). And they dinged me with a mandatory “resort fee” of $18 ($6/day) which granted me the privilege of local calls from my room as well as access to their treadmill room (not a gym: it had 3 treadmills, 2 ellipticals, 2 recumbent bikes, a bowflex-type machine, and no water cooler). But the bed was reasonably comfortable and the price was right.

It takes about 40 minutes to walk from The Sahara to The Flamingo, door-to-door. Fortunately, many workshop attendees had cars, and were generous with giving rides. But the Las Vegas Monorail had a door-to-door transit time of about 20 minutes, and 3-day passes were only $30, so I didn’t end up spending any money on cabs. (The airport shuttle cost me $6 + $2).

Basic Details

The workshop last Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It began at 9am daily and ended at 5pm. We took a 15 minute break at some point during the morning, and took 2 hour lunches.

Workshop Concepts

On day one, Steve introduced us to his model of personal growth. We covered truth, love, power, authority, courage, oneness and intelligence. Those words have specific meanings in the context of Steve’s personal growth paradigm, so I’ll explain them below. The other important concept is Planet A and Planet B: Planet A being the world in which you currently live and Planet B being your ideal world (but still a real one, with real, natural problems as well as desirable circumstances).

Truth-Love-Power Triangle

Truth: the specifics of Planet A and Planet B. What is life like? What is your daily routine? Honesty with ourselves.
Love: the degree to which your environment supports your shift to Planet B. Perhaps the most often overlooked aspect of personal development. how many times have we attempted to begin a new diet only to fail because none of our friends are able to eat out with us, or discourage us in some other way? Or attempted to remold our identity, but fail to do so because all of the places we go to, and people we hang out with, validate the old identity?
Power: our speed of getting from Planet A to Planet B. includes willpower, skill set, knowledge, …
oneness: the degree to which our environment supports our shift to Planet B, because it ultimately benefits from you being in Planet B. For example, when I wanted to focus more on helping out the homeless, staff at my college cafeteria started giving me free food at lunch.
authority: trial and error: how we get to Planet B, from Planet A
courage: The path with a heart. What inspires us? What scares us? We must do that. We will never be effective in accomplishing a goal for which we only hold tepid support in our “heart”.

Intelligence: A way to live life more intelligently!

Application

Steve covered Career/Finances, Health, Social & Relationships, Habits & Daily Routine, Skills & Education, Emotions, Spiritual Development. For each of these sections, he invited an audience member who had a clear idea of both Planet A (current reality) and Planet B (desired reality), onto the stage. He then went through the 7 principles, and asked the audience for suggestions on how the volunteer could improve alignment. Then, we ourselves went through the 7 principles and noted how we could improve alignment; after that, we paired up with a partner, to review our notes.

Emotions

Before I arrived, I noticed on Steve’s Facebook news feed a few weeks back that, at all of his workshops, somebody leaves the room in tears. I certainly didn’t think it would be me, but when we were peer-reviewing Emotions with our partners, my partner Gene said to me “Zack, you may not believe in you, but we believe in you, and I believe in you.” and I started sobbing. Steve’s friend Vicki took me outside and coached me on some emotional release techniques (the Sedona method), as well as reminded me that my ego was the one upset – not me – and that I am stronger than my ego (this is the ego – or self-construct -  in the Eckhart Tolle sense, not the Freudian ego). Just typing this brings back the pain, but now I have some stuff to work on with respect to my emotions, and I think I should see strong synergy between improved emotional wellbeing and the rest of my life. I am grateful to both Vicki and Gene for their support.

Mostly, it was very valuable to come to awareness of how important my emotions are and how much they affect my life. Just having consciousness of my pain will help me treat it and get more living out of life. I have some books to read (on Vicki’s suggestion) and I will report back with new blog posts once I am done with them.

Interestingly, at the end of the workshop this guy Chris came up to me and said that he had been avoiding me for most of the workshop since he sensed my sadness/pain, and couldn’t get involved with that. It certainly explains some of the reactions that people have to me… emotions are contagious. We’re social creatures. You don’t want to hang out with a Leper.

Frustration

I struggled throughout the workshop because I didn’t always have a clear idea of what my Planet B should be. So, I feel like I got less out of the exercises than I could have.

Steve upsold intuitive readings with his business partner/ex-wife, Erin Pavlina; they distributed a sheet and promised that the readings could bring “improved clarity”. Although I think that the notion of “psychic powers” is ridiculous, I do believe that human beings are wired to perceive patterns, and some of us are better at that than others at cold reading (e.g. via microexpressions). Because I do believe in intuition as a skill, I would have opted for a reading had the price not been a prohibitive several hundred dollar sum.

Surprises

There were a lot of people at the workshop who believed in psychic powers (or claimed to have powers of their own), or otherwise believed in what many advanced rationalists (nerds) could call new-age hocus pokery. But this one guy performed a Oneness Blessing on me, and it felt like my head was orgasming. So that’s definitely something I’m going to be looking into further.

Demographics

The workshop audience seemed to be an equalish distribution of male/female; there were omnivores and raw foodists; Germans and Americans and Russians and an Israeli. Attendees’ ages ranged from 18 to over 70. There were hippies who believed in energy healing; software engineers; zen practitioners; elderly collectors of social security; marketers. Suffice to say that there was a wide range of personalities and people at the workshop, all united by a desire for growth, open-mindedness, and (typically) gushing warmth.

I was also surprised to see Derek Sivers at the workshop, with his finacé. I read Derek’s blog at sivers.org and have enjoyed his book notes and summaries (he has some great notes on Steve’s book here), so it was a pleasure to meet him in person.

Key Takeaways

I learned a lot about the principles of growth, and all rang true from my personal experience. I remembered gems such as to only take advice from people with the results I want. I’ve wasted so much time listening to friends with unsuccessful love lives lecture me on the right way to approach dating, or fat friends lecture me on how to eat well and nutritiously.

Connections

I connected with a lot of people at the conference and it was a delight to hang out with them for 3 days. They were non-judgmental and accepting; everyone should be like that! It’s so nice to have so many cool people who I’m so enthusiastic about now populate my Facebook Chat list I’m going to be revamping my social life to experience abundance of genuine connection and friendship. But as Aristotle notes in the Nicomachean ethics, the best friendships are based on shared values; those from the workshop all share values of growth, open-mindedness, mindfulness, and (typically) kindness.

Changes

I have already changed my diet [I have lost 5 pounds in the 2 weeks since I left for the workshop], made a major change in my relationship, and started to go out and connect with people more. I hugged someone outside a bar (I was sober!), and then we started a group hug. I’m blogging more, so I can share my hard-won lessons with the world. Mostly, I want to be helpful, and happy, and fulfilled, and self-actualized, and social .. and each day, I am a little closer to my Planet B.

Conclusion

Well worth the money and time invested. Highly recommended to anyone who has already accepted that personal growth is a good thing, and whose willing to have their perspectives tested/challenged/shattered. Thanks Steve.

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