Hi everyone:
First, thank you for all your support in the last year, and before. Second, watch for an announcement here and on YouTube tomorrow (with Dave Rubin) on the future of my involvement--and his--on Patreon.
Third: Because it's New Year's resolution time, my colleagues and I have reduced the price of the Future Authoring program (part of the SelfAuthoring Suite at https://www.selfauthoring.com) by 50% (reducing its price to $7.45).
Purchase it for yourself at https://www.selfauthoring.com/future-authoring
Purchase it for a friend at https://www.selfauthoring.com/buy-it-for-a-friend (scroll down to “Give Individual Exercises”)
ENTER COUPON CODE NY2019 ON THE PURCHASE PAGE
My colleagues and I designed the Future Authoring program to help people craft and implement a more conscious approach to their lives. I am writing about it today because the impending New Year is a time when people are prone to consider their actions over the last 12 months and resolving to do better in the future.
But what does “to do better” mean? It’s not so easy to define what is good, much less aim at it. But a start might be made by considering, at least, the utility of ceasing to perceive, think and act in whatever manner is producing a crisis in conscience, minor or major. It is possible that guilt and shame, whatever their excesses and pathologies, can at least serve as pointers with regards to what is not good, so that what is good might be considered in opposition to that.
It is easier to notice when you have done something wrong than it is to consciously formulate a vision of what is right. How should you set things right? How should you conduct yourself properly in the world? What should be the goal, or the goals, or your life?
These questions are so general and comprehensive and, in some sense, vague, that they are difficult to answer. So people don’t answer them, and they drift, aimless, purposeless and possessed by the uncertainty and anxiety that such aimless purposeless necessarily produces.
The Future Authoring program, which has now been completed by tens of thousands of people, was designed to aid its users begin to define a vision for the future, and to outline a strategy for its realization. It suggests an attitude for contemplation: Consider treating yourself, at least for the purposes of its completion, as if you were someone intrinsically valuable—as if you are someone whose actions are important, and as if you had the responsibility for caring for yourself, in consequence. Imagine, then, that you could have what you needed and wanted, if you were willing to define what that was, and if you really needed and wanted it (which meant that you were willing to make the sacrifices (say, of immediate gratification, avoidance of responsibility and procrastination necessary to bring all that about).
If you could have what you want and need:
How would you reform your relationships with your parents and siblings and your extended family?
How would you establish, continue or repair your intimate relationship—your marriage, or its equivalent?
How might you further educate yourself?
What path might you choose or develop for your career or, failing that, your job?
How would you take care of yourself mentally and physically?
How would you use your time outside of your necessary work productively and meaningfully?
How would you manage the temptations of drugs, alcohol, sex, online activities, resentment, ingratitude, nihilism and hopelessness?
That’s a start. Could you answer these questions? Could you write for fifteen minutes about what might justify your life, three to five years down the road, if only you could attain it? Could you do the same, in the opposite direction, contemplating what personal hell you might well find yourself in if you fail to set your sails properly and degenerate, instead?
Could you make a plan to implement your new vision? Could you identify some concrete goals, and establish for them a reasonable timeframe? Could you determine how to keep yourself on track?
Could you risk doing all of this badly, imperfectly, partially—so that at least you would have a bad plan, as the better alternative to none at all?
We studied the effect of the Future Authoring program among college and university students in three different institutions (a university and a college in Canada and a business school in The Netherlands). Those who completed the program (even spending only an hour to do so) were much less likely to drop out of school, and much more likely to perform well, academically.
That does not mean that the program was designed for students, or that its effects are limited to young people. It's designed to all adults (we have a version for people under, say, 16 or 17 in the works).
We have reduced its price for all of January 2019 (starting today, December 31, 2018) by 50% to encourage its use.