Hi Lovely Simplerista,

Phew. What a month it's been.

A month ago, I was relating to my healer how I wasn't really feeling supported or helped in many of my relationships. Now, a month later, that has completely changed. We've brought several new people on board in the company, and so many other relationships have changed as well. We've renewed our US visa for five years, and I'm going to spend a week with kids starting this week, after a lengthy legal battle and a long period where I've been denied access.

A month ago, I felt like going to Burning Man and being without connection to the outside world for a week would be impossible. Today it would totally be possible: I've got the people in place that could keep everything running along smoothly without me. (Still undecided if I want to go, though. Maybe just for a few days, if I could minimize the whole logistical hassle, but then again, that kinda defeats the spirit of the event. Anyway...)

At the same time that growth is fantastic and exhilarating and fun, it's also scary. I can feel all of my old stuff come up. I'm taking up too much space. I'm too loud. I can't be this lucky. It's causing strain on some relationships, people who aren't sure if they're up for the same kind of growth, or if they'd rather stay where they are. It seems like every time I experience one of these giant leaps, I come up against my feeling of unworthiness, my dysfunctional relationship issues, guilt, and shame.

Thankfully, by now, I'm more accustomed to them. I know they come up. I know they'll pass. I know they're not true. It's not true that I'm not worthy, and thinking it does absolutely nothing good for how I'm feeling or my capacity to create positive contributions in the world. The opposite, however, does. Someone recently said to my wife Nomi something like "All positive beliefs are true. All negative beliefs might not be true." I don't know if in a strictly mathematical sense that's true, but I find it a helpful rule of thumb, at least.

It's not that I think we need to grow all the time for growth's sake. We need to grow if we feel the desire to grow. Yet at the same time, I feel like a lot of us are demanding way too little of ourselves and our lives. We're playing small, not because it's our nature or because it really serves us or others, but because we don't know any better, or because we somehow find it to be more noble or humble.

I was at a class with Body-SDS founder Bengt Valentino Andersen a couple of weeks ago, where one of the exercise was to lay your head down sideways on your shoulder–without lifting your shoulder, of course. Most people can't do that. I certainly can't. But he can. And he said to the class "you need to demand much more of your neck". I like that. It stayed with me. I think it's true for most of us: We need to demand much more of life than what we're getting.

So go make a ruckus. Be yourself. Demand more of life. Grow when that's what's called for.

New Features in Simplero

We've launched a ton of new features recently, and I've been negligent about documenting them properly. We'll get on that.

The latest is triggers on prices, so you can differentiate what happens to different people who purchase at different price points.

We've also added four new amazing template designs for the embedded opt-in forms.

Random Links from around the Interwebs

Everything we love to eat is a scam.

Artificial Intelligence is (thankfully, or obviously) not yet at the point where it could write Harry Potter.

Trees calm us down. A lot.

Love,
–Calvin