Tiago Forte's Blog, page 11

It Didn’t Start With You: How to Understand and Heal from Intergenerational Trauma

For years I’ve heard about a phenomenon called intergenerational trauma – the idea that the impact of traumatic events can be passed down from one generation to the next.

I have to admit I never believed it was a real thing.

I had only heard about it in very woo-woo circles in San Francisco, and for that reason assumed it was pseudoscience or a metaphor.

Until a friend recommended a book on the topic called It Didn’t Start With You (affiliate link), and I decided to challenge my assumptions and see what it had to offer.

The author Mark Wolynn is the founder and director of the Family Constellation Institute in San Francisco, where he works with people struggling with depression, anxiety, chronic illness, phobias, panic disorders, obsessive thoughts, PTSD, and other debilitating conditions. 

It Didn’t Start With You is the distillation of Wolynn’s more than 20 years of experience helping those people find the roots of their symptoms in intergenerational trauma (which he calls “inherited family trauma”), and heal from it.

In this article I’ll summarize the most powerful lessons I learned from the book, told through the lens of my own personal journey. I hope it gives you new insight and new hope in your own journey.

Trigger warning: I’ve never added a trigger warning to anything I’ve published, but this time it is definitely in order. Wolynn asks readers to closely examine their deepest fears and the most traumatic experiences of their lives (and their ancestors’ lives). The rest of this piece touches on suicide, rape, murder, genocide, violence, sexual and psychological abuse, and other acutely traumatic experiences.

A case study of inherited family trauma

What immediately struck me about this book were the stories.

Early on in the book, Wolynn recounts the story of one of his patients, Jesse, as a case study of how intergenerational trauma works. 

Jesse hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in more than a year. He had to drop out of college and forfeit his baseball scholarship as a result. Dark shadows around his eyes hinted at his insomnia, while the blankness of his stare suggested something deeper. Though only twenty years of age, he looked ten years older. No doctor was able to give him any hope of a cure.

Jesse had been a star athlete and straight-A student, before inexplicably coming down with the insomnia that derailed his life. Sleep had always come easily for him, until late one night just after his nineteenth birthday, when he awoke with a start at 3:30 am. He was freezing, shivering, unable to get warm no matter how hard he tried. He felt consumed by a strange fear that something awful would happen to him if he let himself fall back asleep. Every time he felt himself drifting off, that fear would jolt him awake. 

If I go to sleep, I’ll never wake up. 

These words echoed through his mind for hours.

Wolynn listened to the details of Jesse’s struggle, and asked him if he had any relatives who suffered a trauma involving cold, being asleep, or being nineteen.

Jesse revealed that only recently his mother had told him about the tragic death of his father’s older brother, an uncle he never knew he had. Uncle Colin was only nineteen when he froze to death checking power lines in a storm in the Northwest Territories of Canada. His body was eventually found, face down in a blizzard, having lost consciousness from hypothermia. His death was such a tragic loss that the family never spoke his name again.

Now, three decades later, Jesse was unconsciously reliving aspects of the same experience. For Colin, letting go and falling asleep meant death. For Jesse, it felt much the same. 

Once Jesse made that connection, he finally had an explanation for what he was experiencing. The process of healing could now begin. Using the tools and techniques detailed in this book, and with Wolynn’s support, he went on to disentangle himself from the impacts of the trauma endured by the uncle he had never met. Knowing the source of his fear, he was able to start putting it to rest. And through that work, he eventually found resolution and relief from his insomnia. 

Touching a nerve in my own life

I read this story and several others with extreme skepticism. They seemed far too tidy and convenient. Yet, as I put the book down and started getting ready for bed, I could feel that it had moved something deep within me. 

I finished my nightly routine, laid down in bed, and as my thoughts drifted, I suddenly found myself beginning to cry. It was a very different kind of crying than I’ve ever experienced before – from deep in my belly, visceral and guttural, like an animalistic wailing. 

Strangest of all, I didn’t feel much emotion to accompany it. Nothing in particular had happened besides reading a book. It was more like a body cry, the tissues in my body releasing something that had been stuck for a long time.

Mesmerized and fascinated by what was happening to me, I jumped out of bed and opened up my journal. I started writing, and soon came to an answer as to why these stories had impacted me so strongly.

I’ve always struggled to understand why I seemed to have many symptoms of trauma, even though nothing in my life history remotely explains it. Unlike so many others, my upbringing was practically idyllic. My parents were always loving and supportive, I never sustained any major injury or accident, nor experienced serious violence or tragedy.

Yet for as long as I can remember, I’ve felt a sense of emptiness or “depersonalization” – the feeling that I am not really here, or that I am only half a person. I’ve always had a sense of not deserving to be here, of having taken someone else’s place. 

I knew these feelings of unworthiness had become the source of my ambition. I could see that the drive to prove I was worthy had served me well. But at this point in my life, with a thriving business and family, I was tired of having to prove myself. I wanted to slow down and enjoy the fruits of what I had achieved, but inexplicably found myself unable to rest or relax.

Reading for the first time about the existence of inherited trauma, and how it works, I suddenly saw a new possibility: that I was experiencing the echoes of the traumas of my forebears. And once I drew back that curtain and began to look closely at my family history, I saw that there was more than enough trauma to go around. 

I’d spent my life trying to understand the origins of my anxiety, fears, and neurotic worries while looking only at my own life history. Now it dawned on me that maybe these feelings were not my fault or my burden to carry alone. 

What is Inherited Family Trauma?

Inherited family trauma begins when the impacts of a traumatic event are too threatening to be resolved in a single generation. 

Pain that is too great to be felt by one person becomes submerged until it can find a pathway for expression in their descendants. In this way, we can unconsciously carry the feelings, symptoms, behaviors, and hardships of earlier generations as if they were our own. 

Deep-rooted patterns of depression, anxiety, emptiness, terror, dissociation, numbness, disconnection, defeat, or annihilation may come not from our own life history, but from the stories of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents and beyond.

Pain doesn’t always dissolve on its own with time. Sometimes it gets amplified as it gets passed from parent to child, fragments of past experience becoming lodged in the family psyche like shards of glass. 

The trauma of past generations can and does live on, reaching out from the past to find resolution in the minds and bodies of those living in the present.

Modern therapy and trauma studies have taught us that the psychological and emotional problems we face often come from our past. We’re taught that if we just dig deep enough, we’ll discover their source. But it’s possible that the source goes much further back.

Here are some questions to ask yourself that may indicate this is an avenue worth exploring:

Do you have symptoms, feelings, or behaviors that are difficult to explain in the context of your life experience?Was there a trauma in your family (an early death of a parent, child, or sibling, or an abandonment, murder, crime, or suicide, etc.) that was too terrible, painful, or shameful to talk about?Did your parents experience an event so painful that they rarely spoke about it? (Did they lose a newborn baby or miscarry late in a pregnancy? Were they abandoned by a great love or did they lose a parent or a sibling when they were young? Did they feel guilty for causing harm to someone? Did they blame themselves for something?)

If you answered yes to any of these questions, read on.

The Science of Inherited Family Trauma

Wolynn points to recent findings in three fields for support: neuroscience, epigenetics, and the science of language. 

In particular, research performed by Dr. Rachel Yehuda, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. She is one of the world’s leading experts in PTSD, especially as manifested in Holocaust survivors and their children.

Yehuda’s research has shown that many children of Holocaust survivors with PTSD were born with low cortisol levels, similar to their parents, predisposing them to relive the same PTSD symptoms. As a result, they were more likely to experience a range of psychiatric disorders, such as chronic pain syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, and anxiety. 

Yehuda’s work led her to the conclusion that PTSD changes the epigenetic tags that govern how our genes are expressed. Although DNA itself doesn’t change significantly from one generation to the next, epigenetic markers can be shaped by the parents’ life experience as early as conception. She believes that the evolutionary purpose of these epigenetic changes is to prepare us to face the environment and the challenges our parents faced.

Wolynn also draws on the work of pioneering cell biologist Dr. Bruce Lipton. As a Stanford scholar, Lipton demonstrated that signals from the environment could be transmitted through the cell membrane, controlling the behavior and physiology of a cell, which in turn could activate or silence a gene.

Lipton asserts, “The mother’s emotions, such as fear, anger, love, hope among others, can biochemically alter the genetic expression of her offspring.” In other words, chronic or repetitive emotions like anger and fear can imprint a child, preparing or “preprograming” how the child will adapt to its environment.

The potency of these genetic inheritances has been demonstrated most vividly in mice, which share 99% of our genetic makeup. Studies on mice have shown that traumas, such as maternal separation, cause changes in gene expression that can be traced for at least three generations. 

In one such study, researchers prevented female mice from nurturing their pups for up to three hours a day during their first two weeks of life. Later in life, those offspring exhibited behaviors similar to what we call depression in humans. And those symptoms seemed to get worse with age.

In one of the most striking studies, a group of mice was trained to fear a cherry blossom-like scent called acetophenone. Each time they were exposed to the smell, they simultaneously received an electric shock. After a while, the shocked mice had a greater number of smell receptors associated with that particular scent and enlarged brain areas devoted to detecting it. 

The experience of pain had changed them, but the intriguing part is what happened to their offspring. Both the pups and grandpups of the experimental mice, when exposed to the odor, became jumpy and avoided it. Despite never having experienced the smell themselves, they had inherited the fear response of their predecessors.

Much the same effect has been found in humans, although the long span of generations makes it more challenging to study. 

In one study, granddaughters of stressed grandmothers had shorter pregnancies themselves, even when their mothers (the intervening generation) had not been stressed. Gerlinde Metz, senior author of the article, says: “A surprising finding was that mild to moderate stress during pregnancy had a compounding effect across generations. Thus, the effects of stress grew larger with each generation.” 

Stepping back for a second, it makes intuitive sense that evolution would have found a way to transmit information about what is needed for survival from one generation to the next. We know that evolution through natural selection takes many, many generations to produce significant change. In that time, a family or even an entire species can easily be wiped out by changes in the environment. Epigenetics allows for far faster adaptation, tweaking the sensitivities and biases of our genes based on the gravest threats, which are often the source of our traumas.

Walking the path for myself

It Didn’t Start With You touches on the science of inherited trauma, but this book isn’t primarily about science. Most of it is presented in the form of a self-guided process with written prompts and journaling exercises designed to surface and resolve the roots of inherited trauma within you, the reader.

As I read his words, I felt the desire to put Wolynn’s ideas to the test. I decided I would work through the writing prompts and experience the process he was describing for myself. The first prompts were about identifying recurring symptoms or complaints in one’s life. Although I could think of many, I decided to focus on one of my longest standing and earliest preoccupations. 

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a feeling of being in the way or occupying a place meant for someone else. Even on a spatial level, I’ve always felt this need to place myself up against a wall or in a corner of the room, as if taking up more space than I “deserved” would be a cardinal sin. Later on, that visceral feeling was translated into a feeling of not belonging, of not deserving to belong, or being unworthy of things due to this place I had usurped or occupied unfairly.

The strange thing is, there is no experience in my childhood that can explain these feelings. I wasn’t an unwanted or neglected child. I was never told that I didn’t belong or that I wasn’t worthy. Quite the opposite. And yet, I found myself from such a young age trying to make myself and my needs small, as if to avoid being noticed or scrutinized. 

I would play by myself and out of sight. I invented worlds in my imagination that allowed me to withdraw to a place where I did belong and my needs were valid. I had developed many coping mechanisms to salve the pain of not feeling wanted or needed, like I was a burden who was “in the way.”

As I got older and became an adult, these deep-seated fears and anxieties turned into a kind of restlessness. I often felt unable to relax, unable to enjoy what I had achieved. I’ve long had this sense that I couldn’t afford to “waste time” – every minute needed to be spent pushing forward and making progress. Any time that wasn’t happening, it felt like I was going backward, losing ground, getting left behind. 

In the early years of my career, that restlessness served me, pushing me to work harder than anyone else. But over the last few years as the business took off and I became a father, I began to grapple with the uncomfortable realization that the pace I was moving at wasn’t slowing down in response. I still felt that same relentless sense of urgency driving me to push and push and push. 

I began to see that the pressure didn’t come from any external source. It came from within me. I was more comfortable and felt more like myself in that state of near panic. And so I kept it going at all costs, even in the face of accumulating costs in other areas of my life.

I had this experience time and again of striving to reach a goal, but once I had, being inexplicably unable to savor it. I would find myself turning immediately to the next goal, trapped in the inescapable hamster wheel of striving. My work began to feel like a prison as a result, keeping me running toward but always just out of reach of the fruits of my efforts. Life started to get very grey, like everything I was doing was a necessary evil on the way to some shining, glorious promised land. But I never seemed to arrive there. 

Meanwhile, I could see negative side effects on every aspect of my life. My health deteriorated as I pushed my body again and again beyond its limits. My friendships suffered as they always took a back seat. My mental health and ability to focus took a hit as I never fully took the time to reset. My time with family wasn’t as rich, as my mind kept getting pulled toward looming problems at work. And my workload only seemed to get bigger as I took on more duties and avoided delegating the ones I already had.

I decided to follow the thread of this recurring preoccupation through the rest of the book to try and find its origin.

The Core Language Approach

Over 20 years of counseling, Mark Wolynn has developed a healing methodology he calls the “Core Language Approach.” 

According to Wolynn, fragments of trauma leave clues inside us in the form of emotionally charged words and sentences. These clues can also take the form of nonverbal communication – physical sensations, behaviors, emotions, impulses, and even the symptoms of an illness. 

Like gems waiting in our subconscious to be unearthed, they hint at fragments of trauma buried in our psyche waiting to be remembered and explored.

This “core language” can include:

Intense, urgent, or dramatic words people use to describe their deepest fears.Words that are unusual or feel out of context from what the person knows or has experienced.Recurring complaints we have about our relationships, our health, our work, and other aspects of life.Unexplainable habits or idiosyncratic impulses.

As a therapist, Wolynn interviews his patients and listens for this kind of language. He asks himself and his patients, “What language seems to jump out at you?” And “What language calls out to be noticed?” 

Here are examples from some of his patients:

“I can’t breathe. I can’t get out. I’m going to die.”“The world isn’t a safe place. You have to hide who you are. People can hurt you.”“I don’t fit in. I feel like I don’t belong. I feel like I’m invisible. Nobody sees me. I feel like I’m observing life, but not in it.”

Our recurring complaints or symptoms may actually be a creative expression leading us to complete, heal, integrate, or separate from something. Like chronic pain telling you to pay attention to a part of the body, psychic pain can be your mind’s attempt to call attention to psychological wounds that need attention. That could include wounds you’ve taken on that never belonged to you in the first place.

Perhaps your symptom is forcing you to take a step you haven’t taken, a step you can no longer ignore. Maybe you are being asked to complete a stage of development that got interrupted by an event in your life. Your pain could be recreating a state of helplessness that serves to bring you close to your parents. Or conversely, maybe it forces growth and independence from them. 

Maybe you are being shown that you need to finish a task or follow a path you previously abandoned. Maybe you neglected a personal boundary that can no longer remain overlooked. Or perhaps you’ve ignored a young, fragmented part of yourself that is now coming to the surface.

Your language provides the clues to help you find the answer.

Your deepest fear

If you would like to begin this process for yourself, it begins by answering the question, “What is your worst fear – the worst thing that could ever happen to you?”

Wolynn notes that this fear has probably been with you since you were a small child. You might feel as if you were born with it. Whether actually spoken aloud or pondered quietly, the mere thought of it creates a sense of despair. It usually takes the form of a short, simple sentence in the present or future tense, as if spoken by a child. 

As you read the examples below, take note of which ones jump out at you or provoke a reaction:

“I’m all alone” “They reject me”“They leave me” “I let them down” “I’ll lose everything” “I’ll fall apart” “It’s all my fault” “They abandon me” “They betray me” “They humiliate me” “I’ll go crazy” “I’ll hurt my child” “I’ll lose my family” “I’ll lose control”“I’ll do something terrible” “I’ll hurt someone” “I won’t deserve to live” “I’ll be hated” “I’ll kill myself” “They’ll lock me up” “They’ll put me away” “It’ll never end”

When you hear or say your fear, the words will feel alive inside you, as if they are happening right now or are just about to happen. They often begin with “I” or “They.” The words will often elicit a physical reaction – an anxious or sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach for example.

As I read this list through the lens of my own life experience, the one that jumped out at me with red lights flashing was “I won’t deserve to live.” I had never before said these exact words to myself, but they seemed to somehow encapsulate my view of life in just a few words. 

As Wolynn predicted, the words felt extremely dramatic and threatening. They seemed to transcend time and space, as if they had already happened, were happening now, and would happen in the future. I felt the impact of these words like a punch to the gut.

As I began to capture that fear through writing, the tension between a thirst for ambition and a fear of regret appeared strongly as a recurring theme. For years, I’ve had a certain scene play out in my mind as if from a movie: I’m running a race and arrive at the finish line only to find that there is no one there to celebrate with me. I have driven them away by my selfishness, and it is all my fault. 

This waking nightmare touches on my fear of not achieving enough, but also of burning so many bridges along the way that it all ends up being for nothing. It triggers my fear of not belonging, and also of taking someone’s place unfairly, since winning a race always means someone else loses.

Wolynn asks readers to dive deeper into surface-level fears, asking repeatedly, “And then what would happen as a result of that?” 

I answered that I would be alone at the finish line, with no one to celebrate with or appreciate me, burdened with the guilt and regret that I brought it all on myself. Another level deeper: my ultimate regret would be that I had one precious life, and that I squandered it. 

Essentially, my core fear is that I will miss out on the most valuable thing in the world, belonging, because I am so busy chasing it down elsewhere that I miss it right in front of me. And therefore, all the shame and disappointment for all my failings in life would lie squarely on my own shoulders. 

And one final level deeper: that my life itself will have been a waste, a mistake, taking up the resources that could have gone to someone else. It will be my fault for existing.

Distilling all of this into the most compact form, here is the sentence I arrived at as my Core Language:

I won’t deserve to live. I won’t deserve to exist. I won’t deserve to belong anywhere. I won’t deserve to be loved. I won’t deserve acceptance and appreciation. I’ll have to live alone forever with endless disappointment and endless regret. I will bring shame on my family through my actions. 

It can be terrifying and confronting to even think about your deepest fear. But I had also learned from experience the wisdom in Wolynn’s words: that ignoring the pain actually deepens the pain. His promise that those same words would have the power to release me gave me the courage to keep reading.

Finding the source

The next step in Wolynn’s process is to find the ancestor who the trauma originates with.

Here are some questions he suggests asking yourself in order to do that (take note of any that seem to jump out at you or immediately bring someone to mind):

Who died early? Who left? Who was abandoned or isolated or excluded from the family? Who was adopted or who gave a child up for adoption? Who died in childbirth? Who had a stillbirth or an abortion? Who committed suicide? Who committed a crime? Who experienced a significant trauma or suffered a catastrophic event? Who lost their home or possessions and had difficulty recovering? Who was forgotten or suffered in war? Who died in or participated in the Holocaust or another genocide? Who was murdered? Who murdered someone? Who felt responsible for someone’s death or misfortune?Who hurt, cheated, or took advantage of someone? Who profited from another’s loss? Who was wrongly accused of something? Who was jailed or institutionalized? Who had a physical, emotional, or mental disability? Which parent or grandparent had a significant relationship prior to getting married, and what happened? Was there anyone else you can think of who was deeply hurt by someone in your family or a family member deeply hurt by another?

Using my core fear as a lens, I began to roam around my family tree looking for a possible source. My mother is passionate about genealogy and has researched both sides of our family extensively going back many generations. But I didn’t have to look too far. Asking my father the question, “Who in our family didn’t feel they deserved to live? Didn’t deserve to exist?” a possible answer sprang quickly to mind: his father John. 

When John’s older brother Robert was just 19 years old, he died in a tragic car accident. By all accounts, Robert was the favorite. He was studying medicine with a bright and promising career as a doctor ahead of him, while my grandfather John was a rebel and a misfit often up to no good. 

When Robert died, my father told me that John got the message that “It should have been you.” Whether or not his parents meant to convey such a devastating message is unknown. But my grandfather John took away a sense that he didn’t deserve to be here. Feelings of grief and loss must have mixed with shame and regret to form a potent mixture: a relentless drive to prove his worthiness.

And prove it he did. John joined the U.S. Air Force as a young man and climbed the ranks fighting in the Pacific theatre in World War II. He had a talent for golf, and used that skill to befriend high-ranking military officials in the Philippines where he was stationed. 

Once the war was over, he parlayed those connections into a series of profitable commercial deals. His entrepreneurial ventures in surplus military equipment, restaurants, and real estate eventually made him a wealthy man, and he lived out his last years playing golf in Southern California as his grandchildren proliferated around him.

I had always identified closely with my grandfather John. His entrepreneurial drive, his world travels, his thirst for adventure – these were all qualities I admired and shared. But it’s possible I also shared his trauma – a feeling that despite all his success, he didn’t deserve it. 

Maybe, just maybe, that feeling of occupying a place that was meant for someone else didn’t belong to me. Maybe that information had been passed through my father to me through our epigenetics, our family stories, subconscious language, or some other tacit or explicit means. It’s impossible to know for sure, but the clues left behind by my language and emotions point me in this direction.

Healing our relationship with our parents

Since our parents are the gateway through which any inherited trauma reaches us, Wolynn dedicates a sizable part of the book to closely examining our relationship with them.

As infants, our mother is our world. A separation from her at an early age is experienced as a separation from life. Experiences of emptiness and disconnection, of hopelessness and despair, or a belief that something is terribly wrong with us or with life itself – all of these can emerge from an early separation from our mothers. 

Too young to process the trauma, it becomes embedded in our bodies as incoherent feelings or sensations without the story to explain them. To make matters worse, comforting memories of being held, fed, cleaned, or rocked to sleep are often blocked from surfacing. In short, trauma rewires our memories, keeping only those that support our primitive defensive structures.

Wolynn advises that our relationship with our parents cannot be bypassed, no matter how long it takes. He tells the story of meeting his marine sergeant father for 36 weekly lunches before his dad finally opened up, admitting in hushed tones that he had never believed his son loved him. It was only then that the real conversations could begin.

As I read this, I began having a series of phone calls with my parents. We spent hours exploring the intricacies of our family history, comparing stories and investigating clues as to what shaped us. I’m fortunate that they are open and willing to discuss the stories from their past. 

I told them about what I was learning, what I had discovered about myself, and perhaps for the first time in my life, asked them about their own past from a place of curiosity. I asked questions that I had never even considered, such as “Did you feel close to and connected to your mother?” and “What did you feel was missing from your childhood?” Their answers gave me so much context and helped me understand my own upbringing more deeply. 

An important part of Wolynn’s process is understanding in detail the traumas that your parents experienced. Maybe your mother lost a child before you were born, or gave up a child for adoption, or lost her first love in a car accident. Perhaps her father died when she was young, or her beloved brother or sister. 

Fearing such loss again, she might have kept you at arms’ length, not fully imparting the love and connection you so needed as a baby. Experiencing that distance as a small child, maybe you felt she was unavailable, self-absorbed, or withholding. You might have then rejected her, taking her depleted flow of love personally, as if she had somehow made a choice to keep it from you. Cutting off her love can make you feel free at first, but it’s the false freedom of a childhood defense. Ultimately, it will limit your life experience. 

Many people find that the emotions, traits, and behaviors of a rejected parent resurface in themselves. Wolynn describes this as a “covert bond” – our secret way of loving them by bringing them back into our lives. Conversely, we can project those disowned behaviors onto the people around us, unconsciously bringing into our lives friends, romantic partners, and business associates who display the very qualities we reject.

Wolynn notes that it’s important not to expect our parents to be any different from who they are. The change we are seeking has to happen in us. You can’t change your parents, but you can change the way you hold them inside you. 

Self-sabotage and fear of success

The most direct application of these ideas to my own work has to do with self-sabotage.

I’ve often noticed that in the pursuit of the goals and ambitions that they say are important to them, many people become their own worst enemy. Just as they are poised for a breakthrough, they seem to subconsciously put obstacles in their own way. I’ve always been fascinated by this phenomenon and what causes it.

Which means, I was especially interested in one of the ways that inherited trauma can manifest itself: as a fear of success. Wolynn describes the case of Myrna, which I’ll excerpt below in full (bolded key points are my own):

“Myrna was two when her mother accompanied her father on a business trip to Saudi Arabia and left Myrna in the care of a babysitter for three weeks . During the first week, Myrna clung to the sweater her mother wore on cold nights as she rocked her to sleep. Comforted by the familiar feel and smell, Myrna would curl herself around it and rock herself to sleep . By the second week, Myrna refused to take the sweater when the babysitter offered it. Instead she turned away, crying, and sucked her thumb to fall asleep. 

After three weeks away, her mother excitedly hurried through the door to hold her daughter. She was expecting Myrna to run into her arms as she always had before. This time it was different. Myrna barely looked up from her dolls. Startled and confused, Myrna’s mother could not help but notice the sensations of her own body tightening with feelings of rejection . Over the coming days, Myrna’s mother would rationalize the experience, telling herself that Myrna was becoming “a very independent child.” 

Unaware of the importance of restoring their delicate bond, Myrna’s mother lost sight of her little girl’s vulnerability and held herself a little distant . The distance continued between them, deepening Myrna’s feelings of aloneness. This distance would spill into Myrna’s life experiences, tainting her ability to feel safe and secure in future relationships . Feelings of abandonment and frustration were expressed in her core language: “Don’t leave me.” “They’ll never come back.” “I’ll be all alone.” “I’m not wanted.” “They don’t get who I am.” “I’m not seen or understood.” 

For Myrna, falling in love was a minefield of unpredictability. The vulnerability of needing another person was so terrifying that each time she took another step into her desire, she was met by a deeper level of her fear . Unable to link this conflict to her childhood, she found fault with every man who attempted to love her, often leaving them before they could leave her. By the time she was thirty, Myrna had talked herself out of three potential marriages. 

Myrna’s inner conflict played out in her career as well. Each time she accepted a new position, she filled with doubt, fearing inevitable disaster. Something would go terribly wrong. They wouldn’t like her. She wouldn’t be enough. They would distance themselves from her. She wouldn’t trust them. They would betray her. These were the same unspoken feelings Myrna felt with a partner—the same feelings she had never resolved with her mother.”

This possibility is mind-blowing to me: that a 3-week event in Myrna’s earliest years could have such profound lifelong effects on nearly every aspect of her life.

Sometimes, when a beloved member of the family dies early and is perceived not to have completed his or her life, someone later in the family, in silent collusion, can fail to complete something of great importance. 

A patient named Richard held the core language of “I never get recognized.” He traced the source of this phrase to his stillborn older brother, who no one ever talked about or mentioned. Out of love for his brother, who wasn’t seen or recognized, Richard moved from job to job being eluded by the recognition he secretly didn’t believe he deserved.

Sometimes we share an unconscious loyalty to ancestors who lived in poverty and had difficulty providing for themselves and their children. Perhaps war, famine, or persecution forced them to leave their homeland and their belongings in order to make a fresh start in another part of the world. If our ancestors experienced great hardship, we can continue their suffering without realizing it, thwarting our attempts to live the abundant life that they would have wanted for us.

In other situations, Wolynn says, people feel a subconscious need to “atone” for their family’s wrongdoings. He tells Loretta’s story, whose core language was “I don’t deserve to have what I get.” Her frustrations as an entrepreneur set her on a path that eventually led her to reexamine her family’s past:

“More than anything, Loretta wanted to own her own business. For thirty years, her ‘sweat and hard labor,’ as she put it, had been lining the pockets of the owners of the companies she worked for. Yet every time an opportunity came her way to start her own venture or to develop one of her own business ideas, she’d balk. ‘ Something keeps me from moving forward. It’s as though there’s something lurking beneath the surface that holds me back from taking the next step ,’ she said. ‘It’s as though I don’t deserve to have what I get.’

Again, the answer wasn’t far away. In her will, Loretta’s grandmother had left the profitable family farm to Loretta’s father and left nothing to Loretta’s father’s four brothers and sisters. Her father went on to flourish, and his siblings went on to struggle. They all shared a distant relationship after that. 

Loretta’s father had gained an unfair advantage over his siblings . As an adult, Loretta, the only child of her father and mother, struggled financially, just as her aunts and uncles had, turning the family switch from “advantage” to “disadvantage.” As though to balance the ill-gotten gains her father received from the grandmother, Loretta unconsciously held herself back from success . Once she realized that she had involuntarily been attempting to balance a wrong with another wrong, she was able to take the risks necessary to become an entrepreneur.”

Success is often confronting. It “exposes” us to more risk, more uncertainty, and potentially, more criticism from others. For these reasons, we sometimes hold back from achievement out of the fear of what it will surface within us. Better to play it safe and hide in obscurity. This is the direct link between the healing of intergenerational trauma (and trauma in general) and people’s ability to realize their most meaningful goals and dreams. 

Creating a new image

Given everything we’ve learned, how do we resolve our traumatic inheritance?

Much like recovery from trauma in general, it involves allowing ourselves to be moved by an experience or image strong enough to overshadow the old traumatic emotions and sensations that live inside us. This “image” can include a phrase, a scene, a question, a story, a ritual, a symbol, or a bodily movement directed toward one’s younger self or ancestors. 

The important thing is that this healing image is positive, rewarding, meaningful – an image that evokes our sense of curiosity and wonder. 

Here are some examples of the images Wolynn’s patients have come up with (take note of any that especially move you):

“Instead of reliving what happened to you, I promise to live my life fully” “What happened to you won’t be in vain” “I’ll use what happened as a source of strength” “I will honor the life you gave me by doing something good with it” “I will do something meaningful and dedicate it to you” “I will not leave you out of my heart” “I’ll light a candle for you” “I will honor you by living fully” “I’ll live my life in a loving way” “I will make something good come out of this tragedy” “Now I understand. It helps to understand.”

These phrases may seem trivial in light of the tragedies you’ve faced. But they are only a starting point; the cornerstone of a new edifice of self-love. They establish an internal reference point of feeling whole, a feeling we can refer back to each time old sensations threaten our stability.

A healing image serves as a portal through which we can revisit the past from a place of safety. By reengaging the areas of the brain that were disengaged during the traumatic event (such as the prefrontal cortex), we can integrate fragments of memory into a new narrative. Like fusing shards of glass into a stained glass window, what was broken and dangerous can be made beautiful. 

This approach to healing from trauma is more art than science. We can never know with 100% certainty the exact source and nature of our inherited trauma. Instead, we are using our words and emotions as guideposts to find new stories that bring meaning to our lives. 

Healing is inherently an act of creativity and self-expression. Like any creative act, crafting a healing image requires the right timing, the right words, and the right visuals arranged together in the right way. When these elements align, something beautiful is set in motion that we can feel viscerally in the body.

Psychologist Annie Rogers says, “The unconscious insists, repeats, and practically breaks down the door, to be heard. The only way to hear it, to invite it into the room, is to stop imposing something over it—mostly in the form of your own ideas—and listen instead for the unsayable, which is everywhere, in speech, in enactments, in dreams, and in the body.”

Once I started looking for it, I found traces of an unspoken language of unworthiness throughout my family. It colors our stories of the past, our hopes for the future, and the small ways we speak to and interact with each other. But when I began looking deeper, I found something else: the secret language of fear that may have been passed down to me by my grandfather also contains within it a language of love. 

Grandpa John spent his life working tirelessly to give us a secure future. He helped his children buy their first homes so that they would all live close together, ensuring we were surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins growing up. He paid for much of his grandchildrens’ college educations, setting us up for successful careers. The financial abundance he created out of his drive to prove himself gave his children and grandchildren the freedom to pursue artistic and entrepreneurial careers, allowing us to share our gifts with so many others.

I’ve discovered a new possibility for my life: that maybe I have the great blessing of being free enough of my own trauma that I can begin to process the trauma that has been passed down through my family. Perhaps my role is to finally excavate the past and rewrite our story so that old demons can be laid to rest. Maybe all the pain of past generations is finally coming to fruition, allowing me to live the abundant life that they sacrificed so much for.

Not only the pain, but also the love of countless generations has been poured into you. No experience is ever wasted. Everything that has happened in our lives and the lives of our ancestors ultimately leads us somewhere meaningful. Both the love and the pain has made us who we are.

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post It Didn’t Start With You: How to Understand and Heal from Intergenerational Trauma appeared first on Forte Labs.

What I Learned From The Bullet Journal Method

As I was researching and writing my book Building a Second Brain, I picked up another book to read on the side: The Bullet Journal Method (affiliate link) by Ryder Carroll.

There aren’t many books on effective notetaking for the modern world, especially ones that have been as successful as BuJo (as it’s affectionately called).

I have to admit: I didn’t think I had much more to learn on the subject. I figured I had already seen it all. 

But as I turned the pages of Carroll’s book, he introduced me to ideas that profoundly changed how I think about notes, journaling, productivity, and even what it means to live a good life.

On the surface, BuJo looks like a particular format for journaling and taking notes in a paper journal. But once you dive beneath the surface, it is actually a holistic methodology for taking action, clarifying your values, and focusing your attention on what matters most (that just happens to be manifested in a paper journal).

Here are my 10 favorite quotes from The Bullet Journal Method, including how each one shaped my thinking.

#1 – Find your place in the digital age

The Bullet Journal Method is for anyone struggling to find their place in the digital age.

I had always thought about personal productivity and digital notetaking as a highly niche subject for “techies” and “nerds.” But seeing it framed this way made me realize that it is much bigger than that.

Post-pandemic, we are all living, working, entertaining, and educating ourselves online. The Internet has shifted from a subculture into the culture.

This shift has been so sudden and so all-encompassing that we are all struggling in one way or another with “finding our place” in this brave new digital age. Whether we are immersed in technology and the Internet every day, or are completely new to digitally native ways of living, we are all in the same boat. 

Self-reflective practices like BuJo give us a way to ground ourselves in our most important values and principles before we step outside into the information maelstrom.

#2 – Connect with what you want

My [ADD] simply forced me to address something early on that has since become a common malady of the digital age: the lack of self-awareness.

Carroll doesn’t shy away from pointing to what he sees as the root cause of many productivity challenges: our lack of self-awareness.

I couldn’t agree more. We buy tools and download apps to change how we feel inside. This sometimes works briefly, but doesn’t affect the fundamental issue – our relationship with our selves. 

When we are disconnected from who we are, what we want, and what is important to us, no external change truly makes a difference.

Carroll’s words remind me that as much as I enjoy taking in information from the outside world, my true north lies within me.

#3 – Treat each new idea as an experiment

Think back to a book, a speech, or a quotation that deeply touched you or changed the way you thought about life. It was wisdom that inspired you, that held so much promise. All you had to do was act on this newfound knowledge and things would get easier, better, clearer, more empowering.

Now, how much of this knowledge is still in play—not just intellectually, but practically? Did you become a better person, friend, or mate? Did you keep the weight off? Are you happier? Chances are what you learned has withered, if it survived at all. It’s not that it wasn’t helpful. It just didn’t stick. Why is that?

Every time I encounter this line of thinking, I feel convicted. 

It is so clear that we are surrounded by endless knowledge, yet more often than we’d like, we are also starving for wisdom. We are exposed to countless strategies and solutions to every problem under the sun, yet too often, we don’t apply them.

This advice encouraged me to slow down, to treat each new idea as a practical experiment, and to wait to see what results it produces before rushing on to the next fascinating concept.

#4 – Pay attention to what resonates

We can’t be true to ourselves if we don’t know what we want, and more importantly why, so that’s where we must begin. It’s a process that requires the steady cultivation of our self-awareness.

This may seem very woo-woo, but it can be as simple as paying attention to what resonates with us, what sparks our interest—and, just as importantly, what does not. As we begin to identify the things we’re drawn to, we can start properly defining our dreams, based on what we actually believe in.

I also talk about the importance of resonance in my work, but this quote reminds me that it’s more than just a handy filter for deciding what to capture.

We know that there is tremendous value in deeply understanding ourselves and our values, but we also feel daunted by the herculean task of understanding who we are. It seems like a hopeless endeavor to fully uncover everything we have inside.

But there is a simpler, more “bottom up” way of understanding ourselves: paying attention to and moving toward what resonates with us. This can happen on the scale of a year, a month, a week, or a minute. Every moment is an opportunity to move toward some things and away from other things.

The sum total of thousands of such micro-decisions is a completely different life heading in an entirely different direction.

#5 – Study your mistakes

By recording our lives, we’re simultaneously creating a rich archive of our choices and our actions for future reference. We can study our mistakes and learn from them. It’s equally instructive to note our successes, our breakthroughs.

When something works professionally or personally, it helps to know what our circumstances were at the time and what choices we made. Studying our failures and our victories can provide tremendous insight, guidance, and motivation as we plot our way forward.

I had never thought of my notes as a “decision log,” but that is absolutely what it is.

Our memory is notoriously weak, and that includes our memory of the circumstances surrounding our past decisions. What were the factors that led to that decision? What other options did I weigh? What were the potential risks and pitfalls I wanted to avoid? What goals or outcomes were most important to me?

As Carroll notes, these questions are equally valuable when applied to our successes as to our failures. The goal is not just to win, but to understand what winning means to us and what we are willing to invest in order to achieve it.

Every choice becomes a lesson when we take notes on it.

#6 – Start small and build from there

If at some point you feel overwhelmed, take a step back and start by implementing only the pieces that make sense. Most components are self-contained by design, so you can effectively use them even if you don’t use the rest. Start with what speaks to you—even if it’s just one piece—and build from there.

This has been important advice for me when learning any new system or approach.

Often, I find myself treating a new system like an ideology or religion – either I have to accept 100% of it without question, or reject it completely. But most things aren’t so black and white. The world comes in shades of grey.

It’s difficult to know which parts of a system to adopt, because that requires discernment and self-reflection. At the same time, it’s also not that hard, because there is no risk in getting it wrong. 

We can approach learning new things with an experimental mindset of trying one piece at a time, and only keeping what works.

#7 – Keep your filter a little loose

Notes include facts, ideas, thoughts, and observations. They log information you want to remember that isn’t immediately or necessarily actionable. This type of bullet works well for meetings, lectures, and classrooms…

I strongly recommend an “actionable” approach to managing information. For me, the only thing that justifies all the time and effort of notetaking is having practical use cases for that information.

Carroll’s words remind me that there is sometimes a disconnect between present resonance and future action. Often, we write something down not knowing how it will eventually be used.

This reminds me to keep my filter a little loose. To allow some things to make it through even before their utility is clear. I’ve found that these ambiguous nuggets become the future seeds of projects and goals that I never would have come up with otherwise.

#8 – Keep your notes short

By keeping your Notes short, you’re forced to distill information down to the essential. The more content you try to capture during a lecture or a meeting, the less you’re thinking about what’s being said.

I also talk extensively about the importance of distillation in my book. As information gets distilled, it becomes more potent, more usable, and more valuable. 

This quote reminds me that distillation doesn’t have to happen as a late stage of my workflow. Especially as my discernment grows, I can often distill something right at the moment of capturing it, saving me tons of future effort down the line.

I can attend meetings and decide not to take notes. I can read books and not save any highlights. I can take classes and work with coaches and watch movies without the compulsive habit of meticulously jotting things down.

Part of distillation is removing anything from my notes that isn’t truly essential.

#9 – Keep your future self in mind

Keep your future self in mind. Your Notes will be useless if they can’t be deciphered in a week, month, or year from now.

An important, subtle aspect of effective notetaking is about honoring your relationship with your “future self.”

Do you respect them? Do you value them? Are you looking out for their needs? Are your actions today making their life easier? Or are you borrowing from your future self without planning on paying them back?

Your relationship with your future self is a lens through which to examine your relationship with your self now. Because you will be that future self in just a minute.

I constantly have to remind myself that my notes aren’t just serving my needs in the present, but in the future too. Without a future, there is no point in taking notes at all. And without a present, no notes will be taken in the first place.

Ultimately, reflective practices like journaling and notetaking are about integration. We are slowly drawing our past, present, and future selves into closer alignment by communicating back and forth through time. 

With alignment comes integrity, strength, character, and power – the ingredients of a rich life.

#10 – Start with yourself

To be useful, you must become useful, especially to yourself. You can’t improve the world around you if you can’t improve the world within.

This final quote reminds me that who I am inside determines the life I live outside. 

There is no point in complaining about my circumstances, trying to change other people, or seeking to make a difference in a cause I believe in without first starting with myself.

My problems, my baggage, my fears, my blindspots – these elements of my inner world are the ones I have by far the most control over. If I am unwilling to face them, what are the chances I’ll be able to face challenges outside of me, over which I have far less control?

When it comes to the impact I can make on others, what I do and what I say pales in comparison to who I am. People don’t model what I tell them; they model who I am.

This perspective seems selfish, but it is also honest: the only change you are truly responsible for is the change happening inside of you.

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post What I Learned From The Bullet Journal Method appeared first on Forte Labs.

How I Found My Creative Medium | Converge Podcast

I joined Dane Sanders on the Converge Podcast to talk about how you can be empowered to capture more of the great inputs and put them to work for you. We also dived into: How to capture and organize our creative ideasHow I found my creative mediumThe difference between areas and projectsHow to unleash creativity

Listen to the full podcast episode here.

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post How I Found My Creative Medium | Converge Podcast appeared first on Forte Labs.

Introducing the Building a Second Brain Membership

I’m incredibly proud to introduce the next chapter in the evolution of Building a Second Brain (BASB)…

The new Building a Second Brain Membership.

For over 5 years, I’ve taught an online course that guides people in creating a Second Brain – a personal system of knowledge management – for themselves. My goal was always to help others access the incredible benefits I had found for myself without having to go through a decade of painful trial and error like I did.

Since then, my team and I have taught over 5,000 students from more than 100 countries as part of 14 cohorts. 

This allowed me to further refine the Second Brain methodology and publish its most succinct, distilled version as a now bestselling book that is on its way to being translated into 15+ languages. 

At the same time, we are building the best library of free content on Second Brains the internet has ever seen on our blog and YouTube channel.

I call all of this the SBU – the Second Brain Universe. And I believe it’s the world’s greatest collection of ideas, people, tools, and techniques about how to use technology to unlock our creative potential.

All this enthusiasm and activity isn’t coming only from us. The community that has gathered around this concept is generating so many new ideas, approaches, and offshoots that it’s impossible to contain it all in one curriculum.

That’s why we’re expanding Building a Second Brain from a one-time course into an all-access annual membership that curates the best of the Second Brain Universe in one convenient place.

It’s time to take everything we’ve learned about how to transform people’s digital lives and upgrade it for a new era of learning.

Keep reading to learn about the full scope of the shift we’re making, or if you’re short on time, you can find the most important changes below:

We’re doubling the number of annual cohorts from 2 to 4 in 2023. That means BASB is moving from a one-time training event to an ongoing community of practice.We’re shortening the length of each cohort from 4 to 3 weeks to better fit into your schedule.We’re repeating each live session twice to enable students in the Americas, Europe, and Asia/Pacific to participate live no matter which timezone they’re in.We’re shifting the emphasis of the course to align more closely with the ultimate purpose of a Second Brain: to move your projects forward and help you reach your goals. We’ll ask you to pick a concrete project and work alongside Tiago as we take it through the 4 steps of CODE from start to finish.We’re doubling down on Circle as your ONE destination for interacting with the community, getting updates, and watching replays. You won’t have to juggle multiple logins or wonder where something is located.We’re reducing the number of Zoom sessions we ask you to attend. That means we’re putting the Alumni Mentor program on pause for now. Instead, a group of experienced Moderators will support new students and alumni alike in navigating all aspects of BASB.We are greatly simplifying the purchasing experience by eliminating the multiple editions at different price points, so you only have to consider one option at one price.Creating the most impactful learning experience on personal knowledge management and productivity in the world

For 14 cohorts, we’ve continuously added more and more features to our 4-week course.

Every idea we had about how to enhance our students’ results, every piece of feedback they gave us, every innovative new technique we encountered – each one became a small experiment in pursuit of the ultimate educational experience.

After testing over 130 new features, poring over years of alumni feedback, and comparing all of that with measures of student success, we’ve discovered that only about 10% of what we’ve tried in the past is truly essential to build a Second Brain. 

The rest is optional or, to our surprise, even interferes with learning.

In the same way that “distilling” a note improves it, we decided to distill the course itself down to its simplest, purest, most impactful form.

By the time we finished, there were only two essential components left standing:

The energy and momentum of live cohorts taught live by me personallyThe accountability of a supportive community committed to the same goal as you

That’s it. Two fundamental pillars standing like a gateway to the future we promise.

Now, I want to share the 4 main changes we’re making to build on that foundation and create the most impactful learning experience on personal knowledge management and productivity that the world has ever seen.  

1. MORE CHANCES TO PARTICIPATE IN LIVE COHORTS

Listening to alumni feedback, one of the most common requests was that you wanted the option to join more than one cohort.

Whether to deepen your knowledge another level, see more examples of Second Brains in action, or simply because life got busy and you had to drop off – it’s become clear that building a Second Brain is not a “one and done” experience.

Not to mention, it’s understandable if it takes more than one round to fully absorb all the best creative practices gathered from my entire career, plus history’s most prolific and profound thinkers

You don’t know what the future holds, and having to predict your schedule in advance and choose the exact right dates to join is an impossible task.

You no longer have to make that decision. 

Starting in 2023, we are doubling the number of cohorts we offer each year from two to four. Not only that, I am personally delivering each and every live session twice, in different time zones. This effectively quadruples the number of chances you have to join us from two to eight, across all time zones, so you can choose when and how you want to participate.

Now, if an urgent work project comes in at the last minute, or you have to care for a family member, don’t worry – you’ll have multiple chances to pick up where you left off. 

As fun and engaging as our live sessions can be, you shouldn’t have to be on every single one to learn what you want to learn. So we’re giving you multiple options and pathways to arrive at your desired destination.  

2. MORE TIME TO PRACTICE AND MASTER BASB

You also told us that you want to keep your progress going even after the cohort ends. You want to integrate everything you’ve learned and make it an ongoing practice. Setting up your Second Brain is the beginning of the journey, not the end. 

You no longer have to make that journey alone.

We are extending support and accountability to you throughout the entire year. I will host monthly Q&A sessions where I’ll answer your most burning questions, share my latest thinking on the frontiers of knowledge management, and reveal the details of new projects I’m using my Second Brain for (plus occasional guest appearances by experts and prolific creators).

You also told us loud and clear that being part of the alumni community is the single best part of BASB. Especially as that community has grown to more than 5,000 professionals, creatives, and entrepreneurs from the world’s most influential fields. 

We can no longer contain the energy and enthusiasm of that community within the boundaries of our cohorts. And we shouldn’t have to! Our online discussion forum on the Circle platform is shifting into an “always on” community of practice, where our team of experienced moderators can give you specialized support for your notes app of choice all year long.

3. MORE FOCUS ON IMPLEMENTATION AND HITTING YOUR GOALS

When we interviewed our early graduates as well as our most recent ones, we arrived at a startling conclusion: there is one factor that determines someone’s success in building (and consistently using) their Second Brain.

The most pivotal factor is whether they use their notes to execute a real project, or not. 

It doesn’t matter how beautifully organized your notes are, how rigorously you study the principles, or how much research you do on the “perfect” notes app. In fact, I often find that the more time you spend on those things, the less likely you’ll succeed.

You have projects in your life that you need to take action on right now. You have goals that are important to you right now. Maybe there are even major problems or crises brewing in the background at this very moment.

You have to be able to prove to yourself that a Second Brain works for you. That it saves more time than it takes. You can’t just take my word for it – that truth has to be alive in your own life.

Which leads us to the single biggest change we’re making: the Building a Second Brain Membership is no longer about content.

You don’t need more theory and concepts – you need a practical, action-oriented pathway combined with a supportive, passionate community. That’s going to be our sole focus from now on.

There are no longer any pre-recorded videos to watch, text to read, or audio to listen to. All of that content is now available for free on our blog, YouTube channel, or social media channels. It’s 100% free, and you can consume it on your own time. 

From now on, we’ll use my book Building a Second Brain as our curriculum (which is available in multiple formats and soon in 15+ languages).

I’ll give it to you straight: there’s no need to join our membership if all you want to do is hear about knowledge management concepts.

You should join if you’re ready for what comes after that: implementing and putting what you’ve learned into action.

We are designing every aspect of the new Membership to align with the ultimate purpose of a Second Brain: to move your projects forward and help you reach your goals. 

The purpose of organizing your knowledge is to create the life you want, not get a PhD in notetaking. We are going to become your coaching team and accountability partners in making sure that happens.

When you join a cohort, the first thing I’ll ask you to do is pick a concrete project (personal or work related) you’re working on now. Then you’ll work alongside me as we take that project through the 4 steps of CODE (Capture, Organize, Distill, Express) from start to finish. 

This won’t be an abstract exercise: I will also pick a real, current project of my own, so you can see how I decide which approach to take and which tools I use as I move through CODE. 

By the end of the cohort, you’ll have a concrete deliverable you are proud of. And having done it once, you’ll be prepared to apply the same approach to any other project or goal you take on in the future.

4. LESS OVERWHELM AND INFORMATION OVERLOAD  

We heard from you that there were too many choices to make and too much information to keep track of during the cohorts.

In response, we are making a series of changes to drastically reduce the effort it takes to participate.

The point of a Second Brain is to conquer Information Overload once and for all, remember? 

Instead of throwing more options at you and making the problem worse, we’re going to go in the opposite direction. We’re going to help you ignore and eliminate 90% of the noise coming at you so you can focus completely on the 10% that is the signal.

First, we are putting the Alumni Mentor program on pause for now in order to reduce the number of Zoom sessions we ask you to attend by 90%.

Second, we are distilling the course down to its essence, focusing only on the need-to-know and shortening each cohort from 4 weeks to 3 weeks to better fit into your schedule.

Third, the entire course experience – from purchasing and orientation to watching replays of live sessions and interacting with peers – will now take place on a single platform, Circle. You won’t have to juggle multiple logins or wonder where something is located.

And fourth, we are greatly simplifying the purchasing experience by eliminating the multiple editions at different price points, so you only have to consider one option at one price. 

That brings me to our offer for you…

Get Your All-Access Pass to the Second Brain Universe

As we enter this new chapter, my offer is simple: a chance to join the Building a Second Brain Membership as a Founding Member.

You’ll be joining on the ground floor at the lowest price we will ever offer and work closely with us to shape how our community evolves.

As a Founding Member, you’ll receive:

Access to Cohort 15 in September 2022, including 4 interactive live sessions (with options for all time zones) where I will lead you through step-by-step walkthroughs, live exercises, and in-depth Q&As to help you build and implement your Second Brain.The option to join 4 cohorts in 2023 (winter, spring, summer, and fall) offered in Europe and Asia-friendly time zones. We’ll reveal specific dates at the end of this year. Full recordings of all live sessions, including searchable captions and transcripts, to make them as accessible as possible if you need to miss one or want to review.Year-round access to a thriving alumni community of Second Brainers, including leaders, experts, and creative professionals from Google, Nike, Yale, Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Philips, Unicef, AstraZeneca, Automattic, Upwork, VaynerMedia, OnDeck, and Greenpeace, among many others.Personalized support from our team of trained Moderators to answer your questions, provide examples, and point you to helpful resources.Monthly Q&As with me and my team throughout the year, so you can get your questions answered even between cohorts.A concrete deliverable or creative work you can be proud of at the end of each cohort, built using your second-brain tools.

Think of this as your “all-access pass” to the very best of the Second Brain Universe. 

It’s a curated digest of only the most important new tools and ideas, so you don’t have to pay attention to every tiny update.

It’s your passport to a global community of talented, curious, inspiring human beings who are harnessing the two most powerful forces in the world – knowledge and technology.

It’s a mastermind concentrating the collective brainpower of diverse creators, students, freelancers, parents, life-long learners, productivity experts, and so many others in one grand gathering.

All of this for only $1,499 per year, the exact same price we’ve previously charged for just a single one-time cohort. That’s only $4 dollars per day, the price of a good cup of coffee.

You no longer have to evaluate dozens of different apps, tools, courses, and techniques to get the benefits of digital notes – we’ll do that for you. 

You no longer have to watch hours of videos and consume gigabytes of content just to know what’s next – we’ll tell you the 10% you need to know. 

You no longer have to navigate multiple confusing platforms and attend endless Zoom calls to keep up – it’s all happening in one central place.

I am focusing our entire team and our company on a single overarching goal: helping you simplify your choices, eliminate cognitive overload, and accelerate you toward the moment your Second Brain is fully operational and thriving.

Join us as a Founding Member and become part of the Second Brain Universe

Cohort 15 of Building a Second Brain runs from September 13 to October 5, 2022, and enrollment is open from August 29 to September 7, 2022.

Remember, when you join us now, you’ll also get access to 4 live cohorts throughout 2023. That’s 16 months of Membership for the price of 12 months!

Enter your email address below to stay updated on the upcoming cohort and other updates from the Second Brain Universe.

 

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post Introducing the Building a Second Brain Membership appeared first on Forte Labs.

Ranking Our Biggest Productivity App Predictions | Keep Productive

I sat down with productivity YouTuber Francesco D’Alessio of Keep Productive in London to rank our biggest productivity app predictions and share how we currently perceive the software space.

Here’s a sneak peek of what we discussed:

Is Mem the new Evernote?Will Notion lose in the next 3 years?Is Evernote going to make a comeback?Will Todoist face a risky future?

Watch the full video below:

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post Ranking Our Biggest Productivity App Predictions | Keep Productive appeared first on Forte Labs.

Organizing the LEGOs In Our Minds to Build the Ultimate Version of Ourselves | Unrivaled Man Podcast

I joined Clint Hoopes on the Unrivaled Man Podcast to discuss how organizing the legos in our minds will help us build the best version of ourselves. 

We also dived into:

Why being smart does not help you remember things What a “knowledge library” isHow to gain leverage as a knowledge workerHow to free our minds to be present with the things and people that are most important to us And much more…

Watch the full interview below or listen to the podcast on Apple Podcast or Spotify.

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post Organizing the LEGOs In Our Minds to Build the Ultimate Version of Ourselves | Unrivaled Man Podcast appeared first on Forte Labs.

Becoming a Thought Leader and Creating a Million-Dollar Course | Build Your Thing Podcast

I joined Matt Giaro on the Build Your Thing Podcast to talk about how I went from selling $30 online courses on Skillshare to a team of 8 full-time staff, creating the Building a Second Brain Movement. 

We dived into:

How I got startedThe learnings from my failed projects The power of an email list and how to grow it consistentlyAnd much more… 

Listen to the full episode on Build Your Thing, Spotify, or Apple Podcast.

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post Becoming a Thought Leader and Creating a Million-Dollar Course | Build Your Thing Podcast appeared first on Forte Labs.

​​Why I’m Becoming a YouTuber

I’ve always thought about my career and my business in 2-3 year “eras.”

The first era of Forte Labs was from 2013 to 2015, which I call “The Research Era.” I entered the wild world of self-employment and began to share my ideas publicly through my blog for the first time. I had no idea what I wanted to do long term and spent this period experimenting with many different kinds of projects, from online courses to corporate training to consulting to live workshops. 

Our second era was from 2016 to 2018, and I think of it as “The Cohort Era.” I chose productivity generally and digital notetaking in particular as my central focus, and poured all my time and energy into developing the Building a Second Brain course and getting it off the ground. I finally felt that I had found my calling, and I dedicated every resource I had to improving that course and making it grow.

The third era of Forte Labs was from 2019 to 2022, and I call it “The Book Era.” I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Mexico City with my wife for a fresh start, and decided to pursue a publishing deal for my first book based on the course material. I continued blogging and the online course grew faster than ever, but the focus of my attention was on developing the skills I would need to bring a book to completion.

With the publication of that book in June 2022, the third era of the company has officially come to a close. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop doing everything in my power to promote it – the trajectory of the book has only just begun, and will play out for many years to come. And I will continue publishing my writing on the blog and teaching the course as well.

But one thing I’ve always believed is that we have a unique advantage as a small startup: we can “bet the company” on a singular, bold new direction. Unlike a huge corporation that can never fully commit itself to any one path, we can. And because we have this unique option open to us, we have to take it or risk giving away our one exclusive advantage. 

As the book has been released to the world, I’ve started to think hard about what our fourth era should be about. 

For the first time, we have many choices and many paths we could take. We could lean into online courses and build an entire curriculum of different programs. We could take a turn into ecommerce and develop a new line of physical products. We could build a B2B business and offer corporate trainings or executive coaching. We now have the privilege of being able to choose our own adventure, and I don’t take that privilege lightly.

But I’m not interested in taking just any path. I don’t want to commit to creating new products just because that seems like the next thing to do, or just because we could make some extra money. We are a profitable, self-funded business and I always try to remind our team that we don’t have to do anything new if we don’t want to. 

In light of that, what do we want to do? Life is short, and the prime years of our careers even shorter. I want to spend our precious time working on singular outcomes that no one else in the world could achieve. 

My question to the team over the last couple months has been, “What is a goal that is worth the next 2-3 years of our careers?”

This opportunity would need to fulfill the following criteria:

It is urgently needed by people that only we are equipped to serveIt is something we want to build because it would be fun and excitingIt is extremely leveraged, allowing us to have a greater and greater impact with less and less effort over timeIt would allow us to learn and grow in new ways, as professionals and as humans

Taking all that into account, I’ve come to the conclusion that the next era of Forte Labs will be about YouTube. 

After 6 months of initial experiments on the platform, I’ve become convinced that YouTube’s potential as the world’s most important educational platform is only beginning to be unlocked.

17 years into its existence, YouTube has grown and matured into a classroom that can (and does) teach the entire world almost every subject under the sun. It is vastly more accessible to international audiences, young people and the elderly, and the disadvantaged and underprivileged than any other form of media. If our mission is to enable anyone in the world to build a Second Brain for themselves, then YouTube is our single biggest opportunity to accomplish that.

I asked Marc Koenig, who leads our YouTube efforts, to summarize the first 6 months of our experiments on the platform and to lay out a vision for where we want to go as a company. I’m on board with everything described below and over the next year plan on investing major resources into growing the best collection of educational videos on personal knowledge management on YouTube.

Entering the YouTube Era

Hi, I’m Marc Koenig. I’m the GM & Creative Director of Forte Labs’ YouTube channel.

Over the past 6 months, our YouTube channel has experienced crazy growth. 

Until February this year, YouTube was just another marketing channel for us. Most of the time, it was a place to throw up video content that we’d recorded anyway – guest webinars, Tiago’s video demos, speaking engagements – any video that needed a home. 

That approach got us our first 19,000 subscribers. This February, we shifted gears. And since then, we’ve seen incredible results:

The channel has grown to >55,000 subscribers after publishing 14 new videos (1 video every ~1.5 weeks over 5 months)Our growth rate has gone from 194 to 3,227 new subscribers per week. We now gain 3x more subscribers each week than we gained in an entire month at the start of the year (projected to reach 86,000 subscribers by end of 2022)10% of students from our most recent Building a Second Brain cohort indicated they found us from “ Tiago’s YouTube Channel ” (nearly 6-figures in course revenues)

This algorithm-driven growth is staggering – and will likely soon eclipse the combined attention generated by all our other channels. 

But that’s not what excites us most about YouTube.

Our 5-Year Vision

Our goal for YouTube is to build an Open Source Library of Alexandria for the PKM world.

We genuinely believe that every person in the world should have the chance to create a Second Brain – a personal system of knowledge management – of their own.

We live in a golden age of information. There are almost unlimited free learning resources available online, but not everyone is equally prepared for that reality. Without the knowledge of how to organize those inputs in a way that moves you towards the things you care about, information is more likely to feel like an enemy than an ally.

YouTube is the strongest driver I know of to bring knowledge management to more people who need it. And Forte Labs has some unique capabilities and timing to maximize its impact:

Few people have done what Tiago has – spending the last decade distilling a universal PKM framework for capturing information and turning it into meaningful workFew people have my skill stack – spending the last decade developing my skills as a creator, video producer, and business builder – and an obsession for what makes YouTube work for any subjectOur business is funded by a thriving, high-margin product – so we can pursue a long-term strategy on YouTube, without needing it to immediately pay for itself or produce a returnOur community is already full of the next generation of Second Brain creators, professionals, and coaches who are digging deep on their favorite tools and practices – and can easily be amplified through our channel to accelerate their growth trajectoriesOur YouTube growth is timed perfectly to the launch of the Building a Second Brain book, which is drawing in a mainstream audience that’s only just beginning to recognize the value of capturing their best ideas digitally

Our conviction in our unique YouTube advantages has led us to invest dramatically in YouTube even before it bore visible fruit. We built out a $100K studio, have flown around the world to collaborate with top creators, and created a new business unit dedicated completely to growing YouTube as Forte Labs’ strategic focus for the coming years.

Speaking of which…

Meet Our Creative Team

We’ve slowly been assembling a team of creative professionals to help us bring our YouTube vision to life. 

This team shares a deep passion for quality in our respective domains, a growth mindset, and a commitment to building the Second Brain movement. 

This group is the key to our continued growth on YouTube, and I’m excited to see how they challenge Forte Labs to push the boundaries of digital notetaking far beyond what anyone expects.

Along those lines, we plan to continue to expand our existing pipeline as we tackle new frontiers. In the next 6-12 months we plan to add even more roles:

Animation SpecialistGraphic DesignerNotes App Experts (Screen Recording + Demos)Content Writers / Content StrategistsVideo Editor / Assistant EditorLive Production Specialists (Creative Producer, Production Assistants, Audio Specialists)

If you’re obsessed with high-quality creative work and passionate about Second Brains and their reach on YouTube, get in touch with us.

Become a Second Brain Collaborator

Much of our initial growth has come from entering the collaborative orbit of some of the world’s most talented creators (both on YouTube and off).

We’ve had the chance to create videos with some of the world’s smartest PKM practitioners:

But I’d be remiss if we didn’t mention our most important future collaborator:

The Library of Alexandria didn’t feature the works of ONE prolific author. 

It was a grand collection: thousands of unique perspectives – people digging deep into their obsessions, distilling their insights for the rest of the world. 

If you are:

A creator with a significant audience on YouTube or another platform (Let’s collaborate on a video! We’ll come to you – or invite you to our Los Angeles studio!)A PKM expert who regularly shares your expertise in a specific notetaking app, framework, or productivity philosophy – in public, OR as a coach or consultant (Let’s feature you in a video or a video series on our channel!)A creative, professional, or any individual who has used your Second Brain in a creative way to enhance your life in a unique or interesting way (Let’s find a way to share your story on our channel or blog!)Someone with insight or access to the productivity or notetaking routines of famous creators, professionals, or public figures (Let’s create a video sharing those insights broadly!)A creative (editor, animator, designer, writer) who wants to help us build one of the largest and best free resources for notetaking and digital productivity in the coming years (Let’s make amazing videos!)

We want to hear from you. Let’s make this happen!

Welcome to the Second Brain Movement (YouTube Edition)

If you want to join us in building a modern Library of Alexandria – one that enables anyone in the world to build their own trusted source of knowledge, to live with greater peace and meaning – here’s what you can do:

Subscribe to our YouTube channel. We’re already 83% to our annual subscriber goal of 60,000 subscribers – can we make it to 100K?Join our creative team. We’re looking for writers and content strategists right away – and almost every creative role long-term.Reach out to collaborate on a video. Let’s create something remarkable together.

(P.S. To get in touch with me directly (or for detailed YouTube updates), follow @MarcKoenig_ on Twitter.)

Thanks for being a part of the Second Brain movement!

 

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post ​​Why I’m Becoming a YouTuber appeared first on Forte Labs.

Why the Most Successful People Sharpen Their Memory Power | CNBC OpEd

Information is the fundamental building block of everything we do.

But we often find ourselves mentally juggling and straining to recall things.

I’ve found that the most successful people are always sharpening their memory power — so that their ideas become more concrete and new connections are easily revealed.

I call it the “CODE” method: Capture, Organize, Distill, Express. And I wrote an article for CNBC to unpack it for you. 

Read the full article here. 

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post Why the Most Successful People Sharpen Their Memory Power | CNBC OpEd appeared first on Forte Labs.

The True Meaning of a Knowledge Worker | The Shaun Tabatt Show

I joined The Shaun Tabatt Show to share how you can discover the full potential of your ideas and translate what you know into more powerful, more meaningful improvements in your work and life by Building a Second Brain.

We also discussed: 

The origin story of Building a Second BrainThe blurred line between paper and digital notetakingWhat it means to be a knowledge workerThe positive effects of Building a Second BrainAnd much more… 

Watch the interview below or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post The True Meaning of a Knowledge Worker | The Shaun Tabatt Show appeared first on Forte Labs.