Author, Speaker, Coach Barbara Sher passed away on May 10, 2020.
Read Barbara’s obituary here. Barbara’s Club and all its programs continue in the hands of those she trained.
Cash for Your Dreams
Need $100 to $2,000 to buy some equipment, training, or assistance with the next step toward living a life you love?
Learn seven different strategies for earning it in your spare time. Find the ones that fit best with your talents, personality, circumstances, and location. You will receive seven lessons, one a day, by email.
Through June 30, 2025, you can get this course for 50% off. Just use the coupon code CASH during checkout.
Start Cash for Your Dreams whenever you like.
Survival Guide for Dreamers
If you’ve got a dream (or wish you had one) it’s time to stop being stuck. Let us send you 365 days of Barbara’s help with procrastination and Resistance. This new program is designed to give you exactly what you need to finally get moving. Here’s how it works: One day at a time for a full year Barbara will be with you via a brief email, helping you get past the procrastination and resistance that have kept you from achieving your dreams. That’s it. No exercises to do. No discussions to keep up with. Just an email a day to encourage you and teach you how to deal with whatever prevents you from going after your dreams. Begin your Survival Guide year at any time.
Registration for Hanging Out opens on October 2, 2025
If you have not yet experienced the jewel in the crown of Barbara’s Club, please check out Hanging Out. Enjoy a full year of treats every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. To make sure everyone gets to know plenty of other people, we now open registration only twice a year. Full year registration will open again on October 2, 2025, and monthly registration opens on October 14th. We will begin hanging out together on Monday, October 20th. Don’t miss this! Prior members still have access to all messages they paid for. Links are on the Hanging Out page when you are logged in.
Barbara Sher Book Clubs
Our next book club will read I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was from July 24th through November 12th of 2025. Registration will open on July 10, 2025. I hope you’ll join us. Read more about it here. Members of ongoing book clubs should contact webmaster@barbarasclub.com for assistance. Even after our official reading period has ended, members are still welcome to add comments for the full year. You won’t be alone in finishing the exercises. And please visit this page to see what other book clubs we have scheduled.
The Dare to Soar Telesummit Recordings
All of the mini-workshops at our February 8, 2025 Telesummit were recorded, and you can listen to all of them for free.
Thinking Through Refuse to Choose: 101 things every Scanner should know
Are you a Scanner? These are people with a different (and often misunderstood) type of mindset: they’re curious and smart, always happiest when learning something new. But no matter how promising a path may appear, Scanners can never give up their love of exploring. And therein lies the problem: despite their passionate engagement with the world and their love of life, Scanners are unable to decide on one path, and they’re often afraid that there’s something horribly wrong with them. It’s usually forgotten that such people were once admired for their wide range of knowledge, even called Renaissance thinkers. Now they’re often labeled as immature, lazy dilettantes by a culture that prizes specialization above all else. I wrote this 99-cent Kindle book (with two great helpers) to highlight the top 101 takeaways from my book, Refuse to Choose! Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams. Use it as an introduction or as a reminder after you read the book. Purchase this Kindle book here.
WriteSpeak Online: Write Your Own Success Story
WriteSpeak Online registration is closed now until September 13, 2025. This is Barbara’s entire WriteSpeak program—the 6-hour, highly interactive Teleworkshop plus a new 48-week online version of the material that was in her WriteSpeak retreat and telecourse, all for a fraction of the earlier price. The course is now taught by Kimberly Stewart, a WriteSpeak grad, and Patrice Jenkins, a member of the first WriteSpeak group in 2007 and the first WriteSpeaker to be published, who first taught the Teleworkshop in 2020 with Barbara. Monthly group coaching is included and one-on-one coaching is available. Those who have already completed the required Teleworkshop and want to add the 48-Week Course should write to webmaster@barbarasclub.com.
For more information, check out barbarasclub.com/writespeak or listen to this Telesummit recording: How to Become a Writer and Speaker by Next February. New member registration will open again on September 13, 2025. Come find your message and your audience and begin your writing and speaking career.
Find a Success Team or Become a Sher Success Teams Leader
Isolation is the dream killer. Find your people in a Sher Success Team and learn how to identify and achieve your dreams in Barbara’s 8-Week Workshop for new teams. We always need more Sher Success Teams leaders, so if helping others go after their dreams is your dream, there’s a business in a kit waiting for you, a Leader’s Kit with everything you need to run that same workshop.
Be sure you are on the mailing list to hear about new programs the moment they are available. The mailing list sign-up is under Barbara’s photo at the bottom of this page.
I love the concept of doing what you love, following your dreams, and allowing for the possibility (probability?) that each and every one is possible.
I moved to Austin, TX about a year ago, ostensibly to pursue my long-held dream of playing music for a living. I found an artist development program that will culminate in releasing a 5-piece CD. Sounds great so far, right? I’m a fiddle player, have done a lot of different things musically in the 40 or so years I’ve been playing the instrument, even as my music was a sideline to what I ‘should’ or ‘needed’ to pursue as a ‘practical’ way of making a living. I thought I had gotten clear on my direction, to specialize in French and Gypsy music. But I keep running into parts of me saying “But what about this? and this is a really cool tune! I know, you wanted to leave Celtic and English all behind you…But I still want to keep this tune, and…. How can you throw out everything from the past 20 years?!” and so on. (And this can be a really pissed off voice.) So I lose my focus. I drag myself down. I berate myself for not being able to stick to a decision. I despair of ever finding a way to make this work!
And I’ve been working my way through Wishcraft, enjoying the exercises more than I thought I would – and now getting stuck. Not moving forward with it. I have one more stylesearch exercise, and then there’s the goalsearch, which sounds really interesting… but I’ve stopped. I haven’t been looking at it. I find so much else to do (ok, this is a pattern for many things in my life, starting something and then getting distracted for a little bit – or a lot – of time. I have so very many interests. Well, there are so many interesting things in the world. But skipping around means I never go deep on any of them. Or accomplish much with them. Sigh.)
So how do I keep the motivation and focus? What can help start me moving again? Any comments are much appreciated.
I’d love to receive any course info!
I would love to know when this becomes available.
Yay! Can’t wait to sign up for the writer/speaker course!
Goal: To attend Barbara Sher Training! Calling all angels!
I’m thinking the Hanging Out with Barbara emails have ended for the last year. Right? How and when do we sign up to continue? Is it going to be 2 per week with a conference call once/month? I can’t imagine coming home from work and not finding something from Barbara. Thanks.
A year ago, I was part of a phone call where I talked about wanting to create a doll that talks and market it. Someone on the call told me about a doll show in Houston and I went to it and it was great, but I haven’t moved since then. It’s time to move. I just want to carry out this idea and see what develops because I tend to not do things because I don’t know for sure whether it will be successful. Now I think it will be successful if I just do it–even if it doesn’t make a million dollars and become a big hit. I will have succeeded in actually following through with one of my ideas. I wish I could say I’ve made more progress than that, but that is progress for me, I think.
Thank you, Barbara, and be well.
Henrietta
Hi Henrietta!
Just read your post about your doll idea and am wondering if you’ve re-started or are still pondering. Would love to talk with you either via email (or maybe even by phone!) to hear how it’s going.
Jean
No, they never end. If you join Hanging Out now, you move through the whole process right alongside everyone else who is joining now. If you started on the first day, you’ve completed the year last Friday and, if you’re like most of the members, you’ve signed up for Year Two (which begins on Monday). The second year is a little different, but even more excellent. I say that as someone who does not often brag. 🙂
This is such a novel idea. To do what we enjoy and not what we’re good at. My high school teachers directed me into my first career because of what I was good at. They didn’t consider what I liked. Hell. No one even asked me what I liked. And if they had, they would have been met by a blank stare from me because I had no idea what I liked. I remember going to the counselling center when I was 19 because I hated what I was studying at university. I said this to the student counsellor. She asked me, in return, what my mother and siblings were like. I told her, but I never returned. She totally missed the mark. So even when I found what I thought was a professional who could help me, that counsellor didn’t ask me the most basic of questions, which was, “What do you want to do?” I spent 17 years in total pursuing that first career, hating it, before I got up the courage to stop the nonsense and launch a career that I currently enjoy. I remember friends telling me, “You can’t leave a successful career to retrain. You’ll be poor when you’re old.” I remember replying, “Really? What makes you think I will let myself be poor when I’m old?” That same friend said, “You can’t enter your new career. That’s what you do in your spare time. You can’t do what you do in your spare time as a career.” I remember thinking she was a nut job. But when life gets out of control, for reasons that have nothing to do with my career, I feel like a failure. I lose track of what I really love to do sometimes. I am in one of those periods right now. I have become distracted by extraneous projects, like helping the neighbours get their citizenship, and start a legal business so they won’t get deported, and I wonder, “How come I’m exhausted? What happened to me?” So thank you for suggesting that I focus on what I love. I will give this a lot of thought. Patti
Yes, that happens way too often. It’s a painful story. And I’m very glad you’ll focus on what you love. Then you’ll find out what you were designed to do.
You said a number of things that made me curious. For instance, what did your friend mean when s/he said, “You can’t enter your new career. That’s what you do in your spare time. You can’t do what you do in your spare time as a career.” What was the ‘new career’ you were planning to enter, and what was she referring to that you do in your spare time?
And did you say that, as part of helping your neighbors you’ve been helping them start a business? What other things have you done that were ‘extra-curricular?’
And when you you’d never allow yourself to be poor when you’re old I heard a lot of confidence and competence, a wide array of abilities as well as things you love to do. I’d like to know more.
If you’d like to do some of your thinking out loud, maybe we can help. Sounds like you’ve been on your own a lot, and building a life on what you love to do is a new angle.
Dear Barb,
Thank you for replying to my email. I have been working hard on trying to make my life one that I want to live over the past three weeks. I will begin a week’s vacation this coming Monday as a result. I couldn’t decide where to go, however, so I will stay home and will work on my house. I have hired a professional painter who has helped me choose colours for the walls, and I have ordered new light fixtures that should be delivered within four weeks. This may not be everyone’s idea of a vacation, but I think it’s time to start focusing on making the environment I live in comfortable. The house is an excellent investment financially, but I decided that I shouldn’t live there if I don’t like it because it is “my environment.”
You asked me what my first career was. I was an engineer. You asked me what my second career is. I work in health care. I love it. I am self-employed and have a successful business. For me, the problem is that I focus on everyone else because it’s easy. I built a successful business for my immigrant friend, and have helped them in their citizenship application, because I’m in a position to do so. But it never occurred to me to wonder whether I wanted to help them. Rather, I saw that I was in a position to do so. This is the story of my life. I focus on others and end up with a kitchen that I hate because I’m tired and don’t have the energy to pick up a paint brush to change the colour on the cabinets.
Barb, do you have any ideas about how to create a personal life that I will enjoy? I’m 49 years old and single. I have a successful career, but my personal life is negligible. I would like to spend my next week of doing something more enjoyable than washing paint brushes. Having said that, I started dabbling in acrylic painting this week and have enrolled in my third drawing class, which is a blast. But I need something 10 times bigger than this.
Thanks, Patti
Patti, the first thing you should do is volunteer to help someone who teaches classes in English for foreigners.
1) You have to admit you love helping people, and you do it naturally. It nourishes you. The problem is, it’s not enough. You need something that’s given to you. For that, you need to meet a lot of new people.
2. I’ve met a number of people who’ve assisted at English classes for immigrants and am always surprised (as are they) at how much they love it. They work only with adults, good people who want to learn and become citizens, usually. And typically from warmer, less formal cultures than ours. You will meet people who are touching and kind, and you’ll meet their families if you want to. Don’t turn into a helping machine, just enjoy and appreciate them. You’ll often be amazed to see who they know.
3. When you know them better, ask some of them to help you paint your kitchen. You’re alone too much.
4. Take a course yourself. In history if it interests you, or in photography or home-movie-making, or upholstery. Anything that feels even slightly interesting and pleasant. Don’t try to invent your own environment totally. Get input from the outside.
Tell me what happens so we can adjust, correct, and continue going forward. 🙂
Hello,
I am looking for the next speaker/writers course. Any idea when that will be?
Thank you.
Terre Fallon Lindseth
No date yet, but we hope it will be sometime in 2013. Make sure you’re on the mailing list, so you won’t miss it. The sign up is just below Barbara’s photo at the bottom of the page.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Barbara! I am mid-way through Refuse to Choose! and plan on reading your other books. The fact that I am finishing this book says a great deal. I am a scanner. You are a gift! Thank you so much!
Great job done in Berlin! Thank you so much. Isolation is a dreamkiller, therfore I have promised to work on my dreams and go for a meaningfull life with the people around me. I’ll follow my heart.
Wow! That sounds amazing and missed this event!!(( Lookin forward for the next upcoming one.
1. How you guys know about this event?
2. Is there a group in Berlin where one can get involved?
Greetings and Happyness!!))
Suresh.
Hi Suresh
I think many people were on the Urania mailing list, and others were on my mailing list. If you want to be on mine, just go to http://www.geniuspress.com and you’ll see a place to leave your email address. (But I’d be on Urania’s mailing list, too, if I were you 🙂 ) I believe Urania recorded the Friday evening portion and can sell the CD to you.
Also, one person looked online for some page that tells what’s going on in Berlin, and he found it listed there.
Sorry you missed it, but there are some videos of other events you might enjoy on YouTube. Just search for my name, Barbara Sher. (There actually is another Barbara Sher there, too, who writes books for parents and teachers of small children; she’s not me.) 🙂
Thanks for writing,
Barbara