Hanging Out Registration Re-Opens in April 2025
Hanging Out will be the jewel in the crown of Barbara’s Club. To be honest, I think it’s going to be the jewel in the crown of my lifetime’s work. That’s what it feels like. —Barbara Sher, 2012
Barbara called this members-only program Hanging Out, because she wanted it to be like those wonderful moments just hanging out together at her retreats and weekend workshops. Patty Newbold will be your guide now that Barbara is no longer with us.
Registration Re-Opens April 3, 2025
$197 for a full year
Barbara put together her most beloved ideas and stories and wrote her best stuff ever for Hanging Out. This was bigger than writing another book. It was a huge job, but every minute was a labor of love for her. And with this program she gives you videos from her retreats and workshops, loads of audio, new interactive stuff and other amazing things we can’t describe here or we’ll go on forever. All this in addition to the exercises that made a big difference to you in the past.
After almost a year HO is still my favourite thing on the internet and in my inbox. So many things I could just read over and over and find something each time. The world didn’t change but I’m different in it. -JD
I’m excited about this exercise. I’ve printed it out to work on over the weekend. Barbara, I look forward to working it through and circling back. You’re a gemstone! -A Hanging Out member in Week 38
Once you’re a member, the rest will be easy. Every week, three times a week, via email, I’ll send you some very special things to read, watch and do. They’re not what you expect, I’m pretty sure of that. As much as you may like my books, what you’re going to find in Hanging Out is very new and very different. You’ll want to make comments, compare notes and talk to the other members of Hanging Out, and that’s exactly what happens here. It changes the whole experience into something entirely new, something most of us are missing and need as much as vitamins and sunshine. The effect on most members has been profound.
Registration Re-Opens April 3, 2025
$197 for a full year
You can’t get Hanging Out all at once like a book that ends up on that pile of books you plan to read, and you can’t stick it back on your bookshelf and forget what your life is supposed to be. Barbara learned too much about what’s important for us humans to take that kind of chance.
You’ll receive emails from Barbara every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for a year, announcing the day’s video, audio message, Identity Exercise, Reality Series success story or Brain Candy she prepared for you. Barbara’s Director of Sher Success Teams and WriteSpeak Coach, Patty Newbold, will be reading and responding to your online comments. You’ll also be able to read Barbara’s replies to comments from our first eight years of Hanging Out.
Hanging out has really developed clarity in my life. One thing that I love about you Barbara is that you never tell anyone to just try harder and you don’t shame in any way. You support and encourage which is so very rare. You make sense of the non-sense. This group has provided something wonderful for me. Even the subtle messages are always very powerful. —Michelle
So what is it?
It’s easier to say what it’s not. Hanging Out is not a how-to course or a motivation program. I sometimes think it’s designed for people who have worked too hard and forgot what it’s like to wake up in a goal-free world full of fresh, stimulating ideas, fun and camaraderie.
I’ll always have courses for you on Barbara’s Club so you can find your dreams and achieve your goals, but Hanging Out is not about goal achievement. Instead, it’s more like what one member called “a profound and delicious form of Identity Rehab.”
I absolutely love the idea of Barbara’s Club being integrated into the everyday world—nothing to leave behind—and a consistent source of inspiration. Thank you! —Victoria, by email
If you join us here, Barbara’s emails and online messages will be popping into your life briefly, happily and relentlessly, over and over, waking up your senses, making you laugh and go exploring and, most important of all, helping you remember who you are and how good life is supposed to be.
You’ll receive emails from Barbara every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for a year, announcing the day’s video, audio message, Identity Exercise, Reality Series success story or Brain Candy she prepared for you. Barbara’s Director of Sher Success Teams and WriteSpeak Coach, Patty Newbold, will be reading and responding to your online comments. You’ll also be able to read Barbara’s replies to comments from our first eight years of Hanging Out, before she passed away.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for creating Hanging Out with Barbara. There have been so many “favorite” posts. One that stands out is your description of how you decorated your apartment with all the glorious references to color. I wanted to sink into one of your armchairs and absorb it all. Finding our originality. Yes. Discovering ways to express it. Yes. Realizing that time is short and excuses long. Yes. Boxing up all our should, would and could and relaxing into today, into now, into this moment. Yes. Finding that joy is the reward for allowing oneself to just be who you are. Yes. So many wonderful lessons I have learned, relearned, and unlearned this year…What I have learned this year has changed my life. For that I am eternally grateful. – A Hanging Out Member at the end of the year
No risk – full refund if you cancel your subscription within the first 30 days
$197 for a full year
OR pay by the month – $24 per month
Contact webmaster@barbarasclub.com if you encounter any problems with payment or if you don’t receive a “Thank You! And Welcome to Hanging Out” email within an hour after paying.
Registration Re-Opens on April 3, 2025
Purchase a gift certificate
$197 for a full year membership gift certificate
Gift certificate mailed within 48 hours. Contact webmaster@barbarasclub.com if you do not receive yours.
Barbara, I’m loving the video clips of you speaking. Only short but they’ve both made me laugh and given me something worth thinking about. Thank you.
How do I respond to the messages filling my in-box about today’s call, when the response links aren’t working, and when there doesn’t seem to be any place here to respond that says calls? Maybe it just hasn’t been set up yet. Or maybe, because I’m a computer klutz that I’ve managed to skip it somehow. It would be nice to know, but I have to leave the library shortly.
As to despair–I wasn’t kidding when I asked this question. Maybe it’s because I’ve just lost a good friend, who died horribly a few days ago, and I have a gazillion chores and an unruly dog who has to be walked 4 times a day, plus someone’s cattle loose (don’t know whose!) on the property, and both shoulders have about been yanked out of their sockets because of trying to train the dog to walk on a leash and obey, which she doesn’t want to. Last night, I was talking to my friend in Washington who is a taxidermist, and he said he had deadlines–and that he was articulating skeletons. Something that taxidermists regularly do. I said that I had a dog skeleton that I wanted to donate to him, but that the only problem was that it is still being utilized by the dog! Pulled tendons are no joke. I am still doing physical therapy exercises from August’s encounter with the beast, and now, both shoulders are aching. I have been putting in 6 ibuprophen (my drug of choice!) 17 hour chore days, and I have a night plus a day of humongous amounts of cleaning to do. The bathroom mirror is caked with toothpaste spit onto it. The toilet is black. I’m not kidding! Black!! They are on the same water system that I am. They blame it on our limey water. I know better! There are huge, thick cobwebs hanging from the corners of the kitchen ceiling, and doggie drool marks all over the windows. The carpet is a fright, where it has been anointed liberally by the dog and the two cats. The overhead chalice light fixtures are packed with bugs. My injured back is worse, from the dog pulling. The damn place hasn’t been cleaned since August, when I was last up there. It’s always the way of it with these people. I was a cleaning contractor before I got injured, and can’t do it anymore. But I’m just a chump, I guess, so I’ll make it look nice and purty for the last time!! The husband of this husband-and-wife couple was working on a fencing project and didn’t finish it. He ripped out the posts and rolled up a bunch of barbed wire. Cattle grazing on the mountain above have gotten into the property. They walked right through the open fence, and bolted yesterday, and plowed down another fence, escaping to a neighbor’s adjoining property. The neighboring ranchers are pissed as you know whatsie at him for going on vacation for two weeks and leaving the back fence down. I have succeeded in trapping them, after today’s phone call, and have to get back up there and secure the gate before they get out again, and try once more to contact who we think is the owner. And walk the rambunctious dog twice, once before dark, and once later by flashlight. I’ve been trotting like crazy since 6:15 a.m. when chores begin. Roused by the dog, who wants out immediately if not sooner, to pee. I have it! I’ll have wahumpi stew tonight! (Wahumpi is Lakota for puppy dog!) (Just kidding!) My main defenses are the best dog training book I have ever seen, a fly swatter to make loud noises with, restricting her to one room with the door shut when she gets too obnoxious, and, when all else fails, a Water Cannon! One or two splashes with that, and she begins to know what no means. I can’t pen her outdoors. She just sails right over the top, and gets together with other neighborhood dogs, who run in packs, and is gone for hours at a time. That’s what her owners let her do. I simply won’t. She’s in the house, or out on a chain, or out on a leash. Period.
They haven’t been truthful about their return itinerary, so tomorrow, I’ll have to call them and find out. I only went back up there again because I’m utterly broke and desperately in need of the money. The $$$ will enable me to pay my car insurance for this month and my emergency dental treatment, still ongoing. And then I’ll be broke again. There is no food at my house, and I have turned off the refrigerator, because there is nothing in it to refrigerate. Up there, I am living on a half gallon of milk, some cornbread that I baked this morning, a couple cans of tuna fish, a few carrots, a wilted head of lettuce, 2 tomatoes, and half a bunch of celery. And a custard pudding that I made last night. More emergency dental treatment the 12th. Supposedly, a CEU to take, which will cost me $140 to $150, on the 15th, but it might cancel the 13th. A job interview the 14th. A coaching session the 13th. Humongous chores when I get home as well, to get ready for a Section 8 rental inspection the 20th. And I just need to sit down and grieve my friend for a week, but I can’t do it. Too many necessary chores in the way. I had to have a root canal extraction a few days ago, after the house sit from hell began. Now, what am I supposed to do? Rebuild the back fence to keep the cattle out? No, I won’t! I won’t even pile brush up there to keep them out. There’s not enough brush, and besides, I’m hurting so bad that I can hardly walk, anyhow. This used to be a good housesitting job, and it has turned toxic. I can’t go on sustaining the injuries.
I am damn tired of it all. I am tired of going to these futile job interviews. I am plain sick and tired of being told that I don’t fit into the culture, or that I have to deliver psychotherapy in Spanish or I’m no good. I’m damn sick and tired of being asked to deliver psychotherapy for $12 to $15 per hour, part time, three hours a day. Outrageous! And I feel completely stuck, mired in poverty. I don’t think that unless a person has personally experienced it, that they have any concept of just how confining, restricting, and imprisoning poverty really is. Haven’t you heard me ranting in these pages about how I can’t do this and can’t do that, and things like “How In Heck is This Supposed to Work??” It isn’t just pig-headedness on my part. It’s poverty, and it’s that ol’ debbil Despair. I want to get home worse than anything, and can’t because I’m stuck. My car breaks down and costs me $700 in 3 days, and my monthly Social is $955. Last month, I didn’t even go grocery shopping, because I couldn’t. I’ve recycled my Halloween jack o’lantern into 4 pumpkin pies, and into pumpkin custard, and into pumpkin, which I’m still eating, in addition to canned beans and corn. That’s about it. If this month is just as bad, which it promises to be, I’ll be eating beans and fry bread after the food storage gives out. The car still needs $500 in repairs on it, and I have to take another CEU in December, whether I’m employed or not. No, there aren’t any food banks anywhere in Northern New Mexico. We’re the poorest state in the nation, and the most backward. As long as I’m still here, I plan to meet with two ministers, one in Taos and one in Espanola, to see about setting up some food banks. That’ll give me something to put on the ol’ resume for 2013!
Now, I’ve got only a little daylight left. I’ll quit grousing now, and go look at the rest of the e-mail. The calling responses will have to wait until another time.
Mary Ann, you write so vividly I can see it as if you’d drawn one of Barbara’s cartoon exercises! Haven’t been on for a while so doing a marathon today and came across this. I can’t do much to help but I wanted to offer belated (I hope) moral support and send you good vibes. I’m hoping things have improved now, that the dental work went okay and you’re back in your own nice home well-recompensed for all your troubles. It must have been the house-sit from Hell. Poverty is the very dibbel and hard to laugh at but When I’m faced with another demand on my non-existent resources, I think about my gran a who lived with it all her life (and she was widowed at 23 with two small children and had the worst possible RA scenario towards the end of her life probably due to having scrubbed floors for a living). She and her equally poor siblings were always laughing and had more fun than I’ve ever seen any rich person having. Of course like me you know that when you’re not feeling overwhelmed, as your wicked sense of humour even in the bad times demonstrates here, but I thought I’d remind you.
For future reference, if house-sitting: NO dog needs walking 4 times a day whatever it tells you (and it will also tell you its owners haven’t fed it for 3 years and it has to have rump steak every day or it will die). Don’t listen. Even my dog who has failing kidneys only has to be pushed outside the back door every 4 hours. Put some paper down and let it wee on it till it learns. Also get the dog a Halti or harness and bill its owners for it as legitimate expenses either that or sue them for doctors bills. Second: you’re not obliged to clean up after the sloppy owners and if you do, bill them contract rates. You’re too kind and conscientious, I think. People don’t get wealthy by giving anything away, and undervaluing yourself when you’re strapped for cash is madness (says she who always says ‘It’s alright, I don’t want anything for it’ whenever she does anything for anybody! – always much easier to give others the advice you could use yourself.)
🙂 🙂 🙂
Best wishes
Jay
Hi Barbara,
I attended your Resistance Online Seminar in 09-14-2013 and since then did a lot of scary things.
Which feels great.
But the last three weeks I felt Resistance getting thicker and thicker, I procrastinated more than before, got into bad moods, got bad discussions with my spouse. (Very bad).
I kept on doin the things I drew on my flow-chart, which is still a great guideline, but everything seemed to slow down.
Then I tried to join “Hanging Out” to get some advice, what to do about not to let everything freeze again, but it didn’t work, So I called my bank, they said I should call the credit card company, the credit card company told me I should call PayPal and PayPal said its the Credit Cards fault, and after that I talked with my bank and they said: Its the trader’s problem.
I felt like a Neutron Bomb in a Kafka-Story.
Then I wrote mails with Patty Newbold and did all the things she proposed and after another week finally it worked out yesterday.
Only to have this problem solved is a great thing for me, because usually I would have stopped trying, blame it on me first and then blame it on everybody else.
Frank
Hi Barbara, I would love to join you for a second year, but I am a single Mom who needs new tires. Can I start the second year on a monthly basis starting at the 1st of the month?
Many Thanks,
vicki
[answered by email, as was the one from Mary Ann just below]
Whereinheck did the Resistance Seminar from August 31 go? I can’t find it anywhere, and stuff about it is still popping up in my e-mail in-box. The comment links won’t work, and if I can’t access it somewhere, then I can’t respond, and I really want to. Guess I’ll have to go e-mail the webmaster yet again!
Such an inspiration, Margaux! Hope someday I can do for someone what you did for your friend. And for us all: your story tells about making a big difference, even just in everyday life. Thank you!
I’ve been Hanging Out since the beginning, but even before I joined I’ve been telling anyone remotely interested about Barbara Sher’s amazing insights and trying to get people to read her books. The first book I read was I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was, and it was far more helpful to me than What Color Is Your Parachute or any other career advice book.
For the better part of two years, I’ve been talking to one of my oldest — and easily most intelligent — friends about me being a Scanner and finding all these other Scanners online through Barbara and all the communities that have branched off from Barbara’s trunk. I’d been telling her how great it was to have permission to NOT be a specialist, to not settle into one career for the rest of my life, to be the oddball with a thousand books who takes courses on anything, etc.
At first, in context of me, she understood right away how I was a Scanner. But it took her a while to accept that she was one too.
As soon as she realised she was one (two days ago) and that that could be the reason she’s been so restless in her otherwise seemingly perfect life, she looked up the email I sent months ago with Barbara’s book titles, and went to find the books in the library. As a physiotherapist with three kids and an out-of-work husband (and a giant suburban house to keep in order), she never has time to read any more. And when she finds interesting books, she usually just skims them for the best parts, and leaves them unfinished.
But after crying through the intro of Refuse To Choose, she just powered through the book. She called me on her way home from work today to tell me how she’s been feeling ever since. I could barely follow her because she was talking so fast. She’s so excited now with all the possibilities that have just opened up from reading the book. She’s already planning on buying a scanner notebook and mapping out her house with all the projects she plans to fill it up. She’s also excited about making a 6-year plan to do all the things she didn’t think she had time for.
She was so impressed with how Barbara was able to nail not only the different types of Scanners, but prescribe the right solutions to make things work for those different types.
She had been feeling so dismayed about the state of her house, but now she’s realised it’s because she hasn’t taken any time to work on projects to fill it with the things that mean something to her. She’s always told me how interesting she finds my living space because no matter where she stands in my apartment, she can find something to get lost in for hours (which often happens to me, too). She never felt like that in her own home. Now she means to change that!
I haven’t heard her sound this enthusiastic about anything since her college backpacking trip to Europe 20 years ago.
So Barbara, you’ve made another raving fan! I’m so thrilled she’s joined the ranks and I can talk about you with her and not have her think I’ve joined some online cult! I’m not sure she’s got time to join Hanging Out, but I’m telling her about it anyway in case she ever wants to.
Such a wonderful story, Margaux! It almost has me crying. Thank you. Telling her about the book was a generous thing to do. I never realize that people demand that their friends read my books. I love that.
Even more, I love to hear that another Scanner is set free to be herself. I’m going to have nice dreams tonight. :-).
I think people definitely recommend your books to their friends/loved ones. My aunt, who I look up to as being successful and accomplished, recommended your books to me. I benefitted from the wisdom of “I Can do Anything” and I am yet to read Wishcraft and Refuse to Choose but I am so excited to get to them!
Thank you, Mari! I’ve never gotten accustomed to that. I keep forgetting.
Hey, Margaux, how do you know that HO Isn’t some on-line cult? (Chortle, chortle, chortle!)
Making progress! I connected up to Sandy Swain, who will start a Success Group in my area. Also, I resumed doing morning pages. Got the inspiration to turn the guest bedroom to my writer’s space. I’ll put the “how to write” books on the book shelf; bring in the extra computer; buy another height-adjustable simple desk chair; and continue to enjoy the fabulous bay view while I play, create, learn in a self-loving way!
I’m also shifting my attitude. I’m honoring myself by viewing the work of house-uncluttering as part of my process, instead of thinking of it as an impossible barrier-prerequisite to my life progress and creativity.
Three hurrah for you!
I find your post ever so motivating – for us all!
You’ve put me in a good mood
Thank you, Luisa! That you say the post was motivating calms my concerns that it was too self-centered.
Hi everyone,
I have just spent the past week reading Barbara’s book – I Could Do Anything, if I only knew what it was.
In the past I have read many books with such catchy titles but this time instead of just reading the book, I did the exercises as well. I was delighted with the results.
I am very impressed with the way Barbara is so confident knowing her ideas and material will be able to help people. I aspire to be as confident one day too. My profession for the past ten years has been as a family counsellor.
I’m very grateful that I took the time to read her book and start my journey into my future. I now have a long term goal, a bit of a framework and a starting place……..I’m amazed! It’s only taken me the past 25 years!
I was very excited when I saw the ‘Hanging Out With Barbara Sher’ club and got my self organised to sign up on Wednesday the 14th August, but then after re-reading the notice, realised it was for the 14th August, 2012!!
I guess my question is…….does it matter when you join the Hanging Out club?
I am in Paris at the moment visiting my daughter and first grandchild, baby James. The family have been away for the past week, hence I’ve had the opportunity to devour the book uninterrupted and to look and listen at some of Barbaras youtube sites.
I would very much like to join the Hanging Out club but because I am on holidays and will be travelling with my partner who arrives from Australia tomorrow and we will be touring for the next six weeks, I was wondering if it would be better to join when I get back home to Australia, where I won’t have so many distractions.
I am 56 years old and feel like I now have a new lease of life as I am about to create a business of my own helping people find out what it is they love to do too!
My first job of course, will be to gather a success team. What a brilliant idea that is! Can hardly wait.
One of my difficulties is I don’t really understand all the facebook/twitter computer stuff, but I will be looking into that if it means I can have access to the wonderful Barbara and a group of like-minded individuals following their hearts.
So, I will await an answer from someone who knows about the Club and look forward to becoming a member of the Hanging Out Club.
Many thanks, kind regards, Maggie
Congratulations, Grandma Maggie!
You won’t need Facebook or Twitter to be part of Hanging Out. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you will receive a link to a new message from Barbara in the Hanging Out section of this website. Some have a brief video or audio recording, some have an exercise, some have great stuff to read and enjoy, all have many comments from others who are hanging out. You’ll probably want to set aside 15 minutes or so for each one at first, and you’ll probably find yourself thinking about them throughout your week. They might be a fun addition to your holidays in France, if you have time for them. If not, we’ll still be here when you get home.
And because most members subscribe to comments on the messages that grab them, no matter when you join, you’ll be meeting people who have been around a while and people who join long after you if you join them in making comments, asking questions, and subscribing.
Thank you Webmaster,
That sounds great. Because I will have limited computer use while on my holiday, I think it would be best if I wait until my return to Australia to join Hanging Out.
I will order some more of Barbaras books for when I get home also.
Great to make contact! Bye for now.
Karla, thanks for the welcome. Glad you found your joy helping dogs enjoy water in a special, personalized way. Signing up for HO has already meant I am talking to another synthesizer friend about our creative process and I feel encouraged.
🙂