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.
When recently I realized how fast the last half-year had passed and I thought, “I probably have only about 20 more if I am very lucky,” I thought, “It’s time!”
In the 80’s I took your workshop in a Marina del Rey apartment. Also, after reading “Scanners,” I now have a Big Black Book filled with 150-plus ideas. And thanks for that IDEA!
Still I need more help in DOING what I love: bringing those ideas to finished writing that fulfills me and usually helps or entertains others. My “To Do” list dominates and I’m reminded by your tip that this needs to change for me to be happy.
So I am signing up for Hanging Out!
Welcome, Dottie! You are going to love hanging.out….at fifty years old, I found a new love….. canine hydrotherapy…..everyone is so supportive and you will enjoy the “taps ” on your shoulder…..
Hi Dottie
I hope you subscribed to this message so you’ll see my reply. If you were in a Marina del Rey apartment, it was probably a Playa del Rey apartment, just across the inlet: my mother’s home. That was a long time ago and I’m so pleased that you reminded me of that workshop. Yes, I’m getting kind of old too, to my surprise. 20 years sounds really good. 🙂
And I agree: If not now, when?
Thanks for writing, Dottie.
Hi all, its lovely to finally be here Hanging out 🙂 ! I’ve had some remarkable assistance from the Idea party. I’m making full use of the advice and direction offered. I am reading Wishcraft online (thank you Barbara for offering it free of charge). I realise I could use a success team to help me keep on top of things. I have the ‘usual?’ reservations and uncertainties about my ability to pull off establishing a success team in my area. Can I get some perspective from some people who did this while ignoring the warning bells within themselves which said, ‘you’d be awful, no one will turn up, you havent got the right persona for it you’ll have to get a new image ..on and on.
Chinga, Istarted with a buddy, then got up the nerve to invite a few new people. I sent out a letter saying we would be there to help each other brainstorm (both ideas and solutions to problems), support each other, and hold each other accountable. I was nervous at the first meeting, but I just started with a goal of mine and asked for ideas….then I opened it up to others and they basically jumped in and it ran itself. My problem now is that we have all become good friends.. and we get off task a lot. 🙂 good luck, and keep us posted!
Thank you for your words Karla, I am starting an 8 week course in September after which I would be establishing a success team in my town, here in England. I dont have a buddy that I could do it with, I know I can make a difference for some people in the same position as myself but the self doubt does get to me often. Also I would appreciate some basic help with the blog I’m creating. I’m so not computer savvy and have hit a block with setting up the layman stuff, which I have no doubt most people can suss out pretty easily (not me..) I left it for weeks now after feeling I was’nt getting anywhere figuring it out by myself through following instructions on you tube.
You’ll probably find more than one very good, new friends in your 8 week course, Chinga. Since you’ll continue to help each other with your dreams – and yours right now is to successfully run Success Teams, you won’t be alone after that. 🙂
That’s the miracle of Success Teams. You can sit alone trying to be positive – forever. But actually getting things done requires other humans, and structure. Each week you’ll tell what happened to your promise of last week. Your successes will be cheered because everyone in your team was involved in helping you take another step at your previous meeting. Your problems will be met with a small idea party that helps come up with steps you can take next week to overcome them. You’ll make a promise of some action for the coming week and everyone will write it down and be thinking about it during the week. You’ll get (and give) a ‘buddy call’ mid-week so no obstacles can win for long, and every week you’ll take another step toward your goal – a step you could never have taken if you sat alone trying to feel positive.
After your first 8-week Success Teams Workshop you, and everyone in it, will become evangelists for Success Teams because you’ll *really* understand that isolation is the dreamkiller. With a team on your side, you can achieve anything you really long for.
Until Success Teams you only found a group like this if you were very very lucky. Now anyone can do it.
I’m so proud of that, and so proud of the Success Team leaders all around the world, I have no words for it. What important, delightful work!
Great to hear from you Barbara. I have made this year the beginning of the rest of my life, I want to allow great things to happen in my life finally. Is there any way of buying an audio version of Wishcraft at all? I want to have read some of the material before I start my workshop (listening on my ipod is the best option for me).
There was once an audio, many years ago, but it’s long gone out of print. It was before the days of CDs, in fact, and was on an audio cassette. The only other thing I can think of is that some of my books have been read for visually impaired – and I don’t know which ones or the name of the organization. But I think I know who to ask. Don’t go away.
great, I would really appreciate that.
Wishcraft is available in audio only for US citizens with low or no vision, through the National Library Service’s Talking Books. Two other Sher books are available to all through Amazon’s audible.com.
Hi there Webmaster,
Is there anything I am missing? I have signed up for HO (this is my first year), and have logged in but the links I am able to access is “welcome to hanging out/hanging out” and “member profile/hanging out”. Am I missing something. I imagined a forum or something.
Thanks
Sarah
Welcome to Hanging Out is the first of 157 messages you will receive from Barbara in Year One. You will receive new ones every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, both here in this list and by email. Please reply to the comments you see on each one or add your own, and be sure to subscribe to future comments, as new people join all the time. Even people who have finished the entire year already are interested in what you have to say.
I wish I had the money for another year.
I’m still getting a lot out of Barbara’s Club and Barbara’s work in general. A lot of it is to help others.
Hello again Webmaster,
I also have signed up for year two on 4/29 and the Hanging Out main page lists my access to 4/29/14. However, I only see the posts for year one on my main HO page. Nor have I received any new posts from Hanging Out this week. Didn’t I read that year two started this week on Wednesday? If so, can you advise how I get access to the the new posts? I’m still working on some of the older posts from year one, but I’m really missing receiving the regular posts.
Thanks in advance!
The Year Two messages begin on Monday, exactly one week after your last Year One message (aka Day 365). And we will be extending everyone’s Year Two end date by one week to cover the gap between years.
Great! Thanks for the clarification.
Helllloooo!!!
Soooo, I’m in for Year #2! I renewed my membership for another year (the payment said it went through and my new expiration date is 4/29/14) but I can’t seem to access the ‘stuff’! When I click on links in my email, I get the page with the little lock that says I don’t have access. 🙁
Please let me know if there is something more I need to do in order to get into the content. Thanks!
Blessings & joy,
Jean
Jean, that is the right expiration date, but because you used a different PayPal account, the start date was today. I have just merged your two accounts. Please log in as you did for Year One. Year Two is on its way next week.
HELP, Webmaster!
My Hanging Out expires on Monday…..I have not received an email about how to sign up again……without missing anything…..
I think the new HO will have two taps on the shoulder a week, and some phone conferences…..If I remember correctly…
I would like to sign up soon, and keep my password if possible……as it is easy for me to remember…(I made it into an acronym)……
Thanks! Karla
Hallo Webmaster,
I took advantage of the offer for HO members and purchased the Idea Book -which I am really enjoying!
I have it in my Downloads but I cannot seem to save it to my hard disk. I get a message saying that I should have The Owner’s Password to do that.
Can you explain / help me?
Thanks!
I can explain. You cannot open the file and save it. This prevents everyone from editing it. However, if it is in Downloads, it is already on your hard drive. You can drag the unopened file (or copy and paste it) from Downloads to your Desktop or any other folder on your hard drive.
Hi Barbara — If I don’t rejoin Hanging Out for the next year, will I still be able to access all the posts I’ve received over the 1st year? I’m not unhappy with the program — what I’ve seen of it has been great. And I’ve had a very stressful year (my husband died), so I haven’t had the energy or focus to read more than a fraction of the juicy stuff you’ve sent us, much less do the exercises. It has occurred to me that this coming year, I might want to revisit (or visit for the first time!) what you’ve sent, then rejoin at a future time.
Oh, Linda, I’m so sorry to hear of your loss. This must have indeed been a tough year. I hope you had the support you needed around you.
Regarding Hanging Out, yes, every member has access to the whole year for as long as they like. I hope you will go back and start to get involved. Be sure to leave comments whenever you’re so moved. It always looks to people as if the party happened last week and they missed it when they look at the dates of the Comments. But that’s not true.
For one thing, new people are coming in all the time and they will read and reply to your Comments. For another, the people who left comments before you will be notified if you reply and will read your replies.
So, even if you start at the beginning and only want to see 3 messages a week (it seems to plenty for most members) you’ll still be in the middle of a very nice group of people.
(I’m always notified of every comment, so you can always reach me by leaving one.)
I hope Hanging Out will help this year be a bit better than last year.
Hugs,
Barbara
Thanks for your kind words. Yes, I’ve had a great support system – including friends, members of organizations I belong to, and other new widows met in grief support groups. Just to clarify: Then I would have access to the first-year posts even if I didn’t renew my membership?
Yes. Absolutely.
Dear Webmaster,
I have a technical question: I would like to have the HO posts to go to a new email address other than the one posted here. How do I get my new email address to you so I can begin getting the posts there?
Thanks for all your excellent help this year with a few technical issues that have come up and other membership-related questions.
Best,
Rosalie
Rosalie, we have 3 systems sending you emails. To change the address for the Monday-Wednesday-Friday emails, click on the “Change subscriber options” link on the bottom of any email. We are not able to change this one for you. To change where password lookup notices and comment subscriptions go, send the old and new addresses to webmaster@barbarasclub.com.
Thank you!