Steve was born and raised in Los Angeles, the eldest of four kids. During his childhood, Steve went to a private Jesuit high school. On January 27, 1991 Pavlina was arrested for grand theft in Sacramento, California and given 60 hours of community service. He claims that this was the impetus he needed to turn his life around, he also claims that he was let off a much worse sentence owing to a mistake in the legal process. Prior to starting his personal development site, Pavlina founded Dexterity Software, an independent computer game developer and publisher. He described in a blog post how he transitioned from one identity into a public speaker and self-help blogger, by removing shortcuts from his desktops and favorites, reducing his gamer-related contacts and obligations and e-mail and relationships so that he was surrounded by an environment that completely reinforced the new identity. Steve Pavlina served as Vice President of the Association of Software Professionalsin 1999 and President of the ASP in 2000. By this stage, Steve's writings in the software development community were already having some impact. The ASP's Hall of Fame page describes him as having had "a significant, lasting influence on others via his articles and postings". In 2004, Steve Pavlina began a web site and blog dedicated to personal development, StevePavlina.com. Dexterity Software went dormant at this time and on October 31, 2006, Steve closed Dexterity Software in order to focus full-time on the website and blog. On October 15, 2008, Hay House published Pavlina's book Personal Development For Smart People. The book expands upon several topics featured on his blog.
Pavlina's blog covers topics such as personal development and success; consciousness and courage; productivity, motivation and goal setting; career, wealth and business; and spirituality. One well known trial he performed involved polyphasic sleep, with a related article on early rising appearing in the British newspaper The Guardian and other newspapers and magazines. He has also promoted veganism, having been one since 1997. On December 15, 2010, Steve Pavlina released all the content he had created until that date, as well as all content that he would create in the future in the public domain.
Influence
Steve Pavlina inspired musician Ben Averch to write a song, "No Division", which was based on one of Steve's blog posts on meditation. In 2013, actress Lindsay Lohan got a tattoo based on the "truth, love, power" triangle from Steve Pavlina's book, blogging an image from Pavlina's book representing the triangle. Steve’s poem “Spirit” was set to music by Brazilian singer-songwriter Henrí Galvão.
