Leo Gura

The meet-ups would not be organized or lead by me. I meant enabling you guys to create your own meet-ups in your local cities.

Fixed

I've added a location feature to the forum. You can now add a location to be displayed in your profile Also, the forum software now automatically displays a country flag on your profile based on your IP address (you must log out and log back in to activate this feature). With time, as people gradually re-log, everyone's country will become visible. Here's how it looks: http://screencast.com/t/IWXtsfcZuw4e

We have folks literally across the entire globe. With a majority in the USA, Canada, UK, Europe & Australia. Here's a map of countries that purchased the life purpose course: Right now the forum population is too small to do effective meet ups. Once we reach a large number of forum members, then I'll look into some way to possibly enable this. In general the Actualized.org audience is global. Which might explain why ya'lls English is so damn sloppy!

I can speak intelligently and in-depth about a wide variety of topics and I understand most people's problems better than they understand themselves. This comes naturally to me because my whole mission in life is to understand everything. Btw, the best way to close a sale is to convince the buyer that you understand his problem way better than he understands it himself. << This is true of ALL sales, not just coaching.

I was 27 or 28 when I started coaching. I am rather ambitious though and I did have quite a bit of life experience already and decent prior business success. I would say, don't let anything stop you if you really know you want something. If you really know you want to be a coach, then that's all that matters. Use that as fuel to study harder, coach more people for free, etc. Of course being visibly successful helps clients take you seriously, but it's not required. You can be a great coach without being a millionaire. In fact, most coaches are fairly simple folk. They are not extravagant titans of business. They are people-persons. They love to help people, and that's enough.

You're not going to effectively learn to coach on your own. It's like you're trying to prescribe people drugs without going to medical school. Enter a REALLY good coaching program where they will teach you tons of stuff you would never discover on your own in 20 years. My book list has 4 books on it about how to be a life coach. Definitely read those. But that's only the start. In the meantime you can focus on simply improving yourself. A good coach needs to walk his talk. Then again, practice never really hurts. If you're practicing on your Mom or friends, that's fine. Just realize it will be slow-going without the training program.

This is generally true, but also false in many cases. Just because there is some tangible "payoff" for helping someone, doesn't mean that's why the helper does it. It's more a matter of the helper's state of mind. For example, I of course do have a financial stake in writing this comment and sharing my thoughts with you because I own this forum and it is a business asset. But that isn't the thing that motivated me to actually answer your question. My motivation in this case came from a genuine desire to help out without needing anything back from you in return. Of course that doesn't mean I'm selfless. It just means that people can be generous simply to be generous because generosity makes people feel good in and of itself. Folks on the Moderation team are doing some thankless work to run this forum, and many of them volunteered simply because they want to give something back to the community because it makes them feel good. One of the struggles that humanity faces is: How do we survive and thrive as individual selves AND also as a community of selves? This is perhaps the single biggest force shaping human activity on the planet today. If you've studied the Graves or Spiral Dynamics model, this is basically what its describing. It show you how the psyche attempts to resolve this question at various stages of its development. As the psyche becomes more self-aware, it starts to become more and more sensitive to the genuine needs of others. As the ego dissolves, space is created for genuine connection and, dare I say, LOVE. But yes, at a practical level, as long as you're a human being, you have to still look out for your own survival. But the good news is, you can dramatically decrease the harmful fallout from your self-survival process and you can become a powerful force for selflessness at the highest Graves stages.

Interesting topic. I'm curious to read some stories for how women balance that and what obstacles you face most.

That's a challenge. To sell stuff online consistently you need a MASSIVE audience usually or a highly useful or highly desirable product. To become a successful artist you need to create a very unique style and make exceptional art. Your work has to WOW people. Then you can start to slowly build up a fanbase. If your work is not remarkable, it will be almost impossible I would think. So one thing you need to really focus on as an artist is developing that WOW factor that sets you apart from every other wannabe artist. Marketing is one of those things that no one can really give to you. You gotta be very persistent and dogged, doing tons of research, running tests, and looking for weaknesses and opportunities in the marketplace you wish to enter. There are thousands of different seminars and information products out there on the web about various kinds of marketing. Define more clearly how you want to sell your art and then you can do some Google searches for marketing products. It might be helpful to find an artist you already admire who is financially successful and research the hell out of his business model and marketing methods. Then emulate and refine and customize to fit your needs.

Your purpose doesn't have to be about helping people directly. You could contribute to humanity in many many ways. A lone-wolf scientist could discover the structure of the DNA molecule without directly trying to help people. But he has still made a valuable contribution to humanity. You could also choose to help not just humanity but animals, the ecosystem, the planet, etc. It's not really about helping others. It's about whatever you feel is meaningful for you to do with your ONE life. If you find it meaningful to sit at home alone and jerk off. Hey, that's fine! Do that then. But in truth you probably don't find that meaningful. For human beings, meaningful activities usually involve contributing positively to humanity in some fashion.

Man... getting ideas is the easy part. Executing on them is the hard part. If you're struggling to get good ideas, you are not researching enough, not studying enough, not exposing yourself to a wide enough variety of source material. Creativity comes from exposing yourself to many diverse sources. If you want to get a lot of practical biz ideas interview your prospective clients and ask them: What frustrates you the most? What keeps you awake at night? What do you fear the most? What do you need help with? Get them to spill all their problems and frustrations to you. Then come up with solutions for all their biggest problems. << And now you got product/service ideas!

There's no magic trick. Just keep hammering on the consistency until you build the habit. Until then it will be rough going. Keep your eye on the big picture of what you're working towards: you are gonna transform your whole life! One baby step at a time.

Don't forget to start the day off with a super-clean, preferably raw veggie or fruit meal. No wheat or corn or refined sugar crap. I do a healthy smoothie.

You're walking the path now (or crawling on it) so let that be okay. It takes a few years of consistent effort for the fruits to ripen. At your age -- basically all of the 20's -- you are in a struggle to find your identity and establish your financial independence. You are still just learning how the real world works and it's difficult and scary. Just keep in mind that this is a normal phase of human development. We all go through it. (Some of course better than others.) Focus on finding your life purpose. It will ground you and give you some solace. Keep building good habits, trusting that it will all pay off in the next 5 to 10 years.

The reality is that we need much more scientific studies done on these kinds of questions by enlightened scientists -- which unfortunately are lacking at this point in human history. The exact relationship between consciousness and the brain is not known. But it's clear that the standard scientific model which says that consciousness is simply a collection of neurons is woefully inadequate. Science has not been able to reconcile the ultimate question: what is the relationship between mind and matter?

I've tried it. It was good but didn't wake me up. But then again, I'm a stubborn egotistical bastard. The reality is that people can make you all sorts of spiritual promises. I've tried many different enlightenment methods that promised near-instant results or to save me years of time. And the reality is that people awaken differently. Sometimes a person can wake up in just 90 minutes or one weekend. But this is rare. If it was that easy, everyone would be freaking enlightened. And almost no one is. The reality is much more complex and messy. If you seek permanent non-dual awareness -- which is what I care about -- then you will NOT get it without massive work unless you happen to be extremely lucky. Having a single awakening experience don't mean shit. That's just the tip of the iceberg. When I speak about enlightenment my goal is not to just have some single experience. My goal is the total elimination of every last vestige of ego. And that takes some serious work. If you can get the job done in one weekend, go for it! Try whatever you think will work best.

God isn't so much the phenomena that you see. God refers to the ultimate SOURCE of this phenomena, which is sorta like Nothingness. The phenomena arise from the Nothingness and die back into it every moment. But this is all just ideas. Go discover what the words are pointing to.

That is SUPER common. Most people who have an enlightenment-like experience lose it after a few minutes, hours, or days. And then they spend years chase it. The ego illusion is VERY VERY VERY strong. In most cases it needs to be beaten down to a bloody-pulp. Hence the 1,000+ hours of brutal work. Some people are lucky and they get a full-blow enlightenment experience that shatters the whole ego. But this is very rare. What you experienced in those 5-6 seconds doesn't even sounds like an enlightenment experience. It's just a heightened state of awareness. That's cool. But you ain't seen nothing yet. All the coolest shit still lies ahead for you. A real enlightenment experience will blow your whole mind. But even then, you're very likely to lose it, requiring deeper work. Contrary to what most of us would like to believe, enlightenment is not a simple black & white state. It's a very nuanced and messy business with many facets and edge-cases. Hence why people are so confused about it and why so many misconceptions exist about it. Even enlightened masters disagree.

During the phase when I was coaching all my friends for free, one or two of them were serious enough to finally decide to pay me money after I told them that the free coaching was coming to an end. If you finish the coaching training program, you are ready to coach paid clients! You don't need to prove yourself. Of course your mind will tell you, "Oh no! I could never charge someone for this. I'm too inexperienced! I need another 2 years of practice." << But those are all bullshit excuses and limiting beliefs. You just gotta go for it. Have courage in yourself. No one else will until you do. Like I said before, coaching is the EASY part. It should be the least of your worries. The real trick is in getting people to hand you their hard-earned cash. << That takes some real business acumen to accomplish consistently. Time to start learning business and marketing.

The forum is mobile-friendly. You can use it just fine on your phone. At least for browsing.

Yes, I struggle with it a lot. My best advice is to BE MORE CREATIVE and be generous with your citing. Then you can't lose. It takes more effort to do it this way, but ultimately it's the right way.

So basically your job is to spread the cancer of humanity across the oceans, deserts, and outer space? (half joking) I sometimes wonder about this. How much good is there REALLY in empowering humanity? I mean, sure, let's say this forum helps 100,000 people to become more self-actualized, but then ultimately that leads to more human beings that populate the universe until it's overrun by humans like a swarm of self-actualizing locusts. Lol Do we really know what is good and what is bad in the grand scheme of things? /nihilistic-musings Your heart's in the right place man. I'm just playing devil's advocate.

If you cite him, then you can definitely use his concepts, like the 6 Needs. As far as actual tools he's developed, that might be a bit of playing with fire. Like I said at the end >> BE MORE CREATIVE! What use are you if all you do is parrot Tony Robbins and use all his tools? Be you! Develop your own style and ideas and tools. Go study other people besides Tony Robbins. Then you won't feel like you're encroaching on his turf and you'll be a lot more fulfilled. It's not actually fulfilling to parrot other people. Whenever I parrot someone else, I feel dirty. You gotta be yourself.

Human work performance actually plummets after working 3 to 4 weeks @ 60 hours per week. If you continue beyond that, your work will actually suffer for it and eventually you will burn out. Don't forget that many artists are neurotic as fuck. It's not a good idea to model your life after artists. Many of them are HIGHLY dysfunctional and miserable human beings.