Leo Gura

Good God! Look at all this human potential being pissed away. Glad I was smart enough never to touch the stuff. I've had hot girls invite me over to their place for weed. And in my mind I'm thinking, "No fucking way. You can smoke that shit all you want but I'm not having anything to do with it." Zero interest in artificial intoxicants.

Audiobooks for FTW! Gets TONS of them. Or meditate if you're not driving. These basics is all you need. Do them consistently for months and your life will automatically transform. You don't need to always be doing some clever new thing.

Food for thought: If you look at Zen monks in a monastery, they are super clean-freaks. They make the place look spotless. Many hours per day are spent on tending to the temple. They do their chores mindfully. I enjoy doing personal chores like groceries. It's the easiest part of my day.

To start a business online you need to roll up your sleeves and start doing lots of research. Survey the marketplace and start eyeing a niche for yourself. As you do that, find answers to the following questions: What kind of business do you want to have? What do you want it to accomplish? How do you want to run it? Who would you be competing against? How would you be attracting clients? What is the value you'd be offering to clients? What role do you want to play in the business? How many employees do you want to have? How much money do you want to make? How much money do you have to invest in the business to get it off the ground? What are your passions? What are your are your really good at already, or could become good at?

What is it you want to do with your life?

It's a shortcut to enlightenment in the sense that once you take it, you now start the 1,000 hour self-inquiry process. You can't short-cut self-inquiry. I never said 100,000 hours. Only 1,000 hours. << That's not too bad if you think about. Only a couple years work. Less than high school. The problem is that people are so damn lazy and care about truth so little, that this 1,000 hours might as well be 1,000,000,000.

Nice! This is great topic

Reframe it as a tangible sign of progress. I love it when I feel crappy after meditation. It means the meditation is working. The subconscious mind is surfacing old mental garbage and purging it. This is what spiritual purification looks like. Most people mistake it for a sign of trouble when actually is very healthy. Keep going! Don't let up.

I thought all artists were neurotics

It takes faith in a larger vision for your life. I decided to make a 100% commitment to meditate every day for 1 hour, no exceptions EVER! I made that decision because I could not run Actualized.org congruently without it, nor could I realize my life purpose without it. That was almost 3 years ago. Have not missed one day since. It was one of the most important decisions I've made in my life. TOTALLY worth it! Just go for it. As Jack Canfield says, "100% commitment is a breeze, 99% commitment is a bitch."

Yes, it will be brutal at times. And worst of all, the ego will use this as an excuse to trash all your other personal development gains. The ego is like a little spoiled child. When you take away its candy, it starts to spit and fight and rage and cry and use every other cheap trick in the book. What do you do about? Just observe it mindfully. Don't react to it. Be patient. Be accepting. And never break your daily practice under any conditions. If your pace or workload is too high, scale it down. This is just like running a marathon. You gotta pace intelligently.

Good thread

Sure, it's definitely doable. You're already on the path. Just keep doing more of the same and eventually your addictions will become more and more positive. It can sometimes take months and years though, so be patient. If you really want to drop habits for good, the secret is not to try to forcefully change them, but to mindfully observe yourself acting like a mindless chimp while engaging in the habit. Try smoking an pack of cigarettes while being constantly focused on how they are making you feel and how they are damaging your body and making you feel addicted. Don't go unconscious. As soon as you go unconscious the process stops working. Start to apply LOTS more consciousness to your bad habits as you do them. Pay much more attention to how these habits are robbing you of a great life. At some point, the mind will just drop the habit cold, without you having to force yourself to resist.

Yes, this is called the Upper Limiting problem. You actually do have an upper limit for how much happiness you allow yourself to feel in a given day/week. Anything over that limit feels uncomfortable and even scary. Because fundamentally you haven't developed your psyche enough to open yourself up to being penetrated by love. Deep down the ego FEARS love and it fears life. What to do? Gradually practice expanding your ability to feel love and joy. Be very mindful of those moments when you have more love than you can handle. And stretch yourself a bit to stomach just a little bit more than the last time. Tell yourself, "I have the courage to open myself to more joy and more love." Being happy is actually like a muscle. If you haven't used it for a long time, it's very weak. You gotta flex it gradually over the weeks and months and years to build it up to the point where you can wear a shit-eating grin on your face all day long for absolutely no reason. << That's not easy to develop to. You gotta really work out many of our inner demons.

Sounds like you may have pushed yourself too hard and your body/mind mounted a fierce resistance. This happened because of lack of balance and self-acceptance. You cannot just bull your way through to success, as George Leonard says. You need a more self-compassionate approach to prevent backlash. You need to make sure that you're integrating all the different parts of you, including the part of you that says, "But I just want to be lazy and watch cartoons!" << That is a legitimate part of you! You can't just ignore it's needs. You have to integrate it. Try asking that part of you, "How are you trying to look out for me? How are you trying to help me? How are you protecting me from harm?" Then listen to what is really has to say. Negotiate better between all the different forces inside you. Also try looking into Shadow Work. It will help you a lot here. Reframe this whole issue as: When I figure this out and get myself sorted, I will be in a better position than ever to be an awesome, congruent coach.

Putting up defenses and a thick skin is actually quite neurotic and damaging to your well-being. Following the One Simple Rule For Acing Life video: do the most emotionally challenging thing. Which in this case is being FULLY open and vulnerable! Being vulnerable is counter-intuitively the strongest position to occupy because then nothing can harm you. It's like defeating hate with love. Gandhi is the perfect example of how to do this, and how powerful it really is. It really works! Unshakable openness and vulnerability is a very rare human quality, mostly reserved for the wisest sages and saints. Any fool can be defensive and put up a thick skin. But openness takes real balls and self-awareness to execute.

Strong men don't drink. Weak ones do.

Look! Life is an amazing opportunity with near-infinite possibilities. Forget about all the stuff you don't want. What is it that you actually DO want?! What do you want to do with your one and only life? State it clearly without worrying about whether it's possible or not.

Of course that can be your life goal. One of the problems with your previous/current strategy is that you've tied your success to out-competing others, which is a terrible idea because you're forcing yourself to play a zero-sum game: he has to lose in order for me to win. Instead you want to switch into the Creator paradigm, where you are generating endless amounts of value without needing anyone else to lose. Imagine if you started your own fitness school, for example. You could passionately train young people and still be involved with weightlifting but not in a dog-eat-dog way. This would be much more fulfilling than winning competitions. This topic is covered in the life purpose course.

This sub-forum is only for keeping a public self-improvement journal. This is intended for committed users who want to make a big change in their life and want to document their rags-to-riches journey. Keeping a public journal of your struggles and triumphs can be very powerful, both for the author as well as for readers. You are encouraged to update your journal like a blog, several times per week. You are also encouraged to be brutally honest about your struggles. Document things exactly as they occur for your, without any sugar-coating or self-censorship. This is extra-powerful. If you're struggling with holding yourself accountable for taking action, starting a journal can be your lifeline. As other people become fans of your journal, they will hold you accountable and encourage you to follow-through. Tips for keeping a good journal: Make a commitment to yourself to update regularly. Power comes from consistency. Be brutally honest about yourself and your problems. Be authentic about your emotions and thoughts. Interact with your fans & followers. A quality journal will create followers if you keep it up to date. Give it a sexy title Here are some ideas for themes you could start a journal around: An all-purpose journal with your daily private ruminations and insights Your journey of starting of a new business Finding and aligning yourself with your life purpose The mastery process, how you're training your skillset Your creative challenges at being an artist, musician, writer, poet, novelist, designer, etc. Getting better at dating or relationships A new 30-day challenge that you start each month Enlightenment work journal Spiritual-autolysis journal (as described by Jed McKenna) Insights from your daily meditation practice Notes on personal development videos you watch every week Your struggle to overcome an addiction like food, sex, porn, alcohol, or drugs Your struggle to overcome a hard life event like a divorce, legal battle, death in the family, etc. How you're healing or coping with a medical condition like cancer, diabetes, etc. Your journey to conquer depression Your journey and insights using entheogens or psychedelics Your fat-loss journey Your journey to getting that 6-pack you've always wanted Your journey going vegetarian or vegan Your journey in martial arts Your insights from traveling around the world Insights from your weekly therapy or life coaching sessions If you're a life coach or therapist, your insights from working with clients Etc. There's a lot of potential gold to mine here, so get creative!

I don't think there's a need to bring Graves into this. Just finish the course and you'll experience a HUGE upward shift. Life purpose is not only for people in stage Green. Life purpose is good for people at any stage. In fact, if you want to really ace stage Orange, find your life purpose ASAP. It's hard to make money without a clear sense of direction and passion for your work. I don't see life purpose as me doing charity work for others or sacrificing myself for others. Just the opposite. My life purpose is for ME! It fuels me. It's not some kind of altruistic burden.

You got a couple of basic choices here: Go become a monk and not worry much about money Bite the bullet and get serious about handling your career & lack of money Get a basic and soul-numbing 9-5 job that barely covers the bills Live in your parent's basement Find someone to mooch money out of to finance your lifestyle (or get married) Become a thief

It definitely works. The emotional upheaval you experience is normal and actually a great sign that the process is working. That's how your mind purges and purifies itself. Intense meditation has the same effect. The key is to never stop, but just keep going despite all the upheaval. You have to do it every day for years though, just like regular meditation. Still, totally worth it. If you're gonna do it, don't be cheap. Invest in a high quality program. I don't see any cons. The only thing better is lots of regular meditation.

It basically requires MASSIVE amounts of rigorous practice & training. 1) Daily 1 hour mindfulness mediation habit with mental labeling (as described in my video Mindfulness Meditation). 2) Go to meditation retreats at least 2 times per years. Vipassanna retreats or other kinds.

It's in our nature to be lazy and to prefer theorizing versus taking massive action. No matter what the tool, or course, or book, or seminar, only about 20% of people using it will get shit done. The rest are slackers. Yes! People will definitely use this forum for mental masturbation. Resolve to not be one of them. The best way to use a forum is very selectively. Find the golden nuggets, ignore the rest, and focus on building up your life instead of yapping all day. Contribute your own golden nuggets back into the community once in a while.