Christian

I think you are right here. It certainly is true that we are programmed to believe that what other people think about us matters a lot. I think parenting style has a lot to do with it. Especially the basic carrot and stick model of parenting where parents reward certain behaviours and punish others. That way we become imprisoned mentally and learn that to be loved we have to live in accordance to certain unwritten rules from a young age where the mind is open to suggestion. And we learn that punishment is bad and start to plan how we can fit in to ensure being accepted and loved. The best word I can use to describe it is that it is soul crushing and very limiting to ones potential. It is a real battle and you are not the only one struggling with it believe me.

The real question is why do you need to change? There really is no reason because every place you are at in this life is equal existentially. No experience or place is better than another. You are like a flower that continuously keeps blossoming and even in its earlier stages, that flower is still good enough, right? There is nothing wrong with the flower per se. It is important to realize that first. Accept yourself first, love yourself and see where that takes you.

It is hard to talk about advantages here between PD career and a scientist or an engineer because you cannot account for all the factors and make a general conclusion. And by the way, who says an Engineer or scientist has to do PD-work on the side in the first place? What if they have never heard of personal development and all their time goes into their domain of mastery? You do not really account for that possibility in your post. Then, they would really have an equal amount of time to Master their fields as Leo or some PD-guru. I bet 99% of people have never even heard what PD is and do not care to study it one bit.

He is such a copy of Leo? He has the bald head and even the same shirt as him. Leo always wears a black shirt in his videos (as you probably have noticed already). That's just absurd. He is what? 50? He should have his own style. I bet he just went on youtube one day and was like: Hey, look; there is this Leo guy who has 500.000 subs, I can get that if I just do similar videos, have the same haircut, shirt (copy him). He should know better especially if he claims to be a spiritual teacher. Copying someone like that is ignorant and childish

Ahahhha, that sounds very interesting by the way. But I can't imagine going to bet at fucking 6pm! That's what I did when I was like 4, now I'm 18 lol. I usually go to bed around midnight or so, and it works fine for me generally. But my question is: If you were to let's say go to bed at 6pm and wake up at 2:30 am, yes, you would get 8h30m of sleep, and yes you would have 5h30m to do your daily tasks before school, but what will you do with the 5h30m? One context I could imagine it working is if you are shooting for enlightenment and are dead fucking serious. Like serious, serious. So you would do self inquiry for like 4 hours straight from 2:30am till maybe 6:30am. That could be epic, but it would be hard to go to bed at 6pm I could imagine. That's probably the biggest obstacle at least for me, but it could work. But I think if one were to implement it, they would have to work themselves up to it. So maybe they would go to bed 1h earlier than normal, then 2, then 3 until they could go to bed at 6pm and wake up at 2:30am. That's not something you can do in one go.

@Lorcan I am in kind of a similar position to you. I myself am a high school student. I go to school from 8am til 2pm generally and have dinner from 6pm til 6:30pm. I also study 2 hours per day (on average). It depends on homework and the concepts we are learning. And I also want to self actualize at the same time. But how? For me, what has worked was generating a strong, healthy and doable morning routine. For me currently, it involves two central things at the moment: Meditation and exercise. I jog every morning at 6:30 pm and then I meditate from 6:40pm til 7pm on an ideal day and I plan to expand it so it also includes visualization and maybe reading too. But I can and should only implement 1-2 habits at a time and currently I am implementing 2 (meditation and exercise. But maybe in the future it will expand. I am planning that out. But if I were you (which I of course am not), I would strongly recommend you also start building a morning ritual. Since school starts at 9pm as you said in your post, you are at a better advantage than me as you have more time in your morning. If you woke up at lets say 6:30pm, you would have a good 2 hours to spare. That is the fucking window of opportunity right there! You could develop an extremely powerful morning ritual and that would be very good for you. But what should it include? Well, if I was in your position, I would have it include: Meditation (20-40 min) Exercise (5-20 min) Reading (20 min) Positive affirmations (5 min) Visualization 15 min Healthy breakfast (whatever that is) 5-10 min Again, this is what I would do, but you should do what is best for you. But I hope you understand the general idea that developing a strong morning ritual is the way to go for most people. It sets the foundation for the entire day and I strongly believe you can create one hell of a powerful one. Test it out and see how it works. Good luck

I got coaching and it did not have any huge impact on my life, really. I felt that I was ripping my patents of too because they were paying for it and it had little effect. But that was just my experience with just one coach. And I did not give her a clear specific problem to help me with. I just told her I was in emotional pain in my body (which I was) and I was unaware why and she of course tried to help, but the advice was very wishy washy and it had no long term effects sadly. So if you are going to get coaching, my best advice would be to be clear about what you want out of the coaching sessions and give the coach something to work with. So if you want to loose weight for example, say that you want to have x type of body with x BMI and x procent body fat for instance. Make it specific if you can.

I have the same problem with depressive symptoms, not wanting to make a fool out of myself, and I tend to overthink quite often. And I think if you do not want to make a fool out of yourself, the deeper issue is that you care too much about what other people think about you. At least that is the case for me and I still deal with these issues on a daily basis. But this is not about me; this is about you here. So what is the solution? Well... If you have these issues, I think you should "accept yourself as you are" and you are good enough. Just kidding, that does not help in the bigger picture when you are coming from the wrong perspective. You will probably end up resenting yourself if you just do that because clearly there is a problem here that also needs to be addressed. The problem is more foundational. It really is lack of awareness I suppose. You are probably not aware of the mechanisms of your mind and how it functions and why you are acting the way you are acting. You have yet to develop a meta-perspective of your "mechanical nature". You do not really understand yourself and that is the real issue. But what helps develop this understanding? - Meditation - Self inquiry (enlightenment work) - Journaling - Questioning and investigating your assumptions/beliefs - Developing a watcher's-perspective (watching yourself from a 3rd person perspective) - Generally, raising awareness - Living in integrity with your real authentic values This right here is all you need, BUT the most CENTRAL is ACTION. ACTION, ACTION, ACTION. You need to take action to get any results. Start developing a habit out of these things I've listed. Start meditating daily, start journaling regularly, etc. If you do not take any action, that is the biggest mistake of all really. Hope this helped you, I feel like I did my best here at least.

I think maturity and visdom are closely linker together meaning if you are wise, you are also mature in a sense. But that is psychological maturity. And this comes with time, experiences and inner growth. If you are mature, you also have a strong psychological foundation and self mastery to an extend which self actualization work is all about. This is why self actualization is so important and central to life, yet everyone thinks they have it all figured out and never care to improve themselves from the ground up. They only care about the surface of their life and that is why they never truly grow.

@Juan Cruz Giusto If you are finding it difficult to make time with your friends because of all these habits, I think creating a solid morning ritual might be the solution. I did the math and according to what you wrote, you spend approximately 2 hours per day completens your habits (correct me if I'm wrong). That is quite time consuming especially if you complete many of the daily rituals later in the day. But despite the fact that you probably cannot go to the gym in the morning, I think many of the other habits you mention are best to do early in the day as part of a morning ritual. That way, when the evening comes you will have time to hang out with your friends whilst staying disciplined at the same time.

4 hours? That is nothing. Do you know how hard South Korean students work on a daily basis? They literally have school from 7pm until 11pm including homework generally speaking and they work 6 days/week - not 5 days like in European countries. Which explains the high suicide rate in South Korea among teenagers, but you get the point. So don't tell me you cannot even work concentrated for more than 4 hours per day? For what; because your mind "tricked" you into believing in what some authority figure told you? I think you may fear hard work and you gotta set higher standards for yourself and put things into perspective here.

I think he made the post with the intention of making people become aware of backfiring mechanisms. The problem is that people are not generally aware of how they sabotage themselves and how different actions backfire in their lives before it is too late. Different backfiring mechanisms might be the result of the following actions: Not finding your life purpose and becoming depressed and having your soul drained because you are working a mediocre job. Living in the wrong place Not continueing Education after College Pissing your time away playing video games/ watching TV. Becoming a "Jack of all traits" (average at everything) and not developing any mastery in one field. The list goes on and on. There are 100's of backfiring mechanisms and the root cause is ignorance really.

I recognize that these statements are the self talk coming from the ego or self. And they are trying to bring you back in your comfort zone generally speaking. In my own life, I have now meditated 25 days straight since the 1st of january 2017 and have had to deal with these subtle excuses almost daily. You have to not trust these voices if you want to change. In the beginning, I would trust in the inner voice and do what it said, but I now know better with experience. The inner voice just creates thoughts/sounds in your mind and they want you to backslide and go back to what has always worked. But what has always worked may not be the most optional for you. Ego is all about talking and thinking you out of change to maintain itself. Listen more to your higher intuition and take advice from it rather than your rational mind.

I too feel like I have to fight for my grades, which are all A's and B's pretty much. It is stressful at times, but that is acceptable in my opinion if there is strong purpose behind fighting for top grades. With me, I really want a good education on a deep emotional level and that requires high marks of course and sometimes, you do not get what you want as far as grades. And most of the time, it is because you are ignorant (lack knowledge about the subject), but in other cases, it can be the teachers fault. And if I have a valid argument for why my teacher misjudged my work, I will at talk to them about it and try to improve the situation. I would not really call this fighting with my teachers, but rather it is about serving my self agenda in a responsible manner. And that can be hard sometimes, but life is about doing the emotionally difficult thing. Just embrace the journey and stay consistent. That is my best advice.

This is good! your worst days are your best days. It is the days where you want to claw your eyes or get angry, miserable, depressed (even suicidal) that come as symptoms of the effect that meditation has on you. Think about it: Your whole life, your monkey mind has been constantly stimulated with all of the influences of mainstream media, society, culture, etc. and when you unhook from that, do you not think the mind will resist? Of course it will go crazy because you are taking yourself outside your comfort zone and forcing your mind to be still! It is like you take a heroine junkie who has been addicted for 10 years and you stop giving him his daily fix.How will he feel? Terrible, right? But does that mean he should go back to cocaine just because his emotions say so?

That is trippy as hell, but true if you think about it. The mind comes after, not before because nothingness spawns everything including thoughts into being

@schmitzy Why do you feel the need to be her savior? Is it because you are a people pleaser and want her approval or because you genuinely authentically want it? Really ponder that. If you are doing it to run away from something it will never make you happy anyway so what is the point? That is delusion. You do not owe anybody anything; you can surely talk to her about self improvement and help her, BUT realize that you are not responsible for her well being. So if you decide to help her, if she does not change, it is not your fault. And if you continue to be less understanding of her negativity over time and you guys drift further apart as a result, it is definitely better to just leave. Because you do not want people who are dragging you DOWN to their level and ruin your own potential. You want positive uplifting people in your life who are superstars, self actualizing, learning, growing, contributing, sharing. Those behaviors will then be transferred on to you and that is when you begin to see amazing results and life becomes awesome

I find pain to be a counter intuitive topic. I used to believe that pain was this real thing that just hits you when someone says or does something hurtful. But the new perspective I have adopter is that pain comes from resistance to reality or truth. And to an extend, there is a proportional relationship between pain and resistance meaning the more you resist truth, the more pain you feel. So if you want to get rid of pain, stop resisting the truth. Let it be and develop mindfulness over the pain. In other words, be the watcher. Then the pain will lessen incromentally over time if you stay vigilent. Daily mindfulness/meditation helps a lot here. Watch Leo's videos on meditation to learn more, highly reccomend it.

There are many different visualization techniques out there. For instance, you can visualize with your eyes open or and with music playing in the background. You can even create a vision board and visualize when you look at it. The technique itself is not really that important in my opinion. As long as you vividly imagine your desired outcome in detail and feel aligned with your vision, you are doing it correctly. But the even bigger problem is consistency. It takes 60-90 days straight of visualization reprogram the subconscious mind which the goal with visualization. When your subconscious mind is on board with your vision, that is when the RESULTS come. Because the subconscious is responsible for approximately 90% of your actions. You need to have it on your side and that ONLY comes with consistent practice my friend. Consistency, consistency, consistency. That is what you should focus on. Get the idea?

I do not think there are any real dangers with doing PD work at a young age. I do it and I am 18 myself - started at 16. Of course you become aware of how unconscious you and others around you are, you begin to draw away from unconsciousness and more toward the vision and I think it is great. Just do not get so caught up in self actualization that you neglect important practical skills because all you do is meditate or read books. You still need social skills, marketing, networking, a great physique, etc. It is a balance. Focus on becoming a hole human being and do not become a Zen devil or too involved in PD theory. You need to be someone who can crush it at life. And PD advice cannot give you that only. Action is required. 90% action and 10% PD theory should be the ideal for maximum results. Not the other way around. Good luck mate

I think there is one fundamental principle at plat here and that is: You cannot change other people. If people want to change their internal belief systems, it is up to them and he probably will not do that based on the information you share with him. Especially if his self concept (ego) feels threatened and you construct this narriative of him being "the wrong one" and the one who needs to evolve or grow out of this blue stage that you describe. I would say that the best thing you can do is to show him unconditional love and accept him for who he is. Along side, inspire him with your actions so he generates his motivation to change. This is great because it means you can focus more on your self improvement in this context and if you do thar that, maybe he will get inspired to change, but avoid being attached to that outcome.

@Leo Gura So true man. Wasted 2 years in that trap and now I am starting to see it. Stop talking shit. STOP IT. Do all that can be done each day and you will get your result. Actions=results It is so fucking simple, why make it any more complicated? What's the point. You are gonna die anyway so might as well crush it!

If you are going to push yourself, I would reccomend also doing the following. - Daily meditation 20-60 minutes - Get at least 8-9 hours a sleep every night - Exercise 3 to 5 times a week - run/jog, ride your bike, swim, go to the gym or whatever. - I know this is more work, but it will help you sustain your pace and learn faster. - Always listen to your body/intuition, it is much more intelligent than "you" are ? But keep in mind: I am just 18 years old and talking to you on a forum. I am not an expert or anything so do not take everything I say on faith and realize I could be mistaken. But I gave you my best advice nevertheless

@Aamir King It depends on how much you can push yourself. If you can do 60-hours a week without burnout, I do not care what any study says about working too much. Study yourself and experiment. And when you do, listen to your body. Listen to how you feel when you work. If you feel like you are about to break or not continue, by all means work less. Listening to your body requires that you have at least some awareness. Meditation can help you here, I myself do it daily for 20 minutes and it is a great habit to build which you probably already knew

Sorry, was typing the text on my phone and accidentally sent it so what can you do In a nutshell what I was trying to say is to follow your dream, but balance your life at the same time so you do not get so consumed into pursuing academic excellence that you neglect other important aspects like your relationships, mental and physical health. And realize that the motivation is just a phase, at least it was for me. The motivation can give you the discipline to continue long term and that is what matters. If you want straight A's, you gotta see it as a LONG term project like 6-18 months and stay discipliner every day to sustain your results. And when you active straight A's and get the approval, do not use that to try to improve others or criticize them if they do not want your help in regards to achieving what you have and even if they do keep it light. You are not any better than anyone else JUST because you have good grades. And if you act like you are, that will backfire in the long run Good luck