Christian

I feel you man m. I am exactly the same way when it comes to academics. That is why I get straight A's in school. It is all about having that burning desire to improve. My advice would be to honour your emotions and pursue your goal of academic excellence and pursue it. But do not get so consumed into working hard that you neglect other aspects of your life ESPECIALLY relationships if you do not want r

A great way I like to think about 100% commitment so you guys and myself can get am idea about it is this. Have you ever experienced a situation where your parents tell you you have to do something like: You have to go to bed at 8pm - no exception! In your mind, there is NO exception at that point. All you know is "I have to do this" and I think there is something to this kind of thinking that might be useful when we try to discipline ourselves. Jack Canfield has this saying: 100% is a breeze. 99% is a bitch and it is so fucking true. The reason it is so hard to change is that last 1% of resistance and if that is removed, I think it feels liberating cause there aint no going back!

@blacksapp In my journey of personal development, I have had a similar experience. The proces is that you try to change and fail miserably time and time again, but it does not have to be that way. I believe that the root problem of why we do not change is because we are not 100% commited. Like commited commited. If you had a clear vision and had true 100% commitment to realize it and took self responsibility on top of that foundation, you would not be stuck like the way you presently are! Believe me, I have been in a similar situation to where you presently are. The tough solutions that we resist are the ones that are neseccaey to realize our true potential.

I have recently discovered a relatively niche field called ASMR. It stands for autonomous sensory meridian response which is a europhic response the body has when it encounters soothing sounds. For instance, the sound of a pen writing on a blank piece of paper. I think there might be a place for this in personal development. ASMR is not just about relaxation, it goes way broader than that. My theory is that if you suffer from stress, anxiety or low self esteem or a combination, ASMR can greatly help you. I say this because ASMR can go in and calm your body down and get you into an emotionally healthy space much faster than meditation for instance (in my case). And when the body is calm, you feel calm and clear minded and that will impact your work, happiness and of course self esteem. I just recently used it. I watched like a 30 minute video which was ASMR combined with positive affirmations and I can just intuitively tell that it has a lot of potential. How much, I do not now because I just discovered it, but I felt like sharing it anyway. ACTION step: Look up ASMR on youtube and watch a few videos to get a better idea of what it is and to experience the benefits. Thanks guys

As you can tell by the title, I have a toxic younger brother. Short list of examples of the things he has done: He has moralized me and called me weird, autistic, stolen things from me, talked shit about me behind my back, not taken any responsibility for anything he has ever done, threatened to beat me up if I did not give him a card with a picture of me on it so he could use it as ID to enter a party with his friends. I know this is really fucking bad, but I sometimes I literally just want to beat the shit out of him. I know this is not the best response, but this has been going on for 10 fucking years and I want him to respect me for once in my life. He does not see all the ways I have grown like the fact that I get straight A's, that I am wise and know what is worth to pursue, nothing. In a nutshell all he ever does is try to bring me down and never agrees with anything I say EVER. In the broughter context, since my birth, he had criticized me more than 10.000 times literally, it is so bad and I just want him to change? Any advice on what to do would be greatly appreciated...

I do not want to take responsibility for the relationship if that means changing everything about myself to make him like me because that is literally what he wants me to at this stage. And even if I do change come aspects of my personality which I have done, he just findes something new to judge me on. It is a never ending cycle that he creates to withhold the illusion. However, I know I could do better when it comes to taking responsibility for my emotional reactions when he triggers me with his downputting talk. And other than that, I cannot really do much other than just ignore/avoid him as much as possible because staying around him is clearly creating more harm than good.

@Babybat The family dynamic is that I am the "odd one out". When I was approximately 7 years old, I got diagnosed with autism and even though I am one of high functioning, my parents are quite protective of me especially my mom. This of course damaged my self esteem, but it also made me an easy target for him in certain contexts. Socially, sometimes I can be a little obnixious, but I am getting better, meditation helped a lot. But still, he always treats me like some weird outsider who does not get it and when I express myself authentically, I am labelled weird and stupid and I just cannot get out of that frame. I feel like the fact that my parents are so overprotective generally when he behaves like this just strengthens that whole narriative that I am this inferior being even more which just adde fuel to the fire and makes the whole situation worse because then I did not stand up for myself which is really what I want.

What has grown me the most and has been one of the most challenging journeys is my experience with meditation. I have done over a year of meditation on and off. Meditation has made me a lot more aware of how I affect others around me and what my body/intuition is communicating. It has made me more calm and peaceful because I have realized that I am already a hole human being and I am much less attached to ideas/concepts that I were in the past. Much more open minded. Other than that, I would say that my parents divorce and the way my brother treated me in the past has grown me stronger. It gave me a tougher character to persevere through the challenges of life. Hope that was useful and merry xmas btw??

You talk about how when you study, you are not able to have successful study sessions and I might be able to help you here. The best way to study succesfully is remove every single fucking distraction you have when you study. No tv, no food, no smartphone, no cat, no TV, nothing. You need to "get in the zone" and you can't do that if you are distracted by everything but the thing you are studying see? In "becoming a straight A student, Cal Newport has a formula which is: work accomplished=time spent x intensity of focus Ideally, you want to focus on getting more focused in your study session. Essentially, try to find a quiet place to study and calm your mind in the process to do this. It is really quite simple...

I think E-books can be great if you use an e-reader, but not if you use a computer as it generally has a lot of distractions mainly the internet. But reading physical books is in my opinion the best because I find it more appealing to the eyes to look at paper rather than pixels. Also, it is easier to focus and you can highlight or take notes by hand while reading. Alternatively, you can also use an electronic note taking program like evernote or onenote which I prefer as I can write more in less time compared to writing notes by hand.

Say think you for the sincerity and get out of the situation, i.e leave. You want to be with people who lift you up. But if it is someone important to you, tell them how you feel and set boundaries going forward. No need to attack them.

Study social dynamics, learn the social norms and learn about body language. Also, listen to people's vocal energy when they speak to you. Realize there are many different layers. The surface is the words that are being spoken and the deeper layer is the way the words are delivered. In other words, the vibe behind the words. You want to listen more to that because the vibe tells you more about a person and what to do than words ever can by themselves. Also, it makes it easier to know their needs when you know how they feel. So do that and calibrate throughout your social interactions. It is a skill so of course you need to practice to get better. You really can't analyze your way to social skills..

Firstly, I would say that the problem in internal meaning it has something to do with you. More specifically, it is your perception that generates these emotions of jealousy and neediness within you - not your friends. So I would say that you take 100% responsibility for these emotions and start meditating daily if you want the real solution that leads to lasting change. It will take time, probably years to be realistic, but it is definetly worth it. The false solution for you is distractimg you from your emotions by changing your external environment to serve that purpose.

The self help community likes to praise that you should always be grateful. Be grateful for your kids, your house, health, etc. But that level of thinking is very black and white and could get one in trouble; if you authentically feel like not being grateful for something, better show that than faking. Faking creates suffering, but being yourself is much more fulfilling. Of course there are also exceptions to my claim, but I think the general idea is mostly true.

Ever since my childhood, I have had low self esteem. My low self esteem manifests in many ways particularly in my relationships. I am often afraid to speak up in the face of conflict, I feel like I am not interesting and that I do not have anything of value to offer. I gode my authentic self to avoid rejection, hatred, loneliness, etc. Also, I chase grades and materialism over relationships and I think I wanted to have the grades because my brother used to put me down constantly - never felt good enough so I wanted to prove myself and show how good I am. But I can see that it is destroying my life really if I keep going along this track. Because it is not authentic to me to be behaving like this. I desperately want to change the root which is my low self worth, but I lack the information currently. If anyone could give me ideas on how to increases self esteem, that would be highly appreciated.

If you are backsliding like that, try to think about what let up to the backsliding. What is the root cause? My projection is that either you have been pushing yourself too hard and as a result, you disengage from important habits or you are not balancing your life effectively. Maybe you are too involved in personal development and neglected other parts of your life that seemingly are important. My claim is that it is okay to take a break if you feel the need to; just make sure you come back to PD and create a strategy that keeps you on track for the future. Maybe that means getting more sleep, baby stepping your journey rather than maximizing. But these are just my ideas

@Marinus If you want to harness your intuition and make it easier for you to get an accurate answer, I would definitely recommend daily meditation/mindfulness. When you meditate, you increase bodily awareness which you need to make intuitive decisions. Another tip is when you listen to your intuition for the accurate answer as to which career to choose, listen to the emotional tone behind the answer. If you ask: Do I want to become a psychologist and feel contraction or defensive, then it probably is not the right choice because it is coming from protection of the ego. The right choice is the one that feels expansive and authentic to you and that is the point I want to end on; no one can give you an answer to this question really outside yourself. People can give you advice, sure, but in the end, you are the only one who can generate the right answer using of course your natural intuition

Be more mindful of your sensory experience when you communicate. Then you will naturally want to calibrate in conversation to make it authentic - which implies less drama, gossip, ego-bullshit because you see the suffering it creates as it happens. Daily Meditation/mindfulness helps too..

I had this pretty cool insight recently that god is everything. So often, we tend to judge others as good or bad according to our own egoic needs and desires. The self agenda wants so badly to survive. But this self is a delusion and all ideas about how life should be is that too. But that is also part of the infinite consciousness of god and god is open to all possibilities even falsehood and deep delusion. From the perspective of god or nothingness, there is nothing wrong with anything. Reality is just being. And this nothingness is always present. You can never escape it. It is the truth that cannot be communicated or understood, yet it is always there looking at itself. It can only be experienced directly. I think this nothingness that god is has its own hidden agenda, which also can only be experienced. Because it contains every possible experience and perspective an infinite range of perspectives and therefore allows for infinite expansion. Every perspective and experience is a feature of god and it is always changing. It is never static. It wants to move and shift, destroy create, live and die.

Meaning only exists as an artificial construction created by the mind. It is an illusion. If you ever look at reality objectively, with no beliefs, you will discover that there is no definitive meaning and that is the reason why meaning is created in the first place. It is a coming mechanism to deal with the absolute mystery of existsance. It is more emotionally comfortable to hold ideas and beliefs than to gaze upon reality objectively which is why almost nobody does it. It keeps the ego - the seperate identity - alive and that is basically all man cares about honestly.

I feel you. I also have a hard time figuring out what in relation to my life purpose. But I think the most important thing to do is to lay the groundwork. If you are lacking friends/security, handle that first. The basic needs you have are the most relevant because those will hold you back the most unless you have done years of consciousness work. Also, start meditating daily. I reccomend 20 minutes a day as a start for you. Besiddes this, try different activities to point you in the direktion of your life purpose. Maybe the reason why you have a hard time finding passion is because you have not tried enough activities. That was the case with me. Start taking action and stop watching videos. Basically, what I am saying in a nutshell is this: build your life - your real life, get out and fail, laugh, cry, love , discover. Human beings are means to live. And you can learn more from living than following.

The original standardized way of describing the law of attraktion is basically: Whatever you think about, you attract. But it is really not that simple. If you think about something, money for instance, and do that from fear of going broke, you will attract being broke. Because whatever you resist persists. You need to adress the root cause for why you are in resistance to what you want and experience whatever comes up. Before then, you are basically stuck or regressing. These fears and limiting beliefs are like chains that you need to free yourself from before something new can take its place

Imagine having to explain that you just barked like a fucking dog to your girlfriend or someone else if they hear it. Yeah, that would be kinda fucked up ? You would need a great comeback to get away with that one ??

@Drivro1 You can't teach pigs to fly. That's what my previous coach used to tell me. It's quite sad, but true..

Beliefs are not important in the first place. The best thing to do if one wants to find god is to drop all ideas of god and just sit. Then, the answer can be seen. But only then. Yet on the other hand, beliefs can help you to get a sense of what this thing is that you want to see. So in a sense, beliefs are helpful, they are just not the truth. By the way, beliefs are the map, not at all the territory. Some "maps" are better suited for setting you on the path than others. It is all about how the map is interpreted and used. That is the most important.