denydritz

@herghly

What I understand is that it would be "running away" if the circumstance is something you can influence. The crime rate in a city is not something we can influence directly, individually (even if we are part of a crime-fighting task force). But there are problems we can influence that we run away from. In the case of abusive parents, I would say we mostly don't have influence over how other people behave. But we can influence them in some way, by showing a great level of love and caring. Abusive behavior comes from somewhere, and we can help that person identify and release that behavior (unless they are attached to that behavior and want to keep doing it). An example of something we can influence is an event that makes us sad, maybe the death of someone. It's an external circumstance, and we can't change it at all, but it could make us "run away" from it and not want to deal with it. In this case, running away isn't good because the sadness is an internal condition triggered by an external condition, and the internal condition will last as long as we don't deal with it. Cheers!

@Viking Maybe you could watch YouTube videos about the topic you're studying? It sounds to me that the reluctance to study is a symptom of a deeper issue. Maybe you feel you're not doing or being part of something significant or important in your life? Any studying would feel like a waste of time if you associate it with something that isn't important. I want to add that you don't 'have' to do anything, everything is your choice (even staying alive and breathing). Finishing your study by force of willpower is possible, but it's very exhausting and you won't like it, right? Maybe you need some place or some way where you can apply what you learn or give back to society using what you know. It could give you a sense of importance or worthiness (worth to study). Cheers!

Very uplifting to hear a musician put a positive message into music - and rap/hip-hop nonetheless! The crowd went wild when the children appeared with the meditate message on the background. Thanks for sharing the video @Ether, as a musician I also try to write positive messages into my music. Cheers!

I would say postpone college for the time being, because college takes time and money. Like @zoey101 says, you don't want to get stuck in a long-term commitment that you don't want to keep. Unless you have parents who are asking you to go to college, then that's a different condition ... There is a good book you may want to read, it's "Start With Why" written by Simon Sinek. Or you can search the TEDx talk with the same topic that gives the brief version about what is passion. Searching for your life purpose isn't something I would give a time limit (since people living long lives still search for their life purpose). But Simon Sinek's book/talk can be a good foothold. Cheers!

Hi @haguga. Our brain is wired to be 'risk averse', meaning that we identify loss more intensely than we identify gain. We would rather avoid pain than getting pleasure, even if the pleasure reward is much bigger than the pain risk. What happened in the past may trigger this risk averse response in your brain and it affects your feelings. You identify the loss, and you feel the pain, and your brain is conditioning you to keep it in mind so that it doesn't happen again (ever!). However, this condition is living in fear that an unpleasant experience may happen again in the future. Choosing gratitude is a deliberate exercise that 'fights' against the natural tendencies of your survival instincts. Another possibility why it's difficult to let go of past events is that we think the good and bad things are out of our control, when in fact we have quite a lot of control over what we think and feel. Maybe you can scan your life for the big wins you've had and practice expressing gratitude for those events - the times when you were in control. Cheers!

Hi @nour-cha93. I believe that emotions are truth and learning to listen to our emotions can reveal the truth about us and what we're asking. However, it's possible for us to feel 'false' emotions, such as feeling fear when there is no physical danger in a situation. If you think that emotions are a lie, they are still 'real enough' to have real implications (consequences) in our lives. A person who feels 'hate' towards another person can physically injure that other person - and that injury is very real and not a lie. Therefore, whether we believe emotions are true or not, I think it's safer to assume they are and work with the framework that emotions are real. Cheers!

Agree, let him have his vacation. He may send you stuff because it's a habit that's difficult to let go. Maybe he has difficulty letting go and trusting in other people. I would support him and tell him to stop sending me stuff and enjoy your vacation Cheers!

Yes, my life is better from doing personal development. I have more clarity about how I think and it helps me to understand how other people think and therefore I can communicate better with them (especially people close to me). In some rare cases, I can help other people with problems they're facing regarding habits and personal goals, and even relationship issues on some occasions. It has made me more courageous in (calculated) risk taking when it comes to money issues. I meet more people (although I am an introvert) in new environments where I am the least smartest in the room, learn new things that I'm not sure will be profitable or not, and have the ability to consider that I may be the one with the wrong idea/opinion and always willing to upgrade my understanding Cheers!

Hi @nour-cha93. Maybe the next step is to choose a 'niche' you want to develop? Self development is a broad term and each of us are here because we want to improve different aspects of our lives. For example, my primary focus right now is to improve my wealth, so I search for tools and techniques that can help me with that. So what is it about yourself you want to develop? Better wealth? A stronger body? Build intimate relationship? Grow your understanding in spirituality? Cheers!

Hi @WaterfallMachine. I have disabled friends (deaf). They are some of the most friendly and confident people I know (maybe precisely because of their disability). My friends don't view themselves as disabled, only 'different'. They don't see themselves as 'not normal', which is a habit they remember each other to build. I don't know your precise situation and what are your limits, but confidence is a function of character. People are comfortable with us as long as we are comfortable with ourselves. Even 'normal' people will look awkward if they're not comfortable with themselves, while 'disabled' people will look pleasant if they're comfortable with themselves. Perhaps the key is in accepting or embracing your condition (if there's is nothing you can do to change it)? I understand it can be difficult to look at the bright side when you are feeling down, but there is always a bright side Cheers!

Hi @dvdas. I agree with @furashido that you can't really help or 'deal' with any person that aren't interested in self actualization. Every person is in a different level of development. Some people may be interested, while others aren't interested yet. What we can do is be available when they do need help and ask us to help them. I try to refrain myself from giving opinions or advice, even when people ask me to help them with a certain problem related to self actualization. The mistake that we can make is feel that we are better than them (which makes us prone to judge other people) even though it may seem that way. If my journey of self actualization only makes me feel higher than other people, then I don't think I've made any progress at all. If you help them and they get mad at you for not understanding, then the responsibility lies in both sides. I try to ask questions to make sure I understand what the problem is before giving any hint of solution or action they can take. And I have to communicate in a way that speaks the same language as they do, use the same words as they do, so they understand what I mean. Helping other people is a difficult skill to develop. But I think it's worth to develop. Keep moving forward! Cheers!

Hi @King of Hearts. I like drinking fresh water with squeezed lemon juice in the morning for a detox. It's a simple recipe you can try before moving on to other diet habits that require effort. Other than that, I like making green smoothies using a 50:50 mix of vegetable and fruit that each has a benefit, one of them being detoxification (usually the vegetables are responsible for this). Cheers!

Hi @beatlemantis. It seems that your partner does love you and is willing to make it work. These two pieces of information are the most important and most relevant to your situation right now (from my point of view). If he does love you, and you do love him, then you can make it work. What I catch from your description is that your anxiety or worry may be a 'self-fulfilling prophecy'. You worry too much, and then start to doubt yourself and start to doubt his feelings, and it eventually does make him annoyed and bothered why you keep questioning his feelings, and the relationship begins to stretch under the stress. It would be a different condition if the problem was external (such as a disapproving family or other). But since the problem seems to come from internal factors (your thoughts and feelings), then I absolutely believe there is nothing standing in the way of your happiness with him except yourself. If you feel that you're becoming unattractive, then it seems you need to build your self love. It's difficult to allow someone to love you when you have a hard time loving yourself. Building a self love is a deep process and maybe your recent trip home has triggered some memories that make you feel not worthy of being loved? Cheers,

Hi @brugluiz. It seems what you mean is to ask whether you should think about your life purpose until you know what it is, and then take action AFTER you know it; or take action even though you haven't found your life purpose, hoping to finally discover your life purpose along the way? The advantage of figuring out your life purpose before taking action is that your action will be aligned with your life purpose. It will have direction, give you a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction (or passion as @BjarkeT writes), and you will be efficient in your choices. But finding your life purpose may take time; it may take a long time (months or years) until you can identify it. The advantage of taking action (the 'craftsman mindset') before figuring out your life purpose is that you can figure out your purpose through trial and error which may be faster than simply thinking about it. You'll sign up for jobs, meet people, go places, and build your life purpose based on what you discover. I think quite a few highly successful people 'stumbled upon' their life purpose when they identified it along the way. The downside is that you could end up getting stuck in a job, or a relationship, or a project that ultimately fails and doesn't make you happy. I don't know if I've found my own life purpose. I mean, I have a 'draft' of it, and it does give me a sense of fulfillment, satisfaction, and direction, but I feel it can be designed better, help more people, achieve bigger successes, and so on. Maybe we never truly find our life purpose, we can only keep building towards it Cheers!

Hi @How to be wise. My mentor says that creativity is simply solving problems. If you look at creativity as the ability to solve problems, then we can increase our creativity by exercising our problem solving abilities. I agree with this point of view, because to create what we want in life, we have to solve the problems that are in the way. Problem solving happens the most when we are in a relaxed state of mind. I think a technique you can try is meditation to relieve stress. Meditation makes us calm and not stressed so we can access our creative, problem solving capabilities. It doesn't build creativity directly I suppose, but it does open up access to our already abundant creative, problem solving abilities. Cheers!

@ULFBERHT I agree with @Anna1, working on achieving goals depends on the nature of the goal. If you look at goals as projects that have timelines, then working on a single project until it's finished is more efficient than working on multiple projects at once. EXCEPT for when there is a 'waiting time' in one of your projects when you wait for an event or another person to reply, then you can work on another project while you wait. If you're trying to build habits, then I believe it's more efficient to work on building one habit at a time. There are opinions that say a habit takes 30 days or 66 days until it becomes a habit, but I don't believe that completely. A habit becomes a habit when it does, not sooner or faster. The advantage of building one habit at a time is you can build a system that is 'customized' to create an environment where that habit can flourish without obstruction. Personally, I prefer minimizing my goals to the most important and essentials ones. I feel that working on multiple projects at once requires a 'startup' cost whenever I change projects. The transition between projects consumes mental energy that would be better spent if I focus on one project and achieve a state of flow. I get more things done by working on less projects. But that's my case Cheers!