flowboy

He spent 12-16 hours a day drawing for 4 years. He does character design, basically draws monsters for a living, now also employs other freelancers to draw monsters and takes a cut, makes a few thousand a month passively that way now, on top of the assignments he actively works on, which he obviously gets to be picky with now. Are you creating an imaginary barrier between yourself and some far-away identity, such as you being an "art director"? What does an art director do? Does he get assignments and then organise other artists to work on those assignments with him as a team? (I'm guessing) Then do that. Boom, now you're an art director. No one is going to give you the title, you have to put the castle together yourself and then crown yourself king.

@Fuku I feel for you man. I've spent most of my life having anxieties and obsessively thinking and analyzing about what's wrong with me, talking about it to family members and friends, and then sometimes it seemed like mostly what was wrong with me was that... in and of itself. But that realisation was not satisfying nor curative. The more I'm doing deep inner work and learning about myself, the more I'm making connections of how I came to be this way and how I can get out of it. I guarantee you that your mental state has a reason, I could even help you figure it out. Don't think of "trauma" as some dramatic event that other people had happen to them and you didn't. Everyone has conditioning. Past is interconnected to future, until deconditioning happens. More often than not, things go back to the earliest years including birth.

Burnout is a function of workload over agency x purpose It’s much harder to burnout on something that is meaningful to you. So if you’re going to work long hours, invent a framework where it’s not just a means to an end (for money).

@Space Here's what AI can't take away - personalization. A painting that objectively looks as good as one created by a human - that's one thing. Art was never purely a competition of skill. A painting or drawing that is about a human experience, or even capturing a personal relationship with real people - that will always feel more special than a machine generated whatever. Exactly because YOU created it from your perspective. That will have meaning to people who know you. Don't take your humanness out of the equation. You are your niche.

This desperate ripping-open-curtain thing is all over my life. It's what I feel when I think about the never ending chore of keeping my house clean. It's what I feel when I think about still not having my driver's license. It's what I feel over any way in which my life is not the way I want it and I don't know what to do about it.

Primal session #2 (the following is the raw output of what came up during a primal therapy session, don't take any of this too literally and worry about me ) Exploring a feeling that's been triggered when nothing's working. Nothing I'm doing is working. And people criticize/punish me for trying. I'm in this double bind (thanks Richard) Pattern is showing up in multiple ways. I needed to get the fuck out, then I was born. Then everything was WORSE!! Much worse. The terror. i had to go but it's MUCH MUCH WORSE than expected and now I can't breathe and I want to go back. First it was about my mother. Being caring and nurturing when I got in fights. FUCK YOU. It was all fake. She didn't see the real pain. She didn't want to. No one took care to protect me. The people who where supposed to help me, couldn't, wouldn't help me. I'm all alone. And I'm drowning. Then: anger, wanting to shake my mother for her useless mothering. Can't you see I need self defence and protection. Why won't you see that. Why are you trying to turn me into the sweet kid from the story in your head, while I'm drowning at school in bullying and aggression. You don't love me. I am hurting myself so you see my real pain, and still you don't see. I am hurting myself by getting others to hurt me (omg, insight. I do that a lot) And still no one is in my corner, no one supports me. She worries about me but she doesn't get the message. Then: body feels "twisty" This desperate anger Ripping open a curtain. I have to rip open the entrance to survive. It's a spiderey circular entrance/exit More like a giant anus with folds. Super weird. Then I feel this all-consuming desperate anger, I rip it, and... NOOO. NO. NO. NO. NO. Terror. It's worse on the other side. I feel very baby-ish. I'm letting out babyish screams. I feel a sense of being sucked by my solar plexis, can't breathe properly, pressure on my chest, dragged by my skin. I'm being dragged. Being handled. So much light. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. (I was doing weird twisty movements on the floor for a while without seeing or feeling much) Then the feelings repeat. Desperate anger. Ripping something open with both hands to survive. Then: terror, noo, being handled, being dragged, wanting to go back. Double bind. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I can tell this is about my entire life, somehow. It's connected to everything. "Why did no one tell me/teach me/protect me" THat's a theme that reoccurred a lot as well. Now I know what it's related to. Why did no one tell me that being born was worse than staying inside That's why I feel betrayed.

@actually Geweldig! Werk aan de winkel dus. Go get that natural high back

@actually you inspired me to a video response

@Manny It's very simple. Decide not to cum today. As long as you have that firm decision, you won't let yourself get past the point of no return. This does require that your woman slows down when you ask her to. As long as you don't get past the point of no return, and always are disciplined in slowing down when you need to, you will always be motivated for more. Which means you can last for hours, half a day, maybe replenishing your minerals in between. This is the way I do it. I didn't say easy. But it is simple, and it should be. No tricks. Just that.

You need to get to know yourself in order to be yourself. I wouldn't define "being yourself" as this, but it definitely includes saying what is deeply true for you, digging so deep into your own authenticity that whatever comes out sparkles with your unique hue. Being yourself is not about being quiet or loud. If the environment you want to be yourself in, requires you to be loud, be yourself in a way that people can hear you. Don't conflate "being yourself" with staying in your comfort zone.

@SQAAD Carefully spot the difference here between saying something and being deeply convinced of something. Do you believe everything you say? In the moment perhaps. But when you have a casual conversation where you just express your thoughts, and suppose you read it back a day or a week later? You've changed your mind a bunch of times already. Being deeply convinced of something negative might hurt you. Saying it out loud casually won't make it come true. This is where OCD might actually help: as long as you're doubting everything, no negative thing on your mind will manifest itself like that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ_hIPAgP_0

@Panteranegra It depends what your natural tendency to deal with it is. I would advise to balance that out. If you're an introverted type, your tendency might be to shut down completely to other people until you've "figured it out". In which case I think an important practice is to balance it out with real-life meaningful experiences with other people. Working out. Psychedelics perhaps. You can't think your way out of an existential crisis, although you may think you do. If you're a more extraverted type who tends to seek distraction by oversocialization, hanging out with people, and talking or partying all the time. Or you might want to go travelling the world and just move from place to place, making new friends everywhere until your crisis is resolved. Then you might want to balance that out by journaling and being introspective. You really need both.

This only went bad because you couldn’t let it go. The moment you start defending yourself to her friends who don’t want you around, it becomes harassing. It makes sense that you got the reaction you did, because you in essence prioritised your ego and being right over their comfort and boundaries. So just walk away when you don’t feel interest and you’ll be fine

Without a rigid structure you can count on, there’s no feeling of safety which is a basic need in a relationship. If your partner needs you while you are busy with another, now they can’t count on you. Of course we do have the capacity to love many. The question is do we have the capacity to support many. Life is making choices.

Are you being vulnerable with her by talking about your deepest fears, shameful secrets and insecurities, as well as your dreams and future that could include her? Are you getting to know her most vulnerable topics as well as her future dreams, and weaving them together with yours? If not, try that.

Don't worry about that, it definitely will But with experience, dates have awkward moments too! Don't be afraid of those and freeze up It's all about how you are able to tolerate and be okay with the awkwardness and move through it. That's leadership.

@Razard86 Interesting how the way you overcame your suffering apparently made you arrogant and unempathetic. Makes you wonder, doesn't it. Something that is typically seen in people who never really integrated their pain, just pushed it away. By judging it as ignorance for example. Self-judgment creates other-judgment. Where did I say this?

Tim Dillon is a comedian. What does he know? He can think about stuff and theorize like anyone can, doesn't mean his loose thoughts are fact. Also quite hypocritical of him since he clearly is following his dream and being what he wants to be. Now he and Lex seem to believe that they stumbled upon one thing they liked and wanted to be, and there could have been nothing else. I think that's nonsense. If they had been born in a different time, they also could have found their path and it would have looked different. It depends a bit on how you define success, for example it's perhaps too late for you to become a world class ballet dancer or tennis player, but if by success you mean providing for your living expenses doing something you love and of your own choosing, then in a first world society with a healthy body and mind there's no reason you couldn't do that. The only personality trait required is to not be a quitter. With enough time and effort, everything else that is required can be learnt. It's tempting to look at all these people with unfulfilling jobs and think: "See, it's not possible for everyone. Only a select few make it" I used to work this dead-end callcenter job, and everyone who worked there had dreams when they went to school. One had wanted to pursue higher education, another had wanted to be an interior designer. But when I pressed her on what happened, it turns out that she had just decided not to pursue it because it seemed hard and she didn't know how. Me being my naive 17 year old self, I went to my computer and printed out all these blogs and documents on how one could become a self-starter interior designer. Delighted, I brought them to work and gave them to her. She looked at me weird and said it was sweet, but never spoke about it again. You see, it looks kind of sad, but realise it is a decision. They just chose not to. Most people just prefer to be comfortable and vaguely unfulfilled, rather than have a challenging fulfilling life. If that makes you sad, then decide to not be that and stop wasting your energy on self-doubt. If you introspect and find that you're unable to be satisfied as a comfortable vaguely unfulfilled average person, then you know that eventually you'll make it (or die before you do, which is fine too because the fulfillment comes from the striving, not from the getting there. ). Because then you'll not be able to make that decision to quit. Even if you start a business and it fails, you'd just get up and try again. So what I did when I had a lot of self-doubt, is I looked inside and asked myself: Am I the kind of person who would decide to give up? I realised that for me this is no, so I stopped wasting time and energy on self-doubt and got on my journey.

@Razard86 I have been diagnosed with ADHD. I have coached people with ADHD. ADHD has made my life very very difficult and intermittently depressing for 10 years until I got a handle on it, and I still struggle at times. There's probably nothing you can tell me about ADHD that I don't already know. In fact I know more about what it is and what it's potentially caused by and has been linked to, than one would learn studying psychology. Bet you didn't know it's been linked to the mother taking paracetamol during pregnancy. Or exposure to environmental toxins before birth. Or being exposed to emotionally unsafe or stressful situations during childhood for a prolonged period of time. While it's true that it's just a group of symptoms and nothing can be pointed to in the brain that is "it", and the symptoms could have different underlying causes, that can be said of most diagnosable mental disorders. It's also true that ADHD is not just a curse, it's also a gift and correlates with qualities such as creativity, innovative thinking, intuition and calm leadership in the face of real danger, and it's true that if the current school system was different that these people would do much better, and the top-down enforced learning in modern day's assembly line school system doesn't work for them or accomodate them at all. That doesn't mean that you should make light of these people's problems. People like you and me can do psychedelics and self-development and learn to concentrate better. There's people with more severe ADHD symptoms who literally can not sit still anywhere or control their emotions, their prefrontal cortex functioning is severely impacted to the point that they are too forgetful and impulsive to properly take care of themselves. You've clearly never been inside the home of someone who has to cover their home with post-it notes just so they pay their bills, feed their pet and brush their teeth. You are being disrespectful to people's very real suffering by making statements like this and your assertions are completely unfounded and at the very least incomplete. I take personal offence to this. In fact I consider myself quite lucky because I was able to get a handle on my symptoms in my twenties and could stop taking medication. There's countless people who only in their 50s realise that they had it, and wonder why they could never be quite productive at their job or actualize their potential in the career they knew they could have had, if something in their brain had just unlocked. Now they finally have a reason why normal things were always extra hard for them, and they can get therapy, coaching or medication specialized to them. But it doesn't give them back the lost years. Here comes you saying their problems don't exist.

What the heck? Who specifically are you talking about that you are looking up to? I suggest reading their (auto)biography and books about/from them to understand their genius better, because I'm pretty sure it's not abstinence that was their special sauce.

Great advice! Let's tell all the depressed people to stop "being lazy" and smoking weed because really, it's all their fault. They don't need therapy or to heal from trauma which they have no insurance to pay for or anything! They just need a peptalk. Why stop there? We can tell all the people with ADHD to just stop being lazy too, and just concentrate! Then move on to the schizophrenics because really, it's all in their head. Just stop imagining shit that's not there bro. What other problem he knows nothing about can he solve from his mansion with a pool? Maybe tell starving people in poor countries to just solve their problem and find more food! Then tell the North Koreans to just don't be so afraid to get murdered and get out of their country! It's all so simple! (if you have a simple mind I guess)

@Delmo You don't "build" compassion and empathy. You remove what's in the way of it. Shadow work would be a good way to do it. Any instance where you lack empathy is as good a place to start as any. For example: your ex girlfriend told you that people treated her badly in the past and she felt a certain way about it. You thought she shouldn't feel that way. There you go. That's what's in the way. Where have you not allowed yourself to feel that way? What was that about? How can you bring more empathy and compassion for yourself there? What were you trying not to feel, and if you didn't push it away, what would you have to feel? I guarantee you have felt the feelings that your ex was describing. You're just pushing it away subconsciously. All you have to do is stop. It's scary. That's the way.

You're doing so many amazing things! Take a beat and appreciate yourself for that, if you haven't yet. The money will come.

Don't you want a relationship and a way to feel useful/helpful to other people?

You can't really heal someone. Or if you could (help her heal), that's not what was expected of you in a relationship. That's still coming from the perspective of "fixing" her. It's quite common when the woman talks about issues, that the man thinks: "how do I fix them?" She doesn't want to be fixed. She wants to be heard. Listened to. Understood. Will that make the issues go away? No. Sorry. But then how do I get her to stop thinking that way and having these issues? You don't. She is going through emotional roller coasters all the time, anyone in their feminine energy is, and she just needs to talk about them with people she's close to. Sometimes those things sound like problems for you to fix, but don't be fooled! Just hear her out and she'll find her own way through. @Delmo If you want to develop your empathy so you do better in your next relationship, an excellent thing you could do is explore the unfelt pains of your own childhood. Lack of empathy is evidence of childhood trauma. Why is this so? Because when we're traumatized, we repress our pain. When we repress our pain, we can't empathize with others who have similar pains anymore. (because understanding and feeling their pain would make us feel our own pain, and that can't happen - is what we decided as a survival strategy in childhood) Break down the repression, now you have empathy again.