Extreme Z7

<05-08-16> Pleasant Irony It's Mother's Day today. I drew my mom a Mother's Day greeting for today's celebration. I've been really getting out of my rut with drawing. I still remember vividly a moment about 4 years ago when I felt very sad with my insecurity and deficiency with drawing. I tried to draw something like my computer mouse and couldn't even do that. I even google searched if drawing skills are genetic (I still had a dire lack of mindfulness). And I just gave up and went back to playing video games. Fast forward to today and I'm still not really good at it but I'm good enough that I've been able to recreate a few cartoon characters from my childhood well with nothing but a pencil and some paper. I wish I could go back to my past teenage self or even my child self and slap him and the face and yell "Practice, yoo eeediot!". But that's not important. The important thing is that I essentially drew my mom a "Happy Mother's Day" greeting and she loved it. The funny part is that she said I must have inherited drawing genes from her. Pleasant Irony. . .

@ZenBlue That's why we have a concept called faith, man. This is why the rationalistic majority of the world do not do this sort of practice.

<05-07-16> Welcome to the Future I told myself I would work on school projects and study really hard today. And while I did manage to get a lot of productivity with college work done, I found myself struggling to study. It just felt like I had so much free time today that my brain kept yapping about all the fun stuff I could be doing instead. And damn, I felt so goddamn bored. I had such a hard time focusing that in the end, I decided to ditch studying by reading and instead searched for video content of the stuff I needed to study so I wouldn't need to exert that much willpower but still gain the necessary knowledge required. You know, I think it was a good idea and worked fine. Welcome to the future. I also decided to get back to working on the indie game I'm working on in small increments again. When I get clear with all of my college requirements for this semester. You can bet I'll be coding, making sprites, and composing music like crazy for the next few months. So excited!

@Anna Konstantaki . It took me just a year until I discovered this one realization when I feel like it should normally take decades for someone in today's society to get this kind of epiphany. It can make you think of what is possible if you just keep continuing the practice.

This was actually my actualization journal entry for today but I thought that this particular entry was one I wanted to share to people outside of my journal. It is about a realization I had about human happiness from a recent meditation session. Feel free to read and let me know what you think. I'll be glad to read your thoughts.

@Fishy Thank you

@Mutupo That's why most people only know of the pursuit of happiness but not happiness itself.

<05-06-16> The Realization I've mentioned in this journal before about how I stumbled upon Actualized.org and how my life made an almost 180 degree turn that day. It was when I suddenly had an existential panic out of nowhere. Looking back, it was probably the first time I faced "The Void". The existential emptiness we all have and some fear within our being. That day, I accidentally came in contact with it because of constant isolation from a video game addiction and to date is the scariest experience I've ever encountered. Out of desperation, I searched the internet for answers to rid of the terrible emotions I felt. Read a few articles, tried doing a 5-minute meditation session because one article told me to give it a try, nothing worked. Then I decided to head to YouTube and actually search "What is Happiness?". Then one of Leo's videos came up and I never took a step backward from my search for happiness since then. Like most other people who maintain a daily meditation habit, you start to get mind-blowing realizations if you've been doing it for a really long time. This particular realization relates to why most people don't feel happy if not miserable for most of the day and for most of their life. This was a realization based on what I noticed about my psychology when I was staying in awareness while meditating. The realization I had relates to psychology, not as mind-blowing as a realization about existence but their still pretty incredible. Basically, the reason why its hard for people to be happy is because desires that manifest themselves in one's imagination corrupt the present moment. What kind of desire am I talking about? The kind where you are imagining happy feelings being caused by something in the future. These imaginations arise out of nowhere and against one's will. And here's the real kicker, the main reason why this makes one unhappy is because the mind subconsciously labels the present moment as unsatisfying thereby making us more motivated to pursue said desire. The imagination part itself is not inherently bad, it's the almost unconscious labeling of the present moment as something that needs to be different. Here's a small example: Let's say your doing some work or engaging in a hobby and your feeling pretty immersed in it. Then you suddenly notice a feeling of hunger. Let's say you have a good enough awareness to notice that mental movie plays with you experiencing eating some delicious ice cream and you imagine yourself to be happy at that moment. Notice that you may or may not be actually happy in reality, yet you likely are in the mental movie. Now if you have a really high level of awareness, you may notice that in reality, you're actually slightly less happy after the imagination arose than before it did. This is because you have subconsciously labeled the imagination as a "happy moment" and subconsciously label the present as "just not the same as the moment playing in my head". Because if you were to label the present as a "happy moment", what would be the point of pursuing the dream in the first place right? Obviously, that's just a small example involving food but you can replace the variables in it with whatever you can relate with. Still, I believe for almost of us, this really does happen when it comes to food. The reason why I find this realization very significant is a personal reason. I believe this the first "real" step I've found on my search for the staircase to happiness. This is the first time I've ever experienced and actual growth in my happiness level. Just with this one psychological realization, I've noticed an small increase in my base level of happiness or "good feelings" or whatever you want to call it. Not only that! But I feel less selfish and less ego-driven which I personally think is more significant. Because by definition, being less affected to desire is against one's self-agenda. I came across some homeless kids on the street on my way to school after the meditation session. I decided to give them most of the change I had in my pocket. Not something I usually do. (Although to be fair, they were the ones who came to me for money, XD) But still, I started to feel subtle changes in my feelings towards life as I did that. I think I'm slowly transitioning from Stage Orange to Stage Green (look up Claire Graves Model if you don't know what I'm talking about). Leo talked about the transition comes from a realization that materialism or attraction to the external will never bring you happiness. I feel like I'm just now seeing the truth in that. Now, don't mistakenly think that I've reached true happiness or even that I've reached a high level of happiness. I'm still feel pretty unsatisfied and unhappy with my life overall. It's just that I feel like I have a much clearer idea of the decisions I need to make life in order to reach more a fulfilling life. This is the first time I've felt like I "know" what I have to do to be happy. Before this, I felt like I was lost, very lost. Thank you for reading and have a nice day - EZ7

<05-05-16> Sorry. . . No journal entry today, even though I actually had something to talk about involving a realization I had today after meditation regarding human happiness. I'm just too exhausted to spend the time writing tonight. My college schedule today was pretty bad and my free time was very tight. Anyway, I am going to talk about my realization on tomorrow's entry. I want to be as alert as I can when I write it so I don't half-ass my delivery. It's a pretty cool realization, you'll probably want to read it.

<05-04-16> Still Overworking Myself I'm still been exhausting myself a lot because of the near end of the semester. I have no energy to really think and write today's journal entry. Instead, why not listen to this smart guy I discovered on YouTube share some wisdom.

@Vinsanity Accepting your flaws IS technically a part of improving yourself. There you go, paradox solved.

<05-03-16> Too Much WOrk The end of the semester is coming. I'm really spending a lot of time trying to finish the huge load of requirements needed. I've been re-watching (or rather re-listening) to most of Leo's older videos while I work on my projects for the past few days. It's really giving me the feeling that I've been ignoring a lot of personal development work for quite a while now. Who can blame me, though? I've been really distracted by quite a lot of stuff recently. I'm going to take full responsibility for this though. (A common theme among Leo's older episodes). I'm going to have to get back to focusing on implementing all these personal development concepts in my life because otherwise, they're all just going to be concepts and nothing is going to change. I'm literally the only person I know in real life (i.e. not online) who has great ambitions for the kind of life I can create for myself for the future. The problem is I still have a lot of hurdles I don't know how to jump through and a lot of ball-and-chains I don't know how to remove. This is going to take massive commitment and I'm not going to let my academic pressures hold it back. (I'm still going to do the academic work as best as I can, though. I mean c'mon. . .)

@Anna Konstantaki Maybe you're right. A short version of my entry would be: "I have too many things in my mind and I feel like I'm doing a mediocre job on each of them because it's hard to focus on one particular thing." Maybe something to clear the mind will help stop me from thinking about too many things at once.

It's pretty dangerous to even talk about it. The more enlightenment concepts that are ricocheting inside your mind, the harder it is to get enlightened. Even what I just said in itself is already concept.

<05-02-16> I Always Have Excuses I'm not really sure what I want to write about today. I could talk about how I find myself trying to fall into old habits when I really need to be taking massive amounts of productivity if I really need to move forward. I want to be able to master a lot of areas in my life but I find it so hard to focus. My mind keeps trying to point me in other directions when I'm working on a task and there's always stories and excuses on why I should stop doing what I'm doing now and go do something else. It's making me feel like I'm doing a very mediocre job on all of them each day. I'm going to have turn this around as soon as possible. Oh and I finished a new track again. Still lovin' music ans still lovin' the grind that is music production.

<05-01-16> I'm Sick of Life (but I still don't want to give up) I have to be brutally honest here. I just finished not only watching Leo's new episode but really getting into the meditative state Leo asked us to be in for the guidance session and I came out of it feeling very angry, very miserable, and very very frustrated. You should probably tell that I did not get the experience that I wanted to have yet I felt like I should. I really felt failure deep in my experience. Again, I want to be brutally honest despite how I want to feel or how you think (yes you, the reader) I should feel. I felt like punching something, it was genuine frustration. And I felt hatred. . . . at nothing. Not hatred towards nothingness, I mean I just felt hatred towards nothing in particular, not even myself. I just 'felt' hatred, it was both a very weird and uncomfortable experience. Then I got the usual feelings of dissatisfaction and loath towards the life I experience in general but stronger. I'm sick of life and I don't want to tell anyone, except online. It feels like all the suffering I've experienced through life in my memory all cropped up at one time and I just feel hatred towards all of it. Society has screwed over my life and for a very long time, it seems I haven't had the awareness to admit it to myself and now I do. It should be shameful how stupid and ignorant modern society is and just how easier life would be if everyone was more aware than they are now. But, I still feel like I should keep pushing through regardless. Notice that despite how I feel, I haven't mentioned feelings of doubt, hesitation, or quitting despite my angst. It's almost like my emotions aren't dictating my actions and they are completely separate. I have this intuition, just a gut feeling, that I need to keep advancing regardless simply because I have no other options. I want to examine those other options very closely: Give up - That feels impossible for me psychologically. I've crossed a point-of-no return not only with enlightenment work but with personal development as a whole. Kill myself - I literally have no reason to do this. I'm not even anywhere near considering it. Run Away and Find a New Life By Myself - And how am I supposed to do this? It's simply unstrategic. And you know what, I had to try to come up with those other options and I think the last one was forced. Keep moving forward and persisting is the only thing I know. It's almost depressing to me that this is the only thing I know to do when dealing with failure. It's like I have no control or choice whether I should keep moving forward. I JUST DO IT. I don't even want to mention anything about my ego right now because I don't want to write an entire novel in just one entry.

<04-30-16> I'm Tired Weeeeeee! Strong work weekend! I'm tired. I'm going to take a rest.

<04-29-16> Next Month is Going to Be Intense Finals week is coming up and aside from studying, I still need to accomplish the required projects for the semester. I have to be really strategic, the first 3 months of May are going to be very critical. I know there are much bigger and more long term goals I need to achieve in life but sometimes, one must focus on the most urgent of matters. I probably won't be making any videos to have more time to improve my academic performance. I'll likely resume after finals week is over and all my projects are done. On other news, aside from Leo's videos, I really haven't been reading a lot of personal development content over the past weeks. I've been spending almost no time reading books probably because I have to spend more time studying for college. This will probably be another thing that I will have to resume when finals week is over. However, I have gotten really really serious about mindfulness work over the past week probably because of Leo's "How Your Mind Distorts Reality" video. It's been a pretty weird week for me because of this. It's has not been as serious as say being in a Chinese monastery, but I've been more aware of the phenomenon in my experience than I usually am not only intensity-wise but also duration-wise. I also seem to be have some gains (or rather reduction) in my levels of stress and worry. I still stress and I still worry but it's starting to feel more and more petty. Even if I don't do well with my grades in college, I should at least remember to be mindful with everything. So far, the majority of the results I've gotten from my personal development journey have been from my daily meditation habit. I want to see how far I can take this. I wonder. . . no no. . . I've done that too many times.

<04-28-16> College, College, College I'm starting to wonder if the way current academic systems are structured are too outdated. At least where I'm at, the college system almost seems to assume the fact that so many ways of having a career of sprouted over the recent years especially freelance or self-employment careers. Not to mention there are so many ways to get yourself hired nowadays that are so much more effective than getting a college degree, although granted these strategies are usually more challenging to implement. I bring this up because I can't help but notice how the college I'm in keeps pretending like I already know I'm going to work at the software engineering industry just by the fact that I have a computer science major. I'm lucky enough as a millennial in today's society to actually have clear interests that will influence my future career choice and I can say for sure that if I get a software engineering job, I'd probably only trying to plan my way to getting out of it. I'm currently waking up at 5:30am each day just so I can have extra time to learn music. Yet the academic system seems to think that by putting someone on a schedule of a certain amount of hours per week of training on some arbitrary subset of education that you will become one of the smartest people in society. So far away from what I actually see. This academic system completely ignores advanced concepts of human psychology. It's like the people who engineered these systems where themselves pretty ignorant. I've taken more notes on the concepts that are being taught in my college than from Leo's videos or whatever educational material I find on the internet. Yet, I've reread my non-college related notes more times than the noise they teach at the college. I have short stories worth of notes per college subject yet I don't remember anything from them. Yet, whenever I learn something from creative work or personal development, I only have to bring up my notes half the time to remember them. This has been a pretty ranty entry. Don't really plan on doing this a lot, so I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.

@Anna Konstantaki No Problem! If I make more videos, it'd probably be best to accompany them with text, anyway. I think the video format is best for showcasing good internet videos I came across during the day. Not so much what I did or how I felt about what I did today.

<--[04-27-16]--> Gotten Very Pro. . .Pro. . .Pro. . .Productive Today! No video again today, but for the exact opposite reason from yesterday! Yesterday, I was so freaking depressed from exhaustion that before I went to bed, I told myself to make a commitment to optimize my energy for the next day. And I have been able to do just that! Granted, I still have a load of work to do until the end of the semester, but I've actually gotten a lot of work done today where I felt excited to do and finish. Aside from academic work, I just spent a lot of my time working on a new song. I'm really excited to share it with you guys! A NEW ELECTRONIC TRACK! I've gotten a really good amount of work today that required me to exert a lot of effort and I feel just as exhausted as I was yesterday only I managed to get a satisfying amount of work done. All I want after I finish writing this entry is have a good night sleep. Oh and as far as videos go, it looks like I won't be making that much in the future. Making those videos takes a lot of time and I'm not even that passionate about them. When I first started making them, I thought it would be a good idea to at least try to make one daily but I don't really have a lot of time in my daily routine for it. From now on, I'll only make a video entry if I feel like it's worth it and if I have the time.

You want an enlightenment joke? You are. . . .

<--[04-26-16]--> Gotten Very La. . . La . . .La . . . Lazy Today Sorry, no video today. I just don't feel like I have to energy right to make one, even though I got the time. I found myself getting drowned in thoughts and imagination for most of the day and it really has gotten me struggling to get productive. At least, I managed to get a decent amount of creative work done especially this morning when I still felt energetic. I woke up at 6am and managed to get 1 hour and 30 minutes straight of electronic music producing before I needed to go to school. That's longer than how long I spend on it on average! And you know what, I was proud of what I was able to get done. It was the afternoon where I felt a sudden decrease. I didn't feel like I had the focus to effectively do what tasks have been given to me. I was actually able to get some drawing before I started writing this entry but I stopped from lack of motivation to keep exerting effort. On the bright side, I did feel joy and pleasure from making music and drawing today. This is something I've recently tried to work on is getting rid of the neurotic thoughts that push me to do what I do because they suck the joy out of work and also life in general. I almost feel like music and drawing isn't even as much work as it used to be, it's starting to feel more like personal recreational fun. Anyway, I feel sooooo exhausted to the point that even though I still have more than an hour until I go to sleep. I feel like I just want to play a video game with that free time. I'm going to try my best to be mindful as I play it though. But I hope tomorrow will not be the same.

<--[04-25-16]--> This one's got Thomas the Tank Engine in it (Because, why not?) I really have to practice my speaking skills. Their honestly quite awful and I don't completely know why. I recorded the audio for this multiple times and even then, it still came out slightly worse than amateur in the recording I decided to use. I think I'm just too introverted to the point where I barely know how to speak by myself. I can write just fine but speaking is not something I have a lot of practice with. I don't even have a lot of anxiety, I just don't know how to speak well in front of a mic. Anyway, enough of that. . . Shoutout to @Anna Konstantaki ! Come check out her journal, Sonder: http://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/2137-sonder/ TED: TED's secret to great public speaking by Chris Anderson: http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_anderson_teds_secret_to_great_public_speaking Great Video about public speaking! If only I could get to put it into more practical use . Thomas the Tank Engine (just in case you wanted it ) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnrwM7vFn_U UPDATE: As my video was uploading, I decided to play a flash game while I wait. Then I came across this BRILLIANT ad banner. Yep, that's right! "Prepare to say goodbye to your free time." I'm not making this up, this is a real ad banner I came across. Probably the best (or worst) video game ad I've ever seen. It definitely made my day.

@jcgiusto Damn, the notes I wrote on some index cards can't compare to this.