Snader

I'm not a pro in this, but I've been close to people who have been fighting with a a strong nicotine addiction. My one hippie friend who's into spirituality and does hardcore spiritual practices, has been fighting to get rid of the strong nicotine products he's addicted to, as he knows they don't serve his ultimate desires and values. I've seen how it's been with him and talked with him a lot about it and we've noticed that there are emotions that affect it a lot. He has this sense of purposelessness, which is fueled by his other insecurities and fears. Those things create some sort of void in him, from which he tries to pull himself out of, with the good feeling he gets e.g. from those nicotine products. It's hard to say, because I don't know you, but you might want to observe your emotions and what you feel, when you have this huge urge to smoke. You might find some real golden nuggets there. Also what I've seen with him; when he's busy and has some sort of project in his hands, he can avoid those products quite easily for weeks and even moths, but when his life conditions and situation shift back and he loses his drive, the insecurities arise and he's back on it again. So what I've noticed helping for sure (even with my own addictions) is having some sort of purpose or direction, that keeps you busy in a positive way. Of course, sticking to your life purpose might require that you work with some of your emotional deficiencies first.

You don't need to be typically masculine all the time to be a man. Doing you giggling and stuff and NOT GIVING A SHIT whether she likes it or not, is true masculinity, especially after you made a manly act to explain it to her. After that, you shouldn't worry a shit. She might just be unconsciously testing you and your masculinity. If you keep being authentic and stop worrying about what she thinks about it, chances are, that she will get super attracted to you again. And if not, then she might not be the right girl for you. So definitely option 3, but try removing this ''hoping'' part from the plan. Easier said than done, I know.

Don't forget the 99% of internet users who use internet to educate themselves with memes and TikTok, instead of knowledge and wisdom.

It's gonna take 1000s of years before over 50 % of world population is ready for the most advanced stuff Leo talks about, assuming we don't destroy this planet before. World evolves slowly and government is built by the average development point, which atm is far from true spirituality. Although individuals can grow, and with their development, contribute into collective development.

Depends very much on the field, local economy and your resume.

I do feel the temptation for additional credibility though, especially when you've done a lot of work around the subject yourself too. It's a bitch and comes bite your ass later if given more than little finger

I moved this and another one of your posts from Self-Actualization section to this section.

You're probably talking about SD to guide people, whether it's to understand your other videos better or just to help them understand human development better. If some people stumble to check Leo's videos for the reason you gave him credits, isn't that a good thing in the big picture? You know Leo's videos are valuable and so they can be for those others as well. The insecurity is that you are afraid of people changing from your channel to Leo's, which shouldn't be a thread, if you're creating content that is offering unique value. If you're not, you might want to start directing the ship to that direction. I don't know what kind of content you are creating, but talking about SD and being worried about competition, sounds alerting to me. Honesty and authenticity > greed and competition in the long run.

Study successful people and important concepts around success and you start seeing patterns. Also, take enough time to consider your goals and motives around money, how much you really want or need, and why?

I promise you, there is a new start for you. Your life could be a mess atm, but you get over that, you fix those issues with yourself, you conquer, that's what we do, when we're challenged by life! We don't give up, we prevail! Sometimes stuff feels so personal and it hurts so much that it feels like there is no joy anymore, that the current cloud of shit has filled the sky for good. But that's not the case, there is always a new peak of joy, happiness, bliss and love in front of us, and those things are waiting for you, until you fix the mess. Life has so much more for you. Suicide doesn't fix anything. That's good. Keep talking to your therapist and he will guide you through. You clearly have work to do, but man the feeling after you've conquered those deficiencies and start seeing light, it feels AWESOME!

I think that's a great idea! A professional look from outside could do wonders. You have plenty of material for you and your coach to work on. Some people take coaching without any sense of what their values and strengths are and what they want out of life, and even in some of those cases the coachee walks out of there with a clear sense of direction after few sessions. So you really don't need to worry about having enough data. You've already done really good work! I don't know if there is any online systems you can use to search for a coach. If you don't have any contacts or connections, anyone like a friend with experience vouching for some good coach, then I think you can just google coaches around you and try to find one that resonates with you. Many coaches offer free introduction, so you have a chance to get to know if the one clicks with you before you commit to be his client. I would ask around a bit first. That's a real sign of being serious about life and taking action to get things further!

Looks really nice to me. As brief as it should be, while also telling quite a lot about you. Yeah, why to change anything if already getting more results than needed.

Thanks for sharing! That's a nice journal that's interesting to read. I'm generally curious; what do you tell about yourself on your profile, if I may ask? What is the kind of sales pitch you give of yourself to make the girl decide which direction to swipe and whether to be interested in dating you at all in the first place?

People have personality traits which shine differently in different stages. At Red, more vicious personality could make a great mob boss and would avoid Blue type of living to the last teeth, while the benevolent one would stay as a low rank wannabe gangster and find his way faster to communal Blue.

Sure, I'm all up for that. Practically it's really useful in many cases and even mandatory in some. But if we take a look at that activity closer; why is there the need to do that in the first place? Apparently, it's just to get strong contrast from what you do most of your time so that you can keep your head straight, but there is no absolute reason it should be drinking alcohol per se. If you need a break and want to release some fumes from time to time, I think there would be other ways to do that than getting drunk. Although if you were e.g. a philosopher who's life is all about having a clear mind and your bread on your table depended on that, then maybe getting drunk and fucking up with your brain could be the way to go, but I don't think that's what spirituality is. I think if you were a natural human being without any social conditioning or any other altering of mind, you wouldn't have the need to release and let off. I think the need is caused by something ''non-spiritual''. In today's mainstream society where alcohol is a fundamental social aspect, I agree that it is useful to get drunk once in a while for the sake of balance, especially if you are doing personal development. But still, alcohol doesn't pass my standards for spirituality.

I wouldn't call paralyzing your prefrontal cortex to lose your capability to do proper reasoning spiritual. The aspect of feeling unity is nice, but the way you do it is far from spiritual. It goes to a category of ''drinking a bottle of Vodka to last longer in bed is spiritual, because it promotes intimacy''. I do get your point there though.

It's not like if you drink X bottles of beer you lose Y amount of consciousness which equals Z hours of meditation. Alcohol does lower your consciousness. When you're drunk, you're not much conscious, obviously. In the long run it also lowers your base-level consciousness, but you need to take a look at how it does that. What does this substance exactly do to you mentally and physically and what is your relationship to it? Obviously, all the time you spend wasted is away from your time to do spiritual practices, but there are lots of other factors that lead to your loss of consciousness. Look at what it does to your health, then look at the role that health has in different aspects in your life and how important those aspects are to your capability to do spirituality, not to mention basic personal development. Look at how much alcohol plays with your emotions, how much it clouds your judgement, how it tricks you to make decisions that are not aligned with your higher-self, that you are later married to. I'm not saying that quitting alcohol completely is the solution. It pretty much depend on where you're at and what your relationship to alcohol is, but by looking at those factors mentioned above, we can make the statement, that if you want to maximize the amount of consciousness work you will be able to do and the gains you get from it, you want to work your way to minimum, and eventually zero alcohol consumption.

Keep studying. Do more research and observe people and you'll see they are quite a lot different. There is also that radical difference, but it may be more hidden to you depending on e.g. what kind of people you've been personally dealing with. Dealing with people especially in organizations where their values become exposed easily help a lot. There is a featured thread on examples of every stage on Self-Actualization section that is worth checking out.

You just figured it out for yourself right there. By raising your consciousness and having awakenings and insights about the nature of life, especially suffering, can make some big shifts in the way you look at suffering. While you're at it, you can work to understand the system and see where it comes short and then with your own action, start contributing into fixing those issues. That of course requires that you understand the system as a whole with all its parts, which is quite hard and laboring. If you want to DO something to fix those problems, there really isn't any other way than studying the shit out of what's really going on, and then start taking the right kind of action. But yeah I feel you, it's frustrating to see people being stuck and hitting their head against the wall year after year and see that leading to unnecessary suffering.

I relate strongly. I've been there with pretty much the same attachments (and to some extent I still am) and it took some time of this quick up and down roller coaster to really see what's going on and to get to a point, where I can say I'm doing progress and developing, while at the same time being happy with my way of living. This is a deep topic that I could talk for hours with lots of nuance as it touches so many facets of life, but to give a short general advice, I would say your problem revolves around UNDERSTANDING and BALANCE, like BlackMaze said. Balance in this matter is also really complicated thing, because you are pushing yourself from the center of gravity, so the ego is scouting for reasons to slack off, and hearing balance as it's usually represented, usually takes one to the extreme of old habits once again. I learned this by abusing the notion over and over again personally and also seeing it happening to others too. That's one way to go, but I think that bringing more nuance into it, can make the learning curve shorter. So basically what's going on, is that from perspective of Spiral Dynamics you are pushing yourself from stage Orange towards stage Green. Also, if you are consciously doing quality personal-development, changes are, that you are pushing towards some stage Yellow as well. That means big chance. That means worth 5-15 years of development. But the problem is that if we always just keep pushing and pushing, without putting consciousness into it, we will do that till the day we die. One thing we need to do is that we need to drop the idea of being a person who's at stage x. We need to suck up the information and and then use that information to UNDERSTAND what's really going on. With that understanding we can enjoy the fruits of all present stages at play without being totally integrated those states through those 5-15 years of work. The balance is not needed only between work and recreation (while that's important too), but it's important to implement balance in both per se. The action you take in your life that you consider progress towards the next stage shouldn't be all about the norms of the next stages, while the recreational time you take shouldn't be all about the old toxic habits. This was a game changer for me, because that way I didn't only manage myself to -- without guilt and resentment -- enjoy some important aspects in my life that were kinda part of the ''old me'', but I also started enjoying ''the work'' more. Cutting old unproductive habits cold turkey / giving them free movement, are both relatively problematic ways to go. I think that with careful contemplation, self-reflection and of course study of development, it is possible to tweak your life dynamics a little, to make the process of progressing while enjoying life easier. Once you've found your ways to go, soon you will just one day notice yourself changed to a whole another person. The ways to do that really depends from person to person, but to give some context, I share some points from my life: I don't socialize on my free time as much as I used to, but I still feel it's important for me to do so from time to time, so I do it. Most of my socialization is with people on lower stages of development. I try to enjoy some aspects while I ignore others. I've learned which forms of socialization I should just simply avoid. In example, sometimes I do some sports with some friends and maybe some strangers. I can enjoy the activity and ignore all the other bullshit. Let's say it's a team sport, then I will scan those people and analyze them. Then I make a choice whether I want to join the sauna night after the tournament. Sometimes those people are too toxic and they like to talk about stupid topics and have conversations I don't want to join, but sometimes it's the case that you can really have some good chat with those guys or just genuinely have fun or whatever it is you feel you need at the time, for having balance. I used to play video games when I was younger. I loved them. I loved especially competitive fps games, but gaming is something that I just recently found out I need to quit completely. I tried so many times to do gaming in a responsible and reasonable manner, but I learned that it's extremely difficult for me. For me it's the aspect of competitiveness. I always tried to play just to have fun, but couldn't have fun unless I was the best and to be the best takes too much investment. So I found it easier to quit 100%. Although I can have a match of NHL or FIFA with a friend once in a while for socialization, but I don't really enjoy that particular activity per se. I found out that watching a movie or some TV-show once in a while is something I can do and enjoy without consuming it too much. As an important aspect of progress, reading is something I've had to work on. I first had an assumption that I should be able to read everywhere at any time, but I realized that I can't do that. I can't focus on a book if I'm not in a certain state of mind. Sometimes I even need to take a weekend trip out of town to be able to concentrate enough. Again, it's all about realizing what's the case, then doing what's needed to be done to make it more pleasant and doable for yourself, without any guilt, because you understand. So the point is to find the balance. Enjoy some old habits, but be careful and observe yourself. See what works for you, how much you can lean back so that you don't fall down. Life really feels like a grind and struggle if you don't bring responsible balance into your development. This isn't perfectly structured advice, but I hope you get something out of this. Feel free to ask anything, if you feel so.

@Tim Ho Haha don't thank me, thank Paul

Look at this bad ass. Next time you bitch and moan about little setbacks and struggles in life, take a look at this dude. That's a strong mind in action right there, and that power you see there is something we are all able to tap into, if we take responsibility and strong action.

Nice one! But check this one out: You're streaming on Twitch. The game you stream is called reality and every other person is also playing the same game, but from your POV they are watching the stream you're hosting. When you look at the stream, you see there's nothing but you sharing your screen where you have your OBS open, which is recording the screen as it is. And you know what that means. You're streaming a screen that is streaming a screen that is streaming a screen, and so on to infinity...

You don't need high IQ to do effective spiritual work. You need wisdom.

@justfortoday The simple usage of logic in your words, to point to the deeper inexplicable Truth behind them, is amazing. Your words and attitude ooze authenticity, which helps the reader to dive deeper. Great post, thanks for sharing!