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@Kyle Gjerseth Love yourself. You can’t love another until you love yourself. Also, read the book Models: Attracting Women Through Honesty

@StarStruck I am going through something similar. Make sure you aren’t being condescending and try to become interested in people as they are. Meet people where they are at. Show interest in them rather than seeing their viewpoint as foolish etc. It can be hard to express interest in someone who doesn’t share your values, but in order to get along with people, you need to be able to comfortably express yourself, and be open and interested in others. Otherwise people will sense your inauthenticity and be guarded. Read Models: Attracting Women Through Honesty by Mark Manson. It will help your relationships with both with men and women. If people don’t accept you for who you are, then why do you want to be around them anyway? If you are openminded and kind to them, and they still judge you, then be thankful that you didn’t waste your time on them, (especially in dating). If you want to figure out how to get along with every one, work on becoming a spiral wizard. (Spiral Dynamics) Learn to identify a persons’ values and interests, accept their level of development, and talk with them in their own language. Instead of trying to fit in with the crowd (dumb yourself down), create your own circle. Become a leader. You could start a meetup group for meditation or start a book club. Start going to events or places where people will share your interests. Library, meditation retreats, self help work shops, or anything related to your business/purpose. If the people you are surrounded by aren’t encouraging you to improve, then surround yourself with those that do. Take responsibility for you relationships, be choosy about who you let into your life. If a girl doesn’t like you, her loss. Find someone better, someone who you do vibe with.

@Leopold It sounds like you have experienced some trauma. Were you bullied, neglected or abused as a child? Whatever the case, you have to uncover the limiting beliefs you hold about your self-worth... and about other people. Learn to transcend them: Learn about Shadow Work. Leo has a book about it in his book list. !Watch Leo’s video on Self-Love. !If you have Leo’s book list, check out the second book down in the consciousness, enlightenment & spirituality section. Download the Duolingo app on your phone and learn the language. Start a daily Journal and write about why you distance yourself from people and what you can do to overcome your limiting beliefs. Read Models: Attracting Women Through Honesty by Mark Manson if you think you need help with that dating. It also helps with socializing and being comfortable in your own skin and expressing yourself.

If you haven't watched, I recommend checking out these videos:

Check out this Blog video from Leo: https://www.actualized.org/insights/requisite-variety-and-creative-laziness

My Purpose is to become a life coach. I get the most fulfilment and offer the most value to others when I am teaching, giving advice, and leading by example. Two of my strengths are love of learning and creativity, which feed into my domain of mastery: personal development. If you have a general idea about what you want to make a career out of (baking, veganism, etc.), then I think you are really close to finding your purpose. If it's what you are passionate about, then you can find a way to make a living out of it. Check out Leo's Blog Video Requisite Variety & Creative Laziness. It will help you think outside the box. https://www.actualized.org/insights/requisite-variety-and-creative-laziness Here are a Some notes I took from it: (credit to Leo) If you can be more creative than your problem, you can overcome it. A chess player wins because he has more moves in his repertoire and can see further ahead into the match than his opponent. (Whoever is most nuanced will win) In order to escape wage slavery, you need to become an entrepreneur, to create something novel and original that provides great value. You need to be extremely creative. When you start a business, so many problems will be thrown at you, the diversity and variety of these problems will be so vast, that your mind may not be complex or nuanced enough to handle these problems elegantly and you would fail. When you actually take responsibility for creating something new, figuring out how to solve all the challenges that come with it, what will usually happen is that you will start making excuses for why it's not possible (level 1 consciousness). You need to be an innovative leader and take creative responsibility. You need to commit to solving the problems and not to making excuses. If you don't, you will remain a wage slave. You need 100% commitment, to take complete ownership over every problem in order to achieve your goal. When you are starting your own small business, you can't just walk in to work and talk shit with your friends at the water cooler while you are waiting for your boss to tell you what your next assignment it. You have to take note of what your competitors are doing, what net technologies are coming out. Adjust to those things through the lens of your goals. How can I use these new tools to improve my business. You have to be ruthlessly honest about some new idea for your business. You might be biased to your own creative idea, but truly contemplate whether you are just holding on to it like it's your little baby, or if it really is an effective idea. Perhaps it is too utopian and unrealistic or too stupid of an idea to pull off. Ask yourself if it will work in the marketplace. Be careful not to sell your soul (your vision) for money or fame. If you commit to something strongly enough, your mind will start to generate new solutions in order to solve that problem at any cost. Only 1% of people think original thoughts. The other 99% are sheep, they parrot what they heard from the news, their friends, their culture, celebrities and so forth. You need to deliberately push yourself to think outside the box in every possible way, beyond what any human has ever thought, beyond what school has taught you, beyond what your classmates or coworkers think, beyond what you hear from celebrities, beyond what you hear in pop culture, beyond what you can read in any book. You need to actually tread new ground, (trailblazer) to generate something totally original and new. Self-education, taking on multiple perspectives, and consuming lots of original content comes into play. Diversity of content, niche content, not just mainstream content. Don't worry so much about how to do something. First, worry about your intentions and priorities. By realizing the significance of a thing, on understanding it at a meta level, on setting your intentions and priorities, the problems will solve themselves. A problem is solved through your requisite variety. Set aside time to sit and think for yourself, in solitude. Contemplate, visualize, and strategize. The truth is that most situations in life are not intractable (hard to control or deal with). Relationship problems, financial problems, spiritual problems and most others are completely solvable problems. There are many, many solutions to these problems. You just have to go out there, be committed about it, be passionate about finding solutions, be open-minded and flexible, be willing to change yourself. Oftentimes, solving a problem doesn't require doing a certain thing more, but significantly/radically changing how you do it altogether. There needs to be a paradigm shift. You need an upgraded ego-mind. Increase the quality of your beliefs and assumptions. A lot of times the mind is stubborn about how it wants to solve problems. You need to radically change who you are, your identity, your core, in order to create real change. Whenever you undertake an ambitious project, whether it's with your business or dating life or health or whatever, you usually underestimate the degree to which you're going to have to deviate from your original set of ideas in order to accomplish the thing that you want to accomplish. This is why most people fail. Requisite variety gives you options. When you think you have no option, you are paralyzed. The more paths you can see to reach a certain thing, the more empowered you become. Find ways of expanding your options in dealing with any situation. Put more tools in your tool box. Put more money in the bank. You will be able to deal with more day to day problems when your knowledge and tool kit are expanded. To live a healthy life, you should be constantly shedding layers of your ego and identity in order to achieve success. You cannot become successful in a sustainable way if you aren’t able to transcend old beliefs, assumptions, and layers of fat from your Ego. Over a few years of doing this you will become unrecognizable to others. Read more, research more, study new perspectives. This isn't enough though, then you have to contemplate it. The people who will thrive most in the future are those who are most mentally flexible. They will earn the most money. They will be the leaders, the geniuses, the celebrities, who make a real difference in the world. Everyone else is going to be following these people. Do you want to be a leader or a follower? Don't think of this as some giant chore. Make this a joyful process. Think of this as your art. Building and cultivating a beautiful life is a work of art. Start thinking of it that way as you're working on yourself. You are sculpting your own life, polishing rough edges, making it perfect and beautiful. What else are you going to do with your life?

@Clarity808 I live in south Orange County. It's a 40 minute drive for me to Anaheim. Background about me: I have been watching actualized vids since 2014. I am currently planning/preparing for my career as a life coach. I will go through the IPEC training program when the pandemic ends. I have about 200 books that I am trying to finish to better understand reality and to become my highest/best self. I consider myself stage orange-green-Yellow (SD) and Individualist-Pluralist, closing in on Strategist (Cook-Greuter). It would be great to talk with someone else about personal development for me as well. It's not something that comes up much in conversation, and when it does, I lose people very fast with advanced concepts, etc.

@TheDude0 Learn how to be a leader.

@ertopolice Consider moving to a bigger city. There will be more options and you won't have to travel as much to meet up. Maybe they think you are too far away so they don't engage? Not sure how far you are from other towns but this could be a reason.

@Rilles Try journaling every morning. I personally find it much easier to come up with solutions by writing. Write with the intention of finding solutions and you will come up with many. You have the answers, you just need to let them surface.

@NatureB No way, can't stand LA haha. Orange County

My taste in music had a great influence in turning me onto personal development work. I want to share some artists that caused me to challenge the beliefs and assumptions that I held or simply helped me through tough times. I encourage you to share your own influences, so that we may learn from each other in an enjoyable way. Here's some off the top of my head: Personal Development Influences Tool Pink Floyd U2 Puscifer _____________________________ Other Baroness Alter Bridge Iron Maiden Gustavo Santaolalla Kronos Quartet Pearl Jam 3 Doors Down ___________________________ Genres Jazz Traditional Arabic (Takht) Classical Middle Eastern Classical

@StarStruck Check out Robert Greene. The 48 Laws of Power, The Laws of Human Nature, & The 33 Strategies of War. Here is an interview of him talking about one of his books:

Maybe checkout Leo’s videos on Ego Backlash, The Dark Side of Meditation, and The Dangers of Spiritual Work.

Bummer, I'm 80 miles north of SD.

@wisdom-seeking man Go to the Start Here tab on the site read through the whole page. Identify the areas you want to work on and research them via videos, books, etc. Here is a blog video I think most people missed that I found useful: https://www.actualized.org/insights/requisite-variety-and-creative-laziness Go to the tab All Videos > Foundational and watch those. You could also just start with Leo's older videos and work your way to the newer stuff. One dating book that isn't on Leo's list is Models: Attracting Women Through Honesty By Mark Manson. Best dating book I've ever read. Dating: books 1, 2, 3, & 10 Emotional Mastery: books 3, 6, & 7 Productivity: books 1, 3, & 4 Dealing With People: books 4 & 6 I love the audiobook version of The Autobiography Of Benjamin Franklin. He is a great role model. Here is the link if you are interested: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WUGFADO/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taud_p1_i0 For Life purpose, I can't recommend Leo's Ultimate Life Purpose Course enough. Life changing.

@Corey11 I recommend the following: Go to the Start Here tab on this site and read through the whole page. List the things you are interested in most and focus on those areas first. I personally wouldn't give up the meditation practice. Look into adding a contemplation, self-inquiry, yoga (meditation using focused breathing), etc. to go along with your meditation practice for 'better' results in your spiritual journey. Leo recommends contemplating the ideas he shares in his videos, rather than just watching them. He has a few contemplation videos for more on this. Leo posted a blog video titled Requisite Variety and Creative Laziness. It's a good video you might have missed: https://www.actualized.org/insights/requisite-variety-and-creative-laziness Check out Leo's book list and read lots of books. You shouldn't rely on Leo for all your information. Leo's vids are great, but doing research on your own is essential. A commonplace book is a great way to organize your notes & track your progress:

SD is good and very popular but is mostly focused on society. It has helped me a ton. Ken Wilber covers more bases with his integral model so I would read him too. I also recommend Susanne Cook-Greuter's 9 Stages of Ego Development. You can download it as PDF. Leo has a 3 part series on it if you haven't seen it.

@BartekD Life is too short to be doing something you aren't passionate about. Follow your heart. If you feel that doing this is representing Who You Are, then do it. If you feel obligation and resistance about it, then let it go. "Search your feelings... you know it to be true."

@peqkno Oh thanks, you're right

@peqkno Glad it helped

@ertopolice The more you want something, the more you push it away. Act and think as though you already have all you need. You are already doing this but in a negative way. You say to yourself: "I am struggling, I need this and I'm missing that." Your thoughts are creating your reality. When you want something, the universe says: "okay, you want this." When you say to yourself: "I am struggling," then you create your struggle. Your thoughts create your experience. Pay attention to how you talk to yourself. Start using "I am" statements and let go of "I want" or "I need" statements. The latter are statements of lack (future oriented), where the former is a statement of what is (Present/Now). The present is all there is. Also, I recommend watching Leo's Blog Video called Requisite Variety and Creative Laziness. It's on page 7.

@Elsiedottie Great question, there are so many ways to do this. I will list some things that have helped me and see what resonates with you. -Take care of your body: Eat a healthy diet and exercise daily. -Surround yourself with people that make you feel good about yourself and distance yourself from people who treat you poorly or make you feel bad about yourself. -Read lots of books! Becoming more knowledgeable and wise in all areas of life will make you more confident and will help you to relate and get along with a much broader range of people. (I recommend purchasing Leo's book list) -Work with a voice coach ***-Work with a Life Coach: Transformational Coach, Relationship Coach, or Confidence Coach.*** -Travel -Leo's Life Purpose Course, find and do something that you are passionate about. The most attractive and confident people are passionate about their work. Find your Domain of Mastery and Zone of Genius. (Nothing will increase your confidence more than living a life On Purpose) -Start a meditation habit -Research and study confident people from history. Biographies and videos of people you admire. List the qualities they have and commit to developing them in yourself, no matter what. When your desire is high enough, the how doesn't matter. You will find a way. Some inspiring people for me: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Muhammed Ali, Winston Churchill, Teddy Roosevelt. ***-Watch Leo's video on Self-Love. Self-Love is always the answer.*** Hope this helps you.

@Jon_Bundesen Write out a list of questions that you can 'dream' or vision about. Set a timer for 5-30 minutes, ask yourself the questions and then imagine the results and the feelings you will create when you achieve your goal. Do this everyday for 60 days in a row. Don't miss a day. Here are some example questions, but make sure to come up with some of your own. How will I feel in my body after I stop overeating? What unforeseen benefits might I attain when I overcome my addiction? How will my relationship with myself change? Will I have more respect for myself? How will I look? --- I believe Leo explains how to do visioning in this video. Also, he shows you how to Vision in his Ultimate Life Purpose Course. It's worth the money if you're interested.