EmJay

A friend once told me that whenever he starts seeing the number 11 a lot of times, he would know SOMETHING is gonna happen, whatever that means. before he told me about it, he warned me that I might get infected with it, and that his friend infected him. I knew that it is bullshit and I'm aware of how the mind works when such an idea is put into it, you start seeing the number everywhere, for example: once I was with him and he was like oh its 11:47, and im like so? he said 4+7=11 so its 11:11! That was a while ago and thankfully, I believe he is over this obsession. But what if something like this , a negative theory, a devilish idea, I don't know what to call it. is put into your mind, and it happened to be where you have trauma, where you're mentally weak. Then it's not so easy to let go of it and say yeah I know its bullshit. a simple example would be:- a young teenager, born in a religious family, masturbaits, feels guilty about it, and whatever 'bad' things that happen in that day, he blames himself because of the negative belief. So how to go about fixing it? Thanks in advance.

1.5. Primary - 3.1. Secondary

How to stop caring what others think of me? How to stop living up to people's expectations? How to stop being super shy because of fear of rejection? How to stop the need of validation from everyone, specially close people? How to stop fearing being embarrassed? etc. I believe all the questions above are of the same problem. I am Always anxious while around people. It feels really uncomfortable remembering an embarrassing situation, even a mild one. I avoid talking to strangers as much as I can, this includes my teachers. and I'm probably in university only because that's whats expected from me. I've been a people pleaser since as long as I can remember, and I don't know how to go about changing that. Maybe its childhood trauma, that I didn't get the unconditional love I needed, or the fact that my older siblings bullied me as a kid. I've watched Leo's 'How to stop what others think of you' years ago, more than once, but it didn't really help me. I remember in the video he talked about how it's bad for you to live as a people pleaser, I really know that it is, but knowing isn't enough. I also push myself here and there but I guess I am not pushing enough. I am aware of the urge to not post this, telling myself that I can find my way without involving people, forgetting that its originally the point.

I wanna thank everyone who replied to this topic. I can see the great potential in all these different but ultimately same approaches.

we all have this void that we "need" to fill, boredom is the feeling of that void whenever its not filled good. of course, this void comes from the ego , or survival , its that for you to survive you got to always be doing something "useful". (maybe this was true thousands of years ago when we had to hunt and such) Boredom is what made people build high towers and invent high-tech. However, when you are more and more aware and conscious, you realize that its okay to just sit here and do nothing (meditation). meditating is all about countering this void/boredom, not by giving it a short term fix, like something exciting, but by directly facing it. One of the best actualized.org episodes for me is "Overcoming Addiction - The Root Cause Of Every Addiction". Some insights from my journal: Bored? You are not bored. Your ego is just taking control at the moment. And its demanding you to do something or get something. Just let go. You can use this drive tho to be creative and think of things and do things, but ofc to do that you need to let go of the tension first. Realize that in this life there is nothing to get.

I just watched the latest the Actualized.org video "How Modern Branding Exploits & Abuses You" and man its so valuable. I urge you to watch it if you haven't. It reminded me of some insight I wrote in my journal not long ago. and thought I could share it with you, here it goes: Let me tell you my story with the barber shop, I go to this barber shop for a while now. There are 4 men who cut hair, me being the kid I am. I go there, whoever is empty I sit. Until one time I got a bad haircut, and I went back to them after a couple of days to fix it and almost shaved my head (not really, just had to get a really short haircut) now when I went there, I was angry, one of the barbers asked me to sit, and I cashly (straight forward without hesitation) said to him I don’t want to. And I went to the person that I know can fix my haircut, I sat there mad, and he told me one thing which cant be more true. He said: Its your fault that you went and sat on that barbers chair. To this day, I stopped sitting with the barber that ruined my hair. But I still sat with other barbers that I did not want to cut my hair. (and got bad haircuts ) and I would say to myself things like: they're not that bad!, maybe this time they'll do good with my hair, now apart of that is actually true, but I can confidently say that 90% of why I sat where I don’t want my hair to be cut is because of shyness, because I did not want to make anyone feel bad at all, yes to this degree and its obviously toxic. In the video Leo talks about how being a people pleaser is of course Not the highest Love and it enforces the devilry qualities in people. One of the most egoistic qualities I found to be enforced by people pleasers is this: (another insight from my journal) This leads us to another problem with a lot of people In general, which is: when you give someone something (whether its time, or money..etc.) they start expecting it from you every and all the time. And that is just dumb, so dumb if you think about it. Ego makes us dumb and illogical, and the worst thing about it, it makes you believe that you’re right. We can take this deep example of a person dying at the age of 30 lets say. And instead of realizing the true nature of life that every human life will end in death, he does not accept that he's dying, because he really expected to live a long life, he might even get mad which is so dumb, getting mad with god, forgetting, totally forgetting that god gave him 30 fucking years of life. If god did not give him life at all he would not have complained. You see?. So back to our problem, we shouldn’t be so naïve to fall into this trap, yes we are humans and it feels bad when a friend don’t invite us to an event, or when someone stops talking to us, but we have to understand that it reached beyond our control, and this where we should let it go. There are things that "belong to us", and here is where we should make our own decisions. ( like which barber I sit with) and there are other things that simply don’t belong to us, and so we shouldn’t try to control. (like: a friend ditching you, its your choice to talk to them or not, but if they don’t wanna talk back its 100% their choice! They don’t owe you shit!) I've always been that shy person that didn’t want to "hurt" anyone. And when I got to self-development and heard that you should let go instead of trying to control, I thought I was doing the right thing. however, I was too far towards the end of the spectrum, and the ego is so sneaky when it justify itself. One of the core things I learned in life is to find balance, and this applies everywhere. (in this example: yes don't be be an asshole, but also don't be a doormat.) Find balance between Controlling and Letting Go Thank you for reading

Why do we feel so happy and in love on the first part of a relationship? It is because they look good, and our mind distorts (what we think of as) "reality" into thinking that just because someone looks good, he/she is perfect. If you ever wanna get back that feeling of deep love towards your long term partner, then just do the following: be in the moment, let go as much as you can of your ideas towards this person, let go of their past from what you've seen or heard, and their future from what you have constructed. This comes back to the original idea of how judgment ruins happiness and so, of course, love. Have you ever wondered why drunk boyfriends turn loving and "cute" all of a sudden? It's because being drunk is linked with poor judgment. In the long run. Only when, we stop judging , accept their "flaws" with love (NOT tolerating), and become excited about their differences. Only then, we can truly have that deep sense of love for someone. If we go deeper: The paradox our mind plays on itself is: when we meet someone new we think of them as perfect, assuming they have no "flaws". Now once we know their "flaws", we stop thinking of them as perfect. However, in Reality they are still perfect, everyone is perfect, I mean after all, who are we to judge. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In middle school, I used to have crushes on girls I don’t even know. I thought I'm dumb for being that way. But now I realize why this makes so much sense. The more you know someone the more ideas and judgements you'll have towards them (possibly), and so, the more you'll hate them. This has to be one of the reasons why not many people succeed with long term relationships. Same goes for the opposite, I just liked how a girl looked, and thought to myself she's perfect. P.S. This is my first time posting, I'm happy to join the community