ted73104

I guess it is fine even if you're doing this for experience's sake, in this case you should learn more about how to be her friend rather than lover. Long term relationships requires a person to be more capable to love and be responsive. I believe you will realize that the friendship part is more important than the romantic or sexual part of the relationship. If you want to learn how to build a deep connection with a woman, you will need to learn how to understand everything about her and how to love everything about her. It is actually the inner beauty of a person that can attract you for a long time, not any outer appearances. I guess it's normal that you want to make these dates as interesting or memorable as possible, but that's really not the point. The main point is how she feels about you and whether if you like her or not. This takes time to figure out. So it doesn't matter if the dates you have are absolutely amazing or just flat out boring. As long as you can know more about her and enjoy listening to her talk about herself, you are right on track. If you pursue true Love, then things between you and her will just gradually become more enjoyable and memorable, even if you end up as normal friends.

You might need to search for a doctor online, if there are no professional psychiatrists here that are familiar with this subject.

So is this story actually true? You must be very young. It would seem that you really wanted to create something during your date with this girl, but unfortunately things didn't go as you planned and you think the entire date sucked. But the truth is, the date did not suck. It was great, the girl likes you, enjoys being with you, and looks forward to the next date with you. You, however, are a fucking narcissist. Come on, the date doesn't have to be enjoyable or successful for you two to have a good time. You must have watched too many movies and thought that the script was taken from real life experiences. You need a wakeup call and understand that those movies are full of shit! They don't exist in real life, and it would totally moronic if they ever did. You're looking at the "quality" of the date too seriously, but the content of the date doesn't really matter. What matters is your relationship with the girl, and you don't need to speed things up. Just be friends with this girl until you can do more things naturally. Don't worry about whether you have a good time with her during your dates with her, you should try to understand more about her instead. Life is not about being perfect or having the best experience, it is simply living out the reality of it.

Can I go shoot my pastor then? He's been preaching that to not obey God is a sin worthy of hellfire all his life...

There is a sense of accomplishing something even when you're doing basic household chores.

If you are constantly worried about something, you probably haven't found the source of your fear, which I believe in your case is deep within your consciousness. I think we can see the source of your fear here. Your fear is basically that your current self image is totally incapable of living life to the fullest according to your standards. You also feel that you are far away from where you want to be. You cannot be yourself, because when you do, you feel that the self image you are presenting is not that of the successful self image you wish to portray. And when you are able to be yourself, you are constantly observing your behavior because you hate it when you behave in a stupid or shameful way. Unfortunately your parents were not able to give you a strong self image, which is a condition most people are in. We all have a dream life where we want to enjoy life when we're young, but don't worry, you will still be young in your thirties. Also, getting older will allow you to see other aspects in life where you've not seen before when you were young, things that are more important than success, fame, or any kind of worldly experiences (traveling, dating, etc.). It is good to know you're able to calm yourself down under this pain you are enduring. I know this is very difficult, but the solution to your problems is to accept yourself, fully accepting your self-image, when you say something wrong or stupid. Your dream image of yourself is just too perfect, do you even know anyone who has the dream image you wish to be like? Anything short of your dream image in your behaviors and appearances give you a sense of deep humiliation. To resolve your fear, you need to learn to accept these behaviors that lead to "humiliation" as behaviors that are totally okay. Because in reality, I believe you are totally okay even when you act stupid or awkwardly. What you are often doing is trying to prevent your "wrong or stupid" actions from appearing. However I can tell you this method doesn't work, it even will prevent you from growing yourself and developing your behaviors into what you wish them to be. This is because you are denying yourself the chance to train yourself. When you express yourself in a way you feel to be humiliating, your mindset immediately switches to a judgement mentality and in this process you eventually prevent yourself from trying to express your true self because you don't want to receive the same judgement again. But this does not work, you need space to fully be what you are now and express those wrong and stupid behaviors. Those wrong and stupid behaviors are totally cool, and as you can gradually accept your current self image, you'll have more room for creativity in your life to use positive motivations for growth and change. Damn, I used to be in this condition when I left my church. I thought that I wasted my entire life and was unworthy of anything. I just didn't realize that my life has just restarted and how amazing it could be. You're not really scared of people, you are scared of yourself. No one thinks that you have a problem, they are totally okay with you. And the people who think you are dumb and stupid? Those folks are just like you, projecting their own problems onto other people, so don't really mind those folks. The very delicious thing to understand here is that it is you who is scared of yourself. It is you who hates yourself and is constantly judging and condemning yourself. It is only you who thinks that you are unworthy. We all need to learn the art of loving ourselves in life, and it is not easy. You need to learn how to trust yourself, and the way is to like yourself in the ways when you would normally judge or feel shameful about yourself. Resolve your inner conflicts. The world is not again you. All life is not against you. You are 25 and man are you young! Your life has just started, you only need to get out of the narrow mindset that you have about yourself and embrace the infinite possibilities. Good luck!

@Surfingthewave You are right, I need to live in the moment and see the beauty in what I've become already. Thank you for your response. It is just that I've recently got the realization when I was alone that there are just some things I can never get no matter how hard I try in this life time. And it was interesting that at that moment, I could finally feel deep into the feeling of stubbornness I once had during my high school years. I just want to be like my classmates so they could love me and be friends with me genuinely. I guess I have an addiction to receiving love from people at that level. The spiritual and right path for me is just to let go, however I feel a huge emptiness when I try to let go of this feeling. I think I will need to find a larger love for myself in order to do so.

During my youth, I moved from Taiwan to the States, studied most of elementary school in the States. Then moved back to Taiwan, and continued middle school. The culture of schools back then was relatively more conservative than it was now, and totally different from that of the US schools. My parents were typical Asian parents who just wanted their kids to succeed in life, and they were also conservative Christians. After we moved back to Taiwan, my parents really spent a lot of effort in getting me into the best schools. I totally couldn't fit in due to the difference in culture. This would be a second shock as when I moved to the States, I couldn't even speak English. So I think through most of my childhood, I couldn't keep up with the main group of kids and eventually became sort of disconnected. At first I didn't really care about my grades, and my parents although were very worried, they basically understood my situation and didn't really force me too much to study hard. However when I got to high school in Taiwan, I got into this sort of private school where most of my classmates were like these type of rock star classmates. They not only performed well intellectually in terms of school grades, but were also socially pretty mature. I understand now that my classmates were like that because they came from households which were high up in the social ladder, where my parents' background was from a family of farmers and military soldiers. Eventually I really wanted to become like my classmates in every way. I tried to hang out with my classmates and be friends with them, but due to the relative dullness in my personality and a feeling of unworthiness because I had very bad school grades, I was always unable to become a true friend of theirs. Even though they would help me from time to time, I felt unwanted at times in the classroom. There was this huge feeling of loneliness which I was not fully conscious of, where I desperately wanted to become part of the group, but no one really gave a shit about me. It was like I wasn't even there. When I got into a college in southern Taiwan, I was a lot happier. The culture there was more accepting and passionate. However the students there were like me, and I always had this feeling that although these guys are great, but this is not the group I ultimately want to be in. I wanted to be with the group of people that were killing it in life, who were sharp, bright, ambitious, charismatic, and knew what they wanted. I'm not in serious emotional pain right now, but I didn't know where else to post this. However I do have a problem now where it is ten years after college, I think no matter which level I'm at, I'm always chasing the next level. Deep down inside I always feel that my current level is not enough and I'm trying to get into social groups that I don't belong to. I also only like girls that I feel to be brilliant, and eventually when I know them long enough to think I could try to get into a relationship with them, their peers would be like alarmed to think I could even be with that type of girl. It would like I'm trying hard to know this girl but everyone is against me. And eventually I learn what I lack, this process just keeps on going because there is just a never ending amount of stuff you can learn in life. I've followed Leo for five years now I think, and all this time watching his videos and reading other related materials really helped my situation to grow. However I realize now and then that I still don't fully accept myself. I still crave what is at the next level. I understand that I should just be happy with what I have and that I shouldn't use negative motivation to go forward, but there is just this deep emotion that I've not fully succeeded yet. I was trying to become more successful before, but now I'm trying to become more aware and conscious due to this negative motivation. I guess I'm just programmed this way due to the path I've travelled through, there is no changing it.

@Ilan Hey, thank you very much for your response! I thought no one was going to respond, haha. You must have read my other response and learned that I did some wild stuff in night clubs after I abandoned my Christian path. Fortunately I've been able to grow from that experience and now am able to tell my friends that the excitement from fucking hot girls is really short lived. I wouldn't tell people that they shouldn't do it, but I can say from experience that if you choose to fuck lots of hot girls, it will close many doors for your chance to be with women who have real character. Real conscious and mature women will not be with these type of men, no matter how they change afterwards. So I've lost a bunch of opportunity to be with women who have inner beauty, which I've learned to appreciate later on. I'm still on the path of self-actualization and maturing and I haven't lost hope, but the girl I want to be with would be like the Lori Greiner or Vanessa Kirby type. Good news is that these type of single women are not as rare as I thought, it is just that they're level of consciousness is higher than mine and I just need more work to get closer to them. However I've also abandoned many other choices. There's lots of girls who wanted to be with me in the past, and these were girls who were really suitable for me. However I just didn't feel satisfied because I just have this goddamn dream. Like many people said on this forum, happiness is a choice! And currently I'm just not capable of choosing it.

I think everyone has been in the state where you totally think you suck, and that you just cannot accept the condition you're in. However you have to gradually realize how narrow of a mindset you're using to observe or measure yourself. There's too many conditions you've placed for yourself for you to be happy. Interesting thing is that the people who you think that have the things that you want aren't actually that attached to those things. They're not satisfied because they have those external things, and they aren't necessarily as happy as you imagine they are either. Most people are just okay with the circumstances they're in, and everyone has their own problems. To put it bluntly, even if you got those things, you may not be satisfied for long. Eventually when you normalize everything you have, you'll want to fill the emptiness within you with other stuff. And when you cannot do this, you will continue to project your inner issues outward towards the world and think the world is a "cruel and terrible place". Nothing will ever be as satisfying than being able to accept yourself for exactly who you are right now.

I have the exact same problem. The issue stems from the emotions we had growing up. We are used to those feelings being behind in life, unsatisfied due to various external reasons, not meeting average expectations, etc. If you lived many years during your youth with these emotions, then your body will be used to feeling this way. You can change the ideas and beliefs you have in the your mind very quickly, but the emotions still persists. I feel that it probably will take decades until I can get my emotions totally aligned with what my mind believes now. I also wonder if you're like me, where I would always dream very big when I was young. I somehow always wanted the very best in my student years, always thinking about what I needed to do to obtain this or that. These were mostly negative motivations, because I was left behind in most of my student years, disconnected from the "alpha" group. And I have this stubborness to be as good as those classmates were, refusing to admit defeat. Not sure if you also have this sort of feeling. It's very strange, because I've been learning about personal development and enlightenment for 6 years now and have changed most of my previous beliefs. And I still feel this way.

Although I haven't been in your position before, I have been stuck in life before. I used to be have sort of "holy" Christian personality, and when I realized the self image I was building was mostly smoke and mirrors, there was a time I was pretty depressed. I think sometimes that there isn't really anything you can do about the situation that you're in. Sometimes, only time can heal deep wounds. The only thing you can do now is to try and accept the harsh reality that you're in. Just live as a person with suicidal thoughts. When I left my church, although I wasn't really a bad person, but I thought I was an evil person (according to the church's standards). And there was a time I was very wild, I became a work-a-holic and chased money. I also went to night bars, spent a lot of money on drinks, buying drinks for girls, and fucking girls who were ten years younger than I was. I went on a lot of work trips as my company manufactured products for AT&T and Verizon. Took my colleagues who were with me in LA, San Franscisco, Dallas, or Chicago on vacation every weekend with the company paying most of our travel expenses (car rental, gas fees). I think the only thing you can do is just find a way to be your current self. Try to love and express your dark side. After you've understood and realized that you were supposed to be the way you are now all along, you will be able to accept yourself for who you really are and not think that you suck or have a negative personality. Then will you be able to move forward and grow your personality with lesser resistance. With self actualization work and help from many people, I was able to get out of the situation I got myself into. I also realized that the original views I had on having a "great life" were not as realistic as I thought. Many of my thoughts about how to be successful or happy or satisfied just didn't work in the long run. Once you gradually realize these kind of stuff, you will see that everyone is not so different. There is no reason to compare yourself with others, because we're all on the same boat.

Leo started his channel with lots of videos related to psychology. Have you tried watching those videos? Hope one of them may help you.

Is it possible that you strongly believe motivation and achievement are important factors on what a person is worth in life? When you say you feel trapped when you lack motivation, is there a sense of urge that you should have motivation to do something? Perhaps there is something you desire and you are pushing yourself too hard to obtain that specific thing. We all have a ideal self image on what kind of person we should be, however we may not have enough understanding on how to actualize that kind of self image. Many things are harder that we imagine, even if we wanted to change a simple habit would require lots of hard work. So you need to be easy on yourself on such things. Pressuring yourself is not going to achieve anything, although it does tell you how much you want that specific thing. What you want exactly may not be easy to figure out. You may have to go step by step, doing surface level things to satisfy yourself on the short run, but then contemplating on what you really want in life to prepare for the long run.

Do you know what has caused you to lose your motivation? Also, do you have close friends you could talk about this to?

I don't think Leo would talk about how conscious he himself is specifically, as that is .... not really important? The important thing is how conscious you could become and you would like to become . I would imagine Leo spans from levels orange, green, grey, and a bit of the next level (what was the color above grey? turqoise?), depending on what area. In intellectual, mindset wise, work ethic, and emotional areas, I think he is really on a high level. However socially and psychologically, I am not sure if he continues to work in these areas, but I feel theses are not his strong points, although he knows a lot about these fields. But it doesn't matter! Although Leo is the administrator here and he started this site, I don't think he considers himself the leader here. You are not here to follow him or believe in the things he says. You are here just to gain some information to ..... know more about yourself I would say. Leo is not the point, you are.

@Waken I totally relate to what you said. Facing your fears doesn't mean that you can always find some way to embrace them. Many people have told me to just don't think about the deep problems I have and rather to focus on the lifestyle that I want. This is basically the law of attraction, and from my experience, it does work to a certain degree. However I was too stubborn to just let go of trying to resolve my inner issues. So I spent a long time, 5~6 years, struggling with my shame and fears, struggling with my identity. Eventually I was able to feel into my deep emotions and be conscious of what was causing the pain. In this process, I found out that you actually need to gain a more powerful love than the "self" love. Because there is a lot of stuff in life like courage, compassion, various social skills that basically can only be trained when you're with a group or someone else. And it is the non-stop practice of fully accepting the concept of "other" where you can strengthen your capability to Love. When you strengthen your Love towards "other" events, things, or people, you also will gradually gain more awareness. This awareness will allow you to connect dots more easily and help you be more conscious about your issues than you did before. Sitting alone at home and just comtemplating about these stuff was important, but not enough. I was very fortunate to be able to identify and embrace my fears through a process that occurred to me mostly. Most of the stuff that happened and people I met which/who eventually helped me were not planned. However I know that stepping out of your comfort zone and obtaining more love for everything around you is the way to embracing your fears. This might be a very long struggle as it was for me, but I hope everyone who takes this journey is able to find peace in the end.

I think that a person's job doesn't really have to be something that person is passionate about. In reality, it should be about the amount of value you produce. Passion and profession don't always colide together. Most people aren't passionate about making a business out of the thing they love, because when you bring the topic of money and business strategy into your passion, things can turn sour sometimes. Survival is still very important in life, the farmer must always exist in order for everyone to be fed. But who wants to be the farmer? My dad used to work in a farm growing rice with my grandpa in the hot summer when he was young. And there was no air conditioning back then. My grandpa said to him, if you don't want to live this way, then you better find a way to get into college. My dad eventually went to the US and got a computer science degree. Of course we now live in better conditions and have a lot more room to choose what we want to do professionally, but that still doesn't really mean we can do whatever we want. I would say you need to first get a job and be a wage slave of course to get a certain lifestyle that you can accept. All jobs are boring in the end, so it doesn't really matter if you are passionate about your job. Then if you are able to raise your consciousness to a state where you want to create something that works for society and maybe become an entrepreneur, then you can go create a business first as a side hustle. Then when your business starts generating stable income that is enough for you to quit your job, switch full time over. To be passionate about a business requires more consciousness. Until you gain that level of consciousness and are okay with the lifestyle which is required to create that business, maybe you could just do some more personal development and just continue living the "good" life. The life of being employee is not bad anyways~

There are some very good responses above, but I'd like to add that there is a possibility of your issue being a mental mechanic issue. What I mean is that this is an issue that occurs in where the mechanics of your emotions or mindset functions, and it can still occur even if you fully love yourself. For example, even when you fully understand yourself and accept yourself, you might still not be popular among your peers, you still might behave awkward in some certain social situations. And if your mind is aware of how awkward you are in those cases in this example, you might react in some way or try to evade those situations. You don't want those situations to occur. Connecting the dots is the key here, sometimes you know all the points, but it is actually very hard to connect the dots and realize the totality of your inner psychological situation. However it also might be the case that you've connected all the dots, and you're still experiencing these anxieties. In this case, you should know that human thoughts can change quickly. You can learn and understand an idea very quickly, but the emotions that you have about these ideas change very very slowly. So there is a training process where you have to train and learn how to express a new emotion to the thing you fear. The process is slow at first, but the change gradually gains pace. I think to fully love yourself, you eventually have to fully love your surroundings and everyone in it. Only when you've found love for the world can you gain a love so strong to defeat your inner negative emotions. This is not easy, but I hope there will be people around you who you can talk about this with.

I feel you. What you are experiencing is a very deep emotion that cannot be altered by any logic reasoning. People like us felt this kind of depressing emotion for a huge chunk of our childhoods, and so this emotion has been deeply embedded within ourselves. Basically there is no fast remedy. I don't think there is a quick way to get rid of this emotion. Rather, I think we should find some time each week to be alone and feel into this emotion very deeply. Sort of just let yourself feel sad and deep into the emotion. Following some of the logical suggestions here, like you are not defined by your mom, doesn't fully resolve the situation, although it does help. I personally think the only way is to be able to formulate a very strong love towards something to combat the negativity. And don't try to pursue divine love directly, that is just not possible. Find love towards something like a hobby, a group of friends like yourself, or a boyfriend. Something that can distract yourself from your current unhappy emotions. Then try to build upon those new emotions and improve your love towards for example one of your close friends. Make your relationships or your work more meaningful. Only by obtaining a much stronger love can you defeat the old hatred.

Farewell, may you find a more suitable sanctuary for yourself. Best wishes to you!

There is no good or bad, only the mind makes it so. TV shows are not bad, there isn't a should statement where you need to do more. And so you can enjoy the shows as much as you want. What is interesting to know is why you have guilt when you start watching TV shows. To what image or lifestyle are you comparing yours to? Although there doesn't exist a perfect standard or the correct way/attitude to pursue life, you yourself have internally created a standard or a set of core values. These core values should be fun to identify, and you only need to find effective ways to actualize them one by one. However, I think these core values shouldn't be pursued using negative motivation, because that kind of motivation doesn't last very long. So you should try to accept your current habits/lifestyle and then try out some changes that will bring you closer to what you really want internally.

Hsin-Chu, Taiwan

I think the direct answer to this question is that you as a human will die and cease to exist. That part of you is finite for sure. What we don't know is whether if our consciousness will awaken after it "leaves" our body. We don't know if there is this other part of us which is not a part of our physical form.

Hey, everyone belongs here. No one is a fraud in the realm of God. I think for most people, there is always an external reason that drives people to pursue self-actualization. For example, it's because you want something that you can never get in your current state, or you are in some ditch that you desperately want to get out of. For me, I was always obsessed with this sort of "be a good Christian" notion, because I wanted the type of lifestyle that some of the more "successful" Christians had in my previous church. I wanted to be successful in my career, relationships, and a beautiful loving girlfriend. However my standards were way too high relative to where I was. The harder I pursued, there seemed to be a negative backfire within my mentality, because I was pushing myself too hard using strategies that did not work. I was eventually depressed and judgemental about myself. Then by chance, I was introduced to post modern philosophy from a Christian friend at the church interestingly. I hated the stuff initially, but eventually I was fascinated by how some of the ideas really opened my mind up. I eventually started to question everything the Church taught. Then I got into therapy, as I began to suffer more from the backlash I got from my church. I saw a few therapists along the way, and one of them told me that there was no standard cure for my problems. The only way I could get out from being depressed most of the time was to find my own way, and that everyone else could only hint at how I could formulate my own method. I started searching for ideas online. Initially I found guys like awaken with JP, Tony Robbins, which were great but didn't really work for me. But then I found Leo and Teal Swan, and things started to change...