Soren Solevad

Hey, I'm Søren. This is my journey of self-actualization. I hope that it will be of some inspiration to who ever will read it, and I hope also to be replied with some wise perspectives and wisdom from some of you out there. This forum really shows up at a good time for me, as I am currently feeling the need for some guidance with my journey - and also, I was hoping to start a routine of journaling. So here it is, for you and for me! I'm 20 years old and live in Denmark. I'm working as a 'substitute teacher' on a school , but I am mostly working with a group of kids having trouble socially or with focusing. I'm single and at the moment I'm feeling that I have too many important tasks at hand to invest the time on going much out and to spend the necessary time to become really good with attracting women. Among my hobbies are martial arts, music, reading, personal development, writing, nature, my home/friends (I started a collective with 5 of my friends on an old farm), learning, gaining and nurturing wisdom, writing and analyzing people's (and my own) behavior. How I was presented to personal development: I stumbled upon personal development 'by chance' for about 1-1½ year ago. I was still in school at that time and was really bored about the mundane things we learned - so I searched around on the internet for small convenient, shitty 'magic pills' to improve life. This was when I stumbled upon one of Leo's videos - how to give a squirting orgasm, haha. I saw it, and thought he was really funny and a great communicator. So I saw another, and another, and by an hour, I was completely hooked by his concepts of self-actualization. I signed up for the newsletter and I've been following dedicatedly ever since. I also began reading other material and look into other sources for personal development - with incredible, completely life transforming results. But with no doubt I find Actualized.org to be the most inspiring thing I've ever gotten into. My vision for my journey: My vision of my journey is as the name of the journey suggests: To become spiritual enlightened by climbing the ladder of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Simply, start in the mud, climb the mountain untill I reach the very summit. There is no doubt. I want the disidentification with my ego in order to become conscious being itself. Things I I've overcome: I quit smoking and drinking alcohol and unhealthy foods, and now only eat plant-based foods. I have implemented a habit of exercising daily I have created structure in my weekly and daily routines I've kept a habit of meditating for 20 minutes every day for about 6-7 months now. Before that it wasn't very consistent. I have committed to the path of self-mastery I have created a succesful collective I have increased my focus enormously I have become much more aware of my thougtstream and motivations for my actions I now take responsibility for everything that comes to my awareness (especially when things go wrong) I have quit complaining I quit playing video games. I have discovered my values and strengths (partially, I guess) I have in general become much more positive, proactive, productive and confident. What I'm working on now: Increasing my meditation habit to 40 minutes a day. Achieving a driver's license. Finding my life purpose(!) Gathering money to travel for inspiration Social homeostasis As I'm not very outgoing at the moment, I don't meet a lot of people I can discuss personal development with. Therefor, as mentioned, this forum comes at a great time for me. Currently my biggest concern on the journey is finding my life purpose. I am near the end of Leo's course, which has been a great journey of discovery. Also I am dealing with a lot of social homeostasis and resistance from my family, as I have been making a lot of crucial and life transforming changes in behavior the last few months - which they have a difficult time understanding. However, it has been possible to stay with my head above water for now A few goals I have for the comming year: - Finding my life purpose and begin the pursuit of it. - Being more serious about my spiritual endeavours - that means meditating for at least 1hr/day and practice more graditute and mindfulness. - Be 100% honest/authentic. No more lies or secrets or things unsaid - Visualize for 15min/day This will be it for now. To be honest I am not exactly sure about the directionality of this journal. Wether I write on it daily will probably depend wether I have something to write. I usually keep personal notes about the things I want to accomplish on a weekly and daily basis - and whether they actually got accomplished or not - in a small journal (physical book), but it would be odd to also write it here. I think this will rather be for information about the bigger challenges and achievement I am presented with on my journey. I hope to meet great perspectives and mindblowing debates on interesting topics. Good night, Søren

Time for an update to my journey! The topic is about an incredible journey, that has been going on for about 5 months - and now, it finally payed off: The quest of finding my life purpose! This has been an incredibly disorienting, confusing, emotionally labouring, demanding, time-consuming, funny, interesting, fascinating, developing and eye-opening journey, and the result litteraly brought me to tears. Also, I'll start by mentioning that the journey has, in birds eye view, been really condradictary and ironic: It ended where it started. Full circle, just as Leo suggested it would be (yes, I was using Leo's Life Purpose Course, which I highly recommend everyone struggling with finding their life purpose to look into). Basically, my journey began like this: For about 5 years ago (I am 20 now), I was in the darkest time of my life. I was in a huge depression and generally very confused and challenged by a lot of factors. My family was falling apart with, my identity was being whirled into chaos (which was tough as I was already struggling to find myself as most teenagers are eagerly trying to do), and my whole base of security in terms of my social circle was being torn away from me: I was moving to Greenland for a year. I didn't know anyone, I didn't know the country, I didn't speak their language, and all I imagined was this huge, dangerous and primitive iceberg. Anyway, long story short, of course I overcame the struggle, and as it usually is with such events, it is now the part of my life that I look back to with the most pride and appreciation of all. I learned so much from that time, and my identity was of course reversed forever by it. And the thing most important for this particular context, was that I began developing a hobby at that hard time of my life. A mix between a hobby, an artform, and an idea, really. And the idea became stuck in me, and grew bigger and bigger. Like a universe or an imaginary friend that I could always lead my intention to. But, as things are, life started happening to me. School became a more serious and demanding aspect of life, and I was whirled back into the mundane, non-spontanious life-cycle of school, homework, bedtime, school ... my hobbies were soon forgotten, my good habits were traded for relaxing videogaming with friends, and whenever I actually did have time for myself, I had became too lazy to do anything creative. And so life went on for 3-4 years. Until my recent 'awakening'. My discovering of Actualized.org. Man, was I excited! A hope of another world! Wisdom given free! I was completely hooked. My life started falling back into place - more than ever before. My results with personal development sky-rocketed quickly, and I developed amazing habits. One of them, the habit of appreciating spending time being creative. Something that I had completely discarded for years. The idea that had been seeded in my head 4 years earlier, and had been mocking me in the back of my head all the time in between, finally got a chance to bloom once again. So I began, though rather fragile. It was like there was an anxiety to touch the subject. To work on it for too long, or to even get started on it. It was too significant, too precious to be dealt with halfheartedly. And also, I didn't have the skills required to fully realize a worthy expression of the idea. So basicly, fear still held me back to jump into the work. Lack of skill and fear that the skill was beyond my reach. It was really putting me down. I wanted to let the idea bloom, but on the other hand, it seemed maybe too idealistic. I should mention now, that I didn't have this insight of the issue back then. What I'm writing now is only possible because I've been analyzing what was really holding me back and why the idea kept comming back to me. 5 months ago I was not at all aware of all this. So, with all this doubt, and my recent graduation from school which put the pressure on me to find out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life (+ Leo talking so excitedly about it), I decided to purchase his Life Purpoe Course, and figure this out once and for all. All this was the intro. Now for my experience: Of course I started out excited and ready to study the shit out of this topic! I was just going to slam through the course like bam-bam-bam, done, life purpose here I come and all would be good. This of course, was not how it went. As I mentioned earlier, it was more like a demanding, confusing, time-consuming, disorienting roller-coaster ride (this is maybe focused too much on the negative side on it - it's also been an amazing journey of discovery). I went through several stages of things I thought I had definitively figured out, later to be proven wrong. Underway I thought that I had maybe found the ting, and I got really hooked into it for some time... but then again, I could easily sense my gut telling me it wasn't quite it. This also happened several times. I decided to double my efforts. Try harder. Do everything more thorough. Spend more time contemplating. It was driving me insane. Nothing original or new came to mind. It seemed like all these answers I was generating were meant to point me to a realization - that it was expected of me... but it just would not come. I was getting near the ending of the course, and was beggining to be rather frustrated - even thinking about (ugh, it's disgusting even to think about this) just 'accepting my lot' and proceed in my current job. Who knows? Maybe I'd get used to working a 9-5 job? If I became good at it, it probably wouldn't be so bad? I mean, many other do it. But of course, my wisdom told me that this was lame. I pushed on with the course. And then something began to fall into pieces. It was near the end of the course. I was asking myself some questions that really resultet in some very authentic answers, that, after digging them up from my subconscious, really resonated with me - seemed obvious, even. More and more of these realizations happened. Suddently, the insights became interconnected. Patterns started to show - and, incredibly, as Leo foresaw (though I had earlier really startet to doubt), the pattern began to point toward a single answer. As I polished the answer, it became clearer and clearer. In the end, it was not only clear. It was shining like the sun. Radiating, even. It was a complete and true definition of my desire. It was like the deepest truth about me, that now, I was able to articulate. Emotionally, I was left a wreck. I was in a shock-condition. I went downstairs to hold a break from working, and was looking around me as if realizing the world in its peace for the first time in days. I went to my friend's room (I live with 5 of my friends) and sat down, and told her the news. That I had found out what I wanted to do. That I had found the answer to what I had been spending 5 months trying to generate. That I had found my Life Purpose. This probably sounds like a romantic sort of novel or fairy tale, but really, this is also how it felt to me. After telling her, I went outside to walk around in my garden, get some fresh air. As I stepped outside, I began to weep. And so, there I stood, weeping by myself, tears of relief, and happiness. I was astonished by the beauty of clarity. I was high on the realization, that the idea I have had in my mind for 5 years, is of course the seed that I have to develop the skills required to grow and express, in order to share it with the world. With tears running down my cheeks, and a newly erected body, I went back inside, knowing the trajectory of my life. I am to become a writer. I hope that this can perhaps be of some inspiration to anyone searching for his/her life purpose, not sure what to do in life, or having doubts or fears holding them back from pursuing the part of figuring it out itself. It can be hard to even gather the courage to begin the journey. I also want to add, that since Monday - which is only two days ago, I know - my entire mood has changed. It's like I'm more... integrated. That before Monday, some important piece of me was out of place, even lost. It wasn't a feeling that I was actually aware of. The awareness came when I experienced the unity. I feel more energized, more content, more conscious, even. And really, I feel erect, interconnected and grateful, and my life seems to have more meaning for me to pursue. I feel like I have a mission now. Thank you for reading along. Untill the next update - have a blast Søren

I've had this in mind for some time now. Especially because I am working hard to find my life purpose atm, but on the other hand very interested in the pursuit of enlightenment. Question for me is: Should you try to skip the ladders of Maslows Hierarchy of Needs and simply pursuit enlightenment, or is is, as the model suggests in it's form, important and better to do it in stages and therefor focus first on getting your purpose in place? I would very much appreciate your perspective on this matter...

Well then we must develop ourselves enough to one day finally take part in the mystical secret of direct reply!

Ooooh, this is excactly what I was looking for haha!

Hahaha Marina I'm sorry my respons is taking so long, I just honestly have no clue what so ever on how to reply directly to a specific message on forums??? I'm not the greatest internet-user of the 21th century hahaha Anyway I'm very glad that it's inspiring to you! What you write about your meditation habit, on the other hand, is very inspiring to me! About the weekend: I do everything but go to the job-part, and usually, I wake up at 07.00 instead...

Hey everyone. Very happy that this forum has entered Actualized.org. Now, I've been keeping my meditation habit of 20 minutes daily for 6-7 months (before that it wasn't very consistent, but in all I've been meditating for about a year total). Problem is, that sometimes I experience enormous ammounts of resistance when I'm sitting down to meditate. It shows up in different forms: First, when I set my timer, sometimes I find reasons to adjust different things (which are of course not important) before I actually sit down to meditate - I suspect, to spend time and procrastinate beginning the session. Second, I find myself being more prone to moving/stretching during the session. This is especially to relieve pain as my shoulders tend to get enormously sore and acking when I sit still for ... not very long time. I've been wondering a lot about this shoulder-issue. I'm in quite a good shape physically, and average flexible I'd say, so it wouldn't really make sense that my shoulders wouldn't be able to endure 20 minutes of stillness without acking so much. Also, the position in which I'm sitting - crosslegged, bag straight and arms relaxed, wrists laying on my knees with my palms downward - shouldn't be stressing the shoulders? What I suppose is that there has been made a subconscious connection between the resistance to meditate and my shoulders starting to acke? Does this make sense? And should I ignore it by brute force? Second, I feel that my focus on the practice itself is sometimes by an entire week completely lacking. I know that of course you cannot expect your meditation to be graceful blizz and easy and perfect, but I find the focus to be ... strange. It wasn't a problem earlier in my meditation phases. Does anyone else have these experiences or maybe overcame them? Any advice would be much appreciated as I really want to focus more on meditating and hopefully increase the ammount of time very soon. Thanks a lot, Søren

I've been following this morning routine for 4 months now, and it does absolute wonders for my day and week! I'll start by saying I go to bed 21.30 and already have prepared the most before the next day (lunch for work, clothes etc.) I always go to bed with the window wide open to get lots of fresh air (and since I live in Denmark and it gets very cold in the winter-season, I sleep with a lot of warm clothes and 2 duvets and a blanket - you'll get used to it). Now for the morning: I wake up at 05.30, and start by making my bed, which helps me not to feel like jumping back to sleep haha. Then I do a very short breathing exercise for 5 minutes, then a very short but energizing morning yoga. Then, as I am comitted to Leo's Life Purpose Course, I evaluate my values and strenghts shortly. Then I go drink half a liter of water with lemon (this is a must - you must start doing this!) Then I take a quick shower in which, if I remember it, I try to do some sort of death-contemplation. Afterwards I go out for a quick walk and do some sort of affirmations like "I am abundance, I am growth, I am consciousness" etc. It's really nice so early in the morning, especially in the winter when it's still dark enough to see the stars and milky way (I live in the country-side, so there's no city light to ruin the beautiful picture). After that I go inside and have a healthy smoothie and few oatmeals with rice-milk and fruits on top - sometimes also a cup of coffee. At 7.20 I ride my bike to my job which is 8km away (about 5 miles(?)) Edit: if I feel like I have time, I sometimes read while eating breakfast. I don't know if I should recommend this or not. It good for the reading-part, but I don't really dig into the idea of splitting your focus.

I've also been wondering for a while about the noFap-thing. I haven't really researched anything, but I stopped watching porn myself for about 2 months time now. Shortly after, I thought I'd give it a go not to mastrubate as well. Though I've had a couple backslids I generally get the point. Actually you do feel more energized (or at least less lazy). I think for me it's the part that I can overcome the temptation, which I know wont really do anything big for me anyway, that makes it be such a great thing. I'll definately keep on with the noFap-thing, and highly recommend it

Name: SørenAge: 20Location: DenmarkOccupation: I'm working as a 'substitute teacher' on a school , but I am mostly working with a group of kids having trouble socially or with focusingMarital Status: SingleKids: NonHobbies: Martial arts, music, reading, personal development, writing, nature, my home/friends (I started a collective with 5 of my friends on an old farm), learning, gaining and nurturing wisdom Editet: Forgot to tell that I stumbled upon personal development 'by chance' for about 1-1½ year ago. I was still in school at that time and was really bored about the mundane things we learned - so I searched around on the internet for small convenient, shitty 'magic pills' to improve life. This was when I stumbled upon one of Leo's videos - how to give a squirting orgasm, haha. I saw it, and thought he was really funny and a great communicator. So I saw another, and another, and by an hour, I was completely hooked by his concepts of self-actualization. I signed up for the newsletter and I've been following dedicatedly ever since. I also began reading other material and look into other sources for personal development - with incredible, completely life transforming results. But with no doubt I find Actualized.org to be the most inspiring thing I've ever gotten into. Things I I've overcome: I quit smoking and drinking alcohol and unhealthy foods, and now only eat plant-based foods. I have implemented a habit of exercising daily I have created structure in my weekly and daily routines I've kept a habit of meditating for 20 minutes every day for about 6-7 months now. Before that it wasn't very consistent. I have committed to the path of self-mastery I have created a succesful collective I have increased my focus enormously I have become much more aware of my thougtstream and motivations for my actions I now take responsibility for everything that comes to my awareness (especially when things go wrong) I have quit complaining I quit playing video games. I have discovered my values and strengths (partially, I guess) I have in general become much more positive, proactive, productive and confident. What I'm working on now: Increasing my meditation habit to 40 minutes a day. Achieving a driver's license. Finding my life purpose(!) Gathering money to travel for inspiration Social homeostasis I'm not very outgoing at the moment, so I don't meet a lot of people I can discuss personal development with

"The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or as a curse” – Carlos Casteneda

I think you are absolutely right. This is probably not the place to ask such question Hope you figure it out though