Saarah

No I'm honestly not lol! It lasted like a week and I'm feeling normal now, I think mental health issues are completely within our own hands, sometimes I feel vulnerable to it especially cos I have a family member with it but having an interest in personal development, being aware and taking perspective builds a resilience to that kind of thing, I think a lot of people jump on the depression bandwagon all too quickly when diagnosing others or themselves

I think the values thing is really key there, thanks! In that week I had gotten into watching rubbish reality tv of rich people who are drama queens and socialites, a very different idea than what I value about life, I got lost in their lifestyles that I forgot about what I want from life instead and so I begun to feel that I wanted nothing and there was nothing to want But I feel better now I meditated yesterday after ages and need to start letting my mind race without running with it time to get into harmony!

Yeah I kind of got too lost in terms of what my lifestyle is supposed to be and how pointless everyday lifestyle feels, like whenever I'm in public I just look around at what people are doing and it feels like they're doing nothing even if it looks like something, I'm trying to get with the nothingness of all this somethingness There was this funny quote where someone asks something along the lines of "master, what changes after enlightenment?" and the enlightened guy replies "nothing much, you still have to do the laundry" but then I was watching Leo's video of the benefits of enlightenment and it started to feel like no there's actually more than this life right now

I think initially there will have been certain triggers as there are in all addictions but by now you've probably conditioned yourself to think of that as the automatic thing to spend your money on due to habit. Therefore I'd say that if you have this urge to spend money on gambling as soon as you get it then start looking for better things to spend it on and start forcing yourself to buy those things instead which may feel better to spend on than gambling over time (it's like trying to stop eating junk food, instead of cutting out junk food altogether it's better to replace it with something else but this takes time to get used to) It could be on wiser things such as investment on something which appreciates in value and gives you some savings (the struggle comes in not spending this!) or put it into one of those saving accounts that you can't touch till you're retired if you're not already, also experiences such as holidays or days out to spend with people in your life, it acts as something to do as well so you don't have the time to gamble Finally going back to point one look into what those triggers were for starting your gambling in the first place, mindfulness also comes in handy here. Ask what kind of lifestyle did you have when you got hooked onto it, did you have a boring life or job and so you wanted to seek excitement and risk? Were there certain people that got you into it such as friends? Did you feel it was a great get away from certain issues you were dealing with? Be mindful of both your life situation at the time and the feelings you have directly before gambling and during and how it seems to satisfy you that you go chasing after that

The millionaire real estate investor - a great thing this book mentions at the start is that financial wealth building and your job are two different things! This gives you freedom from stress and worry about the salary of your job or the pay involved in working your passion to at the same time give you financial freedom I also recommend the Project Life Mastery YouTube channel and blog, this guy has made unbelievable gains in a non back breaking way

Well he does have a video on critical thinking, he doesn't want you to just accept it all straight away

I also used to be very closed minded when it came to affirmations like @Epiphany-Inspired, I used to think they were superficial ways to changing your perceptions and that the only way to make such shifts was through deep understanding and learning of the topics you're talking about. Of course, as has been mentioned here already, affirmations are simply like thoughts, all the billions that we have all the time, and consistent thought has led us to who we are now, so consciously creating a new pattern of consistent thought is likely to create a new perception of the world for you. This was also a very recent attitude change of mine which was actually inspired by this state triangle I learnt about. I quickly drew it up in paint and have attached it. At first I even thought the state triangle was superficial because I thought to myself, how can you be in a positive state all the time? Isn't that fake? We still end up sad don't we? But through recent experience I learnt that sure, you'll still have other feelings such as sadness, frustration and fear, but those emotions are supposed to come and go, and the purpose of the state triangle is to empower you regardless of your emotions, so instead of dwelling in an emotion and letting it eat you up, the state triangle helps you to transition out of those negative emotions. Once I stopped seeing the state triangle as a fake temporary thing, I also realised affirmations really do help, if you keep giving yourself positive language (one of the components on the triangle) and talking to yourself in ways that are productive then of course you'll become more positive. When I talk to myself about my problems, I've noticed the language I use is already an affirmation, so how silly of me not to believe affirmations work

where is the questionnaire? I'd like to try it And i'd say modesty and humility are strengths in that you don't feel the need to show off your ego to people, and by the looks of it, you aren't being modest and humble to give a self-image because you've said you don't like those traits, so that shows you're authentically not showing off your ego to people, it's a good strength for working on diminishing your ego as part of this personal development work and I suppose will help you get far in it.

Agreed, I realised recently and have been thinking about how disloyal I am in the sense that I give up on people too easily and lose hope for them and like to distance myself from them when probably they need my support - really just talking about an individual case there but probably has potential to show up even more given the opportunity i dont like backstabbing people though or anything crazy, that's when it's the manipulative kind of disloyalty

The dude doesn't care about preserving a perfect self-image, credits to him! Lol unless that's the self-image he's boastful about portraying heh

I have a similar issue, once I tried just listening in on people to see what kind of things they talk about and it's usually about what they did yesterday or what they're going to do, maybe gossiping about someone, something they've watched or what's on at the cinema , about work related stuff, when the conversation is a longer one it usually digs into one specific aspect, let's say you talked about the weather, then you'd talk about which weather you like, the places associated with that weather, leads to talking about holidays and vacations, then maybe to food, then culture, relating it to yourself and your own life, your preferences - it just sounds so pointless... yawn! When you listen and practice lots with others you can certainly get better at small talk as with any other skill the issue arises when you ask yourself if you enjoy it or not and if you'd rather be somewhere else because then you will not be motivated to get better at it I certainly am not and don't go out seeking small talk but there are some situations where I'm forced to such as in a lecture sitting next to a friend and that helps me gain the experience and practice to at least be a little functional in that domain

Instead of focusing on when it will become your norm maybe instead try to find a comfort in the challenge and discomfort of this not being your norm. Maybe you should stop being achievement oriented and instead be process oriented and enjoy the process more. Think about how much more fun you're having experiencing this resistance and challenge and waking up everyday just to work at overcoming it and doing the things you want instead of having this routine which you've settled into and now you're feeling bored and need to move onto the next thing. Because at some point if it did become you're norm, you'd probably be motivated to create another challenge or find a boundary to overcome. So be glad that you've got this one that could be sticking around a while and giving you a reason to not be lazy See ya later not-so-much-a-couch-potato ok that didn't rhym change potato to patata

I'm currently reading this amazing book called 'Flow' by Mihaly Csikzsentmihalyi and it talks about the experience of flow and how it creates happiness. Im going to give you an extract from a beginning part of the book " "Flow" is the way people describe their state of mind when consciousness is harmoniously ordered, and they want to pursue whatever they are doing for its own sake.... Flow will explore... How is consciousness controlled? How is it ordered so as to make experience enjoyable? How is complexity achieved? And, last, how can meaning be created?" I showed you those last few questions to illustrate the kinds of components involved in creating flow experiences from anything such as dancing into something meaningful. And the definition of flow at the beginning of the quote shows how an activity you enjoy need not be judged as being a waste of time or simply something recreational which you may feel guilty investing too much time in as you may not feel it productive. You are right on the mark there when you say there is a way to do it in a progressive way and a more low consciousness way e.g. The drinking and drugs dancing which is largely about low grade sexual pleasure (pleasure being a key word as you'll see further down) The book by Mihaly also gives a distinction between pleasure and enjoyment. Pleasure is more passive and not conducive to growth whereas enjoyment is about challenging yourself to expand in yourself, you may not necessarily find pleasure with enjoyment. A swimmer challenging themselves may have aching muscles and so that's not pleasure but instead will have felt enjoyment from pushing the boundaries and experiencing flow. The wonderful thing mihaly talks about is finding that enjoyment and flow anywhere and in anything, i would say that includes dancing. He gave some extreme examples such as someone improsined in isolation and who hadn't eaten for ages still experiencing flow and enjoyment, it was probably his saving grace. Anyway there are certain criteria to flow and finding that in your dancing, I haven't made notes on the book yet so I can't go into more depth but all in all don't worry too much about dancing, if you enjoy it so much, if you love putting effort into it, if you love increasing your skill at it, if you love being creative with it, if you love pushing the boundaries of your body with it, you should feel excited my friend to continue on in it. The book also mentions the traps of flow in activities where it can lead to addictions etc and be detrimental to happiness therefore, so that's another extreme to it and important to consider to avoid any malfunction in your life. In my sporadic quests to dig a bit deeper into the idea of passions and living a passion in life, I can't remember who I heard it from, it may have been Alan Watts, but the dude who said it said that people who do things they enjoy or have found what they enjoy didnt think about whether it will benefit society they did it and found it simply because they derived that enjoyment from it. Similarly you may not think it is a productive use of your time but if you have to express yourself physically you should do that in an enjoyable way. You may not necessarily want to do this as a passion but just a hobby and that's fine also. I forgot what else I was going to say but that's it for now! If anything I myself find its a great way to get some exercise, I don't like getting exercise in dull ways, although I enjoy the treadmill and eliptical. Other than that walking in nature and dancing to awesome music in creative spontaneous ways are great!

Think about if it was someone who you didn't know much or have any complicated relations with, would you report that person for doing the thing whatever this other person you mention of is doing? If so then go ahead because it seems it's something you'd do as an impersonal act, if not it's probably not serious enough and just a revenge thing.

I'm dreaming right now that I tap into what my passion is and create a solid lifestyle around that and personal development. All the ideas I have are fragmented as are my feelings, with much persistence though I'm confident I will someday reach certainty.

I think your problem is trying to do too much, instead just focus on one or two small goals related to personal development. I for example have started two small things to focus on, the first is to meditate for at least 10 minutes a day, and the second is to start reading books related to personal development even if it's just a few pages a day. I have tried and failed starting meditation in the past, but having these two select, very small and easy goals has meant I've been very successful so far in keeping with them, I think it's been about a week and a half only but Instead of feeling guilty I feel super optimistic that I can do this because it's so realistic Also, as Alan Watts has said, there are no wrong feelings, it's ok to feel guilt, just try being more compassionate towards yourself. Every big achievement has come about as a result of forming small habits, so focus on developing these, and like I said start small so you can't go wrong, and if you slip up then just carry on again. I would recommend the zenhabits.org blog for helping you with developing habits and being more compassionate towards yourself, if you go to the bottom of the page that comes up, there's a link for all his archives. Go get 'em! lol

Thankfully my parents haven't either it was one of my aunties, they've all been brought up with that mindset really so I just try not to let it piss me off lol!

This is one of the reasons I've been avoiding doing meditation but recently I decided to focus and I started focusing on 'doing nothing' as a theme of my PD endeavours. I'm reading a book about peacefulness which promotes the ideas of solitude and silence, and of course the next missing puzzle is meditation so I'm going to be forcing myself to get started on it now. But this focus I'm having on this specific part of PD is actually motivating me to start giving meditation a try and so hopefully even if I get bored I will continue it due to the involvement and commitment I'm getting into. Im going to start off with mindfulness meditation because I really like mindfulness and so to have it as a meditation is good. I also briefly read yesterday about compassion meditation. It's a bit better than some other forms of meditation as a beginner who gets bored like me because you're not completely still but at the same time you are focusing yourself, I haven't read much on it yet but I think you should look it up!

Lol same here! Just started iron tablets, sometimes when I feel tired I just keep remembering when Leo mentioned somewhere that purpose or whatever it was can override tiredness from any such illnesses which I think I need to find how to do! I'm not a big tea drinker but I still want to drink it regardless cos it seems like a really zen like relaxing type thing to do

I think it just has to do with my personality. In general I'm just very private with anything I do for personal reasons, whether I'm making videos about something for fun or discovering and listening to music, it's all very personal to me and so I prefer to enjoy it myself without having to articulate my thoughts relating to things because everyone has their own interpretations and I don't want to get tangled in all that. I find thinking easier to do when I do it in my own head and not to accommodate others into that. Personal development is so deep even for just this scratching of the surface I've been doing that sharing it seems tedious to me and not worth it especially at the risk of miscommunicating it. When I became an atheist there were so many different reasons and It was such a process, when I told my friends then I didn't even bother explaining to them why or how. There are times where I do enjoy discussing deeper thoughts with people but it's really kept to a minimum and I'm satisfied with this forum. I'm still satisfied with the conversations I have with my friends though, although they're not about personal development, we doyens to relate on certain feelings we have about things and our interaction flows. With my newer uni friends it's a bit more shallow and it's not as great, maybe once I get to know them even better, but for the situation I think those types of interactions fit well as I only really see them in lectures mostly. Seeing as there's such potential for growth in personal development yet, I am hopeful that the more I engage in it then the more I will increase my chances of having people in my life that align with this pursuit. As I see it, it's still early days and so at this stage I understand that I'm not going to be surrounded by people of this type in my daily life. But again I'm more introverted with my thinking habits so it probably bothers you more. Talking about productive and non-productive thinking I guess during those times it's good to do meditation to quiet down your mind, this freshens you up again to steer away from the same thinking patterns so you can explore different avenues, in other words making your thinking more creative and so get out of any unproductive ruts. I personally cannot get into meditation I'm really rubbish and need more willpower and desire to start this, but I've read all the amazing benefits of it. I talked about myself a bit too much here lol!

People can be horrible to you and insult you and hate you all they want. I think just to ensure it isn't taken too far make them aware of your boundaries and when they need to calm down. That way you're respecting yourself and not being trampled all over, while at the same time not playing this ego game of "i'm important and you need to respect me, I shall not be made a fool of by the likes of you" - when you want others to see you in a certain light such as someone who deserves respect, is that not serving your self-identity?

Thanks for sharing! I typed it into google and found an audio recording for this book on youtube, so you can all listen for free! Though I don't really like it much so i'll be perhaps buying the kindle edition for only 49p

An auntie showed me this, I started watching a bit of it and then forgot about it, I just wanted to ask how has this helped you personally after watching them all, has any major shift happened? She also has that book Think and grow rich

I guess it all depends on the type of thinking you engage in Thinking deeply about life, like you said psychology and philosophy I think is great. It's great to question things and to think why. Personal development requires that you think more deeply than most people about things otherwise you end up sleepwalking your way through life and not understanding yourself etc. But there is that other type of overthinking, like people have mentioned such as the overanalysing, thinking too much about what people said to you, overthinking about events in the day, judging everything and having negative, anxious thoughts. The irony is it requires deep reflection and personal development type work to stop overthinking stuff in the non-healthy way Good luck! Don't worry too much about the opinions' of others, I generally keep all this personal development stuff of mine just a thing I do privately and don't really discuss it with people in my life because I feel they just wont understand it properly. I certainly recommend Leos videos on not caring about what other people think, and being your authentic self. Think away young one! lol

I'm currently on my way to partake in a psychology study where you get to play video games for 20 minutes ... That's the sneaky way of doing it ?