Saarah

You can start by accepting the feeling and the reaction instead of rejecting, as long as this feeling exists inside you, that's proof that it's not stupid but just a reality, so there's nothing wrong with feeling that way you wanted to be a hero? Perfectly acceptable!

@Pelin I've noticed in my own life, it's just as simple as either you take effective action and get results or you stop and the results begin waning off, until you start again

@Sartanion recommended reading: six pillars of self-esteem by nathaniel Branden I'll spoil the six pillars for you the practice of living consciously " self acceptance " self responsibility " self assertiveness " living purposefully " personal integrity he also talks about the illusion of self esteem which is what you've noticed by yourself, nice work!

@electroBeam there's videos on actualized.org about religion, it will give you an insight into what religion is and it will explain to you why you feel this connection with the Bible, though it could have been with any of the religions, you're not being brainwashed, you're just understanding the words in their real meaning and not the meaning that regular Christians take from it

@Baul you summed it up nicely! All these words and concepts, being told I'm eternal awareness, act as a buffer or layer from being able to touch the actual awareness, I end up resorting to these answers logically through the method but not... like in my bones, you know? And it feels like that's because the method makes sense and has been remembered intellectually, perhaps if not, I'd have reached conclusions more authentic, through a less linear but more enlightening path, it might help to use your own words like, for me 'knowing' came up, endless knowing, something that resonates more with you, I didn't do this for very long though as I figured it's not the right time for me to do this, I just had a phase of curiosity, the longer you attempt, maybe you can start to remove the already imposed ideas a little initial nudge can help, just not too much reading about it

@electroBeam I like Alan watts analogy that thoughts are like ripples in water, meaning it's natural for them to occur, and if you don't touch them, just leave them alone, the water becomes still when you have these thoughts about meditation, treat them as you would any other thought, focus on simple observation and letting go instead of running away with it, that's what the effort of meditation is about in the first place, being influenced by your thoughts about meditation enough to make you stop doing it is a useful demonstration to show how seriously you believe, invest and take your thoughts to be, so now you can work to improve on that

@electroBeam it sounds like perfectionism, trying to make sure you do the best most perfect things for your life, just remember a few things - these kinds of external things like parties are not going to improve the meaning and quality of your life so there's no point getting worried about missing out on anything - how important something is should correlate with how much time you should allow yourself to make a decision over it - follow your intuition, no need to over analyse, just simplify - there are no shoulds in life, if you tell yourself I have to do this thing because it's so important, no you don't

Back when I discovered Periscope, there was a woman who would stream from Boston about Boston every day, the history and how beautiful it was, you would have loved it

@rush in the most recent meditation video Leo talks about the distinction between thinking and awareness, meditation helps to train you to do less thinking and to focus more on being aware, and being aware has its own intense benefits today in my meditation for example, my eyes were closed, and when I was bringing my attention back to the present moment i was imagining my environment, half way through I realised the environment wasn't even the present, those were images cos my eyes were shut! it was difficult to focus on the sensation of my arms on the chair without conjuring up an image of the chair but I just remained aware of the image as being an image too

@Nicolas I would think you'd have to swallow otherwise you might accidentally choke but if it distracts you, you'd just follow your shift in attention to that distraction, you probably can't eliminate 100% of movement, but the point is to a greater degree than just normal meditation

@bazera Hierarchies or models, we create them to organise things in our mind, so you create a map to refer to, a map which let's you know where you stand, you say "oh, I'm this far ahead from this person" then the next automatic thought from that is, "well, if I'm further along, further along = better than" this is a map, a belief, you unconsciously weaved, and it's based on egoic perception, thinking about everything in relation to you, creates ideas about 'further along' etc, when in the territory/reality, 'further along' the 'personal development path' doesn't exist Since the map is a belief, and beliefs are so difficult to shake, like you say, the only way to move beyond them is through awareness, and there isn't really anything else you can do to 'get rid' of this, so you'll just have to look at the image of the model/map in your head with awareness and not do anything else, and don't expect it to disappear for a looooooong time or better yet at all You don't have to react to your model, just witness its presence although the concept of relational equality was mentioned above, we can't see what that means, we just understand intellectually, your map still exists, and thinking about that concept is not going to destroy your models, only if you see the territory for yourself like a diagnosis from the doctor that you won't be able to walk for a long time yet, you have to learn to live with it and just work on awareness with mastery and not for getting the result of getting rid of this model you have, otherwise you'll become frustrated

@Nulik maybe you became too attached to the result instead of enjoying the process

@Pelin I think you're indulging in thinking about it too much, you probably feel like a victim of it all too It can be difficult to avoid thinking about it when you seem to hear all the noises you described, but you used the tag 'mindfulness' and that's what you should be of these sounds, when you hear these sounds, hear them for what they are, don't get into a whole story about what they are and about war etc etc If you think about anytime something 'bad' happens to us, it acts as a trigger for all the should statements we keep, we're reminded of what should and shouldn't be happening, the stories begin, but you don't have to start these stories just because you come across a trigger for them, use mindfulness to retrain the way you respond, and you end up not responding but just carrying on as you were

@Amir if you use something step-by-step you might find it more difficult to get anywhere because you're not using your own curiosity you can get ideas from people's methods, there's a couple on Actualized.org, to help you but don't do anything to the letter, take your own initiative, for example the language someone else uses might not resonate with you or just confuse you, answer and question everything in your own way, the way you understand everything, sometimes language isn't even needed to think about things, you just get a sense or feeling about stuff

@Christian as someone has pointed out the video on strong negative emotions will help you you don't have to express them, as in scream from a rooftop or cry loads, that doesn't get rid of them, it's about releasing as your title says, releasing and expressing are different things, conduct your emotions with the exercise in the video everytime it arises, soon it will stop because you will have let go of them Be careful of distracting yourself because when you do this you're just suppressing them

@Julio Escalera this is something i was thinking recently, it's easy to tell religious people they're wrong for believing in something and being dogmatic about it but that just distracts us from our own dogmatic views we have against religious people and beyond I guess the answer to your question on the way to stop resisting others beliefs and shutting them off lies in Leo's video titled All of Human Knowledge Explained what it teaches is that everything everyone thinks they know is all a belief, so if you get annoyed at your father telling you God exists, remember you're playing the same game by thinking atoms exist, same thing expressing itself in different ways, we're all more alike than we think, then all you can do is smile at people's opinions and not care to defend your own This is about removing resistance and I think that's all you really need for open-mindedness, you don't need to accept as truth what everyone tells you, believe what you feel you want to but remember it's a belief and not truth, and religious stuff likewise is belief and not truth, then you're free to pick the beliefs you want for your life

@Nulik your life purpose sounds selfish in the sense that you want five million and then to do nothing substantial with your life, like the 9-5 worker who only focuses on earning enough for themselves and not about contributing to something larger than themselves its not the sum of money you want that makes it selfish, it's whether you want enough for just yourself, or if you want more money to benefit more than just your little life I'm selfish too with money goals, maybe once your selfish desires have been satisfied, you might actually want more money to do more, you'll probably get bored staying at that level

@LateBloomer I think awareness would be tarnished of its very essence if the thoughts continued at the same time as awareness Even though we talk of having mindfulness during an activity, I feel like that is switching back and forth from being lost in the task and then the memory of what was happening, but to such a pace that we think of it as one process where mindfulness and the task are happening simultaneously. Though it's well known how the brain doesn't do multitasking, we just get the illusion of it

Either do the task or do nothing the pain of doing nothing will get too much and you'll then give in and decide to do the task you were avoiding you might have to repeat this more than once

@dboyle yes, it's a value that says "I want to do more than just a half-ass job of things in my life" except it's shorter!

@jes I feel like higher consciousness people would be more pragmatic in life, would you need to achieve a balance between them then? Unconscious people do whatever is put in front of them and whatever feels good in the moment at the expense of other perhaps more important things to them whereas more conscious people act more wilfully with where the real progress comes from in whatever they want to be more practical at

@DizIzMikey lol! And I think the chimp brain can spur us on to want better! The more you're aware of it, the more you uncomfortable you feel with it and just itch for ambition

@mikeyy It can be difficult, especially once you become aware that you're thinking, it seems like suddenly the thoughts stop for a few moments! Meditation isn't usually perfect awareness, it's about that whole process of dipping out of your thoughts and watching them, to getting back in and lost and unaware again. You just have to not brute force and think about failure, instead just realise it's the whole process. The in and the out.

@Gone Self-Actualization is an inherent need and drive to grow to ones best human potential... Even if you weren't into self-development you'd still be breathing the process , from the homeless guy trying to meet his basic needs to the rich guy looking for his life purpose You also used the word leader not dictator, a leader is much more inspiring and helpful to their followers

@Jamie If we simplify it all down you've identified problems of: - motivation and commitment to improving your life - Being overweight - drug addiction, some porn addiction - poor spending habits - not following your career aspirations or work - serious emotional issues related to your past, feelings of low self-worth - Relationship strains - Dealing with ADD and taking medication - Apathy in forming any friendships And all this really seems to be getting you down and overwhelming you... Where do you begin? Well, it's great you identified everything, sometimes people even struggle with that part because they've learnt to ignore their real feelings - I think the first thing to do is to challenge any limiting beliefs you have. That can make the biggest difference between deciding to take action and just giving up completely. Sign up to Leo's newsletter to get a log in, and if you log in from his site you get access to 20 videos that help you challenge your limiting beliefs. That will be a step in helping you with keeping the commitment and motivation to improve your life. All his normal videos too from YouTube will start training your mind to think differently the more you expose and actively listen to them. - The second step is entirely up to you which is just to focus on one of these problems at any given time. If you try to improve them all at once, you'll be too spread out and ineffective. A useful tool to help you decide where to begin is a quadrant. The quadrant consists of the following four headings: - Important, urgent (e.g. Something is important like your career, and it might also be urgent if you're struggling to provide for your family, which means this needs your most immediate attention) - Important, non-urgent (e.g. forming friendships and a support network may be important, but it's not urgent for you right now) - Not important, urgent (I don't think you have any issues that are not important, but you probably do a lot of things in your spare time that fall into this category. For example, if theres something like a sale on, that means it's urgent, but it's not important to buy an item, then you're spending your money and that relates back to your poor spending habits, or you could be doing other things you haven't mentioned which distract you from focusing on improving your life, these things need to be eliminated! - Not important, not urgent (Again your problems are all important and don't fall into this category but if you're doing actions in your life that fall in here, eliminate them) Since all your problems fall into the first two categories, from there it's personal choice of which problem to focus on first, based on whatever seems to be the most pressing and over time go down the list Then it's just a matter of once you've picked a certain issue to improve, or even two at a time if you can manage, choose the effective tools you need, you can begin with psychological tools, meaning the help from videos on Actualized and implement practical actions that will help. One hugely important tip is to track your progress with something or your taking action in something, every single day, if you don't you will easily forget, or slowly move back into old habits moving straight back to square one, invest in your life with a vision of it being a long term process. You mentioned struggling with journaling but it could be something much easier, I use checklists for example. Always turn back to that first point of motivation and commitment, do whatever it takes for as long as it takes, to keep up with this process emotionally. That could mean repeatedly listening to certain videos from the limiting beliefs category or the videos about being inspired with self-actualization work that are on the YouTube channel.