The Renaissance Man

I struggle to understand how I can truly be intrinsically motivated by stuff I already have. Or positively motivated, if you want. The main example for me is health. I'm in my 20s, I work out, I eat healthy, but that's because I'm an athlete, so I'm positively motivated by that athletic performance. When we're talking about stuff like skin care of brushing my teeth regularly, I struggle, unless I seriously remind myself of the damage I will have to deal with. Being in my 20s I don't have wrinkles nor I have teeth problems, so I just can't learn to be positively motivated in these aspects. Question So, is it possible to be positively motivated towards something you already have, and that you're just going to maintain if you do everything right? Is negative motivation, reminding yourself about the long-term downsides necessary forever? I have succeeded in creating strong habits where I previously struggled a lot, so it's not like I'm a total victim of this mechanism. The biggest one was procrastination. What has helped me there was probably just the repetition. Forcing the behavior over and over reduced the conscious effort, and now I can just work by myself 7 hours a day total, with breaks not included. I thought that was impossible 3 years ago. My conclusion & hypothesis Even if I struggle to practically understand how to replicate this predictably, I think it may be possible to be intrinsically motivated by stuff you already have and can just maintain and not improve. For health, it could be a mix of self-love and creating an identity of somebody who takes care of himself and strives to be the best as a massive priority, just because it's right, and not because of the damage you're doing to yourself long-term. For other scenarios, it would probably be the same. The positive motivation would be to be aligned to your top noble values, without needing a specific prize. Am I on the right track? What's your experience?

@hyruga Yea I think it's more about sharing it on YouTube vlogs or in a forum like this one that concerns me. I probably have phrased this thread the wrong way, after having contemplated about this "issue" more deeply.

I'm afraid of sharing what my life purpose is because I fear somebody may copy it, and steal my opportunity of living off of it. I also know that it's unlikely because if it's aligned to my person, it's unlikely anybody will be able to do work with the same dedication. At the same time there may be someone who has similar interests and strengths to me, and I may gave him just the right idea. I know there's no necessity of sharing it before working on it, but I was just curious to see what you'd think of this matter. I think that I will ultimately only share it with close people and not on forums like this one, for the reasons above, and only reveal what my plan was once it starts to really take life.

@Princess Arabia I agree. But what about a company not sharing their newly researched innovative product? I know that no matter if other people will do the same, I will pursue the same life purpose. At the same time, why "risking" to give out a precious insight with that much time before I can actually start working on it? In my specific case, I will have to work on myself for quite a while before I give life to my ultimate project. I think I've got a bit of scarcity mindset to think this way, but at the same time the company analogy I gave above isn't something absurd. And, there's no NEED to share it, mind that. I can just do it without having to explain the principles behind my ideas. In the end, I'll just pursue my LP no matter the competition, and I'm sure of it, it's just a life calling I can't deviate from that. At the same time, since there's no need to share everything 4 years in advance, I'll keep the details to myself. I don't think it's full on scarcity mindset, because I believe there's actually space for everybody. It's just that if you have a new way of doing things, that improves something already existing... I lose a point of leverage for no reason.

How gifted do you consider yourself in a certain field, and why? Or maybe not, so how "ungifted" do you consider yourself & why? I consider "giftedness" as how many people would be able to achieve your results with the same amount of practice and dedication. 1/2? 1/10? 1/1000? I'm especially curious to hear about @Leo Gura in the field of spirituality. How many people, with your same amount of practice & dedication, would get to your realizations? I'm fascinated by the limits of human performance. I want to break some of my beliefs of what I think is possible in various domains. IMO it's a helpful exercise to increase openmindedness.

@CARDOZZO Thanks man, love the support

@CARDOZZO My LP is along the lines of using this passion for knowledge to share uniquely interconnected perspectives & insights

@Leo Gura It's so obvious now that you pointed it out, but I couldn't see it from inside. I'll contemplate on it

@CARDOZZO Yes, more as a hobby

@001 watch out I'm coming

This is my attempt at explaining what insight is, after watching and thoroughly analyzing Leo's video from 4 months ago "What is insight?". As Leo said, insight is sudden understanding. Not to the logical level, but true understanding. I think this is called internalization. A smoker knows smoking is bad for his health, but he keeps smoking. That's logical understanding. Then a friend of his gets lung cancer, and he now quits immediately. He has internalized the knowledge. It's unconscious understanding. That's why we don't have control over the generation of insight, and that's why it's so deep right away. It goes straight to the unconscious level. Internalization. What is insight? Insight is a form of understanding. A deep one maybe, but still a form of understanding. I think understanding is ultimately the brain's ability to make sense of multiple pieces of information. The pieces are connected, and some sort of meaning comes out of it. Insight is one of those connections. But it feels so real, so different. My hypothesis I think these connections happen all the time. ALL THE TIME. From input coming from the outside, to thoughts we have in the back of our minds, to habits, and so on. We are not aware of those. Of almost all of them at least. Some are obvious, some are probably just tested by the brain and discarded because not useful. But sometimes, we DESIRE a solution. It's not about a massive craving. It's just about an unconscious, but clear desire for the solution. We want it in some way. Then we connect two dots that satisfy that desire. INSIGHT! So, I think what we call insight, especially the very pleasurable ones, are connections + emotion, derived from this desire. Again, read what I've written in the "what is insight" section of this post. I see understanding as the connection of dots, which creates meaning. So I think insight isn't something per se, but instead an emotion. The combination of a phenomenon that occurs all the time, with the desire of it occurring. Examples from Leo's video These are examples taken from Leo's video "what is insight?". They are examples of insights he gave in the first 30 minutes of the video to explain what insight is. I haven't added any of my examples. These are what Leo provided. If you observe carefully, you'll see how there's ALWAYS a component of desire, and when the right connection occurs... INSIGHT! Every single example, even the one with chimps, shows this. - Archimede’s Eureka moment. He was sitting in a bathtub, playing with an object, and as he submerged it the insight came that he could use the submerging of objects to measure the volume of irregular shapes. - Newton’s apple. The story says an apple fell on his head, he then looked at the moon, and thought: if the apple is falling towards the Earth, why isn’t the Moon falling towards the Earth? He understood it was falling, but it was moving so fast it was in an orbit. - Charles Darwin. When travelling around in South America, being around all these diverse animals, at some point it must have hit him that animal features were so specialized because everything is evolving. - Einstein’s relativity. With his thought experiments of thinking what would happened if he was travelling at the speed of light towards a clock with a flashbeam, etc, etc. He understood there’s no fixed time and space. It’s relative to your velocity and frame of reference. - Mathematical proofs in general. Something clicks when you’re doing a mathematical proof. Or logical proofs. - The 9 dot problem. But most puzzles in general really. Puzzles require insight to solve. They test your lateral thinking ability. - The comprehension of jokes. While comedy is something everybody likes and can appreciate, it’s taken for granted the amount of intelligence required to understand it. - Plot twists in movies usually come with insights. - Scientists observed that animals like chimps can have insights. If you place bananas where the chimp can’t reach them, and there’s boxes in a corner, at a certain point the chimp will have the insight of stacking the boxes to get the banana. - In psychotherapy. Insight doesn’t have to be academic. It can also be personal. About yourself, about why you do the things you do. Leo says this is the best thing a psychotherapist can do. Giving his patients an aha moment. And you can do it by yourself through introspection. - When you go to work the wrong day of the week and when you see nobody you understand… “ooooh… it’s Saturday!”. When you forget about an appointment but then it hits you suddenly “oh! I had an appointment!”

@Oppositionless Absolutely agree, helped me connecting so many dots, and even after months it's still increasing my understanding of the power of awareness

Insight & Truth Leo @Leo Gura in the video also asked about insight and truth. Are all insights true? I think what I said above can explain this too in a way: When insight feels true, it's because it unlocks and improves our logical understanding. Insights feel true because they're better than what we had before the insight. But this doesn't make them objectively true. They're more true based on our current beliefs and understanding. In 3 years from now an insights I had today may be proven wrong. Conclusion So, in my opinion, insights aren't a window into Truth, but they feel so righteous because we can perceive the stark improvement compared to what we had before