Fantastic_Times

Hi guys, I recently quit my PhD in sociology. I had 2 years left but it was making me extremely unhappy, depressed and unmotivated. I decided it was time to pull the plug and be honest with myself about what I want. My intuition (something I don't always trust - unfortunately) told me to try interior design/ interior architecture as a career path. After all, I keep asking "who designed this place?" after I go into a new place almost every time. It's something I always liked or something that drew my attention. I haven't tried any other careers apart from academia and I am lacking a bit in life experience to make an informed decision about my new career path. I am also a massive perfectionist which doesn't help. My question to you is: what advice would you give someone like me who is trying to get a career that is more authentic and more in line with what I will enjoy. Where should I start? I just turned 26 (male) if that makes any difference :P. Cheers, Ferdy

It takes times...a long time to master meditation. Don't feel so rushed to feel mindful. Your emotions won't go away, neither will your thoughts. What you have to learn is how to watch them and separate them from your being and your life. "What you resist, persists" is a good quote here. If you're able to watch your emotions and thoughts, you're doing a good job for starters. Lastly, sometimes with meditation things get worse before they get better. Be patient, breathe, relax, and observe. Be present. This has been my experience so far. I wish you all the best with your meditation practice. Peace, FT

I have a similar experience. I tend to associate it with my idea of accepting and tolerating happiness. That's right. The amount of happiness I can tolerate in my life can sometimes be limited. Feeling of being an impostor and not deserving "the good life" can sometimes pop-up and trigger self-sabotage. Personally, I allow myself to be happier everyday. I tell myself that it's OK to feel happy, that I am enough. It's an ongoing thing but I don't fool myself, I accept myself and move on. Remember that the mind (and the ego) lags behind sometimes and it takes a while to fully understand that you're now going to be happy and fulfilled. I hope this helps. I always found the idea of "tolerating" happiness to be ridiculous until I experienced it myself.

I'll give my two cents. I recently (a few months) changed social circles. You have to understand that in order to successfully change social circles YOU yourself have to be in the same frequency as the people you're trying to attract (if they're not there yet) or get into (if they already exist then and there). What do I mean by "frequency". Well, I mean that you have similar ways of looking at reality and because of that you act in certain ways and get certain results. Having said that, the best way to get into a group that is "higher up" is to simply offer value. That is, offer something of value. Things like having a good sense of humour, being relaxed, being fun, offer to do things for others, offer input, etc are usually good things. Value leaching is the worst thing you can do. While you do this, start improving your life to the point where the good attitudes of the group starts rubbing out on you and slowly you'll be just like them or better. On old friends: don't judge them and don't complain about their behaviour. They're really doing the best they can. I hang around some old friends here and there. One is getting married and is constantly complaining and trying to prove himself to others. I don't really care and since I don't judge them they feel at ease with me. IF your old friends are toxic then simply cut them off. Draw boundaries. I've done this before to someone who wouldn't respect me and after that they respected me and appreciated me as a person. It's hard to balance things out, it comes from experience. Either way, if you change your reality you'll slowly discover that different people start showing up in your life. This is not a coincidence. The key is consistency. Don't give up and best of all be happy being alone for a while. You're the best you'll ever have ;P

@cena655 right on, sir! Good luck! My favourite pick-up mantra is from Alex (ex RSD instructor) and it goes: 'there's no reason why I am not enough'.

Yes, I do love the different instructors. Goes to show that we're all cut from the same cloth and that we should embrace our individuality. Again something quite orange which is awesome. Whether you put pick up in yellow or not it's up to you. I would personally put it in yellow once an individual has reached a peak in terms of relationships and practices pick up responsibly and ethically. That is, when the man doesn't put his own needs over the needs of someone else and considers the other person's agenda. It's kinda hard to classify things like this because - after all - I do believe that we all have a little bit of each colour in our lives. Anyhow, it helps me contextualize "pick-up" much better if I put into a context. Thanks for the reply.

What I realized with porn is that it started a negative loop of thoughts and emotions which would make me feel bad. So it would go like this: -feel sad/bored/frustrated/stress > sexual release releases dopamine > urge to release sexual tension and watch porn > after release thoughts would say: "you're worthless, you can't get a real woman and you have to resort to this". > feeling of sadness and depression >> cycle starts again. So I either cut out the negative thought or I cut out porn. I cut out porn for 2 weeks and I felt much much better about myself and my social life. Reintroduced porn and the problem came back. It's a form of self punishment sometimes which baffles me. I still allow myself to release sexual tension by masturbating without porn. In my personal case, masturbation is not the problem. Porn is also apparently tricking the mind into thinking that one is inseminating several women at once. That is why we men need to keep changing material so as to get off. I hope this helps. I do find the whole "nofap" to be quite unscientific and extreme. Yet, I hands down admire those who can go on without sexual release on command. Peace!

Yes, do it but do not get too hung up on the community. The teachings are awesome (I would recommend Tyler/Owen from RSD or Alex who used to be an RSD instructor). However, the community I found to be quite toxic and more of a cult. Some good stuff here and there if you are willing to fish around. I would say that finding a local group of guys would be preferable. You can learn from them. Be mindful tho, that these people are highly selfish and ambitious people and do not really care to empathize about you or others. They're there to improve their game. I don't say this with a judging tone but it is what it is. At worst, they can be manipulative either directly or indirectly. Anyhow, if you want to get good at pick-up surround yourself with others that know about pick-up just like you would surround yourself with business people if you wanted to learn about business. But don't judge their ways and try to learn with an open mind. If anyone here relates to the Graves model (attached) I would class pick-up as a strong orange. They talk down on those in blue as "sheep" or "chodes" who are socially conditioned idiots that have no self-direction or self-expression. True criticism (sometimes) but irrelevant and useless in the big scheme of things. As such, I like pick-up in that it strongly advocates self-reflection, self-esteem building and a culture of achievement and goal setting. Yet, after you achieve all that it's time to move on onto green and beyond. This might take you a long time. It's taking me forever to get there but I'm patient and I put everything into context. I'm still terrible with women myself and find it hard to establish human connections with others. I wish you all the best in your journey!