Harry

@Lynnel You hit the nail on the head!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQTAVxA4dNBCoPdHhX9nnoQ Change your mindset.

Is this a joke?

Then you have already failed. You want what you can't have. You have the attitude of 'I wouldn't want to be part of any club that would have me as a member'. The kind of guy that is going to judge you for your past is the kind of guy you want to avoid. If you have honestly learnt from your mistakes and have changed why would it even matter, the past is but a memory. You are going to have to open up at some point. Are you not better off doing this at the start of the relationship where you have little emotional attachment than 12 months down the line where you have fallen deeply in love? Is it not more hurtful to find out he is unable to accept your past at this point?

Why are you so insecure about your past? Correct me if i'm wrong, but it seems like you are holding in a lot of guilt about the past. No matter how bad your past was, it happened, you did those things. The best thing you can do now is accept it fully and wear it on your sleeve. Bottling those things up is a recipe for disaster! However, I do agree with you. You should not be forced to share anything until you feel your relationship has progressed far enough that it is appropriate. But this does not excuse you from looking inside to see why you are so afraid to share this information in the first place!

@electroBeam Thats great man! 1) "but everytime I talk to someone I'm interested in, the conversation always feels clunky because I am unsure of what the person is interested in". Can you see that your focus is in the complete wrong direction, yourself rather than at the person you are speaking to. I know because I used to be the exact same. You cannot connect with people if you are half listening engaged the conversation, half worrying about what to reply while also worrying why the person is even talking to such an 'uninteresting' person in the first place. 2) "I'm not entirely sure if my joke will come off as offensive, etc, or I don't know if what I am about to say is cheesy, lame, etc. I dont really connect well." Stop worrying! Number 1 rule for authentically connecting with other people - say what you think and think what you say - if they don't accept you, so what? Why would you want to be friends with someone who doesnt value you for who you are! (Unless you are a complete psychopath that is, then its probably best to keep your fantacies of murdering children to yourself )

Firstly, you are not 'boring'. In my entire life I am yet to meet a human being who is not interesting to at least the degree they allow themselves to be. I know it's easier said than done but let loose a little. Be yourself. 1) Buy 'The Six Pillars of Self-esteem' and complete the program at the back - I can't even communicate here how much this will help you. 2) Take Dale Carnegie's advice, "You can make more friends in 2 months by becoming interested in other people than in 2 years trying to get other people interested in you". Ask questions! Stop worrying about what you should say and start listening to what the other person is saying. 3) Watch Leo's video 'how to be funny'. He talks specifically about how to be funny if you have, as you say you do, a very logical mind.

@Sofiasspecial What makes you think that Leo's views are misguided? What about his manners didn't sit well with you? Which ideas on sexuality and intimacy do you not agree with and what is a better approach? Side note: I don't think that personal attacks on Leo and his sexual abilities are a very constructive way to start this conversation. (Ignore the quotes. Below I couldn't get them to go away on my phone)

You're right! However, It's more than just taking responsibility for your failures. It's about what you are going to do to not let them happen again! Wallowing in a pit of your own self-hate is a cop out. Its the easy route. It means you don't have to stand up for yourself. It means you don't have to do the hard work which is nessesary to build a heathy self-esteem. 1) Are you going to live the rest of your life with the mindset 'I deserve to be unhappy', 'I'm just don't have it in me'? Or... 2) Are you going to step up and do the hard work required to make something of yourself? Of course coming on to this forum is your first step towards 2). @ite That is some sound advice!

@zasa joey This is you, take control of your life.

The book explains that the pillars are not a definition of self-esteem itself, but are practices which are required in order for a person to experience a high self-esteem. Although believing 'I can do' is an essential part of a healthy sense of self, it is not all that is required. A person can have 100% faith in their ability to, for example, run their own business, yet may be held back by a feeling that they are not worthy of success and they are not meant to be rich. to paraphrase Nathaniel Brandon: 'To have high self-esteem is to experience oneself as worthy of success, love and happiness and to see oneself as fit to cope with the basic challenges of life.'

If you think you've got to the root nad you're only 30 pages in, you're in for a shock when you do the sentence completion exercises!

I spy with my little eye a limiting believe. It's gonna be hard to motivate yourself to learn and near impossible to trust in your own convictions if you believe this about yourself. 'Six Pillars of Self-Esteem' is your friend.

The most practical and useful self-help book I have ever read.

@Saitama As a physics student find Deepak hard to follow as a lot of his work is drenched in pseudoscience. I would avoid anyone who links quantum physics to our spirituality as these are two utterly unrelated topics, treating them as such is a distraction from truth.

@ProMetEVS 1) I am stuggling to understand what you mean by Einstein missing the concept of the future in his model of general relativity. It is a model which is drawn from what we humans have found about how spacetime functions and has so far accurately predicted future events. 2) You should not lie to heavily on your intuition when looking at scientific models which do not deal with time and spacial scales similar to times and distances which we experience within our lives. You have to understand that your intuition is incredibly limited. Your intuition is basically the 'feeling' you have about the way the world should work. You get this feeling from a couple of places. Firstly it comes from your DNA - what 'feelings' about the world have helped your ancestors survive. Secondly, you get it from your direct experience. For exapmle, if you observe that time is constant no matter what speed you travel at, you may intuitively feel that time is constant throughout the universe. It is an extremely unintuitive idea to think that time changes as you travel at high speeds yet this has been unarguably proven. Our intuition is a tool which helps us survive and prosper as a species, it does NOT provide any value when talking about concepts which are far from what we experience on a day to day basis.

Do you vote? Or do you see politics as a distraction from finding truth?

Cheers for the feedback! Could you elaborate on a few things please: 1) what do you mean by premises and nuances? 2) what sort of things would you need to have handled? Limiting believes? Self-esteem issues? Inferiority complexes?

I find there is an surprising amount of wisdom within the star wars saga

I would 100% advise you to take the opportunity now, while you're young, to experience all you can of the dating scene. It can be a huge trap at such a your age to get sucked into a long-term relationship or even marriage with the first person who you feel a connection to. You don't have enough experience to accurately judge whether a person will be right for you in the long term, or whether your view is being clouded by infatuation. Don't feel like sleeping around is a bad thing, it's perfectly fine if, like @Pola said, you are honest about your position and don't manipulate and deceive your partner. This is usually where the pick-up community gets under fire. Many use shady techniques and tricks to get the girl into bed no matter what her agenda is. Many lie to the girl, telling her they will be loyal to her and want to be in a relationship. Being inauthentic and dishonest will rot you from the inside anyway so i would stay way from that. You could have a look at some of the more honest and authentic pick-up and dating gurus. My favourite is Coach Corey Wayne who stresses being authentic and true to yourself, focusing primarily on your purpose, which will make you magnetic to girls and guys alike. You can get his book for free on his website and he uploads daily on his youtube channel. I have also heard good things about 'Models: Attract Women Through Honesty' but haven't tried it personally. Best of luck, Harry

@dude No worrys man. I wish you luck with it.

I've never understood this idea. I see pride as the emotional reward for when you overcome an obsticle in your life, taking the path aligned with your values rather than the path of least resistance. I feel it is inappropriate to give yourself credit for actions which you had no part in. In fact you, as a human, didn't even exist at the time at which they occurred. It seems to me like a way to bolster a weak self-esteem by claiming the rewards of others. Moreover, I fear it might stall a person looking to find a solid sense of self, by latching onto groups and societys that can give identity, rather than putting in the emotional labour to think independently to find their own values and ideals.

I used a method I adapted from one prescribed by Steve Pavlina and it was (and still is) SUPER effective for me. I used to snooze my alarm several dozen times before I gathered the willpower to get out of bed. Now I wake up full of energy and momentum for the day ahead. This will take about an hour amd is best done when you are kinda sleepy. Here's what you do: Do whatever night time ritual you do before going to bed Set your alarm for 5 minutes away. Lay in bed as you would if you were about to go to sleep and tell yourself repeatedly "when that alarm goes off, I'm jumping straight out of bed" . When the alarm goes off, do what you told yourself you were gonna do, jump the hell out of bed. (Optional) I found it handy to now go and do what I do as soon as I get up in the morning. For example: start to brush your teeth, go and put the kettle of ready to brew up some tea... REPEAT 5-10 times Then you can go about your business for the day. When you go to bed that night you should once again keep telling yourself "I'm getting out of this bed as soooon as that fucking alarm rings. No. Matter. What." What you'll find, if you get similar success to what I got, that when that alarm goes off in the morning, your body will drag you out of bed almost instantaniously. The great thing is that method is it delegates the waking up to your subconscious mind, meaning you are no longer placing all you hope on your willpower, which is flawed as fuck in those early hours of the day. However effective this method is, bare on mind that it is mearly a plaster (bandaid for all ye Americans) over the issue. If you want to get to the root of it you should make sure you find a passion and purpose that fills you with energy and excitement at the thought of waking up and working towards it.

I was wondering, what are the distinctions between coaching, counselling and therapy?

Hi, I had the same issue with where I would watch a lot of videos about personal development but end up doing fuck all. I have managed to kick myself into gear in the past 8 months or so. This was thanks a lot to Nathanial Brandons work "six pillars of self esteem". He's got a brilliant technique in there, sentance completion, which I found really pulls the wool from over your eyes and makes you notice all the sneaky ways your mind has been deceiving you. How it works is you are given a start of a sentace and you have to write 5-10 endings for this sentence with as little (preferably no) room for thought as possible. Don't censor yourself or try too hard to write something 'life changing' just let your hand flow and see what your mind spews out. Some useful sentance for you might be: If I am bring more awareness to my neurosis... If I bring more awareness to my school work... If I accept responsibility for my bad eating habits... for more I would highly recommend purchasing some of Nathanial Brandens work on the subject. I give a warning though, doing this excersice really will awaken you from all the bullshit you've been telling yourself, which can be fucking scary while its happening, but is essential if you want to grow.