Vigi

We have all heard the typical story of successful people who stepped into the unknown, worked really hard and eventually managed to get great success. However, I feel like there's a lack of stories of people who stepped into the unknown and failed. I would like to get a more balanced view of this topic by hearing more stories of the later. One good book that have mentioned examples of this is So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport. This book argues against the advice to simply follow your passion. It's against the belief that all people have a preexisting passion that can be matched with a preexisting job but instead argues that you need to build up career capital. The examples where people failed where when they took the big step without any career capital. This is obviously a massive oversimplification of what the book says so please go read the book to get a more accurate view. People who step into the unknown usually don't get attention unless they succeed, which explains the uneven ration of success/fail stories. In the video below, a person gets attention for stepping into the unknown. The lack of updates from this person is one of the reason I got interested in this topic. So please share the stories you know.

Very resourceful replies! Using the word "failure" was not a good way to express the core of the topic and I'm still unsure on how to formulate it. Taking action will always lead to more wisdom no matter what the outcome. My aim with the word "failure" was weather or not that person ended up working with something they were passionated about full time. For instance, if a college student who studies an area which is stable in terms of job opportunities and salary, decides to quit college to pursue his/her actual passion and then a couple of years later ends up working a labour job because the passion did not generate any income. The job pays minimum wage and all of the money goes to paying off the student loans. The person has to work extra hours in order to survive and all the spare time goes to recharging and sleeping. Due to the taxing situation, the person becomes unconscious and does not take action based on the new wisdom. Instead, the person lives the rest of his/hers life totally unconsciously and lives in self created misery by the mind. Taking a deep look at the situation above, it was not a failure since it gave wisdom and suffering. This could lead to an enlightening realization. But what I'm interested in for now is weather or not the person ended up working with what he/her love and are excited about. So it would be interesting to hear for instance hear a story like the one above and then learn what that person learned from it, continuing working with something he/her does not like.

Thank you for responding. Did you find that this is the case for you (what you quoted)? I'm interested since I'm just writing what I found based on my own experiences and it would be helpful to get references from others.

Take this lack of motivation as a reason to reflect on weather you're on the right path in life. If you are truly interested in what you study and the career opportunities it might lead to, then it will probably feel like you're wasting your time if you're not studying. However, if you study something just because someone else told you so, you might deep down feel like you're wasting your time. This obviously does not make you motivated. However, please to not jump to any quick conclusions. This is a big one which can take a long time process. Related video: If you got this core down and you simply have a hard time concentrating, I would suggest taking a look at what you do when you're not studying. Are you meditating, listening to/reading resourceful self help books, eating well, sleeping well, working out, socializing etc. or are you doing very highly stimulating activities and switching frequently between them, like for instance going on clickbait marathons while eating foods with lots of sugar and salt? Constantly checking notifications? If you recharge with highly stimulating acitivtes, you're work will become more scattered. That's just my experience.

The topic isn't always that important. It's simply about creating a nice vibe, expressing oneself, having fun and connection with people.

Background In my spare time, I have always liked to write melodies, mostly on guitar. I bought a cheap guitar and amp package at about the year of 2008, and some years later, an ukulele. When there was a bit of spare time, it was a nice little opportunity for me to practice and explore. On the surface, starting to study music in school seemed like a logical choice. That choice felt completely incongruent though. I could not sing, it is a hard feild to make a living in, I had a hard time understanding and relating to music theory, I felt tone-deaf during music assignments in class, I could not really play any instrument too well and I simply could not relate to the stereotypical musician lifestyle. I did not want to start doing gigs and entertaining people (which I probably could not even do). I simply wanted to sit home alone and exploring melodies, expressing deep ideas, doing a lot of contemplation and not rush anything. Time passed on by me pursuing studies and work unrelated to music, only spending time on music on the scarce spare time. What I pursued full time felt congruent. But as time went on, I started to state the classical "What if?" question. I felt like there was a certain force of nature that I had suppressed, not giving it the attention I felt it deserved. There is nothing wrong with what I am doing full time, I like it. What is wrong is the fact that I have not been taking this force seriously enough in my spare time. The thought above has grown over the years, resulting in me putting more and more time, effort and money into it. Instead of just playing the same old riffs over and over, I started doing some research on gear, mixing and mastering. Every now and then, I saved up money and bought a new piece of equipment or learned a new tool in the DAW (music program). Each day, making it a tiny fraction better. Taking it a fraction more serious. Year after year. A part of me hoped that I would get tired of it, so I could let it go completely, since there was so much hard work related to it. The only thing that happened though was that it grew on me. I have been experiencing so many moments of peaceful, relaxing and calm happiness from simply creating. This feeling was something I felt completely without sharing the creation with anyone. As a matter of fact, sharing it was a frightening idea. There was a tremendous amount of resistance in doing so, which is why I decided to do so, more specifically in November of 2013. In recent years, I have studied self help material. This has been helpful since it gave me something to relate my experiences with. For instance, it has helped me understand why I wanted to get tired of creating music. It gave me great pointers. My biggest self help investment so far is The Life Purpose Course by Leo Gura himself. Right now, I am two-thirds through the course. Before the course, I had my sense of life purpose and so far, the course has done an excellent job at confirming it. As a side note, I highly recommend it, both if you have a clue about your life purpose already or if you are completely blank. The price is crazy cheap compared to the value, assuming that you will put in the work and do exactly what he says. Now, here I am, continuing to work on this. What I felt the most resistance to do in this moment was to start this thread and write this post. And that is why, after some days of procrastination, I decided to do it. Aim of My Purpose The aim of my purpose is to not surpress the creative force within me, as described in the background. Instead, it should be fully (definitely not partly) expressed. Side note: I do not state that this creative force so making create outstanding work. As a matter of fact, most of what I create is a bit weird. However, I do not like to place labels on it at all, either good or bad. All I know is that when I follow this creative force, I experience peaceful happiness and a sense of meaning. I feel great resistance to sharing the creations. From self help material such as Leo Gura's Life Purpose Course but also many books (such as Linchpin by Seth Godin and The War of Art by Steven Pressfield), I have learned that this means that I need to do it. To face the resistance, giving it space, and doing it anyway is scary. In order for me to get a reason to do it anyway, I visualize my death bed. I try to get in touch with my thoughts from that perspective, which makes it clear what I need to do. It is also helpful to get a sense of how insignificant my life is in the context of the universe and that all I create will eventually cease to exist. This helps me enjoying the process and not take anything too seriously. Aim of the Tread In the paragraph above, I describe my resistance and how I deal with it. I believe that is a great example of something which can be relatable to a lot of people in a forum like this. Therefore, it could help other people out on their own journey, which is the main aim of this tread. Another aim of the thread was simply to overcome my resistance. A third aim is discussion and feedback. Perhaps you see weak areas in my approach, or you do not agree with something. By discussing such things, both parts can grow from it. I do not aim to post a certain amount of times in a certain time span. I write when I got something to share, when there is something to discuss and so on. However, I will continue to be consistent in my work of my actual current life purpose as long as it is shown to be resourceful, which it has been as long as I can remember. Follow My Journey One thing I resonate extra much about Leo Gura's approach to self help and self-actualization is that he always relate it to practical action you can take, in order to achieve practical results. Therefore, when I share my journey, it is not enough to just write airy-fairy (a word he often uses ) texts about it, like this post. I want you to know exactly what practical steps I take and what the exact results are, which you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdCXigLZuVwXaXCdT-Hs1sg This channel contains only the original music I make. In the moment I write this, I also have a cover and a lesson channel. Liking that would be too much information for now. If you want to find all my links, simply check the description of my latest video. If you have any questions about anything, just ask me and I will answer. When I followed other people, I always had a lot of practical and philosophical questions about their work, but I usually never asked. I would like to eliminate that for this case. Disclaimers Hopefully this does not break the guidelines of advertising/promotional material. If it does, I can not argue if I get permanently banned. Keep in mind I can not update this post with new important information in the future. I still do not think of myself as a musician when writing this. However, it is not possible to go in depth about that in the title, hence the word "Musician" is used in the title.

One thought I just came across is that all the moments that seems big on the external surface tends to be the ones that requires the least effort to me. The most obvious example in my case is the moment when I record the actual video. In the beginning I thought this was the most important moment and I therefore strived to make it perfect, doing a lot of retakes. Not doing retakes because I enjoyed it, but because I tired eliminating defects. However, all it did was creating a lot of resistance. As a result, a lot of energy was wasted. What I have come to realize is that one of the most important thing is to take effortless high value actions all the time. I used to try to find the right moment when I was high in energy and inspired when recording stuff. But I have later come to realize that I should just take action all the time, even when I'm really tired and do not really feel like recording. The perfection comes from taking action and enjoying the overall process. Small errors in the recordings is just surface stuff. By continuously taking action the deep message comes across. In the context of the underlying deep message, the small errors becomes insignificant. By focusing on eliminating the errors and similar surface factors, the deep message gets lost. The depth is all that matters in the end. Well, I guess you can say that does not matter in the end as well, but that's another story. I feel like this post does not perfectly describe what I think but if I just makes post like this every now and then, I think the deep message will come across. You might notice that this last sentence was another practical example of my idea by the way.

I would zoom out one step and advice you to not ask what is ok and not ok. Blindly following rules from other people might lead to neurotic behaviors, no matter where the rules come from (I'm obviously not telling you to break the law though). Get in touch with your true inner self and connect with other people in order to relate to how they handled similar problems. Self help books are a great example. This forum could be another great example.

I'm glad it makes sense to you. I can relate to your situation. Hopefully, you'll share an update after you have worked on this. It would be really interesting to hear.

I see.

I resonate with those statements. However, it only scratches the surface of the question. Edit: @charlie2dogs Are you enlightened? Hello Mal! Yes.

The underlined part is a quote from your post that you posted in this thread this Wednesday at 3:49 PM, which is also the statement that I did not agree on. The bold statement in therefore not true, and it can be verified. It is true that you have also stated the italic statement, this can also be verified. Clarification: This is my reformulation of your question. That is true. Words are symbols/generalizations and I can never convey the exact thought in my mind. I'm only able to point in the direction of my though, not show the true nature of my thought through words.

You said: "I ask you how you could be in the moment of life and be in the future at the same time". The example below is an example of that: Another way that you formulated the question is in the underlined part in this quote: So, you said "So if the being of consciousness is functioning only in the moment of life, then how can it have a life purpose, which is a planning for the future, which in reality does not exist ?" Now, my example above is an example that I think is very related to how a being can be "planning for the future", while "the being of consciousness is functioning only in the moment of life". However, my example still is about "keeping an appointment", which is not exactly the words you use. You used the word "planning". So, to make it more clear I'm going to reformulate the following question, and answer it by using the word "planning": "So if the being of consciousness is functioning only in the moment of life, then how can it have a life purpose, which is a planning for the future, which in reality does not exist ?" To the following question: "If the being of consciousness is functioning only in the moment of life, then how can it plan for the future?" My answer is the following example: Example: An enlightened person works at his/her job, while being present to the moment, when the boss approaches him/her. The boss makes a plan for the future with the enlightened person. The enlightened person first writes the plan down in his/hers calendar. Then he/she thinks whether or not he/she needs to prepare for the event that the boss planned. Since no further information was given by the boss apart from the time and location, he/she decided that nothing more needs the be done and he/she continues to work just like before the boss informed about the meeting, completely present to the moment. Yes, this is my current perspective as well.

@JustinS I found that really powerful. Really cool way of putting it! I'd like to hear more creative personative on enlightenment, which I realize is quite stupid of me. I procrastinate on letting go by wanting to hear more perspectives on letting go.

Here's some random thoughts that hopefully helps a little. Typically, calorie surplus + effective workouts (with progression) => gain muscle + fat. Calorie defficinecy effective workouts (with progression) => preserve muscle + lose fat. If the caloric surplus is too large, you will gain a lot of fat and little muscle. Gaining muscle takes long time so aim for slow but steady increase in weight. Or actually, do not focus too much on gaining weight. Simply eat just enough so you are able to achieve progression after each workout. Also, the initial statement is obviously a massive oversimplification. If you're completely new to the gym you can usually gain muscle and lose weight at the same time. But it gives you the main idea. I would suggest not set a goal of reaching a certain weight, since that might lead you to just gaining unwanted fat. Simply focus on progression. A good starting point could be 2 gram of protein/kg of bodyweight and day. Do not forget the quality of the protein. Protein contains of different amino acids. Some are more important than other. So it can be misleading to only focus an the amount of protein. The simplest approach to solve this is to simply get your protein for a variety of sources. Since you're a vegetarian, it might be necessary to do a little bit of research. I should explain progression as well. It basically means that you get stronger/improve, which can be done in a lot of ways. The most intuitive approach is being able to lift more weight with the same amount of repetitions or doing more repetitions on the same weight.

If I understood your perspective, it's that: Unenlightened person: Can grasp concepts Enlightened person: Can not grasp concepts My perspective is: Unenlightened person: Can grasp concepts and gets easily lost in them by becoming personally identified with them. They can project past/future events/facts in their mind so that they become real to them. It causes a real emotional reaction like anxiety or excitement. The focus on the present moment is completely lost and they are living in a distorted reality created by their thinking mind. Example: The boss tells the unenlightened person that they need to have an important personal meeting at 3 o'clock. The unenlightened person starts thinking that it might be because he/she will be fired because of a thing that happen or this or that... This causes anxiety and the person cannot perform his/hers work like he/she did before the boss informed about the meeting. Enlightened person: Can grasp concepts but does not get personally identified with them. They can understand the concept of that for instance a certain event will take place at a certain time. However, they do not project what might happen, causing them to feel anxiety or excitement. They are examining the concept in a state of presence. Example: The boss tells the enlightened person that they need to have an important personal meeting at 3 o'clock. The enlightened person first writes it down in his/hers calendar. Then he/she thinks whether or not he/she needs to prepare for the meeting. Since no further information was given by the boss apart from the time, he/she decided that nothing more needs the be done and he/she continues to work just like before the boss informed about the meeting, completely present to the moment. Disclaimer 1: In the examples, I do obviously not state that every enlightened/unenlightened will react in that exact manner. I have no idea how a person will react in a certain situation. That is not important. The only purpose is to make the core of the idea more clear. The examples can be modified in a lot of different ways, still conveying the same core. Disclaimer 2: I do not say that all unenlightened persons always reacts bad. I do not mean to judge an enlightened/unenlightened person either as good or bad. I'm unenlightened myself. I'm excited to hear where in the core of my perspective you do not disagree, so that I can broaden my perspective.

It's a paradox. Becoming enlightened is ultimately about letting go. Trying to become enlightened by studying all the techniques related to it is the opposite of letting go. It can still be helpful to study it though. It's hard to fall asleep at night if there haven't been daytime in advance. I'm pretty much repeating what the previous posters expressed so well. But it's good to hear the same thing from different angles I believe.

@charlie2dogs I think it was an interesting read. But I feel like I'm missing out on your perspective on weather an enlightened person can plan his/her time. I push you on this since I want to broaden my perspective and let go of unresourceful believes.

No, I have never scheduled a meeting with an enlightened person. I don't think that I ever will be able to categorize people and then be able to predict what kind of action they will take in all situations either, because every person are very complex in its nature. I believe that the core of this discussion is weather an enlightened person grasps concept or not. I believe that the distinction between an enlightened and a not enlightened person is whether or not the person gets personally identified in the concept or not. Whether the person spends its present time thinking about the past/future regarding that concept, while missing out on the present moment. However, I strongly believe that both the enlightened and not enlightened person can grasp concepts. If an enlightened person wouldn't be able to grasp concepts, in my mind that means that I can't tell that person facts which he/she would understand. Like for instance "I see you at 3 o'clock", "the earth is round" etc. If you strongly believe that an enlightened person can not grasp these concepts, I', interested in hearing you point of view about it.

That's a deep paradigm shift your going through! You will learn a lot from this. You didn't ask for any advice, but I'd like to give some anyway. It's easy to think that society is bullshit and that we have been fooled the whole time, leading us to completely fight against it. I believe that's a trap. There are a lot of good things, and there are a lot of bad things in society. There's never black and white, right or wrong. So it's important to be smart about it, and humble. If one breaks lose completely from society, one will probably have to work ten times harder, but one also got the opportunity to get a million more back in return. Don't get caught up in the numbers, you get my point. I wish you good luck and I hope you'll share your insights if you find some.

I have bought the course. You get to a page with titles under which there are a lot of links in a bullet list. Under each link, you get directed to a page with a Vimeo video embedded, like Neill said. So it's just a simple as a youtube video, but without any distractions.

That sounds like a manifestation of addiction, se perhaps this video can be helpful:

That's perfect! Now you got something to meditate on. Something to simply observe without doing anything. Without judging it as good or bad. Without starting to think about it. Without thinking that you should not think about it... The swallowing thing is most likely a manifestation of something deeper. By meditating on it, you might end up solving the root cause and hence solving other manifestations of that root cause that happens in your daily life without thinking about it, if one is optimistic. It's all connected.

There needs to be a distinction between what Eckhart Tolle "calls clock" time and rejecting the present moment by projecting the past/future in our mind. Otherwise it wouldn't be possible to for instance schedule a meeting with an enlightened person. The main difference is that a non enlightened person might spend time worrying about the meeting, while the enlightened don't. However, both realize that at a certain time in future, the meeting will take place. Transferring this into life purpose, I believe that the enlightened person fully enjoys the process of its purpose, while the non enlightened person only focuses on the end goal.