Dan Arnautu

@BjarkeT Scientists don't have the answer for most tough problems. If you study the philosophy of mind, you would see that neuro-scientists hadn't figured out how to solve the mind-body problem in more than 40 years of research. 40 YEARS OF SERIOUS RESEARCH. Why? Because they operate in a certain paradigm. And you cannot solve a problem with the same kind of thinking or paradigm that created it. Physics and biology don't have the answer either. Why do you think there are such courses in school like the philosophy of biology, science and others of the sorts? Because we already have known for 100's of years that science is not as reliable as people think, and that it has it faults, and that it can be no different from a religion where you are locked into a certain paradigm. All knowledge is incomplete. All scientists make their conclusions based on intuition. Because you can't include every possible variable. At one point, they just say : "This is all the evidence we are gonna use. It is incomplete. We are only human and we don't know what we don't know. Maybe we will figure it out, but here is where we draw the line for now". Every decision is based on incomplete data.

@BjarkeT Oooh, thanks. Lol, I actually watched this video in the past. I forgot it for some reason. Sorry. Although it would be nice to learn how to do it for a certain project, with the objective of proving something maybe and not for big picture understanding (although there can be that too).

@Chrissy j I can assure you that whatever knowledge you think you are getting from college, you can easily get from the internet. Universities will always try to sell you that you can get what you get from university what you can't get elsewhere. But that's just how universities stay in business. Btw, I know this first hand because I'm in my final year as a philosophy student. I didn't drop out for multiple valid reasons though. Your situation seems to be different. Unless you want to counsel people, I don't see any reason to do it. If you don't NEED the diploma for what you want to do and if the repercussions from dropping out aren't massive, I suggest you drop out. You're just wasting time and money otherwise.

Comparatively, yeah, it ain't as big of a demand for stoic philosophy and it's related practices as for food, sex, technology, medicine etc. I was trying to emphasize that if one really wanted to start a Stoic Academy, it would be almost 100% a successful venture. One, because the idea has already been business wise validated and second, because of the internet and social media. With the way the online landscape is right now, Gary Vaynerchuk could take any average painter and make him/her a millionaire. And I'm not exaggerating one bit.

@Shin That's a hasty generalization. Not all mother-child relationships are like that in the modern world.

@Mohamad Tahmas Thanks!

@see_on_see I totally agree with that point. Yes, school is a waste of time, but consider the circumstances. He doesn't have much of school left, so he is losing all the effort that he already put into it, and also, the other downsides are not worth it: conflict with family, friends, employment problems in case he needs a quick job etc. And it's a high chance he ain't the next Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos, so if he were to drop out, it would backfire real hard. @Lorcan Don't know what you're talking about. Check out the Dailystoic on instagram. A much higher demand than you would expect. Also, don't get tricked into thinking that I give a damn about my philosophy degree, even though I get straight A's. I'm studying philosophy right now just to be able to live in Bucharest for 3 years and study guitar with one of the best guitar coaches in Europe. So when I'm giving you advice, I'm not talking out of my ass. I'm putting my money where my mouth is. All you guys are doing is mentally masturbating and complaining.

@Lorcan If you really were a smart super self-actualizer, you would not waste your time complaining about the school system. You would instead figure out how to do all your school work in 1/4 of the time, while still getting straight A's. If you don't think that's possible, that's just your limiting belief. It is possible. Cal Newport interviewed hundreds of straight A students in research for his books, and what did he find out? All the high achievers he interviewed spent most of their time on their own projects, passions and having fun, and not on getting the straight A's that they were getting. Now, you might say that those achievers were just "talented" or had a "natural ability to learn fast". NO! Cal goes into a lot of detail showing you how to do the same. Those guys had nothing special. I did it too, and I had mostly bad grades in school. Right now, I spend less than 1 day a week on schoolwork, and I'm getting straight A's. How? By working smart and implementing the concepts Cal preaches. I'm spending most of my days practicing the guitar, self-actualizing, doing courses, hanging out with friends, meeting new people, going to the gym etc. Not studying for school. Your intentions and motivations seem to be good, but you are going about it the wrong way. You are just avoiding taking charge and choosing the easy way out. It would actually take you much less energy to learn how to work smart than to have to explain to everyone for the rest of your life why you didn't finish school.

@supremeyingyang You should probably make your routine more diversified. It should include every element of rap. Song writing and performing songs are only two aspects of practicing there. You could also practice the following Dynamic (alternating between rapping loud and soft and also bridging them) Rhythm - studying and trying to apply many different rhythms (maybe also learning to play the drums to improve that) Melody - Combining and using different voicings Stage presence/Live Performance - Reproducing and practicing real life situations. For example, rapping standing in one place is very different from practicing while walking around on stage, or in the dark, with lights and heat in your face, while you are out of breath or when your heart is beating hard etc. Breathing - Learning to breathe in such a way that you can maybe rap for 32 bars straight or more or so that your voice is more powerful These are just a few examples, but all of these need to be practiced if you want to have great success and derive great fulfillment and confidence from rapping.

@Girzo That's a little too simplistic. Introverts differ from extroverts even in the way they THINK. For example, you can watch Carl Jung's speech on introverted intuitives on youtube. Introverts tend to have very vivid internal imagery.

So, I've taken a lot of personality tests lately and in 90% of cases they are spot on (but I'm doing only the best ones I can find) if I answer completely sincerely. The biggest argument against these tests is that the results are relative to the database of people who have taken so and because of that the results are in percentiles compared to the other people (ex. You are 20% more neurotic than the average person.) What do you think about this? Are they accurate or not, or at least reliable enough to use as a guideline to fix some stuff about yourself? Some expert opinions would be appreciated if there are some people like that here. I gave these tests to a lot of friends and family members and in most cases, the results tended to confirm what I already suspected about them. Here I want to take into account the following tests: The Dark Triad - which measures the level of Narcissism, Machiavellianism and Psychopathy in an individual The Big Five Test - which measures Neuroticism, Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Agreableness The Myers-Briggs Personality Type Test - which boxes you in one of 16 personality types based on 4 traits (and 4 antithetical to those, in order to see, in percentages, where you tend to incline) Disclaimer: My aim IS NOT to put people in boxes. I know that individuals are infinitely complex, but I see that the results of these tests are VERY VERY often reliably true. And many employers use these three tests in the hiring process, and some say that these help them reject 70% of the applications, being left with the gold. I am not biased towards them, but from my experience, they tend to be more helpful than not. This is an open discussion. Feel free to share your opinions. Although, I recommend to take all three tests first before commenting. It's more helpful if we have only informed opinions here and not prejudices.

Well, if some of you guys are the entrepreneurial type, you will have a very slim chance at growing a business or personal brand without social media in this day and age, so I don't think quitting entirely is the option. With that being said, of course you can only focus on posting quality content and not scrolling through your feed. Also, you can just social media to feel the pulse of the world. What's currently going on beyond borders etc. and things like that. You can also just follow most spiritual leaders that have a social media fan page (e.g. Sadhguru) and use it to get a quick bit of wisdom for 3-5 minutes a day.

@dustylocks Well, with meditation it's a little tricky. One trap on the spiritual path may be confining your moments of awareness to a formal practice. The idea is to carry the awareness that meditation gives you into day to day life. You shouldn't just be aware when you meditate, and when the formal practice is over go straight back into chimp behavior. What I'm trying to say is that it's harder to set meditation into blocks of time and thus in time become a routine compared to other stuff. For a serious practitioner, meditation can be on all of the time, with different objects of focus.

@sweater Well, if you had actually read the post, you would have your answer.

@Leo Gura Ok. Thanks a lot, Leo. Will ponder if I wanna change to windows again.

@Leo Gura Were you running Onenote in a virtualbox on a macbook in the video? Or how did you run that version of onenote on your macbook? I have a mabook laptop too, but the tablet like interface of the mac version of onenote is pretty bad to work with, so I want to change it to the one you have.

@wavydude Yeah, I find that to be the case for me too. Actually, when I see the important figures below the results that have or had the same personality type as me, they give me confidence that I can achieve great things. For example, I am an INFJ (and examples of other INFJ's include Martin Luther King, Morgan Freeman and Nelson Mandela), and I always was a soft spoken person that avoided conflict at all costs, BUT, I found out that I can and should stand up and speak for something when I really believe in it. I was also very doubtful of my speaking and leadership abilities, but necessity is kinda making me want to take charge (and work on those two skills) because all the people around me seem to be doing dumb shit and going down on less than good paths. You can think of me as the one in the group that does not want and doesn't have the confidence yet to lead, but the one that everyone votes because he knows what needs to be done, he doesn't want power for it's own sake and because he has shown genuine care to the people around him. The results made me want to take more responsibility - responsibility not only as in more to do, but as in taking charge of my insecurities, fears and doubts. I saw that I was suppressing my unconventional ideas and who I really was for too long, in fear that I won't fit in and will remain without friends.

@MarinM Pebble isn't asking about lifestyle minimalism (the one Leo has a video on). He is asking about how owning less changed our lives.

@CuteCornDog @wavydude I would appreciate if you would share with us what you have resonated with most from that test.

So, a lot of people started to come to me (friends, family, people on the internet) for advice these past two years, as I've grown tremendously. Even though I know that their problems are solvable and know how I WOULD SOLVE THEM, I rarely know where to begin when it comest to THEIR life situation, because people are such complex creatures. They also resist the solutions and come up with many excuses not to do it. If I bring up meditation to solve drepression for example (and first explain how depression really works and their mental filter that assigns meaning to situations), they come up with things like: "It may work for your personality type, but not for mine" or "there is x and y reason" etc. More often than not, there is not just one thing to be fixed, and as the fixing is also not easy, it's hard for them to follow up on the advice I give them. One method I figured out can be used effectively in this case is let them suffer until they are willing to listen. And that makes me avoid many headaches. Now, regarding the problem of where to begin when people come to you with a difficult situation, should I start to learn life coaching and ask more questions instead of giving people techniques to solve their problems? I don't aim to be a life coach, but people often come to me for help. I genuinely want to help people when they come to me for advice and not just give them a technique and then they don't understand well enough or that they forget about and drop one week later. @Leo Gura Would appreciate your input as you are a certified life coach.

@SFRL You get a book list with audio and written book reviews made by Leo. All books are rated by Leo from 1 t 5, based on their importance, 5 being a must-read book that will definitely change your life.

@DnoReally There are some sample books on the sale page of the book list. Start with those. EDIT: Alternatively, there are many FREE book lists on the web. The books are not as rare, but if you just started reading, there are many amazing bestseller non-fiction books you should be reading that are easily findable even in most top charts. Start Here: http://www.tailopez.com/books

@Pebble Well, yea, the first thing is that you feel more free. I suggest you don't get rid of stuff right away. General Guidelines First, try to REPLACE the things that take a lot of space with an alternative that occupies less. For example, I changed from a desktop computer to a laptop. That also made me want to sell my two monitors (no use having them if I have a high quality laptop with a high quality screen). Think of some things you can apply that to. Second, reduce the NUMBER of things you have in a high amount If you have 100 t-shirts, pairs of shoes etc., throw all but the ones that you wear most. Thirdly, make all the items that you can, multi-purpose. For example, Steve Maxwell uses shoes and t-shirts that are presentable enough for going out, but flexible and breathable enough to exercise in. Fourthly, what you DO have, make it high quality Don't buy things you need to replace every month Another thing you can do is put all the info, courses etc. you have in DIGITAL form, rather than PHYSICAL. I personally can not do that. I love writing by hand and reading books in physical form too much. But that's just me. You may be different.

This is sooooo sweeeeet. Thanks, Leo!

@Akshay Don't review the material one hour before the exam. That's the time when you should relax. Take 10 slow breaths. In through the mouth, deep into the belly for seconds and then exhale with a sigh. Scan your body for the nervousness. It won't dissolve because you are trying to run from it. Sit still and start to feel where it is. In your chest? In your head? In your feet? In your abdomen. Start to feel the emotion and it will dissolve by itself if you just observe it. Nothing you need to do about it.