Marcell Kovacs

What's good guys, The reason I'm writing this is because it's painfully obvious how depressed you are due to your lack of success with women, which is a position I'm sort of in at the moment as well, however let me get your motivation back again and make you feel somewhat better by telling you a story that happened literally 10 minutes ago! I finish this morning at the dentist's and as I walk to the bus stop I see this really attractive girl and my initial thought is that I have to approach her, otherwise I'm never seeing this girl again and she's one of the most attractive girls I've seen all week long. While this internal battle is going on the bus arrives, I get up and I notice that she does as well... All the while I'm thinking "No matter where she gets off, I'll get off there as well and approach her..." Due to some very fortunate circumstances she happens to get off wherever I get off, which is near the flat I live and I'm thinking to myself: "Ok, here goes! Now or never..." I approach her and the following conversation emerges: Me: "Hi there! I know this is a bit weird, but I saw you on the bus and you look really fucking attractive so I wanted to come and have a chat!" (Maybe shouldn't have said "fucking", but I was quite nervous so that's the first thing that came out of my mouth...) Her: "*Ahh face* Thank you!" Me: "My name is Marcell." Her: "My name is *her name*" Me: "What are you up to today?" Her: "Oh, I'm coming to my English teacher to study English, because I need a language exam for my diploma." Me: "Ok, I see, what do you study?" Her: "I'm studying law, I'm in my final year." Me: "Hmm, so you'll be a lawyer lady..." Her: "Yeah, that's the plan! How about you, what are you doing?" Me: "Well, I'm studying Economics, however I took a year off to figure some stuff out and I'm going back in February. In the meanwhile funnily enough I'm actually teaching English." Her: "Oh, really? I've always struggled with English ever since I was a kid... *sadface*" Me: Can't remember what I said at this point... Her: "Well look, I've got to go, because I'm seeing my teacher in a few minutes..." Me: "Alright, I see! Let's meet next week for some..." Her: "... Sure! Add me on Facebook!" Me: "Ok! What's your surname? *pulling my phone out*" Her: *tells me her surname* Me: "Is that your profile? *I show her my phone.*" Her: "Yeah, that's me!" Me: "Ok then! Talk to you soon and have a lovely English session! *holds hand out to shake hers*" Her: "*accepts handshake* Thanks, bye!" That's it guys! I wouldn't say I was overly nervous during the interaction, but I was definitely feeling a bit anxious, yet it all worked out beautifully! What I want you to take away from this is that SOMETIMES YOU JUST LITERALLY HAVE TO SHOW UP! There was no advanced game concept or some complicated conversation that took place. There was hardly any emotional impact at all even, and she was receptive! While it's true that I didn't initially approach her and it took me longer than expected to muster the courage to walk up to her and start the conversation but in the end it all worked out which is what matters! The reason I'm teling you all this is because I feel like many of you guys are crippled as fuck when it comes to the thought of going out and approaching women due to the fact that you're reading this forum and you're watching all the pick up videos and you're thinking to yourself how amazing of a conversationalist you have to be and how you have to get rejected 1000+ times in order to finally get a number, and you're crippled by what others around you are thinking about you (this is my biggest struggle as well, I'll admit...) however hopefully I've managed to demonstrate that this DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THE CASE! THIS WAS MY SECOND APPROACH I'VE EVER DONE! Will it always be this easy? Probably not, this is as easy as it probably gets, there wasn't much work that had to be done in order to add her on Facebook, however I want you to consider the fact that perhaps many times when you're thinking about how unworthy you are of that attractive girl you're seeing somewhere, maybe ALL you have to do is just show up and she'll appreciate it and good things happen! If you're struggling and you're feeling depressed and shit about your lack of opportunities with women, I want to reenergize you, motivate you again and give you a push to go out there and meet some women! Anytime you're feeling shit, just read this post and realize that perhaps you don't need to struggle as much as you'd think! I will say though, I'm not as socially awkward as some of you seem to think about yourselves here (Judging by the topics I've read...), but I'm definitely not the best conversationalist or the most extroverted guy ever or anything like that, in fact far from it. If I was able to do it, you should be able to do it too! You're probably not better or worse than I am either, it's just that your lack of successes and negative mindsets are so strong at this point that you think of yourself worse than you actually are. I didn't even hold eye contact with her as far as I can remember! Hope this helps!

How do you do that? Sounds interesting.

I'm not necessarily sure if all of this is great advice... I'm from Eastern Europe and things work a little different here. 1) This area of town is one where a lot of people come to private teachers for some tuition, I literally do the same thing, so I know how it works. She was very receptive to me opening her, so if she wasn't in a hurry, she would have definitely stayed around for longer, it was very easily noticable that the reason for her leaving wasn't because she was annoyed by my presence but rather because she actually has something to do! As for walking with her for a bit, yeah, that would have been something I could have done! 2) Again, things work different here... We hardly ever do WhatsApp, or anything like that, 99% of online communication happens on Facebook Messenger. Her accepting your friend request on Facebook here = getting a number and response on WhatsApp there. 3) Believe it or not, there are no coffee shops in the area at all... This is an urban area with flats all over the place. Also I'm pretty sure she wasn't giving me an excuse regarding her visiting her English teacher so this was not the time and place for that. 4) Yes, can't argue with that. Emotional responses > logical questions/responses. Working on it! 5) Although that may not be the line I would have used, my attempt was to tease her about it as well, however it was quite a bad one as you can read. Working on it! 6) Something I should've probably done, yes! 7) When I say "Talk to you soon!" in my native language (Hungarian), it's not just meant to be considered as a throwaway phrase like in English. When I told her that I literally meant: "Ok, I'll text you and we'll set something up!" and she understood it clearly. Also I suggested meeting her if you've read the conversation, but before I could finish she told me to add her on Facebook, which is as great of a sign as you can get. At this point the fact that we're going to meet each other again is quite clear! I'm already texting her by the way and we'll most likely be seeing each other next week, she's just having a busy weekend and lives in a different town. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't! If you're having a strong interaction with lots of flirting, you can go for it, otherwise it may not be appropriate, yes! It's all context-dependent... Generally it's a good move though.

@Raphael @TheSomeBody Thank you guys, much appreciated! @iTommy Thank you to you as well and I wish you all the best too! Keep at it and eventually the tides will turn in your favour!

Hello there, I've been hesitant to write this post for a long time thinking "The answer's inside of me...", however a few months ago I've come to the realization that I've been stagnating in life for a good 2 years now, which is causing me enermous suffering and I feel unable to move to the next chapter and I probably need an independent perspective on what the next step for me should be, because clearly my mind's either enslaved me or the circumstances are such that I just have to admit to myself: "I don't know any better..." WARNING: The following post is going to be long, going into great depth on where I stand in life. If reading that and perhaps giving advice doesn't interest you, I recommend you leave this thread. Perhaps it would be best to give you a rough story of who I am and where I am coming from. I'm a 22-year-old male from Hungary, Eastern Europe. My self-help journey began 3 years ago when I discovered @Leo Gura and Actualized.org. I immediately quit playing video games and installed my meditation habit, which was a huge success for me at the time. That's where it all began... In 2017, a year into my self-actualization journey, during my very last semester in high-school I took the life purpose course, because I had come to the realization that if I really wanted to live a passionate life, I'm going to have to take responsibility for it and engineer it in such a manner. Luckily my search for my life purpose was a success. I realized that I want to produce music which was an incredible revelation as it's been something that had been my biggest hobby all throughout life but just never realized that the answer was in front of me all the while. At the same time I also began university studying finance, because I needed some stability while I was working the ins and outs of my life purpose and admittedly I was scared to object to my parents who forced me to take up a class. I also took up a local student job so that I'm able to save up enough money to buy the equipment needed to start practicing my craft. I never really told anyone about my intentions, because I knew I'd get judged, so I kept my them to myself. Unfortunately I went into it with very improper expectations which ended up biting me in the ass and cause me lots of suffering and depression non-stop. Thanks to these misalignments I would always end-up procrastinating and never really getting anything done. Exactly a year ago I was on holiday with my parents and one night when I took a walk in the city we were in as I was thinking about my life and how things are going to move forward, I had the honest self-realization that between late-2017, when I finally got all my equipment and managed to quit the job I took up to be able to afford it and up until that point (2018) I had basically achieved nothing and that my priorities (university, doing basic self-actualization work such as meditation) were very off and I had to take matters into my own hand and be a passive student from university for a year to focus on music production. I first dismissed it, but then remembered the concept of the Hero's Journey and told myself that as hard as it may be, I have to sit down with my parents and tell them that I want to become a passive student for a year and focus on music production solely. Unfortunately to come out with this plan wasn't as easy as it would be for most people because all throughout my life I had been very tight-fistedly guided by my parents regarding every decision I make so this was the first time I actually stood up for myself pretty much ever. They didn't agree with my decision, but luckily I didn't give in and stood my ground. This was also a scary decision because while many of my friends were happy being stuck studying majors they don't like, I would still break out of the norm and embark on a journey that none of them had the courage to do so I would get judged. But then again I had to remind myself and trust the principles of life that eventually this is the decision that's going to bring great results in my life later on. Fast forward to today, the unfortunate truth is that it's been 8 months since I made that decision and in a sense externally not much has changed... Although I did have mild success in the process, the fact of the matter is that during the past year and a half after seeing Leo's video about Shamanic Breathing I highly resonated with the technique and realized the potential and capability it has to work on my emotional wounds/traumas/social anxiety/spiritual journey when combined with meditation, which was/is also an area of my life I wanted to fix for a long time. Until this point I had taken multiple week-long retreats here at home where I would work on myself all day long for 5/7 day durations, the results of which have been pretty astronomical, therefore as expected, with growth comes a lot of suffering, however since I'm generating results, I've been loving the process regardless. Since then I also started combining these techniques with a more "Western-style" approach with the addition of journaling. I also read one of the books on Leo's booklist that suggests you tell your entire life story in your intimate relationship in order to stop hiding your secrets and be authentic, which I realized would be a great exercise to do with my parents combined with telling them how I don't necessarily appreciate them not letting me live my own life and practice opening up about myself, which I've been ashamed to do all my life. This behaviour is probably one of the reasons why I can't take the next step and I have to write this long forum post right now. Luckily I cringe at myself looking back where I was psychologically a year or two ago, which is a good sign however the problem is these results have mostly been internal and it's generating external results I'm struggling with... Back to music production, throughout the months since I decided to take it up full time I went through this grueling process of forcing myself to produce music, sometimes with little success/consistency for days, but then falling back into lazyness and procrastination. The reason for this probably has to do with the fact that I'm just really enjoying doing work on myself, because I'm seeing results from it combined with the fact that I have a lack of success with dating/attracting the opposite sex which is taking a toll on me mentally, which seems to be getting worse as time goes on. I also became really interested in solving this issue, as this is something that doesn't come naturally to me, therefore I started reading books/watching videos about relationships/female psychology/sex/PUA. While this was very helpful and by changing many of my misinterpreted/outdated mindsets I've grown a lot, however the more I knew, the more mentally taxing/depressed I became, because I just know that I don't have it in me to go out onto the streets and start approaching women, therefore I made a commitment to find a job somewhere along the line and go to some bootcamp where this can get fixed. Whether it was a mistake or not, I'd usually dismiss these needs, because I would tell myself that I'm living through a phase of my life right now, where I'm focusing on my life purpose, and that I'll be focusing on fixing this area of my life later, however at the same time as I've mentioned before, I'm failing hard with my life purpose, so it doesn't even make any sense. I'm strongly considering the option of perhaps just finding a job until I get back to university in February and somehow making enough money to be able to fix this issue for once and all, however I'm not entirely sure if this should be my #1 priority right now or not because on the one hand this is one small issue that doesn't compare to the fact that my life purpose seems to be in the shitter, but at the same time my lack of results in this field are causing lots of suffering and depression. At one point in April I broke down in heavy tears, because I never struggled so much with something I love (music production) and I didn't understand why it was so hard to get anything done. I questioned whether this was the path for me. I didn't know if I had to reprioritize my expectations and continue, take a break and do things I enjoy doing (reading books, perhaps fitting in another retreat or do something more casual such as hang out with friends.) I did end up taking a break, however I still wasn't sure whether to quit it completely or not. If I quit completely I felt like I would give in to my ego, so I ended up taking a break hoping that when I come back, things would pick up and the whole issue can be left behind. Not the case... I would again get motivated, be productive for a few days and fall off and end up feeling hopeless and depressed. Around this time I had also come to the realization that as I'm growing myself somehow I can feel this "distinction" occuring between my life purpose and who I'm becoming. It's like on the one hand I'm growing, and while I'm still passionate about music as I'm writing this, it feels like there are these two different personalities fighting between each other. One wants to continue working on my life purpose and the other half wants to keep expanding it's consciousness and branch out into Kriya Yoga and potentially psychedelics as well. And whenever I would question and finally give up on my life purpose my ego would settle in again (As I mentioned above...) and sprinkle these tiny bits of motivation that would make me reevaluate the whole situation again. The change has been so enermous that if I'm truly honest, I've also considered just working on my emotions/doing the work that's been working until February, when I go back to university, and somehow blindly hope that with the building of this new mental foundation, the look of which I cannot envision yet, however it's definitely uncovering my authentic personality in a slow, but noticable manner. It's like I'm beginning to get in touch with a part of myself that was repressed/unavailable for at least 10 years, which I'm really enjoying. I've noticed in the interactions I'm having with people that I'm much more comfortable in my skin and I'm much more grounded in my values and personality traits. My hope is that if I took this approach I would be able to navigate through this phase in a much clearer/greater manner, on the other hand I may be just deluding myself with hopelessness and what's needed is to take matters into my own hands instead of trusting any process to magically deliver results in some indirect manner. This summer I got to a point where during one meditation session I just completely let my life purpose go, because I'm so sick of this cycle at this point and it's causing me so much depression and misery that I'm not even sure it's worth pursuing this anymore. On the one hand cultivating your life purpose is hard at the beginning, however you also have to know when to quit something. At the same time I'm scared of retaking the course, because even if I found out my life purpose, it would be something I wouldn't be comfortable sharing with people and couldn't imagine myself doing due to fear of judgement. Lately I've been so frustrated with trying to get a grip on everything that's going on in life that I decided to take a short break from everything and meet a few couple of friends I haven't seen in a long time. One of these meetings occured two days ago with a friend from high-school. He's asked me how I was doing, told him the fact that I became a passive student from university, decided to dedicate all my time producing music and pretty much stopped there as there was nothing more to tell... I asked him how he was and he went into quite a lot of detail(s). The more in depth he went into how he has been doing for the two years we haven't seen each other the more jealous and depressed I got... This guy has basically had his life purpose since age 10 and he's pretty much killing it right now teaching it to people. As a result of this he's getting invited on to holidays, people are taking notice of him and he is far from peaking. He's also this incredibly extraverted guy, who women throw themselves onto, because he's basically the most confident guy I've ever known all my life. Like it's ridiculous, all these PUA teachers you see on YouTube are an absolute fucking joke compared to him and he's had this personality since I've know him. After this meeting I got home and basically broke down in tears. To ease up on myself I listened to Leo's Motivational Speech he gave 2 years ago and then the Escaping Wage Slavery episode as for some reason I found that would resonate with me right now. As I was listening to the Wage Slavery episode I've realized how important finding your life purpose earlier in your life is, which I was never encouraged by my parent(s) and how fucking unlucky I was with my dating situation and it became really clear how I'm being stuck in a loop and I'm basically there are small inclinations of what I should be doing but at the same time I'm scared to do anything because any action I took would probably reveal another layer of my authentic self which I'm just not comfortable revealing yet. I also realized again how literally I've achieved no results externally and sort of realized the cost of obtaining these results are, but to be 100% honest with you guys here I'm not necessarily sure I have it in me. As I'm thinking all this I'm trying to carefully remind myself to stop fucking bitching about and take 100% responsibility, but I've given myself this 100% responsibility talk so many times that I might as well forget about it. Of course as I'm thinking this I'm trying to remind myself not to give up and remember what the fuck the alternative is and even if I don't know what my life purpose is, how I'm going to sort out my dating life, let alone be able to access higher states of consciousness, the alternative is literal death. It's like so fucking ridiculous... It feels as though during the last two years I had gotten my life from Level -50 to Level -35, and even that is thanks to all this strategizing, meditating, cultivation of mental toughness, figuring my "life purpose" out, listening to Actualized.org and putting in the practices and making of all the important commitments Leo's talking about all the time and this is how far it has gotten me... Then there's this guy, who does none of this and goes from Level 10 to 50 in two years with probably not nearly as much effort as I have to put in, because he's just pretty much had it figured out from a young age, his parents encouraged him to follow his passions, he's got this extraordinarily open and outgoing personality which is probably the main factor why he's killing it. At this point the picture's finally starting to come together and I'm realizing just how incredibly fucking stuck I am and how imprisoned I am by my lack of experiences, lack of guidance throughout my younger years and I'm pissed that I have not one friend who would be on this path, who would at least give me that extra 10% push which would maybe, just maybe enable me to figure out what the next step is and that I have to basically do all the work myself which at this point I'm realizing I just haven't been able to do. At the same time I also try to remind myself that at least I'm very ambitious, I'm in good hands with Actualized.org and at least to be proud of myself for not settling for anything less than the vision of beauty, self-improvement, creativity and love at all cost and try to remind myself to take 100% responsibility for anything that's happening to me and commit to figuring my life out even if it takes as long as I die. As I'm thinking all this my dad calls me into the bathroom saying "My dear!" like a pussy while he's barely able to stand on his own two feet, due to being so incredibly overweight holding on to the walls and asking if I could bring him some toilet paper. I closely examine him top to bottom and think to myself: "Jesus fucking Christ..." So all in all... If you've read this far, I'd like to thank you it means a lot, however it's time to get to the point, enough rambling from me. What do you recommend I do? I've been stuck for a long time now and it's time to put things into perspective with your help. A, Stick to my current life purpose, somehow hope that this cycle of psyching myself out, becoming depressed and then getting motivated for a few days suddenly ends and good things will happen, because we all know that life purpose cultivation takes a lot of work and a lot of patience. B, Continue solely working on emotional mastery until February like a motherfucker, because that's seemingly showing promising results and hope that my vision/purpose becomes clearer as I'm growing myself to this new foundation that I intuit I'm progressing towards and hope that throughout this process my life purpose/whatever the next step for me is gets realized. C, Retake the life purpose course right now this very moment hoping that this is the right time to do that. D, Sell all my music production equipment, find a job online and go hard on that so that I can improve my dating life, the lack of success where is also causing me shitton of suffering. E, Find a job to be able to afford a psychedelic retreat and tell my parents that I don't give a fuck what objections they come up with againts the idea of that and hope that such a retreat will show me something I'm clearly not seeing right now/not able to act on for whatever reason. Once again, thank you for your replies in advance! I highly appreciate each and one of them. This post took me approximetly 3,5 hours to write. Alternative options also appreciated! Sorry for all the tears of sorrow but I had to get it off my chest.

@Extreme Z7 @Marks199 @daniel695 Thank you for your insight, guys, it's greatly appreciated! You all definitely are sharing valuable information which I'm going to be acting on.

@crab12 Huh, that’s a different perspective! Yeah I’m definitely aware of my victim thinking/mentality which I have to work on because clearly things aren’t working so well because of it. I’ll definitely be journaling on my limiting beliefs and question each and every one of them to death.

I very much appreciate what you've just said! You do have many good points and I should probably be more gentle with myself, that's for sure!

Thank you for your insight! I'm definitely going back to school in February, however I'm 22 instead of 18.

Lately I've been bumping up my meditation/shamanic breathing practices to more intense durations and yesterday evening just as I was about to finish my 60 minute session I lost control of my body and it started behaving on it's own term much like what you see during holotropic breathwork retreats. This morning I laid down to do a shamanic breathing session of 60 minutes and the same shit started happening to me. As the session finished I kind of got back to normal. Then a few hours later I sat down to do my 60 minute meditation practice and immediately my body was doing the same stuff. I do have very mild ADHD, I was one of those kids who couldn't sit still, however it's not nearly as worse as it could be. I'm wondering if that's the demon wanting to leave my body. Anyway, do I surrender to this sucker and let it leave my body or is there any further action that needs to be taken? Also, I'd appreciate if @Leo Gura gave some insight into this as well, since this is no ordinary stuff.

Hello there, I'm unfortunately struggling to decide whether my current life purpose is the right one or not and to decide, I'd like to ask for your help. So nearly 5 years ago I discovered a particular genre in electronic music that's the most passionate thing I've ever been towards in my entire life. I would then spend years discovering different eras and artists and subconsciously I would imagine myself DJing at some of these parties that I heard the recording of. I would spend countless days discovering new recordings, looking for tracks the DJs were playing and trying to dig up as much information about these tracks and labels they were released on as possible. Fast forward to 2016 summer, I stumbled upon Actualized.org and I heard @Leo Gura emphasizing the concept of Life Purpose and wanting a passionate life I started thinking about what I'm the most passionate about. Then I came to the realization that DJing (and electronic music production as well) could be the best choice for me. I then took up a job and by 2017 summer I could afford the equipment that I wanted to have in order to start practicing. At this moment I made a huge mistake. I became really cocky and thought that I would be able to do the different kinds of techniques and be able to perform overall at the level that some of my heroes were performing at just because I thought I knew all there is to know about the genre and also because I knew how I would set myself apart from these people. Of course, it was all harder than I thought and this unrealistic expectation lead me to completely fuck my process towards mastery up to the point that I would only practice less and less overtime because I couldn't stand more than 30 minutes behind the turntables before completely losing myself and stopping altogether. It literally felt like hell. Around the same time I also knew I wanted to get into producing these tracks as well, however I was still very much motivated by DJing more, but whenever I would walk on the streets I would hear sounds and imagine placing them into the tunes I would produce. I started learning the different production softwares, however my main focus was still DJing. Fast forward to last summer (2018) I was still very disappointed by my progress both in DJing and producing which wasn't nearly as great as it could have been due to psyching myself out during practice sessions because of the unrealistic and perfectionist expectations I set myself. I then started questioning whether this really is going to be my Life Purpose or not and I eventually ended up taking the course. To my surprise the course just REINFORCED that I wanted to continue and I became very motivated again, however I don't know whether I was deceiving myself or not, because subconsciously I may have taken the course just to reinforce that I don't want to let go of this purpose because then I would have to start something else. I made a negotiation with myself that I wouldn't beat myself up due to my lack of progress. If I can spend 10 minutes DJing/learning music production without getting psyched out, then I can spend 10 minutes and that's it, things will start aligning eventually. Then last autumn my intuition spoke to me from thin air saying that if I wanted to become a great producer (and DJ), I would have to become a passive student at my current university, which I somewhat enjoy, however I've always looked it as another way to procrastinate from pursuing my career in this particular genre. I also realized that I would have to sign up for a music production class to do this full time otherwise I wasn't going to end up getting any results. This was the kind of decision Leo was talking about in the "The Challenges Of Making Bold Life Changes" video. Just thinking about making the switch would send shivers down my spine. So realizing that following my intuition is one of the most important things in life and it's something not many people do, regardless of all the heartache I did just that, this January I enrolled in the course, and started doing it, however since then there hasn't been a single day where I wouldn't have to enermously push myself to sit down and open the production software to do the exercises laid out to the point where I would psyche myself out again and end up doing nothing for days and fall behind with everything. I'm sick of the thought of sitting down and opening the software up. Something else I became aware of is that one of my greatest strengths in life (similarly to Leo) is that I've always been an exceptionally good researcher in whatever topic I would dive myself deep into and this is something people actually praise me for. I would always find such rare pieces of information that many people had no idea about. Just the fact that I've found Actualized.org is a proof of this. Surely if I was really into music production, I would have taken the same approach and not end up signing up for a structured online class. Another thing that's changed is that ever since I started meditating and doing other spiritual practices that Leo talks about, I kind of lost interest in this particular genre in a sense. I would always check out the new releases every Friday, which don't happen anymore. Whenever I would be in town, I would listen to music, however these days I find myself just listening to podcasts and Actualized.org videos while I'm running errands and stuff. Even I have to admit that the fire that I first felt when I discovered these DJ sets/tunes that I was listening to is not nearly as strong these days as it was back then. Had I started producing/DJing immediately, we would definitely not be having this topic, however the truth is that ever since I began meditating 3 years ago the amount of growth I had attained has been greater than ever, which also leads me to believe that maybe I've outgrown this whole music thing in the first place. Also while I'm definitely not advancing in DJing as quickly as I'd like to, I've been practicing certain techniques ever since I got my equipment 1,5 years ago that I still haven't mastered at all, yet many people write on forums that it takes normally between 2-6 months to master them, which is incredibly demotivating, HOWEVER at least I'm at a level where I don't have to push myself as much as I used to in order to start practicing, however any further progress is very hardly attained. Now you might be thinking that music production isn't for me, even I said that I have more passion towards DJing, however the problem is that you have to do both these days. Surely among some of the people I find inspiring in this particular genre, some of them are better at DJing and some are better at producing, there's LITERALLY NO ONE who doesn't do both! You have to! And even the people who are better at DJing speak with such passion about producing as well. I'm not sure if the reason why I'm so resistant towards all this is because I'm still at the beginning phase and I'm not having any success, or because I've truly outgrown this passion of mine? I recently listened to a podcast with one of my favorite producers who said that if you're still a beginner and you have to force yourself to write/produce stuff without having any hunger for sitting down, you might as well stop, because that's not going to work in the long run. But then on the other hand I hear Leo mentioning in the Life Purpose Course that the first 3-5 years of doing this work I'm going to be struggling left and right. I really don't know who to listen to. Also I cannot imagine that some of these guys would have to force themselves to start making tunes or practice DJing on the decks during the beginning when they're talking about how they spent 5-6 hours perfecting a SINGLE SOUND in some of their tunes, to which usually my reaction is "Jesus Christ, that sounds miserable..." And these aren't even mainstream/well-known/successful people! This is such a small niche of people that only those who accidentally stumble upon this particular genre and do thousands of hours of research into it know these people! I cannot imagine them having to write onto forums topics like I'm writing right here, right now. So, what to do now? Is it time for me to seek a new purpose, or is there still hope for me in this whole music production/DJing thing? Also, if there is, what can I change in order to not make it as painful as it is right now? Sometimes I literally feel like I'm in hell when I think about doing some of these things. I would sometimes rather just go back to university, which I didn't like much, than sit down in front of the computer and start producing a track or practice behind the decks. Thanks for reading, no TL;DR for this one!

Take note from this video.

The question(s) of "How do I do pickup in a non-manipulative way?", "How can I be authentic while doing pickup?", "What's the Stage Green/Yellow way of doing pickup?" are possibly some of the most frequently asked questions on this subforum and with good reason... You don't usually see interactions with women on the street coming from a less-manipulative, healthier, Greener way, however the following video (in my opinion) proves, that it's possible! I absolutely love it, just listen to every single word he says... If you're doing pickup and you sometimes feel guilty of being manipulative, you can just gradually try and embody his attitude and counterintuitively, your results are going to be possibly greater!

Can anyone recommend me some videos on YouTube/albums that you guys are listening to while meditating? I've just started listening to these today and I'm trying to figure out which ones are worth listening to.

Okay, so it's been 3 days this has been going on and as soon as I want to meditate and deliberately focus on the present moment my body just goes crazy. I know that obviously the best way to deal with this would be to surrender to it, however it twists my neck and spins my head around to the point that I'm physically in pain and have to attempt to stop it and gain control of it. How could this stop? Should I just suck it up and somehow try and surrender regardless the physical pain or do I take some time off from meditation and trust that it'll leave my body eventually? Any alternatives maybe? Also I'm hoping there's some huge growth happening on the other side, because this is the type of shit you see people doing on holotropic breathwork retreats and psychedelic retreats. Luckily this doesn't happen during daily life activities, but only during meditation so that's good at least.

Yeah it was, but I eventually built up to an hour. I'm planning to write a "year after" report next April as I'm pretty much doing it on a daily basis these days and it's beyond belief how effective this technique is. Also I still haven't defeated this sucker, I'll have another go tonight and surrender to it fully whatever happens.

It's okay, it passed! I surrendered like a champ. Man, that was the toughest spiritual experience I've ever had. It kept going on for nearly 4 hours and I could've easily vomited every second.

Unfortunately I've been dealing with huge jealousy issues during the past 6 years. I've been consistently doing Shamanic Breathing ever since Leo put up the video in order to cure those, my self-esteem issues and some bullying related shit as well. While I'm definitely noticing improvements, especially these days, those jealousy issues have increased a lot during the past week and they're coming back big time to the point that just when I think I'm over them, I realise that they're coming along for the ride making sure we don't part ways and I'm depressed as fuck because I'm not sure whether I'm going through an ego backlash or I'm wasting my time using a technique that was not intended to target what I want to demolish. I don't know whether anything has actually improved and if I should use a different technique for dealing with them. Also regarding Shamanic Breathing, I'm not just doing it in a fluffy way, I'm actually going at it on a 4-5-time-a-week basis doing one hour sessions each occasion, yet I'm feeling like my results in general haven't been as great as I hoped. What's the verdict in general, when it comes to jealousy issues? Is it great that I'm using Shamanic Breathing in hopes to nuke all that shit, and I'm just overreacting due to the ego backlash or should I rather take the contemplative route when it comes to stuff like that? As always, thanks for the replies in advance!

I feel like this thread is a bit underrated.

The episode where @Leo Gura mentions the marathon monks recently came into my mind and I started wondering whether some of these high-intensity cardiovascular exercises, such as running have any spiritual purification/consciousness raising attributes to them. I have a long-distance running practice that serves as a way of maintaining my fitness level that I do 3-4 times a week, however I can't help but notice the after effects of arriving home from a run. I would often times sit down to listen to some music straight after finishing my session and notice that my skin feels very alive/fresh and also that my body is free of any toxic/pent up emotions for roughly 1 to 3 hours. Obviously, we all know this phenomenon very well as the "runner's high". My experiences after a high intensity long distance running session are very similar to how I feel after finishing my meditation practice, however I'm back into full ego-mode much earlier than with running. Out of the non-psychedelic consciousness raising techniques I'm practicing at the moment only shamanic breathing comes close to this feeling of completeness in my body after finishing the session itself, which is a very powerful tool in itself that I owe a lot to. Also, it's interesting to note that running itself was one of the core principles of the marathon monks' method of raising their level of consciousness/attaining enlightenment alongside meditation, which leads me to believe that there's probably some validity to think that it's definitely a highly beneficial technique. While I'm aware that running (or any high-intensity cardiovascular training exercise as a matter of fact) are mainly beneficial and related to the domain of fitness and shouldn't be used as a crutch in hopes of achieving higher levels of consciousness, I can't help but wonder if there's some overlapping with spirituality as well. Also, are there any consciousness raising/emotional healing practices/exercises that are related to fitness as well from a Yellow or Turquoise perspective? I'm aware that we have Hatha Yoga as an answer to that question, which is mainly a Green exercise, however as I understand, it's not very effective for the outcomes/results we are striving for here. There are quote a few known techniques mentioned here and in Leo's videos, which are obviously life transforming, however I wonder why none of them are physical.

Also if you decide not to record or upload anything that happens during these meetings onto your main channel, I can definitely understand that, however if possible, I personally (and hope many other people as well) would appreciate if you at least uploaded one or two vlogs onto the blog similarly to when you documented your Hawaii retreats and stuff like that. Just so that people can have a bit of an understanding regarding what's happening, so that in the future people who were first hesitant to attend can this way clearly decide whether they want to come or not. I'm guessing this will also be able to be judged by the reviews people are going to write here, however still, a vlog or two wouldn't hurt and I'm pretty sure the people who attend wouldn't mind, however for that I think you'd have to make a poll to see whether your attendees are comfortable enough to be part of a vlog like that. I know this is a bit further away and not your first concern yet considering you haven't even begun yet, but as someone, who's from Europe and can't attend and travel to any of the locations during these three phases, it would be cool to have at least some insight into what to expect.

Hi there. Yes, I did two more retreats after the one I posted my insights about, however since the post wasn't too popular I didn't really bother sharing them. My stance hasn't changed on the technique, it's fantastic! I put the technique on hold for a while, because during the end of my last retreat I wasn't experiencing anything serious happening and also in a sense I'm having an ego backlash right about now. It's safe to say that these sessions and retreats have produced enough growth that many of the emotional and psyhological issues I had (and still have in a sense), while they haven't fully been worked through I definitely feel authenticity being unleashed and also the deeper issues which while as I said before, didn't get fully resolved are definitely much easier to resolve right now and I'm much more comfortable with them, I'm not too resistant towards them. In a sense I guess you could say that the wall has been demolished and now the work can begin. Also I'm experiencing great shifts in my consciousness to the point where I'm facing a similar decision in my life which Leo describes the following video: I can also see flaws in the way I was thinking just a year before, which is another sign of real growth happening for me. Also my meditatioon after the retreat has deepened a lot as well, I even had a mini enlightenment experience after waking up one morning for a mere 5 seconds, where I realized I was everything, however my ego kicked back in pretty shortly. All in all the technique is pretty amazing, I'm looking forward to getting back to it in a few weeks time, I'm taking a little break from it for a while.

Does Bruce Lee exhibit some Blue qualities among his Purple peers?

Actually swallow the saliva, it's fine! I've done several retreats using solely this technique and swallowing is actually OK, contrary to what Leo or anyone says on the forum. It's not like if you swallow, all your progress up to that point will be lost, everything continues. Also, when you feel like your throat is getting dry, swallow as much saliva as you can and continue with the practice afterwards. This obviously, shouldn't take more than 5 seconds. Use your nostrils to breathe in and out while you're swallowing and everything will be fine, that is what I do every single time. I also used to be so frustrated by this, but eventually realised there's no reason. Another thing Leo recommends is building up to 90 minutes which in my opinion (at least in my experience) is useless. The peak usually kicks in at around 35-40 minutes and settles down around the 55 minute mark, therefore I find that 60 minutes is usually enough for me. I've done several 90 minute sessions and honestly no matter how hard I tried to get to the peak during those 30-35 minutes it never happened. Also, of course after your timer is up, you want to lie on the floor for another 20-30 minutes to let the emotions purge.

Hi there, About one and a half years ago I found out my life purpose, the most meaningful way in which I can have impact on the world. This actually happened without taking the Life Purpose Course from Leo, however I fell into the trap of setting myself wrong, improper and highly unrealistic expectations. My life purpose involves practicing an instrument in a specific genre of music that I have been interested in ever since I was a child and I went into this whole practice thing with a huge ego thinking that I'm going to be able to make drastic changes in the first year and practicing 8 hours a day easily. I guess you could say I'm the "obsessive" if we take George Leonard's Mastery as an example. Of course, I couldn't win the battle, my practice sessions became a living hell for me and I'm one and a half year into practicing my life purpose and I achieved much less than I would have if I didn't get into this with such a terrible plan. At one point I even thought I was probably pursuing the wrong life purpose, which lead me to take Leo's course, however I once again came to the realisation that I'm meant to do what I initially thought I was meant to do. However something got me thinking. I spend a lot of time listening to interviews from people whom I'm inspired by in this field and they usually say they love practicing for 8 hours a day and say if you have to push yourself to start practicing, you're in the wrong field. Ever since they fell in love with this instrument, they have been HOOKED as a teenager playing video games. This really hit home, because during the last year and a half I've been practicing, I never ONCE had a session, where I didn't have to push myself to start practicing. It would always be "Oh, man I have to practice today as well, just like every other day..." instead of "Fuck yes, can't wait to practice!" Leo always says that your life purpose needs to be something that makes you be excited to wake up in the morning to do, however in my case nothing could be further away from the truth. Once, however I get myself to practice and I'm into it, often times, when I'm not on the plateau and I feel like I'm advancing, improving, obviously I'm feeling great and I'm motivated, however even then I have resistance towards practicing the very next day. The resistance is so deeply wired that I just can't seem to be able to let go of it and it comes back to bite me in the ass every single time. Also, just last week I went to a place where I saw people doing what I'm practicing very close, live in front of me and that got me motivated more than ever to practice. It's as though there was a spiritual connection between what was happening and myself. I felt like that kid again, who got so interested in this specific genre of music back in the days. The next day I would wake up, and would still be motivated, I did start practicing, because the resistance was somewhat minimal at this point, but as days went by, it decreased again to the point where yesterday I couldn't get myself to practice for example, and I'm back in the spiral, I'm just slacking off and I'm feeling very relieved that I don't have to push myself again to start doing the whole nine yards. Now, I know that in the Life Purpose Course Leo says that great art takes huge amounts of work and dealing with resistance and all that, however there's probably a fine line between pushing yourself through the resistance to practice while you're making your life a living suffering and being motivated to practice every single day for endless hours, like the master does and enjoying every single second of the plateau. It's just too fucking fatiguing to ALWAYS have to push myself through this fucking unbelievable amounts of resistance to practice, I cannot imagine that these people, who's interviews I'm listening to always have to deal with this on a daily basis. I would be HAPPY to have a legitimate excuse not to practice during certain days, because of various reasons, however it should be the other way around. These people can't wait to spend X hours of their days doing what they do. It's psychologically impossible that these people are masters at their craft by having these kinds of thoughts and emotions in their bodies every single time when they want to start practicing. So then the question(s) finally arise: How do I remove these improper expectations that I set for myself, and more importantly how do I let go of the resistance that came with them? Have I fucked up my expectations so much that at this point it's impossible to let go of them, so I better find a new Life Purpose? I was thinking of perhaps going cold turkey on practicing for a whole of two months, maybe that would help reconnecting with my initial passion. Would that work? TL;DR: I set improper expectations regarding my life purpose and now I'm suffering for it. How do I reverse engineer it all and make my motives authentic again?