Zane

Leo, YOU'RE AWESOME!!!!!! Thank you so much for introducing me to self-actualization! How was your birthday? What self-actualization aspirations are you currently pursuing?

Leo, you heavily discussed the Creator Mindset in your Victim Mindset video but I would love for you to go into more depth with a creator mindset by shooting a video on the topic. What is a creator? How do creators think? What distinguishes the creator from a victim or a fighter? What is a creator's worldview? What are the signs of a creator? What are a creator's purpose and aspirations and values? How can we become creators? Is there a spectrum of creators? I realized that my greatest desire is to become a completely free creator who isn't limited by writer's block or idea overload and who has limitless motivation.

What I'm loving is your observations about trying to sit still! To improve my mindfulness and sitting still, what I do is go to the theater, absorb myself in the experience, and turn off my phone. Going to the theater can flow by when you're so invested in the show! Another meditation technique i apply is in my creative writing where i try to focus on the writing process.

My Worst Fears 1. I’m afraid that I’ll never express my deepest potential and to realize how amazing my life could be. The scenario of my fear plays out like this! As a child, I was a highly creative and imaginative child who conveyed his imagination through acting, roleplaying, creative writing, and storytelling. I would tell everyone from my therapists, my friends, and even my camp counselors and my siblings my imagination and I loved immersing them entirely in my own imagination. I strongly identified with Buster from “Arthur,” Calvin from “Calvin and Hobbes” Alice from “Alice in Wonderland” and Belle from “Beauty and the Beast.” Yet as I grew older, I stopped expressing my imagination and I abandoned it in the graveyard of broken dreams, dead memories, and untapped potential where unexpressed potential dies and rots away. As an adult, I completely abandoned my imagination and childhood to become “normal” and I would mindlessly go through the day feeling deeply unhappy but not knowing why. I would be unconsciously trapped in a midlife crisis where I forgot how it felt to be happy and all those dreams and aspirations from childhood were never realized and died. As I grew older, I became more regretful and I started to realize how miserable and unfulfilled I was all along because I didn’t express my potential and I never truly lived. I wallowed in the mire of regret and missed opportunity and sunk slowly in that swamp. I wasted my life! 2. I fear being trapped in a dysfunctional situation permanently like a bad financial situation where I’m constantly trapped in the cycle of poverty and debt where my opportunities are completely limited. The worst dysfunctional situation for me would be the situation Jesse Ridgway is in where he is trapped in a dysfunctional family with a tyrannical father who forces his power on Jesse, who mentally abuses him, and who destroys his possessions and who victim blames his son and denies his anger, tyranny and being a psychopath. I feel like in that situation, I would stoop to such a low level that the cycle will continue and only worsen. I feel like the situation would end in me committing suicide or feeling deeply bitter and hating humanity and completely losing my optimism and exuberance. I feel like Jesse will have a damaged self-esteem that is beyond fixing, a deeply pessimistic outlook on life, a bitterness and hatred towards his father, rejecting advice and help, and a deep anger that will destroy him from the inside out. I can identify with Jesse’s passion for gaming and I want to be his best friend to help him lift his spirits, regain trust, and realize his own potential. I feel like my worst fears are becoming deeply bitter, angry and neurotic and being trapped in a dysfunctional situation like a damaged family, poverty, depression, self-loathing and inner pain. 3. I’m afraid of losing my freedom and individuality and being made a slave by my parents, society, or a master or by an oppressive government. A fictional scenario would be that I was kidnapped and made a slave and my masters killed my individuality by ripping away my culture from me and by ordering me to obey with the threat of punishment. My humanity would be denied and I would so silenced and censored that my freedom would be seen as damaging. My masters would tighten their control and their power over me and would reject the concept of freedom as a dream or fantasy! Even worse, my masters would delude me with the idea of freedom to keep me in slavery! I would be so controlled by rules, masters, and toxic beliefs that I’m permanently stuck. 4. I’m afraid of being trapped in a bad family situation or relationship situation. The scenario would look like this. For a bad family situation, I would have a cruel and sociopathic child who never expressed any love or gratitude for me, would scream at me all the time and order me around, would threaten and attack me, and who would say “I hate you and I want you to die.” The child would create so much emotional pain for my life that everything goes to Hell. I would end the day feeling drained and just wanting to burst into tears and to explode in rage and vent. For a bad relationship situation, I would meet a woman who had charmed me with her charisma but I discovered how toxic of an influence she was on me and how she tightened so much control on me. The woman would dominate and abuse me and shatter my individuality and force me to “love” her without truly understanding genuine love. I would become my wife’s slave and she would completely shatter my will and will resist my freedom. Someone like Amie Carter was in both situations of having a cruel and psychopathic child who abused and manipulated her and she was in a toxic relationship with her ex-husband who cut her and his child out of her life, spread lies about her, and blamed her for being a “bad mother.” My Four Worst Fears Simplified 1. Never expressing my creativity and rotting away my potential until it’s too late. 2. Being trapped permanently in a dysfunctional situation like a broken family or poverty 3. Losing my individuality and freedom 4. Having a bad family or relationship situation where I feel powerless. What all these fears are themed around is never expressing my own creativity or discovering my potential, feeling completely helpless when faced with a toxic situation, having no freedom to express myself authentically and not to fight back, and to be a prisoner who is completely robbed of my freedom. I’m also terrified of becoming a bitter and toxic pessimist who is angry, bitter, nihilistic and who feels like there’s no point in living. These fears also have the themes of self-expression, identity, and dysfunctional situations.

@Falk Thank you so much for the great suggestions! I'm writing down my fears to understand my own personal psychology, how I think, my own strengths and weaknesses, and to truly know myself. Your exercise suggestions will be extremely helpful for me to apply! To clarify, I'm not living a dysfunctional lifestyle! I'm clarifying on my own fears!

I feel like a major problem with the Vegan movement are the self-righteous vegans who try to shame you for eating me without taking it into consideration that I'm also an omnivore. I feel like I'm trying to be converted to veganism. I try to focus on having a balanced diet that does include vegetables and fruits and water and salads. I love the wide variety of food and I love trying new cuisines. If someone chooses to go vegan or vegetarian, I respect their own choice but I disagree. @DrMatthewsausage Thank you for using the evidence to support your point on why veganism wouldn't work!

I recently advanced to Adept.

I love how you've been expanding the time of your meditation sessions from 20 to 25 minutes. This will exponentially increase your progress for meditation!

@ZenBlue I'm glad you're watching Leo's "How to Meditate Deeper" I recommend watching all of Leo's other meditation videos to gain insight from these videos and to apply them in your meditation. These videos can transform your meditation! I'm proud of you for being so dedicated on mastering meditation and I know that a breakthrough is inevitable for you at some point.

My pleasure to help you out! I'm glad that you're discovering who you are and how you're re-connecting with your inner child.

That is a great aspiration for after college! I've never met a person who wants to become a monastery resident. Here are some ideas of how you can get started. I'm curious but why do you want to become a monastery resident? I think that's a highly unconventional idea for post-college but I love unconventional lifestyles. At some point in my life I would love to spend time at a meditation retreat or a writer's residency program for a few months or a year. 1. http://stillmind.org/uk-meditation-retreats-top-10/ 2. https://zmm.mro.org/retreats/ 3. http://www.travelandleisure.com/slideshows/top-meditation-retreats

Leo's videos can get extremely in-depth so there is a lot of information to put in the transcripts.

Storytelling is an excellent life purpose! It's a great outlet for deep creative expression and it helps you discover your passions in life.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEO!!!!!!!!!!!!! You're one of my role models!

What I realized about people in Corporate America is how the people with the highest power and status are deeply miserable and are so heavily egotistical that they are obsessed with control. They're completely driven by schedules and their clocks and they're in a constant rush to get to the office and to get home. I'm willing to bet that they're deeply unhappy and unfulfilled about their work because they have the power and the money but they feel empty and miserable inside. When they're so stressed out, they snap angrily at you and they have no tolerance for delays or traffic jams. I wonder if they are ever happy or even remember what happiness is or if their happiness and authentic self is clouded by so much dirt and grime. I made the choice not to pursue power or prestige! I love focusing on discovering my passion and my authentic self! I'm glad that you're realizing people's desire for superiority

I love your student of life mentality and how open you are to experimenting with meditation! You'll always have so much to learn and there is a lot you will be ignorant about. I am highly ignorant about science and math but I remain dedicated to lifelong learning.

Nick, thanks for the transcripts! Someone else is doing transcripts by the way but you can keeping doing yours.

@ZenBlue I'm glad that you're aware of these traps and how your mind is going into so many directions. I'm glad you were able to have a five minute meditation session today. Some days can be harder than others but when you're committing yourself to a hundred day challenge, you're bound to make mistakes. Maybe you can find a strategy to moderate these demands or eliminate these demands by clarifying your boundaries with people and let them know how much you value self-actualization and meditation!

Citizen Kane, The Social Network, Glengary Glenn Ross, Boiler Room, Jobs, Wall Street

In one of his earlier videos, Leo asks the question “If you had a hundred million dollars right now in your bank account, you woke up with a hundred million dollars tomorrow, what would you do?” With that money, I wouldn't blow through it right away and dig myself into deeper debt. I will use the money as a tool to create financial independence for myself and spend the money on my deepest passions like travel and theater. I will give a good deal of the money to theaters that I strongly support and to fund young artists. When I have the money, I will be focused entirely on pursuing my passions like mastering creative writing and mastering self-actualization. I would use my time and money to discover a wide variety of passions and experiment with life purposes. I will deepen my fascination for life and discover what I love the most about life.

Welcome to the forum Anthony!! It's amazing that you're becoming focused on personal development as your main goal? What do you want to focus on in your personal development? Can you tell me how you got into personal development and how you discovered it? What you do hope to achieve from personal development? How do you plan to bring personal development and self-actualization to your local area and younger crowd? What successes have you achieved? What struggles did you deal with and overcame?

@The Village Idiot I love how dedicated you are with your five hour daily meditations and i love how you're experimenting with meditation techniques and how you feel the deep bliss and the benefits of meditation. I'm also glad that you enjoy meditation which is a great motivator to continue your meditation.

Honestly, I want to die feeling completely relaxed and at peace! I will prepare myself for death by answering the questions of 1. did I live a good life? What is a good life? 2. What were my greatest life experiences and my most cherished core memories? What am I the most proud of? What are the most grateful for? Which people did I love the most? 3. Did I have a life purpose and personal values? Did I ground myself in the values? 4. What were my regrets and how can I learn from my regrets? Should I accept the regrets? Learn the regrets? Let go of the regrets? Or accept, learn from, and let go of! I will focus heavily on joy, and gratitude rather than regret and misery when I die. I will keep answering these four questions to keep my life in perspective! I realize how regretful people are about what they did and didn't do! I will start answering the questions in my twenties and for every year of my life to answer the questions more deeply. I will look at the past and the present to answer these questions.

I LIVE, I DIE, I LIVE AGAIN!!!! OH WHAT A DAY!! WHAT A LOVELY DAY!! WITNESS ME!!!!!!!!!! I AM AWAITED IN VAHALLA!!!!! YOU WILL RIDE ETERNAL SHINY AND CHROME!!

Great job on your fifteen minute session! One suggestion I have is to experiment with a variety of meditation techniques. I was in a Buddhist meditation club where I sat on a cushion on meditated for half an hour and what I dealt with was my foot falling asleep and getting foot cramps. I get into meditational and relaxed states when I'm outside in nature or when I become focused while watching a play! The play gets me so invested that I enter a flow state where I'm inspired.