Finn

Is there a way to deal with the anxiety that goes hand in hand with doing anything new? Assume anxiety levels of someone afraid to talk to their own friends.

I believe I have always been bored, even during childhood. I had to be kept busy. I wouldn't go out and do something on my own. There was always some kind of force involved.

Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out. That's what I got stuck on. The simplest way to put it would be a business that runs itself, right?

I bought the life purpose course almost a year ago and got stuck half a year ago. Upon reviewing where I got stuck, which was this massive list of hypothetical questions, it seems I still can't continue. Are there perhaps people who could get past this and could help me figure it out?

@ajasatya I've been thinking about doing that exact thing. I need to find a way to do it, it seems.

That's basically what it is, yeah. And I know it exists, which is kind of where the suffering kicks in. I reckon it has to do with the way I was raised (overly protective parent), which has lead to me lacking independence and agency. I need authority to get me to do something. That sounds both painful and awesome at the same time.

I've been trying to figure something out for a while now, but I haven't been able to. I've seen from up close how cruel the world can be to a person, but I've also seen what some people are capable of if they possess discipline and high IQs. Problem is that I saw it in the exact same person, meaning that with all the terrible stuff out, it's still possible to do amazing things. You'd think that that would be motivating, and in a sense it is, but the fact that I'm not able to do anything useful with my life while having no monstrous issues in my life like physical abuse makes me feel terrible. It's a sense of guilt and futility at the same time: "don't complain, stop being weak, you have no reason to feel bad, get to work you loser" and "you're not good enough, you know you can't be like those extraordinary people, you're not smart enough, you can't even clean your room, you're pathetic". How is it possible that I hold those conflicting ideas at the same time and how do I get out of it?

If you're gonna be technical, everyone is dependent on the state for protection against foreign and domestic threats. But as long as you have a job, financially you generally aren't dependent on the state in that regard. No idea. I've only worked a month in my life as a mailman. I do know it's a service based economy mostly. I have no idea what you're trying to say here. I've been bored my whole life. The only times I'm not is when someone else tells me what to do. I have zero autonomy basically. This I don't understand either.

Oh, I see. I perceived working on a ship as this monolithic profession of serving people on a vessel, rather than identifying the individual professions that are on there. I can't dissect that sort of stuff, which is another reason I get lost when it comes to abstraction or vagueness. Especially if you're dependent on the state like I am. The latter hasn't helped me in the past. Got me suicidal, while still not being able to change anything. The only reason that decreased was through constant consumption of media to basically numb me through distraction. The media consumption hasn't gone down. I picked the values that I picked when it was required of me to do so (life purpose course, essentially step 1), while at the same time being apathetic and clueless of what I even liked to do, because I don't really do anything. I'm basically perpetually bored and fill the void with useless information. I'm quite severely detached. I don't know myself at all, because self-knowledge is feeling-based and feelings are vague and therefore hard to understand and deconstruct. It's probably as close as I'm gonna get to "my values", as much as it doesn't feel correct, because what else can it be? It's not beauty, it's not adventure. And the ones that aren't definitely not it are too close to "my values" to distinguish them from one another.

It's in the life purpose course, so I kinda have to. I think. Do I? Am I being too rigid again? >.>

That I would not care for. It'd kill me with anxiety as well as monotony, which is a strange combination because monotony tends to be closely related to predictable. I would, but it's not the reality of my life. It's a hypothetical for anyone without 7 figures in their bank account. I care enough to resist it. That makes sense. Wouldn't do that if I were indifferent to it. Being comfortable leads to misery. That's what I'm experiencing at least. But the misery isn't greater than the anxiety involved with expansion. Otherwise I'd just do whatever to get out, right? I don't really see how this ties in with clarifying very open-ended questions such as "what are you really good at" or "what do you care about most" or "what does your soul yearn for".

I am going through the life purpose course and I have those 10 values you need to establish. When I read them now, they don't feel right so I have to redo it, but to give an idea of the ones that do feel right: Joy, passion, creativity, society, calm, excellence would be important to me. I think it was meant as a hypothetical to establish what I'd do if I'd be able to make any investment into having a good future. But indeed, I have no material shortages at the moment, but that hasn't resolved my misery. How do I deal with the resistance to that idea? Does that indicate I don't care enough? No one wants to be miserable all their life, but you can't really shoot a target if you don't know it's your target.

There's a bunch of questions out there like "what would you do if money was not an issue" and "what would you do if you had no fears" that are supposed to help with finding out life purpose. The problem I run into is I find them so vague and open-ended that I completely shut down. I draw a blank for half an hour and then get so fed up with the fact I can't figure it out that it just goes downhill from there. I can't imagine what that's like either. How am I supposed to know what it's like to not have money be an issue for instance? Lastly, I don't really have a life, so I really have no sense of what I would like or do like. And because I can't sense what I would like, I don't try anything, because again it's too vague. Too much risk, which isn't great for the way I view myself either. How do I deconstruct these types of questions to make them work for me?