Steph1988

@Joseph Maynor How long do you follow this routine? Do you have setbacks sometimes which make you abandon your routine for 2 weeks or something like that? i sometimes do that keeping up the consistency seems to be the most important thing i wonder how you do it successfully. Is writing the book your work? or do you have a job additionally?

@Salaam I took the Meyers Briggs and i had INTJ with intuition about 85% thinking as well something high like that so kind of opposite to you almost. The sensing part is a huge challenge to improve and i'm working on it because when u practice an instrument, working out or socializing u want to be 100% there and in the moment otherwise u work at like half your potential i noticed this especially while working out i feel when i'm in instinct mode so to speak i am a 100% stronger but it is hard to get into that and even scary because it feels kinda alien but intensely satisfying do u know what i mean? maybe i'm just talking about the idea of the flowstate its hard to explain words really fall short here actually. With my thinking i can get into such deep abstractions and to me sometimes it is like the outside world is a whisper it is exhausting although i guess it has its advantages maybe but it needs to be more balanced. i'm working on it by while running for example, trying to focus on just the next step and look no further, its still incredible hard tho. final question for you, To achieve something real hard to really master something i need to develop this sensing part of me would that be the key and possible life changing maybe is that correct you think? i improved a lot last few years but this might be the next step.

Probably 75% of the time lost in imagination and thinking about the future its quite a problem sometimes. Only when playing guitar i get in touch with my senses i think and sometimes when working out all tho it doesn't always happen. I have a rich inner world but it draws me in too much sometimes and i get completely lost in thought forgetting the outside world. Interesting question, how about you?

@Visitor that's true very much i think i made that mistake going do self development in a neurotic way wanting to see results within the next 3 weeks and get burned out by seeing to few results then giving up so, thx for that comment it was a bit of an eye opener. You can get much done within a year but tracking progress over lets say 4 years can make you see how long stuff actually takes to master or learn if of course you are consistent with your practice.

@Prabhaker Ok this makes perfect sense, in other words its plan B to put it bluntly. I have to say your answer reminds me that there are indeed people who suffer that much and that depresses me a bit sometimes. I can imagine that some people don't trust hope itself anymore after enough misery and give it up and maybe then it is a good plan. But people can give up hope to quickly and simply procrastinate, try this strategy prematurely and that might be dangerous. As for meditation i don't do it because i feel somehow i don't need to but of course i don't know what i miss so i can't really judge it i might be wrong there.

@bernieboy20 I'm not triggered at all i'm curious why do you post this post on the forum? @Prabhaker I like your post it clarified for me that this is more a kind of lifestyle and meditation is not something you do for half an hour just as a simple life hack but i have a question. but how does that stack up with a another mode of self improvement something more like this, You have things and goals you are interested in and you try to achieve them getting closer gives good emotions,on the other hand you have your social life that makes you happy,you take care of your health,and you regulate your emotions by taking a more stoic attitude and embracing a bit of minimalism so actually the non spiritual stuff seems to me the highest good atm. but is that not enough, why meditate? why take such extreme measures? could it be a coping mechanism? could it be a flight from the responsibility of trying to do it the non spiritual way? I don't know how you feel maybe the nonspiritual self improvers miss out massively that could be but what you propose is actually a huge risk because you achieve the benefits after investing massive amounts of time in it which means not attending to other interests and missing out on those. you just have to hope its worth it. So why force spirituality with sitting for hours on end doing nothing and you have to continually do that the rest of your life how can it compete with just a walk through nature for example maybe its all you need to come to rest ( of course there is work to be done and i do see the worth in eastern philosophy i really like Alan Watts for example ) We overdo spirituality here its just a bit too much maybe that is what @bernieboy20 means and you could make a case for it and i think some people here including me were initially attracted to Leo's more practical stuff.

I thought a bit about Leo's concentration video and i thought there is maybe a better way to do it. Namely learn to play a musical instrument or rather try to achieve mastery in it, u cannot achieve mastery if u cannot focus on the level Leo is talking about i experienced that myself i absolutely know that this is one of the few things i'm 100% certain about. So instead of staring at an object or listening to a metronome i learned to play this piece on guitar i already had a reasonable background playing guitar but it took me 6 months of daily practice to get close and i realize now u sit there sometimes for hours at a time playing it at slow speed endlessly but there comes a certain point where u get so focused and immersed i didn't experience that since i was a child i guess that is the focus that is talked about. Leads me also to think maybe this is a basic human skill that got out of fashion in our neurotic world. anyway why stare at objects when u can learn it through an interesting activity that improves your life in many other ways as well? And i take music just as an example because that is what i had experience with but just the general idea that doing activities that require intense focus to increase focus seems to me more natural and preferable. So just a thought what u guys think?

He is an interesting figure quite controversial actually i read this from wikepedia and he was saying smart things but then u read something like this Rajneesh was seen to live "in ostentation and offensive opulence", while his followers, most of whom had severed ties with outside friends and family and donated all or most of their money and possessions to the commune, might be at a mere "subsistence level" U hear that from Scientology and other cults like that off Jim Jones. then there are claims of a terror attack done by his followers and lots of criminal activity there is this article https://artofericwayne.com/2013/07/17/osho-and-his-90-roll-royces/ of course i can't judge it all finding this out within an hour or 2 but even if his teachings are enlightening i tend to look more at facts, stuff that has happened. At first glance he seems highly suspicious.

@Juan Cruz Giusto What the hell..................................why? why does a guru have a 100 uber expensive cars? how suspicious is that? that Osho guy is turning into a curiosity for me especially with the amount of popularity he has on these forums i definitely HAVE! to figure out why he is so popular here.

@Leo Gura could you tell why? i have no idea yet who Osho is or his teachings but i guess i will look into it, but i follow Peterson for about a year now and viewing his maps of meaning course at the moment i love it. so as i also devoted quite some time to your video's now i wonder why you prefer Osho over Peterson.

@Socrates Some stuff i would suggest is closing borders for a while and deport all terror sympathizers that is what needs to happen right now very simple. after that has happened we can talk about solving it long term and of course that also means looking to our own evils as well. i hope no one takes offense to what i say it happened before in the forums i'm not gonna expand to much energy defending myself anymore but i get annoyed with the incredible lack of agency and lack of assertiveness we seem to have on this issue. and if someone tells us to unconditionally love our enemies i'd say well give em some tough love then!

Hahaha well that would be a bummer to some people here to know that. and then What about that then? i like your explanations very much tho in this topic it actually clarifies some things for me.@Leo Gura

@Salaam Thx a lot gonna check it out later after work this day awesome! And i think with that u gave a very good answer on the topic

@Salaam Love it! these are concrete real changes this is what were all here for i think and what we should aspire to. - did you focus on the things you wanted to improve one by one? for example when u were dropping weight was that the thing you focused on for most of the time? and with reaching your dead lift record was that something you focused on for 2 years? i mean how much did you train for that each week? i think its quite impressive for two years to reach that. i'm asking because i kinda burned out last year because i tryed to do everything at once and maybe that is too much because you can focus only on so much. - and if i understand correctly you had a huge momentum going once u mastered yourself doing these first 3 things losing weight,strength training and meditating i mean everything else came from that in your case after of course u somehow made a decision to do things differently ? so first reaching mastery and improve certain things and that was the amplifier for the rest.

@Salaam impressive how long did that all take you? was there a single moment that u decided you had enough and u were gonna improve your life? or was it very gradual? i'm curious how long these processes take for people.

@electroBeam oh@eputkonen beat me to it i'm saying the same thing but now u got more people saying it.

@electroBeam You know this might be just a phase that will pass this metaphysical thinking is going way to far i think (i agree on the grades tho). Yes reject society's ideals , shit on social norms and conformity but there have to be things you are interested in beside pondering "truth'' all the time the ideal might be just doing what u like doing maybe that's all that ever matters. Make it easier on yourself decide on a goal and then try to achieve it don't ponder the deeper meaning for now just move forward and while doing it you will feel much better that is something i had to learn myself the hard way. to answer the question what moves me forward for example. - i worked hard to buy a house working 2 jobs but it was easy mentally because i had a goal in mind and what u said about money was not true for me because with making that money real concrete stuff happened in the world namely having a new house and renovating it will be a challenge as well but it will feel meaningful. - i like to learn to play progressively harder songs on the guitar and achieving mastery on it is a long term goal for me why? because i have a great time doing it very simple. - busy reading books on different subjects recently finished one on the second world war why? because it is interesting to me and the next subject i'm interested in for example is the fall of the roman empire which i look forward to learn more about. - writing here is just something i like doing once in a while because i would like to read and explore topics that go beyond shopping and football but i just like doing it for its own sake. Lots of stuff more but these are just some examples they have no deeper meaning then i have described because i guess i don't care about it, i don't care that within a billion years everything is gone and nothing has any meaning anymore these things mean something to me because they simply do it took me some time to realize this but it is very freeing. There has to be stuff you want to do in your life and you need no exact explanation of why u feel drawn to it u just are and that's enough for now. The future being an illusion needs some nuances maybe i thought Alan Watts said something like the future only counts if u are able to live now and living now is doing stuff and enjoy them for their own sake. So that shines some new light on it, the future is very concrete, if u decide now to start train seriously for a marathon 3-4 days a week within a year( the future ) u will run one and the process will be tough but very worthwhile. This is my view on it good luck hope it helps.

See it as art then did you play the witcher 3? its pure art how about that. Help society by working on a masterpiece game, i see what u mean but people are responsible for their own time wasting. I really would like to see another sim city game going back to the old formula that would be awesome make that and make at least one person extremely happy .

@Nahm I find the idea that the world is perfect as it is quite hard to grasp as well. do you mean that u disconnected yourself from the emotions of for example righteous anger when u see injustice and just move in to fix it so that u are pure practical and not burdened by to much worries which are inefficient, is that the whole idea? is it about being practicality and efficiency? i guess that would make sense but i would call it mental toughness i guess. The idea that there is no good and evil is still strange to me as i think we can agree that in your example overseeing the gas chambers making sure people are being gassed would be clearly an evil action and risking your life blowing up a gas chamber and slowing down the killing would be a good action. So with doing good actions we fight evil it seems very simple and this means that the word perfect is kinda a strange word to describe the world, maybe we could call it a work in progress then. Amiright? maybe we are just fighting over semantics in this thread and secretly agreeing with each other. what do u think?

@Shin nice work! i have problems with this one as well constantly thinking of possible future outcomes which is ok but probably not 10 times a day so i guess it makes sense that with the elimination of 1 problem the rest will follow more easily.

What makes you a nice guy in the bad sense specifically? That is what many men want and if you are in a bar that is actually all you want. But she does get attracted. I completely agree with this but there is a problem. DISCLAIMER: i know that the following is generalizing and not true in all cases but it is a problem otherwise u wouldn't have a whole industry made out of it that is the pickup industry. So whats a man to do with this information if you keep in mind the longing for sex is real and powerful. As long as woman respond well to bad guy behavior then men are encouraged to at least display it for a while and as long as woman's emotions override their logic should men use this to their advantage if they can? i guess so, again for a while, because when i look at this thing it does seem like bad guys get all the fun and the nice guys have to wait until the woman finally make up their mind. I think overall woman have no clue what kind of signal this sends off to men. Men are encouraged by mainstream society to be nice guys and at the same time society incentivizes to make you a bad guy that is kind of confusing. So their is only one question, What works? And you got to do whatever works and at the same time be a good moral person with responsibility.

I'm about halfway and this feels good, 1 leg in society and 1 leg out of it. - stopped using Facebook - limited alcohol use no more drunken nights out or very few - very little TV - most important of all no fakeness in socializing anymore i present myself as i want and it is very hard to do it always 100% but you got to try as much as possible - much less bragging and lying - less fat food (could be better tho) - culture only when i like it on the other hand i would never detach myself from intimacy and never fully from alcohol or drugs or meat and all that stuff. i also want to make money but the only reason to do that is to be as free as possible so now i work 2 jobs for a while and i do some stock trading, i also live kind of a minimalist life to modern standards so no subscriptions, cheapest possible phone,less insurance and i buy almost nothing but i do think i am attached to money right now. I do notice here on the forums there is a certain group of people who are attracted to transcending everything you know the real super spiritual crowd and i just want to throw down the suggestion that maybe to just go halfway might be best for most people i just can't see it making people happy aside from a very small minority but maybe i am wrong if so please tell me why .

I would definitely say outside i run several routes and i learned to really love them, i know every tree, every crack in the road and every building, sometimes i run around a lake,sometimes through the town, sometimes i run up to a certain point for example an old mill and back, sometimes early morning sometimes when the evening sets in and so far over the years iv'e seen deer,rabbits,foxes,owls u name it and that is why running outside is best in my opinion.

Amongst many genre's i think the blues fits that description for me

If u have the time. Awesome book i listened to it twice very interesting. I think the nature of evil is something to be contemplated for some time to be understood this book lights out examples in a lot of detail. Lots of times it starts with small lies and gradually worsens it seems. To make it more complicated u have something like this Now was this guy born evil? was he a little bit evil but the evil world made him worse? or was he born good but made evil? u have to draw your own conclusions. I think everything u do has a rippling effect on the world which means every action and inaction is completely significant no matter how small i think that is also the greatest counterargument against nihilism and to improve yourself is also to fight evil. That is very concrete stuff when u are a happy somewhat fulfilled and positive person your children will see that and in turn their children and the people they interact with and so forth. 2 books i found interesting that were more focused on group evil are man's search for meaning and the gulag archipelago. To answer your questions i think there are no simple answers this i feel is really something to ponder on for a long time. But what i think is that it mostly starts with lies and simple laziness and fleeing from your own problems and then slowly gets worse and worse and then just takes over both society's and individuals as some autonomous thing.