HII

@Scholar Okay fine, but that neither answers the topic question nor renders it superfluous. Maybe that wasn't your intention in the first place, but I was interpreting your post like that.

@starsofclay Thank you for sharing your story. Some thoughts on the three layers you described: What would happen if you showed your true emotional state to your customers? Have you experimented with consciously directing your attention outwards? I can relate to this a lot. But I noticed how much this depends on various states of mind and that I get more comfortable in such situations over time with practice. Could it be that you are afraid that they will not like you or see you in a light that you don't want yourself to be seen if they find out who/what/how you are? Or that you don't want to show to them your struggles? Or could there be a connection to your period of being bullied?

What are your dreams? What do you do all day? What would you like to do all day? What would you like to accomplish? Your post sounds to me like you're filling your mind with too much vague theory and struggle to connect it to the actual world where actions are performed and events happen. Prove me wrong and answer these questions.

@Scholar Then again, how do you know that it's not exactly the specific purpose of humanity as a species to learn how to make a conscious decision, as a large collection of individuals, how it wants to behave on this planet and where it wants to go? It's not possible for bacteria to think about how they want to influence the organism. But for us it's possible. So why doesn't it make sense to try your best in that then?

I know I'm doing that. But stopping with this is easier said than done. Wanna know what the letters HII stand for? Huge Identity Issues. I don't really know what to make of your advice in this particular context though. Maybe you can clarify?

That's very good. It's fine if it didn't change anything, you can't always convince everybody to behave according to your own agenda. But at least you've expressed your concern. Many people often just don't do that and so they keep dealing with lots of unnecessary conflicts and miss lots of easy solutions and opportunities. (I've often been one of those people ) You mean interfere with your meditation? I think it's actually like a cheat, it makes it a lot easier. I personally find white noise a bit harsh and prefer pink or brown. You can also try binaural beats. Or combinations of binaural beats and noise. I can send you some files that I like to use if you want. If I was in your situation, I'd probably try out meditating without this help occasionally, to see if you're still bothered by your brother's noises and to try out how well you are doing at ignoring them now. Maybe it'll change over time. I'd occasionally try that out and maybe focus on the breath, as Nahm suggested. Or even focus on how much you're bothered by the noises I sometimes find that I can make this a fun endeavor, focusing on how much something bothers me. If I can get really curious about it, I try to really feel into just how much it bothers me and then I sit there watching myself how it bothers me so much and oftentimes I end up laughing about myself and find peace with it. But the earbuds are definitely worth it. You'll hear absolute zero from outside. And you can find surprisingly good ones for up to 20$ (or even less) if you look at some amazon reviews. I recommend doing that though, because there are tons of really crappy ones out there as well Please let me know which exercises you're gonna try out. Because I'm also trying to find exercises that work for me. With the exact same goal in mind, I want to strengthen my back, so that it doesn't tend to get rounded anymore during meditation. So far, I've only been doing push-ups, pull-ups, bridges, some self-massaging and I try to sit and stand straight as much as possible. But I definitely want to do more specifically for my back in the near future. I'll try some youtube stuff out and also ask a friend who got yoga teacher training in India. If I find exercises that work well for me, I'll let you know.

@Phillip Can you post the exercises here?

Your brother: 1) Did you explain to him, like you did here, how important meditation is for you? 2) Listen to white/pink/brown noise with in-ear headphones, so you won't hear him anymore. Your back: You can strengthen it with workout and yoga. The others are non-issues I guess. The meta-"thought"/awareness which watches your thoughts will come. As for your issue with do-nothing: You can do nothing about the fact that you can't seem to convince your brain that it's ok to go nuts and just let it fight with itself as it pleases. Pretty nifty, eh?

Can you describe one specific situation? Like an event that actually happened in your life?

So you're just having some unnecessary stupid issues with your self image? And your behavior is genetically inherited? How?

Yeah, makes much more sense now.

@Moreira Can you describe one specific situation where you had social anxiety which made you behave in an introverted way?

The last time I quit I couldn't bring myself to say that I just wanted to stop working there and so I made up a story that I would move to another city

Have you tried using no artificial light and not looking at screens after sunset? I never suffered from insomnia, but when I tried this out, I found myself getting really tired waaay earlier than before and quite reliably so.

@Lauritz I hope you don't get discouraged by these baseless objections that were posted here so far. To me, your idea sounds like a great thing to pursue. If the potential of all kinds of communities is held back by personal drama and self agenda, it seems reasonable to try to reduce it as much as possible from the start. Humanity as a whole could benefit greatly from people figuring out how to pull off an intentional community properly. Same goes for a community which puts their main focus on advancing consciousness. So, if you're gonna do this, I'd definitely be interested in visiting at some point.

Who did that in what situation?

Wouldn't that be because of low self esteem?

@ElenaO What if I told you that I'm scared of asking what the ego really is because I think that I might make a fool of myself by doing so?

What I found works best was going to a gas station and just walk up to people and ask them. If you really wanna know more about how people do this, I'd recommend starting a new thread asking specifically for that. Or do some google search (or ecosia search for that matter). Or you just go for an adventure and find out for yourself.

One pattern that I noticed coming up for me is that I would start a habit with enthusiasm and it'd be very easy for a while and give me momentum for doing the things I want and need to do. But then at some point, there wouldn't be this motivation anymore that just makes me going for the right choices with ease and I'd start to wonder "why am I resisting this right now? It has been fun and easy last time, so why can't it be fun and easy now?" I'd want this motivation back and try out different things in order to obtain it and postpone the actual thing I needed to do, instead of just going for it anyways, even if it seems uncomfortable right now. To fix this in the future, I plan to push myself into going for it anyways and get curious about how uncomfortable/hard it's really gonna be and thereby raising the awareness of how the activity really feels in that moment. Another one is that I would sometimes get arrogant about my quick progress and go like "well, I kinda don't need this right now, 'cause I'm moving in the right direction anyways and doing pretty well overall, so I can afford skipping or doing this stupid thing or that stupid thing 'cause it doesn't really matter". But then I'll be thrown off-guard and learn very quickly that it DID matter.

To me, publishing books that you think would be of value for other people sounds like a great idea! Why would you be afraid it might interfere with your spirituality? I feel you. I also wanna try out some things that I don't wanna tell anybody about, at least not before I find that I can make them work to some degree. It seems sensible to me to keep an idea silent for a while, especially when it's a rather idiosyncratic one that would be regarded as strange by your current social environment.

Have you even tried? Please write down every single job you applied for.

@LaucherJunge Thanks for your perspective and your insights. Okay, so this fits my suspicion that there's a specific reason for why you get drained, you're not just getting drained because "that's the way you are as an introvert". This time it might not have worked as well, but you can learn from that and try better next time. Or be with people who are more in line with your values. At least it's always two options that you have, going with the group or standing up for what you actually value at that particular moment. Whether that means leaving the group or trying to influence it in a direction where you could continue to thrive. You're not just doomed to suffer from being around people too much and get drained and then have to recharge because that's the way you are as an introvert. To me this sounds like a good thing to know and at least I know for myself that I want to try the different options and see what works for me. To me it makes more sense to see the socially active/engaging option as a skill which I can train and which is not "against my nature" or anythin like that. Again, I see no need for playing the victim here. If someone always wants to do shallow activities while never having any empathy for the group, why hang around them in the first place? There's enough people around who aren't like that, so solitude is not the only other option. Instead of blaming "energetic vampires", you might as well ascribe to introverts a lack of assertiveness/ability to stand up for themselves, lack of ability to take initiative, lack of honesty, lack of communication skills, lack of confidence. This perspective seems much more empowering to me, because I can accept it and say okay, I suck at these things, but I can improve and I can shape my social life the way I want and I don't have to "get drained because I'm an introvert". @Nahm I'm afraid I don't get what you're saying. I hope you can explain: Can you specify what you mean by 'connected spiritually'? And why it is that you would find the experience of not being alone foreign in that case? @Girzo Do you have any hypotheses about why things would be as you described? Something concrete that doesn't rely on mere metaphors and analogies? Why would there be these two "operating modes", how exactly is solitude and company "used as fuel" and how exactly do you apply effort to switch between the modes? @mathieu Thanks for your recommendations. I just watched Leo's video, hadn't seen it before, though nothing really new for me in there. At least he talks about possibilities of embodying the benefits of both types. As I said above, getting drained in social situations for me is often connected with low self esteem. So I want to work on that, I'll go watch that video too and probably get the audiobook of The Six Pillars and see if I find it useful. Since you didn't say anything regarding my questions: Do you get drained in social situations? If so, why/how does it happen?

How did you communicate unique perspectives about life creatively so far? Do you have any experience in doing videos, podcast, public speaking, drawing, rapping, singing, dancing, stand-up or any art form that exists? Why not doing all of these? Why not just trying out a bunch and then see what works for you?

What exactly is happening at the moment you lose interest in something and turn away? If you can't tell retrospectively, you can look at it closely next time it happens. For me it often was a hurdle that seemed too big at this particular moment and then I lost motivation. Pursuing something long-term probably takes a good portion of patience, dedication and trust. Maybe you haven't trained these abilities enough? I have had the exact same problem all my life and feel like I've never really done anything or finished anything. Maybe you just have to force yourself into finishing something and train yourself to do it again and again and over time it becomes easier and it becomes a habit? I don't know, I can't speak from experience here.