HelloThere

There are some good topics and questions asked here but they often die down before any deep discussion takes place. People like throwing out phrases and opinions including myself and often it seems like a place for self expression to get noticed primarily and desiring to answer and contemplate the questions second. You can't really make much progress with many of these topics without going deep, long and detailed with explaining what you mean specifically because the people you ask/reply to are oh so very different. This place is great and there are some golden replies here sometimes. I'm just wondering if it is possible to recognize guys like you (not you specifically) in real life or is this shit so taboo that people would realistically only be willing to discuss this on the interwebs. Think I suggested some instant text/voice chatting in the past but that is not the direction this forum wants to go and that's fine. IRL would be a damn fine alternative though . Perhaps some of you have stumbled upon like minded people. Anyway have a nice day.

The forums ARE a place for discussion. Knowing something that is true is great and also great for you but doesn't do much for others. If you are able to bring them closer to that truth by explaining why it is the truth so that they may start to see the pieces(explanations/examples) that you set in front of them come together and help form a similar picture or understanding of that inkling of truth that you already possess then it starts to be about sharing the truth. The less you say the more things it can mean and if you keep reducing then you reach the thing that means the most things which is when you say nothing at all. It's also harder this way to distinguish between people who actually know and are pointing in the right direction and people who know nothing but just say something that can't be related to or cast aside because of how little they say. One is in the know but both have reduced the detail down to form something so generic that there's not much left to work with. The people that really know their shit are few but the people who answer are many so there should be something that allows to distinguish the two. If someone goes out of their way to write a reply it might as well be something that the other can understand and get something from otherwise why ask the question/answer at all? Our opinions, realisation and current knowledge is hardly ever fully in line with "the truth" which is why we might come here to the forums for others with different strengths and insights to help correct or fill in the gaps. Anyway the main thing I was asking was if there are some clear indicators or places to look out for to find like minded people such as the ones here.

Depends what you mean by judging. When you see someone doing well and you "judge" by coming up with fantasies how they are actually some form of an "asshole" to make yourself feel better in comparison to them then... Then I guess you should try to stop comparing yourself to others and being insecure by actually finding things you love about yourself. If you mean you judge people for actually being shitheads and causing harm to tohers then... Then perhaps you could try to emphatize with them and try to understand what could have gone wrong in their life for them to end up as toxic, suffering people and wish for them to get better. I can't imagine someone wanting to grow up as an asshole doing harm, something destructive might have happened to them that broke them. Putting more negativity on an already broken person won't make him rise up to your level. Compassion seems like a safe bet. Think Leo has a vid on judging others too. Not sure what you meant though.

@Nathalie You either realize emotions are occurring (being mindful of them) and you can let them occur or you have no idea they are occurring (being unconscious of them I guess) and they occur undetected. When they are detected you at least have a chance of controlling or guiding them instead of being on auto pilot (people who beat others to a pulp in anger come to mind). Being mindful of all your emotions all the time would be pretty exhausting and a constant process so I don't think you can ever just "put awareness into them" and be done with it. You try to be mindful of the ones that might be causing you trouble and after a while the ones you have spotted more often are probably less likely to go undetected in the future since you've observed them enough times to see them coming as they arise. Some suggest meditation exercises to get better at this since I guess meditation requires you to notice thoughts and emotions to for example block them out or sort of be unreactive to them. A fun exercise I sometimes do out of boredom is trying to trace my thoughts back further than I regularly would. So try to think how you got to your current thought and how you got the thought before that and the one before that etc. Not that I've ever done it for any certain purpose.

@Leo Gura Haha, video reply - best reply. Thanks man.

Kind of lacking passion for/not fully buying into/not committing to life due to being on the fence of how real it is. I mean if everything is so relative and governed by perceptions which are oh so different depending on who you are or where you are at in your own life even then there is no one "truer" life or experience. It's really debilitating passion wise to not think there is a meaning to life since it's all just perception and so malleable, so uncertain. All perceptions are different though feel just as real so even the real thrilling ones that feel very engaging might very well be just as real as the ones I might consider boring or hollow or shallow or unconscious or "evil" or "divine" or whatever. Can't really immerse yourself in life and be in flow unless you forget about all these doubts/questionings of reality and just are in whatever situation you are in and taking things as they come whatever they may be and not evaluating them. This produces a kind of flow state (e.g. at work being committed to trying to solve whatever problem comes your way) which in turn makes time fly past so fast that it becomes kind of worrying and scary that it will be all over soon and maybe I was just unconsciously flashing through life. So you arrive back at contemplating the meaning of life and if I should stop and reevaluate my habits/beliefs towards another goal. Then again all choices seem pretty equal in their having a point in the grand scheme of things so you might think fuck it, try to be yourself and enjoy life and enter back into some form of unconscious flow or doing things that make you feel like you're doing lots of things and start this infinite loop again The main dilemma is basically deciding on moving from this first person view of experiencing lots of stuff to this 3RD person view of contemplating the meaning of everything and the realness of the things you experience which is a dark and creepy place often. It gets rid of this feeling of immersion in magic that you've talked about as one thing that every person wants or needs in their life. It would be nice to always be centered without having to cling to some ideology that is your center. Focusing on being yourself through intuition seems to help. Probably because you stop contemplating. Also being in the mountains with a tent without any real comfort (not even a fire) really dissolved all these contemplations so that's the emergency button to clear these kinds of worries. That was probably because I kept busy with "surviving" and there is no time for these seemingly "pseudo problems". I could probably scrape/have scraped some stuff from your different videos to address this cyclic behavior but it remains #1 nevertheless. tl;dr: I could probably use some form of a video titled "How to not be so open minded your brain falls out" @username Good input, thanks.

There was a video about One Simple Rule For Acing Life. I really like the idea as it seems simple (not easy) and to the point. I was trying to keep this rule in mind in my day to day life and make the hard choices whenever I remembered to choose them. Sometimes I would get confused though since I was picking between two emotionally difficult things which were difficult for different reasons. E.g. I would realize that the reason it was difficult to choose some action was that it was just an action that seemed to have no benefit and would pretty much be a stupid (waste-of-time) choice. Ok, fine, I don't have to do that then. Then I started thinking that doing useless things and also bad (harmful) things also fall under doing the emotionally difficult thing. Since the mind is so good at tricking you and morphing perceptions of situations to support your own biases... I started wondering how can you tell the difference between a "good" thing that is emotionally difficult to do, that SAME "good" thing that the mind has reframed somehow to seem like a bad thing (so that you believe you don't have to do it) and an ACTUAL bad (harmful) thing. The reframed "bad" thing will also be emotionally difficult to do but for a different reason that you conjured up. And if you are not supposed to do the "bad" (harmful) emotionally difficult things then how do you tell the difference so that you won't do it. When does the good reason to not do something become an excuse? This won't always be obvious. This kind of made me sad that maybe the rule isn't as good as it sounded. Have a good day, thanks.

#1 Holy shit you are actually doing something instead of just talking about it. Good job. #2 Watch that you don't get too specific with some of these (based on this: How To Stop Judging Yourself) as when these become programmed deep they might be annoying to get rid of in the future. E.g. it might get awkward when a girl you really like and click with wants to get more serious and relationships don't feel trustworthy to you anymore or something. Doesn't mean it will happen, just an example. Anyway even if some of these are a bit off, and only you probably know which are right for you, then actually implementing them and doing something about it will still do more good than harm. You can always learn from it if something needs tweaking. Good job man.

@Salaam Yes that was exactly my point. Thought it would make a good example for how you can paint an action to be totally beneficial and EVEN "the emotionally difficult thing to do" almost instantly if you overlook some small detail and are not pedantically honest with yourself. I'm not beating myself up about it now as it is the past and can not be changed, new opportunities will always come. I was more disappointed about missing an opportunity to do something uncomfortable but fulfilling as an experience since I do feel good after stepping out of my comfort zone nowadays. That first step out of the comfort zone though, that's a doozy .

@Rajat I was just giving you my perspective on how beliefs make the most sense to me from experience and Leos stuff, still learning on my own as well. One guess could be that if you were playing this "dumb" game for a good while (months+) then it's likely that the output of your actions became 3 as you say and stayed there and you used to be level 5 but you've gotten "out of shape" since then. You still might know what it feels like to be a 5 and be convinced that you can be that easily (since you've been that). Though since it's been so long your brain/subconscious/habits/beliefs/whatever you want to call it have transformed and found a new stable point at 3 so now you actually are back at 3. I went through a similar process of getting mentally out of shape, just far earlier than university. If this is true it will probably take you quicker to get back to 5 than someone who has only ever been 3 however because of homeostasis (your mind and bodies tendency to always stay stable/the same) then you will have to go through some serious emotional effort and grind. Meaning there isn't some magic to just know how to instantly retain information as quickly again after you've "hacked" the barrier with "this one simple trick". Change takes consistent time meaning you can't go on emotion and pumping your willpower up for some brute force attempt but have to actually apply new behaviors daily. This might be something closer to "this one simple trick", but you will still have to apply that daily as well : The Tricks of Using Affirmations to Transform Your Life. Haven't really practiced it widely though except for one thing. That being said I think these might help the exam situation: How To Study How To Get Shit Done Could search his channel for "belief" to see if something you asked comes up (just make sure it doesn't become purely procrastination and you actually use it somehow) Leo has loads of stuff that covers much of the basic questions people ask here so sometimes I think this forum is just procrastination for people. Still good to discuss I suppose This part right here hits deep. Changing your identity is creepy (homeostasis and all) and big changes come with changing your identity. Being afraid to fail and end up disappointed has been something I've had to deal with too. Ended up making a plan that I knew had a high probability of working and be sustainable so I wouldn't give up but it was still very difficult since I had to change who I was in a sense since your behaviors are who you are. Speaking of which lol: The Power Of Routines Totally over killing this reply, Have a nice day

Why not just have a constant teamspeak/mumble/whatever chat server up for ANY actualized.org related topics to discuss?

No idea what he meant if he existed at all but one point here seems to be that you can start judging yourself in a destructive way: How To Stop Judging Yourself

Haha, I don't consider myself a perfectionist but this part here really resonated with me and this "tricky subject" : How To Stop Being A Perfectionist I still take action daily but I can totally see how you could spend your time on mental masturbation about getting it just right basically instead of just executing the roughly drawn out plan. Then learning/tweaking the plan from the results. @Sevi And yeah accepting that it will take time is key. I don't really notice big changes ever but when I think back to a year or two ago it is a bit creepy how different some things are.

If you start noticing/appreciating the good things you have currently then you don't feel a lack. Try to be happy about the everyday experiences that come your way and your life already being awesome. That doesn't mean that new experiences and growth isn't great on top of your already nice life too.

@Shin Well both directions can be uncomfortable for different reasons. Both of these directions can also be pleasant for different reasons. One method of staying positive and happy relies on this principle. You can mostly reframe a negative situation into a good one in your mind by thinking to yourself "ok, that unpleasant thing happened, but what "good" doors/opportunities did it open for me?" Anyway, the last example had a pretty obvious answer though and this would have helped indeed: @Shin When I say "uncomfortable" I mean emotionally difficult. And while I continue thinking about this topic all I have had is trying (or failing) doing the emotionally difficult thing in the meanwhile anyway. Thank you for your input.

@Rajat I guess this one isn't as straight forward as growing into what you believe. You still look how you look unless you start moisturizing or working out or putting on make up or whatever. Your face will be mostly your face. However it's a good thing that it doesn't matter as much as the stuff around it like how you mimic your face or how you hold your posture/carry yourself and how your interactions reflect who you are. Guys are pretty visual but I'll see an "ugly" girl as many points more attractive when she feels and acts in a sexy way/smiles and gives me the vibe of a happy and healthy person. All this other stuff is changeable but will not improve when you have limiting beliefs that never allow you to become this awesome person. Sweating about shit you can't change is a trap not to mention a massive time/effort sink.

You've defined that you are at level 5 therefore you can't get any further or lower without devolving/evolving. A setpoint is like a target value or state that some system is moving towards. Basically if you have a goal or something you are moving towards then it is your setpoint. It's where the carrot on the stick is moving that is being chased. I think of beliefs as kind of broad setpoints since whatever you happen to believe will sort of frame and marinate much of the thoughts that you have and therefore your actions too. My simplistic view on it: Say John and his ridiculously identical twin, Bill, can lift 50kg off the ground and have these beliefs aligned too. Ok, that's what they can lift off the ground so they both stay at that weight day to day. Now say John lost his memory and believes he can lift 30kg off the ground. He can lift that too and 20kg more but since he doesn't believe it he won't give it a chance and try it. Now say Bill lost his memory and believes he can lift 70kg off the ground. He believes that and so he will try it but since that is not the strength either of them are at right now he won't be able to lift it and will have to drop it half way through the lift being confused. Now say they both continue life with these two different beliefs. John will over time become his belief in actuality as his muscles adapt(grow weaker) to match his every day belief. Bill will over time become his belief in actuality as his muscles adapt(grow stronger) to match his every day belief. Their real strength did not change in either direction upon adpoting new beliefs at that moment, but over time adapting new beliefs(new setpoints) changed what their real strength became. So another way of putting it is that is also probably incorrect. We were still a 5 but we didn't use anything above 3 so only the result of our actions became 3. That being said even if it's an incorrect way of thinking that "believing you are something greater automatically means that you are better" it's probably not too horrible of an idea to do so because it can have at least 2 positive effects: 1) You already had a lot of limiting beliefs so your "real value" is actually higher than your belief/setpoint and so you will come closer to your real value. 2) You will overshoot your "real value" but as long as you keep going you will at one point get very close to that "overly" optimistic belief. I guess the only trap can be that you believe you are so insanely great that reality lashes back at you with such force and crushes you so hard that you become embarrassed/bitter/self pitying/hopeless and a victim basically and so you will never try to move out of your comfort zone again. Should be avoidable with some humility/persistence and patience though. Have a good day

@Sevi @Salaam E.g. recently had a hands on training with some girls in the group. One seemed to be showing more directed interest than others to me. Kept staying in the moment, was staying mindful to not have any pointless worrying thoughts and try to keep an internal feeling of outcome independence that I myself would believe to be true. Interaction is going well. Come lunch break and I'm like I could try and get a conversation going about where to get something to eat but that would be a little messy(emotionally) or I could go home which is just a few minute sprint away and eat my own prepped meal. Thought fuck it I'll go home since that's what I had planned before anyway which was followed by the thought that the whole reason I prepared the meal was to keep my calories straight and not have to worry about cooking stuff. I mean technically I was correct that that was the ultimate promise to myself that I want to keep and so it was the right thing to do. BUT all this rationalisation, which I would say is correct, came after I had remembered that I had a caloric goal in the first place and had made the emotionally easy choice. Anyway lunch time is over, gotta head back. Just giving an example of the sneaky mind here

Yeah drinking buddies are ok but that sounds great. Something to envy Getting there slowly but surely. No desire for a bodyfat goal though. Method? And what efffect has it has on you during this period? Why?(not that it's bad) Though seems like no flexibility room for meet ups/weekends. Been pretty big for me as much as I've been able to catch them. Yeah I feel this is a major one that I haven't fine tuned yet. Slowly adding good habits instead for now. Awesome for for cleaning/cooking/commuting. Didn't think I'd be able to kick this one but managed to get it down to a few times a week and not for hours and hours daily. Love gaming to bits but it's such a fucking time sink that you might not have time left for "life". @Dan Arnautu Anyway thanks for the awesome reply.

Awesome. Significant change tends to take a long time for me so 2 years sounds pretty damn fast even. When you know something has worked and have real solid results then you also know the steps to get there. At least I find that with things I've learned. Feel free to share some specific things you changed that you feel built the main foundation for this growth in different areas ;]

@MsNobody Hah my bad someone actually linked something already.

Heard it's been used for therapy and know someone who has tried it and experienced letting go of strong old feelings of not being able to forgive past events. Unless someone posts some solid research on this stuff the answers here won't be much to go on though.

@Sevi What you are saying is comforting. Also taking it slow while making little progress is better than brute forcing and getting disappointed and overwhelmed and quitting I would agree. It's just since the whole point is literally about doing the emotionally difficult thing then I try to take succumbing to comforting thoughts very carefully. This rule is a very tricky subject for me. @Salaam One can hope to learn to get a very reliable feel for it over time I suppose. There are some nonvague emotionally difficult things that I'm not very confused about being good for me so I guess I'll try and start with the no brainers first

Saw an actualized.org subreddit but I think it's private. Anyone been/know why it's private?

Not really keeping score or having a goal of how often but I do rewatch a lot of his stuff. His stuff sort of floats around in my head and when I remember some good point I try to practice it that day. Think I'm missing out though, should probably be taking notes and putting some rule into place of like 1 video followed by 3 days/1 week of actively practicing just that one topic since the amount of stuff in a single video is often pretty heavy. @Danielle Feel free to share notes if you feel like it.