Joseph Maynor

Can you reserve 1 hour per day to do personal development work on a routine schedule? Find a good time to do it like in the morning and do it at the same time everyday on a routine. Focus on cultivating the habit, the routine for now. You don't need to rush this personal development stuff. This is going to be a life-long journey for you. Just focus on getting the habit wired-into your life for now. A small dose at the same time, same place everyday is probably what is best for you. Baby step it.

@Dan Arnautu Thanks. I think I do have an addiction to emotional suffering. As odd and counterintuitive as that sounds. This goes back to all the suffering I experienced in childhood. Emotional suffering seems very normal and natural to me. Happiness seems like total change to me, and thus seems scary -- like untrodden, unfamiliar territory.

I'm 39 years old and I've been thinking about my life a lot this year because I'm gonna be turning 40 this year, kinda did a huge life-review -- and to my surprise I can't find anything in my life to regret. Everything I've done has led me to here, so how can I truly regret anything I've done? I followed my heart. Anyone have an opinion on regrets?

@Morrtiz Great posts everyone. This shows me I gotta a lot of work to do. I'm gonna get my pen and pad and start planning and strategizing how to work some of these hacks in. Thank you.

I think the results of personal development are the final goal. The theory and practice are just means to that end. When I achieve the following I will know: total financial and interpersonal independence, happiness, peace of mind, loving and accepting myself presently, my past, and my future, high physical and mental health, and gifting my completed work on philosophy to myself and to the world (I've been working on a book for 10 years).

"7 Habits of Highly Effective People" read by the author. Check on Audible "Essays" by Ralph Waldo Emerson "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau "The Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant "Moral Letters to Lucilius" by Seneca "The Psychology of Self Esteem" by Nathaniel Brandan "Psycho-Cybernetics" by Maxwell Maltz

@Principium Nexus it's hard for me to say for sure because I never did such an extensive life-review before. And my life hasn't been very happy in sum. Even today I am not very happy, but I can see a tiny light at the end of the tunnel. Like when you are driving in a long tunnel and you see that little white dot appear and your heart skips a beat. But I am more fulfilled today than ever before. And I know I'm on the right track for me now. My happiness will only increase from this point onward.

Personally I don't buy into all that theory myself. Some of the enlightenment theory resonates with me and some does not. There are better and worse paths for you otherwise doing life-purpose work would be pointless. You do wanna come up with a life plan and then execute on it. What's hard is you don't really know yourself fully or what causes happiness fully without some study and self-discovery. I don't buy into a lot of the philosophy that the Buddhists preach, only some. Truth may not always be crystal-clear, but you can orient your planning in better ways than others. And from a practical standpoint, there are better and worse ways to go about actualizing your goals when you do find them.

Yeah. You can't rush it. Focus on practice instead of theory for a while. I'm 39 years old and started reading the 7 habits when I was 22 years old. So I've been doing personal development for 17 years now. The funny thing is you will have to change to be ready for some of the theory to click. My advice to you would be to start rigging-in and implementing some practices so you can get some results. Keep a hand in theory at all times too. As you grow and mature more and more of the theory will get ingrained in you and that will affect your practice. Personal development takes years because you're maturing and changing as you get older. You can't really rush things. The way to hit the accellerator is not by more theory always, but my putting into practice what you already read combined with your own knowledge about yourself from where you stand now.

It's kinda paradoxical that on the one hand life has no meaning, but on the other hand it has the meaning you give it. Life is neutral. You can either cause it to get worse or get better. Might as well cause it to get better. And the older you get the more you will appreciate your life because you will see how far you've come and where you still want to go. Life is like a blank canvass. It's up to you what to do with it. You can tear it up and trash it, or you can learn to paint on it like Salvador Dali. Either way, what matters is what you got out of it. In other words, breathe meaning into your own life. Don't look outward for meaning, create your own. Then your life becomes a work of art that you are invested in. And then you can start to look at your life with a sense of pride and contribution.

I am a huge fan of reading. I read so much in my earlier years, that counter-intuitively not-reading is actually what is wise for me at this stage of my life. I found I was living my life in the books, as it were. But because I read so much in my earlier years, I have a foundation now which is amazing. You will improve your vocabulary, your knowledge, and your conceptual thinking skills. You can also improve your perspective on life. Reading also makes you much more open-minded. After all, thinking is expressed in language, so the more you read, the more you are sharpening your language/thinking skills. But, paradoxically, there can be a stage in life where burning-all-the-books is wise. There's a stage in life where you gotta get out of the matrix and go live life, and trust that you will pick up the remaining knowledge you need. I'll let you figure out when that is for yourself. That was hard for me because I spent my life in the books probably more than most people do. So, my problem was extricating myself from books, not trying to read more. But read up! It's one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself. But I think many people make the mistake of turning into scholastics, and kind of becoming addicted to pedantry. Of course, these people don't realize it. It's a blind spot for them. So, you gotta know how and when to use books and then also know how and when to throw them away. You don't wanna become a victim of living vicariously in books. Life is to be lived, and proper living is not done by reading books your whole life. Reading books is actually kind of unnatural if you think about it. You're sitting there staring at paper for long periods of time. That's what you're doing. Think about it. This is why a lot of intellectual people are kinda kooky perhaps.

@Nahm Maybe that's ok. People need to take responsibility for their own personal development. If someone needs to spoon-feed a person to do this stuff, that's kind of a red flag. I've always been super motivated to learn this stuff because I've had big problems in my life to solve. Even if Leo is doing these videos for himself, I still wanna learn what it is he can teach me, and then I take that and use it. It's like one basketball player learning from another. I think it is a requirement that you gotta really take responsibility to do this work. If people are not at that point, then they are at the pre-algebra stage of personal development. I think the current format of Leo's videos is just fine. Keep it expository. Let people apply the ideas for themselves. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

I'd like to see more practical videos myself. Like helping people get these ideas into practice in actual life. I kinda got it figured out for myself, but I bet a lot of newbies would benefit from that. And Leo has done a lot of that too to be fair. Theory is useful, but practice is where the cash-value for this stuff becomes apparent -- where a person makes a real, permanent shift in their results. Now that I got the theory down, I'm almost 100% concerned with practice in my own personal development. Where rubber and road marry and have a baby. Everything else is just ideas. Ain't nothing wrong with ideas either, you need them. But you also need real implementation of these concepts in your life. Infrastructure has to be built by you for your life. That's a bit different from theory. That's practice. Practice is what excites me nowadays. Actual change. That's what impresses me. Knowing is step 1. Doing is step 2. All theory does is get you in the game -- square 1. Now you gotta apply the theory and move your life strategically away from square 1. That's practice.

@ChimpBrain I did this. Thanks for the tip. I look forward to nipping this phone addiction in the bud.

Since I've been working on meditation and mindfulness I've become aware of the shallow dreaming I do the last couple of hours before I wake up. It's like my mind is working on reconciling my problems. Has anybody else experienced this, and what is going on here? Work is happening during this time, but I'm not exactly sure what's going on. Sometimes I'll wake up and realize it. What is your experience?

This question is inspired by Leo's vid "3 Steps to be ruthlessly effective at anything." Leo talks about finding one high-yield practice that gives good results and then running with that to get success with some endeavor. I want to see what high-yield practices people do that gives them the majority of their results in personal development. Mine: lifestyle minimalism. I've really exploited this hack to make room for what I should be working on.

I need to develop some ground rules regarding my phone usage. I'll do that now. This is a great reminder. This is one of those little time robbers where the pennies add up to big debts. A way to waste your life away. I even need to schedule time to be on this forum, because this is helping me and giving me some support. Like 30 mins per day only at a certain time. For me after work is probably best.

Work on not getting triggered emotionally by other people. You can't change them, and you don't wanna be experiencing negative emotions from them. That's a good personal development goal for you. Also examine what thoughts you are projecting onto them that have nothing to do with them. Oftentimes we project thoughts and emotions onto other people. Your annoyance probably says more about you than it does about them. Change yourself, that's all you can do.

3 great ones for the novice. These helped me, so I am giving what I actually used and benefitted from. Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins Success is a Choice by Rick Pitino 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by William Covey

Bear with me here. I'm gonna do kind of a core-dump of thoughts to consider here: Is having no filter a problem? I.e., I'm gonna be me, I'm not putting on any pretenses. What about learning to be interpersonally strategic? Is acting roles necessarily a bad thing, say when you are working your job? What to make of fears of being a fake person, fears of selling out, or fears of losing authenticity? Can you play the role of being something without being that? Are you really sacrificing anything by strategically playing roles? Is having no filter a bad or destructive thing? Esp. for business. Is it better to operate on more of a need to know basis, developing a huge filter, and being more interpersonally strategic? Is being authentic all the time a sustainable or even wise strategy to use across the board? What are some pitfalls with this strategy? Should we strategically play roles to get what we want? And does that by necessity hurt our authenticity? Does the actor hurt himself when he strategically plays roles?

Man this is tough. These are those moments in life where you learn what people mean by "nervous breakdown". I don't think I fully understood what that phrase meant until I hit rock bottom myself. When your life gets pulled-out from under you and you're left standing there like wudda I do now? And you're looking for a friend, but they are few and far between. That's some tough medicine. I hate to be hedgy about my answer, but it takes time, like 30-45 days to start to make real progress. You gotta get over that first bout with strong negative emotions. Then you gotta do the whole soul-searching stage where you try to figure out what went wrong. Then after a while that cloud of depression starts to wane and you can start to re-gain some confidence. Finally after about 30-45 days you should be able to be back on your feet and back at working your life again. But even then you're still kind of wounded -- but you're stronger and smarter now. It's these rock-bottom moments in life that grow you the most. And you realize how few your true supporters really are. So there's plenty of take-away from this, and this will cause you to shed a skin and mature which will improve your whole life. It's hard to remain a child when you are forced to grow-up. That's one of the effects of these situations: You gotta fix it all by yourself. I like Leo's answer to go off alone to the woods. You need time and space to get your new path started. You gotta forge a new trail. Plan it out.

Being a loser. I've made a lot of progress here, but here goes. Ruining my own life by not taking the actions that I know I should be taking because I am too weak and spoiled to get my stuff together and do it for real. Always finding some reason to postpone my dream until tomorrow. Letting my negative emotions weigh-me down. Enacting self-fulfilling prophesies or death-wishes because a part of me feels very at home in failure, in quitting. Part of me feels very used to being depressed, comforted by it in a way. Like the forlorn loner talking to himself, off by himself in his own mind, in his own displaced world. Being a loser addict, not capable of being responsible in this dog-eat-dog world. Like the perpetual College kid who never grows-up, never having to worry about making money, distracted by his own constant theorizing and thinking. Now that spoiled-brat guy is dropped into this world and has to pay real bills, has to get his own act together for real. Happiness means change, and change is scary. Like I said, I've made huge progress with this, but I wanted to give you an honest answer to a question that made me think. For some people being practical comes easy. For me, being in my head and philosophical comes easy. So, I really had to change some basic wiring in myself to start getting practical results, which I have. There's nothing worse than feeling like you are an alien on this Earth.

@Emerald I tried being 100% authentic all the time and almost everybody started to hate me. Because I just said what I wanted to all the time. Your response is very wise. You can't just operate without any filter at all unless you are independently wealthy and don't care about offending people. In other words the advice to be authentic is kind of dangerous advice. I'm not saying anybody gave that advice, including Leo, but I found out that my implementation of that advice in my life caused me some pretty bad results.

I think the first step is to become very mindful about the emotions you are actually feeling throughout your day. Maybe take a trip out of town by yourself for 3 days and become highly aware of the emotions you are actually feeling throughout your day. Before you can fix the problem you gotta see the nature of the problem you have. I am doing this work now, and I am surprised at how much anger, fear, grief, and apathy I have in my life right now. It's huge. So, now I see where I am so I can now make a plan of action to solve the problem. But the point I wanna make here is take a look at your real emotions that you have throughout the day. I didn't realize I have so many negative emotions all the time that are weighing-down my life. It's like using a dipstick to check the oil in your car. Get that realistic understanding of where your emotional life sits, because if you're like me, you are not yet fully aware of this. It helps to go away somewhere by yourself to do this work. You gotta extricate yourself from your life to get an objective assessment of your current emotional life. I am traveling by myself right now so now I see my emotional life in high-relief, and it's like yikes! I got a big problem with negative emotions ruining my life too, and I never realized the extent and true nature of my problem until now. Not fully. Begin with awareness.