Joseph Maynor

I like to think of it as The Paradox of Control and No Control and that you gotta work both ends of this paradox. The belief that one lacks control is the problem. What you are cannot be straight-jacketed by a belief like no control.

Chinese Culture is very different from Western Culture. From being in China, I got the sense that I would be a very different person had I grown up in China. I definitely would married with a family.

Evil is always relative to the point of view of one or more Egos.

I like the idea of having a million dollars.

How many realities are there actually?

It's not one or the other -- it's one and the other. It's order and chaos.

The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

I think the biggest difference is China has a lot of customs and rules about relationships and about history and family that we don't have in the West. I've been to China and Taiwan. China has a lot of customs and culture regarding relationships that we don't have in the West. In the West every person stands alone and every person is equal, at least in theory. The West is more Individualistic and China is more Collectivist. In China everybody knows what the rules are and follows the same rules. In the West, there's no real enforceable cultural rules. Each family has it's own set of rules. I felt like when I was in China that I was part of a collective system where everything worked together in harmony. I don't feel like that in the West. In the West it's more like individuals all agreeing to tolerate each other and make deals with each other. China is much more like everybody knows their place and does that place very well. Even the guy sweeping the street is doing such a fantastic job. In China it's all about doing the small things well. And then just the massive amount of people in China too is very different from the West. In China there's so many people that it's pretty easy to start taking other people for granted, like strangers. In the West there's much fewer people so each person thinks he's a God basically and he doesn't have to deal with so many people and crowds of people.

It is the law of attraction in a sense because what enables change is you being fixated on making the change. You ever notice that anything that you really want to do, you'll just do it? So, it's taking your detailed plan for career change and tee-ing that up as the thing you're always thinking about and that you really want to do. Strategically, that's what Life Purpose Work is helping people do.

In the first instance it's important to narrow the issues here so we can get clear what we're talking about. We're talking about career development, big picture life purpose work, and career change. Now, all the other personal development issues and skills are obviously relevant to this, but it's important to draw a fence around our problem. Regarding career work, you can look at it through two different lenses. The first lens is, "What kind of box do I need to put myself in to get what I want?" The other way of looking at things is this way -- "I want to make money doing what I am already doing, how do I steer my mouth up to the chute of where the money is coming from?" So, really, the first person is trying to fit into society's boxes. And that's great for certain people, God bless them. But then you have these renegade people, and I'm one of them. 4 out of the 5 of my strengths are Wisdom and and the 5th one is Courage. There is no conventional job for me. I really had to accept that. There is no stock job for me. So, here's what I decided to do. I decided to get paid for what I already actually do, see. So, that's my Vision. My project is to get paid doing what I already actually do which is teach personal development and write about personal development and help people with personal development. So, from where I'm standing, what's the relevance of "How do I do it?" Ok. it's very simple. I need to figure out how to get paid for the kind of work that I'm already doing. This is a research issue, see. This is not rocket science. There's nothing mystical about this. There's nothing vague about this. This is a problem-solving issue that has a clear starting-point and a clear ending-point. But of course look at all the personal development work I had to do to get to where I'm at. But if you're like -- I wanna be a therapist. Everybody is a therapist! You don't need a license to be a therapist. There are people that hang a shingle and promise all kinds of things that don't have a psychology degree. Hell, even Leo is a therapist on some level. The downside is you're not going to be able to take the easy, conventional path, you're gonna have to create your own path with a machete. And if that's the case for you, forget about taking the easy road to being a therapist. You're not gonna have that easy, conventional road. You're gonna have to create your own road to your own therapy and solicit your own clients. You're gonna have to move your ass to make this stuff happen in a very on-point, systematic way. I shit you not there's a psychic in my neighborhood that has her own business and she drives a Mercedes that looks like it costs a pretty penny. If you think about it, a psychic is basically a therapist. The first question is, do you have the balls to make it happen? And then question number two is, do you have a detailed plan to make it happen? Nobody can stop you to do something that you really want to do, you'll find a way. The key is teeing-up career development, big picture life purpose work, and career change as something that you really want to do.

Beware of the "How am I to do it?" fear.

Why do you see depth and wisdom of saying reality is nothingness?

Totally. People get trapped within one side of seeing things. That's ultimately a clinging to concepts. It's where concepts have placed a limit rather than provide a use.

My Zone of Genius is deep-diving issues and projects.

I think there is something to the law of attraction. In a way it’s the inverse of the self-fulfilling prophesy principle. The self-fulfilling prophesy principle is where you’re fixated on failure and that’s what ends up happening for you. The law of attraction turns that around and says when you’re focused on your life purpose vision and on succeeding, that’s what you’re gonna get. I think what you’re glomming into and a big problem with the law of attraction is that people have taken it out of this context and exaggerated it for all kinds of reasons. But really what it comes down to is when you know what you want and you create a Vision out of it, that’s a major step forward in getting it. But people have taken this law of attraction principle and tried to sell it as a quick-fix kinda thing. But see there’s nothing quick-fix about creating and developing a life purpose vision. It’s taken me like 2 years to create a detailed life purpose vision. And when I talk about life purpose, I’m not just talking about career — I’m talking about everything I do with my time in a day. Videos on point to watch:

Both of you have amazing energy!

It feels great when you watch yourself actually stepping up and making the changes. You’ll inspire yourself as you conquer each little change.

You dismantled my metaphor haha. It would be weird to have seedless teachings though. There's always some seeds in there just due to the fact that no two people are alike.

Good job. You seem to be a hard worker like me when it comes to personal development.

I started watching Leo in 2014. Really from that point to now I've been working heavily on my Personal Development Work. Early 2017 was when things really started shifting for me with Enlightenment Work. I could say 2017 and 2018 have been my two biggest years in terms of development and results. 2017 was more about Enlightenment Work, but not exclusively. 2018 was more about bringing it all together for me. It's interesting to see those trends over the last 2 years. Right now I'm working on career change primarily. As a subtext to that I'm really interested in the topic of "making change" right now -- so, it's issues related to change that fascinate me in Personal Development right now, such as "How do I change my life?" What I've found is there is a strategy to do this. You can actually set yourself up to be a change agent.

Everything has a time and a place in Personal Development Work. Affirmations are good for when you know what you want and the Mind needs some re-programming.

The everything is predetermined belief is like the no free will belief — it’s the Mind acting outside of its own pay-grade. It’s the Mind getting in the way of things instead of helping things. I think it’s useful when you study Enlightenment Work to flirt with the no free will side of the Paradox of Free will and No Free Will. But at the end of the day, there’s an ‘and’ in that paradox. There’s free will and no free will, and you gotta work both ends of that paradox. Clinging to one side or the other of that paradox causes problems. Think about this — do you think you’re gonna be good at changing your life if you believe you have no free will? Do you think you’re gonna change your life if you believe everything is predestined or predetermined? F*ck no you're not! This stuff is not rocket science, but you do need to see through things and not get trapped by theory basically. If we’re sitting around dilly-dallying with the theory not taking any action because we have these beliefs in predestination and no free will — that’s not what Personal Development Work is about anymore! That’s more like religion, taking comfort in belief — it’s gone outside the realm of Personal Development Work.

There is a Paradox of Theory and No Theory and you gotta work both ends of this paradox. You wanna maximize the pros and minimize the cons of theory. Theory can be a nuisance or even a trap when it’s dragged around like a baby blanket. But at the same time, theory can be the starting point in your next stage of growth or the birth of projects that you envision doing. Almost every project begins as theory. So, we don’t wanna be against theory. But it is true that theory has a tendency to trap people — very similar to a child clinging to a baby blanket. But see, theory practiced in a linear way has a tendency to stunt people. So, it’s not either/ or it’s both, and you have to find the right balance in the moment using the paradox of theory and no theory as a tool, and knowing that you gotta work both sides of this paradox.

I tend to be a worrier too, or at least I used to be. One of the things that I’ve done is when I start a part of my day, I’ll make post-it notes of the tasks I wanna get done. That allows me to keep the big-picture in mind when I’m working so I don’t get distracted by worrying or ruminating. So step one would be clarifying what you want to get done and the stages of it. What I’ve found is usually when I start worrying or ruminating, it’s because I’m sort of “at sea” regarding what it is that I should be working on in the moment, which is a gap that the Mind can use to worry and ruminate. So what I’m trying to say here is you can tee your Mind up for less worrying by keeping it occupied on your post-it notes, your tasks. In a way, you have to have time to worry and ruminate, if that makes sense. You can take that time away by using the Mind to work on your projects.