Emerald

That's incorrect in the case of the art world. Skill has little to no relationship to whether or not someone makes it big in the art world. It mostly has to do with connections and the big museums and collectors valuing your stuff. Someone could have an abundance of skill and talent and never get their foot in the door of the art world. Their work may never be seen as high art. But another person could tape a piece of string to a wooden plank and call it art and become famous if the art world accepts it as such... which is done mostly through nepotism and getting the wealthy folk to buy into its value.

Most artists are female. Women outnumber men in fine arts programs 4 to 1. When I went to college, you'd have tons of women but only a few guys in the class. But most famous artists are men.

I would definitely end it with a partner that would stop me from watching a show because of nudity... or for anything really. You can imagine that, if they're banning you from watching a show, that that's just the beginning of their controlling behavior. So, for that person, I would definitely recommend breaking up.

Thank you! I'm glad you liked it.

No. You can also use Stripe.

Zoom is another one.

I haven't watched Leo's videos regularly for the past couple of years, but it isn't because of the length of time. It's because they don't resonate with me anymore. This happens when you're on the path. You'll come in and out of resonance with various teachers. So, it isn't that the videos are too long or too long for you. It's that they don't resonate as much because you've shifted places on the path and/or Leo has shifted places with his teaching.

@Pilgrim It's the vulnerability aspect that you'd mentioned. Really put yourself out on the table and express to him in words exactly what's happening for you internally: the good, the bad, and the ugly. And encourage him to do the same. Come completely to the table and encourage him to do the same. And when he does, hold space for him and receive him fully. And in this, practice unconditional love and devotion, no matter what comes up for him.

You may be projecting unrealized and repressed aspects of yourself onto the other person. So, they become the projection screen for parts of yourself that yourself that you have not realized yet but desperately need and want. And because of this, you will feel like that other person completes you. And you will have a very strong and passionate pull to want to love and commune with that person, as an outgrowth of a desire to love and commune with aspects of yourself that you cannot yet love or commune with. So, the solution is to use your obsessive/passionate feelings for these guys as a springboard into your own self-exploration. And fully give yourself to wanting to love them... but also being conscious that you really just want to love and realize yourself. And they are simply the muse for that. You may even recognize that you learn things about yourself through this process of projecting desire onto them. I would also look into information on Animus integration as well. I have a video on that topic....

@Shaun Also, thank you! I'm glad you enjoy my videos!

I do the sessions over Skype. So, it is face to face. But if you wanted to do it to where we were in the same room together, it wouldn't work.

Be careful. You could be using a mix of spiritual and scientific truths to spiritually bypass and repress certain feelings. Or on the more positive side, you may be seeing past a crippling need for validation dressed up as a desire for sex with women. So, just be mindful. You have to really look under the hood to see if this is an "improvement" or not.

Thank you for recommending me! @Shaun I am not a therapist. But I actually do life-coaching with dreamwork, where I help facilitate personal exploration for the client by using the dreams as the starting point and seeing what the dreams are trying to reflect. It's a great process that I recently took a course on, and it sounds like something you'd benefit from considering that you have those dreams every night and there seems to be something trying to come across. And the dreamwork coaching is always about anchoring what's being reflected in the dream back to life and making changes from a standpoint of greater clarity. So, it's really about finding ways to practically follow the messages of the subconscious. At the risk of being to "advertisey," right now I'm offering a discount for those that sign up for coaching in the next two days, where the first 1-hour session is half-price (so $34.50 instead of $69). That way, people can try out one session without paying too much up front to see if the process is right for them. If you're interested PM me, and I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have about the process and anything else. Or if you want to sign up, I can give you the link in a PM too.

Happy Birthday!

Break up with your girlfriend asap and ask your friend out asap. This window of opportunity may not be open for long. Obviously, you feel very strongly for your friend and you want to start out on a good foot. So, don't cheat on your current girlfriend, but do break it off with her and do it quickly. Your heart is obviously not in that relationship, so it's doing her a favor in the long run. Then, let your friend know your feelings for her. If it doesn't work out, that's okay. You shouldn't use your current gf as a placeholder anyway. So, be sure to let that relationship go either way. Also, when you tell her, let her know that you've always felt that way, so that nothing has changed. And let her know your fears about confessing that and messing up the friendship, and that you want to be her friend either way and promise not to make things strange.

Choose yourself. But that guy sounds like bad news to me, especially if he's using the financial situation as leverage. It feels very much like more emotional manipulation. My recommendation is to stay away, and DEFINITELY don't move in with him. He'll have control over you in way he never has before, if you do that. You'd be doing yourself a favor to break it off. It's not what you want to hear, but there are some serious red flags here.

Your feminine side is attracted to their masculine side. I'll write more on this later, but that's it in a nutshell). It shows that you have a desire to connect with your Anima and integrate your feminine side.

Look into Anima integration. If you feel like your desire for women is out of measure compared to what is normal, it could be because you're disconnected from your Anima. And your desires to be with women and to have sex with them and the pain you feel as a result, is really a reflection of Anima disintegration and the pain you feel from having that internal split. Then, you imagine that communion with women in the form of sex will help you get that sense of integration and communion with your feminine side (the Anima)... and it may help but it will only help but so much unless you're working toward integrating your own Anima. Now, there is a degree to which this is just a natural biological drive. So, you will still feel attracted to women and have these thoughts and feelings afterward. But it will take away the obsessional nature with it and give you a sense of detachment from outcome with women... which will actually help you attract more women and have better exclusive relationships as well. Here's a video that I made on the topic...

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You could ask them, what is it mean when something has value? What is something that doesn't have value? What does deserving mean? What is the litmus test for deserving something? What is punishment? What makes something an appropriate punishment? What does punishment do for people? So, things like this that aren't directly related to their hot-button issues, but are the basis for them coming to the conclusions they've come to in a round about way. And these are good conversation starters in that way, if you find someone who's willing to question things with you. That's why I said to pick the low hanging fruit as much as possible, as there can be open minded people who are caught down in narrower and less accurate viewpoints, simply because they haven't thought things through to the point where they could transcend their worldview. So, you're really just giving them as many resources to do that as possible. If a person is very stubborn and ideological, however, you would have to be a lot trickier and methodical to find an opening in their fortress walls. So, you'd have to keep a keen eye out for the Achilles heals of their worldview, where they are not protecting that spot.

Pick the low hanging fruit that are relatively open-minded, and meet them where they are first. Then, you can start sharing some truths with them that are at the peripheries of their worldview that they're not really aware of. Paradigms are a bit like Jenga towers, some blocks are easier to remove than others. So, never go for a block that's locked in tight, look for the ones that are already loose. Paradigms are build like castles in the sky. They have a core taken for granted, faith-based belief and then other beliefs are scaffolded upon that nothing of a belief until there is a cohesive paradigm structure. And people are usually only aware of the top few layers of that belief structure that they really identify with. For example, let's take the conservative structure... the more old-school blue style and not so much the new libertarian orange style version of conservatism. They generally value pragmatism, modesty, good work ethic, taking personal responsibility, falling in line with social norms, traditions, religiosity, black and white answers, keeping things simple, keeping up social appearances, rigid gender roles, patriotism, having wealth as a symbol of character, conformity, not having 'weird' behaviors, and being good in accordance with the commonly accepted cultural ideas of what good means. Then, there are lots of other micro-beliefs, that get woven into this like "A person's value is based on their ability to work hard and take personal responsibility" which then leads to the shadow belief, "If a person is not doing well in life, it's because they haven't worked hard and taken personal responsibility AND that means that they're not good and not worthy of being and they deserve every bad thing that comes to them." It's best not to go for the micro-beliefs like that because that's where all the bacteria of worldviews grow, and there's a lot to be hidden the more granular you get with the beliefs. And the narrower the worldview, the more likelihood there is that it will be conducive to bacterial growth (like hatred, judgment, violence, discrimination, etc.) Not to mention, these are the beliefs that swim on the top of the surface, so they're hyper aware and identified with them. But if you go more general and existential, like the idea of value itself and what value means, if they have some genuine breakthroughs and realizations, then you can take the scaffolding right out from under narrow-paradigmed belief systems and it will naturally give way to a more expanded perspective. It's like if you want to demolish a building, you don't start taking shingles off the roof even though those are one of the more obvious features of the building upon looking at it. What you do is target the underlying structure of the building and take that out first. So, it's all the heave beams that are hiding mostly inside of walls that can't even be seen when you're in the building. So, you're taking out the spine of the beliefs and not the extremities. So, a very conservative person would likely balk at you trying to push the idea that "Poor people don't deserve their hardships." They will likely roll their eyes and think you're being quite naive and too much of a bleeding heart with no pragmatic sense of how the world works. And they'll probably call you a snowflake libtard too. Haha! But if you get more general and ask them questions about what they think about the idea of value and what it means. Then you can ask them probing questions, until they start becoming more aware of what they actually believe about value. And if they become more aware, they may eventually see that there are distortions and inconsistencies there. Most people are not really conscious of these existential type beliefs. So, just in talking about them it makes the person more aware of what they actually believe, which sets them up for potential breakthroughs in thinking. So, work with the big beliefs that are so deep that they don't even know that they have them. And these are the giants that all the other more granular beliefs are sitting on top of. And once you take out the foundation and the backbone, everything else will fall with it... and viola they've jumped paradigms.

I wouldn't worry too much about not having skills in branding, as there are some basic things you can do. For one, get a logo for your brand. Another thing you can do is to choose a color scheme for your channel art. If you have these things in place, a lot of people will feel more invited to check out your videos as opposed to pass them over. You just have to be unique and have a relatively consistent aesthetic to you thumbnails and your banner art. Then, you just have to get a camera that records nice images and set up a background that looks purposeful. And get an external sound recorder of some sort so that the audio is good quality... audio is really the most important quality thing. But you're highly unlikely to attract people through word of mouth on YouTube. The thing to do is to try to rank in the search results by optimizing for titles, tags, and description... and to have a nice eye-catching thumbnail and to give a lot of value in your video as well. It sounds like a lot to do, and it does take a while. But basic branding just requires some front-end work on your channel banner and thumbnails, and it will make all the difference. But as someone who's grown up from 0 subs to nearly 23k, the quality of the subscribers hasn't changed much in that transition. In fact, I get a lot more respect now that I have a larger audience. When you're small, the trolls like to come and discourage and the troll-splain things to you about how you're doing it wrong. But I have had some people who've been with me since the very beginning. Once you get to about 1k, things start to change a bit and you're looked at as more of an influence. And that's when I started getting a regular crew of about 10 people or so that would watch all my videos and comment on them. And most of them are still with me.

Yeah. It's quite a bit. Now, for some people (like Ralph Smart for example), his video production time probably doesn't take that long because he's good at freestyling and he just films videos straight through on location with natural lighting. So, his production time is probably just recording, color correction, and uploading. So, he can probably churn out three or four videos in the time it takes me to make one. But it is quite time consuming, for sure.

That's true. I'm recording one today though. I'm trying to get back on the horse.

- Generally, the better quality videos and the more consistent branding you have, will have a strong impact on your ability to keep people's attention. Everyone has to set themselves apart and professionalism and unique branding play a role in that... That and the quality of the content you provide. - 30 minutes, I would guess, probably won't quite do it. Your best bet as a time saver is what Leo does. He doesn't edit his videos, but just records them straight through. I can't do this, as I need cuts. But if you can record straight through easily, this will save you a few hours you would have spent on editing. He probably also has a studio set up in his home that he keeps consistent. I film in my bedroom, so I have to move the mattress and box out into the hallway. Then, I have lights and camera to set up, and to make sure my green screen is stretched. Chances are Leo just has to sit and record. Also, his make up routine is bound to be a lot shorter... if he has one. - But I don't think men and women differ in this way. People appreciate high quality images and unique branding. There are people like Ralph Smart and Aaron Dougherty that have very simple set-ups who do a video every day. But there branding is on point and they really set themselves aside from other people. - Also, you have to consider social media marketing and search engine optimization or no one will ever find your videos... unless you get extremely lucky. - Also, posting consistently is highly recommended. But there are people who don't post very regularly that still have a successful channel. But it's a best practice that you're a lot more likely to be successful if you do it. j Basically, my advice is to not skimp on branding or professionality because I've seen TONS of beginning YouTubers that have hundreds of videos and only have like 100 subscribers. And quality and branding is severely lacking in those channels. There is nothing setting them aside as a personality. And the quality of the video recording and thumbnail make people a lot less likely to engage with their work. And channel art goes a long way too. So, my recommendation is not to skimp on any of this because it will absolutely affect your ability to attract the audience you want.