Is Mindfuless the answer to procrastination and addiction?

[MarkKol]

Quote

Mindfulness is the cognitive skill (usually developed through meditation) of sustaining meta-attention of the contents of one's own mind in the present moment.

- Wikipedia

It makes sense to me, that everything begins with awareness, without awareness we are like animals, unable to have balance or deny ourselves pleasure, recently I've been struggling with addiction more than I usually do and every dream seems so far away when you're in the slums of it. I figured I would just try to be more aware of my thoughts and actions, and super aware of where each action leads down the line. When I engage in my addictions that's when awareness usually goes away, and I start running on auto-pilot.

But it's very difficult to stay in this mindful/aware state all day long because everything is pulling on my awareness and attention.

Any thoughts?

Edited April 23 by MarkKol

[Leo Gura]

The solution to procrastination is to just take action and stop thinking about it.

The solution to addiction is to find healthier and more meaningful things to do.

Basically, if your life purpose is strong and compelling enough, then you won't have time to procrastinate or be addicted. You just pour yourself into your LP and watch all the toxic stuff receed into the background.

If you have no higher inspirational vision of what to do with your life then you will have a lot of time to waste in stupid and self-destructive behavior. So vision is the ultimate key.

Edited April 23 by Leo Gura

[sholomar]

My last addiction is still video games and screens, LOL. Habit change can be gradual. Set aside an hour each day to be mindful, to practice purposed relaxation. Sit in an empty room, do nothing, and observe the cravings that arise as your body is addicted to it's habitual state of arousal.

I now have 2 videos to remind myself what I need to be doing that open when my web browser opens... despite the clickbait nature of the titles and screenshots they are actually good videos.  Key takeaway from second video... just because something is "relaxing" doesn't mean it clears your "allostatic load" ... think hours binge watching TV series... you actually release cortisol and stress hormones engaged in stimuli like screens.

 

Edited April 23 by sholomar

[ZenSwift]

58 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

The solution to procrastination is to just take action and stop thinking about it.

The solution to addiction is to find healthier and more meaningful things to do.

Basically, if your life purpose is strong and compelling enough, then you won't have time to procrastinate or be addicted. You just pour yourself into your LP and watch all the toxic stuff receed into the background.

If you have no higher inspirational vision of what to do with your life then you will have a lot of time to waste in stupid and self-destructive behavior. So vision is the ultimate key.

I understand this thoroughly, but for the past 5 years now, vision has never made sense. I feel like I have an inability to imagine something exciting. 

 

I really need some sort of resource or something to help me vision something out for my life. Or maybe even examples of what a strong compelling vision looks like! 

[Ayham]

@Leo Gura  I have really strong vision and motivation and it really calls me and makes me emotional, and I do work towards it.

But I still procrastinate and nothing seems to solve that 

Sometimes I am better, sometimes worse, but overall procrastination is always there

 

Edited April 23 by Ayham

[Leo Gura]

36 minutes ago, Ayham said:

@Leo Gura  I have really strong vision and motivation and it really calls me and makes me emotional, and I do work towards it.

But I still procrastinate and nothing seems to solve that 

Sometimes I am better, sometimes worse, but overall procrastination is always there

There may be some shadow stuff you gotta work out.

But again, just showing up and getting to work is the ultimate solution. You just do it and turn off your mind.

Edited April 23 by Leo Gura

[StarStruck]

You can think about eating a banana. And you can actually take a banana and eat it. What is the difference? Contemplate on this question. You basically want to transmute flow beakers into flow enhancers. 

[fopylo]

@Leo Gura

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The solution to procrastination is to just take action and stop thinking about it.

Bro you literally have a video talking about why we procrastinate where you mention the concept of homeo-stasis which helps us to survival. 'Just taking action' isn't enough for your complex survival system that tries to maintain itself as it is.

I see you recently talk a lot here about taking action, like discarding the fact that change is very difficult and not a simple problem of being lazy. Action isn't the cure. Maybe if a person is highly developed like you that his lazy day is simply because he's tired and not because of some survival mechanism like most of us, then maybe you just need to hit him with some classic self-help motivation.

Like this:

Quote

 

There may be some shadow stuff you gotta work out.

But again, just showing up and getting to work is the ultimate solution. You just do it and turn off your mind.

 

just seems like toxic orange to me.

Edited April 24 by fopylo

[fopylo]

3 hours ago, ZenSwift said:

I understand this thoroughly, but for the past 5 years now, vision has never made sense. I feel like I have an inability to imagine something exciting. 

 

I really need some sort of resource or something to help me vision something out for my life. Or maybe even examples of what a strong compelling vision looks like! 

@ZenSwift

I am familiar with this issue. It's like a loop of always looking for another technical step...

Suggestion: Get off YouTube, social media, phone or any other distraction. Pull out a journal and make a quick assessment of your life - Where are you currently in life, where have you been, where are you going, what do you want, what are your biggest fears, what have you tried...

And when you start journaling all of this your life becomes more in the front of your mind and you think about it more, and it is just natural for creative thoughts to rise among them because being aware of your life brings more 'room' for thinking in new ways about all of that... You start feeling more empowered... And naturally more thoughts about what you want will arise.

Really, don't try to force thinking about what you want. Focus on observing (journaling) your current life - that's all, and that's great and empowering in itself. As a bonus you might very well get a new vision for your life.

My small take

[Raze]

https://www.shinzen.org/positive-behavior-change/

[hyruga]

Depends on how good you are at the skills of being mindful. 

If you are poor at being mindful or being aware, you think you can get yourself to work?

[puporing]

If you're thinking you're in the "addiction" territory then you're probably using that to cope with some unexamined pain or unmet need. Like something pretty fundamental to most beings. Do you have at least 1 friend/person you trust you can talk to in your life? If no, access to a therapist or distress line?

Edited April 24 by puporing

[Ajay0]

You might find this article informative...

ABC News anchor Dan Harris has credited meditation and mindfulness with recovery from drug addiction and drug-induced panic attacks...

https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/conversation-how-meditation-helped-this-news-anchor-recover-from-addiction/17678/
 

Quote

 

“Our mind is a feverish swamp of urges, desires, and judgements. It’s fixated on the past and the future to the detriment of the here and now.”

 I have a tendency toward impatience, to think about the past or future to the detriment of whatever’s happening right now, and I have the soul of a junkie. Even though I no longer use drugs, I still want them, and I have all sorts of new destructive addictions—I struggle a lot around food. The junkie has not been exorcised, although he often needs to be.

You can have healthy compulsions, and you can have negative ones. In the years after abandoning drugs, a lot of my life has been about finding healthier ways to redirect my search for dopamine. I have developed this deep meditation habit, and I think it’s largely healthy.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 25 by Ajay0

[ryoko]

I've been contemplating this... Don't know about addiction. But about procrastination, you're already assuming there's things you gotta do. And those things are often things you'd rather avoid for reasons unknown. You may love it, in some sense. But yet it's hard to bring yourself to do it.

Recently I've entered a different territory. And it's been difficult to preserve the meaning in anything I do. I eventually gave up trying to build meaning. What can be easily broken is better off broken. The truth is, vision is a poor substitute for awareness. My only goal these days is to preserve my awareness and pass a certain threshold. No real reason why. It's not even worth calling a goal. Because it's not. It should be natural. 

But this again, like you said is extremely difficult to do, when the energy is pulled in many different directions. And I have to constantly remind myself.

I'm terribly disappointed by human standards of living. It's partially because I want everyone to have a different, more evolved norm. But realising how unrealistic it is. And how much it will hinder their survival and they can't afford it. 

For me, it was, so far I've built my interests by following my heart and ignoring every little motivation factor from outside. Now, I feel utterly lonely, I realised the place I've reached is so lonely. And this is the place I call home. And been losing friends from my life on a high speed. May be procrastination is a coping mechanism to go back to the world's norms.. 

And a way to preserve my empathy for the world.. And be a part of it.. like an actual part, of the group. 

There's only 2 things, which can break this. A strong ego, or a strong nothingness. Both will do. Ego is easier to summon, but hard to maintain. And nothingness takes a bit of work and pain sucking.. but less energy is needed to preserve it. I guess drugs are a failed way of preserving one or the other.. same for any addictions. 

Life purpose is equivalent of building a strong ego and maintaining it. Higher learning requires you be fluid.. But survival requires you be grounded and be blind in a way. That is if you're going the ego route. 

[Snader]

On 23.4.2024 at 10:37 PM, Leo Gura said:

The solution to procrastination is to just take action and stop thinking about it.

 

On 24.4.2024 at 0:51 AM, Leo Gura said:

But again, just showing up and getting to work is the ultimate solution. You just do it and turn off your mind.

 

I think you underestimate how hard it can be to most people to ''just do it and turn off the mind''. Most people are not genetically wired that way, and that fact is illustrated by the trend of hugely increasing ADHD diagnosis in highly demanding and competitive capitalist societies. 

Also, what I think is a big challenge in your teachings is the amalgamation of spirituality and basic self-help. Yes, a conscious person knows the power of life purpose and it's place in human life, and can build his life according to that realization. But it's not that easy, is it? There is a lot of work to do to get to a point - if seriously exploring reality - where you can sit down for hours and focus on mondaying stuff in day-to-day basis.

You could say, that for a conscious person the stuff he does for his life purpose is not mondaying at all, but deeply spiritual and meaningful, but to have that reality, is a result of years of work, which many people here seem to be currently struggling with. 

I mean, I use that "just sit down and do the work" advice everyday to motivate myself and I tend to give that advice to others as well, especially if they are NOT into spirituality. But here, as your channel is guiding people to construct and deconstruct their lives at the same time (which makes your teachings unique btw), I think the challenges in reconciling those two domains should be more considered in your teaching.

[gettoefl]

plan each one of the 24 hours, 3-4 hour buckets is a good division

hard and mindful things early on, easy and mindless things later on

each harder thing is counterbalanced and rewarded with an easier thing

eg i endure a 30 minute run, i enjoy a 30 minute shower and sauna / sun sit

creation is hard, consumption is easy

execute, don't deviate

one day at a time

[puporing]

22 hours ago, Snader said:

guiding people to construct and deconstruct their lives at the same time (which makes your teachings unique btw), I think the challenges in reconciling those two domains should be more considered in your teaching.

The reality is if you want to do serious spiritual work in this day and age you either have to have landed on some wealth somehow or have some help or at least a back up like a good family. If you try to go to the deep end with absolutely nothing (no extra support) it's almost impossible, unless your country has some nice welfare system.

Because fundamentally serious spiritual work will get you "out of this system/universe" altogether. And that would by definition make it harder to do basic survival (because you have a different mindset).

Any remainder motivations to be here is for a different reason than most people here have.

Edited April 26 by puporing

[Snader]

@puporing Exactly. Although, some people can play with those two spheres better than others. It’s really much up to genetics and your level of development which is also higly dependent on your genetics. It’s super rare to be able to do 5-MeO one day and do pickup (or even have a mondaying conversarion with a co-worker at work) the next day.

I hate giving so much weight to genetics, as I’ve seen Leo explaning almost every human difference that way and also because I’ve personally used to emphasize more social factors as determinants of human capability. But man, the gene lottory really seems to get an upper hand there.  

[puporing]

5 hours ago, Snader said:

@puporing Exactly. Although, some people can play with those two spheres better than others. It’s really much up to genetics and your level of development which is also higly dependent on your genetics. It’s super rare to be able to do 5-MeO one day and do pickup (or even have a mondaying conversarion with a co-worker at work) the next day.

I hate giving so much weight to genetics, as I’ve seen Leo explaning almost every human difference that way and also because I’ve personally used to emphasize more social factors as determinants of human capability. But man, the gene lottory really seems to get an upper hand there.  

I don't think it's genetics.. There's just bound to be at least periods where you have almost no interest with the outside world (except the rare souls you might find). And a period of, well shit literally I cannot find anybody here that can understand me. And maybe eventually arrive at some occupation/paid work that can tie your spiritual progress together.

I mean you don't know how Leo really lived his life, he prob also had periods where not much "money making work" was done if you know what I mean. I mean he already set himself up with actualized so seems like to me most of the later stuff was done after he had already gotten the financials taken care of.

And all the other well known spiritual teachers getting paid with their job as spiritual teachers, are not that awake to me. Meaning again the point being if you want to go to the deep end with this it's almost impossible to make a living out of that. It's also a numbers thing, there's just not many people who are looking for that or would pay for it. The more mainstream spiritual you are the more likely you are to get paid for it. The more awake you are the more likely you're a "volunteer".

Edited April 26 by puporing

[Snader]

2 hours ago, puporing said:

I don't think it's genetics.. There's just bound to be at least periods where you have almost no interest with the outside world (except the rare souls you might find). And a period of, well shit literally I cannot find anybody here that can understand me. And maybe eventually arrive at some occupation/paid work that can tie your spiritual progress together.

How I see it, is that for example a person with more preferable traits (in relation to labor market), such as high intelligence and conscientiousness is probably more likely to land a job that grants him more money and autonomy to pursue other interests and not born himself out. Although there probably is the tradeoff that such people might be carried away by materialistic desires, so obviously it's not that simple and I can't really say what is the optimal genetic cocktail for what. But It's starting to make sense to me that even the capability to not get hooked into materialist desires is somewhat genetic, while containing many other factors as well.

What do you consider to be the determinants in one's capability to live ''normal life'' while also pursuing spiritual goals?

 

2 hours ago, puporing said:

I mean you don't know how Leo really lived his life, he prob also had periods where not much "money making work" was done if you know what I mean. I mean he already set himself up with actualized so seems like to me most of the later stuff was done after he had already gotten the financials taken care of.

According to his videos, he was already into spirituality while recording videos on basic self-help. I also remember him telling a story in which he was cracking jokes about enlightenment in a strip club. If there is any authenticity in his videos and stuff he shares, then he definitely was doing business and hardcore spiritual work at the same time. But what I don't know thou is how developed and conscious he really was back then.