What changed you?

[LastThursday]

I was thinking about all the good and bad things that have happened to me in my life and how they've changed me. I was curious to know if there was some event or realisation that fundamentally changed you as a person or the way you saw life? Positive or negative. It would be good to know what it was and why it changed you.

For example, when I split with my first girlfriend as a teen, I was still friends with her brother. Occasionally, I would see my ex around with her new boyfriend. The level of jealously I felt was so intense that I vowed I would never get myself into that position again, so a clean break every time! But also realised for the first time that relationships are messy.

[NoSelfSelf]

There are many, but good one is that i created all the suffering,all the "bad" things in my life,that im the creator of everything, even when you get scared 9/10 its you who created that fear conciously and now you put it there to make you scared.All the laziness created by me,all the procrastination, i can name 100 things its all my creation without me even conciously seeing it now i see it.(but ofcourse you can always see it better ,see now i created the excuse to not see everything 😂)

Edited July 16, 2024 by NoSelfSelf

[enchanted]

Reading "God is not Great" by Hitchens when I was a teen.

[creativepursuit]

Reading Quran

[LastThursday]

Good answers. How did it change you? What do you do differently now?

[Paradoxed]

The death of my Mom at 19. I feel like I instantly had to develop maturity and it felt like "the good times of my life were over". Waking up to harsh realities of life.

Edited July 17, 2024 by Paradoxed

[Evelyna]

@LastThursday Such a great topic!! 7 years ago I got really unwell, I had an inflammation on my brain in cerebellum and lower ponds of the base of the brain. It made me bed bound , all my motor functions were suspended, I’ve lost my vision and hearing recovery took 3 years , actual cause was never found. I have fully recovered with no damage to the brain and functioning normally still today. This experiance upon many other things I have learned through it taught me the most important thing to this day in my life so far. We can’t control anything outside of ourselves what we do have control over is our thoughts, our focus our attitude to whatever is happening and to stay in the present moment, not worry about the future and neither to stay in the past.  Being switched off from reality left me a choice to either give in and wallow over what has happened or to control my attitude towards it and choose how I want to think and feel about it.  I realised that I’m in charge of how I want to feel regardless the circumstances, those don’t determine my state of being , only I do. With a lot of meds and positive attitude I was able to go through the recovery moment to moment , notice very small improvements and keep my attention on those. Although doctors were seeing predictions to a possibility of staying in a wheel chair for the rest of my life , I decided it was just an opinion and nothing is set in stone that I create my own fate. It also thought me that although I have no control over the events to come I definitely have some influence on my reality. This sent me on a journey of discovery of what I am and how powerful human can be. My attention is everything I can navigate through my reality in such a way that I no longer see anything as a problem rather a challenge , and that I can always manage. I  influence the events happening in the present moment around me and I always have a choice in how I feel about things. Happiness is a state of being, a choice , no matter the circumstances. Most will see this as a negative experiance I see it as a profound lesson and most positive experiance to date. 

[Raphael]

Many things have changed me in the past positively or negatively:

• Being bullied as a teenager: caused me to develop social anxiety, be resentful and angry at the world
• Studying in a foreign country: made me more autonomous and responsible but also caused an existential crisis where I started to question the reality around me
• Working in work environments where people had a different culture than me: annoyed me at first and caused a lot of frustration but after some time it made me more accepting of other's differences and more open-minded
• Work burnout: help me to learn to be kinder to myself
• Starting a freelancing business: made me realize how tough the business world is and caused me to toughen up
• Kundalini awakening: opened me more to spirituality
• A near-death experience: taught me to stop wasting my life
• A psychotic experience
• Discovering Reiki

[LastThursday]

@Evelyna that's intense, I'm glad you pulled through.

[integration journey]

Moving from Syria to the US

taking 5-MEO-DMT

taking the life purpose course 

[hyruga]

Nothing changed me. My personality doesn't change so easily.

The thing that's changed is that I don't get angry or worried easily as much as before after learning self help and consciousness stuff.

[Chadders]

@LastThursday my conscious shifts have mostly occurred through suffering. Just over two years ago now I experienced a pretty bad case of burnout and after the initial trigger and breakdown I struggled with sleep for the next 7 months. Horrible time

But through that I moved house and radically changed my lifestyle. I started cycling, went deeper into psychedelic, stoped watching porn, started doing cold showers, regularly do high intensity exercises and socialise more. My god. So much has changed since then

Before this time I was too complacent in my comfort zone. I would not socialise that much, played too many video games etc. nothing wrong with playing video games but it was displacing time that could have been spent doing more holistic things like cycling or going to yoga class

It reminds me of this episode by Leo. A part of me clearly died. I had to let go of that way of life. Too comfortable. Too convenient but not satisfied 

 

[Applegarden8]

Desire to change, projecting what I want consistently and regularly and self-reflection in general.

I want to put the accent that it's the combination of both. Something pushed me due to more space of resolved past trauma and pulled me due to established direction and organized action.

[LastThursday]

@Chadders that's a great observation, parts of us are dying all the time. But clearly something new was born to take its place.