Post Your Biggest Challenges With Personal Development Here

[David Miller]

@Kostas To help with procrastination, check out my latest thread. I focus on how to help people overcome procrastination for a living so I hope you'll gain some valuable insights by reading it. 

[Leo Gura]

I've closely re-read this whole thread several times and taken notes on your issues.

Good stuff guys! Keep 'em coming.

[The Monk]

Hey Leo,

My friends are disappearing! where are the high conscious?.

I'm a high school student and feel like ever since I've started Actualization I've become more disconnected with everyone else.  What I would personally like help with is making higher consciousness friends in real life, obviously. Also, I feel like I'm losing relationships with my friends and don't feel like being the friend either, as they are neurotic and toxic.  But since I have no one high consciousness people who I can make friends with or find since there is such a small amount of them,  It's hard. Sometimes I secretly make wishes for them .  Can you give me some direction or help to find some?

 

I fear the future, due to poor expectations. Also as I have a limited amount of friends now since I began actualisation work as I've become more disconnected from people, and I've been getting bullied recently. The bullying is troubling me, it's small amounts that considered joke like, so I cant report it. Its stuff like making fun of the way I look or the fact that I sweat a lot usually and smell.

Confused?  As to Why people are bullying/ making fun of me, since I did nothing to them, I'm just in their presence. Sometimes not even communicating directly to them.

Stuck? I'm stuck on whether or not I can laugh (this is a question I've posted twice , but got no definitive answer to) since laughing at someone grows the ego, and someone laughing at you grows their ego and psychological and physical suffering, as a result. So my main concern is can I laugh? What can I laugh at?

Also I'm stuck with conversations as I'm struggling to have conversations with girls and boys as I usually cant relate to them, and feel like I'm being awkward sometimes.  Wondering if you could help me with being a good conversation maker that will help me make friends and relationships.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 11, 2017 by The Monk

[dice]

Emotional inhibitions / inability to get emotional in front of anyone 

I'm struggling with expressing my emotions, whether it is in front of my family, girlfriend, friends, strangers, it doesn’t matter who. This leads to all kinds of problem like shyness, fear of public speaking, stage fright, being tensed, having difficulty to connect with someone and so forth. I've tried many things like visualizations, autosuggestion, i've also given tons of lectures in front of 30-40 people and have had many girlfriends, i talk to people on a daily basis, but still have emotional inhibitions.

Edited May 11, 2017 by dice

[PetarKa]

I've kind of touched on this issue already in my "free will & no good or bad topic" though there are some other related topics related to motivation, happiness, values etc.:

I don't know what to want, if that makes sense. I am starting to think that there is no point whether one is depressed or suffering in any sort of way OR one is happy, fulfilled, growing etc. (or anything in between those 2 extremes of the spectrum). In addition, I'm finding it difficult to take on your "ideals" for a great life and a great human being (becoming a sage, higher consciousness, enlightenment, life purpose etc.). I feel like I have forced myself to pursue these "ideals" just because I trust you as someone who apparently knows what he's talking about and now I'm questioning whether it truly is worth it. I mean why not live with pain? I'm confused. I don't know what I want...

[alyra]

it is hard to figure out what to say.

 

the main things of concern regarding my personal interests are that, well I am recovering from some serious skill and emotional detriments. and it is kind of confusing why it is taking so long to recover, yet I keep discovering new ways to grow myself... these past few months the majority of my effort has been on my physical health, I could not sit or lay down without pain, but now I am healthier again. Unfortunately the habits I was working on backslided. but so far my backsliding when it happens - each time where it falls too is slightly ahead of where last I backslid too. So this is not the main concern - 

 

the main concern instead is, on strategic stuff. I watch the strategic video a few times, should watch it again too. But it is not quite targetting what I am worried over - and the pillars are kind of abstract too - idk. the thing that is hard is IDK what exactly to say, that I am trying to work on. There is this thing sometimes discussed in phsychology called executive fuctioning, and that is what I cannot do, but it seems in my observation that the root cause of my struggle with it is unusual compared to teh typical cases discussed. 

 

some  thing I know I am lacking are, focus and sustained application of tasks. Focus also in the way where I can't sort out my ideas into a straightforward plan. Certainly my physical condition held me back too - could not work very long before being tired - but that is not a concern as it is improving. I mean it is a concern but not one I'm sturggling with, one I'm overcoming. focus is the one key I need to work out. and generally - meditation targets a certain different type of focus if that makes sense? I should really spend time figuring my own method of meditation which better targets this type of focus - meditation targets staying with one thing on mind, and generally I am already working towards that - but the "focus" that I am struggling with is Decision Making. That I get locked in circular thinking trying to make a decision. This is similar in a way, but when I am mindful it is easy to maintain focus tho it occasionally gets disrupted. but when I am deciding, I can't stay focused. everything is important. 

In a way it will help as I get better at handling the big picture and the small picture and swapping between those, but I feel like there's something about it that I can't put my finger on that isn't working well. 

The other thing regarding my current struggles that I've identified but unsure how to approach is, self-efficacy, I think the word is. Anticipating accurately what exactly you can do. Generally speaking I trust that in being aware of it over time I will get better at it, but it would be convenient to have some outside inspiration boosting my ideas regarding this - giving me a boost as I try to figure it out. 

and certainly, not being focused makes my growth in general harder, as I keep switching between goals between weeks. 

maintaining a stable output despite lower periods of my week is also one thing I am wondering about. I know you mentioned in one video about cycles being natural, tho you were talking about a yearly scale. In terms of big picture right now I'm working on my monthly big picture. but one thing I realize is that even when in a lower cycle, you don't need to just sleep all day and be mopey - there are activities you can do when feeling worn out or extra unmotivated, and so I try to do them. 

And another thing on my mind, not really a concern but just the last of my major current focuses. is mindful activity, over sedimentary meditation. I would really enjoy a video about that lol - or alternatively, a video about how to discover and develop your own strategies of meditation. later in life I will take on more regular meditation habits, but the life I'm pursuing is one of accepting the dual illusions as important for the locality of our human existence if this makes sense? I am unsure about this as you generally am interest in being monk-like and hugely push pursuit of enlightenment above all else, but I am instead pursuing a mixed approach. I am not sure if this analogy will hold well for you as it has meaning for me, but I've noticed in many things - and this is especially apparent in the simplified "test environment" of games - that often there are strategies in the game to increase your resource increase. um, to invest in investing itself, rather than just putting X cost into growth, you put some of it into having more growth capable. And - in the limited scale of a game - if you put in too much investment into growth, you fall behind anyway because others just produce the whole time. but otherwise, investing in growth is clearly superior. And so in regards to consiousness - my view and maybe you feel this is a poor view idk lol and tbh I won't be swayed by your rebutal regarding this - you've given plenty in your videos already - but the sage's path is investing more into the growth of consiousness than what I feel is healthy for me to do now. Maybe sometime later in life - perhaps soon perhaps never - I will. but right now, I Need to get a stable footing - to get myself self-reliant instead of dependant on the givings of relatives. And this involves a lot of personal growth - so I need to focus on applicative doings much much more than sedimentary thinkings. So the consiousnness work I focus on is in the moment- mindfulness while I am doing an activity of some kind - and only as much focus on that practice as I can afford. 

 

oh that reminds me - one thing I wonder about is how you put down multitasking. I think tho that you speak of a specific scale and I do not speak of that scale. but I do know that I do multitask too much - however it is funny because, we cannot live without multitasking. Our heart beats, our lungs breath, our eyes see. this is multitasking. mindfulness is multitasking - increasing it is opening up more "channels" or "levels" of awareness. IDK. I do not wish to speak of this much as my language to describe my thinking is not developed herein - and likewise, my thoughts are still overall abstract and intuitive, without detailed form, so I cannot even hold them still in a way which -- oh, IDK how to say this. So I will say -

 

I wonder about awareness. In my experience awareness IS thought. I do of course understand that5 choosing labels to mean certain things is important for the health of discourse - so clarifying awareness as seperate from thinking is important in transcending the traps of thinking. However all my life - my thoughts were without words - it was about 8 or 9 years ago now, when I started to work to train myself to be able to read and listen more reliably, and to converse and write with better clarity -  and that led to me developing my thoughts such that they did include thinking. I do also not even have imagery in my mind when I think - the only visual I get is when my eyes are open and I am watching the events around me. (or, weirdly, when I dream) but instead my thoughts have always been just in the form of abstraction, of concepts, of awareness, tho I am not confident that in that way the awareness I have is the same precise label that you have. I wish I could have an extensive conversation with you or someone who has spent years working on awareness, regarding the difference or potential similarity between thought. But I notice that when I focus on being mindful of things - that the original form of thought I used to only think in becomes more present. tho of course - the original thought in my life, was not entirely the same as awareness - I was unaware too. it is very hard to discuss this. I have tried many times to speak of how I think with others, and always it is challenging to communicate. But I feel pretty confident that there is no real difference between sensation, thought, "sensation thought" being language/pictures/sound in your mind as you think/recal/predict, and awareness. at their root they are all the same thing - tho of course, in their complexity they differ greatly. 

 

 

Another thing on my mind is the imperative of community over individuality. sorry I need to over explain this to get to my point of concern. naturally this is not the marxist movement that - IDK if you follow him at all - Jordan Peterson is worried over - it is not to say that we should sacrifice individuality for the sake of making everyone equal lol no it is not that. It is complex to write out sorry - but it is like, the first idea to hold is the idea that selfishness is the best way to find selflessness - that to focus on your own needs, wants, desires is the best way to make the community strong - by focusing on the self first, you change your self, and this is one step towards changing the world lol. it is have lighthearted but the point is serious - the point being that the community is composed of individuals behaving as individuals, and it is healthiest when that is encouraged. however - it gets harmed if it goes to far - if the individuals treat each other as competition, commodity, or disposable pieces. Because - this is forgetting the very real fact that Other people can help us pursue our goals. And - other people want our goals too. and - the goals of other people coming into fruition help us in all the ways which we sacrifice goals for the sake of our interests - if everyone specializes, we need each other to make up for the skills we neglect. So - to harm or discard or step on others defeats this reality of communal growth.

The second idea to hold in this line is - the nonduality/duality discussion - that the language I use to approach conceptualizing what the infinite, nondual, reality is - is localization of measurement. that the quickest way for me right now to begin to see infinity - and it is definitely still I am a novice in really seeing that infinity, but I often feel as if I get glimpses of it - or of nothingness - they are the same - is to think of how if you zoom out enough all the details fade away into a blurr and eventually it is just - uniformity. nothingess. but on the flip side if you zoom in enough - then there is nothing to see, nothingness. and so it is like math, graph, stuff - how everything is made of dimensionless nothingness, and yet with infinite of that you get something. So - we live in a localized world - the measurements we make are important because we are on this localized level of existence. This is where I bring back the community discussion - The self when surpassed you see that the self is whatever you localize your view onto, whatever you choose to measure as the self - that is what the self is. So if you measure your body then it is your body. if you measure your awareness than it is your awareness. If you measure all your posessions and your home and car, than those things are you. Or - if you measure your community, or the global world, or the global ecosystem, or the solar system than that is what self you are.

and so to the concern - the concern is that I see many people and IDK if you are one of them or if in the inexperience of your viewers combined with your word choice your insight is not apparant - but valuing community is the self too. Sacrificing community to become a monk is a dangerous trap in this way - The community could work towards enlightenment - and it is a more challenging self actualization, to have a community self actualization. but much like there is an intuition which guides us as we self actualize on the individual measurement- the individual is that intuition which can guide whatever network that individual directly impacts - and the growth of that network's consiousness influences the growth of the community as a whole - and the community's growth influences the whole world. We could self actualize the world. the world is a self! I am sorry if my discussion does not well encapture the idea on my mind in this regard, and really. it is not a concern I can currently work towards, as  I need to stabilizing this individual I call "me" . lol. 

 

 

Then the other concern in a similar line is - oh, I covered it already. not very well, but enough. so let me summarize now. 

 

there are four main points I concern over. 2 are more impactful for my individual pursuit in the now - and 1 is, in the now, more impactful for you to ponder if you choose to. only a dream for me to ponder. they are : 

- my ability to be focussed, motivated, and similar. 

- my application of meditation via active mindfulness over sedimentary contemplation (I do contemplate but 90% of my consiousness work is in active mindfulness)

- the concern of any group or community, and especially any leader, of community over introspective work. at the localization the best thing is introspection - but once meeting a certain stage, there is potential to expend the "introspection" to be a collective effort. idk it is not well formed this idea but I feel it is important to realize. the power of a community being greater than that of an individual. it requires of course the realization that in the grand scheme of things we are nothing, but in the measurement of our community, our community is everything. Accepting the illusion as important, because if the universe is to appear one and nondual, then the illusory waves must behave as they naturally wave. I could speak a lot on this lol but I should try to keep it teaser for the sake of communication. And, I do not expect you to be swayed or not swayed it is just - obvious to me in my understanding of it, that good opportunities to spread the idea is one manner of its growth. 

 

 

 

 

[BjarkeT]

At the moment i am stuck at overcoming anexity(maybe not exactly anexity but difficult situations in general like for example being out in situations you aren't often in)to the point where i am not controlled by fear i think the reason i am stuck is because we mostly live in an extrovert world which can make it difficult to overcome the fear if it's all around you I don't fear it all the time but it can be hard to face it if the possibility to face it can be from everyone you are around

the only solutions i have come up with so far is to train my self to be able to handle those situations for example by faceing one fear every day (not something way to extreme but also so i fully experience the emotions as i have heard it should be a good way to overcome fears but maybe also in a situation where it could be as save as possible to begin with and then slowly processing up to something more difficult for example if it's difficult to say no an example could be to start with small things like saying no if someone offere you food and you aren't hungry) i think one part of the problem is also that it takes up a lot of energy to be outside your comfort zone sometimes both before you experience it and when you experience and after you have experience depending on how difficult it was so it can become easy to be burnt out if you experience it too much

that's just where i am stuck at at the moment  

Edited May 11, 2017 by BjarkeT

[Leo Gura]

No more discussing good vs evil in this thread. Start a new thread if you want that.

Edit: I've moved all the Good vs Evil discussion to a new thread.

[Guest username]

deleted

Edited May 12, 2017 by username

[Revolutionary Think]

@Leo Gura Does subtraction meditation sound like genuine meditation. I joined these people because of your videos but, a lot of people on the forum say that they are BS because you have to pay them for guided meditation. 

[JKG]

Time Management

How do I know how much time I should devote to different areas of life at different times of my life?

• At which point should I focus more on enlightenment and at which point more on life purpose.
• How much time should I do socializing?
• How much time should I work on building up my health?
• How much time should I spend reading and how much time implementing? Theory - Praxis.
• On which areas of my consciousness should one work on first? Firstly mindfulness and concentration, then self-inquiry?
• How much time should I work on mundane stuff like school work?
• etc.

I would like to work on all these areas at the same time because I see that they are all important. But how do I know that I have set my priorities right? Should I firstly work on fulfilling all of the areas on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs? Or can I just jump up to self-actualization and transcendence? How do I know which approach is right for me?

I am often switching my approaches. And I am not sure what I should do first.

[d0ornokey]

Edit: Going to change my question

Edited May 12, 2017 by d0ornokey

[Voyager]

Authentic Communication vs. Ego Communication

I can't tell whether I'm being authentic or if i'm still communicating from self agenda (ego). I feel myself judging, getting annoyed with people's low consciousness and petty values. I'd like to know how to be more compassionate, communicate from a place of love and acceptance. How to generally deal with people better whilst on this path. For example. I am in training for the week. Everyone is talking shit and i'm trying to work. Is that my problem, or theirs? Do I let it slide, or do i say something? Am i coming from a position of self agenda if i say something , or am i being authentic?

More to come.

Edited May 12, 2017 by Voyager

[alyra]

sorry to post here again but in reflection of the question as well as what I said I've recalled two more things that are frequently on my mind but in not knowing how to handle them as well as in the lack of direct issue in them, I put off tackling them.

 

one is regarding meditation. often people speak of the importance of it because there's something to find, revelation to have, enlightenment. but since I've first been made aware of this journey, I've certainly grown in regards to the self, awareness, consciousness, and nonduality. but not once did I find some exciting, necessary, euphoric sense of sudden knowing, not do I see any reason to expect this - perhaps because I'm more predisposed for these discoveries than most, idk. 

but I just don't find any reason to prioritize self-inquiry not to look for or expect or even describe the journey as enlightenment. I don't see merit in focusing on nonduality or dismantling the illusion of reality much more than I already have - not because I'm fooled into thinking I've already got these all, no, lol. I can see many ways in which I certainly don't got 'em. but my growth in these engravers advance slightly as my mindfulness work often involves my mind wandering in their direction; I grow naturally in their regard and am more driven to focus on more pragmatic assets to the shortness of my human life such as strategy and focus and motivation, or social skills of various kinds, or etc. I do recognize how the nondual/"enlightenment" stuff applies to all of those endeavours as well, and as I've mentioned I do advanced them as they come to mind in my mindfulness work, but I've no interest in sedimentary meditation and am not sure if that is a problem or if it is a fair call to make.

naturally this is hard to wrap my head around it because of the inherent moralization of a decision. but that could just be a silly comment over broadening the term moralization to the point where the way illusion itself manifests is moralization

 

 

the second thing I'm reminded of is general. it comes up in all endeavours. not knowing how to act because of the discussion regarding moralization, self, nonduality, and moreover the social implications of emotional awareness, skepticism, illusion, and overall holding lines of thought to decide action in the moments and shirt run, but letting go of it outside of application of action. and I'm not sure if these are problems per se as much as a lack of decision-making and focus. and I don't know how I could contemplate the concerns to resolve them, nor if that extent really is necessary. (oh and physical and dietary health) I am sure you'd tell me to just start a meditation practice but that is part of the issue - if I'd meditate it'd be contemplation over strategy, focus and life purpose, not over these, and I honestly don't feel that's a mistake. I'm not convinced these concerns I've mentioned in this post aren't going to naturally be resolved over time with the methods I'm currently taking. I'm not convinced they're a problem so much as a facet of growth. so the true concern is worrying whether that sense of comfort with the discomfort is a trap or an accurate assessment of patience.

 

 

(naturally I'm not going to debate any response I receive from these two posts, as simply voicing my concerns is the topic of the thread, not convincing you my practical beliefs are anything more than arbitrary choice. and, the act of typing out my thoughts itself helps me handle approaching them, as my mindfulness practice - tho weak during discourse - is present in discourse)

[Key Elements]

So far, this is what I got. I have a life purpose (bilingual education) and later, I will incorporate non-duality in it. I will keep going on this journey. 

Sometimes this question comes up: am I still missing something?

From my experience so far, I just say to myself: keep going at it and things will fall into place.

[Key Elements]

On 2017-5-12 at 1:45 AM, John Flores said:

My new issue is that in the process of being on your own journey, people start to judge you for acting like what they would describe as "weird". I guess a big problem to all this is, is knowing how to intergrate our transformed states into a closed minded society or community who simply will not embrace our changes in behavior, without needing to strengthen our resolve not to change how we are. Meaning, how can we be how we are without totally seeming like heretics to the wider community?

Wow, well said!

My plan is to write a book in third person, in two languages. There are always ways to express it. Things start to come up as you go along. That's how the person discovers things. When another person is not ready to hear what you have to say, they are just not ready.

Your comment here reminds me of this clip:

 

Edited May 13, 2017 by Key Elements

[HelloThere]

@Leo Gura Haha, video reply - best reply. Thanks man.

[Jedd]

Knowing what my values are and how to go about finding them etc.

[Michael569]

@Jedd the life purpose course goes into a lot of detail about this. 

[Wouter]

Finding healthy and conscious friends