My Lifelong Journey Of Self-actualization

[Apollo]

    6/21/2017 - Day 0

    The Foundation

    Currently adopted practices & techniques:

•         Daily reading + Audio Books    
•         Journalism      
•         Visualization    
•         Researching self-help products    
•         Physical Exercise    

    Practices & Techniques interested in picking up:

•         Meditation    
•         Fasting    
•         Conscious Breathing    
•         Contemplating my Death    
•         Mindfulness Eating    
•         Walking Meditation    

    Important Daily Habit I'm gonna start tomorrow:

        Strong Morning Routine

    Next important Daily Habit I'm gonna pick up in 28 days:

        Daily Meditation

    My mind is my greatest enemy. Traps I fallen victim to:

•         Expecting this work to be easy and pleasant.    
•         Confusing success with happiness or true growth.    
•         Eating the Standard American Diet of wheat, dairy, sugar, meat, and processed foods.    
•         Assuming that personal development is all mental work, not doing any development or purification of my body.    
•         Consuming mainstream media. Not realizing how toxic modern media and entertainment is.    
•         Not taking full responsibility for my life.    
•         Studying tons of theory without ever taking action. Improperly balancing my ratio of theory to practice. Mental masturbation.    
•         Valuing and pursuing gross experiences vs subtle ones.    
•         Assuming that consciousness is a physical by-product of the brain.    
•         Setting unrealistic expectations. Being too impatience. Expecting big results to come quickly.    
•         Trying to change too much too fast. Lack of focus.    
•         Underestimating how much growth is possible. How much better my life can become.    
•         Distracting myself from facing emptiness, negative emotions, loneliness, and ego backlashes.    
•         Quitting meditation or self-inquiry when negative emotions or resistance surfaces.    
•         Using negative motivation to get stuff done.    
•         Assuming I need certain physical conditions to be happy.    
•         Quitting when emotional upheaval surfaces.    

    Traps I don't understand:

•         Speculating about and conceptualizing enlightenment, mystical experiences, and spiritual growth.    
•         Conflating knowledge acquisition with growth/development.    
•         Clinging to a naive realist paradigm, believing that reality is physical, logical, and Newtonian.    
•         Becoming ideological about anything whatsoever (theory, techniques, science, logic, politics, etc), not realizing that all human perspectives are partial.    
•         Assuming that I'm a physical body, or ethereal soul.    
•         Clinging to the idea of good and evil, not realizing that these are all my projections.    
•         Misusing psychedelics: using them recreationally, using them socially, using them without proper research.    
•         Conceptually misunderstanding enlightenment.    
•         Not being decisive, thus maintaining the status quo by default.    
•         Dismissing "new age" concepts like spirits, aliens, God, healing, love, etc.    
•         Demonizing psychedelics.    

    For the next 28 days I will do the following:

    Tomorrow I'm gonna wake up at 6am Mountain Standard Time. I will then sit down and soak myself with my vision of loosing weight and gaining muscle. After I'm done soaking myself with the feeling and picture of me having a six pack with broad shoulders, big pecs, huge biceps/triceps, killer ass calves and monster like quads I'll start working out. Before the workout I'll go to the mirror and flex my muscles to see where I stand in achieving my dream. When I get back from the workout I will flex again in the mirror, eat breakfast and get ready to work. Through the day I will exercise my adopted practices & techniques. At the end of the day I'll go to sleep at a proper time for sufficient rest but not before a recap of my day to tell myself "Hey, I did good today."

    After the 28 days of consistently doing this daily Habit I will adopt the following important daily Habit:

    Daily Meditation for life.

    Milestone after milestone to self-actualization. I will write a recap of my day for every single day until a year has pass. If I don't write in my online journal for a day I will instead write the day recap in my real life journal. Then when I get the chance I will write the day recap on my online journal plus the day recap for that specific day. If I fail to complete my goal I will reset the days to my last check point. Every 28 is a new checkpoint when I adopt a new important habit. Tomorrow will be day 1. Only time will tell if I succeed or fail. Until tomorrow.

 

Disclaimer: I started my journey two days ago and wrote my journals into google docs until I made a self-actualized forums account. So when you compare the post date vs the date I have in the top for the first 2 journal entries they will be different because of that. Regardless the day it says on the top is the day that I wrote that journal.

[Apollo]

6/22/2017 - Day 1

Woke up this morning actually praying to myself I would wake up on time. Which I did and that's why this is day 1. Once I finally got myself up from bed since it it was kinda difficult considering I only got 6 1/2 hours of sleep. I got my clothes ready for a workout and sat down and started to visualize my goals. This was very motivating to me as it gave me the drive to take steps to achieving my goals through the whole entire day. I was proud to be able to motivate myself without having to think of the negatives.

Motivation should inspire and make you want something and that's what visualizing my goals in a vivid picture and actually feeling myself to be one with the vision gave me. Again since I can't stress this enough, It gave me motivation that lasted me the whole day. I'm just saying that's powerful because I used to use negative motivation and motivational videos/music to do the things I wanted to do. At the end you got to be humble with life and say "Life, I want this and if you say I have to pay to get it through pain then so be it."which I did pay the price when I working out... God it hurts doing calisthenics as a beginner. And the good muscle pain not pain pain like I'm doing something wrong and actually hurting myself.

I watched part of the video by Leo on "The Big Picture Of Self-Actualization" (Will finish tomorrow):

Notes:

• This will save me years of dead ends.

It starts with a deep need for growth. Then taking 100% responsibility for my life.

Life's a reflection of my way of thinking, my desires and psychological makeup.

 

What Self-Actualizing is all about:

• Discriminating reality from appearance.
• If I don't learn everyday without understanding theory I will fall victim to the normal heard.
• Appearance ≠ Reality
• Discovering how reality works, how my mind works, how emotions like happiness work, etc.
• Actualized.org is here to help me build a conceptual understanding about all of this.
• Conceptual understanding is the foundation of self-actualizing.

- - - End Of Notes - - -

I'll finish the video and the notes tomorrow since I ran out of time today.

 

Going to sleep and looking back at today I can't help but feel proud and a sense of growth. I feel that I'm actually moving somewhere higher up in my life. Once I realized that the game is actually mental instead of in the outer world, my life changed drastically. REAL success REAL growth is mental. At the end all of my psychological problems and lack of understanding is in my head not in the outer world. I'm very happy to finally have some steps to move forward. I actually have a direction which in my opinion is the biggest difference from me self-actualizing months ago to self-actualizing now. I can see where I'm headed and I know what steps to take. I'm no longer lost in life. Till tomorrow.

 

- Apollo

 

Edited June 23, 2017 by Apollo
"L" in an inproper place.

[Apollo]

6/23/2017 - Day 2

I got more sleep but felt more tired waking up. When I did hear my alarm my mind immediately started to back stab me. It started saying things like “It's ok ignore the alarm and go back to sleep, don't you like how sleep feels? Aren’t you tired?” I was aware of this and fought to wake myself up. Once I did and I realized that today is a rest day from exercise I decided to take a warm shower.

For some reason I can’t get myself to take cold showers in the morning if I didn’t just come back from a workout. I’ll motivate myself positively on Sunday when I don’t comeback from a workout to take a cold shower. Cold showers help the body wake up since it sends it into a type of shock and this helps us become alert. I don’t drink coffee because it's bad for you but it seems to me like a shower can do what coffee can without the negative effects. Plus when I get out of a cold shower I always feel refreshed!

I took a minute to visualize my goals for the day but to be honest I kinda felt like I didn't need to do it as much as I did on day zero. I woke up motivated to do what I needed to do in order to what I wanted to get. Hopefully I can get a snowball effect going with this.

 

Leo’s video on “The Big Picture Of Self-Actualizing”

 

Notes (Finishing from Yesterday):

 

I need Epistemic and metaphysical questioning with an existential understanding of reality.

I need to study epistemic traps and how my mind deludes me into paradigm locks onto a web of beliefs and ideology that prevent me from educating myself and discriminating reality from appearance. At one point I will get a glimpse of the truth with a capital “T”. (Life is about: The Absolute) Once I get a glimpse of the absolute I will start to want to implement that truth into all of my life experiences. This “truth”is transcendent (this is what spirituality is about) getting transcendence to penetrate to all of my life experiences. People who pretend/act spiritual don’t manifest and aren’t able to embody transcendence. (Their egotistical hippies)

 

Growth

     Raising the quality of my consciousness.

     The absolute: Awareness. This is consciousness, everything else is appearance.

I must obtain the ability to have unconditional love in all situations, with all people and myself because of self-acceptance.

Self Acceptance: Accepting and unconditionally loving yourself without needing external circumstances.

I will know I’m growing when the following is true:

    Self acceptance increases more and more and more while interested on what others think about me decreases. Until I feel complete without the need to do or be anything at all.

 

Detachment

     I will be detaching myself from all experiences, all thoughts, all emotions and all actions.

 

     Detachment ≠ Cold hearted terminator robot like character.

     Detachment = Having more deeper feelings than ever before while also having more empathy and compassion in a detached way.

     The reason I can't feel fully is because I'm attached to stuff. Attachment to particular thoughts, ideologies, beliefs/belief systems, positive emotions, and attachment to my actions which yield particular results. The capacity to be vs. doing or having (this is a 180° turn in my life) where pleasure comes from being in the present moment instead of stimulation. True satisfaction comes from steady satisfaction from simply being.

 

Developing the Capacity for Observation

     The way to do this is very precise, very objective, very delicate, very careful, steady long term observation.

          Just sit and observe whatever I'm interested in very carefully and, observe myself observing that thing. I must carefully observe how the mind works, how emotions work and, my decisive tendencies serving the self-agenda.

      What does my ego want?

I must become a good observer.

 

Mindfulness

     Mindfulness, meditation, self-inquiry and contemplation, what are these things?

          All of these things are ways of building my capacity for observation (not to be confused with analysis).

 

Enwrapped in analysis = Mental masturbation.

     Undermining selfish impulses, I must get rid of these. After becoming aware of this I must restrict myself to them and lower conscious tendencies and desires alike.

 

Honesty

     Honesty with other people but most importantly with myself. Like brutally honest, how do I perceive myself?

     How am I lying to myself?

          All my secret desires, all the ways I manipulate people and situations but most importantly why do I do what I do? (Not the excuses I give myself) but really why?

 

Surrendering Control and Giving Up Manipulation

     If I'm really growing then self-actualizing Is not about getting control but rather realizing their is no one in control because this is part of the doing/ having cycle.

          When I surrender control I change orientation to the being.

      I control and manipulate to get the experiences that I'm attached to. I suffer because I realize I cannot control and will never have full control over these things. Nothing last forever.

 

Everything will end.

 

Facing the Hard Truths

• Facing Death
• Facing Boredom
• Facing Emptiness

    And not getting depressed and bummed out about these things.

 

Identifying Fear Barriers

     My defense mechanisms are the reason for me getting stuck on where I am.

Fear about losing money, losing security, fear about losing a relationship(s), etc...

    I need to identify these fears and drop them. All of these fears hold me back from reaching my full potential.

 

Raising The Quality of Motivation and Desire

     Most of the things that motivate me and I desire are low-consciousness stuff that I've been programed to want and pursue by culture and society. These things aren't healthy.

    

     examples: Money, sex, success, fame, popularity, love from external sources, security, comfort, stimulation, etc...

And to top it all off we use negative motivation in order to pursue these desires.

 

Becoming a Creator

     Finding my life purpose.

          What impact on the world do I want to make?

          What career do I want to pursue?

I need to be here as a productive human being otherwise how I'm I gonna take care of myself and gain/maintain financial independence? All while working on my passion. (Ex. Making money doing what I love and actually living off that money comfortably)

 

Reconciling Evil, Suffering and Ignorance

     This is an important component for unconditional love.

          People get hung up on misunderstanding evil, suffering and indifference.

     What I need to do is discover that I'm more evil than anyone out there and I must do this using careful self-observation and brutal self-honesty.

          Where does suffering and ignorance come from?

     Once I finally see all the evil inside me I will stop criticizing other people. (Reconciling) This will take me years to accomplish.

 

Pursuing Big Picture Understanding

     I need to get the big picture on life and self-actualization.

          Intelligent people tend to lack the big picture visual understanding of life because they pursue it with their left brain instead of their right brain.

 

More from Left-Brain Understanding to Right-Brain Understanding

     Left-Brain: Logical analysis, computer like thinking.

     Right-Brain: More emotional, holistic, integrated, spiritual like thinking.

Ego stems from the left brain.

     Right brain works more with enlightenment even tho enlightenment is absolute. I don't use logic to run my life I have to instead use intuition and let logic serve my intuition. It's easy to lose myself in: video games, movies, conspiracy theories, etc...

 

Having a Sober Life

    Addiction free, toxin free, stimulation detachment, distraction free because all of these don't help me discriminate truth from reality they actually hurt me. So I must peel these things off my life.

          Psychical + Psychological coming together as one.

I carry psychical energy blockages in my body that will be removed if I do deep psychological work.

     How can I grow when I treat my body like shit?

Simple. I can't.

 

Undoing Social Conditioning

     Overcoming cultural, child and school programming.

Actualized.org goes against a lot of what these thing teach us.

 

Non-Manipulative Relating

      I must become honest with myself on how much I manipulate relationships and also realizing that most of my relationships are manipulation games. (All of my relationships) It will take a lot of self-observation work to realize how much I'm actually manipulating my relationships because my manipulations are so sneaky that I'm not aware of them. As I become aware of these things which will take a lot of awareness, courage and self-honesty I will stop doing them.

- - -

In self-actualization I'm becoming:

• Very Strategic
• Very Decisive
• Very pro active & visionary

     Most people are the opposite of those things.

There is a deep recognition that this work is serious. This wont happen spontaneously or by accident. There is no fast way of becoming self-actualized. This is gonna take some determent and real digging to this work because the devil is in the details. This work is in the details.

Part of being strategic is surrounding myself with resources that will enable me to accomplish my goals rather then hinder me in my journey of self-actualization.

And all of this are the essence of this path!

Disclaimer: This is a messy process that wont go in this order. There is no linear fashion to self-actualization. I am not special. I'm a biological human machine. The human species already holds knowledge of the psychological makeup of mankind it's just culture seduces us to do all the wrong things.

- - - End of Notes - - -

Phew! That was a lot of hard work and it was all worth it because now I know what techniques I need to find in order to self-actualize. I did these notes through out my whole entire day, during breaks at work, in the morning and afternoon and I finally finished them tonight.

Looking back at my day I'm proud to be doing this work. I'm also proud on the hard work I put into understanding the big picture of self-actualizing. I think I did a wonderful job today. Hopefully tomorrow I can keep up with my morning routine as normal to be one step closer on making a strong morning routine a habit. Leo said that I need to have these habits  installed in my life in order to self-actualize and at the end I can say today I made progress. Till tomorrow.

- Apollo

 

 

P.S: I hope these video notes can help other people who found it hard breaking down Leo's video on "The Big Picture of Self-Actualization" to have an understanding of what he's trying to tell us.

Edited June 24, 2017 by Apollo
Finals edits.

[Apollo]

6/24/2017 - Day 3

Got up this morning a little bit easier than before. I only got 6 hours of sleep last night, because I had trouble falling asleep. Regardless I woke up at the time I was suppose to and got immediately to work. I don't take as much brakes to visualize as I did on day 0, mostly since I visualize during the actual workout. When I was doing pull ups in the park I just imagined myself a year from now being lean and being able to do pull ups with other body weight exercises with no problem at all. This really motivated me to do more pull ups then ever before. I just told myself one more pull up when I felt like I couldn't do anymore and, that got me to push myself forward past what I though was my limit.

After the workout I decided to try picking up the practice of:

            Fasting   

I was able to resist wanting to eat for about 3 hours until I just gave in and eat a healthy breakfast. Hopefully later in the future I'll have enough will power to past the whole morning. I really want to lose weight and If I can figure out how to properly use this technique, then I can gain all the benefits it has to offer without any of the negative side effects. I did my research and fasting is been proven to be beneficial if done correctly. Obviously this was my first attempt into the whole technique, so I wasn't expecting fast results or success from my first try. I tried and that's all that matters but, that doesn't mean I wont try again.

Looking back at today I can say once more that I'm proud of myself. I actually got myself to maintain a strong morning routine for 3 days in a row. This brings me confidence and hope that I can definitely keep doing this for a whole entire year. Then once the year has pass I'll keep on going with self-actualization as this is a life long journey that I'm committing to. I'm not gonna get ahead of myself tho since this is only day 3. Until tomorrow. 

 

-Apollo

[Apollo]

6/25/2017 - Day 4

Like the last 4 days I got up at 6am and immediately got to work. My workouts are getting more intense as I visualize more vividly the picture of me achieving results. These vivid picture of what I could be If I keep up the hard work make me want to work even harder. This is an amazing feeling. I love being motivated positively to achieve my goals rather than being negatively motivated. There is no limit or damage from being positively motivated like their is in being negatively motivated. Negative motivation is beating yourself up for not doing what you set out to do. Rather than building yourself up for trying, your breaking yourself down for failing. I don't like this because it doesn't bring long-term results. I am most confidently that positive motivation will do what negative motivation failed to bring. And that is long-term motivation. So all in all I had a great successful morning!

Leo's Video on "Advice For High School & College Students" (Since this applies to me.)

Notes:

     High School and College times are my only opportunity to build a solid foundation for creating an amazing fulfilling life.

Investment in life is like a exponential graph when it comes to results. Example:

     In order to get the exponential results I have to invest in the early stages of my life (my current youth). I have to sit here and invest, invest, invest and not see huge returns. Then after the first few years (usually 10-20) I will start seeing exponential returns. Most people die/retire before they see exponential results because when they where in High School and College they where wasting their time instead of building a solid foundation for their lives. Usually this is because they work a 9 to 5 hour job that when they get home by the end of the day, they are to tired to build a foundation for self-actualization.

     Where I stand in life right now (which lies on the periods of High School and College years) I have the potential to gain a lot, and the potential to lose everything. I will gain the benefits of the exponential results early on in life if I work hard to build a solid foundation now then if I where to start in my 30s or 40s. Building a strong foundation now will also bring me even more exponential results in life, because of the early curve in exponential returns. If I on the other hand I result to wasting my time by being lazy instead of working hard, I will not gain any benefits. In fact I can actually go down in life instead of up If I'm really filling myself up with toxic habits.

Leo's advice for a building a strong foundation:

Finding my life purpose (Check!)

     What do I want to master?

     How will I make an Impact on the world?

   Finding my life purpose will bring me most of my financial success and fulfillment in life. Satisfaction will rise because fulfillment comes from being good at something. I must position myself as an artist in life.

     Whats my art form?

   I must explore a variety of experiences in order to take a lay of the land, and see for myself what life has to offer.

Not Being Afraid of Independence

    As human beings we tend to assume to follow the same path that our parents took, therefore I must open myself up to the unique possibilities in life. If I'm working on something forty hours a week, how would I like my work to play out?

Building a Strong Work Ethic

    Habits that I build now will tend to stick more in my life than if I where to build new habits when I'm older. Building habits when I'm older is more difficult than building habits when I'm still modifiable. I must not study for grades but instead study for knowledge because I love learning, and I'm a lifelong student. When I'm working on my life purpose I will be studying on how to improve at it.

     Things I Shouldn't Do:

• No Drinking
• No Partying
• No Drugs
• No Cults (lol)
• And no Social Groups

This stuff might seem appealing at first glance, but in reality their a big waste of time and wont do anything for me and my future.

Sports

    Sports will not solve life's problems. Sports wont be big thing for me when I'm around my late 20s and 30s. So when those times come, guess what? I'm gonna have to start from scratch and find a new life purpose.

Socializing

   Social status is the shallowest most stupidest thing their is, It doesn't matter what people think of me. What does matter is working on my passions and life purpose.

Bad Habits

   I must stop wasting so much time watching TV and playing video games. TV and video games are the biggest criminals when it comes to stealing valuable time. Time I could be using building my foundation. Spent 100 hours instead of 10,000 on habits like these.

Nutrition

     I must cut the following:

• Soda (Check!)
• Sport Drinks
• Pizza
• Potato Chips (Check!)
• Bread and Refined wheat products
• Alcohol (Check!)
• Candy
• Fruit Juices

Building the habit of never touching these things will make me ridiculously healthy. It will also give me lots of energy that I can use in my life.

Debt

   No debt of any kind. I must buy with cash and never with credit. The only exceptions are college/educational loans. Otherwise no debt of any kind.

College is NOT Everything

   A college degree is not a one way ticket to success. In the real world people care about results. They care about your more about your EQ and your street smarts.

Reading Self-Help Books

  I should read about one self-help book every single month. Self-help books have distilled the principles of success and happiness that human beings have discovered over last 2000 years. School doesn't teach us the theory of practical real world success. I must learn from the mistakes of others rather than rebuilding the wheel by years of failure.

Meditation

  Meditation is the key for mastering happiness.

     Happiness ≠ Success

No Fighting with My Parents

   I must start living life as if I where living on my own. Recurring arguments are a waste of times. I must focus on building my foundation.

 The key to success in life is learning!

8 Most important subjects I must study:

• Psychology
• Self-help
• Meditation and Enlightenment
• Nutrition and Fitness
• Business and Marketing
• Dating sexuality and Relationships
• Biographies
• Money Management

- - - End Of Notes - - -

This is in the end of the week and all I got to say is that this was an awesome week for me in terms of self-actualizing. These journal entries really do help me keep track of my progress and knowledge on the theory. I am happy to continue this for a whole entire year hopefully. That's all of today, that's all for this week. Till next week.

- Apollo

Edited June 26, 2017 by Apollo

[Apollo]

6/26/2017 - Day 5

   Journal entry a little early today because I'm planning to do nothing this afternoon. This morning I had my most intense training session yet. Not only that but I realized I lost some weight. So much so that I could fit into some jeans that I wasn't able to fit in before. The feeling of success gave me the motivation to keep pushing forward. This new fuel will probably keep me running for a good amount of time.  

  This afternoon I had an argument with a pragmatic person. They told me my decisions in life with self-actualization and following my dreams are not something I should be doing. Usually this doesn't effect me, but since this person is family and I only started to open up to feeling emotions once more, their comments and destructive criticism left me hurting at the end of the day. Leo told me I should stop holding these emotions in, but instead express them in a healthy way. I will express my emotions through my meditation. I need to look at his video about mastering emotions later on in the future, in order to learn how to express my emotions in the most healthy and positive way.

  Today I wont be looking at any new videos. I watched some of his video about balancing theory and practice, but I stopped a quarter of the way because I'm not feeling so good emotionally today. Regardless I have to embrace these emotions because life is an emotional game, not a logical one. So after I'm done writing this I'm gonna sit down and do nothing until its time to go to sleep. Leo said I shouldn't avoid boredom, he said I should face it head on. To be honest tho I find pleasure in doing absolutely nothing. Until tomorrow.

 

- Apollo

Edited June 26, 2017 by Apollo

[Apollo]

6/27/2017 - Day 6

Morning routine still going strong.

Afternoon was emotionally tough, but I still got through it.

Gonna go find some advice from Leo on how to deal with emotions.

(Post Late because I went straight to sleep last night)

- Apollo

 

 

 

[Apollo]

6/28/2017 - Day 7 (Week 1 Finished!)

Wow, I got myself to go a whole week with a strong morning routine. This is an achievement for me. Waking up at 6am to workout everyday is becoming easier and easier as time progresses. My body is getting used to it too, so that's also an improvement for my lifestyle. This week I'm only planning to watch Leo's emotion and dealing with criticism videos. I plan to mostly just review this weeks work.

I should start typing these journal entries a little bit earlier because I'm getting tired around the time that I post. This is thanks to my body adjusting its sleeping cycle to accommodate my new strong morning routine. Enough for today. Till tomorrow.

 

- Apollo

 

[Apollo]

6/29/2017 - Day 8

Post late once again. I think I might just write the journals earlier and upload them online around 5 instead of 8. This strong morning routine is becoming a strong routine of mine. All of this work is gonna pay off in the future. Only 21 days remain until I can start my  daily meditation habit. Like I said this week is more review than notes so I got nothing new to show. Till tomorrow.

 

- Apollo

[Apollo]

6/30/2017 - Day 9

Where looking at the end of the month here and I am looking at my 9th day in a row with a strong morning routine. I'm making my post early today since If I wait until eight o'clock I just fall asleep and do it in the morning. Today was my second rest day in 9 days so 2 in total. My body is actually pretty sore right now so I know I got a good workout.

Don't have much else so let the gains begin!

- Apollo