Traps On The Path To Self Actualization

[Christian]

As a person who is on this path toward becoming self actualized, I am aware that there are lots of potential traps on the journey. I have fallen into some of them and will likely find new ones later. But I want to be prepared.

And I want to raise awareness regarding these traps because I think people and myself need to be aware of more of them.

So what are the traps on the path to self actualization?  

 

[Truth]

- How You Sabotage Yourself

- How You Go Unconscious

- How You Get Distracted

- How Your Fears Hold You Back

- How Your Identity Hold You Back

- How Your Premises and Beliefs Hold You Back

- How You Fail To See The Big Picture

- How You Fail To See True Value

- How You Fail To Understand The Importance of Patience and Implementation

- Not Being Able To Recognize What's True and Not True

- Not Understanding How You Work

- Not Having A Life Purpose

- Not Knowing How To Build Structures and Strategize Effectively for Internal and External Environments

- Looking Externally Instead of Internally For Solutions

- Asking Others For Solutions Instead of Finding Out For Yourself

- Not Deeply Contemplating and Strategizing

- Not Understanding Deep Concepts Like Enlightenment

- Not Being Able To Recognize Patterns Within Oneself and Outside Oneself

- Not Understanding The Difference In Emotion and Logical Thinking

- Not Understanding The Difference In Awareness and Thinking

- Not Meditating

- Not Understanding How You Learn

- Not Being Able To Focus and Contemplate Something For Long Periods of Time

- Not Being Able To Get An Idea of How You Feel

- Not Understanding How Identity Is Created

 

These are just some of the things you need to become more aware of, thanks for the post, I haven't really contemplated this topic yet.

Edited July 25, 2016 by Truth

[Consept]

-worrying about traps 

[FindingPeace]

The greatest trap is your own mind. Specifically your ego and your self-agenda. Become aware of these, increase your awareness/consciousness and mindfulness and allow your mind to open to the possibilities that self-actualization will offer you. There are no traps other than the limiting-belief system you have before embarking on the journey. But as you do self-actualizing work you will only move forward as one by one, each limiting belief is addressed and each 'trap' is removed.

If you take the insights you learn on the path to self-actualization, take them seriously and integrate them in to your daily life then things will only ever get clearer for you as time goes on. As the post above says, worrying about traps is a trap in itself. Just having this worry will become a self-fulfilling prophecy as you will be looking for 'failure' and will try to identify it. If you look with the expectation of finding, then you will find it. Insight number 1 - your reality is a projection of your own mind. So if you expect there to be traps then you will 'see' traps. They will exist.

There will be challenges however. One day things will feel like progress, and then next you will be frustrated. The days you feel frustrated or like things aren't improving are the greatest opportunities for personal growth. You learn more about yourself and reality when things are hard than you do when everything is easy and nice.

So whether or not there are traps, it doesn't matter. Accept whatever happens and take everything as a learning/growing exercise. In fact look forward to the challenging situations. Some days I'm living at peace with the world while other days I get triggered and my ego takes hold. These are the greatest opportunities for me to learn and to grow. Practicing mindfulness will help you observe these situations without getting 'trapped' by them.

[Vaishnavi]

There was this really eye opening statement in one of Leo's recent video which stated that it's very easy to grasp the so called knowledge just by sitting back and listening to all the personal development material, I mean you can go on and on and on and on just sitting back relaxed listening to personal development for hours, there is no real inner work there. You have the knowledge the tactics but you don't take action. 

One of the best things which I can suggest is implementation of the acquired knowledge. Just read one book but commit to actually apply the principles you think are beneficial.

Just listening to some audio program or self help stuff and thinking that oh you're doing personal development (when you actually are not doing anything) is the biggest trap. 

That is why probably even Leo suggest taking immediate action and doing emotional labor. 

[Progress]

One trap I recently fell in is controlling everything to "improve yourself." In this case, less control is more control. You create problems out of thin air. Like for example, I noticed that since I nitpicked what or what not to do on camera, I wasn't able to be in a more flow state. When I didn't nitpick, I did really well. So when you do fuckup, You want to take even more control of the situation+ feeling unconfident. It is a domino effect. Let the mind do its job, It doesn't need you, It never did. Then you despise situations that you fucked up on and avoid it making you even less confident and wanting to take more control.