Tell Us How You Got Into Personal Development

[sarapr]

What I've realized from reading all this is that the number one reason for people to start personal development is being bad with dating and social situations.

That's interesting. All ego driven and survival driven motivation that leads to a radically different place.

[star ark]

Just now, sarapr said:

What I've realized from reading all this is that the number one reason for people to start personal development is being bad with dating and social situations.

That's interesting. All ego driven and survival driven motivation that leads to a radically different place.

I believe our lack or social success exposes the ego in all, in them as they seem to thrive with their egos and in us with our resentment of their innate abilities.  We watch the ego (our resentment and lack of sense of self compared to their proud sense of self) at play as we never learnt to manipulate the ego to our benefit like most social people. It's interesting that the social people rely on a status quo for their egos to work. The funny guy needs a crowd, the tough guy needs an adversary, the beautiful people need other beautiful people to date to reaffirm they are the most beautiful.

Most people here are searching for their true selves and are not falling into the stereotypes, so these stereotypes do not know how to utilize us in their subconscious attempts to climb the social ladder. 

 

 

[Krishna Siva]

Name: Krishna Sivakumar

Age:17

Gender: Male

Location: Chennai, India

High school student

Hobbies: Learning about personal development, Programming, Cooking, Thinking and Introspection 

Martial Status: Single 

Kids: None

I got into personal development in the start of 2017, when I discovered astral projection. It required me to meditate, and when I started meditating, my mind began to think (consciously). 

That made me get into reading on philosophy, spirituality, religion, meditation, paranormal phenomena, and personal development.

Challenges I have overcome: 

• Social Anxiety
• Victim mentality
• Excessive amounts of fear

Stuff I have accomplished:

• Think strategically and critically
• Becoming more open minded
• Doing Introspection

What I'm working towards:

• Becoming Fit
• Removing myself from all my biases

[Leo-Tzu]

I used to play tennis in competitive tournaments and train hard everyday (for my age . . . 16 at the time) then i injured many times my left elbow (i'm left handed) til the doctors said i could not play pro tennis anymore . . . It hit me very hard. I lost my life purpose at 17 and then i did what the society expected (graduated, worked some part time jobs, had a few girlfriends, went out clubbing) like a zombie, but never felt the same emotions and the thrill like when i was competing in tennis tournaments . . . Now that i'm 27 still have to improve a lot (i did a lot of mistakes with videogames, weed, alcohol etc) and i'm willing to improve in order to feel the same passion about life as i felt when i was 17. . . Or even better

Edited January 5, 2018 by Leo-Tzu

[YaMayka]

Name: Maja
Age: 38
Gender: Female
Location: Belgium (but first 26 years spent in Poland, then 2 in Luxembourg)
Occupation: Local Support Manager
Marital Status: In relationship
Kids: Daughter 9 y.o.
Hobbies: dancing, reading, music, nutrition (lately), new ideas, travelling (whenever possible), cooking, observing world, psychology

I never thought about it in categories of self development - I was just just curious about world - inner and outer. I still remember when I was a child and it struck me - this question: why do we exist? how weird is that! Why does world exist? And nobody could give me an answer. I can't say that I got obsessed about it but it was always at the back of my mind, I watched it differently. I read a lot of books - I also had a brother who loved that subject and I would take his books (he's 4 years older), so as a teenager I was reading Castaneda's books, Hesse, Dostojewski, Colin Wilson. Whatever I could find in the 90's in Poland (the market was limited and the internet was not so available as it is now). I would have a lot of self awareness (well, not on Leo's standards, on average standards). Unfortunately, I was also lazy to take enough profit from my consciousness and I screwed up my studies - failed at the last year (I studied psychology). That is something I need to work on - my conscientiousness - I get distracted too easily and lose my goal.  I got a good but mundane job in Luxembourg and moved there, then to Brussels, got a child and all that, even though still made me learn things about myself, slowed down my development. I picked it up when I had to fight for my health. I get severe migraines, so I cleaned up my diet - I am gluten free, dairy free, I don't eat meat since I was 16 (I eat fish now though), I try to eat clean and removed all sugar. I read and listened a lot about nutrition and am trying to fix my migraines by myself (it goes better and worse - still working on that project). I am introverted and I sincerely like it - I have nothing against extraverts but they can get on my nerves when I have them too much around (something like silence and contemplation seems to be a foreign concept for them ;)) - I have no idea why people here put them in one line with "shy" and "socially awkward" - they are not synonymous. Jordan Peterson's and Leo's video's gave me a final kick to pick up where I started as a young adult - et voila! here I am

 

[vibrate]

Name: vibrate

Age: 37

Gender: Female

Location: Switzerland

Occupation: Addiction-coach

Marital Status: divorced

Kids: no

Hobbies: Kundalini Yoga, Reading, hiking, sailing

 

How did I get into personal development:

I've had a stellar career in NGO and had a burnout at age 25. I crashed hard and fast and was unfit to live for about a year. It dawned on me that I might have a problem. I re-entered my career and told myself that as soon as I spot signs of my work addiction again I would go see a psychologist. I did not have to wait too long for them to appear so I "turned myself in". I spent 4 years in psychoanalysis twice a week which sparked my interest to go back to university to study psychology which I did. During my 4th year of analysis I got introduced to Kundalini Yoga during what was planned to be a Hatha - Yoga retreat in the South of France. That night I had a vision/ dream and my heart opened. I realized I'm done with analysis and now have to move on to pocess things in another way, and come into the body. That sent me on a path of Kundalini Yoga and other techniques and my interest for minimalism eventually led me to Leos video "Minimise your stupid, busy life" (or something close to that) a year ago.

 

Personal challenges I've overcome:

-burnout at a young age

-Workaholism

-Severe depressive spells

-Binge eating

-Sports addiction

-Alcoholism

-a lot of other pacifiers

-becoming vegetarian/vegan

-A career in corporate oragnisations, I work for my self now

-Divorce

 

 

What I'm working on now

Codependency in my relationships, generally doing a lot of shadow work

Building my business

reconnecting with my parents

cleaning up my diet (once again...)

Finding a way into sports again without using it as a distraction and getting addcited

Squeeze a Kriya Yoga routine into my Kundalini Yoga one...

Online-Addiction

[Rob06]

Name: Robert
Age: 26
Gender: Male
Location: Amsterdam, NL
Occupation: Recruiter
Marital Status: Single
Kids: No
Hobbies: meditation, personal development, reading, music, cooking and eating healthy

I got into personal development about 6 years ago when I read the book The Music Lesson by musician Victor Wooten. This book describes all the spiritual and musical growth of the author in the form of a novel. His story totally blew me away and completely changed my whole worldview forever. After this I discovered Alan Watts' lectures on YouTube and another paradigm shift happened. After that I decided to pursue my passion and started studying music at conservatory. During this time I attended a meditation course and immediately thought it would be cool to be a meditation teacher my self one day. Then a couple of years ago I discovered Actualized.org. The first video I watched of Leo was his spiritual enlightenment video. The second one was the how to get a girlfriend video. I remember thinking to myself: "Is this guy for real or what?"  After that I slowly started getting interested in personal development more and more, and started working on myself more and more.

Personal challenges I've overcome:

• Overcoming social anxiety and shyness
• Shifted from very narrow minded to very open minded
• Changed from a very mediocre guy with a very small life vision into a passionate enthusiastic guy with a big and bright vision
• Saying no to the love of my life after two years to persue my dreams

What I'm working on now:

• Healing an over use injury that forced me to quit playing music 3 years ago
• Finding my Life Purpose with Leo's Life Purpose Course
• Law of Attraction (visualization and that kinda stuff)
• Building a stronger work ethic
• Cleaning up my diet (killing those last remaining junk food cravings)
• Gaining a better understanding of the field of personal development
• Quiting coffee (have been a junkee for about 12 years)

 

Edited February 27, 2018 by Rob06

[Ether]

Well, i desesperadly wanted to find a cure to my suffering and i met my mentor online.

 

 

It has been history ever since

[Sunchild]

Man, the readership here sure does skew young.

As a 55 y/o guy, I feel like Gandalf or Gandhi or somebody by comparison...

 

I'd post my Entire Mad Magnum Opus, but nobody would believe me.  And I couldn't really edit too much out either without losing too much...

Edited February 27, 2018 by Sunchild

[PsiloPutty]

For me, it was born from the growing knowledge that it would be easy for me to spend the remainder of my life doing everything as I had always done it. Being angry, insecure, anxious, drunk, hiding at home, faking normalcy, faking contentedness, following bequeathed life blueprints, going through the motions but not feeling much. I was made aware of psychedelics, and did ayahuasca, which opened my eyes/mind/life up to new perspectives. Leo's were the first self-improvement videos that I found, and the rest is unfolding every day in front of me. 

[Thaw Thaw]

Name: Thaw Wunna Tun

Age: 20

Gender: Male

Location: Yangon, Myanmar

Occupation: University Student

Martial Status: Single 

Hobbies: Learning, Self-improvement, Creative stuffs

I got into personal development about one and half year ago when I started to pursue my dream career, being a singer-songwriter. I was really serious about my dream and faced many problems on my way. I found out that most of my problems were because of my porn habit and got into the Nofap thing. From there, I started to learn personal development materials. I found actualized.org while I was searching for videos about 'Understanding Positivity' on YouTube and the video I found of Leo was about a Zen story about Positivity. After that I watched Leo's videos more and more and got into the personal development world.

Personal challenges I've overcome:

• Was short and overweight throughout my high school years
• break free of my porn habit
• set up a meditation habit
• stopped watching tv and playing games

What I'm working on now:

• Reorganizing my life and finding my way to get back on track
• Finding my Life Purpose with Leo's Life Purpose course
• Starting a reading habit

 

[Jamie Universe]

Name: Anonymous

Age: 16

Gender: Male

Location: California, USA

Occupation: High school

Marital status: Single

Kids: No

Hobbies: enlightenment, miscellaneous personal development techniques, art(performing/music/drawing/etc.), dealing with my problems, nature, excessive TV watching, Dancing for the sake of feeling beauty not actually being good..

 

I had depression sort of bad, and was sort of suicidal around 7th grade. I didn't have the willpower to do it but I just wanted it to stop and end. The cause of that depression could be several things, during that time I played video games every possible second and nothing else was even considered, I also (and maybe still am?) had something similar to some schizophrenic delusions, I believed that the people around me were apart of some secret society (to a certain extent). This was around when I was maybe 13 years old, I realize my sexual/romantic interest in guys, which is just more of societies shit that I have to deal with now being gay. It could've also been caused by some sort of philosophical-induced belief. I also had a ton of miscellaneous problems, I would constantly get erections in public, and for whatever reason my cock is really sensitive, literally doesn't even have to be anything sexual that triggers it. And I had a guy friend who I played video games with a lot, and people considered us BFF's but I realized after a while that he was a jerk (to me a lot). And this anger somehow translated into sexual attraction. (this is 8th grade now). And it wasn't a mental option for me to leave that group with him, so I was kind of just stuck with him with my feelings, this hate, and almost pretending to like him all this time. This was also a very hard year.

The beginning of high school was still rough, but I would consider this to be the year I dealt with my shit. I left the friend group with that friend, and texted him telling him that he was a jerk (leaving out the gay part), and then never talking to him to this day. Also I had a problem, because I had sexual attraction to children, and this was rough because society looks at 'those' people as monsters, and so naturally I looked at myself the same way, only recently did I have a huge face palm and realized that the children that I was attracted to, were within a general 4-6 year radius of my age, and adults marry within that range (and bigger gaps) it natural, and even if it turns out not to be natural, I'm not unconfident that I can't deal with it. This year I also talked to a counselor telling her all my problems, and I almost went to a therapist, but looking at my life so far I decided not to and to deal with this shit on my own. I also suffered from lack of purpose during these times, because of my excessive time wasting.

This year, (which is almost over) I felt dealt mainly with being gay. For whatever reason halfway through the year, some thing in my mind clicked, and I realized and felt all the social impacts of being gay, I become extremely nervous, I almost had a panic attack when someone came in to talk about LGBTQ club or something, which immediately resulted in me taking action, I told a friend, which was very awkward and emotionally exhausting, but she was accepting, despite it being such a hard task, it was easy for me to do, because I knew what the alternative was, and it was not good. And then recently I just told another friend (who is pansexual). And then one morning I had an incident, where my dad was texting in a family group chat  and said "I hope you have a good gay" and then my mom texted back with "I hope you have a good gay to!" which gave me a fucking seizure, note that I just woke up early in the morning, literally the night before I told my other friend I was gay (the pansexual one). And now this!! HAHHA... I didn't know if this was some sick way of telling me "Hey btw we know your gay" and so I responded with "..."  and walked downstairs, and she seemed totally normal, and I was trying to figure out the entire time whether or not she knew, it took me a while to realize that it was just an grammar mistake and my mom was making fun of my dad, because apparently mentioning 'gay' is funny to her.

But despite the onslaught of crap, this year I've actually been really happy, I found Leo somewhere around the end of 8th grade, I think I was looking up for a video on laziness or something, and eventually got lucky enough to find Leo, in which case I would feel doomed if I hadn't stumbled across him. I would probably be worshipping him at this point if he didn't tell us not to. 

But now? I mean, I still face problems obviously. I haven't told my parents that I'm gay yet, I worry about that, but I have my plans to tell them. and otherwise I have tools that most of the people around me don't, knowledge that they (probably) don't have, and I feel lucky to have something work for me. My confidence is pretty amazing, after that one morning with my parents texting, it really put it into perspective that random shit happens. There's still more problems which I didn't go into, but these are typically the biggest. (Also sorry I kind of jumped around a lot).

 

Personal challenges I've overcome

- Dealing with depression solo

- Dealing with insanity solo

- Dealing with social bullshit (a lot of it)

- getting over self-image

- Meditation habit

- less laziness

 

What I'm working on now

- Shamanic breathing

- Meditation

- Enlightenment (but going to be more serious after high school)

- mastering the social terrain and wasteland that is high school

- Getting over my laziness or excessive wasting of time

- becoming a better student

 

 

[nour-cha93]

I once had a crazy friend who was dating a guy and she was searching for videos on how to make a guy fall in love with you and she sent me Leo's video. That is when it all started. 

I am 25

 

[zoey101]

Name: Tyffani Wilson
Age: 24
Gender: Female
Location: Florida, USA
Occupation: Receptionist for Law Firm
Marital Status: Married
Kids: One little girl  
Hobbies: singing, playing with my little one, drawing

I have always been into personal development, but I have been getting more into it since I joined this site a few months ago. I have always felt like things didn't feel right around me, I started having issues connecting with people around me on deeper levels than just conversations. I adore this site and what we are able to discuss here and how connected I feel to the world now.

Personal challenges I've overcome:

I am less quick tempered towards the people around me

Issues Connecting with others

Went from a social butterfly in high school to a complete introvert after

Am becoming more independant

 

What I'm working on now:

Working on being more authentic in relating to others

Working on discovering my purpose

 

[searchingserenity]

Name: Priya Moi
Age: 26
Gender: Female
Location: Bangalore, India
Occupation: Professional
Marital Status: Single (I am a commitment-phobe)
Kids: No
Hobbies: reading, learning music, writing, thinking, nature, personal development
(yes thinking is a hobby for me apart from a regular activity. I can spend hours in my own head)

I got into personal development this year. It's a very new journey. I'm trying to become a better version of myself and to reach or tap into more potential. I'm here on this site for the very purpose and also hopefully to find like-minded people with similar goals or journeys and have many discussions and friendly prodding towards achieving goals.

 

Personal challenges I've overcome:

Insecurity and associated issues of abandonment (difficult childhood)

Used to be very shy, introverted, and socially awkward

Have become financially independent

Changed careers and finally found something truly challenging

Started my journey of development after being a life-long proponent of determinism and serial procrastination.

 

What I'm working on now:

Working on improving core aspects of my character/personality

Working on improving my exercise routine

Working on learning skills, language, music and philosophy

Working on identifying what I want out of life.

 

Edited June 6, 2018 by searchingserenity

[Sparkist]

Name: Amy
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Location: Suffolk, UK
Occupation: Currently unemployed and working towards a new career (in alignment with my truth, for want of a less cheesy term)
Marital Status: Single
Kids: One, 13 y/o
Hobbies: Spirituality, personal development, enlightenment, comedy, acting, making burlesque pasties, live music & festivals, going to the theatre, making art!

I got into personal development about 2013/14 when I truly started questioning everything I thought I knew about life and this world. I began to feel that there was a lot I was missing. I started researching and stumbled upon teachers such as Eckhart Tolle and Dr Joe Dispenza who really helped to shift my perspective on everything really. I became passionate about self help videos/books but found that I wasn't really practising what I was learning. I paid to learn transcendental meditation but found I wouldn't commit to the twice daily 20 minute meditations. Anyway, long story short, for many years I've been aware of the things I CAN do in order to reach a higher level of consciousness, I've just been too lazy or unconscious to go the distance. Well, recently I reached a peak of existential crisis (thank you universe! Ha! It's helped me get to this point <3 ) and now I find myself not wanting to continue my path of ignorance. So...

Personal challenges I've overcome:

I have quite smoking tobacco

I have quit smoking weed

I have cut out a lot of toxic people in my life

I have taken up running

I have lost 50lbs 

I found a way out of a career which was causing me deep unfulfilment and adding to my emotional grief and existential crisis

 

What I'm working on now:

Meditating daily

Kicking my addiction to food

Enlightenment

Improving my health & diet

Working on being my true self

Working on my personal development in such a way that I can fully benefit those around me, and not just myself

Working on being in a place where I can grow and maintain meaningful and rich relationships in all aspects of my life

Edited June 6, 2018 by Sparkist
Typos

[furashido]

Name: Fura Shido
Age: 40
Occupation: Design/film/Composer
Marital Status: In a relationship
Kids: 1

 

Growing up in not the best conditions i early on had a feeling that something was wrong. I allways found myself uninterested with the regular things and spent more time exploring my mind and pondering reality then anything else. I tried to act normal and make my self fit in, and tried many ways of life and had the oportunity to see life through many eyes.

At the age of 29 i had found myself in a position i could see no way out of and i gradually got closer to the idea that it was time to leave life. There was more pain that i could endure,  and one night when i was having the most intence panic attack, there was an explosion within me and a thought arised within me that killing myself did not have to be litteral, as i understood that everything that hurt me was in my mind, and that i was not my mind.

Accepting the fact that i wanted to die had become symbolic in a sense and a separation happened. Knowing that many reach that point in their lives but that do not get to have that insight, i chose who i wanted to be from that point. Seeing this as a miracle that had shifted my awareness, i started to seek answers from everywhere and studied everything i could come across, and started to meditate regularly. And so on.  

Edited June 6, 2018 by furashido
wrong spelling

[Robi Steel]

Name: Robin Stahl
Age: 18
Gender: Male
Location: Germany, Schleswig Holstein
Occupation: Student at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Marital Status: Single
Kids: No
Hobbies: youtube, entlightment, drugs, psychedelics, politics, psychology, music

I got into personal development in 2013 when I saw an ad next to a porn saying "How to make a girls squirt 100% of the time". I was 13 and didnt know what squirting even was. As it is in my nature, I wanted to bring light to this topic and searched on youtube and found Leos beautiful video on squirting (true story). Following the discovery of "Actualized.org", I started following Leos content which was way to mature for me at that time. With the help of Leo I went from being a social outcast (Introverted, socially akward, deluded, no friends) to a relatively stable member of society even though there were alot of misinterpretations of Leos content along the way. Slowly but surely my brain was developing and things started to click more and more. I often couldnt recognize the person I was a few months ago. I work on myself with eager and see this huge potential that is lurking ahead.

Personal challenges I've overcome:

• Almost no social skills
• Immense fear of girls
• Very logical, autisitc world view
• Argumentative, hurting, arrogant personality
• Unregular meals, alot of candy, aversion to fruits and vegetables 
• Social anxiety, overthinking, low self-esteem, sensitive to critique, self-harm, anger-issues
• Nihilism, pessimistic world view, no sense of purpose
• Seeing entlightment/understanding everything
• Low quality friends

What I'm working on now:

• Laziness, low work moral
• Embodying Entlightment, being conscious
• Meditation habit
• Excercising habit
• Leadership, taking responsibility for your surroundings, uniting people, solving conflicts
• Romantic relationships, attraction
• Confidence in my actions and beliefs
• Finding a life purpose, mastery, commitment
• Smoking and drinking

 

Edited June 24, 2018 by Robi Steel

[EugeneTheSage]

Name: Eugene Fil

Age: 17 years old

Gender: Male (I hope so)

Location: presently, I have no place which I can call "home"), I am locating in village Tryhirya, Ukraine, it is here> https://goo.gl/maps/JCpNaxNJohG2

Marital status: Have a girlfriend

Life purpose: Create a system of schools which are oriented on developing life skills, like: oratory art, financial managenment, time managenment, emotional managenment. Also it focused on developing social interaction skill. I am going to make a factory of new Elon Musks, Tomas Edisones, Sadhgurus and Mark Aureliuses

Hobbies: Personal Development at all, especially: meditation, Being, contemplation, reading, building muscles, learning english, mnemonic (the technique, that allows you memorize 100 phone numbers in 30 minutes), and helping others to get on track of Self-Actualized life (I'd say it is an addiction), and some that are not in self-dev: kickboxing, 3d graphic (here is my best work> https://www.artstation.com/artwork/L0lz0), making paper models of tanks, planes.

What I have overcome:

• Eating sugar, flavour, gluten, stuff
• Being lazy
• Videogames, sitcoms
• Surfing in the internet

What I have achieved:

• Meditation Habit - 11 month of daily meditaion, usually even 2 times a day. It all after Leo's video, where I've committed to do it for the rest of my life
• Reading habit - 30 mins a day
• Good level of English, Polish
• I am vegetarian

What I'am working on:

• Going deeper instead of wider (after watching "Comprehension has many degrees")
• Creating a contemplation habit
• Being more mindfull on daily basis
• Making bread (without gluten) and butter (without trans-fats) for life
• Not to masturbate (I thought I dropped this habit, but after half of year I returned to it)

The first seed has been planted as I red a few books 2,5 years ago. One of them was: "If you wanna to be rich&happy don't go to school" (after this one my school marks fell down to hell). 

Then after half of the year I entered the free-trial version of course about changing of your life. The trial lasted for 7 days, but they changed direction of my life.

Then I started to watch hundred of videos about self-development, untill I discovered Leo. The first video was "3 step fornula How to be ruthlessly effective in anything", and "The vision for actualized life" - that one inspired me so much, that Self-Actualization became the most important in my life. The things Leo told me were the profoundest with ones I heard (until I found Sadhguru).

The mainst my attainment was getting rid of videogames (I'm still missing for Witcher 3), and pitful sitcoms like Game Of Thrones, also cleared my life from surfing in Social Media, and cleaned subscription list on YouTube.

My mum suggested me to get education in Poland, and I accepted this Idea. But I had a down-to-hell marks in school as I said before. I started to working hard, and finally I pull them up to heaven. I had a great success, and came to Poland as a lider.

There everybody was wondering me, and I put a few guys on the way of self-dev. On the holidays I experienced a few mystical experiences, and, unconsciously, started to search the truth. So, I found it in the in the second half of school year I red "The Power Of Now" - it has changed my life completely. But after 3 month's I quitted the way of no-way. It was ego's (my ) victory.

Through all the year I had been noticing that I am getting to be worse, some bad habits used to return. I was feeling bored in school, it was sucking my energy. The town where I was living in was too smal to offer some events, seminars about self-development.

So I decided to take responsibility for my life, and DROPPED out the colledge. Now I'm searching for a job, and I have a few great job vacancies.

I am writing my story, and it will be exciting like Game Of Thrones (but without blood and gay-sex)

Make the screen of this post and I'll give you 1000$ after 10 years, when I'll be a billionaire)

Edited July 8, 2018 by EugeneTheSage
I forgot to write an important info

[Alinea]

Name: Kevin Moore    
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Location: Denver, USA
Occupation: Grocery Retail management
Marital Status: Dating
Kids: No
Hobbies:  Bouldering, mastering cooking with a Wok and everything cooking actually, mountain biking, hot springs, permaculture, healthy eating, learning about human potential, architecture and aesthetics, simple and minimal living, design and artisinal craft and so much more.

In the year 2005, at the age of 25, graduating college with a degree in an interest (architecture) but no specificity or purposefulness behind acquiring the degree and faced with 'real life', the proverbial shit hit the fan for the first time in life. Tasting freedom from overbearing and eagle eyed parents, during the college years, going home was not an option; therefore taking the path of least resistance happend. Moved in with my younger brother and took the first available job, hoping to transfer one day to another state away from my parents (because I did not feel I could become who I wanted to be around them). Still had not caught the personal development bug yet though, I just wanted away from Catholicism. Anyways, I was working at a produce department and my manager was a body building, organic food eating, very Christian boy; and I was a fattening up, what the hell is organic food and trending towards being an anti Christian guy. Despite our differences, I have always been inclined towards building healthy relationships and getting along with everyone, and so this guy acted as the catalyst that would kick off the self development bug within. I remember shit talking the organic produce, it looks the same but is more expensive and since it looks the same it must be the same and why pay more is what I thought. Well that was the story I told myself until being corrected by my manager with some factual truths. And that is when I realized that I had told myself a story about how I thought something was, but in fact was not and then started to wonder where else in life had I told myself false narratives. And then I liked to debate my manager on Christian things, and I learned about Nietzsche, thinking he was this anti Christian guy, and started to read his books (have read most of what he has written at this point in life). Come to learn that Nietzsche was not exactly what I thought he was and was very touched by his idea of the Superman and overcoming things in life. Lastly, I started to eat more healthily because of what I learned and the development of some discipline and  went on to lose  my college fast food and beer weight. And so that is how personal development seeped into this life.

Personal challenges I've overcome:
Weight gain
Living life without religion
Strengthening a weak body and soiled mind
Not caring what others think of me anymore
Lack of female relationships in life

Overcame the notion that I was not interesting and not worthwhile

What I'm working on now:
Working on not feeling overwhelmed by all of lifes possibilities
Working on bringing more varied activities in life to further strengthen the body and mind
Working on finding what is a proper diet for me individually 
Working on building more self discipline
Working on continually ridding myself of all self deceptions 
Working on experiencing more altered states of consciousness