flowboy

My failures for the past 4 months have all come down to an emotional issue. Lol. I didn't even spot this until I pushed past it. Working on a 100 things at once, creating intricate systems of chaos and complexity, living in the mind instead of in reality, it's due to some fear of loss of imaginary potential. That fear was not offset by a the visceral experience of how little time I actually have. Now, when I think of browsing the forum or something else, I just remember that I'm 30 and time is fucking ticking. The vastness of things that I just don't have time for. It feels like I've integrated that knowing of limitation, rather than having to beat myself up over it whilst secretly cheating. Now I can throw things away. Now I feel like I have the balls and the energy to move forward unhindered. I used to be slowed down by conflicts with imaginary other results that would never manifest. No more. No time. I used to go into chill mode early in the day, take long for breakfast, take long breaks, take long detours. Then veer off to a stressful other end of the spectrum: "panic productivity mode" - where I would make myself work until 23:00 and still not be happy. Under all that stress and self hate I could also not see clearly what was important and what wasn't - I couldn't throw anything out because I already felt low on results - so why admit even more stuff I'm not going to do? I hope that me seeing this game, means that I am transcending it. Things that I did that maybe helped: Going into feminine mode and crying in my girlfriend's arms Cultivating pushing through in the morning, high expectations combined with fixed stop time + active recovery parts work sessions with myself yoga in the morning.

Choose a group of people with a common characteristic that you can easily find 100 of. It helps if they are related to an interest of yours Have in-depth conversations with 15-30 of them and find out what their secret deepest fear or problem is Create conceptually a solution to that problem that will actually help them (be it a book, an e-book, a physical product, a workshop, a course, you teaching them something, an accountability group, an app, a website, a service, a platform, whatever will work that you can make happen) Verify that they would pay for it Tell the first 100 about it, get them to buy it from you. If they don't, learn why not and fix that Learn from feedback by people who bought it, and make it better Tell the next 100 about it. @Someone here these are the steps. Hope that's simple enough for you. I'm still working through them. The difficulty is not in the complexity of the steps, it's staying the course and doing every step properly without getting distracted into side tangents that is mentally tough. Some reading material for you: Russel Brunson's "Secrets" series, 3 books MJ DeMarco's 3 books Though you technically don't really need to read any of them, if you can just keep focusing on executing those steps and solving every problem along the way with resourcefulness and grit. Also, this doesn't necessarily have to be done through online marketing at all. At least not until you're no longer happy making 6 figures and you want to make millions. Stupid example: you like philosophy. You know where a bunch of philosophy students go to school. You drop by and buy 20 of them individually a couple beers/coffees in exchange for talking to you for an hour, call it a research project. Should take about 3 weeks max. You find out: most of them are terrified that they won't get into a respected career position with their philosophy degree. You call up the university and ask them for a couple of names of their philosophy students who did really well in life. You call up those successful motherfuckers, ask them what they did during and after their degree to get them where they are today. You record those conversations, summarize the gold nuggets, make a nice workshop out of it. Invite the philosophy students to join it for a modest fee. They get to do a live workshop with you, plus a PDF or printed book to take with them, and the recorded conversations with the successful guys as a bonus. Plus you follow up with them, checking if they are doing the required steps, giving them some accountability. Now you have your first money and by checking up on them, you see where they still struggle. You solve that problem too and include it into your workshop. Then you contact more philosophy students, maybe at another school, and organize another one. Make it a bit more expensive this time. Rinse, repeat. Don't actually do this specific idea though (unless you go through the steps and actually happen to end up there) because I just pulled it out of my ass and it's not based on real data. The problem is most people are too lazy/shy to go have those conversations and get that data for themselves. They think that just googling shit should be enough. Not so. Real market research is valuable, and takes sweat equity to acquire. Whatever market research data you can find without doing the work to get it, should be assumed to be either wrong, outdated, or some combination thereof

@Explore You're not thinking longterm enough with this one. What type of future do you envision for yourself? Do you want to be an entrepreneur (creating companies, waging war on the status quo through innovation, potentially rich, but also potentially broke, perhaps both multiple times, lots of deep emotional ups and downs, hard work, stress, less family time)? In that case, better start now, because there's lots of hard lessons that can only be learnt through experience. In fact, if you have an idea that is worth pursuing, you'd be stupid to let it go, depending on, again, do you want to be an entrepreneur. You may have to convince your business partners to stay in the same country for the next few years, or get different business partners, or pursue it alone if you have the drive. If they don't think the business is worth sticking around in the same country for, or their travel dreams are more important, they don't have their priorities straight and you should cut them loose, because a business is never going to work if it's not priority nr 1 for everyone. Or do you want to be a scientist, researcher, having a kushy job learning, researching, discovering, teaching, and lots of time off to chill and take vacations, while being paid well? Perhaps write some books or do some consulting later? Would you mind if other people took this drone idea and made it work, while you just go to your stable job every day, not getting rich but always being paid decently? A lot of people would choose that. I think the central question is: can you be happy as a part of the system, or not? Entrepreneuring is hard. Way harder than studying and getting jobs. People do it because they have no choice. They just don't have the type of personality that would be happy being part of a system. You could pay them 200K a year and they still resent being told what to do, and still crave freedom. If you can be happy fitting in, and have some things decided for you, and you just want to get paid a decent stable salary to work in a field that interests you, then go for the PhD. If you're a rebel, you hate groupthink and fitting in, you crave total freedom and control of your destiny, then don't.

@Jannes It's been well-documented that psychedelics are anti-addictive (see James Fadiman's talk on microdosing) That means that they not only are not addictive themselves, but they also help to break or lessen other addictions. Other chemicals you might take to mitigate ADHD certainly have a higher potential for abuse. Of course, for the addictive personality there is a risk of taking too much "just to feel something" Which I certainly have done when I microdosed. But then again, that's not so bad. It's not toxic or harmful to the body. Caffeine is more harmful to the body and addictive, and caffeine is relatively okay in modest amounts, so if you don't worry about drinking tea or coffee, definitely don't worry about microdosing.

@newbee If he does such bizarre things and so few people complain and so many are grateful, then maybe that should be a clue that this is something you don't understand. If you had done ayahuasca and experienced energy work, then maybe you'd have a clue how this could make sense. Right now you're just reacting to the bizarreness of it. Which I understand, but you don't know what you don't know. It doesn't fit into your current framework. That much is clear. Then expand your current framework. Seek first to understand, then to judge. Read. Experience for yourself. Do ayahuasca. Get a Reiki session. You are reacting from closed-mindedness and ignorance. Understandable, but unwise. No one is being saved by your shouting your protests into a dark cave.

@Leo Gura Maybe have another chat with Martin Ball? Seems like he went through something similar, becoming hyper creative suddenly etc.

@Valach Thank you for the kind words brother. Glad to hear about your high quality relationship still going strong?

@trenton There you go. Create and own a chess education company, not just have a job at one. Read 'Blue Ocean Strategy' for some ideas on how to give a unique twist to something so you get less competition and can charge more money while putting your unique spin on it.

@Jannes There's no such thing as "also focus on" Focus is singular.

One more thing: obsessing over this addiction is a distraction. It doesn't matter that much, really, whether you masturbate a crazy amount of times or not. Sure, you may have less energy and be less attractive and social. Sure you may have some trouble relating to women because of the objectification that porn makes your brain do. But ... so what. Is that really the most important thing you should be focusing on? There should be something way, waay more important than that. If there isn't, then you just don't want to look at it. Your self-expression, your life purpose, your self-actualization. Don't tell me masturbation is in the way of that. It's not. Your self-actualization should be in the way of masturbation. How much you masturbate should barely be on your mind. It should be starved of attention, squeezed out by your greater pursuits. A small detail. Not enough energy? Ok, masturbate less. Boom, back to the important stuff. Masturbated again? Oops, whatever, back to the important stuff. This obsession with the wrong thing is a form of self-sabotage. That's what is interfering with your life severely.

Actually good advice. Did you try this @ThePoint Ah, I see the bug in your thinking. When you masturbate once after 2 weeks, your mind goes "See, I failed, I can't do this, might as well fap 5 times today" Whereas actually masturbating once in 2 weeks is perfectly fine. If you can make it two weeks, you can just do that back to back and be okay. Watch out for the thought that says that all is lost and you didn't make it, because it's an excuse for overdoing it.

I think what you're looking for is a prostitute. And boundaries.

Bad idea if you want sustained passion. That's not to say that real estate can not turn into a passion, I'm sure Grant Cardone really enjoys spotting good opportunities in real estate, making calculations, negotiations and deals. But that's not the same as chasing money for money's sake (anymore). Also, without sustained passion, you won't be successful anyways, because learning to be successful in business is a b**h of a journey that will annihilate your ego and make you cry in desperation many times. Why don't you figure out how to make a business for a purpose you enjoy? You're too easily giving up on this. Brainstorm more. Make more small bets and see them through for a longer time. What have you already tried and how much effort have you put in? I recently attended a talk by a successful entrepreneur who started a company educating corporations and their employees about the climate and how to be more climate conscious. I would imagine that to be very unprofitable, yet somehow he's making it work, selling training programs. If he can make that profitable, you can make your passion profitable man.

Reminder to self: I never zone out during client sessions. Some parts of a coaching business are quite difficult for me, I can do them but very inefficiently and I zone out a lot / don't easily get in the zone. Such things are marketing activities for example. But the core of the value, the coaching itself, is where I never have this problem. Also responding to other people's questions or input gets me in the zone. Hence the Q&A videos and posts. Perhaps Q&A lives and in-person workshops is the only marketing that I should do.

Agenda & Crazy Plan versus Presence With the help of my girlfriend, I was confronted with a pattern: making crazily elaborate plans that take me away from presence, from 'being here' with the other people. There is this dissociation that I have habitually walked around with, since university or perhaps earlier. Sometimes it took the form of "I have this insane to-do list so I can't be present with these people" Sometimes it's a story of "I have my own plan to escape these circumstances, and if I associate too much with other people, they will distract me from my plans and it will end badly". Ending badly meaning: I will end up average, not rich, not special, "just like them". Fundamentally it seems to be hypervigilance. Constantly checking whether my current action is still in line with my master plan. Is it still the shortest path? And the other way around: what is my plan again? what does that mean I should be doing right now? These constant recalculations cause me to use up a lot of brain power thinking about the future. Not enjoying the present. Not able to enjoy a moment with other people for long. Also, because there is so much fear involved, fear of missing out on a certain outcome, that new versions and slightly altered plans are being spun up constantly. Then I tend to spend a lot of time writing them out, trying to pin down a guarantee of a certain life outcome. And I get really attached to those plans, meaning that when I change my mind about a course of action, I have to painfully throw out a very large collection of information and hypothetical next steps. I'm not nimble that way. Everything better than being here, apparently! There is a fear of the present. Because what if I just let go and enjoy the present moment? That would be accepting my fate. In the past, that meant not getting girls and getting bullied. At some point in high school, I came to the conclusion that my current friends were losers and I had to escape them and try to join the winners. A negative mindset that brought a world of pain. ADHD In 'Scattered', Gabor postulates that the fear of the present moment, often described as boredom, or the inability to stand one's own mind, is too reminiscent of the feeling of being emotionally alone. It could be that there's something deeper going on for me as well, that it didn't start in high school. In fact, I do suspect it. But since my Primal work hasn't gone to this layer yet, I can't be sure. One suspect is a period where I was hospitalized as a baby or small child. My mother had to leave me there for some time, and it was long enough that her milk dried up afterwards. This could have given me the separation anxiety and aloneness, and lack of motherly comfort that I often try to quench as an adult by sucking on a cigarette or pipe. But this is just a suspicion. Agendas are Icky We instinctively don't like it when someone we interact with has an agenda. When we sense that they have thought lots of steps ahead and we are just one of the steps, we feel manipulated. When we aren't one of the steps, then we feel like the person is not really present, or doesn't really value us, which is true. I wonder if, because it is part of a Soul's purpose here, to be present with what is, that that is why we don't like agendas! Letting go of the agenda does not mean that the good outcome won't happen! It's perfectly fine and feels good to everyone to stay in the moment and follow natural curiosity. Step by step. Not knowing, letting it unfold. If good things follow then everyone is good with that. We accuse others of "having had a plan all along" like it is a bad thing. Well, in a certain sense it is, because a plan takes one out of Trust, so someone with an elaborate plan is not very open to trusting Source to bring him his gifts in an organic, unpredictable, creative way.

So this is the start of a memory where pain was experienced that you still have to integrate. Hypnosis can be used for this, but it depends how it is being done, because to truly heal, you need to feel the original pain and be fully conscious of it. Bit by bit, if your inner 7-8 year old trusts you enough, you can ask it to show you more and more bits of memory, and ask it to let you help him by showing you its pain, and then you have to feel it, screaming, crying and thrashing about as necessary. I would recommend getting guidance by someone who knows how to guide such a session. I have some experience with that, I bet there are others too. Perhaps your hypnotherapist can help you do this, it depends how he's using hypnosis. The hypnotised state can be helpful to bring this up, similar to how MDMA and ketamine and breathwork can make it easier to access these traumas, but then it's important that you are guided into feeling the pain in its entirety and consciously processing it, and NOT to jump straight to rewriting the memory as a positive thing or replacing unhealthy beliefs by healthier ones, which is a bypassing that is often mistaken for true healing. Or worse, trying to erase the memory so you feel like it never happened. That's a red flag. Healing is a grieving process. Of what? Depends what you needed in that moment. Perhaps that no one was there to protect you. Perhaps something else. It has to be shown in a session. Analysing does little for healing.

I like to listen to pre-birth rememberers and near-death experiencers and spot similarities in their story. It's about as scientific as I can get whilst alive. From what I understand, when we're not embodied on Earth, we're out of linear earth time. Which means that there's no clear before and after, because everything is sort of happening at the same time. That said, there apparently is something going on where your soul is trying to learn different lessons, or rather, subject itself to different experiences on earth and in other realms, with the goal to gain depth and become more well-rounded and increase its capacity for love and empathy. It goes about that by conferring with its guide, who then recommends a life on earth which would be a good fit for learning that specific quality it wants to work on. Then, if the soul is sure that it wants to go ahead, it voluntarily subjects itself to a veil, which makes it temporarily forget that it is God and that it is infinite love, so that it can be born on Earth and not know what the fuck is going on. Because remembering its true nature would ruin the experience of loneliness, disconnectedness, pain and fear that is actually the point of the game. Depending on the intent with which one chooses the life, of course. Some are meant to be enlightened from the beginning, some can get little sneak peeks later in life through meditation or psychedelics, but most just sign up for a life of darkness and confusion, with the challenge of still embodying love through all of that as best they can. Which is fucking hard, and people do it very imperfectly and that's totally fine. Then after leaving the body, the soul apparently goes to this place where it's laid down on this table, or a rock, these nurse-like entities work on it to heal the pain that it's built up during life. Ancestors and dead family members come to say hi and welcome back and stuff. At this point the soul still sees itself as having a body that looks like its human form, but without all the aging and damage that it incurred on Earth. After which it gets to hang out in this massive hall of a palace where other souls also keep coming in, fresh after just experiencing death on Earth, some still holding their heart because they just got a heart attack, and all of them going through this healing ritual until they look like perfectly shiny 30 year olds again. Then there is the Life Review, where the Akashic records are opened, the soul sees what the plan for their life was, their purpose, the different ways it could have gone, and get to watch back the footage of their entire life in a cinema-like setting, to see how they did. Here, they can also watch the complete footage from all people's lives from all times, if they want to. Now sometimes there's a guide telling them they have to go back. Or offering the choice to go back or not. The ones that choose to go back, are NDE'ers and tell some story like this. If they don't go back and their death is definitive, they get to see their full Akashic record and then they let go of their humanlike shape, which I assume goes together with dropping the veil completely. And then it's basically up to the soul, what it wants to do next. It can talk to its guide and ask to jump straight back into another Earthly life, because it wants learn the thing it was working on even better, be more loving this time and so on, or it can choose some other life, or it can hang out in a green field with its loved ones and just be happy for as long as it wants, or do something else in another kind of realm which is less dense, so manifestation and telekenesis work a lot better and creation is faster, or it can just hang out and process and do nothing but telepathically communicate with other souls for a long-ass time. There is no linear time there, so everyone has time to hang out and do whatever, for however long. This is just what I've pieced together from a lot of interviews.

There's a difference between understanding her and doing everything she fantasizes about. A girl listening to her boyfriend tell her how girl-on-girl action turns him on, doesn't make her "half gay", does it? I can tell that these ideas are very threatening to your ego by the way you're responding. You might want to practice some open-mindedness and nonjudgement for if you want to have a successful long-term relationship at some point. At some point my kids are going to be 14 too. It's good practice

All these assumptions with you guys. Did you bother to verify them, like actually ask women who you are in intimate connection with, and who are self-aware and trust you enough that they would tell you the truth about what they could get turned on by? Your understanding of what turns women on is very limited, if you think that she only gets wet by seeing you be stereotypically masculine.

If you need to put it in such crude terms, yes. It's not just mine, most women get turned on by /fantasize about guy on guy action, especially if the guy is someone they are already attracted to. Not all of them will admit it. Like I said, it's quite a perfect parallel with the other way around. Experience with women will show you this.

@Jannes My girl's fantasy is for me to be bisexual. Most women I know love to see guy on guy action. Think about it: don't you love to see girls make out? Would it make you jealous? There you go. They just want to be sure that if they're in a relationship with you, that's enough for you, that you don't need to date guys also at the same time. It tends to make people insecure if they can't be everything that you need to be satisfied. But then if you have the relationship, I bet if she's an open-minded girl she'd love it if you'd experiment with guys, probably even beg to watch.

Yes, fasting can help with feeling bloated or tired. But also, if you are feeling bloated and tired, you are probably eating some ingredients that you aren't digesting very well. Have you taken a look at Leo's video on how to shop for healthy food? It's still the gold standard in my opinion. Keep in mind that what ingredients digest well and which ones your body doesn't like, is not static - it's dynamic. If you are under emotional stress that you are ignoring, your gut will be more sensitive and reject more ingredients than if you are emotionally taking care and holding space for yourself well. My experience with intermittent fasting was that it gave me a boost in energy and taught me to deal with hunger, something which lasted ever since. My dad's experience is more spectacular though - he had diabetes type 2, was on Metformin medication, and he was always very intolerant to not eating every few hours. Then he started IF - now he doesn't have diabetes anymore and doesn't need the medication. Also he looks healthier.

@UpperMaster I went through this, including the mass ostracisation, disapproval, getting kicked out, reputation completely fucked because of some beef that was way too public and not belonging anywhere. I started high school with some friends, some neutral and some bullies/enemies, I exited it with everyone hating me. When I was 17. I am 29 now. I am still feeling the vengeful hunger for status, money, power and sex that was created in those years. It's literally like that feeling of "when is it fucking my turn to be powerful, popular etc" never left and never grew up. It's caused me quite a bit of trouble in relationships, when my 17 year old self, which still lives in my 29 year old body, started interpreting an adult minor relationship conflict as a status/power game, or some minor criticism as bullying, or worse, commitment and not having tons of girlfriends at the same time as being a loser. It gets weird Here's what I want to communicate: Your current pain is going to fester and self-perpetuate indefinitely until you heal it. This can look like, for example: Being frustrated that you can't get status by being good at anything, because the things you try are so hard and people are easily surpassing you, yet at the same time you keep trying things that are not your natural talents, and you do have real natural talents, where if you would build those you would easily gain status, but those you don't even want to think of pursuing, because you view them as low status. Thus the vengeful part that says "why don't I have this" creates the blind-spots that keeps you from getting it. Getting what you want will just move the goal post and you'll still feel the same low status vengeful thing. For example, when I was in this kind of pain in high school, I thought: "why can't I just get girls to like me, why can't I just get a girlfriend". Then I got a girlfriend but I wasn't happy, the same exact feeling stayed, and the desire became "why can't I just get a really hot girl" Then at some point I did that, and the exact same vengeful energy stayed and said "why can't I just get 20 friends who respect and adore me and sleep with X many girls" On and on. Constantly feeling this lack, unhappiness, unfairness, revenge no matter what I really did or experienced. It's still with me to this day, I just choose to not let it run me anymore and start actually healing it, so that I can appreciate where I got already. Not having this vengeful impulse and angry feelings does not preclude that you get everything you want. In fact, you are much more likely to get everything you want (status, respect, popularity in your social circle) after you let go of the need for it. Because people can smell this need and will want to stay away from it. The sooner you heal it the better. I recommend that you: start regularly talking to someone who does not judge you but really understands you, and helps you to make sense of your emotions. I'm sure that there are things going on that you can't talk to your parents about without getting judged or them turning it into something else, or you wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. I'm thinking therapist, coach, uncle/aunt, whatever resource is available. The reason is that the more you can share and openly talk about the difficulties you are facing, to an understanding and safe person, the lesser chance that this becomes a trauma that follows you all your life stop trying so hard to get status at things that are hard for you, and start looking for your natural talents and develop those, it's the best long-term play. Your natural talents will absolutely be there, but you may not want to see them, because they don't get you status in your current environment. So look where you don't want to look. Example: I found programming when I was in early years of high school. The only respected activity was soccer. I was bullied for being a nerd. But when I was in my early twenties, I now had a fun and easy way to make really good money, whilst the popular kids struggled in supermarket cashier jobs.

This is key. Something I also took a while to grasp and am still falling into sometimes. All these thoughts of "how do I..", attempts to figure it out, are sneaky escapes from the discomfort of action.

It's like the veil between me and my childhood pains is getting thinner. I passed 4 teenagers under a bridge in the dark. They were really innocent looking teenagers, standing around smoking some weed. I'm a nearly 30 year old man, having a surge of adrenaline and near panic, and part of me was sure I was going to get attacked. This is not something I'll just leave behind or grow out of. I notice that the ever-hungry objectification of women is getting more intense. A part of me is just compulsive about that, never satisfied. It's no wonder that from this state, in this mode of being, my past attempts at conversation didn't go so well. There's very little friendly, positive intention. It's more a desire to use and possess. And there's a dark jealousy and anger that has been surfacing. I feel jealous and anger towards anyone who has a higher income, better career than me. And a part of me feels anger when I see beautiful women. Not towards the woman, but towards ... life? About the unfairness of growing up with intense social anxiety, precluding me from successful interactions. That's not going anywhere either, just by itself.