Espaim

This may help you.

Does this advice apply if I'm from a third world country? I feel like I'm doing exactly what @Ya know is describing. No real enthusiasm for what I'm doing. University is just becoming a setback in my pursuits. But I feel like my degree may open doors for another things I might like. Lol, writing this sorted some things out in my head.

Me: orange(20%)-GREEN(70%)-yellow(10%). Forum: I agree with @UnconsciousHuman I feel like I resonate with most people here. By having a 2/5 understanding of Spiral Dynamics, I can see that there are still many people here with cooler ideas. The turquoise posts are hard for me to grasp because I lack the direct experience. The yellow shit I find cool but I still need more knowledge.

I took it from December to January. After January, I only took it like 3 times. There are some pills here at my home but I don't dare to touch them anymore. Generally, taking a nap doesn't reduce my sleepiness or fatigue any more than powering through it. Anyway, it's an easier way rather than suffering through the fatigue. Anyway, I'm at home during quarantine. I need something I could apply when I'm out on University or other places. It doesn't work very effectively. I'm still tired if I take a 20min nap. And it's not always viable to take long naps when out. Going to try that. Thanks!!

Hmm. By filling this I discovered that I'm soo green I look like an spinach.

Okay. Got it.

How I'm supposed to assess my SD levels? What? How? Could you elaborate?

Do you drink coffee or take any psychoactive substance/supplement daily? It may affect your visualization ability. After stopping drinking coffee I found that it caused some curious effects on me. I feel much better since. Visualization included. Have you tried modafinil? For me, it helps a lot with visualization(maybe even too much). I know it's not something to take everyday but your visualization difficulty is really bad on some days and good in others this could be helpful.

You're tired? Rest. Is it really going to be a regress if you stop doing those things? In the long run? You'll probably learn something. How shitty it feels to eat shitty food. How tired you can feel when not exercising. Losing some of that knowledge by not reading. Feeling stupid af. Or maybe you'll only lose your progress. You said you had some spiritual awakening. Nice. Applying your realizations: what are you really losing if you stop? Maybe this is spiritual bypass bullshit. You decide.

Wait till my man bun is ready!!

Orange: I think I used to be orange from 14-15 to 18 years old. I was totally obssessed with self-improvement and tried everything I could to "fix" myself. I was also a total libertarian and even anarcho-capitalist, despite not even having worked one time in my life(lol). Full MGTOW and hated women for ???. Also obsessed with logic and being right. I HATED any leftist and thought they should be eliminated (yes, I know now, wtf). During this time I had more discipline than now, actually. I used to drink coffee a lot just to be more productive on shit I didn't really want to do. At 18, I had a philosophy class on utilitarianism, and saw how my libertarian philosophy would be causing a lot of suffering and even not achieving the expected effect. It was totally out of reality. I think this was the turning point. The greatest catalyst was actualized.org. I started watching Leo's videos when I was 17 years old. All my beliefs on logic and shit went out of the window. Green: Now that's when the cool shit happened. I stopped hating the leftist people. I used to hate a guy that used antifa logos on his shirt and now I'm his friend. My political views shifted from full right to center/left. I dropped my blind belief in logic as a means to reach the truth. Dropped almost all MGTOW beliefs. I started meditating 10 minutes a day.(now I'm doing 1h) My empathy greatly increased. I became was less judgmental of people and way more open minded. Actually, this judgmental attitude has now decreased so much I can tolerate waaay more than I did before. It's hard to remember when I did get triggered by someone or some idea. I don't hate anyone. Last year I tried some weed and oh boy. Then did some mushrooms and you know the story. That's when it went exponential. Now I'm more people focused. I don't care that much about productivity or results, but still think those things are important. Also, full hardcore vegetarian for 6 months. Stopped because maybe it was causing some damage to my health because my concentration went to hell. Now that got better and I'm vegetarian again. I value much more "natural" products. Stopped using shampoo. I still plan on changing a lot more things like plastic use reduction and using even more natural or homemade products. Planning also on stop going to the gym and doing bodyweight exercises. I started going to the gym for not accepting my body but now I like it. I love it. My plan was to get the rippest as fuck I could but now that goal seems pretty shallow. Nature is way more pleasurable. Started going to the beach, hiking and camping.(see profile pic) Right now I think I already have some yellow going on but I have some issues of my own to work on. Nothing really serious though. Just that's not something I'm really invested right now.

Do you mean like at 1pm? @TrynaBeTurquoise Shit, I forgot the private testing option. I'm not from the US, so if I go to a doctor I can get free bloodwork but they don't really do the tests I want. I was counting on that. The least likely for them to test are tsh, t3 and free t4 so I'm probably going to check those privately. Going to test that. Thanks.

Cool experience!! I've had some insights like that on my first 3g trip too. Too bad it was so intense for my egoic mind I forgot a huge part of it. Keep it going!!

Now I'm pretty inspired. Thank you.

Stop doing: Drinking coffee; Gaming. Start doing: Working out; Reading; Healthy dieting; Meditation practice; Drinking 2L of water daily.

In the matter of sex drive, I feel like an outlier. I'm currently 19 years old at college and my sex drive is very low. When I was 15-17 it was very pronounced but now it's almost non-existant. My friends are about my age and they think a lot about getting drunk and gaming girls while I can't see the point in doing that. Not really criticizing their choice, I would do the same if I had the will to do it, I'm just curious about what might be causing it. I have a hypothesis: For 8 months I used Lexapro and it helped me with social and general anxiety but made my sex drive very low. Now maybe I'm suffering of PSSD (Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction). Has anyone here had a similar experience with antidepressants and fixed it? I want to fix this shit. On searching for the cause it may be the desinsetization of 5-HT1a receptor but for me that doesn't change anything. I've been off Lexapro for 9 months. My current(relevant) habits: Sleeping on average 7.5 hours[varying between 6 and 12(very rarely 12, realistically 10)]. I don't wake up at the same time every day. Generally it's 6:00am but some days its 9:30 am. Hitting the gym 3x a week I am a vegan and I eat mostly (not in any particular order):bread, beans, soy protein, chickpeas, rice, tomatoes, gherkin, lettuce, apples, bananas and peanuts. I also eat a considerable amount of junk food per day, that being +- 1/6 of my food intake, like chips and sweets. I drink sugary beverages once a week on average. I meditate on average 15 minutes a day. I take a multivitamin, 1mg sublingual methylcobalamin and 250mg Bacopa 30%. One or 2 days a week I drink some tea.

@UnconsciousHuman Sorry, I got a bit confused by your question . I'll try to answer what I understood. When I read, I just start reading and let my eyes and brain do the job. Whenever I notice that I was daydreaming, I generally go back to where I started daydreaming and skim the text up to where I noticed I was drifting off.

Has reading books improved your concentration ability? Not sure if I really have ADHD. I do have frequent problems concentrating. I've been reading daily for 3+ years for 30min on average. Highs and lows happened thoughout this time. When my concentration hits a low point I can't even read one sentence correctly so, I don't think it reading had a huge effect on my general concentration hability. I've gotten better at reading books, though. What really helps is staying away from the internet and screens in general (I've been doing the opposite since the corona virus outbreak ). When my concentration is really messed up during the evening is when I got too stimulated during the day.

It has been 6 days since my last mushroom trip (3g). No real powerful insight came during the trip (i don't remember much of it but I did have ego loss) but now I'm starting to get some real weird reactions. I have had some "awakening experiences" in the past but nothing like this. Context: I've been meditating for 1,5 year; I have a history of depression, anxiety, demotivation and nihilism. I have tripped on 1g mushrooms before(on December). On Sunday, after the trip ended I felt like I was born again. Everything was so beautiful. I looked around and my life seemed perfect, no problems whatsoever. The thing is: this feeling didn't go away. It's now so easy to be authentic and I'm so much more disciplined to do everything I always planned to do. I stared at a pillow on Thursday and it felt like total bliss. Even pain now isn't unpleasant. Anxiety and anger come up and I can just bear with it. Even past "negative emotions" are pleasant now. I used to suffer a lot to meditate and don't even think about doing strong determination sitting. Now it's just effortless. Actually, everything is effortless. Now, about the dying part. Everyday when I exercise those behaviors that I didn't use to practice I have a strange feeling of something dying inside of me. I used to repress anger so much that now when it comes up fully I feel like I am dying. I'm becoming so much more loving and assertive. I know this was possible but didn't believe it could happen with me. All the theory I have accumulated when watching to Actualized.org and reading books seem to be so easily applicable now. Why it was so hard before? Okay. Actually, I know the answer. I used to resist the present moment so much. When meditating I couldn't go futher than 30min without becoming super restless. I created a spiritual ego around the teachings I listened to on Youtube but didn't make them happen. I created my own depression and anxiety by resisting what was happening (now I understand the video "you're not happy because you don't want to be"). Even by not browsing social media I managed to waste a lot of time on my cellphone. I listened to a lot of theory and thought that I was growing when I was just procrastinating and wasting my time. I resisted working because it seemed boring, forgetting that I chose to do what I wanted to do and my vision for the future.How could I be so ignorant of all those things? Well... I chose to, but I wasn't aware that I did. Now it's the time to actually implement most of the fucking theory I half-assed through. I won't promise doing anything here because, you know, talk is cheap. I'm fucking grateful for life and existence with all it's shit and whatever thanks

@Matt23 Here's me after 2 months! I managed to implement more self-actualization theory into my life. Dietary habits changed (quit sugar and caffeine) and I became way more social than I used to be in those 2 months. On the other hand, I had some problems with sex drive: I just didn't have any libido. After that trip it came back intensely and now I'm addicted to fapping The really bad "depression" I had just went away. Now I feel the normal range of emotions. I had some waves of wasting time on my phone and then not using it a lot over those 2 months. My discipline seems to have increased a mild amount overall. Yesterday I've done 15 minutes of Holotropic Breathwork and more repressed emotions came up. Really like it was when I took mushrooms. The anger and sadness just got purged.

Update after 6 months. After one more 3g mushroom trip on January my sex drive came back fully but it backfired. Now I'm addicted to porn. Shit. I must thereon be more careful with my wishes. I also started taking Ritalin in December. It made me very anxious and helped with motivation only a bit. Now I'm using Modafinil. General changes since september: Not a vegetarian anymore; I don't feel cognitive dysphoria as often; I feel less tired overall; Quitted caffeine completely (no chocolate, no coffee, no caffeine pills); Quitted soda completely; Quitted refined sugar (had a relapse or 2); I've been much more social (till coronavirus ) Didn't change: My motivation to do things didn't change that much. I procrastinate even on Modafinil (even though I'm able to complete more tasks while on it). I still eat a considerable amount of chips. I quit the gym because I had no money then I got back on it on february. Planning to(next 6 months): I started a simple aerobic exercise last week and I plan to follow it for at least 3 months 4x/week; Reduce the amount of fapping per week to 2 and eliminate porn; Stop eating wheat (I already reduced wheat comsumption a lot, I just didn't stop completely); Go to a dietitian and plan my eating habits accordingly; I'm probably not going to update this anymore because this is the Health section. Thanks for all your suggestions.

I feel like I'm not aligned with what I "should" be doing with my life. Going back and forth between addictions and some work here and there. Low amount of discipline. Some days I manage to get most things on my list done but generally it's not that way. Do you have a word for someone in this situation?

@Vipassana Thanks for your advice. I'll watch more videos on the topic and plan my meals accordingly. Considering my financial conditions I'll probably need to adapt some of the principles but nothing too big.

Nice work bro! Could you elaborate on "raw foods"? I'm thinking of doing the same thing but could you be even more specific? Like breakfast, lunch and dinner or whatever eating schedule you followed(if there was one). If you have any external resources to share on the matter I'd be thankful.

I had some insights on my personality on my first mushroom trip and saw a lot of things that were repressed: emotions, memories and wants. Now I see that maybe the course I'm in (Mechanical Engineering) may not be what I want to work on. The motivation to choose ME is that I wanted to expand my father's work on this area(he works as a lathe operator, not sure how it's said in English) because I really admired him. Those were somethat Blue/Orange motivations. I'm now at stage Green/Yellow, and after a lot of spiritual experiences I can see that this motivation won't really take me far. Now, after watching Actualized.org I got an extreme interest in Psychology and I'm thinking of changing courses. I don't know what I should take into consideration. I live in Brazil and university here is free, you just need to pass the entrance exam. If I decide to change, I'll lose 1,5 year of studying. I'll need to study 6 months for the entrance exam. And there's a huge change I may not pass. I don't have money for Leo's LP course. Any suggestions?