aurum

@see_on_see I can always form a judgment. But the rep count still helps. Look, I seek out experts in everything I do. If I'm looking to earn more money, I'm looking for the guy with a mansion and a Rolls-Royce. If it's enlightenment, I want the guy who has meditated 20,000 hours and has a bunch of students that have made it as well. It doesn't mean everything they say is true. I might discard even the majority of it. But I'm not so naive to think I know everything or that we have the same level of understanding. In fact, one of the biggest obstacles to learning is that you usually have tons of preconceived opinions on what is true, fed to you by people who didn't know what they were talking about. And the mentor / expert has to get rid of all of those. So yes, if I came to this forum as a new guy I'd 1000% be looking for the top-rated posters. It helps massively.

@Leo Gura I am pro keeping things the same. I understand your concern about social proof and its ability to manipulate people's perception. But it has a purpose. We are not all equal, some people are more of an expert than others. And I like knowing who is and who isn't perceived that way because it gives me a context to evaluate what they're saying.

@Tony Tellez Listening to music can be good. Linkin Park, not so much. Everything you consume is having an impact on you. Ask yourself: do you want to be like the kind of person they portray in their music? Angry? Hopeless? Numb?

@sgn Keep taking action, keep exploring and keep doing your personal development work. The fog will start to clear.

I'm pro-gratitude and appreciation within a context. But I'm definitely anti-anyone having to "prove themselves" to anyone. Proving yourself sets a frame that her opinion matters more than yours. It's approval chasing. You're obviously not just using this girl. So she either gets it or she doesn't. And if she keeps bringing it up, I'd stop being friends with her because she's being selfish.

@George Fil Good stuff my brother. If you haven't already decided, you guys should watch it together. Way better than Netflix

@-T8 Have you tried enforcing a boundary? It sounds like you're just complying to what she wants and you haven't tried to talk to her about it or stick up for yourself. If that is the case, realize THAT is actually the selfish move. Nobody deserves to be with someone who is only there 50%, which is what you're doing when you don't want to be there.

@Dsteller It's all a paradox. My personal philosophy is similar to what Leo describes in his latest motivational video: Yes, I want to be obsessed and with unreasonably high standards for my life. Standards so high that 99% of people can't relate to me. And, I want to so not give a shit that I could drop it at any second and laugh. Because it's all a joke. So I don't see "wanting" as the root of suffering. At least not in the way I define "wanting". Wanting is inevitable. Wanting is what life is all about. Continual, never ending creation. The question is, are you aware that the game never ends?

@Ether This is a tricky question because fun to me is just doing what you want to do. The problem is, most people don't really even understand what they want because of social conditioning. So things I like to do for fun are: 1) Working on my life purpose 2) Personal development 3) Socializing 4) Sex 5) Reading 6) Spending time in nature 7) Exercise And that's really it. I don't care for one second about things like Netflix, I can't even watch it anymore without getting bored and feeling like I'm wasting gargantuan amounts of time.

@egoless That mindset is only useful if it's leading you to a definite life purpose at some point. Sure, explore and be free, if all that exploring is going to end up with a real decision. Otherwise you're just not willing to commit. Do you think Ghandi, Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr. were "flexible" on their life purpose?

@Mount Bananas Definitely a solid foundation as far as mindsets. Do not be afraid to get technical, techniques are extremely important. It's like your utility belt. Now go out and actually do it so you can understand what you know.

@zunnyman You can implement too many new habits at once and end up failing because of it. But assuming you do it slowly enough, there's no such thing as habit overload. 95% of your life is habit. The way you eat, the way you speak, the way you stand, the way you think, all of it is basically just patterns looping over and over unless you make the choice to change. One every 30 days will be fine. Your original habit will already be solidifying at that point so you can definitely stack another. I also agree with tying them to your morning / nightly routine. That's exactly what I do.

@WaterfallMachine "You did not come into these bodies to have growth. You came into these bodies because growth was inevitable and you wanted to enjoy that growth." That about sums it up for me. Yes you have weakness, yes there are many mistakes you will make, yes there are lessons you will learn. So what? Who says that's a bad thing? If you knew everything already, there'd be no point to this experience. The learning is the fun part.

@rogi 97 I used to drink pretty heavily so I know exactly where this is coming from. The whole appeal of alcohol is that it can shut off feeling constrained by your ego and any resistance you might be holding. That's why your conversations seem better. You're just letting go. You have to learn how to let go naturally. People get hooked on alcohol because they think it's their only option to get out of their ego for a minute. They don't know any other way that could actually be healthy, and so they falsely assume alcohol is their savior. So how do you do it naturally? Meditation, yoga or any sort of energetic healing work would be good places to start. You need to quiet the monkey mind.

@Afonso They're all pointing to the exact same thing. Except this thing is actually no-thing. You can't grasp it because they're intentionally using a non-nonsensical term so that the mind doesn't turn it into a concept. I'd ask yourself if there's another way you could understand it. And if you could, how would you make it happen?

@Sheeba If it's truly something you're interested in studying, then it's no blunder. Sometimes life purpose just looks like curiosity. I spent five years in college and I don't feel it hindered me at all.

@Empty What's stopping you?

@Waves Great work. The fact that you ever considered doing this says a lot. Now go take some massive action. It's romantic to think about coming up with your life purpose suddenly over a week alone, but that's not really how it works. You've got to test your ideas in the "real world" and flesh it out over time. Congrats on the start of your journey !

@sleeperstakes Of course your idea matters, I believe in being highly strategic like Leo talks about. But the reality is that most people don't fail because of the lack of good ideas out there. They fail because of their own self-imposed limitations. You ever see people that get an idea to start a business, but then don't want to tell anyone because they're afraid their idea might get "stolen"? What I've seen is that people with that default attitude won't ever create that business anyway. They haven't realized that you could give the world's best idea to everyone on the planet and 99% of them couldn't execute on it. They don't realize it because they still believe their programming that says "external circumstances dictate my life". Back when I was in graduate school, my business partner and I applied for something called YCombinator. It's a startup incubator out in Silicon Valley where you can get capital for your business as well as training / mentoring. What surprised me about that application process was how little they cared about our business idea. You would think if someone was going to hand you $120k, they'd want every detail about what you were doing. But they were foremost concerned about getting to know the founders, because they understood that success is largely about who you are. How about Steve Jobs? Was Steve Jobs able to create Pixar after he got fired from Apple because Pixar was the best idea? Maybe, but the reality is that Steve Jobs was an executor as proven by Apple. And people who are executors, execute. Plain and simple.

@Alien Sounds like the purging process. It's ultimately a good thing, but it can be a complete bitch when you're going through it. Important thing is just to keep coming back to center. This too shall pass and all that.

@Omni @Faceless You guys are pointlessly arguing in every thread. It needs to end.

@Brandon Nankivell Why do you associate being conscious as being some sort of monk? Why don’t you associate being conscious to being wealthy and prosperous? Somebody could be highly evolved and still choose to promote those products.

@blazed @LaucherJunge This conversation has devolved from constructive to attacking each other. End it or I'm applying warning points.

I do conscious priming every morning. Takes like 15 minutes but it's the best 15 minutes you could spend all day. Basically it goes like this: 1) Breath of fire (3 minutes). Basically it's just extremely rapid breathing, around 2-3 per second. 2) Visualizing experiences or things I'm grateful for (3 minutes) 3) Visualize white, healing light coming down from the sky and into my body (1.5 minutes) 4) Visualize sending love energy to everyone (1.5 minutes) 5) Incantations (3 minutes) 6) Throw on some inspiring music and write down all goals I can think of as fast as possible (5 minutes) What I love about this is that no matter what emotions I wake up to, I can guarantee I'll be in the right emotional state by the time I'm done. Then I'm off to do whatever I got to do.

@Joseph Maynor Because that passion doesn't come from ego. It comes from the soul / God. The ego gets terrified because it's being threatened. Life purpose means change, risking disapproval, evolving your identity and a whole host of other calamities that aren't on it's agenda. Much easier to just stay the same and play it small. Which is what 95% of people do.