Eph75

It's all depending on your definition of survival. Defining survival by weekly hours of work makes little sense. It is depending on what kind of work, how much that pays, how much of an investment (time) that work requires and how frugal you are. Your question feeds into my curiosity about where this question is really coming from?

Not entirely so. Of course, you could bullshit and mislead, perhaps unconsciously so, but the selfish drive/need still gets satisfied in form of self-affirmation and increased self-importance regardless as long as the one being helped find that help offered as helpful. Everyone must think for themselves, take advice as input and food for contemplation, own sense-making and fuel for experimentation so that you build understanding from own experience proving advice useful or not useful. The path to "true happiness"* is scary for sure, and painful. If it doesn't hurt, that's probably not the right path.

Phew, this is a vast and deceitful topic - I think some distinctions are called for. Selfishness, to me, implies being or doing with own gains in mind, usually on behalf/cost of others. True selflessness, to me, implies doing good deeds without any motif, without agenda, without underlying selfish needs. For true selflessness to exist, you would probably have to have gone through complete dis-identification with ego, to such a degree that you don't even care if you live. That leaves the uncomfortable realization that when we think we do selfless acts, they are actually selfish and there is something in us that we are gaining by doing that "selfless" act. Meeting that need in us, if only for a temporary moment, is what gives the deep pleasure, and that's what makes us come back for more. Yes, ouch, this is a painful realization, but it's not a bad or harmful realization, on the contrary, it's seeing a bit more clearly. My interpretation of this is that you don't want to be more selfish, and instead you want to become more responsible, responsible towards self. By becoming responsible, you will need to face that which has broken down, or prevented self-esteem and self-worth to emerge, and rebuild these traits as they are the foundational building block of our experience of being. In this process you will have to face some shadows of the past, and also aspects of the current that you are avoiding or not able to see. Pursuing a spiritual journey without facing one's shadows is spiritual bypassing, using spirituality as a solution to avoid having to deal with the psychological issues that we've accumulated throughout our lives. We need to own back these disowned aspects. This means that we need to stop and see what it is that is weighing us down. We need to become aware of our dogma and our self-created defense and control mechanisms which sole purpose has been to build a tough shell, or wall, around those sensitivities in our lives, so that we don't have to, or have to fully experience the related pain and suffering. One of the most common problems, or distractions with personal development is that we turn outwards and try to solve external problems. We identify problems with our work, with our families, with our partners and with all and everything that is around us that rub us the wrong way. What we need to do is to shift focus from that external world and shift focus towards ourselves and start figuring out where we have gotten ourselves stuck and how we need to get ourselves unstuck. This could be interpreted as what you say "becoming selfish", but I want to call call this "becoming responsible" for self and the world that we create for ourselves. This is where we are have the power and freedom to create whatever changes, within ourselves, that contributes towards creating the kind of world that we want. This doesn't mean that we can change what is, since that which is, just is. But it allows us to make more complex sense of what is happening around us, and shift our own perspective in such ways that we relieve the excessive suffering that we call upon ourselves, by not being able to flow with what is. For example, bad parents become nothing more than themselves products of circumstances, cultures, their own parents. What they do, or have done, isn't coming from being evil, or wanting to do evil. They simple wasn't capable of doing otherwise, based on their own shadows and suffering. Becoming able to shift towards a more complex, more holistic perspective is inevitably followed with emotional detachment, as a long-going process. Gaining more complex and impersonal perspectives also makes it easy to forgive others and ourselves, building a strong foundation for cultivating self-compassion. Sometimes you have to slow down, really slow down, to be able to speed up. That slowing down is the inward turning phase needed to accelerate growth. This is somewhat like driving your car with the handbreak halfway engaged, it slows you down, it causes friction, it gets heated, and it will break you down from time to time. Slow down, figure our how to disengage your build-in breaks, and someday probably sooner than later, you will be able to go fast without that friction. @Preety_India I guess this boils down to one question - are you willing and able to slow down, let go of outwards distraction, and turn inwards to relieve yourself from your inner demons/shadows? This is the single most difficult obstacle to overcome on the developmental journey.

@Preety_India Sure, if I can I'll check it out later today.

You need to learn to set and maintain boundaries and being consistent with it. Some people simple won't be able to adjust to other's boundaries, and if not, why stay and endure it? You sound perfectly self-sustaining except for the inability to stand up for yourself. Do you see value in the relationship that, if boundaries are set and managed to be maintained, without constant friction and suffrring, are there other things in the relationship that makes it worth investing that effort into? If it's all bad, why fight for it? Also emotional and physical abuse is an absolute NO in a relationship. Don't convince yourself that you should ever tolerate that kind of stuff, and do everything to make it stop, of course in that process maintain self-respect, and never by lowering yourself towards abuse yourself, even if it is hard when getting caught up in the heat of the moment. To be honest, life shouldn't be so hard and some people simple aren't willing to invest and maintain a relationship. Both parties need to be invested, not just one, and both needs to work on solving the problems that arise. Communication around mutual respect is essential.

Yes, if that's constructive or not depends on the quality of those thoughts and that analysis. If you get yourself stuck in self-criticism, or procrastinating around negativity (very common) you build strong pathways that will default to, such self-criticism or negativity, simply by creating strong habit to do so. Switching into constructive thought processes, positivity, self-acceptance and -love, will start building new neural pathways that with consistency and over time will become stronger that those of old, and will take over as the new default thinking. While you can't shut off pathway of old, you are empowered to build such new pathways by incorporating good habits of using you mind in helpful, positive, constructive ways. When doing so, and when falling back into old ways of thinking, we need to be decisive in catching ourselves and switching back to constructive thought processes. Regressing to old default thinking is usual when ending up in certain situations where we get triggered, challenged and so on. May be related to certain people, environments or topics. Being attentive to what our mind is doing, and switching to constructive thoughts is mindfulness. Our minds are constantly listening to what we say through thoughts and make those thoughts our perceived reality. Be careful what you tell yourself, because you, are listening very intently. Repression happens when not coping with the suffering created by such negative though processes, and that hurt becoming too much. Letting go can happens from the space of constructive thought processes. Start with switching to a constructive thought process, curiously investigate your thoughts, triggers, the circumstances that triggered your thoughts and so on. With positive annotation, you can release the thought and it would not be repressive and, instead be a learning experience that is positive in nature. With practice, especially through do-nothing-meditation, it becomes fairly easy to shift focus of mind into something of a "void state", where there are neither negative thoughts nor thought of having let something go, with the bare minimum of sensory input. Void.

Not letting go would be to keep something in your thoughts, twist and turn, analyze, try to make sense and so on. By doing so that thought and the content of it will grow stronger in you as you build stronger neural paths ways related to it. When you meditate you can choose to let a thought go, letting it exit your thought processes. So, a thought for example, about disappointment and resentment arises in some situation... Letting go isn't about repressing or forcing thoughts to go away. It's instead more like intentionally decide to let a thought go, and preferably not filling the void with new thoughts, allowing for mental space to happen. It can help to do it ritualistically, I keep mentioning the example where you visualize taking the thought/topic: Imagine gift-wrapping the thought, attach helium filled balloons to the package, and gently push it away from you and let it get carried away with the wind. Watch it in you mind, until it fades away. A bit corny, sure, but it helps breaking the ongoing thought pattern, and helps preventing that thought to jump right back. Before letting it go, it is good to investigate what you feel, what triggered the feeling, what thoughts the feeling involved, and so on. Then, gently let it go.

There is no big deal, I don't think anyone implied there being a big deal? Some experience this, others don't or don't notice/know it, or aren't aware of it being that, until much later. It sure is a big deal to someone stuck in it. But of course, that person doesn't know it, so to whom would it a big deal. If you're interested in human development, it's an interesting aspect. Since it's a phase where it's hard to reach and affect, nudging the one stuck in rigid ways, I'd put it into the category of curiosity rather than very useful tools. The awareness to identify patterns, in people is useful though, if you're into helping people develop. There are a lot of people wanting to develop but counter-intuitively work against themselves in this stage.

Ironically, development is the opposite of this.

@flowboy Haven't read all posts so you might be replying to something specific. This is just the unfolding of human development. No one is immune to it. The paradox in it, is that the false sense, of perceived competency, that relatively speaking low competency, correlates with high confidence. This is not about thinking you are smart, it is about the pain related to becoming aware that you indeed have had false and inflated confidence and how this relates to the gaining of understanding that what you thought you knew now has proven itself incorrect/incomplete. And this realization becoming a readily apparent pattern in your experience, not just a single occurrence. And becoming aware of this being a stage of development. This means that anyone not having passed that state will falsely think this is beneath them. So the question then becomes, how do you know that you're not in that flase confidence, low competency, high dellusion state of development? Dogma is just that, the inability to accept that anything else could be true, and to such a deep and unconscious degree that you are not able to see it, as dogma as a phenomenon is outside of you awareness.

That is still fear based. Imagine a world that is post-gender-and-sex identification, where ones sex or whatever wouldn't matter. Reproduction might be an issue, but life indeed finds a way. In that world there wouldn't have to be need to present oneself as such or such, and the human connection is all that matters. Not for the sake of shifting acceptance towards the one group or away from the other more traditionally accepted group, but instead from the position that gender and sex is nothing else than a preference and a piece of flesh that happen to be attached to a body. It wouldn't be dangerous from anyone's perspective. It would just be. The norm creates the perspective, and the perspective crates the values, and the values creates the fear. Ok so we don't live in such an world, but it's easy to see that we're increasingly moving in such a direction where equality becomes absolute, and the construction of mind will dissipate. We won't live to see this, probably, but we will live to see this shift. Would I feel scammed? As a heterosexual man enjoying the heterosexual female "form", I certainly would be surprised. Would I get angry, or shamed, or feel guilty and so on? Don't know, haven't been there, but if I did, I am conscious enough to see that it lives within me. If you are desire and deficiency driven, you will perceive anything that is a potential obstacle to achieving that which you desire out of such defieinecy as a threat, and fear is the result. Would anyone expect you to suddenly shift preference? No, of course not, that is your freedom. But shifting perspective just for a moment for the sake of exercising the mind is an interesting and healthy activity. Of course, unless you do so and your current fears become challenged, and changes your norms, and then it becomes dangerous, to your old self That would be a beautiful thing

So what I hear is that you fear becoming attracted to someone that doesn't match your definition of a woman, and are afraid of what experiencing the shame it would result in when realizing that you indeed were attracted, and are are capable of loving a man? That is, until you realize there was a dick. Yes, that probably hurts the ego. At the same time, wouldn't that be a beautiful realization of something representing connection deeper than surface? Sounds very, very dangerous - to the ego.

It's not so much escaping the kreuger-dunning effect as it is the movement along the competency increase and the shift in correlation to confidence, where confidence drops as you start realizing that you know less than you thought you did, and the more competent you get the more humble you are to the understanding that you know nothing, and confidence or lack of doubt in self once again shifts. If you explain this via kreuger-dunning effect or not doesn't matter, but it can give comfort and relievement of suffering in the process. The gaining of understanding of that the only thing you can know is the not knowing and only having current beliefs, and that you are better off being proven having incorrect or incolmplete knowledge which in itself is the basis for accelerating learning and understanding, as well as the regaining of competency and relievement of that depressing state. That depressing state being nothing but the bruising of the ego and deserve little attention not to get stuck for a more extended time than necessary. The newly found confidence is very different, flexible, humble and empowering compared to the previous confidence that was ridgid, dogmatic and demonstrative. Looking at this as the unfolding it is, you see the correlation between this and development as a phonomenon, and how that depressive state is what so many get stuck in for the rest of their lives, being consumed by the suffering and pain created by the realization that you essentially were fake, wearing a mask, putting on a façade, but bring unable to find the path forward out of despair. That realization hurts, but it's also the most important realization representing a monumental threshold in development and the moving past it, somewhat of a developmental quantum leap. Needless to say, yes, have been through that valley of despair, and it really is a beautiful thing although hard to appreciate until you can look back at the beauty and complexity of it from a newly found, different, outlook point.

@fopylo Would it be feasible, the next time you gather, to go in with intent to drop expectations and desires on what should happen, and instead approach that gathering as an experiment to observe yourself, your feelings and thoughts as they arise, and notice the differences when letting go of such desires? And just like when meditating, allow those feeling and thoughts to arise, and gently and without judgment or self-criticism or attaching meaning to them, let them go, let them gently drift away in that moment, and return to just being.

What could you try doing to get yourself into that groove, or rather outside of any groove - and especially out of your current ruts?

@Preety_India This should be useful as well, and is part of self-leadership, the taking of 100% responsibly for what is in your experience, consciously moving away from negative states such as justification and blame, and how that makes you motivated and empowered to create change.

@Preety_India Essentially what you're looking for it to develop self-leadership competencies. https://positivepsychology.com/self-leadership/ https://positivepsychology.com/developing-self-leadership/ Short of just making yourself accountable to taking action, through shear willpower and build a positive habit that way, there's no quick or simple way to achieve this. Lack of self-efficacy is often a culprit. The lack of belief that we have the what it takes to complete task, the fuel of procrastination and negative thought processes. Instead of taking action, we turn to theorizing or exploring aspects of of the task, often negative aspects, such as what could go wrong, trying to solutionize and solve potential problems in the mind instead of just doing without entering such unconstructive thought processes. Exploring what causes us to procrastinate or postpone helps. It's often some sort of fear, as often is with life. There's a lot of material on that site that is useful. Paradoxically, developing self-leadership takes consistent practice of taking action. Catch 22 - what comes first, the hen or the egg? There needs to be a catalyzer.

What kind of practice are you looking to get motivated around, specific stuff like spirituality related, meditation and such? Or more generic, just getting shit done, dropping procrastination and building a strong connection between urge and action? Why do you want to be an "action machine"? What are you looking to achieve through action? And why is that achievement important?

Meditation gives you space, reduces noise and inner chatter, takes the level of distraction down and allows for more focused practice. Introspection, possibly through specific mediation practice, brings clarity and deeper understanding of self. Practice, such as doing where doing is needed, or stopping where stopping is needed, which also is doing, gives us distance to that which got us stuck, or limited. The result is that we allow ourselves becoming increasing detached from needs, and the bringing of such freedom to do, and to be, to flex and to flow with whatever is. That's where effortless success is found.

Feel the dogma. That dogma, your rigid belief that it must be like you imagine it, and unquestionably so, that is what is keeping you stuck. That is your ego protecting itself from you disidentifying with it, it making sure it will prevail with all of its limitations it has as a firm hold over your authentic self. IF you were to get past those defences of the ego, and detach from you toxic deficiency needs, there is no way that you would miss not being free, that you would miss the suffering. That fear and doubt is ego. This IS why it is so hard to break free. It is in a sense an addiction to a rigid world view. It's deeper than conceptually accepting that this is so. Embodiment is the experiencing of the conceptualization. Repeating words and contemplating concepts do no make those those concepts real. On the contrary, you can easily get stuck with concepts, thinking that we experience them, as new dogma. Experiencing this break is an awakening. That IS the path.

Self image is a construct. Deconstruct instead. With deconstruction and disidentification you free yourself from limitations you've adopted/created for yourself, such as wanting to be alpha or any of those attributes you listen. The need to be "successful" is creating your suffering through the discrepancy between what you want and what you get. When freed from the need to be "successful" as you define it today, authentic natural success emerges. Paradoxically, by being free, this might result in what you tried to achieve before but failed at. With acting out of non-attachment and freedom of being, it typically results in becoming successful in similar terms without trying, effortlessly. Notice how the most successful people seemingly achieve effortlessly, naturally, as if it was second nature. Some have competencies such as social competencies unconscious to themselves and connecting with people and drawing people towards them happens without trying. Alpha really is natural and authentic leadership. Not trying to adopt attributes and thinking that results in an "alpha package". You would still feel fake underneath that alpha construct as it's not authentic and needs to be maintained.

Who are you trying to be, and why? It seems that you are playing a game that you can't win, where there is prestige in how you should or shouldn't be. Where you have preconceived ideas on how things should turn out, and when things don't go as you expect or want then to, then you derail. Truth is that you derailed yourself long before and the only way to win is not to join in on playing games on someone else's terms. Maybe you are "innocent", is that bad? Maybe they said "how cute", is that bad? Maybe you aren't Alpha, is that bad? Why even bother wanting to be labeled Alpha, and disappoint yourself with labels like Beta when things don't go as you desire? The only thing that matters is to be authentic and not to be ashamed or guilty for being who we are, and owning that. If you are doing things that goes against your values and morale, then you're not authentic, and you need to return to authenticity. These games, are they authentic would you say? Authenticity is where we can be confident, it's us playing no other game than the infinite game of being, where there is no crowning of winners and losers. Confidence is radiating, what's stopping you from finding your confidence? It's in you, but you've just lost it, clouded by all those ideas of how things should be. Innocent can be confidently owned. Being laughed at for mistakes or whatever can be confidently owned. It only becomes awkward when we make it awkward in our thoughts. It's only not good enough when we don't accept ourselves and embrace our authentic selves. Stop playing games. This means nothing. There can be a false sense of development by consuming information related to development, but development doesn't happen by hoarding information. Getting too deep into the information hoarding results in building conceptual ideas of what development, or spirituality is, until such a point that it feels like second nature, and creates a false sense of feeling developed, yet without embodiment into deeper understanding and wisdom. These are the kind of things that development entails. Wanting to be alpha is just chasing some ideas of feeling successful, or being seen as successful. Real success is detaching form such limiting ideas of the ego.

@Preety_India @RickyFitts is essentially saying the same thing as me, he just uses less words and a condensed concept in that communication, yet carries the same message. It does leave a lot of implicit assumptions of previous understanding of self-development and much room for interpretation. One of the reasons why I write so long answers, in order to a greater extent eliminate misinterpretation based in such implicities. In essence, it's the complexity of one's sense-making that allows for seeing a deeper and more complex meaning in something that was communicated, and a higher ability to apply the abstractness of what is being said, onto ourselves, so that we see the pragmatic interconnections. It is your needs that dictate you wants and pursuits. There is a difference between needing a relationship, wanting a relationship and having the freedom to allow for relationships to happen. To allow for relationships to happen isn't about making zero effort, and instead it's about the emotional detachment of needing relationship to be. It leaves room for relationships to happen out of a playful approach to life and being itself. People who appear care-free, easy-going, non-needy and so on attract others. We ourselves are attracted towards such qualities and people who appear free in such ways. We want to feel good so, we are drawn toward others that radiate such qualities. Paradoxically, radiant as freedom is, letting go of our emotional needs, it works as a great attractor, and seemingly effortlessly attracts relationships. More for less.. People who try hard based on needs on the other hand, exhibit that need, and act as a repellent, or attracts individuals who are exersicing toxic behaviors, in a way, looking for prey. I think it's very important to distinguish between building deeper relationships and getting sexual needs met. Someone with great ability to have sexual connections can have great struggles with building deeper connections and lasting relationships. The dynamic play between two people creates an intricate dance around one and another's qualities and deficiency needs. So knowing yourself and working on yourself becomes a central part of building healthy relationships with others. To be able to make this happen, we do have to switch how we're making sense of the current reality, so that we can focus on "fixing" ourselves, so that we can become free in that sense.

@Preety_India They are inseparably intertwined by such complexity, that we need to develop ourselves in order to see clearly and to be able to respond to it in a healthy way And yes, everyone have their suffering minimized/reduced in a relationship that is emotionally stable. We can all appreciate that. Some end up there by chance. Others end up there by exercising unconscious competencies, such capabilites that we don't consciously use to create our world, it happens autonomously based on our inherent values. An example on use of such an unconscious competency would be someone that has grown up building a healthy self-esteem and self-worth. This individual will unconsciously pickup on and take action upon that which threatens ones own autonomy. It happening as a natural process. This person might end up with healthy relationships without doing anything that is perceived out of the ordinary to that person. By just being and doing what is known as default behavior. Others might see this as "luck" but it's really a gift. On the other hand, someone struggling with self-esteem and self-worth is unconsciously downplaying self against others, will miss out on signs on boundaries being overstepped, not respond in healthy ways towards that which threatens our autonomy, and won't be able to maintain healthy boundaries. The result is often unhealthy relationships. This is why people with problems inside themselves that they need to solve, often end up in similar pattern situations and relationships that are clearly toxic seen from the perspective of others, but they the themselves don't see it in the same way, and they themselves also, don't see that their way of being attracts a certain type of situations or relationship dynamics, such as co-dependeny and narsisictic partners, along with all other pattern behaviors. Only when seeing the underlying need to relieve oneself from the suffering, and seeing that we use this pathology in ourselves to meet that need though others, we can see the correlation between our pathology and the toxicity in the partners we attract or are attracted to. So, instead of looking for the causes and effects "out there", where we become the victim to circumstances and where we can assign such justification and blame, we need to introspect and free ourselves from the hold that we have on ourselves, the hold our ego had on our h authentic self. By doing this, we change who we are, and we free ourselves from escaping attributes we've collected throughout our lives, and we can be more free in the way we approach, relate and make sebse of the process life, relationships included. It's in a sense going back to the source, rewriting the source rather than betting stuck navigating the bugs in the program.

@Preety_India You're very welcome, I'm glad it resonates with you. This still leaves you with focus towards self-developement, to become deliberate about developing your own sense-making capabilities, to become able to take in more sensory stimulation, and to make sense with increased complexity. Better relationships is just a side-effect of that development, along with better and more enjoyable results in every other area of life. You might want look into Ego Development Theory to become deliberate about that sense-making development along side this relationship stuff, as it all intertwines into one psychology. @RickyFitts @Preety_India His question is important, there is more depth and a lot of complexity hidden underneath it that warrants exploration. Our needs usually don't come from as a good place as we want to think, and that we are able to accept about ourselves. Those needs are deeply linked to you as a being, reflecting the difficulties you've experienced and is experiencing in your life, and how you relate to yourself. Deep and sensitive area and we really need to drop our inward [ego] defences to be able to explore that in a constructive way.