Eph75

From this point of view it's impossible not to conflate femininity with attributes that the male (or attracted) finds compelling and attractive. Where is the breakpoint between being feminine and trying to be attractive to men? How can we even tell, as we're so deeply programmed towards attraction. That leaves femininity to predominately include attractive, desirable features, and not anything that is less attractive or unattractive to men. Does it have to be attractive to be feminine? Or is it about a power dynamic at play where the two halves need to come together is a state that creates a sensation of equilibrium? Where masculine is predominately "this way" and feminine is predominately "that way" but where there is no room for individuality? Breaking it down, it becomes more about the dynamic than about specific characteristics, and not limited to male and female or two individuals but also essential to the equilibrium that can be reached within ourselves. Strong "this or that" in ourselves, need a certain dynamic of other to have strong something else, to reach that equilibrium. I can't say what is feminine without telling what attracts me more than not. That is also shallow and I recognize that those things have nothing to do with the equilibrium. And what positively affects that dynamic play ultimately isn't about someone else, it's about me. An example would be the pianist video in a previous post; attractive, sensual, alluring, graceful movement, glittery, girly, slim, devoted, invested, skillful and such a thing as the hand slowly touching the seat at the end. Call it feminine it you like. It's also a façade, a persona, a game. The distinction what authentic feniminity is feels much more interesting. That takes the attracted part out of the equation, but still the attractor's biases and self-deciet need to taken into account. Impossible to overcome? To me it comes down to dropping façades, persons and exiting the game. There's really no need to play, when the desire to play drops away. Then what is true femininity would shine through, and it will attract, maybe not the same, but someone.

@Carl-Richard I like it. What throws me off a bit is "development" - are you trying to say that development leads to internal health or that development results in a way of being and a way of meaning-making that develops internal health? From my perspective there is something limiting being and meaning-making, laying itself over both like a wet blanket that sufficates the emergence of internal health. Removing or reducing that something is what matters most for "IH". It's like driving a car with the handbreak engaged or one foot on the break, causing friction and inhibits forward movement and causes different kind of friction and regular breakdowns minimizing forward movement, or cause regressions (taking the vessel back to the shop for maintenance). This is what we do, unaware of it being us breaking ourselves out of a smooth ride. It's all suppored by your "lens". Development defined as the increase of the complexity that serve our ability to create more complex meaning of what is happening in and around us, directly feeds into "M". That complexity increase of "M" catalyzes a deeper sense of purpose, and brings awareness of the existence of noise in our "B". The fundamental human need to bring clarity, to regulate the "signal-to-noise" level in our being, by amplifying the signal, and reducing the noise, inevitably introduces such self-regulating practices as meditation (resulting in noise reduction) and mindfulness (ability or focus and amplify signal over noise), in one form or another. The correlation between increased complexity of the meaning we are able to make for ourselves, and the increase of "relaxed" being allowing to flux and flow with what is rather than resist the currents of the reality we're finding ourselves in, introduces an equilibrium of the pressures we're subjected to, that consitite the very need for and the emergence of an increased "IH". As you say, there's a requirement of a certain level of balance which gets defined by the meaning we make, which inevitably define previous elements of being as "problematic" when matched against newly emerging desired outcomes, and the limitation these pose to continued evolution of "self". This forces us, through some discomfort, to address at least the most fundamental flaws that make up that handbreak that prevents not only "IH" but the developmental feedback loop as a whole. Over time less critical limitations will become more critical and will be self-regulated until such a point the discomforts no longer affects the stability of "IH", and only remain as some awareness of, rather than limitation by. This regulation is one of if not the most fundamental characteristic of human beings, part of our survival, and the only thing we really need to do, today, is to let up on our own handbreak, and enjoy the inertia dissolving, and the building up of "developmental movement". It's inevitable, but we're too busy fighting it by supporting the resistence for it to happen without great friction. The most interesting point of this unfolding is when the majority of energy has shifted to be redistributed into feeding back into self-development, rather than to manage the self-created resistance. An increase in "IH" can then be seen as the by-product of healthy development. In actuality the cross-influence is a significant factor. My apologies, I got a bit carried away. Love your posts, very inspiring

@fopylo That sounds great just keep going.. A note on responsibility. It's not hard to take responsibility when push comes to shove, and around external things, as you mention, driving, camp and so on. High personal responsibility shows up in the little things, that seem little, but that makes all the difference. Ultimately, I'd say, what matters most is how you are "responsible" around managing your inner world, and maybe most of all those resistences that we feel that reason us to choose the easiest way out, away from responsible external choices. Building strong responsibility by managing ourself in that way, around our behaviors and attitudes is self-leadership, and exumes "responsibility". I dare say that is what your parents are longing to see, responsibility showing up in the small. Let's say you do two things starting tomorrow: A) You get our of bed and go to bed at a "normally accepted hour", no snoozing, no slipping, maintained discipline. B) You take one deliberate action that is responsible each day, varying that something each day, so that you just don't add one thing and repeat that. It doesn't have to be "monumental" but it would have to be something that is a stretch for you, meaning that it's something that you would otherwise procrastinate around, and around which you feel some level of resistance towards. Then keep it up, keep going, wait and see.. Your parents will recognize it, very soon. But more importantly, you will feel great about yourself. It's got a lot to do with our brain chemistry, but also you gain control over your inner world, which is the one thing that we can control. Those choices, to do that which we feel resistent towards, to take control over ourselves by own choice, makes us feel authentic. It's a great feeling, and you already know it is, you've felt it before, many times, but maybe not in a deliberate and controlled way. Also it adds a sense of agility, changeability, and possibility to have movement. If you don't have a vision, you're not moving in a specific direction, but that's OK. It comes down to building a "moveability" that you can call up for yourself where/when needed. Which turns out being all the time, everywhere. Find a vision and you maximize the outcomes from the movements, towards some direction. But imagine for youself, that a vision doesn't have to be "change the world", "get financially independent" or something else "monumental". How about starting out with envisioning taking charge of yourself (inner world) so that you can use yourself as a tool to achieve some outcome of choice. The goals becomes building self-control and sense of self-efficacy. Visions can change, and should change. Our outlook keeps changing as we make movement. Reassessing the direction of movement is natural, and over time, the direction becomes more clear, and this can be a lifetime project, not something that you must figure out at your age. That movement though, that's fundamental. Without self-leadership, the ability to influence your behaviors and attitudes, visions are just mirages. The most "funny" part is that you could change this forever, today! It's that "simple", but it's not "easy". It's just the motivation and assertedness that is missing. And sometimes, just making a explicit choice to start is what's needed That choice is in your hands, right here, right now. Grab it

@fopylo If you didn't have to integrate with society, it wouldn't matter at all. The only reason you "have the energy" is that you've skewed your operating hours of the day, away from what's normally accepted hours. Result is being tired at different hours, combined with a certain level of need for sleep, which is individual. Do you have a vision for yourself? What is that vision? Does these skewed hours support that vision? I avoid labels as good or bad, since our behaviors, attitudes and perspectives in general either are supportive to achieve what we're envisioning, or they don't. So there's a functional value in "either - or", not universal "good or bad". If you lack vision and you skew the day, it's fully understandable that a parent worry about one's child's ability to or inability to make responsible choices and be a responsible person. Responsible being defined by their perspectives. Does that make sense? So this calls out to you to honestly - as you might find resistance to state something honest to youself - assess whether you are relatively responsible towards what would be authentically "responsible" to you. If you know that isn't the responsible thing to do, then it's a behavior issue and you not being able to regulate your own behaviors so that you can be authentic. Maybe the lack of seeing what you want for yourself is the problem. No vision. Assuming you love with your parents, that can't go on forever. So what comes next? Calls out to create a vision, to get goals, to make it happen... But what is it? What's "right", i.e. supports what you want, you need t no figure out yourself

@Preety_India What if self-love isn't about adding something and instead it's about removing something that isn't authentically you, that creates the cognative dissonance that shows up as self-doubt, takes a hit on your self-esteem and -confidence. When are you not authentic? When do you step into façades trying to be what you are not, creating appearances when the deeper you know that's not true. Playing games, appearing confident, arguing, hard beliefs and fixed sense of self. The discrepancy we feel when this is from where we operate... which is from where we all operate until we awaken to it, will mess with self-acceptance and our ability to have compassion and love ourselves. The "enemy" or rather obstacle or limitation is once again ourselves, our ego and ignorance and dillusion is what is needed to overcome. Removing, deconstructing that which surpresses the inner quality that, inevitably always is good is what removes the veil that shrouds us. Most importantly of all, that deconstruction forces us to remove all focus on finding something external that we can add that should fix something. It doesn't need fix, it just needs reducing or removing the noise that drowns out that clarity so that we can't see that it's really always there. It's just drowned out by the dillusion of it needing to be found.

@Preety_India It would rather show up as, "what are likely things that would cause a crash?" Possible causes: Fiddling with your cellphone while driving is one example of things that are likely to cause crashes, so we can be extra attuned to not using the phone in the car, using handsfree or turning you phone off while driving, especially if there's challenging traffic. Being in a hurry is another thing that is likely to cause the crash. We can focus on leaving well in time, and having plenty of time for unforeseen things to happen on the way to wherever you're going. If living in a snowy and icy climate, lack of traction and skidding into other traffic is often causing crashes, which allow us to checkup on our studded tyres, that they are in good quality, rubber is soft and plenty of studs left. Or weather in general, if the conditions are bad, we need to drive carefully, or even consider driving another day. By visualizing the things that are likely to go wrong and cause a failure, one can be proactive with avoiding those scenarios by introducing healthy processes and attitudes that end up being preemptive. It allows for building predefined strategies that help reducing risk of failure - to approach consequentialism in a rational way. A premortem shouldn't be confused with worrying and catastrophic thinking, that's not helpful and typically end up in unlikely, far-fetched scenarios. So, focus fully on finding plausible causes to proactively prevent common failures eliminating real risks, not fantasies. Pure fantasies wouldn't show up in a premortem, as they are not plausible.

Love is much bigger than love between two people in a committed romantic relationship. One's language of love can dictate how you look and long for being loved, seen, cared for, the need to be loved. Even if you are not in a relationship, you have a certain way you respond to love, and how you get acknowledged by others. This very black and white: "Someone that is not genorous with his money, cannot be generous with affection and love" Does that mean that women who never pay for anything, and default to men paying, cannot love? Or is this one of those things that can only work in one direction, the direction of one's own preference What I was pointing towards was just that two different ways of practicing affection may not be compatible, but does not mean there's anything wrong, simply saying there might be an incompatibility. Someone feeling especially loved and appreciated through gifts, may be biased towards looking for being gifted so that they can fulfill their need to feel loved and accepted. It's not as most people know what drives them, it's the opposite. What's rationally odd may be subconsciously emotionally validated. Insecure people can just as equally turn to over compensating generosity as desperately looking for being liked, essentially losing a sense of self while accommodating others.

Awareness of the different languages of love might help to get some perspective. Some connect signs of love to be via gifts, feel loved when getting gifts and not surprisingly lean towards thinking that others think the same, love to give and love to get. Give something to someone who "speaks a different language" and it doesn't make much sense, as it doesn't hold the same meaning. Give a gift so someone who feel loves by touch, and it may not just mean nothing, it might we awkward. Understanding this allows to better connect with others. The monetary value of the gift, in this case, doesn't matter. It can be a absolutely trivial gift, as it's the act of giving and being the receiver of that act that hold the meaning. How do we tell the difference without context? We can't. How can we tell the difference even with context? Difficult, biases and judgment is at play, and often we can't, especially when not knowing what to look for. Of course, this doesn't take away the fact that getting gifts can and is abused by some.

@itachi uchiha Sorry, brain-fart, was going to write Cook-Greuter, but essentially, her work builds on Loevinger's work. Oh, ehm, hard to say. If key is increasing the complexity of the sense making you operate at, this sense making is limited by the degree of self-awareness and ability to self-observe you have. The mind wants to grow and it's more a matter of our egos holding development back by being anchored in the current interpretations that creates our world views. Essentially movement then happens when letting go of the current beliefs to look for what comes next. The problem is that you don't know what you need to let go of, so that you can deliberately explore those attachments to current beliefs and adopt more complex beliefs. The development isn't about learning what the next stage beliefs are, or learning about what the perceived current stage limitations are, it's about fundamental transformations in how we think that serves us with the meaning that shows up in our thinking. Although, by learning about the different stages, the typical charateristics of each stage and finding the stage that resonates most with you, allows you to know about the typical limitations of the current and lower stages that are preventing "leveling up", so that we can catch ourselves when we hold on to these beliefs, or lean on such behaviors, at the same time as learning about the next stage charateristics which allows us to stretch into that world, so that we can experience the discomforts it brings, and we need to make new sense of what is happening around us. Learning and development is in a sense connected since learning increasing knowledge and confidence to stretch towards and into the unknown more comfortably, where we can, but not necessarily so, experience shifts in our sense making. Those shifts changes the how we think, so that we can think new thought which links back to learning, opening up for new learning in that unknown experience but also changes the perspective of preexisting learning leading to more new learning, i.e. consolidation is happening, or as often is said in spirituality, embodiment of what is learned. A pitfall here being that we typically overestimate our development by one stage higher than where we typically have our center of gravity, so contemplate the stages below the one that resonates the most with you. Being deliberate about letting go of what you think you know is eassential and helps accelerating the process. Self-awareness is also as a said central to all of this and is one of the main obstacles against becoming deliberate about one's own developmental growth. Lack of self-awareness simply shows up as not having a need to grow, or thinking you already know best, and misses out on cues in one's thinking, feeling, attitudes and behaviors that needs evolving, so that we can address and explore them. Work on raising self-awareness, explore self-regulation and how you change you own behaviors as identified by your imagined ideal self image, e.g. if you are aware of an unwanted behavior you have, learn how to shift away from such behaviors, replacing with wanted behaviors. This builds an inner changeability that will be needed to develop. If you struggle with known unwanted behaviors, shifting towards the unknown will be difficult, mostly because many of those unwanted behaviors are those that holds you back, maintaining status quo. Learn about developmental theory, models and psychology which not only helps with finding your needed challenges but also obsessing about development pushes you towards detachment of what is to give room for what could be next. It needs to be being deliberate about your own development. Development can happen circumstantial or be facilitated by someone else without you being deliberate about it, and maybe the most powerful transformer which is depression pushing towards a life crisis in which you end up rejecting and replacing a larger portion of your sense making over a very short time. Being deliberate implies creating these challenges, deliberately, for yourself. Since your sense making isn't something you can hold in your mind, you can't choose to change how you think. It needs to evolve through experiencing the unknown where your current sense making is insufficient to apply what you already know, so that you actively start trying to make new sense, which may creates the shifts in your mind that over time increases the complexity of how you think. What you CAN do, is choose your behaviors, attitudes and challenging your beliefs rather than blindly defending them. This is a life journey and not something you decide to do. With that said, you can transform surprisingly fast when A) you are aware of something that causes you anxiety that you avoid like the plague, and B) deliberately put yourself into that so that you have to stay with that anxiety, which C) very soon will become normalized and no longer cause said anxiety, or same levels of anxiety. Repeat ad infinitum. I'm sure you know a few such challenges from the top of your head, that you could deliberately pursue right now, today, this very moment, but there's something pulling you away from it. That's a start. There's going to the those obvious ones that we've essentially been procrastinating around. Essentially we know what is holding us back because we're preprogrammed to grow, and growth opportunities typically shows up as resistence that ensures we stay in our comfort zone, where we're safe but where we don't grow. It gets harder the further we go, it won't be as obvious, but with less ego quirks acting as limitations, this inevitably transforms from being a deficiency need to being a way of being, adopting, changing and at times transforming. Development is painful, uncomfortable and riddled with anxiety. In a sense it's much about redefining that resistence from being something bad that should be avoides, into being opportunities for growth, and something good, rushing into it with excitement. Does this make any what-so-ever sense?

@itachi uchiha You could check out ego delopement theory (EDT) by Jane Loevinger if you haven't already, which I think would be the closest to what you are looking for. It's about increasing the complexity of our cognitive skills which essentially as we develop allows us to reason is more complex ways, which would show up as appearing more intelligent or wiser. Aslo look into "7 transformations of leadership" which correlates to EDT expands on this. There are sentence completion tests (e.g. Harthill LDP) you could do that allows for assessing the complexity within the sense making behind the answers you provide to a certain set for questions, but these require people analyzing the result to make sense and cost a fair amount of money. It's interesting though why you are interested in being intelligent, it has no particular function in itself. Focusing on developmental growth in general which is more about orchestrating your life experiences so that you are exposed to unknown and challenging situations where you have to discover new ways of thinking and coping, which helps with fostering adaptability of the mind and non-static way of thinking, better allowing for one's sense-making to evolve. Making such progress will, when done right, show results in the stages of above models as values and perspectives are directly affected by increasing the inner agility of the mind, adaptability that sees increasing amounts of connections creating perspectives as that cognitive complexity grows stronger. Whether you are more intelligent or not doesn't matter, but what it will do for you over the long run is to be able to see things in new ways, and possibly, translate these new thoughts and ways of looking at things into actions that better serve you in reaching whatever desires you setup as being your goals - although the latter (actionability) is more connected to self-leadership capabilities. It's all interconnected though, and "appearing more intelligent" is more a synergy effect from these things emerging side-by-side.

Ah yes, my "probably not" is 100% assumption

He's just pointing towards there being a difference in capital use efficiency between corporations and government where capitalists or corporations "that have proven great responsibility [towards the bettering of the world]" are better off using the capital that otherwise would be taken by the government, and instead reinvest towards meeting the desired outcomes connected to that envisioned better world. This makes sense. Are there many corporate leaders that are so future world benefits focused as Elon Musk so that it would be wise to exempt all corporations from that reinvesting possibility? Probably not. The administration would be tedious and risk of corruption or taking advantage of such a system would be enormous as its hughly profitable for anyone favored by it. The lack of practicality doesn't take away from what he is saying though. Capital in the hands of someone like Elon Musk [seems to be] is likely to be reinvested time and again towards pioneering making a better world for all, while government is more preoccupied with maintaining the world and keeping to from falling apart, survival. And for each self-sustained project raising more capital a new project could be born, accelerating the overall process of creating a better tomorrow.

You're conflating different things, and we need to differentiate between learning, development and spirituality. You can learn about the stages, that doesn't mean that you develop, it means that you learn theory and based on that theory you choose to think different thoughts and come to other conclusions. Development is on the contrary that which serves your thinking, how you think, not what you think, and increasing the complexity in our sense making, which means that we will be able to make up more complex perspectives and find more plausible perspectives that we couldn't make up in the past. This is not learning about new perspectives and add to a collection of perspectives. That is once gain learning, building knowledge, and possibly being able to apply knowledge into actions. Spirituality is separate from development, or rather a separate/different developmental line, not to be conflated with neither the SD stages and ego development. Spirituality can happen at any stage of development and enlightenment in particular is about deconstruction and reduction, through the decreasing of complexity rather than the increasing of complexity and nuances that constitutes development, increased complexity of one's sense making, increasing ability to hold multiple perspectives and also including contradictory perspectives in your mind, the emergence of systems thinking and beyond. Development will inevitably involve also developing spiritually, or our development stagnates. So how do you know if you're just learning about spirituality, or, if you are developing spirituality? How do you know if you're just learning about developmental theory, or actually do facilitate the environments in which you develop? How do you know that your development constitutes what SD thinks of being "green" or whether you've simply adopted values that are green? It's not possible to self-assess as we don't recognize emerging development as something concrete,we can't even hold on to it in a sensible way, or it amounts to no more than gibberish to us. And when looking back, after development we can easily recognize past development phases of ours though others. SD is a tool by which we can help ourselves navigate into our future developmental challenges, along with other tools/models, but not much more. It is more useful to learn about developmental theory in general, and widely so, and from there see how it correlates with SD, not the other way around which inevitably will create misunderstandings and dogmatic paragidm locks. Ultimately there's a need to create strong distinctions between developmental growth learning, spirituality and self-actualization. If any of these are conflated or unclear, they need to be distinguished in order to be able to talk and reason about development in a sensible and unconvaluted way. Ego has is a very central part in development as it dictated our every perception and poses a lot of limitations that need to be untangled and let go of in order to be able to move forward with development. In that respect ego development happens in parallel with perspective and cognitive complexity development, etc. It simple shows up in different ways when looking at ourselves (and others) through the lenses that different models provide.

@Medhansh You

@preventingdiabetes Why make this so complicated? Watch the series (it's a good one ) - watching TV series isn't unhealthy. If you are worried about spending too much time, cap it to 1 episode per day so that you don't end up binge watching. If you have an addictive behavior around screen watching, cap the overall screen time per day. That forces you to prioritize your watching time. Use other times to whatever productivity you want to pursue. In fact you can use watching an episode as a reward for having done something productive, enforcing a healthy relationship with and habit around doing productive things, get your dopamines flowing. Plan your productivity, plan your rewards. Balance is key.

@Consept I'd say it's a matter you lacking setting boundaries. I'd simply, and consistently, just say something like "I get that you think that it's fun to make fun of others and me included, like you did with me just now, but really it's just hurtful and it makes me feel bad and I'd appreciate you not doing that". No need to go into an argument here, or point fingers, in fact that removes the power of exposing the emotional impact others behaviors have on us, as it triggers the other person's defence mechanisms. This is about you and the impact their behaviors have on you, and they can't take that away from you, and those kind of words stay with most people for a long time. With that said, it needs to be consistently done to set AND maintain your boundaries, and stepping-up as needed. Impact feedback is a bit of an art, so it might take some practice to deliver it to maximize that impact within others.

@Preety_India Yes, and you're missing out on the complexity I'm pointing towards, but that's OK.

@Preety_India Yes indeed, and explore that more deeply, add more complexity to it, the outcomes benefit others but the need is coming from within. The expression of the different stages alternates between orientation towards self and others. The expression does shows up differently between red, orange and yellow (self-focused or withdrawn from world) , and that of blue, green and turquoise (world focused). This is not "pre green" and "post orange" though. Let's call it phases of developmental growth that needs growth from both aspects, and typically shows up that way, although to different degrees in different people. Some are leaning heavier towards the self, others towards world. Practically, even if your values makes you focus on helping others, there is still the own idea and need to "be good" that drives you toward that, and creates your values and world-view. That drive is inherently selfish, expressed through values of whatever stage one is at. The outcomes may likely benefit others/external, the drive is internal needs, whether deficiency or becoming needs. That selfishness isn't to be confused as being negative. It "just is" , and "is" even if you don't realize it yet. But as it is, it's fundamental to self-discovery and self- understanding. It's way helps us to stop focusing on the external world to find excuses, blame and justification for what is, and to look internally to find that our world-view and the reality that follows is a construct of our minds, and therefore changing the way we see things (which we own) change the meaning of that which we previously saw in a different way. For example, "orange is bad" is a statement created by your own needs. This is really interesting from a green perspective as green values involves inclusivity and acceptance of everyone - that is, everyone who belongs to the accepted group. Objectively speaking, orange isn't bad, and orange people aren't bad. It's just different, and serves other needs which needs to be met and transcended. I'm more curious as to what holding that in your thought makes you feel, and more importantly, what it is that make you react in the first place, and how do you transcend that?

Paradoxically, the path towards self-actualization poses this phenomena as an obstacle, only to eventually transcend towards recognizing perspectives as just that, and only that, perspectives, and all need to rate, evaluate or label those perspectives diminishes. Perspectives are valuable but only as a means to some end, and a perspective is only as useful as that perspective is towards reaching some desired outcome, whatever that outcome may be. More-so a tool to use than something worth holding on to, or being attached to, and to be able to more easily reach desired outcomes, any perspective is best replaced by some other perspective that better serves those outcomes. Stage orange desired outcomes are different from those of someone predominately green. Stage green perspectives are perfect to achieve stage green outcomes, but from a yellow perspective, are inefficient and misdirected in focus. For each individual on each of those stages these perspectives are inevitably "right" as they have emerged out of a need to grow, to deal with that which is in one's own world view, to eventually overcome and transcend that world view. I.e. no single thing can be "too anything", they just are, and they always coexist as long as not being actively censored. Change you position and your perspective is new. That does not mean that the now opposing perspectives wasn't there all along. It's just the inability to see them. What are you getting out of this forum, by doing what you perceive being "helping others" ? There's a need within yourself that you are attempting to fulfill by doing everything that you do. Asking ourselves how this is different, fundamentally and psychologically speaking, from that of the orange need, other than it shows up differently? They are both an attempt to reach individual desired outcomes, conscious or subconscious ones, that ultimately live within you. This means that nothing is too anything, it just is. You could say that it's being too focused on others that hold disagreeing values to those of ourselves, but that too, is just an expression of who and where we are, and simply just is.

@Irina Wolf Creating intention to stop a behavior is as you say through becoming aware of that behavior, and being intent on catching youself earlier in that process, until such a point that you have the Chan e to intercept it before you've acted on whatever impulse that causes you to do this. That awareness isn't limited to being aware of doing it, it is raising the awareness around the whole process, why you do it in the first place, what kind of patterns there are around theti es when you do this, and being able to pickup in those signals as a "premonition" and maybe work on the "why" and not just the "act". Having the intention to "catch yourself ealier" doesn't produce results overnight. It's a lengthy process and it's a matter of starting it and staying with it. Inevitably you will become aware of the need before you act it out. To stop the urge though is yet another challenge.

There are no quick fixes. Face that which you use weed as a tool to escape from, befriend that, slay that demon. The numbing is you coping skill. First step is to stop numbing to you can stand face to face with that which you fear. This has nothing to do with weed. Any coping skill hold the same problematics, it just shows up at different severety and withdrawl degrees. What are you escaping from? That anxiety is telling you something. Over time it turns more general, grow in strength and is harder to decipher.

@omar30 It's easy enough to find programming course online, for free. I think the intention and discipline is more a problem than actually finding out how to learn. You could also check out https://www.codewars.com/ Start with setting intention and a strategy for how you will add practice to your everyday schedule. Then relentlessly pursue.

Ah yes, the day you get that realization, remember this day ?? until then, contemplate what dropping the resistence would look like.

@Blackhawk This is life serving you a slapping to get you to straighten out your flawed sense-making, and it amping-up your suffering successively until you reach the breaking-point where you realize your flawed sense-making, reject your current dogmatic stance, and get "slapped right". Essentially developmental growth, "growing up". Not at all uncommon. Some get permanently stuck, due to stubborn resistence, others get spat out on the other side after surrendering. The question: What do you think is true about this statement?

@Tangerinedream Looking at your last post in another topic where you called out "toxic" and "vulgar", you're just reacting towards someone you disagree with and towards language that you don't think someone should use. If we were to normalize language so that no one can express themselves without tip-toeing and thinking thrice about the language used, so that no one could possible get offended, then we're heading in a truly toxic direction. It's also not possible, because it's the past experiences of the individual that adds the interpretation of what is being said, and will find implicit offensive meaning also where there is none, based on that own meaning-making. Of course there are extreme cases and there are limits. Such limits aren't commonly challenged. Of course I read far from everything, but I have never seen such cases here, and I tend to read some of these young male frustration topics around not being able to have relationships they want, or any relationship at all. Such topics where your sense of "toxicity" and "vulgarity" is at least fairly common, and where people get triggered. Also there's always going to be someone that is sensitive that will get triggered, and in these cases it calls for examining ones own emotional handling and further develop EQ. That in itself might be triggering, as a lot of people think high EQ is to have high sensitivity and justify lack of constructive responses based on this, but that's not EQ. Knowing your emotions Managing emotions Motivating yourself Recognizing emotions in others (empathy) Handling relationships A common culprit is that we emotionally attach to the beliefs and values we have, meaning that attacking our values is equivalent with an attack on our person, which it of course is not. You can't change others, but you can develop yourself so that you can better reach and influence others. So turn inwards and examine what the development opportunity here would be. That's what this forum is REALLY about, yes? Not about getting caught up in some fruitless argument around young males venting disappointments and frustrations. You might see that as "wrong", but that also a development opportunity, that isn't related to learning seeing this as "right", it's about recognizing perspectives.