Lyn

@JevinR it's not a specific tangible problem like I said, it's just a sense of tension from years of building up. This is not a problem I can tackle so easily like 1+1, and I think reading about psychology like this will give me a better understanding on how to approach the problems. But I've found some books by Thich Naht Hanh mignt help me out so I'm reading them now.

I have three that I do for 5 minutes each. It's perfectly fine to have multiple affirmations, in fact Leo even recommends in one of his videos to have 2

Hey pals! I know this is a common problem most people face. I go to school in a different country but for summers I go back home and see my parents, but there is always tension and fights between all 3 of us, and then I go back to school leaving an even worse impression than before. So although I love them incredibly, even seeing pictures of my parents gives me anxiety at this point. I'm intent on changing this completely. Now with a month left until I go back home again, I'm eager to have a deeper understanding of the psychology behind why we have tension the way we do and how I can go about correcting it. Would anyone recommend some books to read that would help me understand this situation, possibly see it from my family's perspective better, etc? Any books on relationships (including familial/platonic) or just understanding others' psychology in general and how to interact with them so they are comfortable and can empathize with me as well, etc. I have The Four Love Languages on my to-read list already And simply any other seminars to listen to or affirmations or activities that can help me (and perhaps anyone else with similar issues) out! Thank you guys!

Are you talking about the practice of visualizing your "higher self" and having a conversation with it? It's something I know many people do (mostly New Agers), but I've tried it a few times. For New Agers they believe it's a literal other higher (almost godly?) version of yourself in your own head, but for me (and perhaps others) I think it's just a more visual, easier to process way of clearing your mind and finding solutions to problems. For example, when I feel I want to procrastinate, sometimes I close my eyes and visualize that I'm sitting across from myself, but a wise version of myself that knows what's right for me (which we all have in us, we just ignore it half the time hah). I tell it I want to procrastinate, and she asks me why, and I'll tell her how much I don't want to do the work and I'm lazy, and she asks me if it's worth it, and tells me I can do it if I really feel like that's how I want to live my life. Soon I'm back on track with getting work done. Essentially, it was just me rationalizing that I should do my work, but it's a lot easier for our minds to comprehend talking to someone than a bunch of cloudy thoughts all up in the air in our minds that we just don't want to think about. I don't think this is an airy fairy practice, as long as you don't believe you're doing anything but rationalizing in a visual way.

Basically, when is it considered being a workaholic? Leo has said many times in his videos that hard work is important but not to the point of being a workaholic. I want to know, when do I get to that point? For me, I know it's not good but I often skip multiple meals and hours of sleep because I cannot stop working. In the moment I feel like there is literally nothing more important than my work. I'm an art student, already starting work in the art industry, and since it's such a competitive industry it's a common mindset in this field of study to be working and practicing our asses off everyday. The whole, wake up and work until nightfall, kind of routine. I do meditate for 20 minutes when I wake up, along with positive affirmations and visualization and light exercise, but then I work for hours and hours with no breaks. I know this kind of routine/habit is unsustainable and unhealthy, and I believe part of it is my deep-rooted anxiety surrounding failure. I want to have a good balance of work and rest, but I don't know where the line falls. I feel like anything less than this is not enough, basically. I do have a tumblr blog where I interact with my several thousand followers daily and that takes up a portion of my time, but because I feel like it's a waste of time I'm thinking of deleting that too so I can make even more time in my day to work. I'm not sure what's a good or bad decision at this point. Thank you for any thoughts on this or even just some of your own experience with productivity like this if you've ever felt something similar!

@Lorcan It's not that I don't want to have fun, it's having an emotional dependency on games that Leo would call an addiction. Anything that we repeatedly go back to and feel uncomfortable/restless if we stay away from them for too long is an addiction. Of course it's fine to play games if you know you can stop at any time, but for me I'd like to condition myself to not need it.

In Mastery by George Leonard there is a great analogy (he took it from an old zen master I believe), of four horses. Horse A runs perfectly without its master picking up its whip. Horse B runs well right as the master is about to whip it. Horse C runs only when the whip touches it. Horse D runs only when the whip is at its bones. We all want to be horse A, but actually, it's best to be horse D. Horse A has never faced a moment of hardship in its life, it doesn't know what pain means and doesn't have a tolerance for it, and it would likely die if it was released into the wild, not having someone to obey. Horse D knows what it's like to be stubborn in its own choices, to have endured pain and to tolerate and recover from it, and ultimately will come out the strongest horse in the end.

@Skenderberg Yes I have had moments where I realize I am nothing, there is nothing, and simultaneously that means I am everything. This is all having to do with consciousness, it has nothing to do with physical things like the stars. This is just for me but I have realized that there is nothing outside of my perception, and then when I think about what I am, ultimately I am just consciousness. Ultimately, everything is consciousness, which on a higher level translates to everything is nothingness. This does not mean that I literally am the stars and palm reading and whatnot and now we can predict my future from them (first of all we need to grasp the concept that there is no future). I believe that that's still thinking inside of the box in my opinion.

I'd like a video on this as well. The subject has a lot in common with the TV one but Leo has had lots of experience in the game industry and with being addicted to them, possibly even more so than TV. I've already stopped competitive gaming and hanging out with my competitive gaming group of friends in fact, but I still find myself casually gaming sometimes, which is less of a time sink but still a time sink all the same. There's something about it that's more addicting than TV... it feels like you're really achieving something when you work hard and succeed in a game, but we should be channeling that energy into our actual lives.

He's made a video on this already! Leo has a great point that he thinks about his death constantly, and actually it helps motivate him and he sees it as a good thing in a way. I've accepted this as well; I have a sticky note on my desk that says "You are going to die. Do not waste time." So check out that video! It's a common fear that almost all humans have so don't feel anxious about it. The visualization he makes you do is very powerful and I shed a few tears while I was doing it for the first time haha

Kelly, start with forming one habit at a time. Yes there are ultimately many good habits to build into your daily routine on the path to self actualization, but as you've said you're feeling stressed out and what you want is to decrease your stress, not increase. I'm also in college and I think what's most important first and foremost is to have the habit of a routine right when you wake up. Meditation, working out, affirmations, visualizations, are all great but meaningless if you do them once and not follow through. Start a habit of meditating for 10-20 minutes in the morning so you have a calm mind for the day (if you're sleepy because you just woke up then do some light stretching/exercise beforehand so you don't get sleepy meditating). Then after that's in place you can start putting more things in your routine over time, and not miss a single day. It'll work wonders for your stress situation in the long run.

Yeah this is BS... some things seemed accurate at first, but other things were not so accurate. I think it's a human thing to take whatever he's saying and shape it in your mind to fit ourselves, no matter what he says, so that the illusion stays real and possible to us. It's more fun to believe that a website knows who you are from your name and birthday than to attribute it to descriptions some guy has manufactured to subtly fit into most peoples' personalities (but not quite, as I found for myself).

Be more careful with your money... not saying you were an idiot; if you read Tony Robbin's new version of Awakening The Giant Within he talks about how he hired a guy to handle his money who he thought he could trust, and he ended up losing a couple million. I think that's just one of the things that happens when you get into running/starting a business, and one of the things you need to experience punching you in the face so you know how to dodge it the next time.

I don't like to talk too much smack about stuff like this since a lot of it does have ancient roots in cultures that I don't want to disrespect, but really, everything in this kind of area: star signs, palm reading, horoscopes, numerology, tarot etc. The world is populated with over 7 billion completely unique individuals. To say something like lines on their hands or numbers or the stars can generalize and put every unique human into a convenient little category is a little fishy ...

@Neo I was talking about when I was a 10 year old haha. Not so okay when it starts that young.