Yarco

Who is going to trust a homeless guy with their pets? That's nothing. 200 hours in 5 years is 40 hours a year. So you've spent the equivalent of one full work-week pursuing those topics in 5 years. Literally I think you could watch a 1.5 hour Actualized.org video per week and double that. Like have you even looked into this, or are you just talking out your ass? A quick Google search for "Buddhist monastery Sweden" shows at least 14 temples. Plus 2 Hindu ones. Have you even tried reaching out to them? If that's not good enough, get a part-time job at minimum wage and work 100 hours, that's less than 3 weeks full-time, and you can buy a ticket to a "real" monastery in Thailand or Nepal. Where are you going to get all of this knowledge while you're homeless? You won't be able to afford books, they probably won't even let someone homeless-looking into the library to use the free internet. They'll call the cops on you. So it sounds to me like you aren't actually interested in becoming homeless, but going on some sort of unemployment/welfare system. Have you done any basic research into what the requirements are to get this? Do people under 18 who have never had a job and dropped out of school even qualify? How many times in the past month have you meditated for more than 2 hours per day? How do you know you're capable of "hardcore" practice? This is the devil talking Look dude, I remember what it's like to be 17 and thinking that you have all the answers, but you don't. This is going to seem ridiculous when you look back in a decade or two. And I agree with the sentiment of some other posters here that dropping out of school to become homeless with no backup plan would be a really bad choice. Honestly I don't think you could even survive life in a monastery. You don't seem able to adhere to rules or discipline. Life in a monastery is way more regimented than going to school. They decide when you wake up, when you meditate, when you eat, what chores you have to do, when you can sleep. I don't feel like you are pursuing this for noble or positive reasons. You just want to escape things in life that are boring or uninteresting to you. You'll learn that sometimes even an enlightened person has to suck it up and do things they don't want to. (If you are truly enlightened, would there even be a feeling of resistance to school, etc?) If you truly are enlightened, it's unlikely that you'll be able to maintain it while being homeless. Higher states of consciousness are only really possible for someone who has their food, water, warmth, rest, security, safety, friends, feelings of accomplishment, etc sorted out. If you're constantly getting into arguments and fights with other bums, hiding from store owners and the cops, starving and wondering where your next meal is going to come from, trying not to lose your toes and fingers to frostbite in winter, etc you're going to go back into a state of survival pretty fast. Before enlightenment - Chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment - Chop wood, carry water.

What is it about AAA studios that appeals to you? Creating your own AAA game studio sounds like an extremely lofty goal. I'm guessing most game studios start as indies and then grow over time with the success of their games? You could try to go work for an AAA to get a feel for it. I'm not sure what about it being an AAA studio makes it particularly appealing. It seems like the most stressful and grindy kind of studio you could work for. Definitely as an employee, working at an AAA studio doesn't seem like a life purpose to me. It lacks the artistic integrity you mention, you're just a cog in a machine. I would look to games like Stardew Valley. Wildly successful, 10+ million copies sold. Just one guy did all of the programming, artwork, and music for it. That's $100 million + straight in his pocket. And you can tell that he was living his life purpose in creating it. Look at a game like Assassin's Creed. One of the biggest AAA franchises and it's only sold 140 million copies across all games. Then deduct the massive overhead cost of the studio, all of the employees, and everything else from that. IMO indie is the way to go, and Minecraft isn't the only one who has made a killing at it. Dead Cells, Undertale, Hollow Knight, Prison Architect, Enter The Gungeon, Celeste, etc etc etc... all sold 1 million or more copies.

I first did the Life Purpose Course 2-3 years back, and I've been pursuing that to great success so far. But for months now it's felt like it's not really my purpose any more. I don't feel passionate about it, I don't feel like I'm having a greater contribution to the world and it's not fulfilling me. It's not just drudgery or the normal level of resistance that comes and goes, I know what that feels like. I've put in time to master something and now I feel like I'm at the limit of what I can do to keep growing, and I want something different. I haven't put in 10,000 hours, but maybe about 4,000. So I went back through the course to try and find a new life purpose. The problem is that most of my results came out the same. My top 3 values, signature strengths, ideal medium, high-consciousness virtue to build my career around all came out very similar to the last time. What do I do in that case, where the course points me back toward what I'm already doing? I've tried finding other things I can do that fit the same values/strengths/etc but I'm blanking. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Life Purpose: Summarizing information in an easy-to-digest format and empowering people to pursue their dreams. My top 3 values are: 1. Contribution/Impact/Significance 2. Health/Vigor/Energy 3. Personal Growth/Development/Self-Actualization/Self Improvement My 3 signature strengths are: 1. Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness 2. Perspective wisdom 3. Love of learning The high-consciousness virtue I want to build my career around is: Richness: complexity, intricacy, depth, differentiation Ideal medium: Writing, blogs, courses, video ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Currently I'm a freelance writer. I write blogs/articles for other people to earn a living, and then I've also been creating a couple blogs/websites of my own on the side, with the hopes that I eventually get enough passive income from those to pursue whatever I want. My websites are doing just okay... one has 4,600 views in the past month, the other has 2,200. But I've only made a couple hundred bucks in ads and affiliate sales so far this year, basically it pays for the hosting and domains and not much else. It feels like nothing significant is happening, and even if I 10x the amount of content on my sites I'll only be making a couple hundred dollars per month. Writing for other people is steady money but usually about topics that I'm not passionate about. I'm getting a one-time payment to help someone else get ahead, instead of setting up something more recurring for myself. Just trading my time for money. I've also hit a rate where it seems hard to find clients willing to pay above that much, like I can't advance any further. Honestly I don't know how these companies are paying me $100+ per blog and turning a profit, when I write the same quality and style of content on my own site but can't make a living from it. I also tried to start a Youtube channel. I put up 45 videos so far (I was uploading regularly 3x a week) that I felt were providing useful information and answering questions people would search on a particular topic, but I've got 8 subscribers and less than 300 total views between all of them since May, so I feel a bit disheartened and pretty much gave up. I started a webcomic recently on a whim, but I don't see that going anywhere. I don't know where to go from here... except maybe starting another website on a different topic, or another Youtube channel... something I'm more passionate about right now... do it for a few months and see if it gets any traction... if not, repeat until I find something that sticks. Funny enough, the thing that has probably always brought me the most satisfaction, the thing I keep doing even when I'm not getting paid for it, is answering questions or giving my opinion on Reddit or forums like this. But how the heck do I monetize that? Unless I make like an "Ask Amy" newspaper column type thing where I answer questions from random people. But I'm already offering lots of advice on specific topics through the things I've outlined above.

This I think is very helpful and pointing me back in the right direction, thanks. It seems silly to do things to set myself up in a position to do what I want in the future, instead of just doing what I want now. However then the problem becomes... what do I want? I'm not sure what I would do every day if I had infinite money and everything that I wanted. There are times after I complete a big project and have no other work lined up, where I can do whatever I want for a month or two. But I just end up squandering it... browsing Reddit, watching Youtube for hours and hours at a time. Nothing that feels productive or meaningful. But there's also nothing I would rather be doing in those moments either. When I do find some sense of purpose, it always seems temporary. I can never seem to do anything for long without wanting to jump to something else. I almost need a handful of projects on the go at any given time. That way I can switch from one to the other once I become bored of one. Now the idea that my purpose is what I already am, what comes natural, that it's right under my nose, really has me questioning. Maybe it's something as simple as doing housework and cooking for my partner, and I'm just overlooking it because it's not very sexy or lofty. Or maybe everything I'm doing is just a distraction and reason to avoid admitting that I don't really know what I want. Do you have any specific marketing things that you would recommend? I feel like I already have a decent grasp of SEO, how to get web pages to rank at the top of Google search results. I've taken some internet marketing courses that cover those kinds of topics. Should I branch out into paid advertising like Facebook ads and stuff like that? Or is there some other marketing topic I'm overlooking? I have considered trying to pivot into a business of doing full SEO for companies instead of just writing blogs/articles for them. I'm not sure if that would be more or less aligned with my life purpose compared to what I'm currently doing. Seems like a mostly sideways move, but might be a good way to branch out into new marketing stuff. I'll follow up on your suggestion of working with more conscious organizations as well. I will try cold emailing some organizations that I would feel more passionate about working with, instead of just applying for what I find on job boards. I agree with this assessment too. Part of me feels like I have unreasonably high levels of impact and contribution that I want to reach. Like I want Elon Musk levels of impact, I want my work to still be remembered several generations for now, and I'll never be satisfied with anything less. Not sure if that's just trying to overcompensate for something, how to overcome that feeling, or what. Other parts of me realize that's illogical, that I have a short finite life and I might as well enjoy every day while I'm here instead of wasting it trying to create some legacy. Hard to reconcile between the two.

Some vitamins for sure. You can get Vitamin A poisoning from polar bear meat because it's so high. There's also a thing called rabbit starvation you can get if you only eat rabbit meat, because it's so low in fat. If you are getting your vitamins from leafy greens and vegetables, it's very unlikely that you're going to reach harmful levels. Your body can naturally balance it out, or you physically won't be able to eat enough. If you're taking supplements I'd go with the recommendations on the bottle though. Vitamin D it'd be hard to get too much unless you are really overdoing it. I forget the percentage of people that are Vitamin D deficient but it's huge. Most people can take 5,000 iu's a day without any issue. But check with a doctor if you aren't sure.

Don't focus on becoming a more "academic" writer. Writing in general is shifting toward a much more casual, conversational style. Write the same way that you would talk if you were explaining something to a friend. There is a place for super airy poetic language if you're trying to win a Pullitzer Prize or have your book dissected in university literature classes. If your goal is to convey a message, using big complicated words will just frustrate, confuse, and bore readers. Focus on learning to write for the web from people like Neil Patel and then write that way. Keep paragraphs to just 2-3 sentences in length. Use tools like Grammarly or http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ to clean your writing up and make it more readable, and less passive.

It doesn't matter if you're on the front line or just in some kind of support position. You're contributing to an organization that potentially kills innocent people and exploits third-world countries. Arguably paying taxes does the same thing. But that's unavoidable and you're coerced with jail time and other threats to comply. Deciding to join the military is totally voluntary. Just like if you're an accountant for a tobacco company or a janitor in a gun company. You're still playing some part and making their bigger picture possible. Doesn't mean that you can't still find sihk or buddhist soldiers in the world. The mind will bend over itself to find justifications for its behavior. Then again, a country needs soldiers to protect its borders to provide the kind of peace for ordinary citizens to pursue awakening. But there's a big difference between a military that just defends its country, vs being Imperialistic. I don't know how the UK's army compares to the US one, but I would not feel like it would be moral to be part of America's military industrial complex.

You are going to need to find a way to set yourself apart from the competition. Self-help and get-rich-quick gurus are a dime a dozen. Many of them have decades more experience in the field than you. What special do you have to offer?

For me, it's like desire. You feel pulled to do something. That in itself is meaning. You are the one that creates the meaning for yourself! You are listening to judgements from society saying that being a chess player will never provide an income for you and that it's not practical. That doesn't mean that it doesn't have a strong sense of meaning for you. You are thinking about it too narrow-mindedly. There are more ways to be a great chess player besides just competing in tournaments. I typed "chess strategies" into Youtube and the first result is a channel with 683,000 SUBSCRIBERS!!!! You don't think you could get a sense of meaning and passion from conveying your love of chess to others and teaching them the game that you love? That guy is absolutely living his life purpose through chess.

If your friend doesn't exist when they're not in your direct experience.... then what happens when you send someone a text message? Does your friend blink into reality for a split second to receive and respond to your message and then goes back to non-existence? Or is there no one on the other end and really you're just texting yourself?

I think web development for self-help websites is a good niche. But if it takes you 6 months to build a small site, I think you're going to have a hard time.

Depends on the person I think. Personally I felt the same way as you. I don't need coffee every day to function, I can just get it once a week or whatever. But lately I've found I'm around people at work who want to go grab Starbucks every day or every couple of days, and it feels like I'm becoming more dependant on it. Mood has gone down, less energy if I don't have it. If you have any kind of cravings I think it's probably best to cut it out entirely before it gets worse. But I'm also a very "all or nothing" kind of person.

Don't get paralyzed by indecision. It will never feel 100% perfect or like you're 100% ready. At some point you just have to start trying stuff though. Are your careers something that you could try out at home for a few days to get a feel for it? If you wanna be a writer or artist, spend a day drawing or writing the first chapter of a story. If you wanna be an accountant, open up some software like Excel and just start filling it out with examples as if you were really working for a business. That's just a negative story that you tell yourself. But if you keep repeating it over and over, that's likely what you're going to end up with. Change your narrative.

Personally I think like everything, it's about moderation. If you can't go a day without jerking off, you should probably do nofap. But I also think people get obsessed with it when they start talking about 100 or year-long streaks or make it their whole identity, start talking about it to family and friends. Longest I've gone is about a week and I think that's about the sweet spot. Definitely do feel more confident and more energy. The studies seem to show your testosterone levels max out after a week of nofap.

Literally everything. Money, weight / health, relationships, family.

At least completely finish the life purpose course and give yourself a couple of weeks to contemplate and integrate everything before making any big life decisions. You're already partway into the semester and have already paid for everything. It won't be a huge waste or loss of time to spend a few months to finish the courses that you're enrolled in now. If it turns out that your life purpose could apply to your current studies, it'll mess you up way more if you drop out and then try to get back on track in a few months. Sounds like your current course isn't the right fit for you. But don't be too hasty about abandoning before you have something else to move on to. If nothing else, it'll be way easier to explain to your mom if you have something you're passionate about to replace school with, and can give her a timeline of how you're going to accomplish it. Instead of just "I dunno, I'll figure it out"

Making a girl have 4x gushing orgasms back-to-back. Shoutout to Leo's "how to make a girl squirt" video haha. I get what he's mentioned a couple times about being able to enjoy your partner's orgasm as much as getting off yourself.

Totally depends on you. Maybe you would find being a windmill turbine or radio antenna technician enjoyable if you love heights, being outdoors, climbing, and adventure. Personally I'm afraid of heights. So the idea of spending every day 300 feet in the air would be hell for me.

I think this may already be a mistake. If you're halfway through the course, you haven't done most of the values passes or life purpose exercises yet. Don't jump to conclusions and think you've figured it out before you go through all of the material. You might have suspicions, but let it fully play out first.

"How Openmindedness Works - Exercises To Open Your Mind" seems like it would be a gold mine for this. Ideas like... how do you know your mother actually gave birth to you? How do you know she didn't lay an egg? How do you know Australia really exists?

You couldn't have started any earlier. Your exact life experience is what led you to getting started in the first place. A character in a movie can't go back to the beginning and start from minute 0 knowing everything they know at the end. The same is true for you. Just be glad you ever got started on the journey and weren't asleep for your entire life.

I would approach your search for your life purpose as an add-on to your regular life, not a replacement to it. So you still go to high school and do all the stuff normal kids your age do. But then you add a search for life purpose, meditation, self-actualization on top of that. I think finding a few minutes a day like you said would be a good way to do it. "Knowledge not grades" is true to an extent. But in high school, really the knowledge you get is trivial. You just want to make sure you're getting good enough grades to get into the university program that you want afterward. "Knowledge not grades" works great if you plan to start your own business. Then all you need is the knowledge. But if you're working within the system then you need grades for post-secondary education, and on your resume for potential employers. So don't write off good grades entirely yet. Learning how to learn is good, but I don't think you need to obsess over it for weeks or months. A couple things like Leo's "how to study" video will get you most of the way there. Remember you're still 16 and keep things in perspective. Don't feel like you need to have it all figured out by your next birthday. Just the fact that you're thinking about things like life purpose already puts you lightyears ahead of most people your age. If you can really nail down your life purpose by 20 you'll still be doing amazing. Before you can ace life, you really need to explore what life is. Just try to experience a lot of stuff and get a well-rounded experience. Then you can really focus down and pinpoint one purpose to go after. I really do think the Life Purpose Course is going to answer so many of your questions. Personally I've gone through it 3x so far, I plan to re-do it every December going forward. But I understand as a 16 year old it's hard to get $250 to spend on it. In the meantime you might consider Jordan Peterson's Future Authoring program though: https://www.selfauthoring.com/future-authoring For $15 I feel like it gives a nice condensed idea of some of the big parts of the Life Purpose Course. It'll help you figure out what you want to learn about, things you could do better, what habits you want to improve, what you want your social life and other aspects of your life to look like. It'll help you figure out the ideal future you want to move toward, as well as the future you want to avoid. I don't have any affiliation with them, just aside from Leo's course it's probably the next most helpful one I've done.

This seems incredibly misogynistic and outdated to me. We live in a time when people are able to choose their own gender for god's sake. Why can't a man be happy in a role that isn't traditionally masculine? I still feel like the "man" in my relationship. It's not like I'm suddenly transformed into a cuck because my wife is the breadwinner of our household.

Some people are too toxic to change. There are people in my life that I've tried to bring around, but you just can't get through to them no matter how you try. Some people refuse to accept they could be wrong, or that someone else might know better than them. I have a friend I cut off contact with 6+ months ago because they were engaging in some unhealthy/toxic behavior. My friends who are still in touch with them say they're still doing it, and the only reason they keep doing it is because they don't want to stop and prove that I was right. Literally they're sabotaging their life and making things harder on themselves just because of ego.

16 is too young to give up on school. At least finish high school and get your diploma. If you don't, it might be one of your biggest regrets. How have you invested thousands of dollars into your current career at 16? Because you own an instrument? Chances are you like music and will continue to use them even if it's not your career? Lots of people would do the same for just a hobby, so don't look at that like a sunk cost in your decision. I'd be curious to see where you got this "college is a good way to find your life purpose" message. I don't remember Leo ever saying something like that. Are we talking about college here or still high school? Finishing high school isn't about your life purpose. It's practically a mandatory step before you can even start working on your life purpose imo. Don't make excuses to be lazy and drop out of school because "life purpose" just because you aren't feeling it. My guess is no. Break it down... how many hours per week do you spend in school, studying, working? You're talking about pursuing your life purpose, but then admit you're still trying to figure it out. The whole message is terribly incoherent. I think once you can afford to take the Life Purpose Course it'll give you a lot of insight. Until then I'm afraid it doesn't even sound like you know what you want, or what you're talking about. This is about your lack of motivation and nothing to do with life purpose. My suggestion would be to just be a kid, finish school, and do what's expected of you until you're at least 18.