Vladz0r

Just trade bodies with me. Carb up probably? Mixing big portions of fats and carbs seems to be good for promoting this, since when you do that combination, it's easy to overeat and become hungry quickly. So like anything with pasta and sauce, meat and bread, cheese and grains, etc. You could go exterme and start adding soda or mango juice to every meal, probably the latter because it's delicious af and won't give you diabetes as quickly. I don't know how this type of dieting will affect that are naturally skinny, as my friends in this situation seem to literally be unable to eat even half as much as what I generally eat.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, my friend. Spending 10 hours a week commuting, especially by car, is going to cripple a lot of aspects of your life. You could set yourself up for greater success and hone your skills and maybe even reach more people in the future.

I think it has become pretty common knowledge that the technological convergence is coming. I think this is a nice intro video that goes in a bit of depth with the history of different topics, and shows a nice amount of data on what's coming. Looking at the summary of book "The Future Is Faster Than You Think" I think this is a pretty similar video version of that. Some other noteworthy innovations (not included in this video iirc) include space travel and 3D printing, and how those technologies combined will trickle down into better materials, including 3D printed organs produced in space, as well as lower latency fiber optic cables and potentially metals produced there. As the future of automation looks grim as unemployment continues to increase (ignoring that irrelevant 5% statistic in the US) I think that if you're someone locked into the middle class, there could be a lot of things to look forward to, assuming we continue to grow without killing ourselves. It could be advantageous to start planning a business for the future bearing some of these future technologies in mind. examples: Starting a mobile food cart on wheels rather than opening up a restaurant. Thinking of mobile apps that may work better in the future than now, once there's higher bandwidth, processing power, and and lower latency. Artists can draft designs for products and create 3D printable models to test products more easily I can't find the list of topics I saw once before, but here are some big ones: Space Travel - reusable rockets, cheaper machines, 3D Printed Satallites, Rockets as a cheaper and faster alternative to airplane travel Satellite Internet & 5G - (Starlink, Amazon, Verizon, etc.) 3D Printing Mobile Computing & Quantum Computing Virtual Reality Renewable Energy & Battery Storage Capacity - think Tesla with their gigafactories and solar grids Artificial Intelligence - mostly specialized right now, but for some tasks as complex as Autonomous Driving and Surgical Procedures Automated Machines for Industry Use - think of how Tesla and Amazon have machines to do a big bulk of their entire business Brain Implant Technology - ex. Neuralink to alleviate certain brain conditions such as schizophrenia and paralysis from stroke I found this video interesting even knowing about some of the technologies already. Seeing the numbers and how it might all fit together is cool. We might actually be able to catch up to China in things like internet and transportation through parts of this technological convergence, without having to actually fix our infrastructure too much.

If it does come down to Bernie vs. Trump, Big Pharma and Trump will likely pump unprecedented amounts of money, going into the billions, to try and slander Bernie and misrepresent his views. If 1 person, Bloomberg is literally spamming ads in upcoming states, the companies who are profiting billions will quickly step in to represent their constituents. I'm interested to see if any big investments will go into the Democrat side as well, because I'd like to see a real battle take place. If it's Bloomberg vs. Trump though, I guess we just have to strategize and double down on capitalism. Protect your friends and family, try and convince them to invest and learn skills that will be futureproof as we move into this new industrial revolution of mass A.I. and autonomy. Maybe consider moving to China honestly, since they'll most likely win an A.I. war rather if we don't have a president willing to build up our relationships between the West and the East.

Unfortunately in politics, people judge too much by the "feel" and "likability of a candidate." Go look at their policy and track record and you'll see a stark contrast between someone like Pete and Bernie. It's already been said anyway, but Bernie's the only one capable of improving this country. Anyone making under $500k is going to see benefits from this. At $100k a lot of people are going to have better healthcare overall even with the extra $3.5k they'll have to pay into the system. If you look at socioeconomic reasons for why crime is an issue, it's generally considered to caused with adjacent large socioeconomic differences, specifically between the bottom end and the middle class or upper-middle class, not necessarily between the very top and bottom or between the middle class and the bottom. To clarify, I'd say middle and upper-middle class are people who are financially independent, own assets, and are saving for retirement, even though the middle class can include people living paycheck to paycheck. Salary is hard to account for here. You can observe this at the different between crime rates and safety in all of Latin America excluding Cuba, and comparing it with a country like Cuba and Spain. GDP per capita is similar, but crime is 10x off. There's dramatic wealth inequality as well, as they've inherited or otherwise utilized our same wonderful capitalist society. Do the same in neighborhoods in the US, and you'll see the racial device with classic redlining and quickly see it's those at the bottom who have no safety nets who have to result to this thing. Also see in the US that a big portion of this is drug-related. Decriminalizing recreational drugs like marijuana, improving housing costs and development, subsidizing things like internet and other utilities, improving public schools dramatically to reduce class sizes, investing in public transportation (especially greener public transportation, if we can manage that), switching to universal healthcare, etc. If all of these "dream-like fantasies" that other countries already have could be implemented in the US, crime and poverty would be reduced dramatically, and no, this would not reduce the drive to "pull oneself up by one's own bootstraps." It should be obvious to any of us that once Maslow's hierarchy bottom level is fulfilled, and people are in jobs that actually respect them and pay a living wage, and if we could have decent paid time off (again, like these mythical eastern European countries) we would have more room for reflection and consciousness work. I've talked to and worked with family and friends who have gone in and out of poverty, and been in this situation myself after losing a job, talking with people trying to get their disability or social security benefits setup, etc. The difference between having your basic meeds met vs. not having them met is night and day. I've seen it go both ways. A lot of people who go into semi-retirement or obtain passive income find themselves pursuing self-actualization or self-reflection and philosophical pondering in one form of another. This freed up time is where the culture of the US will start to improve. But yeah, if it improved too much, we might actually have a functional political system, and might have to actually pay people fairly for the work they do, so any big business or company wouldn't want this. Socialism, marxism, communism, etc. can continue to coexist with capitalism for the sake of stability until maybe we move onto a stage where there's true collective wealth owned by the people. Bernie's plans heavily promote small and medium businesses and entrepreneurship as well, as you'll actually have medicare and safety nets to fall back on as you pursue a career you actually want to pursue. I love capitalism for what it's done for me and my friends in the form of goods, services, and innovation, but with my city having tens of thousands living in the street, when we have some of the cheapest food and technology prices in the entire modern world, there's really something wrong here with our priorities. Non-profits have to fill the role of the government in keeping the homeless fed and sheltered, when the government could easily invest in some infrastructure (ex. an app) to keep track of homeless people, work with them, subsidize public transit for them, etc. We already have digital public transit cards and a good system here. I might have to start an organization myself at this point just so that it can be run optimally. I want to cry when I see my brothers on the street as I walk into my 11 storey corporate office each day. Sorry for my long commie rant, but every other political candidate has given a mile to republicans before even trying to take back an inch. *edit* - Aaaand it looks like he's an Establishment crook in kahoots with CNN and Facebook.

Hey guys. I've been thinking about how tricky it can be to learn how to do things, and how to evaluate mastery of a domain. By copying and learning from masters, you can start to construct a routine filled with high yield techniques. I'm currently trying to become a better programmer, and haven't come across them. It isn't so obvious to me who is successful and who isn't, and a lot of people only become good at their domain over 5-10 years, which makes them poor case studies. I've made huge improvements in my Japanese learning, and I consider it something I know how to master, though I've been lacking time and need to focus on my career until I can turn it into a calling. My Mastery - Language Learning: I do believe I've found "the truth" for language learning and language acquisition. This is what I consider my blissful productive activity, though, and what I'd like to make into a calling if possible. My good friend Matt makes videos on his language immersion method with Japanese: https://www.youtube.com/user/MATTvsJapan/videos He's an honest friend who's into self-actualization as well, and has proven his mastery of Japanese to Japanese people, and I've verified the ability of Matt and his original mentor Khatzumoto with Japanese natives. People study Japanese for 5-10 years without coming anywhere near his level, and it's seen as a really difficult language to learn. His method is built upon the methods of Khatzumoto and Antimoon. Steve Kaufman is another supporter of immersion who's fluent at understanding novels in around a dozen languages. It's based off of a method called AJATT, or All Japanese All The Time. Essentially you create these habits and mindsets (for learning Japanese, which I'll use as an example): The main rules for language learning: 1. Immerse in the language all day every day, through active and passive immersion. 2. Learn 10+ new sentences worth of vocabulary from real native content each day through a flash card program (ex. Anki). Aim for 10,000+ cards. Immerse in Japanese content each day. Listen to media you're interested in, and keep earbuds on you all day. Switch all of your enjoyment from English over to Japanese. Watch a show dubbed in Japanese or watch different shows instead. Cut attachments to distracting (English) media to do this. Use spaced repetition software to make flash cards that you find from these shows. There's some software like Anki you can use to make engaging flash cards. Know that the core of improving at a language comes from listening to it and reading it each day. Listening helps the subconscious mind automatically consolidate the information. It'll take a few years of consistent effort to improve. "Seek first to understand, then to be understood" - You'll get fluent at understanding the language first, and then be able to speak it, as you can get used to the grammatical patterns through example and mass media consumption. College classes are not the way to get good at a language, and degrees don't mean jack shit. You need to be doing at least 10 new sentences worth of vocab each day, while immersing, which is going to give you the cumulative review and gains you need to maintain it all and reach mastery. You don't need to go to the country to immerse: this is fallacy. You just need enough native media that you can learn new words from and practice with, and to incrementally challenge yourself. The main high yield techniques in language learning: -Turn a TV show into mp3 files and listen to them on your phone/mp3 player throughout the day. Keep earbuds always prepared. This is the equivalent of using audiobooks to fill that empty time. -Make a habit of learning new sentences daily, in interesting contexts. Refrain from using too many premade/random flash cards with vocab words on them. They're just not as interesting or enjoyable, and can lead to burnout, based on the content you're learning. This is synergistic with active immersion. There are tools out there like subs2srs that can be used to turn entire TV shows into flash cards. If anyone has any high yield techniques for any domain that you're mastering, that'd be awesome. It could be for anything related to mastery, from self-actualization to pragmatic mastery . Make sure it's something that you've actually tested.

In short, it's supposed to be a blend. In the course, Leo makes it clear that you need to have some way to inevitably monetize your work, and you have to do a blend of what the market wants, needs, and your domain of mastery. Mastery, discipline, daily habit is for establishing that confidence in the main skill. Marketing and business come as side things unless your goal is to be an entrepreneur, but yeah, you need that entrepreneur mindset in general. I think of it this way: Leo could have tried to monetize self-actualization before mastering the material himself and having a bigger vision for it, but he was able to sustain himself for a while with his previous business. Likewise, you can do the same by trying to market your skill, or you could focus more on the skill itself while you sustain yourself by other means. Eventually you'd "get so good they can't ignore you" but you have to have a real, almost impractical game plan to do much more work than the amateur jack of all trades is doing. I've been listening to Robert Greene's book on Mastery (a pretty good, modern and practical approach to Mastery, with a lot of examples of successful people) and it talks about people who were inadequate at writing, language learning, and sports, and other skills, who then adopted their own strict daily regimens. Taking the theoretical highest yield techniques, utilizing them to a great extent, and spending concentrated periods of 2-3 hours, multiple times a day if possible. There was a basketball player who had an 8-hour regimen and crazy ways to improve at dribbling and passing without ever looking at the ball by using cardboard underneath hollow glasses. A military pilot asked to be tested 10 times as often as his peers, in order to overcome his peers. These people were below average to start out, but through tons of concentrated effort, they got ahead. Same with Charles Darwin, who strictly utilized all his time during the 5-year voyage to the Galapagos. You gotta be able to hustle like an immigrant and make every moment count, basically. You'll also see more opportunities as you start to master your domain, attend nearby events, meet people and mentors, etc. Sorry if this is vague advice.

Hey, Leo. I'm really interested in how you would respond to this. I'm someone who's not really well-versed in varied subjects, yet I'm interested in a lot of topics. I want to be broaden my perspective on life and learn some interesting stuff. What do you think are the most fascinating subjects you've ever learned about in the world, outside from the experiential, spiritual, and consciousness-related topics? If you had to come up with a list of topics of study that no one should go their lives without learning about, what would be on that list? ex. Neuroscience, Sociology, etc.

The key is mastery. I don't You don't have to specifically start a business. It's important to realize all the things that you CAN do, though. You can become a master and trust in the process, and you can learn about the business side of things even if you were never interested in business. You could actually start a company that's related to what you're mastering, or you could join together with someone who is doing as you gain enough career capital. Pretty sure the keys include mastery, being a creator of some sort and contributing, but you have to focus on yourself and meet your needs and may need to build a foundation before you can go off and take a big risk with business. Then, you can find ways to work towards autonomy, passive income, a business, etc. I found the courage to go through with an idea of turning my main hobby into my life purpose, but I found that I'll have to really develop mastery in the main field in order to establish career capital before I can specialize further into a niche, become more creative and start a company, or some creative outlet like a YouTube channel or website where I can help people in my field of expertise. It's like how Leo's life purpose starts with reading, digesting, and practicing the psychology he's learning. That's the mastery part, but to convey it to people, his life purpose includes improving at shooting videos, learning business aspects, and maybe even web development in order to deliver it all to us. I think the key is that once you find what you want to master, you become so dedicated that can get through the drudgery in order to convey your mission. The long-term results will just be so worth it to complete your vision that you'll want to figure out how to improve and share your work with the world.

In hopes of inspiring people trying to discover their life purpose, I wanted to share my story. This is the story of someone who went into college for the money. He tried, under pressure, to turn his major into a passion, instead of turning his passions into a career. My situation: I'm finishing up college at a computer science major. I went into the field because I thought there'd be a lot of money in it, and that from going to school, I'd get my ass kicked into high gear and be able to get a good job. I was into PC gaming, like a lot of other CS majors, and chose the career because of that. I didn't think about being a creator, or the huge impact I could have or anything like that. From at least 5 years back, I started really getting into anime and Japanese culture. I started studying the language 2 years ago, and I started to actually see the potential of what I can do with it. I enjoy reading and writing, and I enjoy a well translated manga or visual novel. I think that in a way, translation can be a form of art. A good translation of a translated manga can literally make or break the impact of the work. In this sense, as a translator, you're interpreting the original story and conveying it to an English (or whatever 2nd language) audience. It's a tireless and meticulous career, working on translation, but I also mastering the language will be viable long-term. I worry a bit for betting it all on mastering a language, but I don't believe that prose in Asian languages can be translated into English prose by AI in my lifetime. The written language is so contextual and requires a real brain to determine what's going on in context. Mastery: Whenever Leo talks about the mastery process and coming to enjoy the work itself, it just rung so true with my casual study of Japanese over the past 2 years. I started to actually enjoy looking up individual Japanese words just for the sake of knowing them well, and for the sake of mastery. The reason is fluency, but Japanese is something that I didn't angrily dread pouring hours of frustrating and dread into. I started to enjoy the process itself, and when I have the time, I would slow down to be more thorough studying. Through the law of attraction, I started to get more interested in the culture, in cooking, I started meeting people at college who are into Japanese culture, and I started to look for mentors. All the sort of things that you're supposed to do when you enjoy something and want to master it, I was beginning to do with Japanese before I knew anything about self-actualization. Struggles, details (you can skip to the next section, but it has some specific details on my thoughts about the different career/life purpose prospects: My main difficulty now are some conflicting ideas about how to use the language to become a creator, outside of doing translation. I trust in the mastery process to eventually take care of my needs years down the road, so that I can become so skilled that I can translate, because my literal purpose for living is Japanese, but I've discovered my values and strengths, and I'm reviewing them daily. My life purpose statement I previously made was about programming, because I didn't even consider that I could turn my main hobby, the study of this language, into a career. I thought it was too impractical, and that programming was the logical, safe choice to quickly get that $40-70k job as a coder, as I let my years spent on interests just die completely, in hopes of discovering passion for programming. Some other fundamental issues I have with Japanese - it is largely escapist fantasy. For any Redpill readers here, a lot of this content is pretty much "The Ultimate Blue Pill Fantasy." But I think that by focusing on the creative aspects on the medium, and by translating material that inspires people is ultimately a good thing. Movies and TV shows are also escapist fantasies, but not everyone takes the same thing out of a movie. From Leo, I learned that you can watch a movie with the goal of being inspired from it, like with Jodorowsky's Dune. It's a bit complicated, because I got into Japanese content through escapism, but I feel like studying the language and changing the mediums I consume (more visual novels now than anime) has reduced the dopamine spiking and raised my consciousness a bit. There's plenty of depraved Japanese content that gets associated with anime, and this parallels all the addicting software and social media that's out there with programming. There's pretty much no creative medium I enjoy that doesn't have cons to it. You can even use classical music and fine art as distractions from doing work. Some interesting aspects of Japanese - I find the mediums of manga and visual novels to be especially moving. They're not the same sort of quick, instant gratification experiences that you could get in video games. You'll often a dozen hours on a single story arc before any major climax happens in a visual novel. My highest emotional peaks and peak interests were hit when I was reading visual novels. I think that by spreading this medium to the West, gamers and people who enjoy anime will learn to enjoy the calmer, slower paced aspects of entertainment, and of life itself. Some issues I have with programming and technology: The impact that technology has had on our society, lowering our attention spans, lowering people's consciousness, and all these little quick apps, I feel have actually fucked over my generation in a lot of ways, and now people are dealing with heavy procrastination with all the free dopamine everywhere. Men don't have enough positive male figures in their life, and porn and entertainment is so easily accessible that technology leads to escapism. Of course, technology is a tool and this is a huge negative generalization of it. Mark Zuckerberg might've had a positive creative vision with Facebook and creating his company, and a lot of these companies might actually have great intentions. Being connected with tons of your friends online sounds great in theory, but the anxiety, the fake posts, the instant gratification and dopamine, the distraction element, the attention span and motivation reduction, and all these other side effects are just killers for me. Rather than working with social media or making some game apps, I would want to create some meaningful software, and to spread self-actualization ideals through the software, but I spent years trying to program and never came to really enjoy the process. I'm annoyed that I was so unconscious when building up all this resistance, and didn't understand how I could ever possibly come to WANT to program. I spent every day of my life for years comparing myself to others, thinking about the money, programming under pressure, all before I grasped these self-actualization fundamentals, that made me really believe that I could catch up to and even surpass these friends of mine who are going off to work at Google. Career counselors at my college told me "Not everyone can be like him, but you can still get a good job programming." I think now that if could even make some productivity-related software, it would be really beneficial for people, and it would convey things like discipline through usage and support of my software. I also think that programming will become really chaotic, and in order to gauge the marketplace, I have to really stay plugged in. I would end up being a problem solving sort of career rather than a creative one, at least for some years until I become good enough to gain career capital and creative control. My entry into a programming career could be be too rigid for too long before I can create anything that I feel is meaningful. They say programming is just problem solving, but I don't want to be some reactive problem solver for a company. The solution to this that I came up with was working with Startup companies, and focusing on the creative aspect of programming. I'm definitely capable of becoming an excellent programmer, I believe, but with my conflicting passion with Japanese, and my low consciousness resistance towards programming that I built up from coding under pressure for my classes, it's not right. 10 years down the road, I think programming could be the better option, and I think in the near future I'll start doing it as a side hobby, so I can enjoy it and burn through my resistance. 10 years from now, it could become a new life purpose, or be combined with Japanese once I've become a master and have some economic security. There are other aspects of my life like health, fitness, and relationships that I need to work on, and having two exhausting mental hobbies, Programming and Japanese, isn't going to work out if I want to achieve those goals. My Big Fuckups: (choosing what was possible as a career) I didn't TRULY consider using my years spent on hobbies AS my career. I didn't believe I could do it. I didn't pitch the idea to my parents, even though I knew that I have a good 3-4 years of financial saving saved up. How was I going to tell them that this language I study for fun could actually become a career? Until last summer, I didn't have the confidence to speak up to my mom much at all, until I found TheRedPill and read No More Mr. Nice Guy and started building up my confidence. With learning Japanese, I sometimes guilted myself for spending too much time on it, instead of on college and my career. (NEVER GUILT YOURSELF). I went through Leo's Life Purpose Course and partially preselected Programming as the medium, though I had 3 or 4 other big ideas based on other interests and skills. I had Japanese as an idea on that list, along with writing, but I thought my parents wouldn't allow it and I don't have the financial freedom right now. There are a lot of other psychological investments I've made with Japanese that my ego won't let go of. I have friends of over 10 years that share the same interests as me. Trying to cut my ties with Japanese is equivalent to mental suicide at this point. At the end of my semester in college, I started having so much fun with people of similar interests, and I suddenly felt like "holy shit, I belong with these people." and was doing a lot of meta-analysis of the experience. I felt really overly attached to these people, because I felt like I would have to give up Japanese and sever connections with them next semester to transition into a programming regimen and career. When the semester ended, I felt extremely awful, worse than when my best friend died. I didn't even know that I could ever feel that level of emotional despair. I spent years repressing my hobbies and avoiding people with similar interests, investing into shallow one-sided friendships. At this point, I truly understood the inherent bias of having friends with similar interests - they actually care. Yes, it's a biased, neurotic, cliquey sort of caring that Leo talks about, because they value you because of your shared interests, but this leads to a real tight friendship. It's hard to find people who will be as egalitarian as you try to be, and will appreciate your interests the way you appreciate theirs. Sever attachments from people who don't love and support you, because life is too short to maintain so many shallow friendships. Investment is probably why Leo chose to combine his Sage advice with Actualized.org, rather than leave and become a sage himself, because he's become really invested in helping us, and he'd be abandoning the life purpose he adopted. On the other end of my own ego investment, I have a ton of negative ego investments against programming. I projected all my pain and anxiety towards it, by feeling like it's taking away time from my hobbies, and is creating all of my anxiety and unhappiness. I'd overeat just to be able to program more and get past the pain. I exhibited pretty much every neurotic behavior in the book to many extremes, when it came to programming. I would talk shit behind people's back because they were successful at programming and I wasn't. I thought that since these guys didn't do anything besides programming, they "didn't have a life," because they didn't have other hobbies. In reality, these programmers who enjoy their work and understand the mastery process are actually the happiest people I've ever met. Understanding the mastery process and my own potential to master anything, I feel that my biggest regret was pouring so much negative emotion into something that I actually always wanted to become good at. I felt like I wasn't talented, that it didn't come natural, or that I would lose myself and my hobbies if I dedicated all my time to programming. I realized that these beliefs are something your mind has built, especially with things you've attempted over and over again before learning about self-actualization, and so even with newfound objective information on the hours it takes to master something, and a path to doing it, it will still feel like we sometimes inherently can't do it. tldr; Basically, I see the beauty in Japanese culture, spreading it, focusing on lower dopamine mediums in Japanese, using translation and the written word as a medium, and I've got some intrinsic motivation for mastering the language. Hour for hour, the money will probably come later with Japanese for me, and I might be working slave wages until I'm truly excellent. I'd rather master Japanese and translate, starting at slave wages, than go into programming for the money like everyone wants me to. I'd rather "waste my degree" and follow my bliss, because it lights my fire. I recognize my own bias towards people who share the same interests as me and the connection I feel with those people, and my bias towards anything Japanese. I enjoy plenty of things outside of Japanese, even moreso thanks to self-actualization, and I enjoy talking with people who don't share my interests at all, thanks to mindfulness. I'm utilizing this subjective and biased reality of mine in order to master Japanese. I can't realistically do both programming and Japanese to a high degree, and Leo explained this. The mind subconsciously homes in on ways to optimize learning and retention when you have a singular purpose. It's like a heat-seaking missile, as he says. You start finding the most optimal methods, and because your purpose is so important to you, you see the longterm payoff and invest in those better methods, because of the long-term payoff for the effort in advance. Your time becomes precious. Being married to your life purpose and being disciplined to it gives you the freedom to relent to it. I have to redo part of Leo's Life Purpose Course with Japanese in mind, as I work towards mastery. My recommendations for those seeking their life purpose: Look for what you've done the most in life, something where you feel like you've gone through steps of the mastery process, and have begun to enjoy. Truly forget the money. Get a part-time job or some financial security (refer to Maslow's Hierarchy and what Leo says about supporting yourself first, and then going on to be a creator). Don't go to college until you're ABSOLUTELY sure about what you want to do, and I recommend dedicating hundreds of hours on your own into working on your skill you plan to Master before majoring in that field in college, so that you don't fall into the traps of working for the money. See what other people are doing with your productive hobbies - look at the creators on YouTube. Look at the people who teach your hobby, if it's something like that. Ideally it should be a hobby that's somewhat productive. You can even combine 2 things you enjoy, like watching movies and writing reddit replies --> into doing some sort of meta-analysis of movies as a video career or something. I think that if you've taken one of your hobbies so far that you find yourself saying "I can't live without this," you may find that you have already selected your life purpose. Tap into that, and go all in and see how much energy you can summon into working towards that hobby every day. See how confident you feel when you imagine "I can just utilize this one main hobby of mine, increase the priority to the top, and I can let the other ones go." Also, as a general thing: Watch Leo's Foundational videos on YouTube. They helped give me a clear picture of self-actualization. Also, don't fall into the trap of settling for a shitty life purpose or career simply because of having the goal of Enlightenment and enjoying the Now. The whole point of Actualized.org is to become the best that you can be, not become some enlightened guy at 7-Eleven. The Maslow's Hierarchy video was also really helpful in this regard, since I was actually debating between mediocrity + enlightenment. Also, not to sound like a shill, but the Life Purpose Course helps a lot of things click together. I think I learned to some extent like 50-70% of the theory from Leo's videos. I think a key to taking the course is to do it when you feel you're financially stable, or if you're in high school or college. The confidence you get from having a more complete picture, though, is worth the $250. You have to think of it as an investment in yourself, just like the food you eat, the house you live in, the books and video games and coffee mugs and crap you buy. Don't be afraid to invest in yourself, especially for the long-term. You only get one life. I can finally proudly share this video from Alan Watts, because I feel that I'm living it now - And if you still want to convince me how easy it is to become a programmer, I'll check some resources you send to try and do it on the side, but my life purpose is to master Japanese and become a creator with it.

Eh, I was gonna write a long reply to this, but I'll try to keep it concise. I've contemplated this idea for years, as a way to turn my interests into a career. I have specific goals with learning and mastering the language, but I went through the course keeping anything Japanese-related on the backburner, because I didn't believe I could make a living through it, or do it with an impending student debt, especially before understanding the Mastery process. I enjoy looking at all different cultures and seeing what different world views are. I don't "just" like Japanese culture. At college I've learned about African American Culture, different religions, Latin American culture, and my own city's history. I've also built up an appreciation for the learning process itself through Japanese. Learning this language has given me first-hand proof of the Mastery process and self-actualization. I was already finding ways to keep me on track with the process, by finding mentors, taking advantage of opportunities, making friends of connections. Is this your greatest passion and joy in life? Being able to make the mediums that I enjoy the most become more accessible to other people would give me a huge amount of passion and joy, yes. Would tears of joy pour out of you when you think about what you've done years later in your life? I already tear up when I see the contribution I have in the community, when I put a lot of effort into a recent project on the learnjapanese subreddit. I made an impact with a post I made for improving at Japanese with a certain flash card deck I spent days constructing, and it received thousands of views and downloads, and it's helping people accomplish their goal of learning the language. I did it because I wanted to help people, and quality checked it a lot, and I didn't even expect as many views as it got. Impact is important, and I'm still seeing how else I can help people who are learning languages. I see the impact that polyglots have on the language learning community, and the impact of Westerners who have become fluent in the language, and serve as mentors and inspiration for people. Is this the most meaningful thing that you can do in this single life that you had. Right now I think it is. The only other ideas I've had felt lofty, or as if I had just taken them from people and friends who have done the same work already. I can use this language to become a creator, because I see the beauty in it beyond just the anime stuff. If I had to pay to do this, would I do it? I'm essentially doing that now, by going with this instead of a more conventional career. I could easily go make more money while doing IT work. I invest money into learning the language already. I've sacrificed grades and sleep for it. What exactly is my passion or fascination with the language? It's something that just evolved over time and changed forms. I started out just watching anime and reading manga like everyone else. I got interested in the language and I kept at learning it. I started actually learning about the country, the good and the bad.I learned about how safe Japan is, the low gun ownership, the beauty and simplicity of the Japanese countryside and of Japanese lifestyle, the mindset of eating less, Okinawa being the place in the world where one can live the longest. I learned about the often insane work hours, the xenophobia, the poverty, the gaijin hunters, the women who trap men, the low birth rates and the sexual decline. I started cooking, got into cooking Thai, Chinese, and Japanese food, along with a lot of more common recipes, and people really enjoy my cooking. I thought I might become a chef or try to fuse cuisine or something. I thought "Well, if I can enjoy a show in Japanese, why not a movie in French or Portuguese? Why not documentaries in other languages, about other countries? Why don't I try to learn other languages besides Japanese? What about different food culture? What about all the great culture in my city that I'm missing out on? What about history, a subject I used to hate learning about in school?" It opened a lot of doors and new perspectives for me. Ultimately, a lot of it boils down to a fixation on the language, and it's given my life a lot of meaning. It feels so ridiculous to try and change my interests to something way different in order to tap into this drive to succeed and create with this hobby. I need to master the language as my main domain, and create using the language in some form, and see the ideas that arise that are aligned with my values. Leo said to "take care of your basic needs first, and then worry about your impact on the world," and that's why I'm focusing on mastering the language first, to build the career capital, but then avoid simply stagnating as a translator or interpreter, so that I can become a creator. All I wanted to say was that, I think people are too quick to write off their hobbies as unproductive, or obsessive or childish. When I started actually learning the language and discussing culture with people, instead of just recommending anime, people started to take me seriously, instead of just being "that weaboo." I developed discipline and interest in lower dopamine activities. The language and culture obviously have a lot of stigma, and I knew I'd get criticism from this post, so I had to make it.

I wish I could get some my younger friends who are closer to your age than mine to buy into self-actualization. You'd be so set for life, and you could avoid the trap of going into college without a clear idea of what you want to do (or possibly avoid college altogether). Your lack of life experience is fine, because you'll have years of practice with self-actualization while your brain is still developing, and you can work on your consciousness, enjoying the moment, learning to enjoy work and shed bad habits while figuring out what you enjoy and can create. Maybe don't go completely workaholic and get rid of every unproductive habit, but find ways to make your unproductive fun into a career by extrapolating what you enjoy and combining it with your values and personality traits. I think at 14 for me, though, this would've led me down a completely different path. I was pretty much completely dead asleep until I got deep into nutrition when I was 15. I might've just become a nutritionist or something, or maybe I would've chanced video game streaming or something, since I didn't have any real hobbies outside of video games. (we're talking literal 8 hour/day games and talking on Skype.) I feel like with the self-actualization knowledge I have now, I could've figured out how to get into the best colleges easily and become #1 in my high school, but hindsight is 20-20. Seeking opportunities instead of just ignoring them completely... That's one of the biggest changes I feel with self-actualization. There's so much less regret it's insane. I see now that I can go the extra mile and extend my comfort zone. Even the smartest kids I know from my high school and in college aren't really living their passions now, and I don't feel their presence in the moment, the way they're distracting themselves with their phones and all, always trying to escape their schoolwork. Finding a life purpose is tough in today's society, though, and many people earnestly choose their best subjects and interests that they think are viable, but find that the passion is gone once they progress into college or start working. So, through the course and Leo's videos, you'll develop that spark that other kids won't have the foresight to see, and you'll be able to take advantage of it. You'll begin to associate with like-minded people as well, in high school. The self-actualization mindset alone will keep you from getting majorly fucked over in life and ending up in a passionless rut, and you can always revisit the course once you find more hobbies in high school. You'll start to see your school's opportunities and actually consider them. You might check out some clubs at school instead of just heading home, for example.

Some of the dangers I've experienced. (They're a mix of positive and negative, and this isn't meant to be sarcastic or judgmental) -Being aware of how neurotic and unconscious you and others are. -Spending your time wisely and focusing on the long-term. -Being criticized by others who are bigger failures than you, who will try to suck you back into the matrix. You may be seen as a hippie, a workaholic, or a threat for not just "going with the flow of life." -People may call you religious or atheist if you align with. -Having a life purpose that "won't pay the bills" (immediately) will piss off your parents. -You might be seen as "not having a life" because you don't waste all your time dabbling in different time-wasting activities. -Your friends will try to deplete you and waste your time and bring you back into low consciousness, and you may to leave them if their ideas don't align with your purpose. -Emotions may actually become more intense as you consciously feel them and become aware of them. -Suicidal thoughts, depression, existential crisis - happens when you still have a very incomplete picture of self-actualization. I was going through this when beginning to dive into Leo's videos. You might start to feel like "everything's pointless" until you surrender to the now and start to realize your potential, that you can do anything because you're not so separate from others, etc. -Savior Complex - you might try to save your friends and family, but most of them won't listen to you, because they're highly unconscious. I wish I had friends that meditate and do self-actualization, but ultimately it's a journey you'll primarily tread alone as you refine yourself. -Dreaming big for the first time - I didn't realize how much I had suppressed my dreams of being able to accomplish anything significant. This was a huge shift for me, in terms of my long-term goals. -Awareness of other people's beliefs, your reaction to them, and how you may embody them as well. You'll quickly notice generalizations. I think I become triggered into consciousness by what people say, and have to be aware of my need to interject "The world isn't really that way" or "it's pretty negative to see our city this way." I try and look within and see how I make these same sweeping generalizations. (Leo made a cool video on how to exploit other people for your own personal development.) -By being aware of certain behaviors, they may become autocorrected, or become harder to justify. As you become aware of certain negativity loops, playing the victim, etc., and through meditation practice, your mind may dissolve the negativity as it pops up. And this is the biggest one: Presence, Bliss in the Now, and enjoyment of the mundane beyond what I could've ever imagined. You can just go outside and really look at a tree and relent to the present moment, and realize what a ridiculous fucking miracle it is to even be alive, in that moment. You can take it in without really thinking too much, and without having to much about it. Conversations also start to happen like this, and I find myself psyching out sometimes. It might lead to become overly attached to people, and being attached to the present moment, and then rejecting the next moment. (Say you're really present while going for a walk, but you come back and lose consciousness when you have to do work.) So, it can inadvertently lead to a clinging, but you'll be aware of it, and that's cool. I would say to watch a mix of Leo's videos. Leo's video on Maslow's Hierarchy helped me a lot in consolidating the different ideas, because I was like "Wait, can I just skip to enlightenment? Can I just be that guy who works at 7-Eleven and is enlightened?" I'd be listening to a bunch of his videos on my phone, walking through my college campus, altering my interpretation of the world and the people around me. Sometimes I'd just walk through campus with no music or audio and see reality "as it is" while being aware of neurotic tendencies to project certain beliefs, judgement. So, getting the big picture is important, so I'd recommend the Life Purpose Course and to watch a ton of his videos. On this topic, I think the whole point is that you can reconcile your life purpose with self-actualization and enlightenment, and through following the hierarchy and being a creator, you're making the best use of your experience. You could become a monk, but you'd lose a lot of potential impact you could have as a creator first.

I don't think it depends on the age, but more the experience, maturity, and knowledge. You should try and experience true abundance mentality, the ability to have a selection of women to choose from and have true confidence that if she leaves or you or crosses you, that you would be completely fine by yourself. Until I personally at least reach that point, I won't get married. I thought I wanted to get married at like age 26, because I thought the world worked a certain way, but it's clear now that it doesn't. I thought I'd just find someone who likes me for who I am, or that finding someone with similar interests would lead to attraction. All of this is nonsense that women and the media have been telling men long, but I've seen how it plays out. If I get into a lot of relationships to test the waters, and then get myself into a good LTR (long-term relationship) that works out, then marriage might occur. If I have children, though, and they cheat or produce many of Leo's red flags, I'd have to either screw myself over by bending over backwards for the woman and staying in the relationship for the sake of the children, or I'd screw over the children for the sake of myself. I would have to be really aware of the risks, be the best man I can be, and be fortunate for a marriage to work out with how culture is right now. Monogamy itself is a cultural belief, and beneficial when it works out, but marrying just seems like playing Russian roulette. The odds of finding an emotionally mature person without toxic values, who you find attractive, and can maintain attraction with, is going to be extremely low, so I think I'd rather stick to short-term relationships until I really want to settle down. I could maybe look for a woman who's older and more mature to marry to improve the odds of a successful marriage, once I experience enough relationships. Or, I might have children with a surrogate mother and find a way to raise them myself, but it still wouldn't be the same. The psychological effects of not having a mother and father together way isn't something that most parents are mature enough to understand. They'd rather divorce, because "it's my life" and because they want to live the best life for themselves, thinking their children aren't suffering the lack of positive masculine figures (which are absent in Western society). Most people in the West don't even understand the necessity for a healthy diet, let alone the necessity for a traditional family. Coupling these values with individual tastes for marriage material... it's going to be a lot of work before I settle down. I'd suggest you check out TheRedPill community and Leo's relationship videos. I'm not sure if Leo has ever mentioned TRP, but it can be utilized alongside self-actualization to have a better understanding of reality and see through the cultural beliefs. Conventional wisdom doesn't teach you enough about relationships. Just like you can't ask your unsuccessful friends how to manage anxiety and find your life purpose, you shouldn't ask them for relationship or marriage advice. Ask other experienced men for advice. This post is going to sound misogynistic, but then so does a lot of what Leo says. He barely mentions women in finding their life purpose, in relationship videos, in leadership or other typical masculine roles. So, I'll say that a woman should also be exploring her options, learning about relationships, asking more experienced and fulfilled women for ways on how to get the best man they can get, to fulfill her sexual and financial needs. It's a top 20% of men get 80% of the women split, so women will have more opportunities to try guys out, so do that by all means and don't settle for a mediocre guy out of social obligation. Also, figure out the root cause of Why you want monogamy. There are so many egoic negative beliefs and societal pressures that perpetuate marriage and monogamy. There's fear of cheating, self-doubt, lack of options, Leo discusses all of these ideas in his videos. This was very important to me. I realized that I didn't have enough male friends with similar interests, so I was narrowing my scope of relationship options to people I could enjoy my hobbies with. Similar interests doesn't inherently build sexual attraction, though you'd "logically" think it does. It's a catalyst and glue for male relationships. They tell us guys to "settle down" and "share your wealth with women and children" so that you can enjoy the same sexless and anxious life that has been. I don't even have my career in order and my mom's asking me if I've found someone to marry yet in college, and asking how many children I want to have. tldr; Don't marry until you experience abundance first. Watch Leo's videos, check TheRedPill. There's also no age minimum or even maximum. Realize that you can be a 45 year-old man with experience, and marry a 20 year-old woman, and people will not really give a fuck. You aren't obligated to marry someone who's 45, has lost their beauty and feminine energy. You definitely just shouldn't settle until you are comfortable being in different relationships, being by yourself, and have achieved an abundance of options. I wrote a lot, and it might sound radical, but I also do a lot of research and I'm confident that Leo would agree with most of what I said here.

What made the Life Purpose Course the hardest for me was probably the doubt about my values as well. I spent the previous few months looking at a lot of Leo's videos, and content from certain self-actualization books, stuff from Adyashanti, Eckart Tolle, and some info from dating-related videos and RedPill mentality. I kind of overloaded my brain with a lot of theory, and it was hard to figure out what my "default" values were anymore. I based my listing on my experiences, but probably wound up with some values and strengths that seem appealing, based on what Leo has discussed and what I want to master in life. So, it's not a bad thing, but I might've picked a few weaknesses as strengths. An example: With friends I think I'm spontaneous and funny, but in general I'm also pretty shy and have become a bit of a hardass lately, when I used to not really take anything too seriously. So, Spontaneity is one of my top values, and something I'm working on. Also, "Fun" is a top value, but it could just as easily be an egoic need for distractions. Love/Romance/Intimacy is a top value but I've only experienced it through friendship. Wisdom is something on my list I'm aiming for, because I know I need a lot more experience applying all this self-actualization theory. Still, even having a list of values and strengths linked to my own experiences helps to narrow things down, and over time they could become better identified as "my own values" through what I create, and through referring to my Top Values list each day.

Might sound like a downer here, but you really can't save everyone. It might be better off just utilizing the advice to better your own life, become successful, and become an example to others in your family. It's kind of like if you were to preach how to lose weight while you're still losing weight yourself. As a loved one, he might be more likely to take your advice. A lot of my closest friends won't even bother with embarking on the self-actualization journey or checking out Leo's videos, calling it "new-age hippie nonsense" and saying "just live your life the way you want it " and whatnot. For now, you can still drop nuggets of wisdom and just be conscious and calm with people, and when you're in your 30s and become really successful, and shed a lot of the massive amounts of neurotic behavior and limiting beliefs others have, they'll be begging you for the same advice you were begging them to listen to before. Once you're successful, your advice will come to mean a lot to people. A lot of people are discovering self-actualization through trial and error anyway. A friend of mine was reading a book that was explaining concepts like Talent and Mastery that Leo has discussed in his Life Purpose Course, but my friend doesn't specifically look into all the self-actualization concepts that Leo specializes in. While we wish we can change our friends and family, know that most of them won't change. We have to commit to changing ourselves first so we can create some awesome shit in the world first. I try to get my mom to meditate regularly, and she tells me how she has no time, yet spends hours watching TV every day, and says she'll get to doing it more once she "sorts things out" first. It's kind a bit ironic to me, and it sucks when you think you know what's best for other people and actually just want to help other people. Go in with love and honesty, and be ready to accept your brother's reaction.

I guess for me, it's like 3 states of being. Not being in a state of happiness, and getting off track with my life purpose, and stalling everything makes me feel like "Oh well, I could walk out my door and get shot and that'd be pretty ok with me. I wasn't going to do anything big, anyway." Or "I could kill myself now and it wouldn't really matter. Nothing big's going on right now." If I start to get on track and realize my potential, then I start to get more realistic about it, and think more about my own safety. I re-ground myself, and I'm more careful about going out at night. When you're on a mission, you don't want it to end abruptly. But when I'm in a state of total acceptance, you really feel like "If I were to die right now, I'd be happy." When I go for walks, I usually think much about the past or future, but I sometimes flash forward to the idea of "What if I died, or wanted to commit suicide. How would I feel about it now?" to gauge how things are for me at the moment. If I'm eager to die, it might be because I'm avoiding work I need to be doing. We have to build up my ego and attachments to accomplish big goals with life purpose, so naturally I'd think you'd want to die less. But if you pair it with acceptance, you're literally ready to face anything, even death or intense suffering. The "feeling better" that you're experiencing is probably coming from a place of acceptance. Maybe you haven't thought about death as a means to escape suffering (suicide). Until we get into a near-death experience where someone puts a gun up to our head and we're forced to react, either afraid or unphased, we might not really know how deeply prepared we are for death.

I've been noticing this peculiar "issue" as I've discovered mindfulness lately. Intro: Most of my life I went through almost completely unconscious. (Anyone else like this? Haha.) Extrinsic Motivation has been running my life, and all I did was play video games growing up. I started meditating for a while on and off towards the end of last year, and only towards the end of the summer, the presence sort of "clicked in" and I felt like I had a mini Enlightenment experience. I had that sort of laughter and realized like "OH, the NOW is the only thing that matters, and despite all my problems, I can sit here meditating and enjoying the present!" There's also the "Meditation as Escape" dilemma that I haven't quite solved. Sometimes I use meditation to get away from work I have to do, and there's always that inertia following meditation where I have to be careful not to do distracting activities. I now have a strong morning meditation habit, and do other mindfulness exercises throughout the day when I can. So, for the past few months, I've been struggling with the paradox of letting go of the past and future, while enjoying the present, without getting too attached to the "just" past from a moment ago in the present. College is ending soon for me, and I only got into self-actualization in my semi-final semester (which has just ended). I didn't take advantage of my situation here, and it's still hard to get over this and start living in the Now in a productive way. Eckart Tolle's "The Power of Now" has been pretty helpful recently, though, and he has a great audiobook for it. So, I'm looking for some advice on these topics. I've been kind of confused about it recently. Examples of my Mindfulness: It's pretty easy to be mindful when I'm going for a walk, hanging out with friends, watching an episode of a TV show, exercising, shaving, etc. This used to not be the case, as I would walk to school and get completely lost in unconscious toxic thinking. Whenever these states of mindfulness and flow are over, and it's time to start being productive, I form a strong attachment to the previous activity. When I'm with friends, I start to miss them as soon as I leave, and I feel like I won't see them again. I've recently learned that neediness and attachment are unconscious behaviors, when we forget about things like the universally collected consciousness, and the illusion of being separate from one another. I learned from Leo though (on a forum post I just read) that when watching TV, you actually lose consciousness by becoming lost in the show. Maybe, in this same way, during the moments where I'm hanging out with people, I'm actually becoming deeply unconscious and becoming more attached, through the buildup of inflated and biased positive emotions and my dissonance with reality. Until figuring out what I thought was mindfulness, I had never been so able to enjoy the little conversations with people before, so it's kind of depressing to see how attached this can make me. In this regard, I think that I'm doing mindfulness well, but there are some deeper attachment issues to be worked on. I'd just spend my time thinking about my problems and other things I had to do, or spend time people's looks and social behavior, looking at how deep their voice is. I guess awareness is still deeply confusing in an external sense. So, I think the caveat with mindfulness is that it has to be done ALL the time, especially during work. If you're mindful while having fun, and then just drop back into excessive thinking and anxiety while doing work, it can cause a huge amount of suffering. It's easy for my mind to be still while I go for a walk, away from all my problems, but when I come back, everything comes at an even fuller force. I feel like the time of year and the situations in my life and habits have been leading to this overattachment, but it's hard to keep moving forward. Friends I've known for years have such a strong influence on me, and I notice these feelings of deep attachment when they come and go. There's an insane of baggage I want to get through, accept, and overcome, but the methods and approaches have been confusing me, and sometimes feel contradictory. I feel like by feeling into my emotions and negative thoughts and accepting them, it can make them stronger and give them more control. Sometimes I bring myself back to awareness without getting caught up in the emotions, and sometimes I bring them out through one of Leo's exercises. I might also be mixing up consciousness and unconsciousness. Maybe I "think" I'm conscious when I'm having fun with people, but because feelings of attachment and loneliness are building up, I'm actually losing consciousness during these situations, or after them. I recently had a fun gathering with people of similar interests at the end of the semester, and I barely got to know them, but I felt extremely attached and lonely once the gathering ended, and I scrambled to add people on Facebook, so I can keep them around forever. On a rational level, I barely know any of these people, but they share a similar hobby and it's going to be difficult to keep in touch and build up a friendship next semester and once I graduate, so I have this one-sided attachment to them, because of the hobby. I also find myself getting attached to people in my classes that I also don't know much about. I did some emotional release exercises to better accept the reality of things, but it's still a tough concept. I know that I'm not living for myself much at all. I announce my goals to friends and parents and feel like I'm living for them. I feel the urge to do this, and the urge to get attention from other people. So, I'm working on keeping my goals hidden and transitioning into intrinsic motivation. Now, here's something I've been debating. Unhooking from Facebook/Skype. I feel like when taking a break from this is great, so long as I keep up avoiding social media. I lose the urge to announce everything and I can focus on myself more. The problem is that when I go back, it feels like I get even more attached than before. The core issue is the overattachment to people and what they care about, so logically I think I should be able to engage with others, while being aware of my motivations and how I put too much care in what others say. Long-term friends don't have their shit together, yet I find myself sometimes grabbing onto their advice that contradicts the useful self-actualization advice that has helped me. My attachment is likely due to college ending, and the attachment I have to my hobby, so I guess it's natural. I feel like removing myself from people is avoiding the problem altogether, but this could also just be a trap where I keep myself preoccupied with my friends, so I'm probably going to unhook from social media for the next 3 weeks anyway. tldr; Looking for some advice on Attachment and Awareness. Some information from practical spiritual teacher might help me out. I'm all over the place with my post, and maybe I'm overthinking this and I actually understand myself really well already, but on a fundamental level, it'd be great to break through the grand illusion of "being separate."