Wicked

Hi guys, Quick question. How to find happiness and optimism inside myself? I mean - I don't want it to be caused by external factors, like having a passion, girlfriend, whatever. I'm a 20 years old guy, regularly working out, trying to be the best version of myself. In a hope of achieving 'happiness'. But it's like a butterfly - I don't ever catch it. I think the problem is in my thought patterns - I rarely think optimistically or have positive expectations. How to fix this? I have a feeling, that my emotional 'baseline' is very low. Thanks!

I didn't say I want to get rid of any emotions. I just want to change my 'baseline', my ordinary, day-to-day normal emotional state, which is very dull these days. It's not that I want to be positive 24/7.

I'm doing that already.

Thanks for the replies. I think I didn't explain well what I mean. So - the thing is - I want to have more positive emotions. Because my baseline of emotions for everyday life is somewhere around 'neutral' to 'a little bit depressed/sad'. I don't know where it comes from, I think I wasn't like that few years ago. Gratitude worked for me for some time, but after some time I didn't feel much when I listed 3 things that I am grateful for. What I recognized is - I feel much better when I think about the best possible future, when I try to smile even when I don't want to, generally when I expect the best out of every situation. It kinda makes me realize, that I might be a little bit down because of 'ordinariness' of life. I mean - it's like I forgot about my dreams, aspirations, goals, my best self. Reality numbed me down. I don't feel like I have hope for something very good in the future, even though I know logically there are many things that will be amazing. There's no excitement for anything in me, even though I have many interests. I feel dull most of the time. And I'm pretty sure it's a matter of mindset and mind control. Do you have any suggestions for mini-habits or habits to implement, to get rid of that kind of mindset?

Hi, recently I got more and more interested in enlightenment work. It interests me deeply. I come to my first realizations, but enlightenment work takes more and more time. I don't want to reject self development, but sometimes when I work on myself I feel that I am lying to myself. Because there is no real self, there is only awareness. I am 20 yo and don't want to settle only on enlightenment work. I want to have cool ass job, make my dreams come true, etc. Maybe I want to make enlightenment work my priority, but I don't want to leave all self - development stuff. I think it's useful. But also I don't want to strengthen the belief, that I am the ego, which self-development seems to do. What's your opinion on it? Thanks!

I am just afraid my self development work will work against my enlightenment work. And the other way round too.

That I know... I am just conflicted and I don't know how to solve it.

Hi! I have a question about goals. Recently I just realized I have too much of them. Of course I minimized the list to 3 most important goals for me for now, but that's not actually the question. The question is - should you focus all your energy on just one goal at a time? For example, for now I want to create one source of passive income for myself. I am 20 years old, I'm in relationship, I study psychology and I work. These are my most time consuming activities. In all of these areas I see a lot of room for improvement, but I don't feel and think that in these areas there is the most important goal I should be having now. On one hand I would like to improve myself in every area of my life. Financially, socially, healthwise, etc. But I know there's not enough time for it all. On the other hand I love the feeling of being focused only on one goal. The feeling happens for example right before semester exams - that's when I put 100% of my efforts in the area of education. And it gives me massive results - I have 4.8 grade average after 1 year and it seems like it will happen this year too. It also makes me feel great, as I said - I just love the feeling of razor-sharp focus. Besides that I want to achieve mastery in what I do. I'm a very active person and I have million new ideas per minute, that's why I am not so sure about staying focused on just one goal. But I know I won't achieve anything significant without cutting off innecessary activities. How would you deal with that? For example - now I seriously consider just focusing ONLY on building my passive income stream, but at the same time I have 1 offer connected with changing my job and one offer which is somehow 'temporary job' for 1 month, but I would get paid much more, like 3,5 times more than in my normal job. None of these offers reflect my main goal right now, but they are interesting... While I know that you should work on just one habit at a time, I have troubles with this rule when we talk about goals. I have plenty of them, there are many things that interest me. But at the same time I want the feeling of razor focus and mastery. What's your advice? Thank you!