Joseph Maynor

It's kinda paradoxical that on the one hand life has no meaning, but on the other hand it has the meaning you give it. Life is neutral. You can either cause it to get worse or get better. Might as well cause it to get better. And the older you get the more you will appreciate your life because you will see how far you've come and where you still want to go. Life is like a blank canvass. It's up to you what to do with it. You can tear it up and trash it, or you can learn to paint on it like Salvador Dali. Either way, what matters is what you got out of it. In other words, breathe meaning into your own life. Don't look outward for meaning, create your own. Then your life becomes a work of art that you are invested in. And then you can start to look at your life with a sense of pride and contribution.

I am a huge fan of reading. I read so much in my earlier years, that counter-intuitively not-reading is actually what is wise for me at this stage of my life. I found I was living my life in the books, as it were. But because I read so much in my earlier years, I have a foundation now which is amazing. You will improve your vocabulary, your knowledge, and your conceptual thinking skills. You can also improve your perspective on life. Reading also makes you much more open-minded. After all, thinking is expressed in language, so the more you read, the more you are sharpening your language/thinking skills. But, paradoxically, there can be a stage in life where burning-all-the-books is wise. There's a stage in life where you gotta get out of the matrix and go live life, and trust that you will pick up the remaining knowledge you need. I'll let you figure out when that is for yourself. That was hard for me because I spent my life in the books probably more than most people do. So, my problem was extricating myself from books, not trying to read more. But read up! It's one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself. But I think many people make the mistake of turning into scholastics, and kind of becoming addicted to pedantry. Of course, these people don't realize it. It's a blind spot for them. So, you gotta know how and when to use books and then also know how and when to throw them away. You don't wanna become a victim of living vicariously in books. Life is to be lived, and proper living is not done by reading books your whole life. Reading books is actually kind of unnatural if you think about it. You're sitting there staring at paper for long periods of time. That's what you're doing. Think about it. This is why a lot of intellectual people are kinda kooky perhaps.

@Nahm Maybe that's ok. People need to take responsibility for their own personal development. If someone needs to spoon-feed a person to do this stuff, that's kind of a red flag. I've always been super motivated to learn this stuff because I've had big problems in my life to solve. Even if Leo is doing these videos for himself, I still wanna learn what it is he can teach me, and then I take that and use it. It's like one basketball player learning from another. I think it is a requirement that you gotta really take responsibility to do this work. If people are not at that point, then they are at the pre-algebra stage of personal development. I think the current format of Leo's videos is just fine. Keep it expository. Let people apply the ideas for themselves. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

I'd like to see more practical videos myself. Like helping people get these ideas into practice in actual life. I kinda got it figured out for myself, but I bet a lot of newbies would benefit from that. And Leo has done a lot of that too to be fair. Theory is useful, but practice is where the cash-value for this stuff becomes apparent -- where a person makes a real, permanent shift in their results. Now that I got the theory down, I'm almost 100% concerned with practice in my own personal development. Where rubber and road marry and have a baby. Everything else is just ideas. Ain't nothing wrong with ideas either, you need them. But you also need real implementation of these concepts in your life. Infrastructure has to be built by you for your life. That's a bit different from theory. That's practice. Practice is what excites me nowadays. Actual change. That's what impresses me. Knowing is step 1. Doing is step 2. All theory does is get you in the game -- square 1. Now you gotta apply the theory and move your life strategically away from square 1. That's practice.

@ChimpBrain I did this. Thanks for the tip. I look forward to nipping this phone addiction in the bud.

Since I've been working on meditation and mindfulness I've become aware of the shallow dreaming I do the last couple of hours before I wake up. It's like my mind is working on reconciling my problems. Has anybody else experienced this, and what is going on here? Work is happening during this time, but I'm not exactly sure what's going on. Sometimes I'll wake up and realize it. What is your experience?

This question is inspired by Leo's vid "3 Steps to be ruthlessly effective at anything." Leo talks about finding one high-yield practice that gives good results and then running with that to get success with some endeavor. I want to see what high-yield practices people do that gives them the majority of their results in personal development. Mine: lifestyle minimalism. I've really exploited this hack to make room for what I should be working on.

I need to develop some ground rules regarding my phone usage. I'll do that now. This is a great reminder. This is one of those little time robbers where the pennies add up to big debts. A way to waste your life away. I even need to schedule time to be on this forum, because this is helping me and giving me some support. Like 30 mins per day only at a certain time. For me after work is probably best.

Work on not getting triggered emotionally by other people. You can't change them, and you don't wanna be experiencing negative emotions from them. That's a good personal development goal for you. Also examine what thoughts you are projecting onto them that have nothing to do with them. Oftentimes we project thoughts and emotions onto other people. Your annoyance probably says more about you than it does about them. Change yourself, that's all you can do.

3 great ones for the novice. These helped me, so I am giving what I actually used and benefitted from. Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins Success is a Choice by Rick Pitino 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by William Covey

Bear with me here. I'm gonna do kind of a core-dump of thoughts to consider here: Is having no filter a problem? I.e., I'm gonna be me, I'm not putting on any pretenses. What about learning to be interpersonally strategic? Is acting roles necessarily a bad thing, say when you are working your job? What to make of fears of being a fake person, fears of selling out, or fears of losing authenticity? Can you play the role of being something without being that? Are you really sacrificing anything by strategically playing roles? Is having no filter a bad or destructive thing? Esp. for business. Is it better to operate on more of a need to know basis, developing a huge filter, and being more interpersonally strategic? Is being authentic all the time a sustainable or even wise strategy to use across the board? What are some pitfalls with this strategy? Should we strategically play roles to get what we want? And does that by necessity hurt our authenticity? Does the actor hurt himself when he strategically plays roles?

Man this is tough. These are those moments in life where you learn what people mean by "nervous breakdown". I don't think I fully understood what that phrase meant until I hit rock bottom myself. When your life gets pulled-out from under you and you're left standing there like wudda I do now? And you're looking for a friend, but they are few and far between. That's some tough medicine. I hate to be hedgy about my answer, but it takes time, like 30-45 days to start to make real progress. You gotta get over that first bout with strong negative emotions. Then you gotta do the whole soul-searching stage where you try to figure out what went wrong. Then after a while that cloud of depression starts to wane and you can start to re-gain some confidence. Finally after about 30-45 days you should be able to be back on your feet and back at working your life again. But even then you're still kind of wounded -- but you're stronger and smarter now. It's these rock-bottom moments in life that grow you the most. And you realize how few your true supporters really are. So there's plenty of take-away from this, and this will cause you to shed a skin and mature which will improve your whole life. It's hard to remain a child when you are forced to grow-up. That's one of the effects of these situations: You gotta fix it all by yourself. I like Leo's answer to go off alone to the woods. You need time and space to get your new path started. You gotta forge a new trail. Plan it out.

Being a loser. I've made a lot of progress here, but here goes. Ruining my own life by not taking the actions that I know I should be taking because I am too weak and spoiled to get my stuff together and do it for real. Always finding some reason to postpone my dream until tomorrow. Letting my negative emotions weigh-me down. Enacting self-fulfilling prophesies or death-wishes because a part of me feels very at home in failure, in quitting. Part of me feels very used to being depressed, comforted by it in a way. Like the forlorn loner talking to himself, off by himself in his own mind, in his own displaced world. Being a loser addict, not capable of being responsible in this dog-eat-dog world. Like the perpetual College kid who never grows-up, never having to worry about making money, distracted by his own constant theorizing and thinking. Now that spoiled-brat guy is dropped into this world and has to pay real bills, has to get his own act together for real. Happiness means change, and change is scary. Like I said, I've made huge progress with this, but I wanted to give you an honest answer to a question that made me think. For some people being practical comes easy. For me, being in my head and philosophical comes easy. So, I really had to change some basic wiring in myself to start getting practical results, which I have. There's nothing worse than feeling like you are an alien on this Earth.

@Emerald I tried being 100% authentic all the time and almost everybody started to hate me. Because I just said what I wanted to all the time. Your response is very wise. You can't just operate without any filter at all unless you are independently wealthy and don't care about offending people. In other words the advice to be authentic is kind of dangerous advice. I'm not saying anybody gave that advice, including Leo, but I found out that my implementation of that advice in my life caused me some pretty bad results.

I think the first step is to become very mindful about the emotions you are actually feeling throughout your day. Maybe take a trip out of town by yourself for 3 days and become highly aware of the emotions you are actually feeling throughout your day. Before you can fix the problem you gotta see the nature of the problem you have. I am doing this work now, and I am surprised at how much anger, fear, grief, and apathy I have in my life right now. It's huge. So, now I see where I am so I can now make a plan of action to solve the problem. But the point I wanna make here is take a look at your real emotions that you have throughout the day. I didn't realize I have so many negative emotions all the time that are weighing-down my life. It's like using a dipstick to check the oil in your car. Get that realistic understanding of where your emotional life sits, because if you're like me, you are not yet fully aware of this. It helps to go away somewhere by yourself to do this work. You gotta extricate yourself from your life to get an objective assessment of your current emotional life. I am traveling by myself right now so now I see my emotional life in high-relief, and it's like yikes! I got a big problem with negative emotions ruining my life too, and I never realized the extent and true nature of my problem until now. Not fully. Begin with awareness.

I think there are some universal hacks. I am working on happiness now in my life and getting a lot of results. I find these tips from Leo in his video "How to Feel Happy" to be really useful and I am working on getting them wired in my life: 1. Gratitude; 2. Optimism; 3. Stop Overthinking; 4. Eliminate Addictions; 5. Build Deep Relationships; 6. Savor Life's Joys; 7. Meditation; 8. Get Into Flow; 9. Goals and Life Purpose. And then the other one I want to list is getting your triggers handled so you get your negative emotions and neuroses handled. I have a huge imbalance between negative emotions and positive emotions right now. I'm working on reversing that ratio, while at the same time trying to remove triggers as well. Chase the positive feelings and de-program the negative feelings from your life. But at the same time, paradoxically, don't need the positive feelings. Learn to be happy just inhabiting emptiness, inhabiting being. Another source of happiness I've found is the realization that you are causing positive growth to your life. That you are creating positive change for the better to your life.

I'm realizing that the more I treat my life like an engineer would treat creating or optimizing some system, the easier it becomes to change my life. Creating and programming-in modules, strategically, in light of the theory, allows me to tweak my own life like a programmer tweaks a machine. Personal development work is almost like anti-malware software in the sense that you want your life to be giving you the results you want and not to be hung-up on bugs or slowed-down on irrelevant processing. You wanna be running smooth and happy, on point, and getting the results you want. So, I find that systems thinking, even thinking of myself as a system, has really allowed me to optimize my life by breaking it down into sub-systems or modules, like the way an engineer approaches optimizing a machine. And this kind of "probing and plugging" paradigm has allowed me to create some great results. We are just complex systems that need to be optimized, and we alone must craft the modules and infrastructure and get them plugged -into our own lives. I realize now that this systems thinking is a meta-narrative that I find useful in my personal development. It allows me to chop myself up into manageable variables which then can then be isolated, optimized, and measured. I like to merge the scientist with the poet in my life. So, the new video is right up my alley this week Leo! I feel so caught-up finally, like I am right where I need to be right now. I find that working on infrastructure has really improved my life. Find infrastructure that implements your ground-rules. Your ground-rules are the things that you need to do to get what you want and to give-up what you need to give-up. Implementing infrastructure, often by trial-and-error -- like plugging modules into my daily routine like an electrical engineer might test different circuit possibilities -- has given me a ton of results. Find what works, and then bam! you get that module plugged-in and handled and now you can go work on the next module to perfect the next optimization to your life. And you work your way up the exponential curve of results. That way you solve problems permanently instead of having to keep circling-back -- you can move on to the next hack, next optimization, and get the next module designed, built, and finally wired-in. So, I find this kind of systems-thinking useful and practical in personal development.

I think self-actualization is more like a process than a destination. If you think you've arrived, you missed the point. There is always an improvement you can make to remove some obstacle or perform some optimization to your life. There is a positive change you can always identify and shore-up with some kind of infrastructure to improve the results of your life. That optimization process, strategically implemented is self-actualization. Self-actualization is a lifestyle more than it is a definition. It's an attitude towards optimizing your own life. So, none of us are self-actualized. We all sit at different points in 3-dimensional vector-space away from a common origin point, and our vectors are all pointing in different directions. That's what a static snapshot looks like. The question is, how do we strategically change our coordinates to optimize our own vector as it currently sits.

Will Durant. I recommend everybody read "the Story of Philosophy" -- listen to the Audible version. Also check out his 11 volume magnum opus "The Story of Civilization". That's also available on Audible. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Read "the Essays". Also available on Audible. Read "the Divinity School Address", available online for free. These works changed my life. I'd like to carve a middle ground between Will Durant and Ralph Waldo Emerson myself. That's what inspires me. The factual mind marries the poetic mind; fact and symbol had a baby. Not to stereotype either man, since both were very complex.

Here's what I do. I practice 1 hour of meditation daily, which includes: 20 minutes of concentration practice, 10 minutes of do nothing meditation, 10 minutes of active release meditation, 10 minutes of awareness focus meditation, and 10 minutes of mindfulness meditation. Then, throughout the day I embrace emptiness and try to maintain awareness. This becomes more and more sustainable when your daily meditation practice gets really locked in. But be mindful of distracting yourself from being in emptiness. You wanna learn to embrace that emptiness and be mindful of objects as they come through your input portals to keep your monkey-mind from having you go down too many crazy rabbit-holes. When you are aware of the nature of the inputs the monkey-mind can't sabotage you as frequently. This is why mindfulness meditation is so important and useful in practice. It's a bubble-burster. You will realize -- that's just a thought, it has nothing to do with that person. And the pre-neurotic issue drops away. The rabbit hole never has a chance to form in the first place. So you can use mindfulness to prevent obstacles like rabbit holes, overthinking, and negative emotions, as well as other neat stuff like auto-correcting problems.

Give us a practice that you do daily that you would recommend that other people do. One from me -- I take a full bath (not shower) every morning and that helps relax me for my day. It is one little hack that surprisingly has paid large dividends to me. Just that little luxury of taking a bath instead of a shower every morning. If meditation, please specify or describe the kind of meditating you do. How do you act or not act while meditating? Just saying meditation doesn't tell me much.

Well, I've figured it out already, but the last category that I had to figure out and deal with is the category of "Soft Addictions". I think you should do a video on that subject. It would be very useful and is needed. Until I investigated this, I had no idea how many I had. And it's like -- if you don't identify the problem, you can't deal with it. So, if I had been aware much earlier in my life about Soft-Addictions, I would have been much better off in my personal development. But I'm glad I am getting it handled now, and I'm getting huge results from doing this work of identifying and removing soft-addictions.

I've totally gone away from the harsh-discipline approach. I think I had to do it long enough in my life to realize that it didn't work for me. I work 100% on positive motivation and I outline very clearly the mandatory adversity I have to face to implement my life purpose, and I try to actually relish taking that adversity because I know that that is what is causing my growth, and the reward of increase in my positive emotions and a decrease in my negative emotions. When it comes to facing my mandatory adversity, I do use a kind of stern discipline when I have to, but I try to be loving when I do it. Maybe like the way that a loving mother carefully disciplines an unruly child. I find that self-love and patience and care for myself work much better than the harsh-discipline approach. I am actually getting amazing results using this approach right now in my life. It's kind of counter-intuitive, and I was paradigm-locked on the harsh-discipline theory myself for a long time. It's paradoxical that the way to achieve self-control is not by use of force but by use of love. But if you think about it, it all comes back to positive motivation being more sustainable than negative motivation.

Yes. I think it is healthy practice to re-build your life from the bottom up. I keep very few possessions for this reason. I like to have a very basic grasp of my needs and satisfy them very carefully. Otherwise we basically just get distracted and over-saturated with addictions. That doesn't help us, it sabotages us. Additionally, I am working on not getting triggered by the distractions. I shouldn't be getting annoyed by the distractions. That would be optional adversity not mandatory adversity. I have a zero tolerance rule for optional adversity. So, I need to develop an exercise I can run to solve this little issue for me. It's not bad, but I still need to do a little work on not being triggered by the distractions. I should be able to get to that point. That's a new goal for me.