Brandon Nankivell

Can't remember if this is a scientific study or cites scientific studies, but you can dive into something that resembles the science of 5-MeO-DMT production during extended periods in darkness, here: https://en.calameo.com/read/000386510277d33f36601

How is it that your LSD trip was much more insightful than 5-MeO-DMT, if it's 1000x stronger? Curious. I'm not in a position to comprehend the nature of 5-MeO-DMT given I haven't tried it myself, but have had some profound experiences on LSD that have contributed to my spiritual growth.

What I read and have read: Business: We create and share animated life-changing book summary videos.

You already have it. But if you mean on a legal level - Yes.

Second this

@Rilles It doesn't feel sufficient to provide 5, based on my assumption of what's really being asked. So here's a list of 21 books that have had the most profound impact on my once-self-described 'self-improvement journey' + my now 'spiritual journey'. Roughly in chronological order. Self-Improvement Journey (2014-2019) The Two-Week Lucid Dreamer by Derek Raltson A random e-book I found on the iBooks store one day when I was bored in bed and messing around with my phone. I had my first lucid dream within a few weeks. Even though it only lasted 5 seconds, it was a euphoric experience! And paved the way to further reading and my first entrance into the world of self-improvement. Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely My first dive into understanding the behaviour of myself and others. Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki The first ember of realization that I could build a business as my wealth vehicle and free myself from the system to a certain degree. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey Great classic self-help that has served me well in life and business. The Millionaire Fastlane The next level up from Rich Dad Poor Dad that really gets into the specifics of building that wealth vehicle. Has served me well. The Choose Yourself Guide to Wealthy by James Altucher I grew to love Altucher's absolute transparency about the terrible situations he's been in. Divorce. Losing his house. Failing at business multiple times. Being a geek. The Game by Neil Strauss Blew my world apart. Understanding social dynamics and female psychology. Wow. Ended up getting into the whole pick-up scene and learned alot, although that's well behind me now. The Story of the Human Body by Daniel Lieberman Sheesh. Blew up my world-view. Helped me understand more about my behaviour and the current situation of humans and society in the last 300 years. Made me question more about what I eat, why we wear shoes, the authenticity/lack-of-authenticity of doctors etc. Sex God Method by Daniel Love Title says it all. Evolutionary Psychology by David Buss Another reality-blower like The Story of the Human Body. Work The System by Sam Carpenter Has completely changed the way I do business. Has improved it. I don't work much these days and business still grows at a nice level. Systems for the win. The Rational Male by Rollo Tomassi Helped me come to terms of the realities of life. Has helped me become way more detached from outcomes than I once was. Especially in the domain of relationships with women. The Future Is Faster Than You Think by Peter Diamandis Crazy how things are converging so fast with technology. Potential to completely change what we typically value and how we typically conduct ourselves on the spiritual path. And it's closer than we think. Being Infinite by Martin Ball The first book that I can remember where I began to enter the 'spiritual side of self-improvement'. Watched Leo's interview with Martin Ball and also had a chat with Martin myself. Incredible stuff. Encouraged me to pursue psychedelics further. Spiritual Journey (2020) The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness Still self-improvementy but Ravikant is pretty woke. A great summation of 10's of books I've read earlier on in my life. But possibly better thanks to Ravikan's way of communicating. Out of Your Mind by Alan Watts A beautiful aid for helping me understand non-duality on a conceptual level. Love, Freedom, and Alonelness: The Koan of Relationships by Osho Absolutely ripped my life apart in the greatest way. Took me to the next level of consciousness. Osho speaks Truth like I've seen in no other to date. Had a library of 150,000 books and spent much of his childhood in silence. It's my understanding that he was fully enlightened. Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic by Osho Page turner. Gasping every second page. In my top 5, hands down. Letting Go by David Hawkins An incredibly useful tool that's helped me to gauge where I'm at on my spiritual journey. And where others are at so I know the greats are to study. The Bible by Who The Hell Knows For Sure I took Duncan Trussel's suggestion on his JRE episode and read the Book of John under the influence of LSD. Some of the bible verses are crazy when viewed in this manner. When you replace 'God' as in white-beared guy in the sky with 'God' as in pure consciousness, the Bible completely changes. One verse for example is, "Be still and know that I am God". The Gnostic Gospels There's a fantastic description of Non-Duality in one of the Gnostic Gospels that were left out of the mainstream Bible. I believe it was Jesus who put forward the description.

Wake up. Read for 0-3 hours. Eat a healthy breakfast. Singing happens in the kitchen. Walking happens in nature for ~1 hour. Sometimes sitting and doing nothing under a tree happens. Hop on a team meeting call. Do some animation. Do businessy stuff. Research psychedelics, religion, and spirituality for 2-6+ hours. Read for 0-2 hours. Sleep.

410 books over ~7 years.

This was claimed by Shawn Stevenson (author of Sleep Smarter) on the Tom Bilyeu show. Whether the claim is true or not, the science and your own sleep-deprived self will tell you that sleep is vital for great health. So I'm curious, where are the discussions on sleep in this forum? Assuming we used a measure for optimal health where we measure 'If I were to deprive you of X for 24 hours and your objective was to stay alive, which item in descending order of importance would you want to retain?' Correct me if I'm wrong but the the order would look something like this: 1. Air Die in minutes without it. 2. Water Die in days without it. 3. Sleep No evidence that you can die from lack of sleep but longest time is ~11 days someone has gone without it, and at that point you're extremely dysfunctional. 4. Food Die in months without it (give or take, depends on many factors like individual biology, amount of body fat etc...) 5. Exercise Not sure you can die from lack of it anytime soon but many years down the track you're probably going to live a shorter and lower quality life without it. Again the assumption here is that what your body demands for survival is what equates to optimal health. Do you think this is a reasonable assumption to make? And if so, why should we focus on food and exercise before healthy sleeping habits?

There was a good response and discussion with the last sleep post, with wide agreement that sleep is important for health: So I'd love to promote further discussion by asking you the following 2 questions: 1. What is your best sleep tip? (Based off you truly getting a good night's sleep) 2. What is the biggest thing that prevents you from getting a good sleep?

1. I drives me crazy not to share more than one but if I had to choose one based on what actually enabled me to get on a good sleep schedule for the first time in my life, it was getting a sleep tracking wearable so I could actually see how well I was sleeping. Being able to see my own data gave me the motivation that I could really change it. I actually started off developing the habit of exercise because it also tracks my activity. And the immediate results with activity tracking encouraged me to improve my sleep stats so I started going to bed at a better time. 2. Travelling. I slow-travel around the world so once I rent an apartment for a month, there's not heaps I can do to alter the environment on a permanent basis so I have to make do. Right now I live in a busy part of town where noise is less than ideal and can be a bother when trying to fall asleep.

Great, I watched a few of these. My main takeaway is that he is essentially saying that most people are stressed / hold stress so the body demands more sleep. So if you stress less and be calm, you need less sleep.

@Rigel This is an interesting proposition. Do you have a link to the source video where Sadhguru says this? I'm deep into sleep research and those heavily experimenting with sleep and something that often comes up is that healthy people need less sleep. 3-4h: Anything is possible however I am yet to meet or even hear about someone who can function optimally on that amount of sleep. Does Sadghuru himself sleep for 3-4 hours a day? For now I'd only be treating it as food for thought.

If you've gone through VBA then you have all the knowledge you need right now. The effort you've put into making an engaging video is fantastic. Make more. Stay consistent. You got this.

Can you have a conversation with your Mom's colleague about how she gets her clients and how she markets herself? Better yet if you can speak to the students she tutors, you could ask them why they pay $75 instead of $25. You may not get a perfect answer but it's a start. Your Mom's colleage + the existence of companies charging $200 already tells me there are people out there willing to pay that much. I doubt it's entirely dependent on the fact that you're 25 years old, although I could be wrong. I don't know the education/student market well enough. You could try marketing yourself as a company that you happen to work for, sell to richer/prestigious students, or find a way to convey more value (learn sales!). The blanket answer for should you start charging more right now or take whatever comes is to charge more right now. It sounds to me like you have the value to provide and there is a market who pays $75-$200. I know it's scary to up your prices and risk losing clients. I've been there. But you simply will not be receiving $50-$200 for your services if you aren't willing to take the short-term risk. Good luck!

If you know what you want to do, you've spoken to a few people who have been in your chosen field for decades, and it's a field like medical/law where a degree is essential, then go for it. If you know what you want to do, you've spoken to a few people who have been in your chosen field for decades, and it's a field where no degree is technically required (art, business, philosophy, sales, agriculture etc...), then probably not. You can learn all these things on the internet and on the job in half the time, for free, or even get paid as you learn (a sales job). If you don't know what you want to do and college is free for you (because you're European) then there's no financial risk in exploring a field for a semester, although you do spend 6 months of your time. If you don't know what you want to do and college costs a substantial amount of money but your parents are paying, then you're at high risk of being the next confused/passionless drop out who wasted parent's money. If you don't know what you want to do and you have to take out a student loan, then DO NOT GO TO COLLEGE. DO NOT. It's called the student loan crisis for a reason. Books I wish I would have read before dropping out half way through college (with student loans) are Choose Yourself and 40 Alternatives to College. After I dropped out I pursued starting an online business and am forever glad I did. I dedicated my time to learning 'meta-skills' like psychology, creating healthy habits, sales, networking, communication, learning how to learn etc... + a niche skill that can be learned from world class experts online for free. Out of the options you mentioned, B is the only one where you don't convey negativity. It's difficult to build a business and the statistics are crazy in terms of how many businesses fail but hell dude, it's the people you meet, personal empowerment, and the skills you develop along the way that are infinitely valuable in my experience. Whichever path you take, it will be challenging. All the best!

Set a temporary life purpose. Meanwhile follow your curiosity.

Awesome. In the beginning I didn't really. FightMediocrity disappeared so I just got stuck into it as there was a hungry market. I found my style and created branding elements as I went along. I'm lightly connected with the guys apart from FightMediocrity. We've worked on some great collaborations in the past. They're not on my radar from a competitive standpoint as I don't seem them as competitors.

My temporary life purpose is to fulfill my potential.

Lucid dreaming researcher Dr Denholm Aspy is a big advocate of this idea. I don't think it's impossible but it does present many challenges. The average lucid dreamer including myself has a difficult time prolonging lucidity for more than 5-10 minutes. With training you can extend it. With that said, there are varying intensities of lucidity so you also have to train yourself to hop in at the right level of intensity. There's also the question of whether training in your sleep 'takes away' from your ability / energy to dedicate to training in the real world etc... There's a great section in Stephen LaBerge's book on the utility of lucid dreaming if you haven't stumbled across it already.

It depends what you want to do exactly. What's your ultimate goal? Start with a digital marketing course if it's relevant so you can learn the basics but I'd be moving quickly into a specific domain like SEO, Facebook ads, YouTube etc... and then mastering it. Be careful of falling into the trap of doing course after course but never applying anything. Once you've established a clear goal, learned the basics, then I'd suggest looking at Sam Ovens video on the modern state of online business, absolute ripper:

I've been creating animated book summaries for the last 4 years. 24 now and still have a bunch to learn.

I've earned thousands and closed many clients on UpWork and here's how to stand out: Make a VIDEO proposal - 90% of people don't do this and just copy and paste their proposals. By making a short video of you going through their proposal and explaining what you can do for them, they will love you for it. I've got an inbox full of responses of those thanking me for going the extra mile Keep your proposal short and to the point. Whenever you are going to say 'I' or 'I am', 'I this...', 'I that...' - find a way to say 'You' instead. This was a game-changer for me. The client doesn't care about you, they care about what you can do for THEM Fill out all areas in your profile Have a trustworthy photo where you are smiling - You can use online tools to get people to vote on the trustworthiness of one of your photos (Google it) Be HYPER NICHE with what you do - Don't just frame yourself as a "video editor" like everyone else does. Be a "Travel Video Editor For YouTube", "Greenscreen Video Expert", "YouTube Video Strategist" etc... Charge high compared to everyone else. DO NOT compete with Indians and Filipinos charging $10 an hour. Aim for $35 - $80 per hour depending on your profession, although you should be leaning towards charging a fixed price to maximize your ROI I've found that the proposal matters much more than your profile as the proposal is the first thing they see.

I've had amazing experiences with online dating: Breaking into a girl's own house through the bathroom window like a naughty little boy and girl. Her family is religious. We made out in her bedroom when we weren't supposed to. Met on Tinder. Having my dick sucked by a 37-year-old (I'm 23) in the cloak room after a public speaking gig I did. Met on Facebook. Wild, passionate sex has ensued. Hanging out and getting fed free weed before the sex. Met on Tinder Even though you don't get some of the benefits of what cold approach gives you, you can still lead the interaction in such a way that it creates something wild. Saying that, I am only 6 months into the dating/game scene so every experience for me is super fresh. I haven't done too much cold approach either. Next stop is Medellin Colombia where I have a mentor who will be pushing my ass out the door to do 300+ cold approaches. Terrified but excited and looking to begin seducing models!

Title says it all. I lean towards the BS side but don't doubt you can benefit from a strong belief in it combined with legitimate result-producing actions that it may prompt you to take (i.e. "Your orange chakra is out of alignment. Go exercise!"). RationalWiki's witty take on it: I'm super interested in discussion as to why or why don't you involve yourself with chakras