UpperMaster

Journey to Self Actualisation

226 posts in this topic

What is your favorite character from a movie/TV-series?

For me, it's Gus Fring from Breaking Bad. Not because he is an evil drug lord, but because his level of attention to detail is inspiring. 

I feel that attention to detail is lost in most of the work that the general population produces. 

I would be lying if I said I was good at it. Nonetheless, the trait of being highly detail oriented is something I plan to incorporate into my daily life.

I encourage you to pick a task, and attend to it with the intention of completing it with the utmost respect to detail. I encourage you to be meticulous, strive for excellency. 

Leo is right, there is a sort of satisfaction that comes from excellent work, detailed work. 

I love how Gus walks with attention to detail, wears his clothes with attention to detail, blends in to society with such amazing attention to detail.

I love how he executes his small everyday actions, and his grand plans with the same level of attention to detail. It's so satisfying for me. 

If such attention to detail could used towards our goals and truth seeking, how far could we go?

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I met a friend of mine that I haven't met in a while. Both have a self-improvement bias.

He was already ahead of me in terms of life success and self development from the last time I saw him, but now it seems like he is way ahead. 

This could all be bullshit, I don't actually know how much he has improved his life and what results he's been getting (in a holistic sense). That said it was apparent to me that his demeanor has changed, its apparent to me that now women isn't an issue for him. He seemed happy about his life and direction. It was clear that he was already a much more attractive man than 90 percent of other guys his age. 

One of the few times I feel somewhat jealous. I want to feel proud of myself like he seems to be. I want to achieve results like he has. Now it seems like I've just been completely left behind. 

I don't think he's doing much if not any of the philosophy work. but still, women is a big part of life this age. It's seriously fucking me up now. I am still a fucking virgin. 

No hate to the guy. Wish him best always, very good dude and kind to me. Im just being honest about how I feel. I feel bad that I haven't gotten the results although I put so much intention and effort. No women is really invalidating my worth in my eyes. I want high class girl, but not good enough yet and it hurts.

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One thing about the previous guy is he has his bar set high. As in he actually does the, no junk food, sleep on time, cutting out social life. 

This almost gives me the "permission" to implement this discipline in my own life and be unapologetic about it.

 

 

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I was continuing to leverage my superstitious OCD in order to become super productive. 

I don't think I will ever do it again. 

So basically to recap, the way this works is the following: 

I make a superstitious deal with the universe where I have to do action X or something bad will happen. The bad thing that "will happen" is chosen by me at the start of the deal. The bad thing is what motivates me to do action. This deal was initially started by me with the efforts to completely eliminate any procrastination, and has been incredibly effective.

Recently, I made a "deal" where if I don't go to bed by 11 pm everyday that a rival of mine will be luckier than me in 2026. When making the deal, I also outlined few exceptions to when I can get out of bed.

These exceptions are:

1. Going to the bathroom

2. If parents call for an emergency or there is some sort of crisis

I thought this was a clever contract, because it gave me room to use the bathroom and also took into consideration possible disturbances. 

 

Yesterday however, a timer that I forgot to remove started going off in the middle of the night. Completely unwarranted. 

I waited till I needed to take a piss, stood up and while going to the bathroom also switched off the phone. 

Problem is, I am not sure whether or not the "deal" is still on or not. 

Because if I were to be truthful to myself, one of the reasons I got out of bed is to switch off the timer, which isn't a proper reason for getting out of bed as per the specifications in the contract.

But at the same time, I needed to use the bathroom, which is a proper reason as per the contract. With these sort of things, I always ask whether or not my past self who made the contract would allows myself to look at my phone while going to the bathroom. Honestly I don't think so. So maybe my contract is broken. 

See how much of a clusterfuck mechanism this is. 

It's like I am creating problems that didn't exist in the first place. 

When I started using the mechanism, I was desperate for results, so desperate that I was willing to sacrifice anything, tell myself anything to be able to achieve some form of success. 

Now I realize that maybe I should go back to developing self discipline normally. Although this mechanism works, it isn't without cost. 

I'm scared it will ruin my life because there can always be events like the one aforementioned (alarm ringing), that are out of your control and can ruin the "deal" I set. Like now, I actually might start believing that my rival may be luckier than me next year. What if I had made a more serious deal, like "I wouldn't be able to have children" that would be super motivating, but if it went wrong, then I would actually start believing that. Whether it's true or not I can't say, as I am legitamitley superstitious that's why this mechanism works. 

But even if the mechanism isn't actually true, simply believing that a bad outcome will happen could become a self fulfilling prophecy. 


Truthfully, I haven't investigated other possible drawbacks in using mechanisms like this. I suspect that it could worsen OCD (therapist suggested). But the aforementioned drawback is a pretty big one, enough to never use it again. 

I've used this mechanism to be able to work 6 hours a day for 30 days. Now I know I can do it. Fear really drives me, I think I might still use fear as motivation, but I will not use it through this mechanism, as I suspect it will cause many other problems. 

So no more of this.

This is decision is based on intuition + the fact that if I fail to fulfill any of those deals, it actually has psychological (or real world) impacts on me (which are not worth it). 

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First, I want to reflect on how I handled my OCD situation. For a some time, I believed I’d have less luck than my rival for an entire year, but eventually I realized I needed to find a way to manage this superstitious OCD.

What became clear to me is that you can’t actually disprove superstitious OCD to yourself. That’s because OCD isn’t rooted in logic,  it’s emotional. Even if I made a “deal” with the universe and it didn’t come true, technically that should disprove it, right? But no,  my mind would just find some way to justify why that particular deal didn’t count.

Knowing this, I tried a different approach. I made another deal with the universe: if I drink more than 250ml of water, I’ll have good luck for the next year. That way, no matter what happens with my rival’s luck, I’ll still have amazing luck.

After that, my strategy was to let this whole mess go. Honestly, I don’t even know if I failed the previous ritual agreement, so maybe my rival won’t actually be luckier than me anyway. But either way, I’ve made this new deal, and now I can finally move on and leave it behind.

Edited by UpperMaster

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University started again. 

Women and lack of dating has become a significant pain-point for me. It's actually getting very painful. I really really want intimacy. I really feel it to my core. 

I don't just want sex, my end goal is to have a relationship I am fulfilled with. I'm genuinely getting slightly frustrated, no lie. 

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