Escaping wage slavery towards an Actualized Life

[Vali2003]

I’m pretty happy with the CS50 course so far, but I sense it’s going to become really difficult soon. Anyways, I like to tell myself that I don’t mind hard… 

Pretty happy with the decision to at least try it, and do it however long it takes me to finish Problem Sets zero through six. 

Leo’s video on how to become decisive has really had an impact on my life. I haven’t made any major decisions since then (except to be a decisive person, lol), but even the small ones have had an impact on me. Not the contents of the decisions themselves, but the process of being decisive and seeing the decision as absolute — not letting any room for backpedaling. Here are some moments where I was more decisive last week:

• Deciding to do CS50
• Many times about what to eat, also whether to use condiments or not and small stuff like this haha 
• About doing a dopamine detox for 3 days 
• About how I time-block my day

There’s a specific principle to making decisions that I discovered/experienced in the process. A decision binds you down, it takes away freedom from you in some sense, but paradoxically it feels freeing to just make decisions and stick to them. I also notice how it grounded me, which I usually struggle with (feeling grounded). And it made me feel more masculine in some sense too, I think.

I’ve also noticed that my decisions are starting to carry more weight than before. They still don’t carry that much weight, I’d say, simply due to my past of constant backpedaling from my decisions. I notice now, that when I decide something, it actually means something and isn’t just empty words. I can see now, how powerful it is if you practice this over years. Make decisions, stick to them, repeat. More and more will that decision ground you to the reality you’ve decided upon. Hence you become much more powerful in creating your reality. 

 

Edited Tuesday at 03:52 PM by Vali2003

[Vali2003]

Here’s the connection between being decisive and feeling grounded for me:

Throughout my days, there often comes up some stuff that I’ve been procrastinating. For example remembering that I have to take care of my university schedule for this semester. But I don’t decide if I’m gonna do it later today, tomorrow, next week or even not all. I just don’t decide. It stays an open tab. These things accumulate throughout the day, which makes me less and less sure of how exactly my day, the rest of my day or the following week will occur. Hence, I feel ungrounded 

[Vali2003]

I have some feeling, like it’s unclear whether doing another degree in pursuit of ensuring survival (primarily) will actually bring me closer to self-actualization or further away. 

I do need money. And I don’t want to be financially dependent on my dad anymore. 

Obviously, it would be perfect if I knew my Life Purpose, and it would be covered by a degree that also ensures survival. Like if my Life Purpose would be to become a master in business, and help others achieve the same. But I don’t know that. And I don’t think I can find that out so quickly. 

 

[Vali2003]

There’s also still the question on if it’s smarter (for survival) to pursue a degree and then build a business — although, of course, there can also be overlap between doing the degree and starting a business — or just start a business right away. 

I’m tempted to say doing a degree is smarter, because it’s the safer option for me. But is safety even always a bad bias to have? 

Edited Tuesday at 04:09 PM by Vali2003

[Vali2003]

As I currently plan it, I will dip my toes in 2-3 more domains (like Computer Science right now) that would likely be good for survival. These should also be degrees where a bachelor’s will suffice to get a good job / start a business. I still have to do research about what that could be. I will then pick the one that resonates the most with my values and that I liked the most. 

 

 

[Vali2003]

Here are my Top 10 Values btw:

1. Health
2. Excellence
3. Creativity
4. Truth
5. Movement
6. Connection
7. Nature
8. Spirituality
9. Family
10. Contribution 

At least that’s what they were 2 years ago when I took the LP course. They still seem mostly accurate though. Especially Health, Excellence and Creativity being the top 3.

[Vali2003]

Lately I’ve been really having the desire to do psychedelics again, after I haven’t done any for three years. I would love to just sit in my room and contemplate all day then. The value I’d get from that would be enormous. 

However, since I’m a pretty ungrounded person and struggle with anxiety sometimes, I fear that it would be smarter not to do any psychedelics until I’m about thirty. Also my aunt had/has (we’re not in contact therefore I don’t know her exact situation right now) schizophrenia, which is why I have some extra worries. I, stupidly, smoked weed when I was a teenager and did some psychedelics in my late teenage years, which, I think, increases my risk for psychosis as well. So I don’t want to fuck around with my sanity, which is why I haven’t been doing any drugs. 

I had bad experiences on weed all the time. Nothing horrible, but I was anxious most of the times I smoked. However, I never had any bad experiences on psychedelics. They were positive every single time. But still, I think it’s smarter not to indulge in them now. There will still be plenty of time when I’m older, and I’ll also wrestle through those problems with a sober mind. 

Edited Tuesday at 04:32 PM by Vali2003

[Vali2003]

One big insight I got through reading some Peter Ralston is that the fastest way to learn how to do something is just by trying to do it. 

There’s a barrier in us to do that, though. Especially if there’s some ambiguity as to how that’s possible. But exactly then do we need actual experience to refine our understanding of what we’re dealing with. 

For example: I wanted to do some sprint training. And I didn’t know how you do sprint training since I’ve literally never done it before in my life. So I did a quick GPT5 research for sprint training best practices. It was basically “sprint at 90-100% max intent for 20-30 seconds and then jog slowly or walk for 3-4 minutes and repeat 3-4 times.” I didn’t feel satisfied at all by that explanation. I didn’t feel well-prepared going out to do the training, but I did it anyways. Going out and doing it, I learned so much about sprint-training, so that I’d now feel pretty well-prepared if I went to do it again. I learned, just from doing it one time that I tend to go too intense, that I definitely need water, that I need to bring my fitness watch for a timer, that I need to warm up pretty intensively. Of course, I could know all of those things without the experience. But I wouldn’t know them.

The satisfaction and confidence that we search from reading about how something works is not in the researching, it’s in the doing.  

You best learn how to contemplate by contemplating, you best learn how to write beautifully by trying to write beautifully, you best learn how to relax your body by relaxing your body, you best learn how to jump by jumping. 

The more abstract and wishy washy the thing we’re learning is the longer we tend to want to stay in the process of researching. Confronting the imperfection of not being able to do something properly is really uncomfortable. But it’s not nearly as uncomfortable as we think it is. And once that bit of discomfort is bridged, it gets really rewarding. 

[Vali2003]

Peter Ralston is really badass

[Vali2003]

Here’s an insight I had while playing basketball: 

I was doing a skills-workout, and the goal of my current exercise was to hit 9/10 jump shots on the left wing and 9/10 on the right. If you got that, you could move on to the next level. I really wanted to get it. It was probably the third or fourth time doing the exercise and it’s generally pretty hard I’d say to hit 9/10 consecutively on each side, but I had already gotten close the previous time. I had hit 10/10 on the right side, and then absolutely shit the bed on the left side and hit like 6/10. I have a tendency to choke in those moments when the pressure rises in little exercises like these (ironically more than in real games). Ok, now I did it again. One more time, I hit 10/10 on the right side. Left side also went well, I was 7/7 so far. “Just don’t piss yourself now” I thought. And I noticed that I slid into that same frame of mind as the last time. But then I realized, if I’m ever gonna not choke, then there’ll be a moment where I just have to do it. And that moment has to be in the Now. Cause I noticed then and there that I always lose concentration in such moments. And it was the realization that all I need to do is focus and that I need to break through it Now! I also hit 10/10 there and move on to the next level. 

The point is, some things that we want to learn are always in the future, but we’ll never learn them in the future. They have to happen Now. 

Sorry if this is a bit off topic. Let me know if you’d like me to post exclusively career-related stuff here, as that’s what I say in the first post.

[Vali2003]

I want to discover my LP, so badly. I want to love life to its fullest, so badly. I want to create the most beautiful thing I can, so badly. 

 

[Vali2003]

The funny thing is, I had all the time in the world to experiment and discover my LP (or something close to it) in the last two years. However, I wasn’t mature enough to really see and understand how I would do that. I see it now, though, and the hindsight stings. 

However, I’m doing the right things now. I’m slowly, but steadily building the strongest work-ethic I can. And I experiment.

[Vali2003]

I’m so thankful to be on this journey. I just continued listening to Leo‘s motivational speech from 2021. He said there, that the first couple years of doing this work will be slow. And that it will take time until you start to notice changes, but then the momentum will pick up, and the payoff will start coming in. I noticed it’s very true for me. 

I read my first Personal Development book at 15. At that point I was completely wasting my life, watching YT videos all day, not doing any sports, not being passionate about anything, horrible self-worth, doing okay but not good at school. Then I saw a YT Video from a German YouTuber called “Trymacs,” who usually does Clash Royal (a supercell game) gameplays and stuff like that. He talked about the favorite books that he read, and that every successful person reads 70+ books per year or some bullshit statistic like that . I literally caught on fire because of that video and asked my mom to buy me a book called “Miracle Morning” that he recommended.

Through reading this book, I, for the first time in my life, realized that the quality (success) of my life is a function of how/if I develop my personality. And that my personality is the only thing I can influence and so I should put all my energy into doing that. Then I slowly started to develop passion for life. I started going to the gym, I started playing basketball, I started talking to girls more and getting better there. My confidence slowly rose. Then I got into Lucid Dreaming which was really my first project where I developed intense passion and persistence. I started doing better at school, I picked up some more books, started working on my sleep, realized how fucked my social media consumption was, I grew shrooms in my room while living at my mom’s still, lol, I got into meditation, I got into New Age spirituality… which is why I met with some new age spiritual people on Koh Pangan (Thailand), one of which recommended to me Leo Gura.

My whole personal development journey started there, because of this YT video. This one, strong ass intention that I had — and it really was strong — shifted the entire trajectory of my life. The power of intention. 

[Vali2003]

And now the last two months I feel that I’ve changed so drastically. I visited my mom in my hometown now, during my semester break for the last 1 1/2 months. And for the last 63 days I’ve contemplated everyday for thirty minutes. It’s not that much but still I feel that the quality of my life has increased a lot. 

I’ve changed so much over this timeframe —not only due to the contemplation —, that now being back in the city I study at, everything feels different. It’s really weird.

[Vali2003]

I just watched a part of How to fall in love with life and I realized that I’ve fallen out of love with life for a bit recently. It’s weird,  because I also feel confident on the other hand, with my self-esteem being higher than ever. I’m so preoccupied with ensuring survival that I’ve lost touch with intrinsic goals that genuinely ignite excitement within me. But it’s necessary, no? 

Doing CS50 makes me happier and actually is quite exciting for me as it’s part of the larger quest for finding my LP. 

I guess, the things I’m doing aren’t so much the problem, as is the pressure I’m putting on myself. 

Within all this pressure and neurosis, gets lost the genuine excitement I have about the mission of gaining financial freedom. 

It’s also just the uncertainty I have at the moment. I don’t know which path I’m gonna go down and that just feels… unnverving. 

[Vali2003]

I’ll write a list tomorrow of things I could do to help me with deciding which path to go down, or with achieving financial freedom in general.