Joseph Maynor

What does true growth and growing look like?

11 posts in this topic

I know a lot of us like to boast — I’m growing, I’ve grown so much.  But what do these words mean in respect to your experience with growth and growing on your path?

What memory can you recall where you felt like you were growing a lot?

Do you feel like that right now?

Why or why not?

Edited by Joseph Maynor

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@Joseph Maynor For me personally, I started to see an exponential growth curve by the second year of college.

What growth looks like imo:

  • unwiring bad habits and addictions
  • instilling good habits
  • getting clarity on your life purpose
  • getting actual results from products 
  • getting insights about yourself (ex. you finally find out what was the reason for the lack of assertiveness in your communication style and things like that)
  • making peace with your past
  • detaching from outcome
  • starting, working on, and finishing grand projects
  • etc.

How I've grown in the past 3 years:

  • I quit video games entirely (switching to a macbook made it a lot easier though)
  • Found a career mentor
  • Instilled the following habits:
    • Working out 3 times a week (for the rest of my life)
      • Results: Cut down to 8-9% body fat and put more than 10 kg of muscle on my frame
    • Yoga (which is actually my stretching routine, but it consists of mostly yoga asanas/poses)
      • Current Results: no more chronic back and neck pain
    • Meditation
      • Still plenty of monkey mind and backlashes, but at least I've come to understand the mechanics of my mind more
      • Had a lot of insights, most of them pretty scary as I didn't feel I was ready for them (I don't have a high tolerance to mindfucks yet)
        • Spontaneous awakenings (some in my sleep, some at random times in the day)
        • Two deep trips on high doses of weed (unfortunately, I tried to control the experience too much, giving me anxiety and panic attacks. I need to practice surrendering more)
        • Spent a year in a silent retreat like setting... living alone, little work to do, very few people to socialize with. Had weeks where the only time I heard my voice was when I told the cashier what I wanted from the grocery store. Felt like I was going insane at times. Hearing my voice started to become very weird. It wasn't natural anymore.
    • Organizing my day in time blocks
    • Taking body measurements
    • Mindfulness in day to day life
    • Healthy eating and drinking (I don't binge drink anymore)
      • Removed candy and most sweets from my diet
      • I eat more fruits, vegetables, proteins, seeds
      • I also track my macros
    • Reading (at least 1 book per week)
      • Went from not reading at all to having read over 50 books
  • Started a common place book which is already getting pretty hefty
  • I became a lot more socially calibrated and also learned a lot about how women think. Gonna focus on pickup next year.
    • Made lots of new friends
    • Deepened a few of my relationships greatly
  • Unwired most of my assertiveness and self-esteem issues
  • Found more clarity on my life purpose
    • Figured out my top 10 values, top 5 strengths and much more
  • Etc. etc. The list can get huge, but these are the essentials.

As a final note though, If I am to be really honest, I do think that I've bit much more than I could chew when it comes to spirituality. It got to the point where it really started to affect my emotional stability (manifesting as existential angst, depersonalization, anxiety, fear of death, epic ego backlashes, depression, meaninglessness, inability to do simple tasks and minor PTSD after my irrensponsible trips on high doses of weed - considering that I am extremely sensitive to any kind of substance; a quarter of a dose feels like a full dose to me), school performance, productivity, ability to handle loneliness (before knowing anything about spirituality, I could sit alone happily for months on end - right now though, for some reason, I can barely resist a few days without getting into a somber mood). Before college, I was always the most stable and balanced person I could find. I had a smile on my face all day everyday. I had trust in the universe won't do me harm and had the self-confidence to handle anything life threw at me... that is... until what life threw at me was reality/life itself.  When my barrier of certainty shattered, seeing things I can't unsee, my mind was flipped upside down and it made me really fearful of everything around me.

I can see it's mostly my fault though. Even when knew I should have taken a step back, I always just unconsciously went back for more spiritual beating (haha) as soon as my mood and stability would improve a wee bit.

I am not as humorous anymore - much less spontaneous too. I resist a lot more, surrender a lot less, take many things too seriously. Maybe it's just hardcore spiritual purification or maybe I'm just creating unnecessary suffering... who knows?

I do recognize I have a huge head start in my life by doing all of the things above though.

Maybe what I did to myself was good, maybe it was bad. What I know is that I'm turning only 21 years old this year and I already feel like I'm in another dimension (in both a good and a bad way) compared to all the other people around me that are just the same as they were 3-4 years ago. I can't relate to them anymore. I feel like I'm being pulled into a black hole and I miss having people I can relate to.

Right now I'm trying to shift the focus to the more basic needs in my life... I want to establish my financial independence, get a girlfriend or play the field for a while because I spent almost 3 years in solitude (working on myself and figuring out what I want in life), create conscious friends, start and figure out how to go about my career... maybe travel. Once I have a these figured out,  I may pursue spirituality more seriously again, but at a more comfortable pace.

I'm still gonna keep a meditation and mindfulness habit though.

That's about everything that I can think of right now. I'm open to any questions.

 

Edited by Dan Arnautu

”Unaccompanied by positive action, rest may only depress you.” -- George Leonard

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Being able to feel great joy with the subtle, "small" and "ordinary"  feels like growth to me.

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When I see life as an hourglass of meaning.

hourglass_gif_by_junguler-dawrq50.gif

Edited by tsuki

Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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When you feel the lowest next day, you have grown the most. Why? Because your mind/body matrix you are currently in, will get destroyed and expand. Next day you will feel like waking up, like from a state of atrophy. Your 5 senses will be sharper and an adaptation will be needed (like after a night of drinking feel like), that is why you feel the LOW. 

One will know the low from growth or the low of regression. When the growth happens is a feeling of total disorientation. If you feel low because of a drug or something else, then you will know the cause within yourself.

Believing that something else is a cause of your misery next day, then it will be what you believe. True cause of feeling low is growth, even if something ''bad happened'' (emotionally speaking).

There is no growth without pain, because pain is simply uncharted territory of your body/mind. Take a cigarette addict per exemple: he/she will feel the urge to smoke, not because the so called nicotine, but in reality he/she are used to the pain that smoking does to the body. And if you suffer pain to a such extent, the Stockholm Syndrome will occur (like in torture or sadomasochistic practices). 

 

Blessings

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@Dan Arnautu

I really admire the work you're putting in and I can resonate with what you've written, since I am in a similar situation, one year older than you and probably some steps behind. Out of inspiration, I would like to ask you some questions:

I have the impression that you methodically introduced new habits into your life while removing bad ones and I wondered how you personally handled it, because I feel a bit overwhelmed by the amount of ideas and desires I get and that I feel the need to implement. Also, how do you integrate and take action on all the information you get from courses and books? How are you trying to have insights about yourself?

 

 

 

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@Waves Thanks for the kind words!

You can unwire a habit while putting in place another if the habit that you choose to put in place is a keystone habit. A keystone habit is a habit that causes a chain reaction and changes other habits with it as well. For example, if you start exercising, you may naturally start to avoid junk food and start go to sleep early.

This technique may not work if the two habits that you are working with are totally unrelated. I strive to change one at a time. I remove or put in place one over the course of 66 days and then I move to another one.

20 hours ago, Waves said:

 

Also, how do you integrate and take action on all the information you get from courses and books? How are you trying to have insights about yourself?

If we are talking about courses, it's ideal to finish one before you move on to the others. That's actually the trap that I fell into right now. I started more courses simultaneously because I got curious about the content in each one. Now I force myself to finish one at a time, because otherwise I get nowhere.

Integration comes through practice. Once all the strategies from the course/book are put on autopilot in your life (as they become part of you), you won't have to think about them anymore (maybe only when you try to teach someone else). This frees up mental capacity to move on to another area/course/book.

For example, I only needed to track what I ate for about a month... then I became like Neo in the matrix. Then I knew by just eyeballing how many calories and macros were in each food. You could put any food in front of me and I knew exactly how many calories it had and how much I could eat until I hit my daily intake. I don't have to weigh food anymore, or prevent myself from eating out. It's internalized behavior now. This applies pretty much to any other thing you want to master.

You only need to apply awareness to the things you want to fix. Once they are fixed and maintain that behavior for a while, they get programmed into your subconscious and you can move your awareness elsewhere. That's how your brain prevents overwhelm.


”Unaccompanied by positive action, rest may only depress you.” -- George Leonard

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@Dan Arnautu

Thank you for the detailed answer, it helped me clarify some doubts :)

I guess in the end I should clarify my goals, identify those habits/books/courses/skills that are crucial for achieving them and then implement one thing at the time by working laser-focused.

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