Everything I learned about myself and self-development while traveling in India

[Lynnel]

Travel Report : India

Here are all the lessons I learned about myself, my self-development journey and self-actualization during my 3 week trip to India.

I am gonna be extremely transparent and honest because I believe that way I can get nice tips and advice from you guys

Foreword : travel is so underrated. As with everything if used right it can be amazing.

The danger of technology and the use of instagram.

From the very start I had the desire to have cool instagram account - to be seen cool etc, to have a great image to show to the world, be it for girls or future employers, viewing this in a sense as self-marketing. So I did it. And I started also following other people, and at some point I got a bit lost into posting stories of everything I visited, taking nice pictures of me, etc and I was even hurt when I followed people who didn't follow me back. At this point, a red light went flashing and I realized that there was a lesson to learn there. I'm still trying to look interesting, to be interesting, doing something interesting, such as visiting India, and kinda doing this for the validation. Sometimes I didn't even care about what I was visiting, just wondering if it would make good pictures.

I realized I really need to do something about this approval thing, not trying to manifest some synthetic self-esteem by doing something or trying to look cool which will never work. Plus, I'm not putting myself out there really, just an image of me. You're not interacting with real people when using instagram but with some persona's. You're not facing real people and therefore there cannot be any real interaction. In short I still need to work deeply on the need to look interesting/cool and not feeling interesting or attractive.

Your daily life is put into perspective and it's not beautiful. Far from it.

I had a perpective about my very rigid routine, with very strict unbreakable almost neurotic rules which cannot work in the long term. While traveling your standard life is put into perspective and you can really look at it with a outsider perspective, if the culture shock is strong enough. You really need to TRAVEL not just chill at the beach : you must have an environment that forces you to lead a very different life and do/think very differently.

This gives you a outsider look at your thought patterns, your life, and well what I saw wasn't very great to look at. I spend way too much time doing nothing in a day, basically distracting myself or coping and then for the rest of the day doing my routine of yoga,meditation, writing. On the surface since I have like 4 daily habits and 1 weekly one it may seem I'm doing a lot but I am really not. I was very unhappy about myself and still am and taking a hard hard look at myself well I was distracting myself way too much.

That meant like 80 hours of youtube per month. Trown away. So I would spend 1 hour of yoga, watch youtube while eating for like 2 hours with a feeling of dread after doing my yoga well because it's annoying and not pleasurable by itself. Same for meditation although it's very nice sometimes. Because I use willpower to do it I feel exhausted really fast after that and spend the rest of the day, unless I have a deadline doing nothing, aside writing for one hour and the rest is lost in shambles. Which is horrendous and horrible. I mean I could do so so so so so much better. Several days I've been doing shamanic breathing on top and after that hell I have no motivation, no drive, nothing left. I really have no motivation, I'm not like inspired. My life purpose is a chore more than anything. Like seriously everyone is like yeah it's gonna be great and amazing life purpose you should love it  - yeah sure being complete garbage is very pleasurable and training yourself to get slowly better so so fucking nice. Really ? Enjoying life ? Sometimes I believe life isn't to be enjoyed until later but only suffered first.

Either way I'm getting off topic a bit. I clearly lack drive and I'm not like working around the clock for something I'm passionate about because I spend too much time coping with stress I guess ? Or something else ? Mental blocks ? Lack of willpower ? It's annoying either way. I hate struggling so much for my life purpose and the lack of drive creativity and emotions which is very apparent in me is rage inducing. Like the amount of things you have to do to be successful is simply astonishing. So I don't wanna dick arround. And it was a very harsh realization that like hold on my life is not working out. Clearly not the way I want it.

There is a lot of confusion going on too !

On the same note there is a lot of confusion because I have a lot, books, videos, opinions, and I am sometimes lost and unsure how to diagnose myself. MOre psychedelics ? More meditation ? This exercise ? Hypnosis to release blocks ? There are SO many causes for any single event and situation in your life diagnosing it is quite complicated.

Also I have intense anxiety about my future since I wanna simply become a writer and I don't wanna work for someone full time. But I will soon have to find a job and also I have a Phd option I am thinking about. But 4 years while I clearly know I should be doing something else with my life ? Well I'm quite stuck at my life purpose too and I don't even know why.

Oh Actually I do. Usually, there is a finished product, such as a manga chapter, one painting which can be contained in one's mind. But one book ? It's impossible : there are infinite variations and possibilities and you have to carve out a finished product out of it ? As the french saying goes, choosing is renouncing I guess ? But a novel is far too large to take in at once. You can have one painting and hold the whole painitng in your mind. You can design a manga ark and then split it into chapters and you're good to go. A Novel and a great one ? No fucking way. I am also extermely frustrated with my incompetence and all this suffering, because I keep thinking I should have done several novels and be on my way to an amazing career already. Feeling like I'm late in life is a very suffering-inducing feeling.

Thus, distractions ! A lot of them. And distraction are something that once it dissapears from your life, you do not miss it - and your life doesn't change. Like I didn't have wifi, and not watching youtube didn't make my life worse : it made it better. So distractions suck a lot. Be it kongregate, facebook chatting, or youtube, and even porn. About that.

Guess what ? Lots of problems with sexuality too.

I clearly have a addiction to porn and I'm sexualy frustrated, because I tend to masturbate on hot girls from instagram which I dream about banging. Amazing. So yeah that's a huge problem and I do not have enough willpower to do any nofap. So not using porn and fapping way way less gave me a perspective on how addicted I am to that. Porn felt very shallow for a moment.

I also read "fear of life" by Alexander Lowden which a goldmine. And he talks about the fact that a lot of problems stem from sexuality and oedipus complex. Like sexuality is extremely important in a human being and I need to handle it better, talk more about it, explore it more, like dive deep into those issues there. Like I wanna undestand my fetishes, why I like them, stop being frustrated all the time and feel more alive. I'll write about this book separately but it is freaking amazing. I'll have to do plenty of body work for that.

What I learned about dating from indian shopkeepers.

Indian people are often quite poor (sorry - not sorry) and extremely pushy. The tuktuk drivers and shopkeepers have no shame and scamming tourists is part of the culture in India, you are basically not a person here - just a walking source of money. So, for instance, if you walk down Jaipur Bazaar, you will get harassed like freaking hell. And everyone talking to you and saying my friend - is not your fucking friend of course but just wants your money.

So after having that happen 50 times a day, I wondered, wait, is that what women feel like when they are approached for sex ? I mean they are just on their way and then some random guys come up with unsillicited shit they don't need and are not attracted to. And it gets annoying very fast. The third day I learned how to say "no" in Hindi and would shout it at anyone even blinking at me.

So the shopkeeper analogy is that women here are most likely as harassed as tourists are in india by Indian merchants - they want money the same way here guys want sex : in a needy, pushy way which is not attractive. And even if you are not pushy or even if you're actually nice girls will ignore you immediately because the 1000 of guys before were complete douches.  This really allowed me to understand how women must sometimes feel in our society and it saddens me a little bit.

Also, you can feel people's intention by the way they look at you. You can see they are shocked, interested, reactive, or expecting a selfie with their phones out. In the same way, based on how you behave and on very subtle signs, girls can immediately see who you are and where you stand in life. Cold reading is easy once you have a lot of experience ! That was a revelation for sure !

Final words

I'm not sure if I have said everything but I ranted long enough and in short I learned a lot. This perspective was extremely precious and I feel like I've grown a lot by interacting with all the people, paysages and monument. Travel if used correctly, can be a great source of growth. It's always a source of escape and discovery and I urge you to enjoy it

If you have any practical tips (I'm clearly orange !) to get some of my shit together I'll be happy to have any feedback !

[PT89]

I love this travel report, a lot of it resonated with me.  This need to do certain things, take/post pictures for validation, wasting precious time outside of the daily personal development routine.

From my experience, the deeper you go with this stuff, the more difficult it gets... I'm wondering if anyone else has similar feelings? I have indeed noticed myself unhappy with a lot of things, more noticing of a lot of bullshit around me, and in giving up a lot of my egos attachments to comfort, it certainly hasn't been easy.  But there are then those miraculous moments I have, through insight or shifts in consciousness that keep me on this path of madness   I've also noticed some very positive changes in my personality - such as no longer needing to win, but simply enjoying the game or sport for what it is.  But the suffering persists... and I just try to have faith that this is what is necessary for real growth to happen.

 I'm planning on volunteering in nepal next december then heading to india afterwards for a vipassana retreat.  Thanks for the info on your travel experience.  

It's hard for me to give you advice, because I seem to be in a pretty similar place in terms of just not being happy with the way things are right now, but I mean I should be... and you should be too... we've got a million things to be happy about but our minds just don't seem to want to let us.  

Have faith... Leo's opened my eyes to so many things I never would have imagined so I guess we just need to trust the process and persist.

[Lynnel]

On 18/07/2018 at 10:14 PM, PT89 said:

 wasting precious time outside of the daily personal development routine.

Yeah I feel like I at least idealize a LOT of people here : I mean Leo's job is full time actualization and video making and I like imagine everyone being so perfect, reading a book a day, with a yoga routine, meditation practice, 5 hours of life purpose work, and non stop progress. I don't believe this is true at all. Still all I do is push myself to do more and to the next limit and next achievement like a mad horse !

I also feel bad about myself because I'm not chasing for enlightenement and I just wanna get my basic shit together, and usually feel very judged by the community, like enlightenement is the only thing you should do, just be, you lack being, fuck pragmatism just be and relax. Like for the love of god can we not be so perfect and not st

rive for constant achievement so much ? Everytime I look at some post here it reminds me of how much more work I gotta do and it's just exausting mentally. I'll have to post that into my journal if I ever make one. Yeah having 7 volumes of journal and posting is also nice to show to the world you're working a lot. ANYWAY.

Sometimes I just feel like I was happier being naive and just going out picking up girls, eating random shit and worrying about nothing a playing video games. And overall I believe I felt better, more in state. But the overall growth is tremendous and I'm happy I'm on the path. I just need to rant sometimes because I can feel abusive standards (yeah projection I know) being thrown everywhere.

Like Todd Valentine would say things getting hard is just a opportunity to get to the next level. Yeah great I noticed some superego issues right now.

On 18/07/2018 at 10:14 PM, PT89 said:

 

From my experience, the deeper you go with this stuff, the more difficult it gets... I'm wondering if anyone else has similar feelings?

If it's not hard you're not doing the real work So it's a good sign I guess. Thanks for your comment, I felt a little less alone and it helped lift my spirits a bit.