Do not go gentle in to that good night - Tale of a man who refused to conform

[TheAlchemist]

"Do not go gentle into that good night" is a poem by Dylan Thomas that has helped me a lot over the years. It has given me fuel to keep going in times of deep desperation and it has given me courage to be more bold and take bigger risks in the things that really matter to me.

I decided to start this journal after having gone through a few weeks of massive ego backlash/self sabotage. 

Before I go into that I will do a short recap of some relevant things:

16-year old me:

Extremely social anxious, very skinny, completely lost with women, deeply addicted to porn, feeling of no control in my life, feeling isolated, lonely, my best friend turned against me, completely lost in life, no idea of my purpose, raised by evangelical Christian parents, deep feelings of shame

Now I am 22 years old, what has happened since? I first got into self-improvement, started doing surface level stuff taking cold showers, lifting weights, eating better, facing my fears, pickup, comfort zone challenges, public speaking, university, studying myself and my tendencies. I also travelled on my own a lot which rapidly grew me as a person, I hitchhiked around Europe on my own and backpacked in Asia. 

In the past few years I got into more inner work. Emotional release techniques, meditation, psychedelics, inner child work and figuring out my purpose. I realized that I dont want to be a wage slave which led to starting a business and learning how to make money online a few months back. Now I'm gonna write about the past few months and the ego backlash I'm going through atm.

June 2019

I intentionally didn't take a job for the summer break from university so I could focus on learning how to make money online for the next 4 months. I got into a course be Sam Ovens which was recommended to me by a friend who is making lots of money online. I didn't want to just make money but do something meaningful so I figure the perfect niche for me was Porn addiction recovery.

I had struggled with it myself for years and I felt like I had a lot of knowledge of that market and how to help people. At this point I had been free from porn for about 4 months and with only a few slip ups in the past year. So I believed I had a grip on it. I started the business full of fear, I registered the company, made a website and started reaching out to potential clients. 

New habits: Started daily meditation with the Waking Up app, daily affirmations and daily gratefulness practice. 

July 2019

Kept moving forward with the business. Meditation starting to bring some results. A mushroom trip that shook things up. I realized I can only find answers inside me, not outside me. Did social comfort zone challenges in public almost daily. 

August 2019

Kept going with the client outreach, got a free client to test things on. Pretty much smooth sailing

Present - Backlash

I decided I will be honest with my journal so here goes:

University started again. For the past week I have struggled with complete ego backlash. I skipped some daily meditations that I had been doing for almost three months every day. I have been skipping the gym, skipping meals, procrastinating for days on end and isolating myself from other people. 

Heres the most difficult part:

I also have had a complete relapse to porn. This has effectively destroyed a lot of my dreams of making the online business work. I cannot be authentic in teaching others how to quit porn if I am still struggling with it myself. So I have to put that whole project on hold for now. I feel like a part of me is trying to tear down every single thing I made progress in over the summer. This past summer I experienced more rapid progress than ever before in my life and the self sabotage is also stronger than ever before.  Now I am kind of lost and in a rut. I know things go up and down in this world of duality, but it still doesn't make the down part easier. Now it's time for awareness and some intense self-reflection. 

What part of me is it that doesn't want me to succeed? How can I give it some love and attention without it having to tear down my life to get it?

I will be reflecting on these questions and getting back to this journal when I have something.

Peace

 

[TheAlchemist]

Update - October 12 2020

Woah what a year it has been.. A lot has happened since the last update. Actually, everything has changed....

1. Quitting the porn addiction coaching business

The business I started a year ago ended up being very little about the external and very much about the internal. I hit a brick wall. I self-sabotaged the shit out of myself and basically forced the business to fail. This forced me to go inward and face the things that were stopping me and all of my own internal dysfunction and bullshit.

2. Facing my own demons, deep inner work

I was faced with having to radically change my view on things if I wanted to move forward. I was forced to go deep inside, way deeper than the surface level "porn addiction". I was forced to learn about real self-love and eventually I realized there was no way out except radical self-acceptance. I basically had to bring the beast of "porn addiction" to the surface to examine it, analyze it and finally integrate it. I did shadow work, journaled, talked to my inner child, talked to my shadow, meditated, took psychedelics and eventually I realized that there was something deeper going on here, porn was not the problem. I stopped being ashamed of watching porn and ta daa! it stopped running my life! I stopped binging on it excessively and I stopped feeling like shit about my sexuality. 

Who would have thought? For 3 years I was "fighting" the porn addiction, when all I had to do was to love and accept myself for it not to be a problem anymore! So simple, yet so difficult to embody when you have tied your identity around fighting this "evil" thing that you have imagined......

So basically, I left the porn addiction niche because it was so toxic with religion induced shaming and such deep rooted beliefs about being a bad person for fapping etc.. I cannot support people denying and trying to suppress their sexuality, and I don't have the expertise to make these fundamental root level identity shifts in reality for people. That is the only way out of that mess of toxic shame.........

From September 2019 to August 2020 I focused mostly on myself, because I knew that if I don't go deep within I will just self-sabotage even more. 

3. New business - Truth: The "universe" cheers on for courage

Throughout the summer I was thinking about my life purpose and I was figuring out what to really do with my life etc. Something was not right though.. I was feeling very lethargic, very unenergetic, no passion and no desire for challenge. I just expected that when I figure out my life purpose, then I will be passionate and have tons of energy. But that didn't seem to give me any energy for now...

So one day I met one of my friends/mentors, and he said something that stuck with me. He told me it's better to get you hands dirty and do something, that way you will gain momentum and you will learn much more about yourself than infinitely analyzing about stuff... So an opportunity presented itself. Two of my friends who are great business people asked me to join them in starting a new business. I decided to stop analyzing my life and start living it and said yes, even though I didn't feel ready at all...

It has been a wild ride already these past few months. Things have happened that I never though would be possible. I have put myself in highly uncomfortable situation, high pressure situations, but they don't beat me down in the same way they did before. There is now a deeper level to rely upon, all the self acceptance stuff is there. My self-worth is no longer tied to this external thing, and that feels liberating. Incredible things have happened, doors have opened for us in places that we never knew they existed. I have felt that fiery passion inside me light up again and I am feeling very inspired at the moment. I know this feeling is passing, but it's great to at least have it back in the catalogue after over a year of apathy. 

This is what it's about, I need a balance between immersion and analysis. If I am too much in the analysis side of things, I fall into apathy, if I'm too much on the side of immersion, I self-destruct. But now I feel like I can handle way more immersion than before. A year of meditation and all that shadow work and psychedelic reflection has allowed it. I see that in a phase of "analysis" the benefits of meditation and shadow work are not that clear, but they become crystal clear in a state of "immersion". They build resilience, the storms don't whoop your ass so bad anymore. I am starting to trust myself that I will be able to thrive under massive pressure. When I have to pitch at an event, or I am put on the spot I often find myself having a calm, internal smile. Knowing that I am enough no matter what happens, there is always meditation and the present moment to rely upon..

The present moment always cradles us, we just have to remember it's there...

I don't know what will happen with this endeavor, but I trust it is the right path because I trust my intuition more now. It might not make logically sense for me to go into this, but I feel it is a necessary step for me. I need to learn the art of business, that is an essential life skill that I can build further curiosities onto.

See you now, future me

[TheAlchemist]

Catalogue of businesses/projects I have tried so far from age 18 to 23:

Many of these have failed, but some have succeeded, so feel free to ask me about any of these if you are interested:

1. 2015: Affiliate marketing blog
2. 2016 - 2017: Repairing iPhones and reselling them
3. 2019: Porn addiction coaching
4. 2020: TikTok social experiments
5. 2020: Matched betting
6. 2020: Print on Demand t-shirt business
7. 2020: Digital photocopying service for elderly people
8. 2020: Smart tool/product lending service

(crossed out = idea scrapped)

Edited October 12, 2020 by TheAlchemist