The role of balance in personal development

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Balance can’t be taught
There are problems with every extreme
- There’s also a problem with being in the middle all the time

One extreme usually demonizes the other extreme

Things that need to be balanced

Laziness & complacency vs neurotically working, overly disciplined

Being gentle with yourself vs being hard on yourself

Left brain vs right brain

Suppressing emotions vs expressing emotions

Rejecting theory entirely vs getting lost in theory
- Spiritual people rejecting theory
- Academics getting lost in it and forgetting to apply it

Career and life purpose vs spirituality

Pursuing enlightenment vs personal development

Working on yourself vs enjoying life

Unconditional love vs being a doormat

Being too stingy with your money vs being too wasteful

Chasing money vs neglecting money

Being pragmatic vs being idealistic

Contemplating death vs becoming a nihilist

Being scientific vs being overly materialistic

Art vs marketing

Being brutally honest vs being weak and compassionate

Relationship vs career

Exploring psychedelics vs using psychedelics to escape (or demonizing them)

Cutting toxic relationships vs avoiding commitment

Sticking to one school or technique vs being eclectic (sampling everything)

Balance is not just about taking everything in moderation
- Don’t mistake balance with splitting everything in the middle
- People have different balances and sometimes need contradictory pieces of advice and solutions
  - Even the best teacher can give you wrong advice because they don’t know your balances as well as you do
Balance isn’t static but dynamic
- Can require modification

Society appeals to the lower self

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Society exploits our lower self and distracts us from living an authentic life

We’re in an era of modern capitalism which is at stage orange in the graves model (Spiral Dynamics)
- Business is shaping society, government, culture, religion, and science
- Business and marketing people are experts of architecting systems to trap your lower self
  - Makes you trapped in low-consciousness patterns
  - Very little business is done in higher consciousness
  - It’s a game rigged both against you and its creator
    - Both you and the marketers get stuck in low consciousness

There’s a war for eyeballs in business

The heart of every business is marketing
Attention = power = money

Your brain has different levels and parts

The lower consciousness parts of the brain can be called the chimp-brain
- The parts that have stayed in the brain from earlier evolution
- Irrational, illogical
- The stuff that rules chimps

Chimp parts

These mechanisms function unconsciously
- Salt, sugar, and fats
- Sex
- Need for power and status
- Fun, play, and entertainment
- Validation: approval
- Likes security and comfort: a false security (money etc.)
- Love: lower kinds of love, needy, desperate, and neurotic kind
- Vanity: ego, pride, arrogance
- Gossip

Business has learned that you don’t buy things unless they hit one of these pain and pleasure points

28 ways society appeals to the lower self

Food: restaurants and food markets are all geared to appeal to your lower self
- Ruins your health
Alcohol and drugs: medicine and pharmaceutical industry
Collage, school, and educational systems
Celebrities: following and watching them
Books: junk books (romance, vampire, sci-fi, fantasy) appeal to your lower self
Video games
Tv-shows
News industry
Social media
Whole internet
Popular culture
Socializing with your friends (gossiping and talking shit)
Status game
Porn
Shopping and fashion
Tech bubble trend: gadgets, following the latest trends
Financial markets: credit, loans, mortgages
Nightclubs
Cars: caring about the vehicle you drive, wanting a Porsche
Holidays: marketing for Christmas etc.
Politics
Religion
Marriage
Romance: escape from reality, really you’re most likely just horny and desperate
Family
Career: 9-5 Career
Stock market
Sports

You’re following the path of least resistance
- Leaves a higher part of you that isn’t being tapped into

Society’s aims are

Achievement
Progress
Power
Efficiency
Status quota

Modern society is an amusement park for the ego (lower self)

All of this is an escape and a distraction from looking inward
The distraction is from Truth, being conscious of your own life and the lies that you’re telling yourself
- Doing is a distraction from being

Society doesn’t care about truth

Truth is antithetical to achievement and progress

7 pillars of strategic thinking

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Most people function in routines that they don’t question
- They face the same problems every day
- Most people always struggle with something

Most people don’t actually sit down and strategize
- Especially not deeply and often enough
- Leads to a lot of strategic blunders

What is strategic thinking

Setting goals and developing flexible long-range plans to reach those goals based on careful analysis of internal and external environments

Thinking logically and deeply about the future
- Thinking where you want to be in 5 years, 5 months, 5 days
- Should inform you what to do today

Dealing with a constantly changing environment
- Responding and changing the environment to your benefit

A method/plan we craft to bring about a desired future

In sports

Studying the competition
- Learning the opponent’s tendencies, habits, and weaknesses
  - This is the same within personal development, except the opponent is you

List of common strategic blunders

Relationship/social

Getting married in your twenties
Having kids too soon
Sticking with a bad boyfriend/girlfriend that you know isn’t right for you
Chasing sex or love (using a lot of energy for it)
Staying loyal to a dysfunctional family member

Personal development

Playing video games and pissing away your prime years (teens and 20s)
Not continuing education after college
Being too cheap to buy books, courses, seminars, or retreats
Hanging out with the wrong people
Neglecting spirituality (meditation and enlightenment work)
Taking religion too seriously
Not being able to think micro or macro (big picture and detailed oriented stuff)
Having zero intel about self-actualization, meditation, enlightenment, life purpose, how to start a relationship, what love is, mastery process
Lack of self-knowledge
Neurotically overcompensating for the problems that they have (reactive instead of proactive)
Not knowing how to prioritize
Not investing time to strategize
Not spending time developing their strategic recourses

Health/wellbeing

Eating junk food
Not going to the doctors
Being too cheap to hire a therapist or life coach
Living in the wrong place
Not being able to delay gratification
Being unaware of the things you shouldn’t do, the things that are dangerous, costly and risky
Not fixing problems at the root

Career

Drinking and partying in college
Not developing mastery in anything
Chasing achievement and status rather than inner growth
Chasing money rather than passion
Investing money in the wrong places
Thinking you can get something in life for nothing
Going into debt
Working for a boss in a giant company
Working 80 hours a week
Chasing the corporate ladder
Being oblivious to social and business traps (they don’t serve you, they serve themselves)

All strategic failures boil down to not doing the right thing at the right time

7 pillars of strategic thinking

Strategic intent
Strategic analysis and gathering of intelligence
Strategic preparation
Concentration of force
Disciplined execution and detailed tactical follow-through
Adaptability
The study of general principles

Strategic intent

A compelling vision for the future
- Motivates action
- The ultimate thing you are going for
- What’s the point? What do you want?

Strategic analysis

Analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that present themselves
- Anticipate the competitor’s responses
- The competition can be yourself
  - Anticipate the ego’s responses
  - Anticipate how your subconscious mind will trick and convince you

Strategic preparation

Building up strategic reserves through preparation
- Your options will be limited if you have no reserves
- You can increase reserves through training, hard work, discipline, sound planning, and preparation of your unique capabilities
  - You must develop yourself internally to handle the challenges that might come

Concentration of force

Concentration of force at the decisive point is the key to all strategy
- Directing as much force as possible to one point
- Applies just as much to military battles as to personal development and business
- Strategy is about finding the weak point and pushing resources to that point to get a breakthrough
  - Everyone has limited resources which makes it even more important to concentrate the resources properly

Detailed execution

After you come up with a plan, and you’ve gathered your resources, and you know where to concentrate your force, you now have to execute the plan
- A great plan poorly executed leads to disaster

Adaptability

Strategy isn’t about selecting the one ultimate best strategy and sticking with it
- Proper strategy is all about being flexible and adaptable
You have to plan for all disasters and misfortunes that might happen

A common mistake is making a long detailed plan and not being able to stick to it because it’s detached from reality
- You’ll have to rewrite your plan
- Don’t get clingy and attached to your plan

The study of principles

Regardless of how chaotic a situation may be, there are principles that can give shape to your thinking about the situation
- Emergent in such principles allows for genius flashes of insight

You need to study the proper principles of life and self-actualization if you are a human being trying to live your life
- You’re not just looking for a fix, instead, you’re looking for a deep understanding and mastery of the principles of life

Your life will only become satisfying once you start making wise strategic decisions
Strategy is not just about blind success
You can apply strategy to anything

How to get results

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The world runs on results

Fitness, business, money, career, internal mood
Everything you want is a result

Generally speaking, people are bad at getting results
- Most people have problems in life and most of them are because they are poor results-makers

Everything starts as a dream at first, but many people just get lost in dreams, theories, and ideas
Modern society makes it easy to lose sight of results
- We might simply plug ourselves into the system and settle for a 9-5 job
- We aren’t holding our own feet to the fire of reality
  - We don’t depend on results
  - This makes us bad at making results

A good results maker is able to hold his feet to the fire as the other people are just dreamers, big talkers
- A lot of dirty work needs to be done to translate dreams into reality
  - This is very emotionally difficult
  - Reality doesn’t change for you, you have to change reality

Two options for dealing with dreams

Emotionally easy option
- Fantasizing more and forgetting about making your dreams real
  - Not taking action because it’s painful, uncomfortable, unpleasant
Emotionally difficult and mature option
- Admitting having been misguided about your understanding of reality
- Thinking of a new idea and going back to the drawing board
- Analyze what kind of beliefs you hold about the world that makes it impossible to get your dream to work
  - You’ll have to give up some of your beliefs to make it work

People who are spiral dynamics stage green are usually bad at making results
- Stage Green preaches about relationships and spirituality
  - Really they both require a lot of results making

You need to bite the bullet and not be one of the people who preach about things without actually getting results
- Take on the burden of expending emotional labor to reach your goals and dreams
  - Do less talking and more doing
  - Don’t confuse doing with results
  - All doing doesn’t lead to results

How to think like a results-maker

Value tangible results
Value creating things
- Start thinking about life in terms of projects

Have a desire to impact people
Talk is cheap, talk is oftentimes just a distraction from holding your feet to the fire
Work for excellence
Take a personal responsibility to make it happen
- You have to believe it’s your job

Working the big picture
Strong work ethic
You have to be willing to use brute force
If you can brute force yourself to reach your goal, do it
Sacrifice comfort
- Hedonism doesn’t actually produce happiness

Be willing to change yourself to get a result
Throw yourself into demanding situations
Be around exceptional people
Think about your own death
- Shows how little time you have to get shit done

How to stop being a victim

Source 1

Source 2

A lot of people aren’t getting the results they want from life because they are playing the victim
- If you’re stuck, frustrated, and feel like you aren’t getting the results you want in any area of your life, it’s most likely because you’re behaving like a victim
  - Usually, you don’t realize when you’re doing it

What is a victim

Somebody who gives away control

“being victimized”: you think that there’s no control over a particular situation and that you have to live and suffer through it, that there are no options

If you are frustrated in any area of your life it’s because you have victim thinking in that area of your life
- The foundation of all personal development is taking 100% responsibility
  - Who is really responsible for your quality of life?
  - Is it your parents, family, environment, country, friends, husband/wife/kids, or is it you

6 areas to take 100% responsibility in
1. Success

2. Failures
– Money, relationships, worrying
– Failure will happen but a victim will blame others and situations for them

3. Emotions
– Emotions aren’t caused by external situations
– You are the one who is creating all the emotions in your life

4. Accidents
– Car crashes, stock market crashes, you get robbed
– You need to take responsibility for the stuff that is seemingly out of your control
– What is in your control is how you respond to the situation

5. Circumstances in your life
– Political systems in your country, your family, amount of money in your bank account

6. Relationships
– When something isn’t going right in a relationship we like to point the finger at the other person

If you refuse to take responsibility for any of the following you will experience suffering and bad results

People generally tend to have a linear upward growth of personal development in their early years until they are in their 20s
- Then the natural growth usually plateaus
- People become stuck in life after they get out of the school system and their family
  - They stick to their conditioning, mindsets, and beliefs
  - That’s the trajectory that they’ll carry for the rest of their lives

Model of victim mentality

Spectrum with one end being low consciousness/victim mentality and the other being high consciousness

Victim thinking

A victim believes that they don’t have much control in life
- Doesn’t even start to take action
- Believes that there are obstacles and roadblocks that are impossible to overcome
  - This is happening unconsciously (the person doesn’t realize he is being a victim)

Fighter

All about conflict
- The idea that we live in a harsh reality and we need to fight and compete in reality
- Believing it’s a zero-sum game

Creator

Someone who realizes that life is what they make of it
- Every single obstacle has some workaround to it
- Everything that is blocking you can be dissolved or made peace with

Being at peace

Maximum consciousness
- Going full circle
- No longer believing that you have any control
- Life force is flowing through you
  - Job is to remove blockages of that flow

Responsibility vs blaming

You shouldn’t blame yourself and be self-critical
- The objective is not to get you to blame yourself
Responsibility is how you respond in the present moment

The problems in the past don’t actually exist

In order for the past to hold you back it you have to be thinking of it in the present moment
- You always have control over your reactions
- You always have control over your interpretations of a situation
- You always have control over how you’re going to act

Why do people want to remain victims

Victims usually get defensively angry and frustrated if you tell him he is acting like a victim
- It’s scary to admit to yourself that you are responsible for everything
  - This means you have to do a lot of personal development

You have to sacrifice the ego and take massive action to solve some problem
More often than not things require more action than you think

Phrases that victims will use

I can’t
It’s impossible, that can’t be done
It’s too hard
Life’s unfair
I must, I need to, I have to
I have never done that
What if I fail?
It’s not my fault, it’s his fault (blaming others)
I’ve already tried that
Never (I never succeed)
Always (I always fail)
I will try, I’ll give it a shot
There’s no point, what’s the point?
It’s too much effort
That’s all great for young people
It’s too late for me
Sure it’s easy for you (using this and that as excuses)
But how?

What makes a victim a victim?

A victim thinks that the external world is a greater obstacle to him than he is to himself
- You are the only obstacle
  - Your mind is the obstacle
  - The solution isn’t just positive thinking
- Every obstacle you think is an external obstacle is an illusion
  - Lack of money, lack of time, boss holding you back

Self-deception is one of the biggest dangers and sources of dysfunction in your life
Victims tend to worry more about the external world than the internal world

Things you should worry about

Your:
- Mental filters
- Attitude
- Limiting beliefs
- Judgements
- Unquestioned assumptions about reality
- Lack of introspection
- Monkey mind (overactive thinking)
- Model of reality as a whole
- Emotional reactions
- Views on right and wrong / good and evil
- Habits
- Self-talk
- Awareness and consciousness
- Ego

There are no real problems in the external world

A problem is a feature in the mind

You’re the one attributing meaning to the external world
If you only change things in the external world, the problems will keep recurring with slight differences

Your mind is not your friend

Stop believing your mind gullibly

If you’re a victim your beliefs about reality are very distorted

Exercise
1. Select one area where you are being a victim in life
2. Write down all your justifications of why you can’t change this area and why it’s not your fault
3. Identify how the problem seems like an external problem
4. Identify how the problem is actually an internal problem
5. Ask:
– How am I creating the obstacle?
– What am I avoiding by creating this obstacle?
– What must I believe to be a victim?

Responsibility vs blame

Source

You should take 100% responsibility for everything in your life
- Responsibility doesn’t mean that you’re at fault or that you are to blame for a situation

Blame and fault is a pointless activity

There’s never a need to blame or fault somebody
- It’s a low-conscious activity that the ego uses
  - Makes it so that you can say that you’re the good one and the other one is the evil one
- Even if you’re responsible for some bad thing you shouldn’t internalize the pain, guilt yourself, and make yourself feel bad

Responsibility is response-ability

You can have a resourceful response in the present moment to past bad experiences

4-part definition for taking 100% responsibility

Recognize that you are the cause of a lot more of your life than you’re willing to admit
Commit to never blaming anyone or anything else for the things happening in your life
You always have at least some control, no matter what situation you’re in
- You have control over your response to any situation
Acknowledge that your response in the present moment is what matters the most

You are both the entire cause of your life and not the cause at all
- The most productive mindset is to assume that you create absolutely everything

Understanding resistance

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Resistance robs you of a lot of potential
- Your mind’s resistance to thoughts, ideas, and actions

Resistance is worse with the things that you actually want to be doing
- If you have a goal you create a lot of shoulds and musts

The higher and the lower self

Higher self	Lower self
– The higher self knows what’s best – The higher self is like the parent	– The lower self wants to stay in your comfort zone – The lower self is like the child * The lower self doesn’t want to do what it has to do – You need to have options to motivate the lower self * Punishing the lower self will lead to worse results * Shoulding leads to worse results

Resistance is a feeling

How to eliminate resistance
The Sedona method
– Get in touch with your feelings of resistance
– Ask yourself:
* Could I let this go?
* Would I like to let it go?
* When would I like to let this go?

The best way to get rid of resistance is through action
– Cut off your mind and thoughts
– Be present
– Get to work and start doing

You might also be resisting the resistance
– You don’t want to do something and you resist your feeling of not wanting to do it
– You need to accept your resistance
* Don’t think you shouldn’t feel that way
* Accepting resistance can make it go away

You usually resist what you tell yourself you should do
- Example: going to the gym
  - You can either side with your lower or higher self
    - If you side with your higher self you go to the gym
    - You’ll feel a lot of tension and it will feel like labor
    - If you side with your lower self you’ll stay at home but feel guilty

You don’t want to run away from your feelings

It’s like sweeping a problem under the rug
It might work in the short turn
- It comes back to you in the long term

40+ self-actualization techniques

Source

Life purpose
- Taking your career and turning it into your work of art
- The impact you have on humanity
- Mastery
Reprogramming your subconscious mind
- Affirmations, visualizations, etc.
Meditation
- Labeling mindfulness labeling
- Concentration practice
Self-inquiry
Contemplation
Journaling
Learning theory
- Reading, taking courses, watching videos
Taking notes
Buying and taking courses
Researching books, courses, and seminars
Studying various spiritual traditions
Seeking our masterful teachers
Solar retreats
- You sitting on a couch by yourself for ten days for 12 hours a day (meditating)
Take psychedelics (for growth, not recreationally)
Ending unconscious relationships
Radical honesty
NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming)
Shadow work
New-age methods
- Astral projection, lucid dreaming, hypnosis, Reiki, chakras
Cleaning up your diet
Physical exercise
Hatha yoga (western yoga/stretching)
Pranayama or Kundalini yoga
- Breathing exercises, body postures/positions, mudras, and mantras
- Used to send energy up your spine to purify the chakras
  - Can lead to awakenings, physical healing, etc.
Breathing
Holotropic breathwork
- Specific shamanic breathing technique
Bodywork, energy work, and Reichian therapy
- Work on your physical body
- Can release various blockages
Developing body awareness
Cleaning up your information intake
- Eliminating television, phone, internet, YouTube, comedy shows, news, politics, blogs, gossip tabloids, garbage music
  - They’re extremely addicting
Eliminating hard addictions
- Drugs, coffee, alcohol, smoking, shopping, pornography, video games
Eliminating subtle/soft addictions
- Theorizing, judging, chasing love, chasing success, perfectionism, being right all the time, morality, arguing and debating, criticizing
Getting more life experiences
- Travelling, being in nature, interacting with new and interesting people
Building socialization and dating skills
Finding healthy forms of relaxation and entertainment
Getting your affairs in order
- Try to automate things (taxes etc.)
Lifestyle minimalism
Finding a quality life coach or therapist
Neurofeedback training
- Take electrodes and attach them to your head while you do various training routines that train your brain to fire in the right ways

How to self-actualize
1. Start by researching the techniques
2. Journal
– Make an assessment of your life
* Where are you?
* Where have you been?
* Where do you want to go?
* Consider your options
3. Make a plan
– You need to have a vision

Things you’ll need
– You need a lot of theory
– Remove addictions and distractions
– Install small healthy habits (meditation etc.)
– Glimpse non-egoic consciousness
– Don’t rush self-actualization (think long-term)
– Don’t forget the path

The self-actualized life

Your possible self-improvement isn’t just a 20% improvement but can be a radical 5000%

Self-realization

the realization of one’s potential, capacities, and talents
Fulfillment of one’s vision in life
Fuller knowledge of one’s intrinsic nature
Getting in touch with your authentic self

Two types of pleasure

Scarcity pleasure
- The relief one gets from the loss of tension and anxiety
  - The pleasure most people get
Abundance pleasure
- The ecstasy of functioning at one’s prime

The self-actualized life

Living to your fullest potential
Think to your past when you felt alive and creatively abundant
- It’s possible to live like that every day
You can master all the major areas of your life
- Relationship, career, emotions

Goals you can strive for

Create a life where you never have to worry about money ever again
A life where your work isn’t like work but it’s like play
Developing full emotional control
Developing a deep understanding of how the world works
A really successful intimate relationship
Physical vitality and energy
Rich and rewarding friendships
Becoming a leader and a role model
Enlightenment

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NOTES (Self-Help)

The role of balance in personal development

Society appeals to the lower self

7 pillars of strategic thinking

How to get results

How to stop being a victim

Responsibility vs blame

Understanding resistance

40+ self-actualization techniques

The self-actualized life