Okay so ma man.
So I have interacted with you, played with you, and have talked to you, right?
Do you want me to tell you my personal recommendation?
Quit league for a while, trust me on that, and if you need any motivation and reasons why, then here:
I’m not gonna tell you to fully quit it, but your mental stability isn’t worth losing over a digital rank.
Look at me, I dropped all the way to bronze cause I just play for my own enjoyment, and maybe only once or twice a day (I used to play 8 hours a day and peaked at platinum - you probably remember this), and here’s the biggest lesson I learned:
you suck out the fun out of something when you start taking it too seriously.
Your rank isn’t going to lead to you getting the girl of your dreams, your dream car, a nice house, a fun social circle, but obsessing over it will land you straight to depression land.
Oh and side note: when I was in therapy about 2 years ago, the first thing my therapist asked me to do was to go 2 weeks without video games, and that helped more than the medications haha.
This whole year has been tough regarding life in general with certain events and personal things going on. Not only bad things of course, but sooner or later people hit their breaking point - then either they change their situation (or it gets changed) or they crumble. At least that’s my current view of it. I’m also still trying to figure this out.
My main motivation back then to try out subs was to enhance my gaming skills, well at least that’s how I found out about subclub. I didn’t wanna stay terrible at a hobby that I enjoy and wanted to see if this actually works. Then later on I also used subs for healing, money and other areas.
I can’t fully grasp my problem, but I might be able to describe it. I’m constantly looking for things that help me improve in life (whatever that area is), something relatable right? Most people here want to improve some part of their life. But over years and years after having received so much help/advice from other people, media, books, research, own experiences, subs… here I am still being really depressed as I had been before - a real freaking mess internally (jealousy, self-doubt, anger) & externally (barely keeping up with life’s responsibilities, being a bad friend and not a good person to be around).
Not sure if you’ve watched the movie Maze Runner, but basically it’s like I’ve already explored the whole maze a thousand times, knowing each corner, but not the deeper mechanism that allows me to get out of the maze. And no matter how much I’m learning or trying out, I’m still not going anywhere significant.
Or it’s like Pac-Man (for the old school gamers hehe): I’m collecting all those points (experiences, learnings), but I’m still stuck in this level. The enemies are all the people who expect me to be someone that I’m not or who are stressing me about my lack of progress, my own self-sabotaging self and time.
Definitely, life naturally has highs and lows. I do for example think that even if I have a bad day that the next one might be better or worse, but it’s not the same each day. However, how I am currently, it feels like I’m always the same and not improving as a person overall whether that’s my mindset or my abilities. But I still have some hope for now, despite calling myself hopeless case numerous times.
Yes, I don’t have a gym membership, but I work out at home or some sport outside (cycling, running, etc.)
Yup, not the most muscular nor a sixpack, but in shape.
No, not anymore. I quit after I researched about the negative effects and experienced them myself on gaming performance. So my goal in gaming basically made me quit porn and also do more sports.
Not good, I have some solid days regardless where I can pull myself together and get it right
No, not at all.
No complaints about that one.
Yes, I always have to go through that torturing process of overcoming that anxiety when I actually want/have to talk to another person.
Yes, I have some real life friends.
Not sure about that one, I haven’t measured my own testosterone level yet.
Taking a break from the game can be quite healthy. I actually did this not too long ago and went for a 100km bike tour instead. I still don’t wanna fully quit, bc I see this beautiful world in it that I want to explore. And yeah… the fixation on this digital rank even gets so far that it can remove the fun for exploring the game itself, pretty ironic.
I think regarding that it’s just the disappointment of having set a goal for myself (same concept can also be applied to other life areas) and despite so much of my own effort, dozens of help from others and a realistic time frame, failing to reach it. It’s not over yet, but 70 days aren’t a lot.
I’m very conflicted about medications, I’ve talked to an expert about it, and I’m not that convinced yet, but also haven’t tried them yet. Regardless, I do pay attention to not be addicted to something like a game. I’ve quit numerous games in the past bc they weren’t good for me, I just view league differently than most other games, it’s more like a sport for me. But you’re right, I need to be careful of it not dragging me to depression land or insanity.
You have to address your low self-esteem, you have to start loving yourself.
Why don’t you like yourself?
This is because in order for a change to occur there actually has to be an internal shift.
Also, more evidence of your lack of self-love: judging yourself about being a “bad” friend and a “bad” person to be around. Low self-esteem also = jealousy.
Low self-esteem = suicidal thoughts, depression and hopelessness (all of which you’ve mentioned.)
Almost sounds like an anxiety disorder. Sounds like a mixture of low self-confidence, low self-esteem and fear of rejection.
This is a typical low-self love/trauma case.
Check out Love Bomb For Humanity
Also, stop playing League of Legends, it’s not good for your mental health (which is your issue).
It’s not like playing that game is going to uplift your mental health is it? It’s not rocket science.
From the outside looking in, this is insanity.
I’m sorry, but you literally subject yourself to an extremely toxic and negative community in your spare time as a fun “hobby” then wonder why you have poor mental health and are depressed.
Maybe I’m getting this completely wrong. In which case, do ignore me. But let me talk about myself for a bit.
In reading some of the recent posts I am reminded of how I sometimes feel, especially near the end of the year. I have this sense that time stops for no man, it only ever moves forward and my time is getting shorter and shorter with every day. So every year I set these amazing goals for myself. I’m gonna get a beach body, earn twice as much, revitalize my relationships, celebrate a romantic Hallmark Christmas with a partner whom I met during the year and so on.
And then the end of the year comes around and I have difficulty seeing all the things I did accomplish because I feel this constant tremendous pressure of needing to do better and do more because time has scratched yet another year off my life. Like the weight of my entire life is always on my shoulders and I can never put it down.
One thing I keep telling myself is: “Your mind has this limited amount of space to keep things in which you can pay attention to. What is done is done and can not be changed in the present. Let it go so it doesn’t take up valuable space better used for other things.”
If I keep reminding myself of al the things I failed to do, how can I ever motivate myself to do them again?
Or, some related quotes: “The only thing a person can ever really do is keep moving forward. Take that big leap forward without hesitation, without once looking back.” – Alyson Noel
“You need to have faith in yourself. Be brave and take risks. You don’t have to have it all figured out to move forward.” – Roy T. Bennett
“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." – Joseph Campbell
It’s always a good thing to learn from the past, but after I have studied it and learned all the useful parts, I don’t have to keep remembering the past, only the things I learned (not) to do in the future. That’s a mistake society keeps making, one which in my opinion has caused most of the social conflict the past few years. They think we need to learn about the past, when instead we only need to learn from the past. If we keep learning about the past, we’ll never get past it.
Another challenge I have is that for most of my adult life I have studied about communication, dating, psychology, money, business and so on and on. And I know so much about these things that I have coached a lot of people to get better lives, the perfect partner, financial freedom and more.
But somehow I have a hard time applying all these things to my own life. Somehow I have this complete inability to turn all this wisdom into something applicable for my life. And it’s frustrating.
It’s like a game of the Sims. I can be an overt or covert puppet master, helping people to change their lives for the better, but I’m unable to pull my own strings and control my own actions.
Why can I say these things to others and it works…
“Knowledge is power: You hear it all the time but knowledge is not power. It’s only potential power. It only becomes power when we apply it and use it.” – Jim Kwik
“When there is time, there is no money… And when there is money, there is no time… So, if you don’t want to have regrets in this life, do it when you have either of them, don’t wait for both!” – Yulia Lipovka
“Start right now with whatever you have. Six months from now it will an absolute game changing move of your life.” – Hiral Nagda
…and of course the most annoying of all…
“Just do it.” –Nike
…but if I tell myself I consistently fail to follow the advice?
Life is full of these unfair challenges. But what keeps me going is shifting my focus to figuring out how to overcome them. Finding the answers which so far nobody has given me.
And in the meantime, I just wake up every morning with the intention to wake up tomorrow just a little bit better than today. To do at least one thing right today, no matter how tiny. Little things add up. I may never reach all my lofty goals, but I will keep setting them to provide direction and at least I know I’m getting better every day in the meantime. And that’s something to be proud of.
Someday somebody might make a book called Nuggets of Wisdom by DarkPhilosopher. I can imagine somebody tweets that thing about learning from the past instead of about the past and it going viral, all the while I am completely oblivious to it happening.
Well, there are about four or five of us here talking to you and as probability would have it, each of us has quite a unique perspective and asks very different questions. (Though I did find helpful points in each post that I read.)
I guess what I’m saying is, if this starts to become overwhelming, let us know.
What I’m always curious about:
How specifically can you describe what your next level will be and will look like?
When we allow subjective impressions to guide us, most people end up moving the goalposts a lot.
I could talk about this for a while, but I think it comes down to one point:
It is tricky to tease apart the external elements from the internal elements that contribute to wellbeing, satisfaction, and happiness.
We’re genetically wired to find ways to 1) be safe and 2) be able to reproduce (whether we ultimately choose to or not). Many of the things that we instinctually regard as ‘happiness’ are related to those two underlying standards.
Thing is: we’re not actually wired for happiness.
That’s no problem at all. It just means that if you follow your impulses and impressions on auto-pilot and are successful, you’ll end up safe, somewhat connected, with resources and opportunities for pleasure; but not happy.
To be happy, a person needs to step outside of the game somewhat. Instinct is the greatest addiction in the world. But we don’t need to defeat it. Just to push back a little bit, and stop believing that everything it says is necessarily true.
Anyway, whatever to all of what I just wrote. You may or may not even be interested in that.
But my real question to you is still the first one that I asked up above:
How specifically can you describe what your next level will be and what it would look like?
Thanks for pointing out the self love issue. I do think this hits the nail on the head and I’m addressing that, trying out love bomb for humanity.
I don’t agree with quitting League though. It’s not really about the game itself, the same can happen in any other game, a toxic relationship or friendship, a job, another hobby… But definitely how it was when I wrote the entry is not the way to go (wrong approach).
Regarding the game’s toxicity - it’s mainly the community, not the game itself. Quite some time has passed since those posts that you quoted. For context, I quit the toxic communities and people within the game. Instead I chose a LoL community (discord server) that is not toxic at all, where it’s more about improvement & learning, which includes out of game stuff too.
I do think the game can amplify certain problems that had already been there from the start as a result of childhood stuff or other experiences/factors.
In the last days I thought about my approach to the game and I think I have a better one now.
Your example is pretty accurate, as it’s also now the end of the year soon. But then I’m wondering what’s going wrong - is it the goals we set for ourselves, the expectations, not letting go of the past or something else?
There’s a difference between knowledge and being able to apply that knowledge. Why do you think you haven’t been able to translate that wisdom into something in your life?
An interesting thing that I learned is that people are motivated by different things. You give me the impression that you’re highly motivated by acquiring knowledge and coming up with new findings.
I’m similar in that regard, but opposite to that, I don’t get much motivation from most materialistic stuff or some in the social department.
My current theory is that the goals, both long-term and short-term ones need to include a big portion of goals that in align with what actually motivates/drives us personally. And that’s something everyone has to find out on their own.
So, thank you for giving me another puzzle piece, as I think my own curiosity and love for exploring/figuring out something helps me more to keep going than another value/motivator that a different person might have.
Don’t worry, I appreciate all the different takes and find them very interesting. It just takes me a while to respond, as I wanna really understand and think about them before I write something.
If I followed only my impulses, I’d be much more miserable, I’m pretty sure. I actually get a bad feeling each time, I’m losing touch to what I actually want and when I get pulled too much into certain directions by external things like media (phone, tv…), other people etc. or simply by my own autopilot (which is as you said genetically wired to fulfill those things and also influenced by past experiences.)
Sometimes I struggle to actually believe in something - a state of endless questioning the validity of each thought, perception, reality. Like missing an anchor - a reference point. But being alone, enjoying nature, well also other things, basically “being in the moment” resolves that.
So I pondered a lot on your question and I still don’t have a satisfying answer to that one. What I imagine the key to the next level is, that I can finally stop standing in my own way. As if I’m my own gatekeeper - in reality I’m the final boss of this current level that I’ve been stuck in for so long by self-sabotaging myself so many times - creating illusions of “enemies”, fake progress and debuffs.
The irony behind this: I probably know that I’m my own worst enemy. Thus I’ve developed all that self-hatred, BUT the way to advance to the next level is not through hating, hurting and defeating myself. However self-love alone doesn’t seem like the only required solution. So I guess the next level is simply reaching a state where I can consistently tackle certain things in my life without self-sabotaging myself, which will open more doors in the future with new challenges. But I can’t say what those will be, I can only make guesses based on stories of similar journeys/people.
how do you figure out whether something is an illusion or not? How do I see past the illusion and for what it really is without having the proper foresight?
So much food for thought in what you’ve typed. Like you, I want to take more time to reflect on what you’re expressing. But one immediate thing I can say is:
I don’t actually consider an illusion to be a bad thing. I think our happiness and wellbeing as much as our discouragement and despair are equally based on illusions.
I take a pragmatic approach (or I try to).
When my illusions are working for me and leading to solid, stable, effective states of mind, then I welcome them and even nurture them.
But if they start telling me that life is terrible or that I’m worthless, then it’s time for us to have a little talk together.
Our perceptions are mostly illusory. That’s not a flaw. They’re literally supposed to be like that.
Paintings in an art museum are all 2-dimensional. But when you look at them your brain transforms them into 3-dimensional perceptions. Same with movies. The entire movie is just shifting colors and shadows on a 2-dimensional plane. We transform them into richer perceptions.
They’re supposed to be like that.
And we’re supposed to learn the balance between being absorbed into these pictures and being able to stand apart from them and remember their illusory nature.
We do both.
We engage with the game, we absorb into the games, we play with heart, with courage, with commitment.
And at the same time, we hold that part of our awareness that remembers, ‘This is just a game’.
This applies to everything we do.
Some games are big and serious and life-changing. People will even end their lives over those games. The game of sex. The game of love. The game of business. The game of self-worth. The game of proving myself to Society or to family or whoever.
Other games are lighter and more obviously trivial. But they’re also important because they’re literal laboratories where we can practice our balance for the bigger games.
But it’s all games and it’s all illusions. It’s all art and it’s all artifice.
Images, painted in water.
I think we’re here to play the games well and with heart. And to make beautiful art with integrity.
That’s a good life.
But it’s still illusion, games, and art.
So when it knocks you down, always get up again.
Apply the same mastery and resilience you’ve practiced in your online games, when you’re playing your offline games.
Anyway, I’ll think more about the rest of what you’ve said, and hopefully learn from it and respond to it.
You want to know why I don’t play online video games?
It’s because I have no interest in reading or listening to toxic rage from hyper-traumatized, hyper-emotional beta males with the masculinity levels of f*cking plants. There are 24 hours in my day and not a single second of my attention or aspect of my mind is worth being focused towards that.
This is not a compartmentalized attitude towards video games, this is merely an extension of the same internal self-worth and value I have as a grown adult man affecting every single area of my life.
You say it’s the community and not the video game. Technically yes, but realistically no.
Online video games in general, are toxic because they give anonymity to traumatized beta males (99% of men in society are traumatized) while being highly attractive to them like a moth to a flame.
The anonymity is like an artificial inflation of the trauma and manifests as being rude, being aggressive, berating, bullying, degrading, belittling, and threatening - without fear of repercussions. It’s completely disconnected from nature.
Suddenly some 16 year old, edgy virgin nerd can talk all the sh*t he wants to you, call you a “stupid idiot” and even say malicious things about your mother/family members. People are able to say things that they would NEVER say face to face in real life and they do this casually, without a second thought.
When you choose to play these online games with toxic communities, you are basically saying that you DESERVE to be in an environment that facilitates these types of dynamics. The “ignore button” is a cop out. That crap shouldn’t even enter your reality, it shouldn’t even meet your mind.
It’s like walking into a dirty broken down motel because you like the food there and sleeping in a room that has a rat infestation. There are rats running around and you just “ignore them”. No, you don’t need to ignore them, you need to leave that dirty ass motel and rent a 5 star resort because you deserve better. It doesn’t matter how much you ignore the rats, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re sitting in a dirty motel. Instead of coping/dealing with what you don’t like, you can actually just level up into a completely different vibration.
Reading toxic stuff from toxic people, even if it’s not directed towards you… is not healthy for your subconscious mind. When you read it, it doesn’t make you feel good inside does it? Does it shift you into a positive emotional state? You are basically programming your subconscious mind to believe that acceptance of this type of human behavior is normal (no it’s not). Since it’s a large community, there is the addition of having your subconscious mind emulate, mimic and integrate the most common type of perceived behavior (hyper-toxicity) as a survival mechanism to fit in with the herd. You’re also creating a subconscious perception of other humans that is based on their anonymous selves (inflated trauma)… this can even amplify a fear of rejection.
This is all extremely basic shit by the way, lol.
If you watch the news all day, it’s going to screw you over because it’s a distorted concentration of negativity rather than the state of the world. These toxic video game environments are like a distorted concentration of exaggerated trauma.
If you want to subject yourself to these environments then you are free to do so and it is your choice.
If I play one of those games for a week, I will likely encounter hundreds of hyper-toxic people, yet in the real world I can go a year without encountering any hyper-toxic people.
Any high value man is going to have an ROI filter in his subconscious mind. High level manifesters ESPECIALLY are VERY cautious of what goes into their mind.
Subconscious mind 101:
Pay attention to what you what you put into your subconscious mind and what you expose it to.
Pay attention to what you focus on and what you direct your attention towards.
Your mind is insanely powerful.
Anyways, do what you wanna do… this is all just my opinion lol.
None of the swearing is directed to you, I mean well… I’m just passionate about the topic. Please don’t flag me or have moderators edit my post.
A person is walking across this river, and he slips and falls.
He was actually being pretty careful, but his foot hit one of the stones wrong and the force of the river knocked him off balance.
Does this mean that he is bad person?
Does it mean he is a good person?
Does it mean he is a low value individual?
Does it mean he deserves criticism? or praise?
Does it mean he was definitely careless? And that in general, he will be incompetent in most situations?
No.
None of those.
Many people, probably most people, will slip when they’re trying to walk across those river rapids. At least once. Possibly many times.
Because the rapids’re freaking slippery.
The waters are pushing you forcefully. The rocks are moss covered. And so on.
You don’t slip because you’re a good or a bad person. You slip because the conditions are conducive to slipping.
And yet, people can and do become skilled enough to cross sometimes without slipping. They develop the skills of balance, sensitivity, and strength, and learn to maneuver skillfully through the waters.
Some of us find other solutions. Some rare athletes build up enough explosive leg strength to be able to jump across. Some of us use cleverness to figure out how to build bridges or to use ropes to swing across. Some of us learn to find others who can help us across in some way. Or we find a team that can cooperate to find ways across.
(And each one of those innovations or achievements, 1) develops and applies our abilities, but also 2) robs us of the chance to learn the skill of walking across.)
Either way, we don’t need to think of it in terms of ‘becoming a better person’. We can think of it much more simply as developing the skills to deal with a particular problem or situation. Anyone who lacks those skills or those resources, no matter how “good” or “bad” they are, will slip and fall. Conversely, anyone who possesses those skills, again, no matter how “worthy” or “unworthy” they are, will navigate the waters without falling.
It’s not, fundamentally, a test of morality and character.
Though of course we can use any challenge as an opportunity for building morality and character. But that’s a choice.
We can also make the alternate choice and determine to keep our external challenges separate from our perceptions of our fundamental worth or sense of character.
We can choose to play the challenges of life and the challenges of our minds.
Hmm…not sure if the point is getting across here. But at any rate, I’ll stop now.
Well, since we’re very close to discussing the meaning of life, I might as well add a big post too. Although I may have gone completely overboard. Part of me likes the feeling of just letting the thoughts flow once I start typing…
I do hope there’s value here though and it’s not just me hearing myself type.
I don’t think anything is going wrong. It’s possible to treat life like a business project and set goals complete with plans to guarantee they get completed. With experience, training and extensive progress monitoring we could probably do that as well. But that would feel like going on a vacation and experiencing the entire thing through the lens of your camera. It prevents us from living the experience.
I suspect that even the most successful people don’t always reach their goals. They still keep setting them though. And they get there eventually. They might have goals which they know they will reach, a series of small goals to motivate them to keep going every time they complete one, and a couple large goals which provide direction more than anything else. Have enough of both and you’re riding a constant feeling of accomplishment.
Figuring out what is achievable and what isn’t is something which comes from repetition. At some point you just get a feeling of what you’ll be able to do and how long it would take you.
But all this still doesn’t explain why it feels so bad when we don’t reach our goals. Obviously if I knew the answers I would have told you already, but at this time I think it’s because we focus so much on what we have not (yet) accomplished that we become blind to what we have accomplished.
When we simply put one foot in front of the other and keep moving in the right direction, we tend to accomplish a lot of little things. We just don’t notice them. And so as the deadline gets near it feels like we haven’t done a thing. The experience and skill we gained, the meaningful moments with other people, all the times we worked out, it all came so naturally that it passed by unnoticed. And because of that, we don’t feel that sense of awe and pride to offset the feeling of disappointment. We never stop to think what our lives might have been like if we had done none of those things.
What a friend of mine does...
I know somebody who keeps a set of folders. Each folder represents an area of her life. Relationships, Career, Education, Health, Fitness, Creativity and so on. On the front of each of those folders is the goals she set for that area. And every time she accomplishes something of note, she either writes it down of collects some other form of “proof”, then puts it in the associated folder. When she does, she doesn’t consciously look at the list of goals.
At the end of the year she reviews her goals by taking the list of goals she had set for each of those areas and line up under it all the evidence of her accomplishments she has in that area. In some cases it turns out she either completed a goal, surpassed it and completed a bigger goal or even that it turns out the original goal wasn’t what she really wanted and she’d been subconsciously working towards something else which she can now see based on the evidence.
Finally, after taking note of everything, she creates new goals for the next year, archives the folders for times when she needs some reinforcement and puts the new list of goals on a new set of folders.
According to her it really skyrocketed how much she accomplishes. She describes it as gaining momentum, like a snowball rolling down a mountain those folders get bigger and bigger every year, even if she doesn’t necessarily achieve more of her goals each year.
The key is to be consistent. Forget logging your accomplishments for too long and part of your mind forgets about it with the idea of giving it another go next year.
This is one of the bigger questions in life. Even though we know what to do, why don’t we simply do it? Why is there an irrational river of thoughts getting in the way of ourselves? Why do we often place outside influences in a position of power, trusting them to guide us and determine our value, but won’t believe or trust a word of what we tell ourselves unless it’s something negative?
Most people with phobias will tell you that they are perfectly aware that it’s irrational and yet it doesn’t change how it feels. Many people are constantly obsessing over what other people think about them, it’s more important than how they think about themselves.
Although we logically know certain things to be true, we often can’t convince ourselves of this. We would much rather believe that someone or something else has a power over us which “makes” us do things. A deity, a coach or guru, a healer, a subliminal.
In fields like Chinese medicine, the healer will tell you that they aren’t actually healing you, they are simply helping you to heal yourself, to get out of your own way. Stories of how sick people got better simply by believing and never giving up and how healthy people got sick because they were giving up are plenty.
We put our faith in these tools we find, so we can say to ourselves that as long as we have the tool, we can do this thing. Until we liberate ourselves from those limiting beliefs, we need the tools.
This is where the concept of “I am” comes from often heard in meditative practices. The idea that you can identify with and become just about anything by first saying “I am” before it, they after enough repetitions dropping the “I am” and just repeating the word and finally even dropping the word and meditating solely on how that thing feels. Become the thing. Become health, become love, become wealth, become success. Identify with that thing so completely that suddenly your life is filled with it, it’s everywhere.
But I’m going off on a tangent here.
We block ourselves from applying what we’ve learned because we don’t consider ourselves the authority on it. After all, if we were we would not have needed to learn it, right?
And until we convince ourselves that we are indeed an authority, we will continue to seek out guidance rather than give it to ourselves. It’s hard to convince yourself you’re right when part of your mind is constantly telling you “Yeah, but what if you’re not? Better wait for someone with a proven track record. Or better conditions so we have a larger chance of success. Or both. It’s the smart thing to do.”
The 2 primary driving forces behind human behavior have always been pain/fear and pleasure. Both are manifested in us through chemical reactions in our body, although it is still uncertain if the chemical reaction causes the feeling or is caused by the feeling (each can trigger the other though). We are all running away from things and running towards things. Ironically, the methods which work to train dogs also work quite well on training humans. Variable reward and discipline, the carrot and the stick.
For all of us, one of these is more powerful than the other. Some people will be driven to action by being shown how their current way of life will lead them down a dark path and inevitable death, while other people need to be shown what their life would be like if they wanted to. I am a pleasure person, I actually have a very adverse reaction to fear-focused external motivators.
Considering adolescence
Humans between the age of 15 and 25 are actually almost completely driven by these things as the post-puberty brain is rewiring itself completely, starting at the back and ending at the front with the prefrontal cortex. Scientists have seen this process happen using a special MRI technique. The unfortunate part is that since the prefrontal cortex helps us make better choices and the back part of the brain is where our prime motivators live, these adolescents tend to take extreme, sometimes life-threatening risks in search of pleasure, and refuse to allow adults to act as the voice of reason.
Once the brain is done re-wiring itself, they become capable of mature reasoning. The pleasure they feel from this moment forward will never again be as intense as it was during those years, and will actually become less and less as we become more and more in control of ourselves as the years go by.
There’s a good reason why we don’t recommend the vast majority of subliminals to teenagers. We have no conclusive evidence about what subliminals do to a brain which is already rewiring itself.
When you set goals, they have to be based in a “why.” If your goal is wealth, are you setting it because of a fear of poverty or a desire for what wealth brings? Somewhere in the back of your mind there’s a movie running, and that movie is eliciting the driving force behind the goal. Often we only notice the goal pop up in our mind and don’t notice the underlying motivation until we start asking the question. Why do we want this? What does it make us feel? What does not having it make us feel?
For example, my thirst for knowledge comes from a need for control, which is a fear-driven one. I feel that I (my consciousness) am like a shell around my body and I need to understand everything inside so I can make sure it does what I need it to do. So I can make the most of it, and so I don’t have to worry about what’s inside and can focus fully on the outside.
My need for financial independence is a pleasure-driven one which has absolutely nothing to do with money. My need for fitness and health fear-driven ones. My spiritual goals are mostly pleasure-driven, governed by curiosity. My social goals fear-driven almost always.
Nope, and I really think I should keep at least a blog or something…
Do you think subliminals are also such tools, and that the mind once liberated can create changes as profound as subliminals, without using them? If so, is using subliminals a “limiting belief” as well?
