What is it that you want? Ask and you shall receive.

If you read this article seriously and apply what I am going to lay out here, you will get what you want faster than if you would not do it. That is a fact. As with everything, the first step is to understand why it works. Firstly I want to emphasize the fact that reality is subjective, and the way you perceive things is entirely up to yourself even though reality is not what you think it is. Understanding this as a guy in this world, is a key in the process to become who you want to become.

However, I fully believe that if you want to create a rich and deep life or whatever, you should keep in mind that the reality in your head has to be as close as possible to the actual reality. The beautiful thing about that though, and I smile when I think of this, is that there is no separation between the two. You dictate your own reality. You are a god. If you do not understand that yet do not be hard on yourself.

Anyway, the fact that reality is ultimately subjective and how you perceive things dictates the actual reality you unfold every moment (self fulfilling-prophecy) is fucking powerful and you can consciously create the life you want. How do you do this? It is not as easy as just wanting to be happy and you shall become happy. No, it is a little bit more complicated than that. A little bit.

”If it’s not in your life, you didn’t want it fucking badly enough. Period.”

Owen Cook

We get what we ask out of life. We just have to ask specifically, intelligently and with clarity. Owen defines INTENT as the clarity in your thoughts, words and actions. That is it guys. You want to be a god with women? Well, ask for it. With clarity. “I want to make myself a god with women through hard work, intensive experiences and ultimately through coming into my power as a man.” The next step is to make it to different parts. Where are you at right now? If you have not made out with a girl in two years, asking for a threesome is not to ask intelligently. Remember the definition guys. We just have to ask specifically, intelligently and with clarity.

I am going to lay out my personal intentions here and how I fucking get what I want by asking for it and making it happen when it shows up in my subjective reality. Because that is ultimately what happens, when you ask for it, it shows up in your subjective reality. Do not think of your mum. You just did. Do not think negative thoughts because ultimately the universe do not know the difference between positive and negative. To get what shows up in your subjective reality is entirely up to yourself, this post will not make it happen for you, chode.

Some of my intentions for the past few weeks:

I want to make my blog as awesome as possible and I want to make other people like it because of the value it offers. Same thing with my articles on this forum. Furthermore I want to make people give me complements on it. Two weeks after I asked for this, guys started to tell me that I should work with writing articles like this in the future. A dude on this forum told me that this was just what he needed to read and that he loved it. Just what he needed to read, this is not ultimately fulfilling your goal, is it GaryBusey? Well, it is if I believe that it is. Period.

A month back I asked for more girls in my life. The last two weeks, I have had girls call me in the middle of the night. Girls approaching me on the streets and wanting to hook up. Girls giving me phone numbers without me asking for it. Of course I have taken action as well. I have done the EXACT same thing as these girls have done. You wonder why you are not getting approached? Well, start approaching. You attract what you are. If approaching girls is a part of your identity, you will attract girls that have the same type of identity but with guys.

One week ago I wanted to make love to an older girl, I thought. Two days ago I did.

Three weeks ago I started to ask for bisexual girls in my life. Lately I have been meeting bisexual girls, without me even knowing it at first.

For two months I ago I told myself that I want to make myself become unapologetic in my desires as a man and furthermore in my desires to offer value. And to make myself not give a fuck. Last night I choded out two older guys by telling them how retarded their faces looked, in front of ten other guys, who all were their friends. Did something bad happen? What do you think, of course not.

One month ago I wrote an article on surrounding yourself what you want to become. After that I started to make friends with people on Facebook from RSD and a guy with the exact same vision as me found me through my journal. I does not stop. It stops when you want it to stop.

Now, take action. Make a new document on your computer and name it : My intentions. And write down what you want in your life. Ask specifically, intelligently and with clarity. To get even more advanced you can make another document and call it what I receive and write down the things that you get out of life by asking for it. Just as I did.

What are you going to do when you find what you are looking for?

What is happiness?

Happiness is not something you can get. It is something you create. Growing up we are subconsciously taught, from soaking in social conditioning, that enjoyment comes from the never-ending stimulation through the media, for example. And that happiness is all about achieving certain things – the classic example would be becoming a celebrity and the massive attention that comes with that is in some way going to make us happy. That is, to me, truly absurd.

Sure, achieving certain things in life is great. But it is a byproduct of happiness, not what causes it. The same thing with being approved in any way, shape or form. Fully believing that achieving, getting stuff or being massively approved is going to make us happy is a form of neediness. Flip the coin. If you are happy, how easy is it to be approved by somebody? If you are happy, is it not much easier to go through with a project or fulfill a goal or even just to fucking do the most simple thing, then if you are doing it purely to gain something from doing it.

Well, now the question arises – how do we become happy? What makes us feel really fucking good? I mean getting shit can surely feel great, for a very little while. To portray this I want to tell you about my last Christmas experience. First of all I believe that Christmas is actually pretty fucked up, in way we view it(specially the way we condition our children to view it). The way we celebrate Christmas is the complete opposite of what actually, underneath the surface, is the main reason to even give a damn about it at all. To me Christmas comes down to get back to the fundamentals of things. Like, the Jesus- dude was born that day, that is how fundamental it is. But what do we do? We condition ourselves to believe that a good Christmas is all about buying the right gifts(and furthermore receiving the ones we want), to cook and eat the most delicious food and arrange everything as perfect as humanly possible. And last but not least that all this should make us happy. My mother cried throughout the entire Christmas-period due to how stressed she was.

(By the way, there surely are people out there that celebrate this holiday in an entirely different way, which is great. I am only speaking from my own experience here.)

Furthermore, during the holidays I have been feeling quite sick. I have not been able to leave the house, which inevitably lead to the fact that I could not buy anything at all to my parents and friends. Instead, in order to be able to keep up with the Christmas norms I told my mum and dad to buy me the gifts. When it was time to open these fancy packages I have to admit that I felt very excited about it. (To prove the point that I am not above this social conditioning shit at all, I fall into these patterns even though I consciously study them.) And surely I got what I wanted.

Did this make me happy?

Yes, for two minutes. In fact after these two minutes I felt a strong feeling of lack. What the fuck? I got what I wanted. Why do I feel this? Again, getting something will never make us feel fulfilled or completely happy. However, while reading this you might think “well, I understand that happiness comes from giving and not taking”. That is great, but I believe that we all have plenty of habits that we ultimately are not really aware of which are based on the belief that getting things will make us happy in some way. The most obvious one could be that you understand that watching television all day and getting stimulation is not going to make you perpetually happy. But believe me there are other examples that are muuuuch more subtle than that. Especially in social contexts. Examine yourself. What is that you are still doing that is based on believing that getting something will make you happy. In any fucking way.

Let me explain what real happiness is about to me. Keep in mind that what I going to lay out here is not in any way “the official way to become happy”(which would be the exact opposite of what I am trying to tell you as well as another form of conditioning.) From my point of view, to really “understand” happiness you need to keep two things in mind. The first one has to do with purpose. Is what I am doing right now(not only your longterm purpose but every minute) in alignment with my purpose? If you are at the gym, is what you are doing in alignment with becoming healthy, building muscles or whatever the reason you are there for, or are you simply going to the gym and chatting with your friends to waste some time so you can tell yourself and your dad that you went to the gym that day? If you have decided to evolve socially and you are out at a venue with a lot people, are you actually doing something that is in alignment with that purpose? The purpose to grow. Or are you longingly looking at the beautiful girls that are perpetually smiling and seems to have a good time? Just going out is simply not enough.

The thing with doing stuff that is in alignment with your purpose, is that it does not necessarily create happiness right away. Most of the time it does not. Remind yourself of this, every time you do not get the outcome you want. Actually if what you are doing is in alignment with your purpose how can you possible fail or let yourself down? One might ask, and I see this on this forum all the time, how do I stay motivated if I am not getting any results?

“I mean approached eleven girls last night but only two of them turned around and gave me attention.”

Great, that is two more girls than if you would have stayed at home and watched Horatio speak his one liners left and right(again).

Furthermore, and this is the key to understand why having a clear purpose is even valuable at all and how having a purpose combined with this will make you inspired, motivated and happy. The key is to know that what you do will offer value to other people. To contribute. Think about this. You can apply this principle to basically everything in your life. Your social life, your work, your writing, your teaching and so on. The more things you do in order to make other people happy(which definitely is not the same thing as serving them), the happier you will become. It is close to impossible to be perpetually motivated and enthusiastic in life if what you are doing, your purpose, is not about offering other people value and furthermore to contribute to something much greater than yourself. Society for example.

Why do you want to fuck girls? To brag about it to your friends or to one day be able to teach dudes that came from the same position of fear as you did? To feel superior when a girl takes it in her mouth or to realize that living in sexual abundance and constant intimacy will increase all areas of your life so you can contribute even more to the world? Why do you want to be a social outgoing and fun guy? To impress other people with your personality or to simply put a fucking smile on other peoples' faces?

To contribute to the world is one thing to me and another thing to you. Owen said in the Blueprint(a series of dvds about attracting women if you are not familiar to RSD). That guys who join the community in order to attract and make love to women do no really find the happiness they wanted, the happiness they thought it would give them. Does that mean it makes them severally depressed? Not necessarily. It made me, though. (If you have not realized yet that all the stuff RSD speak about in their marketing copies of their products is not the end of all this, you have simply not come very far on your journey).

Yet.

At first, you take more value than what you offer. It is simply a part of the process. If you are in that part yourself do not be hard on yourself, but remind yourself that life ultimately is not about getting results(beautiful women) but to contribute to the world. (To teach how to attract beautiful women, for example, as well as giving them long orgasms a long the way).

If you are familiar with RSD you have definitely heard about “offering value”. The thing is, you will not offer value if you do something so you can tell yourself that you are fucking awesome because you are offering value. That is the opposite of offering value. If you offer value you are simply awesome. If you tell yourself that you are going to offer value just because you have heard that this will make you happy, you are not going to offer value. (You can to an extent, I guess. But it will not feel nor appear genuine). You offer value because you want to offer value.

This became a long fucking post and I want to end it by saying that at first, when you offer value, resistance will surface. Actually a kind of resistance that feels very much like the resistance you feel in your body when somebody tries to take value from you. However do not let this stop you, use your willpower to push through it. Eventually you will feel good. Pretty fucking good.

If you have not realized it yet, the title for this article is a scam, it will not make you happy. But if you like it be sure to check out my blog.

What does it mean to trust yourself?

Trust yourself. How many times have you heard that you should “trust yourself”? Growing up I thought that to trust myself was to to hold onto what I thought about the world to be the absolute truth, and if somebody questioned me it was a simple question of trusting myself that I had the better answer. That is definitely not what trust is about.

Actually, I would say that to trust yourself is somewhat the opposite of holding onto a lot of beliefs about how things generally are. To trust yourself is to walk through the world with ease without having a need to hold onto that many beliefs. On the surface it might seem that the more beliefs I have about myself and the world the better and the more rigid belief structure the better. I mean, it surely creates a feeling of security. Something to point at and turn to when the world does not turn out the way we want to. Certain religions have plenty of rigid beliefs about how things should be, what to do and what not to do, eat and so on. In reality these beliefs are just a way to view the world. And viewing the world through some of these religious beliefs definitely creates a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Back on point, what does it really mean to trust yourself? Actually I would like to say “trust” instead of “trust yourself”, because the second one relates to trust in certain beliefs or concepts you have about yourself. To cultivate a general sense of trust means to trust in that the universe will give you whatever you ask of it. Anthony Robbins says that our brains are like target-missiles, whatever we deep down desire – our brains will find a way for us to get there.

Every thought we have in our minds is an intention. By thinking we create our own reality by intention after intention. By simply pointing our thought towards what we want will eventually give us exactly what we ask for. The key is to ask intelligently, specifically and with clarity. For example, if you have decided to step up and take care of your health you have probably started to work out regularly. That is not enough. You have to consciously ask for good health by thinking about good health. You can work out as much as you want, but if you keep telling yourself “I am fat it sucks” you will never improve your health in the way you really want to.

Furthermore to trust in yourself is basically to trust in that the universe will provide whatever you ask of it. But is it that simple? You ask and you receive? No, not really. You either have to use courage to step outside your comfort zone and get what you want or you have to get out of your own way. Most of the time, what we really want is right in front of us.

The thing is that we have certain habits that keeps us living in the way we have always lived in. Some of them are so strong that even if what we want is right in front of us we do what we have always done and then complain that we do not get what we want. Human beings in a nutshell. The other thing is to use willpower and courage to do something different and get different results. If you do what you have always done you get what you have always got. Change the way you do things and get out of your own way.

Notice when you ask something from reality how it will either appear in front of you in some way , or that challenges will start to show up that will make it possible for you to get what you want. The further away from your current reality something is the more challenges you will have to master to get it or the more you have to get out of your own way in order to realize that what you want is right in front of your face.

Constantly challenging yourself makes challenges less challenging

“And the eight and final rule, if this is your first night at fight club – you have to fight.”

Tyler Durden

When I first thought about writing this article I doubted myself. I questioned if what I know about this subject would be valuable enough to spread to other people. Then I read the title of the article and reconsidered.

What is a challenge? To me, a challenge is something that requires courage. Doing something with fear in your body, or doing something that you do not even consider possible for yourself to do. Challenging yourself is not the same thing as doing something that other people consider strong, courageous or morally correct. Or, to do something that you would consider a challenge compared to what the people around you are doing.

To challenge yourself means to look within. What would require courage for me to go through with right now? Not what challenged you yesterday, but what can actually create that nervous feeling inside of your chest and gut right in this moment. I believe there are few moments in life that could not be made challenging.

Making excuses is the opposite of challenging yourself. For example, if you have decided to step up socially and express yourself freely, you might believe that the only way to challenge yourself in that area is to go out and meet people and push your comfort zone, outside your home. Wrong.

It sure is the most effective way to do that, but let us say that you are not able to leave your house for a couple of nights to do that. What then? Do you comfortably sink deep into your couch and watch Horatio speak one liners left and right? Hell no, you find other ways to challenge yourself.

Challenging yourself comes down to making a decision. And when that decision has been made, you find a way to challenge yourself even though the external circumstances are not the most appropriate. You can even challenge yourself just by using pure imagination.

If you are somebody who has regularly challenged yourself for a long period of time, you have surely encountered other people throwing limiting beliefs at you. “You can not do this, what if that happens?” “No do not do that, other people will think you are weird”. Speaking from my own experience, the limiting beliefs other people will throw at you will mostly circle around a)Something bad will happen in the future if you try this or that. Or b)Other people will not approve you.

These limiting beliefs might seem very strong and that is because they are very often tied together in a web. For example, doing something that other people are not immediately going to approve can be tied together with failure, or embarrassment. When in reality, it really has nothing to do with that, at all.

Creating a lifestyle for yourself where you constantly challenge yourself is a way to find out which limiting beliefs, created by social conditioning, that are in reality completely false and has nothing to do with with who you are. This leads to creating a reality for yourself with less and less beliefs to hold onto, and furthermore these beliefs can possibly not be tied into a web because you find out the truth about them. (Limiting beliefs are a very very common way for people to draw a false feeling of security from) On the surface your new reality might look as weak, but in reality it is stronger.

Brad Blanton, the writer of Radical Honesty, describes this as living in comfortable uncertainty.

It becomes comfortable because it is your new way of looking at things, your new way of life.

You can not change

You can not change who you are. You can change the way you perceive yourself, but how you perceive yourself is not who you are in the same way as how you perceive someone else is not who they really are. You can change the idea of yourself in the same way you can change the idea of someone else, but ultimately your idea of someone else has nothing to do with who they are.

These are good things by the way, changing your idea of yourself and the way you perceive yourself to something positive and awesome. I am not telling you to “not have an ego” or anything stupid like that. I simply want to emphasize the fact that you will never be able to change who you really are, the observer behind your thoughts, your true nature. Which is not the opposite of your ego by the way.

Having a belief that you can change who you ultimately are is coming from a position of scarcity and neediness and is very much the opposite of 'you are enough', a common phrase in RSD. The book Nine Ball by Jeff Allen emphasizes this in a personal yet profound way.

Furthermore, with that belief you can still accomplish great things however, create an awesome personality for yourself(that you believe is who you are) and so on. But in the end it will only create a feeling of lack. Because it ultimately moves you away from your core and adds more layers instead of the opposite.

However do not let the phrase 'you can not change' disencourage you. Because there are things you can change. Do we, as human beings, have free will? I do not know, I do not care. It is irrelevant.

You can change the things in your life - your habits, your values, the way you look at things and so on. These things, such as habits and values, can move you closer and closer to your core day by day. Which is the same thing as 'you are enough'. Ultimately your actions and values will not suddenly make you realize that “oh... maybe I am enough?” but rather move you closer to that core. (Life has no destination, thanks a lot Hollywood.)

You want to live in alignment with your true nature, just as we do as kids. Emotionally, spiritually, when it comes to your physical and mental health and well being and so on. Consciously creating and responsively maintaining habits and beliefs that makes you live in alignment with what has real value in life is the key, I would say. In doing this, you will eventually (re)understand what 'you are enough' means and ultimately 'you are enough' is not something separate from the actual habits that makes you feel this way.

“Social conditioning gets replaced by another form of conditioning. The true strength lies in a return to the origin. A return to nature and natural forms. A return to beastmode.”
-Jlaix

You are enough and therefore you are more than enough to others, not the other way around. However everybody has a socially defined ego to an extent so it is close to impossible to always feel enough in the pressence of other people.

Ultimately why would you want to change who you are? I mean deep down there you have always been enough, haven't you?

Great results are cool but great actions are cooler

I have experienced that if you focus on taking action instead of achieving results you will get more and better results than if you would focus on actually achieving them. If you focus on outcomes too much you will shoot yourself in the foot. Let me explain why.

First of all, from a longterm perspective you want to develop an identity that circles around taking action and not achieving great things and getting tasty outcomes. I would say that the main reason for that is that the former is much more flexible and will serve you in all kinds of contexts in life, whereas focusing on great results is bound to a certain area. For example, if you focus on success with women and what you strive for is to hook up with a lot of girls, then you generally get your results but when you inevitably have to focus on other areas of your life, financial, health or sports for example, and you can not pay that much attention to getting your tasty outcomes(girls). This will probably cause you to go around with a feeling of lack. In comparison, if you develop an identity that circles around always taking action you will easily handle more areas of your life and you can freely come back to whatever area in which you like to develop yourself in.

However, you can have a “taking action ego” and when you eventually get your results that you deep down desire, you will most likely develop a “result based ego”. The thing is to keep inquiring yourself and change your focus to taking action instead of getting outcomes. Furthermore, to focus on taking action does not imply to totally let go of what you want and forget about outcomes. It comes down to having intent and strive for a result but at the same time not really caring if you get the outcome you want. Desire without attachment. To develop desire without attachment, I believe the key is to consistently change your focus to taking action while having a clear idea of what you want.

If you get too caught up in your results you will most likely higher your barrier for success. This is no good, because you will not be able to live up to the success-standard you have created for yourself. On the other hand, if the only thing that you really care about is taking action then that standard(to push yourself and perpetually take action) is something that will develop yourself and at the same time you will most likely achieve even more and better results then if you ran around and thought about outcomes all the time.

Keep reminding yourself of the fact that actions are both cooler and more effective to focus on than outcomes. And when I say focus on I ultimately mean what you perceive as being successful to yourself. So even if you fail you can still give yourself credit for trying because the power does not lie in the result. This is very liberating. Go see for yourself.

Limiting beliefs are not personal

If you are into personal development you have most likely heard about limiting beliefs. For you who have not – a limiting belief is something that you believe about yourself or the world that holds you back.

We all have limiting beliefs, however some of us have more than others. Your limiting beliefs were created in the past when you interpreted reality in a certain way. However most of our limiting beliefs were created unconsciously, without us knowing it.

For example when I grew up I had asthma(I still have) and my parents and other people around me told me that asthma is not good for my health. Eventually that led to me believing that I would not be able to become extremely healthy, although my parents' intentions were not to teach me that. So, a reality for someone can be completely different for someone else. We interpret reality in different ways. To my parents it was obvious to tell me that asthma is not optimal for my health when I asked them, but for me it created a limiting belief about my health in general.

There are different kinds of limiting beliefs. For example if you have no legs, then it is quite obvious that you will have a limiting belief that tells you that you will not be able to play football with the top players in the world. Other beliefs are more subtle, however.

A lot of people in modern society believe that you have to work from 9 to 5 if you want to make a living. I am not saying that society does not need people doing that, however that does not have to make ANYONE believe that they have to be bound to work that way and limit themselves. Another example of a more subtle limiting belief, is that you need to be extremely good looking or own expensive stuff, like cars or apartments, in order to attract women. That is not true.
How are these beliefs that holds us back created? Plenty of them are created due to social conditioning and furthermore they are created when we grow up. However this article will not circle around social conditioning, but why these limiting beliefs are not personal to yourself specifically.

In order to understand fully why most of our limiting beliefs are not personal I want to point out social conditioning particularly. There is an entire system that unconsciously creates and reinforces the same limiting beliefs in people all over the world. That is how impersonal they really are.

Furthermore, if you have a limiting belief about something, let us say that you have an extremely limiting belief about getting girls. If you then even think about getting girls, that will appear utterly outside of your reality. “ How is that even remotely possible. That is just not me.”

Maybe you have believed it for so long that it is now a part of your identity. YOU ARE somebody who is not good at getting girls. That is the evil, limiting and idiotic balloon of doom that I want to stick a needle in with this article. A limiting belief is something you have, not something you are.

It is not bound to you forever and therefore it has nothing to do with who you really are. Nothing. It is most likely something you have picked up along the way of growing up and learning how the world generally works. If you are fat, and believe that being fat will make you unattractive to women, it is not the fact that you are fat that will make you unattractive, but the fact that you believe it will.

The first step of getting rid of a limiting belief is to acknowledge that it exists. The next step is to question it.

Reading this, you will not be able to immediately question and change all of your limiting beliefs. But what you can do, and what you can keep in mind, is that the parts of your life in which you limit and doubt yourself, have nothing to do with you personally.

A very limiting belief, or a web of limiting beliefs brought together, tend to feel like it is holding you stuck where you are. However you are the one holding the limiting belief, not vice versa. Do not misinterpret the fact that limiting beliefs are not personal with not taking responsibility for having them, because taking responsibility is the key to change our beliefs.

My triangle for self fulfillment part three; surrounding yourself with what you want to become

Before even touching the last part of my triangle I want to emphasize the fact that if you have the two first parts down, this part handles itself naturally with some willpower. However, describing this part might give you a sort of “jump start” in all of this and help you get moving a long the way for self fulfillment. And the last part is this: surrounding yourself with what you want to become. Bare in mind that this works in both small and huge contexts, in both easy and difficult challenges. For example if you want to get shitfaced but you do not have any money, surrounding yourself with friends who all has habits to drink a lot of alcohol, becoming drunk is probably not that big of a problem. However if you want to become a master at snowboarding you have to spend a lot of time with experts in this area and furthermore watch what they are doing with great precision for a long time, then try yourself. Fail, and do it again. And learn more, and so on. Surrounding yourself with what you want to become is usually something that people start off with when they decide to get good at something, whatever that is. First of all they are very inspired, which starts to create the vision in your mind. “Maybe I can be like this guy, imagine how cool that would be.”

Another thing that is common when doing this, at least in the early part of one's development is to take value. As you are new (in the context of learning a skill) you are not as experienced as other people and you do not have much of value to offer, so you naturally take more value than what you give. There is nothing wrong with that. And I am not telling you to go out there and suck energy from people in order to become what they are. What I am trying to do is more to create that map , as I mentioned earlier.

When you start to hang out with more people that has the same ambitions as you have, the same superficial desires and what not, early on what might happen is that you start to annoy these people. You know when you are talking to someone and you know that they want something from you, feels bad does it not? It is the same thing here, you are trying to get something from them, whether it is inspiration, tips, strategies or any other kind of value for that matter. They might even unconsciously start to see you as a threat. However instead of putting yourself down for doing this, I believe you can view it as a part of your development, although, it is not a destination you want to get lost in. You are simply doing it so you can become the person you want to become and ultimately so you one day have the capacity to offer incredible value to people, just like the your mentors.

(One thing that I love about personal development and people that are into personal development is that when it is clear that both you and the person or persons you are learning from are all accepting the roles given to them, there is no one causing anyone to be annoyed, because they are all into it because that is what they want. The mentor wants to give and the student needs to take. To me, that is the ultimate beauty of spending time with like minded people who are into self development.)

So how do you practically surround yourself with like minded people and people that you want to be like? It is easy, think about it. If you want to be good at football and your vision is to become a great football player one day, what do you do? You join a team. Let us say that your vision circles around something that is somewhat more complicated and more dynamic than becoming a football player(not at all saying that it is easy becoming an end game football player, believe me I have tried.) Let us say that you vision yourself as someone offering value to people through the Internet. You do not really have a clear option to join a team and go practice offering value through the Internet every week, but what you might find is a forum on the Internet dedicated to this. Or let us say that this forum does not exist, why not create one? In that way you are already offering value through the Internet. My point is that whatever you want for yourself, it is easy to break down how to surround yourself what those kind of people that want the same thing. And believe me when I say that there are people out there that want what you want.

Surrounding yourself with other people that enhances your new sense of self and inspires you towards further action is essentially a process. And as every process, it starts with baby steps.

Firstly you might start to post at a forum related to your passion, then after chatting with the same person on that forum for a while you decide to meet him/her over a cup of coffee and further discuss your passion together. That might eventually lead to building a completely new social circle with people WHO ARE ALL INTO what you are into. And it all started with that single forum post that “RandomDude1739” responded to. How beautiful is that?

In conclusion, consistently surrounding yourself with like minded people takes some courage and requires you to step outside of your current comfort zone. At first you might not find what you are looking for, but that just might be an indicator that your vision is not clear enough and that you are, to start with, not completely sure what you want. Moreover I believe that surrounding yourself with people that you want to be like can be great for learning to realize what your core purpose is. However bare in mind that you do not want to spend a lot of time with people just so you can rely on their identity, you want to develop your own in their company.

Lastly, surrounding yourself with like minded people that encourages, inspires, motivates, criticizes and consciously or unconsciously teaches you things is an internal experience. What I mean by this is that it necessarily does not have to take place in the external world, for example you can easily find like minded people through the Internet and imagine how much you have in common and so on. However I fully believe that the most effective and FUN way to surround yourself with people is to actually be around them as much as humanly possible.

When you are developing a new identity for yourself it is common to experience loosing connection with your friends, a few or even most of them. This, to me, along with other phenomenas related to that, is one of the biggest challenges in self development especially when growing up. However that is material for another in depth article.

To sum it up. The three parts are having a vision, being in charge and surrounding yourself with what you want to become. How these three parts collaborate, enhance or work together is up to you to find out.

My triangle for self fulfillment part two; being in charge

The next part of my triangle for self fulfillment (I am starting to like that phrase more and more by the way.) is being in charge. You could also call it to create your own reality. Nelson Mandela said “I am in charge of my own destiny.” What I mean by this is not to control the people and things around you, but rather to be in control. To fully understand this concept I want to talk about something that you probably have heard of, and that is that there is an outer world and then there is an inner world. Ultimately these “worlds” are not separate, however I like to refer to them as they were. Furthermore there is one reality in which we can see, walk, touch etc and then there is our inner world. Our psyche, our unconscious mind and so on. (Sorry for my poor use of language here but I assume that you get the point.)

To create your own reality, to manifest the vision that you want so badly, you have to realize that this can not only be done by controlling the outer world. It is done by changing the inner world, (also referred to as “inner game”) so that it gives you what you want. To elaborate on this point to make it crystal clear for you too see exactly what I am talking about here I want to give a social example. Imagine someone who deep down assumes that everyone is his friend. This is not something taking place in the outer world, but rather something taking place in the inner world of this person. Sure, it might radiate from him that he has this belief, however that is not the point. Imagine this person socializing and how much more friendly people would be towards him than if he assumed that everyone is an enemy. He is basically creating a “self fulfilling – prophecy” for himself that comes from his inner world, however giving him things(reactions or whatever you would imagine in a social situation) in the outer world.

Ultimately, being in charge comes down to how you set up your inner world. How you expect people to be around you, how you react towards abusive or insulting behavior, how you cope with strong authorities, how you filter and view the social conditioning bombarding you everyday through the media, how peer pressure affects your decision making and how you deal with old socially approved beliefs, norms and ideals that can hold you back.

All those are examples of things that can hold us back and get us off our path, to make us not be in charge. Ultimately you cannot really control these factors and influences(you can try and sure you can control some of them to an extent, but I advice you not to try at all), but what you can do is to set up a strong inner world that fits you the best and creates the most effective self-fulfilling prophecy possible. Furthermore you create an inner world that filters out what you do not get any value from at all, for example other people lamely complaining about you or trying to put you down. Personally I have found that when I am really creating a self fulfilling prophecy for myself I do not even have the energy to give a damn about what other people think of me, for example. By the way, a social self fulfilling prophecy is just one sort of self fulfilling prophecy, and the reason I chose to give it as an example is that it is the easiest one to portray.

So, being in control comes down to having a strong inner world. And by a strong inner world I do not mean a world that is very rigid and unable to change, but rather a world that you are in alignment with. Furthermore, a world that fits you the best in the context of your life and creates the ultimate self fulfilling prophecy.

To elaborate further on being in control I want to introduce the concept of having a purpose. This is probably the key to being in control of your life. Without having a purpose there is not much to be in control of. Having a purpose goes back to the first part of the triangle, however there are two ways in which one can have a purpose. Firstly there is the longterm purpose, the vision. And then there is a short term purpose that has more to do with your everyday actions and habits. I believe that it is extremely important that your everyday actions and habits move you as effectively as possible towards your longterm purpose, or vision.

The difference between having a purpose or not in a situation can be a very subtle thing yet very different. For example, sitting on a couch and resting can be done in two very different ways. One way is to sit sloppy with bad posture and unconsciously letting your mind wander off in projections of future scenarios or recalling previous events. Another way is to consciously focus on your breathing and sit with good posture in a yet relaxed way.

If your vision is to become extremely healthy and get a good looking body, every time you drink a glass of water instead of a coca cola you can gladly approve yourself and give yourself credit that you are moving towards your vision and living in alignment with your purpose.

In conclusion, you want to strive for something in your life. You know, your beautiful vision. You want to move towards positive, uplifting outcomes, however realizing that it all ultimately comes from within. You want to realize that you are the one creating your own beliefs and standards. It is completely up to you to even care if you get the outcome you want. Of course, by reading this you will not immediately be in charge of everything in your life, but you can start to realize that it comes down to setting up an inner world entirely of your own choosing. And more practically you can change your focus to the inner instead of the outer, holding your awareness within yourself instead of chasing around looking for the best possible external circumstances in the world.

However the golden link between part one and part two in the triangle is taking action. Without that no one will ever fulfill or accomplish anything. This article, however, will not circle around taking action as that covers material for an almost equally long article as this one.

To me that is the two first parts of the triangle for self- fulfillment, and ultimately the most important ones. However I realize that both of them are very theoretical and might just work as some kind of source for intellectual understanding, masturbation if you will. So, I wanted to write in a more practical fashion. If you have read about the two first parts you might ask “BUT HOW??” The problem is that there is no ultimate answer to that question. Essentially the only valuable thing I can give you is a map. And the map is not the territory. I personally have no idea where you are in your life at the moment(if I do not know you, I just might) what your “sticking points” are or where you are stuck in your personal development. Because to me that this is ultimately what this is all about. Personal development.

My triangle for fulfillment part one; having a vision

When I first thought of a title for this article, the word success came to mind. So instead of ”My triangle for self fulfillment” it would have been ”My triangle for success”. But then, I realized that what I am about to share my views on is not really about success. To me success has always been about doing or achieving something that someone else wants you to, whether it comes from your mother or the subtle social norms where you live. After a moment of contemplation I found the word fulfillment to fit the context better. Instead of living up to what other people wants you to do, most of the time without even realizing that you are doing it, it comes down to doing what you want to do in life. Therefor fulfilling the self.

The reason I call it a triangle for self fulfillment is that each part of the triangle enhances the rest. Furthermore, even though you are not congruent with one part of the triangle, you can definitely have the others parts down. And vice versa. I believe that there are plenty of people out there that has one or two parts of the triangle, but misses the last, whatever that last part is.

The first part of the triangle is having a clear vision. By clear I mean a vision that not only symbolizes and radiates what you would like your life to be, but exactly what you want out of life. The clearer the vision the better. Anthony Robbins, who is a motivational speaker as well as a writer, says that we get what we ask out of life, we just do not ask precisely enough. Ask and it is a given, is a book that touches on this topic.

Visions change. Imagine them like what we aim our everyday arrows at. Or that picture in the back of our heads that we keep on moving towards, but that we will never be able to grasp it and hold it entirely. And as the path of our lives changes, which it inevitably does whether we like it or not, the beautiful picture in our minds changes with it. However what is extremely liberating and beautiful about this is that the picture we paint ourselves. So instead of trying to control everything by having a very rigid idea of how you would like things in your life to be, or even a rigid self- image, which is even worse, we can create and recreate a vision in our minds that keeps us inspired and motivated.

An example of how one's vision changes could be that, at first when you are younger and less experienced, your vision of how you want things to be in your life circles around other people approving you and loving you and how popular and high status you are. Then, as you become older and has a bunch of reference experiences that validates the fact that you actually are loved and approved by other people, you start to see the world as a place of giving more than taking. Perhaps your vision of life is more about you offering people authentically from your heart, as well as other people doing the same to you. The last vision sounds more beautiful right? Sure it does, however there is nothing wrong with the first one either. For the person having the first vision, it is equally beautiful to him as the second vision is to the older, more experienced man or woman. Rather than seeing it as insecure and needy, it can be seen as a necessary part of their development.

I believe that there are a lot of human beings out there that are stuck in viewing reality in a certain way. They think it should be like this or that, otherwise it messes with them in some way. The thing is, there is no such thing as an objective reality, I believe. Only subjective. That is why it is so important and powerful to create the vision that you want for your life, what your core desires. Not what society expects from you, but more what you expect for yourself.

There are two very similar expressions, one from eastern philosophy that goes “Float like water” and one which I do not really know the source of that is “Go with the flow”. The first one indicates that you go with the current of the world, and as the world changes, just like a river-path does, you change with the world just as water smoothly follows the river path. The second one however, to me, is more about unresponsively following other people's paths and unconsciously listening to what external forces tell you to do, tell you how to act and so on.

Another thing that determines the “strength and effectiveness” of your vision is how compelling it is. If your vision is clear and changeable, it is most likely useful for you but you might keep it in the back of your mind without really paying that much attention to it. Without focusing your inner burning desire on it. However, if it is compelling I believe it can be very effective for you. By compelling I mean that it is something that you want to come back to, again and again and again. Like that incredibly interesting book that you just cant put down.

Then the question arises: what makes a compelling vision? It is different from person to person, what is compelling to one guy, is not to another. Furthermore you could ask yourself what really makes you believe your exact vision to be so compelling. Like, what is it that makes me want this in my life so much. To me, this is very interesting yet difficult to determine. I believe the most basic of our desires are more instincts than anything, like replication for example. (Actually I would go as far as to say that most of what we do is in order to replicate and spread valuable genes, if not everything). Then I think there are more superficial desires that changes from one generation to the next. I advice that you try to distinguish which of your desires comes from the superficial(externally validated) position and which ones comes from the more primal position, and that you focus your burning desire more on the primal ones, without disapproving the superficial ones. Sex is a perfect example of a primal desire that every human being has. Stop and think about how many of your habits are based in the need of chasing sex.

To summarize, I believe there are three main parts of what makes a good vision. (Keeping in mind that every vision is subjective.) How clear it is, if it is able to change and how compelling it is.
One might ask something like: but if it is clear, how is it then possible to change? It is. But believe me to change your vision but still having it crystal clear all the time is not something you accomplish over night.