#self-developement

[ibprograms-blog]

Profiles -Work life balance -06 04 18

[modernmonkeymind]

Recommended Reading

Personal Developement and spirituality are two genres that are unusually prone to bullshit, mostly because what fits into either is unusually open for interpretation. Today I thought I’d throw out a couple recommendations that I’ve found helpful in my own life, and I think are worth checking out.

Personal Developement:

Level Up Your Life, by Steve Kamb: Steve created nerdfitness.com, which is a great fitness resource, especially if you’re a bit of a geek (obviously). He started out as an out of shape introvert that hadn’t traveled outside of the United states, and got himself in shape and became a world traveler (while continue to play video games and other geeky activities on occasion). Level Up Your Life is the “Strategy Guide” for life, showing how you can do what he did by turning your life into a video game, complete with quests to develop various areas (with point values), levels, D&D classes, etc. If you set up a profile on level up your life dot com it even lays everything out like a D&D character sheet.

How to Be Alive: A Guide to the Kind of Happiness That Helps the World by Colin Beaven: An alternate title for this great book might be “a Guide to Karma Yoga for Westerners.” Karma yoga is essentially acting in service to others without any expectation of gratittude, reward, acknowledgement, etc. As Beaven puts it at one point, the method he’s laying out isn’t just a self-help method, its an “other-help” method as well.

Finding Ultra by Rich Roll: Technically a memoir, there’s a BUNCH of really useful self-developement advice in here. I know I’ve mentioned this book before, but seriously, its that good. Rich is the real deal, taking himself from a Standard American Diet eating couch potato to a multi-Ultraman finishing vegan in a year. The best part? The man is damn humble. He’s said in multiple places that there’s nothing special about him, anyone can do what he did as long as they’re willing to stop trying to hack their life, and put the work in.

Spirituality:

the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A manual to how to work with the mind written long before Western Psychology was even close to being a thing, based entirely on direct experience. Like the Bible, there are numberless translations of Patanjali’s Sutras, and many are garbage. If you want the real heavy hitter, go for the Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali, written by an Indian professor who walled himself into a cave the last couple years of his life to focus on practice, the book comes in the form of annotations to Vyasa’s commentary, along with a handful of essays written by the translator. If, understandably, what is in a sense a Doctorate paper written as annotations to someone else’s Doctorate, Chip Hartranft’s translation is a great introduction, written by a scholar/practitioner with a background in both yoga & Buddhism. Edwin Bryant’s translation is also very good, Edwin is yet another scholar/practitioner, and brings in insights from various traditional commentators (including Hariharananda, author of Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali). For a more approachable traditional commentary, look for a series of large format books called “the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Study Guide to Book _” by Baba Hari Dass. Babaji is a classically trained Indian yogi who has spent decades living in California and teaching Westerners, and his commentary is a direct product of that endeavor. Unfortunately Babaji is in hospice currently after a serious medical event, and, unless its published posthumously, it looks like we might never get his commentary on book four, These volumes are beautiful as objects in themselves, with large full-page images of various saints and spiritual designs.

the Heart of Yoga by TKV Desikachar: Its technically a textbook, but its still a great read, laying out the basics of the teachings of Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, the man who taught BKS Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, Indra Devi, and is in many ways directly responsible for the popularity of yoga in the West. Written by his son, its highly recommended to anyone interested in a serious yoga practice.

Light on Yoga & Āsanas: The first is a brick of a book written and illustrated by Iyengar with detailed instructions for more postures than anyone would likely need. āsanas is a coffee table book of photographs of Sri Dharma Mitra performing more than on hundred postures. Dharma Mitra comes from a tradition unrelated to Krishnamacharya, but he is a highly accomplished yoga in all aspects of practice. Both books are a testament to what a life dedicated to practice can create. I would have loved to meet Iyengar while he was alive, and hope someday to visit Dharma-ji’s school in New York and hopefully meet him.

[anna-learns-to-love-herself]

Could you recommend any helpful/motivational books? :)x

Hi love, yes of course! :)

- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

- The Art Of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau

- Mind Calm - The Modern-Day Meditation Technique That Will Give You “Peace With Mind”

- No Arms, No Legs, No Worries by Nick Vujicic

- The Art Of Asking by Amanda Palmer

Usually, if I wanna find more interesting, motivational books, I check out TED talks that suit the topics I am interested in at the moment, and then I do research if there are any good books by the person giving the TED talk. I get my books from the public library, because if it turns out shitty, I didn’t end up spending 15-20 bucks on the book and I did something for the environment xxx

[sansbeer]

A little over a week in and going strong! This video is a little bit long and I am going to work in the future on keeping videos down to a bit more of a reasonable length. Covers some updates into the past week and what has been going on as well as what is coming up in this weekend and in the next week. Starting to find a bit of a groove here.. Thanks again! Questions, comments, concerns below. XO

[aarhonsilver]

Through the wall.

I often hear people in recovery say that they couldn’t change until they really surrendered to the problem. Accepted it. Recognized its existence. It’s as though making change in recovery is a grief process. Like the Kubler-Ross model which lists the five stages of grief or loss as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, when I make a decision to change I can expect all this.

The…

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[aarhonsilver]

Purpose.

The purpose of Creative License is to share the revelations that can happen in the realm of creative process and filmmaking. It is about the power of exploring the self through the ‘creative, expressive, self-reflexive process of  filmmaking’* used as a form of alternative therapy. There are so many things untapped inside of us. So many dreams, visions and stories. If we are allowed or better…

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[jadmed104]

Self-Developement and Self-Improvement

Anyone who knows me knows that I do not support, as a means of engagement of life, anything the self-help gurus sell.

Why?

Well, by my observation, whether it's Anthony Robbins, The Secret, Life Coach, etc, they all tend to offer their personal conditioning as the panacea of everyone's lack or failure or need to want to do and have better. Not that positive thinking strategies aren't important, since we all have to think and effort to benefit our survival, and since anything that makes survival more of the joy that it was meant to be, any kind of thinking and focus discipline that allows the individual to move forward to the results they are aiming at is good. Very good.

Yet, having known hundreds of people who have bought every program, went to every seminar, and after observing them, and noting there is a slight change in attitude skill set, they still are off looking for what will give them success in financial terms, and are always off to buy their next dream. Another observation is that they are never satisfied with less than something grand in the spectrum of their dreams. They have either quickened the delusional needs of ego for wealth and fame, or even in the midst of multiple levels of success, occurring in the middle of their ordinary life, they don't see the miracle because it's not the grand ideal of their dream.

If all we can do is magnify the ego drive for greater and better, we are only trading one form of programming and conditioning for another that will still keep us blind to the truth. When a system of thinking or doing, has you focus on results, and measure them as good or bad according to a measurement of what another conditioned self's parallax is, we cannot move closer to what is true for the individual who discovers or uncovers what is true and real success for them. It is pure artifice. It becomes something forced, cultivated and therefore phony.

If however we engage being Awake first, then add certain strategies of engaging improved circumstance, we are no longer attempting to make a silk purse out of a pig's ear. The individual will then work unerringly from a center source of seeing reality as it is, seeing themselves as they are, and determining their own course of success based on what success means to their own sense of value and interpretation. For many, once awake, they begin to see the world not as an us versus them. They operate from a sense of unity, and dare I say it....Love. Here is where there is an absence of fear. They no longer operate from a feeling of lack. They don't attempt to cultivate anything that isn't a real expression of their highest ideals. Ideals that are clearly seen to be in harmonious alignment with reality. The amount of success such a person experiences in such a state, is limitless.

Why?

They begin to see and appreciate all of the life they are connected to. They no longer estimate things as being bad or good, right or wrong in the world around them, based on the world's value system(s). They see each moment as a gift. A learning experience. One that they can build on, one success after another, seeing the little successes of life all around them. Such a person cannot be denied any results they engage because they are working from the source of all life within them, in harmony with this source that is alive all around them, not some set of programs that originate outside of the experience of their own life. Their success is certain no matter what the aim.

No matter what the struggle, an awakened individual doesn't lose perspective. Never sees any engagement as a hardship. They understand that everything is a learning process that shapes the approach to the end result. To the awakened, the approach is more important than the result, because if the approaches are real and true to the pulse of all things, the result cannot fail. And should they meet with a so-called failure of the result worked for, they don't lose heart, they understand that a learning of the operations of result, relevant to them, has occurred, and pick up once more the effort to engage. They acquire poise.

If we want anything, is it because we see that the having of it adds to our experience of life, or is it rather we take the fear position of not having it, and the not having it is bad, and begin our effort from there? From which platform of experience is true success acquired?

To my own viewpoint, if the individual is not awake, neither. And that is precisely why I have decided to go toe to toe with every fallacy that poses as a religion or philosophy for the good of man. The idea that we can be more and do more is critically important, no doubt. But to have a person know and acquire the things of this world without knowing themselves is criminal. It puts the cart before the horse. It teaches adopted mindsets and attitudes, but never gives the real skinny on how money or wealth are being actually acquired by the hype marketing huckster.

Truth doesn't require showmanship. True success is not a Hollywood production. It is a simple process, of the individual coming to see where real meaning arises. Then and only then will they understand and effort towards their goals from their own sense of meaning, of what success means to them. In that moment they will see that the first success is having a life to live. All the many successes build from there. Some small and momentary like the shared smile of a friend, to the great successes, like acquiring skill at something they enjoy. This is where it starts, and never ends.

Blessings,

Garwin is a Living Teacher. He is the creator of http://ift.tt/1DjywJX

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