Saturday, July 27, 2013

A New Beginning

Just an update, nothing special. I decided to delete all of the previous posts in this blog, simply because it was all utter nonsense. This is me being entirely honest. I had absolutely no idea what the hell I was talking about when I wrote all that crap. I had seen nothing of the real world. Its easy to spew advice and preach about how others should live their life, but when you start to apply it in your own life, you realize just how stupid / silly everything was.

 I see the world in a completely different way now. I still want this blog to have a purpose, since it has *some* visibility on the internet. Since I am still very much involved in self-help and finding ways to improve my own life, I would like to keep this blog open for the possibility of writing here in the future.

For now, I would like to kindly ask for anyone that links here to not remove this blog from their list of associated websites. I have plans for my life in the future and this blog has some level of reach across the internet. It would be nice if I can keep that without sacrificing my own personal integrity by leaving the garbage that was posted here to linger on after my life has changed by a whole 180 degrees.

Before you ask, no, I do not intend to ever make money off this blog, nor will I ever do such a thing. I am however in the process of developing tools that will lead to extraordinary change in one's life and mindset, and I would like to keep this blog around as a way of touching the lives of more people once I have completed my project(s).

For now, I wish you good luck in your journey of self discovery and self fulfillment. As a token of my gratitude, I will share with you a book that has changed my life forever. It is called "The Six Pillars of Self Esteem" by Nathaniel Branden. The only thing that I will say is that this book, and this man have led a vehement atheist to find peace and god in his life. I don't mean that in a religious sense either, as I did not convert into any religion (nor do I intend to). However, I did find spirituality on a level so profound that it has brought me to feel emotions that I never thought even existed, to cry like I have never cried, and to experience life in ways that I have never thought were possible. In short, I have seen the miracles of life unfold before my very eyes.

I'd like to share the story with you, and one day I might get the chance. For now, I leave you with a link to the book.

Have a great day, and good luck.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Six-Pillars-Self-Esteem-Definitive/dp/0553374397/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374941441&sr=8-1&keywords=nathaniel+branden+six+pillars




4 comments:

  1. Hey netherlife,

    Are you still using affirmations/subliminal messages you talked about a few months ago on ybr? I think you mentioned curethecraving.com to make your own subliminal messages. Have you noticed any improvements from long term use?

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    1. I stopped using affirmations back in January 2013. Affirmations did work for me as a quick pick-me-up when I was feeling down, but it did absolutely nothing to improve my life. The biggest problem I find with affirmations is that no matter how much I listened to them, the problems in my life still remained. I did not embark on this journey to feel good about myself from time to time, I went into this to improve my life and actually obtain real happiness. I eventually realized that happiness is not something you achieve by telling yourself that you are happy. I came to the realization that the only way to really improve the way I feel about myself, and the way I see myself in the world, is to go out there and do something about the things that were bothering me.

      The exercises in the six pillars book helped me greatly with showing me what I need to do to be happy in life. They gave me a sense of direction, and from there I was left with a simple choice: I could either do nothing and be unhappy, or I can do these things that I wrote down (using the exercises) and fight for my happiness. I could no longer blame everything around me for feeling miserable. I could no longer hope for a miracle to happen or for lightning to strike and make everything in my life all better. I realized that my problems are here to stay, that no one is coming to help me, and that it is up to me to generate happiness in my life.

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    2. well of course telling yourself something isn't going to improve life automatically. there has to be action supporting your affirmations to actually make improvements. but you knew that. what I'm taking away from your comment is that if they increase the likelihood of me taking action to improve my life in accordance with my affirmations they are well worth it. I guess feeling good, even temporarily, improves the odds of taking action. although with me being a hardcore procrastinator it will be an interesting experiment and I'll try to report how it goes. Will try to buy the book you're recommending or might just wait for you to summarize it on this blog.

      excuse the punctuation. trying to get Swype to do auto punctuation but it doesn't want to cooperate.

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    3. This is about as detailed of a summary as I can give you.
      http://www.nathanielbranden.com/discussions/self-esteem/

      The exercises that are in the Six Pillars book are different from the ones that I link here, but these will produce the same effect. They're all geared towards bringing more consciousness into one's life.

      http://www.nathanielbranden.com/exercises/sentence-completion-i/

      If there is something I have learned from my hiatus from blogging it is this: the best realizations are the ones you make yourself. I can't tell you just how powerful those exercises are. Its like the matrix, you have to see it for yourself to believe it.

      Since there is no summary on the exercise link for how you would use those exercises, its actually very simple. I'm picking a sample stem from week 1 to illustrate the example.

      Every morning, before you do anything else, you write (in a notebook) the following:

      "if i bring more awareness to my life today..."

      and then you finish the sentence with the very first thought that comes to your mind. You must write as quickly as you can, and finish the sentence 6-10 times. The idea is that you write the very first thought that comes to your mind, without imagining scenarios or how things would play out if you actually did these things that you're writing down. The key is NOT to think. The endings don't have to be profound, they don't have to be grammatically correct, and they don't even have to make sense. As long as you finish the stem, you're fine.

      Here is an example usage (from my own life):

      "if i bring more awareness to my life today..."
      i would walk my dog
      i would study more programming
      i would visit my grandmother
      i would sleep over at my grandmother's house
      i would relax a bit more
      i would be proud of myself

      This is how it should look in a notebook, with the stem at the top, and the endings below. If you're writing with a pen, you can just read the stem once, and then write (as rapidly as possible) the first endings that come to your mind.

      If you're using a computer to do this, my suggestion is that you re-read the stem over after every single sentence, and then write the first thought that would complete the sentence stem (but keep the format the same as the above).

      After you are done with the exercise, all you have to do is go about your day. You don't even have to pay attention to what you wrote down (though, at times it is quite intriguing what comes up). You will notice (over time) that you have set forces in motion that will make it absolutely impossible to NOT act more consciously in your every day life. The key to the exercises is A) speed, and B) NOT THINKING. You fail the exercise if you start thinking about scenarios, and what would happen if you do X, Y , or Z. Think AFTER you're done with the exercise.

      Anyway, that is basically my lifestyle philosophy for the past 7 months. I can't say that bringing more consciousness in my life has made me a whole lot happier (because my subconscious was suppressing A LOT of painful emotions and thoughts), but at least now I know what I need to do to be happy in life.

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