Subliminal Talk

(04-29-2015, 05:01 PM)mat422 Wrote: [ -> ]Awesome post, thanks a lot for writing all that out. Glad you got a bit out of my journal too, sometimes I worry I ramble on way too much haha.

It's crazy you mention the present moment because I experienced that state your described a day ago. And it's weird how things have been sort of aligning in my life, like little stepping stones. Whenever I make some realization or shift in awareness it's been reflected in my reality. I think this is definitely due to the current subliminal I've been using.

As far as being present goes. One thing I've started doing is becoming aware of the sensations around me. Sounds, sights, sensations, feelings, etc. the more you can tune into these things the more you automatically enter the present. Because the present is what you readily perceive at that moment in time. And it's truly amazing when you can look at something like a tree and see what it is, not the label attached to it. Obviously I'm not experiencing this state 24/7 because things will snap me out of the present. But practicing it whenever I can has made me realize how powerful the present moment truly is.

Ahh yeah that feeling of things synchronizing and aligning in your life, what a lovely feeling it is! Now we are talking man. You've got it! I'm glad to hear you are making the shift Yeah it isn't staying there for long, but we'll get there. Meditation and subs, and practice practice practice, will get us there I believe. Wish you all the best bro. Looking forward to more progress and updates

Realized I like posting these updates whenever I come across a shift in my state or beliefs or whatever you want to call it. It seems really easy to overlook this stuff, especially with the naturalizer in the subliminals these days.

Anyway, I know Shannon has mentioned in the past that people have a certain core type and how they respond to subliminals. I'm pretty certain I'm the emotional type. Basically whatever I feel I take as the truth. You can see how that lands me into a bit of a hole when it comes to negative stuff. I have a tendency to get stuck in how I feel and no amount of outside observation or logic can really pull me out. And the longer I stay with that feeling, the more accustomed I am to it. As a consequence whenever I try to internalize something new it feels "wrong", but it's not wrong just different. The other troubling part is that my perspective is skewed a lot. So well meaning advice from others may not reach me. You might have run across a person like this in your life, they keep doing the wrong stuff, the wrong attitude, and they do want to change. So you give them some advice or try to get them to think more positively and it seems like it backfires or it goes in one ear and out the other. I've mentioned before my MBTI type is INFP, this is a very common thing INFPs run into. It can be improved and balanced, the problem is A LOT of stuff get internalized over the years that needs to be reevaluated. It can be like world war three up in an INFPs head at times.

Now the flipside of this is once my conviction in something is strong or I feel it very strongly, I'm unshaken by the opinions of others. So I believe that once a lot of this subliminal programming overrides the old programming it'll be like switching the polarity on a magnet. Where before I was intensely negative and rejected the positive, now I'll be intensely positive and automatically reject the negative. I've been thinking about when I'll eventually run AM6. In the past I felt like I couldn't or shouldn't be alpha, but now I recognize that it's just a feeling, not an absolute truth and there's no rule or solid fact in why I can't be alpha. Basically the only reason I felt I couldn't be alpha was just that, a feeling. And as we all know feelings can change, they aren't the end all be all.

(05-01-2015, 07:29 AM)mat422 Wrote: [ -> ]Realized I like posting these updates whenever I come across a shift in my state or beliefs or whatever you want to call it. It seems really easy to overlook this stuff, especially with the naturalizer in the subliminals these days.

Anyway, I know Shannon has mentioned in the past that people have a certain core type and how they respond to subliminals. I'm pretty certain I'm the emotional type. Basically whatever I feel I take as the truth. You can see how that lands me into a bit of a hole when it comes to negative stuff. I have a tendency to get stuck in how I feel and no amount of outside observation or logic can really pull me out. And the longer I stay with that feeling, the more accustomed I am to it. As a consequence whenever I try to internalize something new it feels "wrong", but it's not wrong just different. The other troubling part is that my perspective is skewed a lot. So well meaning advice from others may not reach me. You might have run across a person like this in your life, they keep doing the wrong stuff, the wrong attitude, and they do want to change. So you give them some advice or try to get them to think more positively and it seems like it backfires or it goes in one ear and out the other. I've mentioned before my MBTI type is INFP, this is a very common thing INFPs run into. It can be improved and balanced, the problem is A LOT of stuff get internalized over the years that needs to be reevaluated. It can be like world war three up in an INFPs head at times.

Now the flipside of this is once my conviction in something is strong or I feel it very strongly, I'm unshaken by the opinions of others. So I believe that once a lot of this subliminal programming overrides the old programming it'll be like switching the polarity on a magnet. Where before I was intensely negative and rejected the positive, now I'll be intensely positive and automatically reject the negative. I've been thinking about when I'll eventually run AM6. In the past I felt like I couldn't or shouldn't be alpha, but now I recognize that it's just a feeling, not an absolute truth and there's no rule or solid fact in why I can't be alpha. Basically the only reason I felt I couldn't be alpha was just that, a feeling. And as we all know feelings can change, they aren't the end all be all.

Hahahah tell me about it. According to NLP I'd say your Kinesthetic and ID, because that's what I used to be. Everything you've said in this post were very true for me at one point. "Where before I was intensely negative and rejected the positive, now I'll be intensely positive and automatically reject the negative.", wait till you reach the positive side of the polarity, oh man you're in for the time of your life I can definitely assure you that you're on the path to freedom my friend, you're on the right track to create the change you want. I'm happy for ya

(05-01-2015, 12:00 PM)QuantumEnthusiast Wrote: [ -> ]

(05-01-2015, 07:29 AM)mat422 Wrote: [ -> ]Realized I like posting these updates whenever I come across a shift in my state or beliefs or whatever you want to call it. It seems really easy to overlook this stuff, especially with the naturalizer in the subliminals these days.

Anyway, I know Shannon has mentioned in the past that people have a certain core type and how they respond to subliminals. I'm pretty certain I'm the emotional type. Basically whatever I feel I take as the truth. You can see how that lands me into a bit of a hole when it comes to negative stuff. I have a tendency to get stuck in how I feel and no amount of outside observation or logic can really pull me out. And the longer I stay with that feeling, the more accustomed I am to it. As a consequence whenever I try to internalize something new it feels "wrong", but it's not wrong just different. The other troubling part is that my perspective is skewed a lot. So well meaning advice from others may not reach me. You might have run across a person like this in your life, they keep doing the wrong stuff, the wrong attitude, and they do want to change. So you give them some advice or try to get them to think more positively and it seems like it backfires or it goes in one ear and out the other. I've mentioned before my MBTI type is INFP, this is a very common thing INFPs run into. It can be improved and balanced, the problem is A LOT of stuff get internalized over the years that needs to be reevaluated. It can be like world war three up in an INFPs head at times.

Now the flipside of this is once my conviction in something is strong or I feel it very strongly, I'm unshaken by the opinions of others. So I believe that once a lot of this subliminal programming overrides the old programming it'll be like switching the polarity on a magnet. Where before I was intensely negative and rejected the positive, now I'll be intensely positive and automatically reject the negative. I've been thinking about when I'll eventually run AM6. In the past I felt like I couldn't or shouldn't be alpha, but now I recognize that it's just a feeling, not an absolute truth and there's no rule or solid fact in why I can't be alpha. Basically the only reason I felt I couldn't be alpha was just that, a feeling. And as we all know feelings can change, they aren't the end all be all.

Hahahah tell me about it. According to NLP I'd say your Kinesthetic and ID, because that's what I used to be. Everything you've said in this post were very true for me at one point. "Where before I was intensely negative and rejected the positive, now I'll be intensely positive and automatically reject the negative.", wait till you reach the positive side of the polarity, oh man you're in for the time of your life I can definitely assure you that you're on the path to freedom my friend, you're on the right track to create the change you want. I'm happy for ya

Good to know I'm on the right path. It's been a long journey but I feel like I'm finally starting to break free. I'm pretty excited to reach that positive side. Feels like I've been scaling a huge mountain and I'm a couple of feet from the summit.

I've been thinking a lot about what I should do with my life. My passion is definitely music. It's difficult because to me it's more than a hobby. A hobby to me is something you turn towards to relax or unwind. Making music for me has been incredibly stressful at times, but rewarding. It is work, there's been a lot of learning and roadblocks I've had to overcome and I'm still working on overcoming them. Perfectionist tendencies seriously hold me back, lack of skills, fear of what others think of my music, not being as good as professionals, procrastination, etc. Also a lot of comparing myself to others in more "practical" fields. Art is important, but people seriously overlook that. A world without music, movies, paintings, drawings, architecture, etc. would be an incredibly dull place. And yet when it comes to the hierarchy it seems like engineers, scientists, doctors, lawyers, etc are higher up. I admire these people and what they do. I also recognize their vital importance. Even people that want to work in a corporate environment, I get it. I don't badmouth their goals and what they want out of life. Everyone wants something different in life. But that's just not who I am and part of the reason I've struggled in life so much is because that's the direction most people are pushed. Maybe it's because the whole attitude of your job being your identity is so engrained in this culture that such emphasis is placed on being "productive" or "practical". So you become a doctor, great you're helping people. Artist? Stop being unrealistic, get a real job, you're wasting your time, etc. I don't think anyone receives as much criticism as artists who are still working on getting better. Sure once they establish themselves as proficient or popular they get praise, but before that you're treated with such disdain by some people. That actually goes for anyone with dreams that might be hard to attain, the negative people love squashing it and watching you suffer because they might have been too much of a coward to take control of their own life and let fear dictate their actions.

I'm not shooting for a lofty goal like fame. If it finds me I'd be happy, but that's not the reason I do the things I do. I'd rather pour my heart and soul into my music and achieve my vision than try to maintain a high standard of living by being tied to my job. And I am realistic about all this. I know I need a job, I need food, I need a place to live, and all that necessary stuff sheltered people tend to take for granted. But I only have so much energy and it has to be concentrated wisely. If I'm at an office job and there's nothing for me to do for 3 hours except pointless busy work to make it seem like I'm being productive, that's a form of torture in my mind. That 3 hours could have been spent putting more time into my music and getting closer to achieving the vision I have in my head for my music. Everyone knows the stereotype of the starving artist, it comes from somewhere. It's because artists place such a high emphasis on their craft that everything else fades into the background. It's hard to understand this feeling unless you've experienced it. I don't even say that as a form of ego or that it makes me special somehow, I'm just stating it as a fact and something that I've lived with for most of my life and never really understood.

So where am I going with this rambling? I'm trying to hit the sweet spot in my life where I have a career or job that provides the basic essentials for an ok standard of living, but doesn't demand so much of my energy that I'm pulled away from my music goals. I'm definitely forging my own path here, which I think is part of the reason this is so damn difficult. It's like a path filled with vines and stuff that I'm hacking away with my machete while I'm watching other people right next to me stroll along a well worn path. I can't even see 2 feet in front of me, but I just keep going. Meanwhile I've got people shouting next to me that I'm going the wrong way and to follow them. EPRHA is bringing all this to light, but it's been very hard to come to terms with because everything I feel inside is the exact opposite of what I was told to do in society.

My music is by no means great. But after listening to EPRHA for a while I've realized that I need to take more responsibility for it. It won't magically get better. I'm gonna suck for a while. I can fantasize all I want about making great music, but until I get in there and get my hands dirty nothing will come about. There's no secret, no technique, no book, no software, no nothing except hard work and determination. I plan and plan and soak up knowledge like a sponge in hopes that it gives me the answer. But I lack the action. The amount of times I haven't finished a track or avoided making music is far too many. It's way too easy to make excuses, and this goes for anything in life. But the thing you have to remember is those excuses and procrastination haunt you. It's not always the path of least resistance that gets you the results you want in life. And this makes it hard to keep going at times because you may think to yourself that it shouldn't be this hard. After reading dozens of books of the new age variety, there's a poisonous message that life is effortless and you can have anything you want as long as you think really hard about it or visualize. This is nonsense, all you'll get good at is fantasizing about what you want. At the heart of this misguided message is the simple fear of hard work. You still have to put in the work. There are still rules that govern this universe and one of those rules is related to your souls desire to learn lessons and overcome obstacles. You still have to face those demons and upsets. Law of attraction can put you into alignment with what you want, but that's only about 50%. You have to put your 50% in as well. Ultimately coming to terms with those fears and doubts will help you transmute them into energy that can further propel you to reach your goals. Otherwise you expend energy trying to avoid them or push them away.

I wrote a damn novel here. But I'm going to try to follow what I've written, so I'm not just talking the talk there. Nothing upsets me more than people that talk big, but their actions don't reflect their words. There's still a lot of stuff I try to avoid, facing it will be difficult but ultimately I'll grow stronger for it.

Well I have to take back what I said in that last post. It's not all wrong, but it just swung a little too heavily in the other direction. That's a bad habit of mine, I believe in psychology the term is called splitting. Basically it's easier to jump from one extreme to the other because there's less cognitive dissonance. While it seems like a relief to finally have an answer or a firm understanding of something, it's just gratification for the ego. The real value in life is reading between the lines, the grey area. Not gonna lie, that's hard to do. Especially when a lot of people out there have very black and white thinking. But ultimately you gain greater perspective and as a consequence make better decisions.

I'm only writing about this because I want anybody reading this journal to see the ups and downs. How progress is NOT linear. You'll slip up, fall back into old habits, and convince yourself that it's right for you. In that last post my goal of getting better at music was just a fear of not being good at music in a sort of disguise. My perfectionist tendencies to be great at something, basically that all or nothing mentality. That mentality is championed here in the U.S. but I'm not sure about other countries. Be the best or don't bother. It's not a healthy belief to have. I have to watch myself very carefully to make sure I don't revert to it, which is very easy to do because it's my default mindset. It was how I viewed everything pretty much from the age of 13 to now and I'm 24 so quite a few years of integrating a very faulty pattern of thinking. Ultimately if I keep on with that attitude I'll kill my enjoyment of my music and I don't want that. There's definitely more to life than being really good at something. I still have my artistic vision, but I realize that I have plenty of time to get there and I can't rush progress. Rome wasn't built in a day. On top of that nothing kills creative flow like stress. Letting go of needing to be good at something is the first step to becoming good at it.

Anyway as far as law of attraction goes and my whole monologue about hard work and determination, well sometimes it's good to not to have any preconceived notions about what the rules are to life. Hell I've known people that coast through life having everything line up perfectly. I've also known people that struggle and grind, that's their reality. Nothing is set in stone, it's better to be flexible. Do I want to struggle and grind my whole life? No. So it would probably benefit me not to internalize that as a solid belief. At the same time I recognize there is going to be work I have to do, it can't all be effortless. But this work is like training a muscle. It's like if you went over to a squat rack, loaded up 500lbs on the barbell and attempted to squat it, you'd injure yourself pretty bad if you haven't worked up to that weight. Instead you have to start with what you can handle and build up to that weight over time. I always tend to waver between two extremes. Either biting off more than I can chew or retreating so much that I never give myself that healthy push that keeps my strength from atrophying. It's definitely a balancing act for me and I feel like I haven't quite reached that point of equilibrium yet.

Had an extremely rough day yesterday. To make a long story short I got caught up in the whole negative thought loop of needing my music to be good. And instead of stepping away from it, I have a bad habit of trying to bulldoze through it which causes more stress. I think one of my biggest problems is I'm worried if I'm not constantly working on the music I'm wasting precious time. Definitely a fear based mentality I'm working to overcome. On top of that music can be so subjective that sometimes I doubt everything I do and I lose my ability to make good choices. Kind of like that feeling when you write a word and you don't recognize the spelling as correct. I guess it's those moments where I really need to step back.

And as a side note I think caffeine is horrible for me. I don't usually drink coffee, but last week I drank about a cup every other day. Coffee makes me feel really good, but I crash hard. And it's not just that day, but I think it has a carryover effect into the next few days. Yesterday I found myself wanting to make some coffee to lift me out of my depressive/anxious slump, but I realized it would only prolong it. Today I'm feeling much better. There's definitely something about caffeine that ruins my ability to cope with stress, it's like my body becomes hyper sensitive and small things that usually don't set me off do.

Anyway, you live and learn. I don't know how some people can drink that stuff day in day out without getting burnt out. But maybe my nervous system is different or something.

One huge problem for me is I can usually get a job. The question is how long I can last at that job. See while I'd love to say that anxiety doesn't affect me anymore and I can do anything I want, that would just be straight up denial. And anxiety is more than a mental thing, it takes it's toll physically. So I've realized I do have to be smart in what jobs I apply for. For example, working as an administrative assistant answering calls, dealing with customers, juggling a lot of tasks at once, etc would be horrible for me. I'd burn out, my performance would suck and it would be no good for me or the company I'm working for.

I've never been particularly good with this aspect of myself. I feel like I should be able to do these things. But should is such a poisonous word. It just contributes to a lot of self hate and feelings of not being good enough. The fact is people are different and there are different jobs for different people. I should be focusing on what I can do, what I'm good at it, instead of beating myself up about what I can't do.

I have my limits, I have to respect that. But I also have to push myself out of my comfort zone a bit.

Lots of crap has been coming up. I could probably write pages, but I'm keeping it short.

Intelligence. I've always been praised on my intelligence. Well when I don't do very "intelligent" things or make mistakes I feel like it shatters that image and I feel guilt. It's led me to avoid trying new things. As if my intelligence is where my self worth lies. For some reason my dad loves pointing out when any worker is being incompetent and I think to myself if I wasn't his son I'd probably be one of them because I've had my share of mess ups. It's not fair to judge a person on one single action alone, you can't know the whole story.

Pretending to be something I'm not. When I look for jobs and I come across something that says "self motivated highly driven success oriented person" or whatever else I feel guilty. At this stage in my life that's not me, I don't feel that way. And beating myself up for not being that type of person has led to an endless cycle of self hate. Do I want to be that type of person? Yes. But I want it to come from a place of authenticity, not as a facade so some company hires me. Sometimes I like to look at myself from the perspective of an employer and I understand why they wouldn't want to hire me. But I've got a lot of stuff I need to sort through and there's only so much mental energy I can dedicate. Pretending to be something I'm not is not something I prioritize.

Man, it's easy to forget things and fall into bad habits. I just realized that part of my problems is resistance to allowing myself to be a successful self motivated individual. I tell myself I'm not, but I honestly have never tried allowing myself to be one of those types of people. It's like I'm still wrapped up in an identity of being incompetent. It's like I have to remind myself to wake up and not fall back into that state of identity.

And just to show how multi layered these issues go sometimes, here's an example. One of my defense mechanisms growing up was apathy. Big test coming up that challenges my self worth as a person? Just say I didn't try my hardest on it, that way I have a copout for why I did so poorly. Important essay to write? Call the essay stupid, worthless, doesn't matter, etc. Also even when I did get really good grades or a teacher praised my essay I didn't care. Grades didn't matter. I shut out both the good and the bad because the bad hurt a lot. Now I'm finding that I've taken that same attitude and it's being applied to jobs. I'm really starting to uncover a lot of self worth issues, that I've masked with apathy. But the important thing is I'm not dwelling on being worthless, I'm kind of viewing it as behavior that just needs to change. So instead of telling myself I can't do something or I'm not that type of person as a knee jerk response, I'm going to question where it's coming from and why I believe that.

I guess when you live with a certain mindset for a while it's obviously gonna stick to you. And the problem is it's habitual, so you'll find yourself doing these things with no conscious awareness unless you really look.

Case in point, I'm typing out the post and meanwhile in the back of my head I'm hearing "You're not really making any progress, this is all a lie, you're going to maintain this for a few days and then crash and burn. Stop pretending about being happy because the truth is you're always gonna be miserable. You can't do this". I mean typing that out, it's clear to me that either A. This is just my subconscious mind coming up with tactics to keep me stuck because the change is scary or B. I really have a tendency to think all these negative things about myself. Either way it needs to change because my quality of living sucks and I'm tired of it.

And I just realized I don't need to change my internal dialogue. I can just stop resisting those negative thoughts, let them play out like a child throwing a temper tantrum, then let it go. No need to engage it. The more I work on myself the more I realize that actively resisting things is always a bad idea. Even the negative that pops up, it's good to immerse yourself in it and let it go. I'm getting better at that, definitely thanks to EPRHA.

Back again with more insights. I feel like I've touched on this topic before but it's self improvement from a place of positivity vs feeling you're not good enough. One helps, one hinders.

One of the things about self improvement for me is it's easy to get carried away and think I need to change everything about myself. Like if I'm naturally introverted than I should be more extroverted. If I'm naturally more quiet than I should work on speaking more. It made me think of animals. Animals can have different temperaments, they just are. They don't try to be anything, they just live. Humans are gifted with the ability of higher consciousness, but at the same time it's easy to forget there are things that aren't under our control. Sometimes I get carried away with the subliminals and forget that they won't alter who I fundamentally am. And I have a tendency to fight against how I am. And I think it's this fighting that has made my life so difficult because that's a massive amount of energy wasted on something that isn't even wrong. To clarify, you have to be sure who you are isn't just a bunch of deceptive negative lies. I'm not going to accept that I'm a naturally depressed person because I know that's not true. But things like personality and your core being, those are with you whether you resist or accept them.

And one more thing. I've always been a control freak. I've realized how powerful it is to let go. It seems scary at first because control in my mind equaled security. But it does nothing except burn away my energy with nothing to show for it. The control I thought I had was just an illusion.

Probably gonna be my last post for a while. I've kind of been posting all this stuff as a way to affirm my own beliefs I guess. It's weird, but when I have thoughts and ideas floating up inside my head they don't seem real. When I put them down on paper or online, it's almost like I'm creating "rules" for myself. And I really really need to get rid of my "rules" attitude. It's a very claustrophobic way to live. An example of this is my idea of letting go of control and not controlling so much. But by telling myself to not control so much and let go, I'm creating a "rule" to follow. The irony of creating a rule to let go in order not to be a control freak is just another way to guarantee a certain outcome, which is controlling in nature. Same goes for being present. If I try to be present as a way to attain something or change something, I'm not being present.

As you can see there's still a lot going on in my head that revolves around fear and perfectionism. Rules imply stability or certainty, they are appealing because they quell the fear inside of me. But ultimately they are incredibly restrictive because I limit my perspective on everything.

This all sounds like the ramblings of a madman. My brain is weird. It's always zipping around looking for connections trying to tie things together. Sometimes it tries to tie two completely irrelevant things together just to see if they hold any similarities. But now I'm going to go practice some finger drumming on my drum pad, get myself out of this insanity loop.

Well I was wrong, oh well. I figure this post is important anyway. That apathy I talked about a few post down, I've realized it's actually a form of dissociation. When I was younger I'd "check out" to avoid the anxiety because it got so intense at times. This bad habit has followed me into adulthood and if I'm not careful I easily slip back into it. The hardest part is when I dissociate, there's no self growth. It's like pulling out of myself, going on autopilot and doing what needs to be done, but I never address any of the things that might have been triggering the anxiety or negative thoughts. So in essence I've learned to function, but not in a particularly healthy manner.

I think there's definitely a lot of fear still associated with being myself out in the world. And there's been a lack of real exposure because I have that bad habit of dissociating. It's important to face my fears, but I have to make sure I'm actually present when facing them, otherwise I'm just further conditioning my response to dissociate in the face of anxiety. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that dissociation is why a lot of the times in the past I didn't see a lot of changes when using the subs. It's like a whole system shutdown, pretty much a stonewall approach.

Alright I gotta get real for a while here. Truthfully I'm still deeply affected by people's opinions of me. I'm not at that point where I'm able to say screw it and just be me. As a consequence some of my posts here have been a little censored. It's tempting to want to keep up with the positive posts, as if my progress is steadily increasing, but the truth is it's all over the place. And I've been trying to be mindful of these defense mechanism and in general just how I live. At the end of the day having a filter that carefully sorts out what I should and shouldn't say is a large mental strain that's just covering up the fact I still have issues owning my stuff.

I chase my tail a lot, I recognize that. From the outside it probably looks like I'm just obsessing over the same stuff and I just need to stop. But ignoring it is definitely what landed me in this predicament to begin with. If I can't identify my triggers and just keep exposing myself with the same undesirable reaction I'll just get more of the same crap.

I told myself the other day, I can't be perfect. And instead of bringing relief it brings on fear. Telling myself I can't be perfect makes me want to be more perfect. It's like when you tell a kid not to touch something because it's hot and then they touch it and burn themselves. And when people say stuff like "stop trying to be perfect all the time!" or "it's ok to make mistakes or not be the best at something", I get it intellectually. Emotionally it just doesn't seem to stick. On top of that my perfectionist mentality can make me very blind to any emotional issues I may have. I can't tell you the number of times I've read about things like fear of intimacy or rejection and thought to myself "nah that's not me, I'm above that". And I'm not. If I was I'd be out there without dealing with any of this stuff. My biggest bout of denial was while I was still in high school, meditating heavily almost every day and came to the realization that I don't really need friends because I'm ok being alone. Which was an outright lie I told myself to make me feel better about the fact that I had intense trouble making friends or being myself around people.

Still I think I've come a long way. I no longer feel like an awful person for having flaws, like I'm broken or defective, and that's huge progress for me. In the past I'd make everything worse by taking all the issues I had and then on top of that piling more crap about hating myself and feeling guilty. I just see them as something that needs to be addressed in order to maximize happiness in my life. But I still have to be careful to not outright deny any problems I do experience because of some fear of not being perfect which still is a very strong fear in my life. The hard part is it doesn't exactly manifest as anxiety and my mind will come up with some damn good reasons that seem convincing to keep it around.

So there it is. True thoughts and feelings on my progress of self improvement. One of my desires is to come out the other side of this hell and show other people it's doable. To provide inspiration for those that maybe don't take to the subliminals as fast as others and get discouraged. I know what it's like to feel hopeless, not believing that you can make the changes you want, feeling like you're trapped in life despite having thousands of different opportunities standing around you, a prisoner of your own mind. Nobody should live like that. Life is meant to be enjoyed, not filled with endless pain and suffering.