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Hey, this is Leo for actualised.org. And in this episode, I'm going to be talking about building the infrastructure for your success. Are you building your infrastructure? What infrastructure is that? Well, the infrastructure for a high consciousness life. A lot of people, when they start to get into spirituality, or into the higher aspects of personal development, they lose touch with the practical aspects, the infrastructure you got to build in order to be successful in life. So that's what I want to talk about here. What I mean by infrastructure is, I mean, the practical structures necessary to live the kind of life you want to live the high consciousness kind of life, the life that is aligned with your highest values. That's not something that happens by accident. That's something you have to create, to construct to architect. And you have to be very deliberate about it. It means constructing your environment, an environment that's suitable for living your values, which makes living your values easy and automatic, rather than the way it is for most people, which is a lot of effort and a lot of resistance and a lot of wasteful energy. They end up sabotaging themselves simply by the environment that they have surrounded themselves with, and which they have done nothing to build to their favor in their advantage. This is really piggybacking on the topic that I covered in the past, in the episode about strategic thinking. And there, I talked about the building of strategic reserves and capacity. And that's exactly what I mean, when I talk about infrastructure. Don't get so spiritual, or so idealistic, that you forget about the pragmatic, utilitarian requirements of life. And don't forget that your spirituality and your ability to stay in a high consciousness state, especially at the very beginning of this journey. And, and probably, through much of it, until you get to the very end of the journey is going to be highly dependent upon the environment that you're in. So if you set up yourself with a very bad negative environment, with very low quality infrastructure, you're going to find it very difficult to develop yourself and to live up to your highest ideals and values. On the other hand, if you take the effort to just do the ordinary work of laying the foundation for your life, surrounding yourself with the right environment, then the spirituality will become automatic and easy. And that's what you got to be strategic about is thinking about that, why make life hard for yourself, make it easy for yourself. What you shouldn't be doing, ideally, is you should be figuring out what are your top values, once you know what that is, and if you take in my life purpose course, I went into a lot of effort to help you to figure out your values. So you should know your top 10 values. Now what you need to do is you need to systematically go through and say okay, what can I put in place? What processes, what mechanisms? What objects, what environment can I stood up for myself, that will make the following of all those values very easy and effortless and automatic. And then you go about putting that in place. So let me give you some concrete examples from my life. Because I've really spent the last five years working very hard to lay the infrastructure and the foundation that I will need to execute on my highest purpose, and on my values. And a lot of these things, these infrastructure things that I'm talking about. They're very simple. They're a lot simpler than they sound, it might sound like what I'm saying infrastructure, I'm talking about some, you know, some massive thing that you're supposed to build in your life. Sometimes it is like that. Sometimes it's simple stuff. So I'm going to give you examples of simple stuff. But before talking about the examples, there's one other point that I wanted to mention, which is I want to draw the parallel between infrastructure in your personal life and also infrastructure the way you see it around the world. So one of the things that gets talked about in politics these days, like, Let's build up America's infrastructure, okay, that's a good idea and The reason that's a good idea is because societies that have high quality infrastructure, facilitate the growth of human beings and enable them to operate more effectively, and to do the things that they need to be doing, rather than wasting their time and inefficiency. In the same way that if you have a broken down car, that's 30 years old, and he's got a bad engine, that's not a good piece of infrastructure for traveling to work. If that's your main objective in life is getting to work, then you need a good machine to help you do that. See, so it makes sense to spruce up your car so that I can get you to your work on time all the time consistently. Well, nations suffer this problem too. And one of the problems that third world nations face, they have very low quality infrastructure. You see, and this, of course, is not a complete deal breaker for people's development. If you want, you can develop yourself spiritually to the highest levels, no matter what environment you find yourself in. But still, nevertheless, at a social level, if we're talking about large averages of human beings, having the right infrastructure is very helpful. Which is why in third world countries where people don't have access to clean water, or to clean air, or to basic food, or basic medicine, or roads, or the Postal Service, you know, just these very basic simple things, you find that these people are not able to really develop themselves. They're at a very low level of consciousness and a very low level of development, which is why you find a lot of corruption in these countries, a lot of violence, a lot of theft, a lot of rape, a lot of health problems. So all this stuff happens there. And you don't find very many enlightened people there. Maybe one interesting example counterexample to that is India, where India is generally has a lot of poverty, and doesn't have the highest quality infrastructure as a country, of course, they have over a billion people. So it's hard to provide that much infrastructure for that many people. But still, in India, you have probably the highest concentration of spiritual masters, probably at the deepest levels of spiritual attainment that you'll ever find. One of the reasons for that is just because when you have a billion people, of course, you're gonna have a few who are very exceptional, while the majority are in poverty, but also because India has this very rich and ancient tradition, and this culture, that it takes the spirituality and enlightenment very seriously. And personal development very seriously. So that's interesting to think about. So it's not so black and white, even if you find yourself in a very crappy environment. If you really want to, you can still develop yourself. But overall, it's going to be a lot more difficult. Okay, so let me talk about some examples in my own life. Let me give you just a couple of very simple examples. So one of the simplest examples that I just did recently, here's an infrastructure change that I made. One of the challenges I have is figuring out how do I capture all the insights that I have throughout the week, and share them with people and record them, because these insights come up spontaneously. My best insights just come up when I'm in the shower, or I'm in the car or something like that, how do I capture them? So I've been working on this problem for years now. And just what came to me recently, one of the solutions is that what I did is I discovered that I just don't have a pen around, or a piece of paper around me all the time to write down all these insights. So what I did is I went and I bought a bunch of pens, and a bunch of post it notes. And so I have those lying around the house. But what I found is that even that wasn't good enough, because the insights can come up so fast, and then they can get lost so fast, they come into my mind, they go out of my mind that if I don't record them, immediately, I tend to find that I lose most of my best insights. So still, it wasn't working, because I had like one or two pens lying around the house. And I had one or two post it note squares lying around the house. And what I what just came to me is like, hey, why don't I just like inundate every area of my house and my car with plenty of pens, and plenty of post it notes. So I'm never found wanting for one. So what I did is I have I have tons of post it notes lying all around my house, all the common areas that I am in the kitchen, by the couch, by the office, computer and, and so forth in the bedroom. And in my car, I have them and also have pens. I have like tons of pens more way more pens that I need to because sometimes I'll take a pen, and I'll use it to write something down and then I'll lose the pen, right? I placed the pen in another room and then I can't find the pen. And because of that I'm too lazy to actually write down the insight. Now this seems like such a minor problem, right? You think like Leo, this is this is small stuff. Why are you sweating the small stuff? See when you when you get the small stuff down, the big stuff becomes easy. The big stuff is difficult because you ignore the small stuff. The small stuff tends to snowball into add up. So what I did is not only that I get a ton of pens, way more pens than you would think is reasonable, I got a ton of post it notes, way more than you would think is reasonable. And also I got these pen holders. So I have these just like plastic cups that I got at The Container Store to hold all my pens, and I got a bunch of them, and I placed them all over my house. So now it's been working really well. And I've been taking so many more notes than I have in the past years of running actualised.org. And it's like, it's pretty amazing. I've probably doubled if not quadruple the amount of insights that I'm able to capture just with this very simple sort of infrastructure. So that's one example of what I mean by infrastructure. Here's another example. And it also goes to the same problem that I was having is how do I capture all these insights? Sometimes I'm driving in the car, and I can't even write anything down because I'm driving. So what do I do? Well, I started looking for ways to do a voice recording. And of course, I wanted to find the right voice recorder. So I bought I purchased like five or six different voice recorders online, played around with all of them for about a week experiment to try different audio formats, because I wanted to make sure that the recordings are, are nice and good that they don't take up too much disk space, and so forth. So I went through this whole process of finding the right voice recorders. And in the end, I actually ended up settling on a voice recorder app for my phone, I went through a bunch of different apps tried a bunch of those. So I went through physical voice recorders and phone voice recorders. I ordered microphones tested different microphones, this whole process cost me several $100 cost me a week of time, went through some hassles with all the technical stuff that goes with. With this, I found the right app. And now it works for me. And I've been recording hundreds of new insights over the last couple of months, that otherwise would have been completely lost. And it's Wow, it's been really, really significant. I can really feel the impact of that. And the reason it's extra significant for me is because my life purpose is to share insights. That's what my life is about. So you see, not only is this just helping my work, it's not just me making my work more efficient. That's not what's going on here. What I'm doing here is I'm looking at what's my highest purpose in life? What are my highest values, which is truth, and understanding and passion and life purpose, all of this? And then I'm asking myself, okay, how can I make my job easier to follow, and to stay aligned with my purpose and my values? And then I'm asking myself, okay, so what kind of infrastructure can I build to help me to do that. And then I build it, I take the time to go through the nitty gritty, gritty details of building that. Also, in the last two years, for my business, I built a backup system, automatic backup systems, I have a lot of different files, I have a lot of video files, I built a backup system of over 36 terabytes of hard drives in a RAID array, which automatically backs up all my my laptop, my desktop, all my camera stuff. So that took quite a bit of effort to research all that to hook it all up to set it all up, make sure it's completely automated. So I don't have to worry about losing files. And for me, you can see how that's a huge problem. Because if I'm taking all these notes when I'm putting them on the computer, and then if I lose all that, that's huge. That means my life purpose and my values are significantly at risk and potentially damaged just by a simple computer or hard disk failure. You see. So these things, some, the difficulty with them is that they're, they're simpler than they seem. But what I find is that a lot of people don't bother to go through the effort of systematically building up the infrastructure in their life. And certainly, they're not clear about their values and life purpose. So even if they do build some infrastructure, it's sort of random. They're not deliberately strategically saying, Okay, here's my top value, what could I do to enable that top value to be automatically happening every single day in my life? See. And I've been doing this in all areas of my life the last five years, I've had to in order to be effective at what I do with actualize that org. I've optimized my computer's had to research spend a lot of time getting the right computers getting the right software on my computer. So all that stuff is very efficient, because it's very easy for me to to waste hours and hours and hours with the wrong software with the wrong computers with the wrong operating systems. And that stuff is technical stuff. And it's not very spiritual work. You might say, Well, what does this have to do with spirituality or personal development? This is just like, work. Yeah, exactly. Most of the stuff I do with actualised.org is not super spiritual stuff. You know what I spent my last five years doing 90% of my effort went into building infrastructure, not in Some meditation not into, well, I've read quite a bit of books. But a lot of time when it's just building infrastructure stuff that is boring stuff that's very technical, a lot of computer stuff, a lot of stuff around the house, a lot of camera equipment stuff, learning cameras, learning microphones, I just like this sort of stuff, because then it enables me to follow my life purpose. If all I was doing was just meditating, and, and dreaming up ideas, there would be no tangible product for me to put out there. You see. The infrastructure that I build, the most important ones of it is the stuff that helps me to put out the deepest insights that I can. Because that's my number one purpose, I don't know what your number one purposes is probably something different. You probably don't even know unless maybe you've taken my life purpose course. In which case, you've got something good to go on. Now you can apply what I'm telling you in this episode. And if you don't know what your life purpose is, well, that's a really huge area of your life that you're missing, which you should probably figure out at some point, which is why I created my course. So you can check that out if you want. But also, I want to point out to you that infrastructure is not just material, hard stuff. So there's hard infrastructure, for example, roads, bridges, computers, technology, camera equipment, voice recording apps, and this sort of stuff. That's what I call hard, hard infrastructure. There's also what I call soft infrastructure, infrastructure. This is the stuff that's non material and non tangible. So what might this be your speaking ability, for example, that's huge for me, I've had to build up my speaking ability so that I can communicate the insights that I want to communicate, because one of my biggest bottlenecks was my speaking ability. I've had to work on that for years. creative ability is another soft infrastructure thing. creative ability, you might think, like, well, creative ability, how do you build that up? And it's tricky, because the soft infrastructure is the hardest to build up. Because it's intangible. When something is intangible, your mind has a difficult time working with it. So it's hard to figure out how do I build up my speaking ability, but there are tangible ways like you can go to toastmasters or something and speak more, or shoot more videos or whatever. How do you build up your creative abilities? Oh, man, I've been building up my creative abilities recently, a lot using some powerful techniques that I'm actually going to be creating a course on. So I can't go into depth on that here. But rest assured that you can certainly build up something as intangible as your creative ability, by orders of magnitude, it's quite amazing. And for me, that's huge. Because what I do is very creative. And creativity is one of my highest values. So for me the ability to build up my creative infrastructure, the mental tools that I have for how I visualize how I think about the world, how I put insights together, how I'm able to channel information from higher from higher wisdom, this is super important to me. And it's taken me a while to figure out how to do that. And that's an infrastructure, that's an ability that I have, once I build that up, I can't really lose it. And then I become a much more powerful speaker, I become much more powerful in my life purpose, and so forth. How about humor, humor can be an infrastructure that you build up your ability to be humorous, and that's actually something that I'm gonna be working on in the future is how do I present my material. So it's not just interesting, fascinating, but also humorous, too. That's something that would require a lot of work. And rest assured that you certainly can build up infrastructure for humor. Other soft, intangible infrastructure might be the right relationships. A lot of people are really hindered by the relationships that they have their relationships really weighed them down and prevent you from living your values and following your purpose. So what are the right relationships you need that will enable you rather than holding you back? Also various kinds of technical skills, maybe you need some computer skills, maybe you need some language skills, maybe you need some business skills, some marketing skills, this is all rather intangible stuff. But once you do have the skills, you are able to follow through on your values and your life purpose in ways that would otherwise be impossible. So you know, one of the ways that people struggle with their life purpose as they find their life purpose, or they have some big dream or goal that they want to accomplish in their life, but then they lack the technical skills. Do it. And so they get really down on themselves because they think like, well, but this dream I have, it's so lofty, it's just impossible. No, it's not impossible. The only reason that it feels impossible to you is because you lack the technical skills. And you lack the strategic long term planning skills of being able to sit down and say, okay, so I don't know how to get to my dream yet. But if I develop some marketing skills, and some business skills, and some language skills, and some computer skills, and whatever skills I need, I can use those to stair step my way up to my dreams, and then I'll be able to realize them. And that's always the case was an ambitious dream was an ambitious dream, you're not going to know how to fulfill it. But what you can ask yourself is you can ask yourself, Okay, what would I need to develop? What infrastructure would I need to build? In order to do that? If I want to become let's say, a comedian, and I have no idea how to become a comedian, I can always ask myself, what infrastructure do I need to become an amazing comedian. And then I can go about building that. The most powerful internet infrastructure is non material. So while material infrastructure is good, for example, having those cupholders with my pens, having the post it notes lying around my house, that's material infrastructure, that's good stuff. But it's not as powerful. For example, as the creative infrastructure that I'm building, in my mind, in my mind, that's even more powerful. See. And the non material is the most difficult to work with, which is why I'm I'm working on resources for you, I'm working on a course that will help you to really work with the non material aspects of personal development. Because that's where people struggle with the most, that's also where you can get the highest leverage. And you can get extraordinary orders of magnitude, more efficiency, and more results and more power, if you get the right non material infrastructure into place. So I'm working on that that will maybe come out within the next six or 12 months, I'm not sure yet. The point of infrastructure is to free you from a lot of the busy work that you do in your life. I don't know if you've noticed this, but a lot of people, most people, they're super wasteful with how they spend their time. Their time is spent in an unfocused way. Not focusing on doing their core values, they're not living out their core values for most of the time in their week, most of the time, and their week is spent on doing busy work, busy work that really has very low yield, and low fulfillment level. And so they have all this chronic resistance, they keep doing the same ineffective procedures over and over and over again, for example, if they have a buggy computer, they're going to live with that buggy computer for the next five years. And that's just going to make their process harder, right? If you're a writer, and you're using your computer, make your computer fucking efficient, super, super efficient. So it's not a bottleneck, it's not a source of resistance for you getting your ideas on, onto the computer. See, and if that requires you learning some technical computer skills, good. If that requires you spending $2,000 To get a better computer that's going to be faster and more efficient and free of bugs and lag and all that, then that's a worthwhile investment. To build the infrastructure requires an investment of time, energy and money. And this is one of the ways in which material resources can be effective and necessary for personal development. Sure, you could develop yourself completely without any money. But having some money, which you can invest strategically into yourself to build the right infrastructure. And that's one of my favorite aspects of personal development is when I can find something someplace where I can just invest some money, buy a computer, buy some books, buy a voice recorder, buy an app by buy some, some coaching, whatever, because this is so easy, right? This is the most effective way that I can use my money is to reinvest it in myself. So anytime I can find an opportunity like that I do. But don't get don't get trapped into this idea that the only way you can grow is by having money or by investing in yourself. Actually, the most powerful ways to grow are completely free, completely free. And there's limits to how much money you can invest in yourself in an effective way. So what I want you to do is I want you to ask yourself, Where is my time, not optimal? Throughout my week, wherever Am I working against my values? Where am I lacking alignment with my purpose? And what kind of physical infrastructure could I build to correct that, to help mitigate that? Just imagine that if you are building your infrastructure, and you're doing it on a weekly basis, week after week after week, month, after month after month, year, after year after year, imagine how powerful you will be when you have the hard infrastructure in place and the soft infrastructure in place. And all of it is making living your values easy, and effortless and automatic. And all of it is serving your purpose. And that whole thing is snowballing decade after decade after decade, imagine how powerful you will be how fulfilling it will be to live that kind of life. See, one of the problems that victims face is that they shirk responsibility. They don't take the responsibility for building the infrastructure, and they avoid it. And so what they do is they just go party or they ignore it, or they watch TV, rather than learning. Rather than building their infrastructure, they're out there wasting their time, because they think it can't be done. They just don't want to take responsibility for this stuff. See, because they sort of expect that the infrastructure should already be there for them. As if you should be born and already have all the infrastructure you need, not at all, you need to construct the infrastructure you need. And you need to tailor your infrastructure to what your objective is in life. Nobody knows what your objective is. Probably you don't even know yet. But once you find out your objective, well, then the job begins of laying the foundation. Taking responsibility means that you say, I'm not going to wait for anybody else out there. To build the infrastructure that I need to create some stairway to my dreams. Spiritual folks fail in this regard, because they forget about the practical elements of reality, they get so spiritual and airy fairy about it, that they just say, Well, I'm just gonna, you know, I'm just gonna, like, sit there and meditate and everything will be attracted to me through some mystical law of attraction. I don't need to actually build any infrastructure. It'll all just happen. If it's God's will, then it's God's will. Well, you know what, God helps those who help themselves. God will help those who build their own infrastructure. And don't just sit on their ass expecting God to build the infrastructure for them. God's not going to build you a fucking highway to your dreams. That's your job. Dreamers, people who are chronic dreamers who dream up stuff and have a bunch of visions, but aren't able to actually show tangible results and success in life. Those people who like to talk a lot, but don't have much to show for it. Why is that? Well, because they suck at building the infrastructure. In many cases, it's just as simple. You need to develop the ability to dream big. But then also, at the same time, get to work on building the infrastructure that will make those dreams possible. And that requires a careful balance, you have to balance idealism with pragmatism. Also, I want to point out to you that there is a danger in getting too hung up on building the infrastructure. So like everything I talked about a few episodes ago, about balance, with everything that I talked about, you need to find the right balance. Because if you build your infrastructure too much, you get hung up on that, here's what's going to happen is that you're actually going to lose sight of your dreams, you can become so pragmatic, you lose sight of your dreams. And you just start working on your business working on your business, for example, and you spend the next 10 years doing that, and you just spend all that time chasing material success with your infrastructure, trying to kind of like build the perfect nest. But that's not really what you're about the point of building the right nest in the right environment is that so that you can really sink your teeth into pursuing your values and your purpose. If you spend too much time building infrastructure, and I fall into this trap, what will happen is you'll disconnect from being you'll spend all your time doing and creating, thinking that that will somehow ultimately lead you to happiness, but it won't. Because the only thing that can lead you to happiness is being really connected to the being level of life. So you're going to have to balance building infrastructure and doing a lot of stuff which distracts you from being but also there's danger that if all you do is you spend all your time being Then you're just going to become like the stereotypical hippie who spends all his time being in free love, but then doesn't have a house to come back home to can't pay his mortgage, and can't hold down a job can't arrive on time to a meeting, because he's so airy fairy lost in being that he doesn't even recognize concepts like time. See, so you got to be able to do both, you got to be able to find that balance. And in the past, I've, I've tended to side actually towards the doing versus the being. And so I get very frustrated, where I spent a lot of time working on my business, working on my business, building all these infrastructures. But at the end of the day, it was just hollow, I felt unfulfilled because I would build all this stuff, and it would be great. But I'm disconnected from being. So you got to find that balance. How do you connect yourself with being well, that's a deeper talk topic that I will cover elsewhere. And I have covered it elsewhere, but basically meditation and so forth, techniques like that will get you more connected to be. Another danger with building too much infrastructure getting caught in that cycle, is that you start to identify with the infrastructure that you build. And I've definitely fallen into this trap as well. Like, for example, you're building your business, building your business, and then after five years of building up this great business, that it's successful, now all the sudden you identify with it. And you think that you are your business, and that your business is your source of happiness. And if it stops earning you the money it was earning, then now you're not happy anymore. If there's a problem with your business, you feel like you're being damaged personally, because now the business has become an extension of you. Or you might feel like well, if you're not able to fulfill on some kind of infrastructure goal, that somehow that damages your ability to be happy. It's like, well, I wanted to build this thing here. But I wasn't able to, like let's say I wanted to build a house. But because of financial problems, I wasn't able to build the house that I wanted, the House would have been a good piece of infrastructure to help me to live out my values, okay, but I couldn't do that. So now I can't live out my values. Now I feel bad about it. Well, you don't want to fall into that trap. Right? Think of the infrastructure as a bonus, it's a tool that helps. But if you're not able to have some kind of tool, you can still do it the old fashioned way. You don't need any kind of material stuff to really develop and grow yourself. But it is helpful. And if you can find some low hanging fruit, that will make your journey easier, why not take advantage of it? what this requires is rolling up your sleeves and getting to work. Which is why most people don't build the right infrastructure. Infrastructure takes time to build, you need to do it consistently through the entirety of your life. This is not something you do for a week or a month and you stop, you take on an attitude of I'm building infrastructure from now until I'm dead. I'm building infrastructure. And that's how you get this massive snowball effect. When you see really successful, really efficient and productive people, business people maybe that you admire, how do they get that way? They've spent a lot of time building their infrastructure. That's how they weren't born that way. So how do you do it? Well, you just make a list of the infrastructure that you need. And then you go out and do the work. And be careful, stay vigilant that you don't get lost in the process of building infrastructure. People err on both ends here, it's tough to find a balance, they either build too much or too little. Finding the balance is the really tricky part, which is why I have a worksheet for you. Click down below there's going to be a link, download the worksheet do the worksheet to figure out what kind of infrastructure you need to build and other subtle facets. And I have questions here that will address certain subtle facets of this process of figuring out which infrastructure you need to build and how not to get trapped in it. All right, that's it. I'm done here signing off, please click the like button for me. Post your comments down below, share this episode with a friend. And lastly, come check out actualized. Org right here. This is my website. My blog is there. I'm posting new insights that I can't share through the videos on the blog. So check that out weekly. I'm updating it pretty regularly. Check out the actualized. Org forum. You can chat with people there, ask questions, figure stuff out. They also share a lot of cool resources that are always cropping up on the forum. I answer questions on the forum. So it's a pretty cool place to to take care of your self actualization needs without getting too lonely. You know, one of the biggest problems I hear about people who are doing spiritual development and personal development is that it's a lonely process. It can feel like you're the only one nobody understands you. Your family doesn't understand you. Your spouse doesn't understand you and so forth. So, where do you find like minded people? Well, the forum is good for that. So check all that out. And I'll see you next week with more