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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I'm going to be talking about fake growth versus real growth it's very easy to deceive yourself when you're doing personal development into thinking that you're actually growing when really you're not fixing the root issues that are causing the deepest problems in your life you tell yourself in a sense that you're growing but actually you're not and in general what I find is that when we enter personal development those first few years that we're doing it we're just kind of trying to orient ourselves we're not really sure how this whole field works yet how it's going to fit into my life how it's really going to affect my life and what you have is you have these car cut cartoon caricatures of what growth will look like so let's say you come into personal value have a problem like you feel shy and secure or you're not able to attract women or you're not able to find that dream relationship that you want or that marriage as you want or you have trouble losing weight or you're struggling with business and with your finances whatever the issue is you tend to think that okay so I need a solution right so people come into this stuff because they want a solution to a burning problem in their life so they come in there and it's okay what's the solution going to look like and in their mind they're just kind of imagining almost in a childlike way how this issue is going to be resolved for them and so it's funny because some of these childlike cartoon caricatures are just so unrealistic that it points us in the wrong direction as to where to look for solutions what are some examples well let's say you had a shy guy right someone who's not cool with women and he's not very confident with man so he comes in d2o haven't I become real confident my solution to this problem is I'm gonna be the super alpha confident guy and then he goes looking for that he thinks that's really going to be how the issue is resolved is be cut by becoming the super Alpha confident guy and of course that's not really how it's going to get resolved or maybe a woman comes into this thing and you know she's looking for Prince Charming she thinks that well right now I'm needy that's my problem is I'm needy and I really feel lonely I feel like my life is empty if I could just find Prince Charming that's it that's gonna be my solution right that's going to give me happiness and of course that's not how it's going to work that's not how that issues really resolved or let's say a man comes into the situation into personal development and he's coming from a place where he's really struggling in business he's got a lot of competitors his business is struggling so his dream solution is that oh you know I'm gonna I'm gonna really good in business I'm gonna stomp all my competitors into the ground that's kind of his fantasy solution but of course that's not how any of these really deep issues get resolved they don't get resolved by the surface level stuff they don't get resolved by external solutions in reality what happens when you experience real growth is that the issue simply becomes a non-issue so if you're shy crippling crippling lis shy then the solution to that is not to become alpha confident it's just to stop caring about shyness like it just becomes a complete non-issue to you there's an emotional release that happens C and if you're needy and you want a marriage or a relationship the solution that has not to get your marriage or your relationship but it's actually to let go of the need for a marriage or relationship very counterintuitive it just becomes a non-issue like you stopped caring about it you stopped needing it there's an emotional release and if you're really hung up on trouncing all your competitors the solution that has is not to come out number one it's not to prevail over the marketplace that's not the solution the solution is to stop caring about competition at all to stop even thinking about competitors to remove that entire way of looking at the world from your mind to erase it so to speak so that is just a complete non-issue you just don't even think about it anymore again there's been that emotional release there's a change in perspective that's what real growth looks like relative to fake growth and I want to fill in the blanks here and some of the gaps by giving you lots of examples of what I mean by real and fake growth as we go on but how do you tell the difference how do you really know that you've experienced real growth in some area of your life here's how you get a permanent release of the issue you don't over compensate for the issue you stop obsessing about the issue it completely leaves your mind and it almost seems like oh my god I can't believe like this has ever been an issue for me it's so unimportant so tribulus is so insignificant that's what it'll look like when you really get an emotional release also what will happen is that you won't need defensiveness anymore what a lot of people do is they think that to resolve their issue they need to build like this fortress like they have a castle that's under attack they need to build a moat around it and a giant fence with electrical barbed wire ring and you know make it all secure but that actually tells you that you're not resolving the issue you can put all the security systems in there and you can build a you know a giant moat around your castle but that is just you being defensive and neurotic really what needs to happen you need to let go of the need dismantle all your defenses and this is very counterintuitive and scary to the ego because the ego only understands defensiveness and protectiveness that's kind of its modus operandi and another hallmark of true growth is there's no longer a need to exert willpower over the situation there's no longer a need to whip yourself into a frenzy to do the things you need to do to do the things that are healthy for you you don't need to whip yourself into a frenzy to be loving towards people you don't need to whip yourself into a frenzy to go work on your business you don't need to whip yourself into a frenzy in order to get the kind of sex you want or the kind of relationships you want or the kind of health you want all these are neurotic solutions when you're whipping yourself and you think oh yeah I got a really you know put the screws in and really work really hard this kind of stuff when you notice there's a lot of tension in your body and internal friction that tells you that you're not really experiencing true growth here's a litmus test for true growth you look at your emotional responses to challenging situations in that specific area of your life that you're trying to develop it and you ask yourself have my emotional response is improved am i less reactive do people no longer push my buttons do I have less emotional need in this area of my life am i calmer in this area of my life do I not think obsessively about this area of my life anymore if so then real growth has occurred and if not that it hasn't and this is where fake growth comes in to see fake growth masquerades as real growth and what fake growth is is basically success or a Qi and our society right now is very focused on success and achievement it's focused on finding an external fix for whatever problem we have either a technological fix or a money fix or a relationship fix or whatever but it always looks like an external circumstance or situation so basically the way it works is you come in and you're dissatisfied with your life because you think that some external situation in your life is not properly set up maybe you don't live in the right place you don't live in the right house you don't have the right car you don't have the right a number of digits in your bank account you don't have the right girlfriend you don't have the right boyfriend you don't have the right children you don't have the right courier or whatever and you tell yourself well of course that's where the problem lies right it lies in those things if I can just fix those circumstances and I get myself the right career the right girlfriend the right boyfriend the right number of digits in my bank account then that's going to be real growth but all of that is just success and achievement see those are all external fixes and they actually in a very clever way take the attention off the real issue the real issue is inside of you that's where the real work has to happen inside fake growth is stuff on the outside real growth is stuff changing on the inside let me give you some examples some really classic examples which will get you a good idea of what I'm talking about here this distinction between fake and real growth so let's say we have a needy woman who feels lonely and then what she does is she finds her dream relationship and she marries this guy and it seems like it's going great now was that real growth or is that fake growth just because you find a guy that is like a mask over the deeper issue that wasn't really resolved in situation see finding a great guy does not solve the core issue of neediness for this woman it doesn't solve her loneliness fear that fear is still in her it's just not acute anymore because there's this nice external circumstance which is kind of supporting you it's like a support structure but as soon as that support structure is taken away you're back to square one see nothing really here was solved this was just a success and achievement your marriage is an achievement that's what it was in this case how about the case of a jealous man let's say a man has this problem with being jealous about the girlfriend that he dates he's always jealous because they're talking to other guys they're very friendly with other guys and you know this this really makes him feeling insecure so what does he do eventually he finds himself an introverted woman and he makes her his girlfriend this woman is different from the other women and that she's introverted in that she doesn't have a lot of friends you just have a lot of guy friends and so now it seems like oh this man has solved this problem because this woman doesn't talk to guys anymore so there's no more reason to be jealous this seems like the perfect fits except really we know it's not the perfect fix nothing has really changed about the man's problems the guy is still fundamentally jealous he just put a kind of like a mask over that problem by finding this woman who doesn't really put him into a challenging emotional situation as soon as she goes and meets a guy friend and starts chatting with him like some you know some old guy friends from college this guy's going to get super jealous again so nothing was really fixed no real growth has happened here it was just an achievement let's take the example of a man who worries about money all the time he's insecure about money and this has been haunting him for years as he's working on his business let's say but then all of a sudden he's working on his business for a few years and the business starts doing great he's starting to lead in his marketplace the economy's doing well everything's going well no more money problems he has more money than he could ever imagine did that fix the root issue that he had with money no of course not not at all it's just masked it it's made the fears about money irrelevant of course they're irrelevant because he's got lots of money but as soon as the economy starts going down a little bit or as soon as some of his clients stop paying him all those fears are gonna come back in full force because they weren't really addressed and he might feel for a while maybe for a few years he's gonna feel like he's on top of life and everything's going great he's really happy and satisfied with life because the money's coming in and he doesn't have to worry about it right but in the back of his mind he's going to be afraid that whole time as well afraid because he knows that the money could dry up at any time and then he'll be back in his old neurotic patterns and so what happens that even when he's doing well he can't really be fulfilled and satisfied because that fear is still there it hasn't really been addressed and you can't fix the fear of losing money and the fear of going broke you can't fix that by just pouring money on the problem just because you have a hundred million dollars in your bank account does not mere mean that your mind will say oh we don't need to worry about losing money anymore the mind doesn't work that way that stuff is wired into your mind it needs to be unwired that's where the inner growth comes in okay let's take the example for example of an angry person who has trouble collaborating at work he just can't collaborate with people he can't work cooperatively so what does he do he goes and he creates a stay-at-home job for himself so he's not working in the office anymore he's kind of isolated himself and now he isn't feeling any anger anymore or frustration because he's just working by himself kind of like a lone wolf now and now he feels calm he feels happy and he thinks that this has solved his problem but did it really he's isolated himself he's no longer around people so of course he has no reason to be angry anymore but that didn't really fix his issue something inside of him was making him angry when he was working with collaborating with others that's the thing that needed to be fixed and that's not fixed by simply sticking your head in the sand and working from home so no real growth happened here this was fake growth it was an achievement and in fact you could imagine this guy's real proud he'll tell his friends and he'll tell other people he meets he'll tell his family that a you know I work from home that's an accomplishment that I made I know I'm grown in my life by making this accomplishment and other people will look at him and say oh yeah it's real cool that you work from home you know I wish I could work from home that sounds like a really sweet gig how can I do that tell me more I'm real jealous of you now or I'm real happy for you and to the guys he's like oh yeah look all these people they admire the fact that I work from home and so he tricks himself into thinking that all I've really grown but actually he hasn't grown and in the future if he ever needs to collaborate with somebody and of course he will then that anger is gonna come right back up and he's always gonna be afraid he's gonna be afraid to collaborate with people that's gonna limit him in his business and it's gonna limit him in his work for the rest of his life unless he faces that core inner issue with some real growth or how about you take an uncool guy a shy guy who learns how to pick up girls let's say this guy was really bad with with women and with dating in high school and in college very typical scenario and now you know he he goes and starts doing pickup and he learns how to date and he gets really good he gets real funny and he does sense of humor and and confidence and all this kind of stuff and now he feels very alpha because he can go and he can pick up a girl and have sex with her on the surface that seems like hey look I solve my problem look it's cool look how cool I am but see deep down that guy still feels uncool because just from picking up a girl having sex with her does not change the fact that in your mind you fundamentally believe that you're an uncool guy that you're a socially awkward guy that somehow you're you're broken or you're deficient in some way that's the real thing that needs to be fixed and this success with women this is just successes fake growth let's take the example of a rich guy who uses money to attract a wife he can't attract a woman through charisma and personality naturally so he just says well I mean I'm gonna I'm gonna kill it in business and then I'm just gonna you know flaunt my money and then women will flock to me and I'll pick one of them and she'll become my wife problem solved right problem solve of course though that's we know how this turns out this is fake growth yes you can attract a wife that way but then the kind of relationship you'll have with her is going to be a very dysfunctional and in the end the core issue hasn't been addressed and that wife she'll cheat on him or she'll leave this guy eventually after a few years because the thing you need to attract a woman's need to have some personality or some charisma that that woman loves that keeps her attracted money does not keep a woman to attract it forever so that's the thing the guy is avoiding fixing by focusing externally on the money and on the marriage and then of course you know he'll tell his friends hey look I found this beautiful wife and she loves me and we're getting married we're going to throw this big party come and celebrate with us and of course everybody's celebrating they're saying hey look they're a great couple they're so perfect for each other they seem to love each other they get along so well look at them and so they reinforce this self-deception in his own mind that what he did is that he solved the problem when in fact he didn't solve the problem he ran away from the problem or take a depressed person who's been depressed for months or maybe for years and then all of a sudden they find a new hobby or they get involved a new career or some you know some big activity in life comes their way and now they're just busy with that new hobby or that new career and they they like oh thank god finally I got out of my depression I resolve my depression but of course they didn't resolve their depression they just found themselves a distraction their mind was sitting there depressed and now all the sudden is just busy thinking about other stuff and now of course that masked the depression this person didn't really deal with their depression they didn't go inside and really look why my depressed what's got me depressed what's going on in my mind they didn't do that process of inner work and so of course we know what will happen what will happen is that eventually this new hobby or this new career it'll run its course this person will get tired of it and then they're going to fall back into depression even harder because they thought they cured it and now they realize that they were just tricking themselves this whole time scene and of course when you have a great new hobby or a great new career what do you do you tell your friends and your family and look at my new career I'm so busy and I'm so happy doing this stuff and all of them they applaud you and say oh yeah you do have a great that's so wonderful for you we're so happy for you maybe we're even jealous of you and this reinforces in your mind this idea that all I'm doing good I'm really growing I've really grown myself this year by getting this new career and so this lie is reinforced in you how about we take a a woman who fights with her mom she can't get along with her mom so what does she do she stops calling her she moves far away to other city another state and they don't really talk much and she feels like okay finally you know finally these arguments with mom have resolved themselves finally have some peace of mind I don't need to think about that stuff anymore we don't yell at each other anymore but of course what happened she just ran away from the problem in the future it'll probably come back and bite her in the ass or take a person who's overweight who tells himself that he needs to get fit and so what he does is he uses this this technique of guilting himself into not eating junk food so he tells himself I'm not gonna eat donuts anymore at the office and he guilts himself every single time that he eats a doughnut or a piece of pizza or something like this and and he thinks that by guilting himself for eating junk food that this is a real solution to his problem he feels like if he just guilt himself enough that he'll stop eating the bad food and maybe he even does he gives himself so much that he stops eating the donuts and he stops eating the pizza and he even dropped some weight but that's fake growth because he didn't really deal with the core issue the core issue is why does he want those donuts in the first place why is he addicted to them and the pizza and all this other junk stuff why does he need to guilt himself to stop from putting poison into his body that shouldn't require guilt if you've really resolved that problem internally but of course he just cares about the external he just wants to drop five or ten pounds to look good during the summer or whatever and okay that's fine and then and people even complement him and say hey you look thinner you dropped twenty pounds oh my god you look so good I can see more muscles on you and all this kind of stuff and of course he's very happy about it because he thinks like yeah I succeeded you know my new year's resolution was to drop 20 pounds and unlike most people I actually succeeded at this so I'm a success I've really grown but in truth this is fake growth it's not real growth and of course those twenty pounds are going to come back they'll be back in a few months or in a few years they're all going to be back plus more and this person's going to be more frustrated than ever because he thought that he solved the problem when in fact he didn't so as you can see there's a lot of examples of this kind of stuff I can keep going and going and going with this hopefully you start to get an idea I want you to now put your mind on your life take a look where in your life are you masking the deep inner work that you need to do with fake growth and success and achievement are you confusing success and achievement with growth these are two very different things growth happens in here success happens out there and let me tell you real growth is much harder than success much harder which is of course why most people fall into this trap and they go for the faith growth because it's easier they know how to work in the external world they don't really know how to work on the internal world how do you change the internal world how do you sculpt it to be what you want it's good question real growth is not about getting what you want externally but about releasing your need for it internally and this is really difficult to explain to people who are just getting into personal development because when you get into personal development you really honestly believe that if you just fix the externals that's gonna solve all your problems in life and when people tell you no it won't more advanced people tell you no it won't that's been tried and it won't work we know that doesn't work because of how human psychology is it will not possibly work this is like a law of human psychology but you're so unfamiliar yet with human psychology that you can't really believe it you're gonna have to have a period of going out there and chasing this fake external success and failing over and over and over again to get satisfaction to finally realize like wait a minute it's it just doesn't it's not working why is it not working and then at one point you'll go back and you'll start to actually reevaluate the core assumption that you have which is that changing external circumstances is really growing you it's hard to believe that when you first start really hard because it sounds like hey Leo what you're telling me is you're telling me some positive thinking [ __ ] you just want me just to like sit on my ass and not do anything right that's what you're saying and then I just I just need to feel happy I need to feel good about myself and not do anything and then I'm gonna I'm gonna manifest millions of dollars and all my relationship problems will get solved and I'm gonna attract the right girl and I'm gonna attract the right guy and all this stuff will happen sounds like that's what I'm saying that's not what I'm saying I'm not saying you sit on your ass and do nothing I'm saying you do the real work the inner work that you don't really know how to do you commit finding a way to do it and you don't get distracted by the shiny objects all around you on the outside that's what I'm saying so there is real work to do but you got to make sure you're doing it in the right place one day you're going to have the following epiphany after years of thinking you've been growing in some area of your life like in your dating life or in your business life or in your fitness life in that part of your life you've been thinking you've really been growing for the last five years and then it'll just hate you out of the blue like oh [ __ ] I've really just been rearranging my external circumstances haven't I there hasn't been any real growth here it's just been rearranging externals freaking say thats all I was doing this whole time [ __ ] son of a [ __ ] I can't believe I tricked myself like that you're gonna eventually come to this point where you admit that you haven't really changed the you you haven't changed anything inside and you're gonna come to this point where you admit to yourself that man maybe I don't even want to change the me it's rare that people actually want to change the you a commitment to changing the self is rare because it's scary because it requires deep inner work that's difficult to do it's abstract in its nature it's not as concrete as the external work and you're breaking loyalty with yourself and that's a very counterintuitive move is to actually decide to break loyalty with yourself as a means of getting higher in your development but if you think about it this is what's necessary I mean if we're talking about real change substantive change that makes a real difference in your life how can you get that without changing yourself do you think that's really possible you're going to get significant change without changing yourself at some point you have to buy into this idea that man I have to give up myself in this process I came in with this cartoon idea that I'm just gonna you know tweak myself a little bit and something's really going to change in my life and I'm gonna get real successful and real happy but then you realize and know what needs to happen is I need to just completely obliterate myself completely transform myself to the point where there's almost nothing left of my old self it's like you can't even recognize yourself anymore imagine that imagine 10 years from now you wake up and you look in the mirror and you can't even imagine what it was like to be you as you are right now that's what's actually necessary to get the kind of satisfaction and true success issue presently want out of your life you think you can get this by not changing yourself but you're going to realize that that won't work and one or the other you're gonna have to give up you have to give up on the idea that you're gonna be satisfied and successful in life in the really deep and fulfilling way or you have to give up on this idea that you can preserve yourself because you can't have both you can't have both because the way you presently are is reinforcing all the stuff that you don't like about yourself see so you can't stay loyal to that and at the same time remove all the crap in your life the two are one all the crap in your life comes from the way that you are not from your external surroundings and it's going to be very tempting for you on this journey to take shortcuts to [ __ ] yourself into thinking that you've grown going for the easy stuff the stuff you can buy the stuff you can feel the stuff you can see in the external world the stuff people can praise you for because when you do internal work no one praises you for this no one really sees it in fact when you really do inner work what happens that people actually start to criticize you for it they start calling you a hypocrite they start calling you like all you've changed why are you such a different person now I can't relate to you anymore come back and be the old you so the the real inner growth you know that's like you doing it all on your own no one's going to do it for you you can't buy a magic pill for it no one's gonna praise you for it in fact they're probably gonna put you down for it but that's the cost of true growth I hope you have a higher vision in your mind of why this might be worthwhile doing what would it take for you to give up yourself what kind of vision would you need to have of your future that you would say okay fine I'm willing to give up myself entirely I don't care I'll change everything about myself until I'm not even recognizing myself anymore in the mirror but that's a worthwhile trade because what I really care about is this thing here this vision that I've got what is that for you could be tied to your life purpose could be tie - how you want to help people in the world something like that so keep all this in mind as you're growing and keep an eye out for what kind of material you're learning and studying and purchasing because there's a lot of people out there selling you fake growth and I'm not saying that they're evil people and that they're trying to manipulate and steal from you I'm just saying that those people themselves are caught in this trap of fake growth so you know people get caught in this trap to such an extent they're so unconscious about it then they create products and books and seminars and stuff to sell you fake growth and of course it's much easier to sell fake growth than real growth because real growth happens on the inside it's kind of painful it's not very glamorous whereas fake growth is very glamorous it's flashy it's shiny you can buy a new car with it you can buy a new house with it you can get a trophy girlfriend with it this kind of stuff so that's much easier to sell into market to you so watch out keep an eye on that when you're listening to somebody giving you advice or you buy a self-help book or product or something take a look is that person really teaching you the root causes and solutions or are they teaching you fake growth alright that's it I'm signing off go ahead click the like button for me please share this with a friend post your comments down below and come check out actualizado right here this is my newsletter and my website sign up to the newsletter it'll keep you on track with getting real growth in your life what I want for you is I want to show you the big picture the biggest possible picture of personal development and the biggest possible picture of what you can do with this one life that you have how to actually get that deep sense of fulfillment and satisfaction that you can't get anywhere else or through any other means this requires going really deep to the root of many of the issues that you have in life so if you've come into this because you have a bad relationship or because you want some more money that's fine that's like your entry point right but stick with me make a commitment to watching this material on a weekly basis what will happen is it will completely rewire your mind over the course of a few years and it only takes like an hour a week that you commit to this you'll be shocked at what is possible for you within the next five to ten years by following some of these concepts learning about them and slowly implementing them in your life your life will transform completely and of course all your results will transform completely from that and how you feel about your life which is ultimately what we're after as we're ultimately after changing how we feel about our lives so that we can feel much better about it on all the different levels happiness satisfaction confidence all this kind of stuff our mood to really transform that you have to transform yourself on deep levels and that's what gets me excited about doing this work is that I can share with you some really powerful concepts and ideas and techniques that you can use to do that in the same way that I'm doing it in my own life every single day so sign up to the newsletter and I'll see you soon with more videos you