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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I'm gonna talk about how to stop being a workaholic I suppose I should start with a confession which is that I'm a bit of a workaholic and that's something that I've been working on to myself lately because it's a problem workaholic is a problem have you ever stopped to notice that there's something deeply wrong going on inside of you if you're a workaholic well whether you realize it or not there is and what I want to do in this episode is to help you to gain some deep insight into where your workaholism is stemming from what's the root of it and it turns out that the root can be very very deep also very fascinating also very eye-opening and the cool part is is that once you get a handle on it then it can open up a whole new world and a whole new life for you whole new chapter of your life so this will be powerful but first how do we tell if you're a workaholic well here are some basic guidelines that I just kind of drew up for myself if you work over eight hours a day and over 40 hours a week then you just might be a workaholic if you take your work very personally to the point where it can make you sad or angry at what's going on with your work you might be a workaholic if you work weekends you might be a workaholic if you work holidays you might be a workaholic and if you don't take vacations you might be a workaholic and the a whole slew of problems with this but as workaholics were very good at disguising what these problems are so let's mean let me just bring a few of them to light for you the first most obvious problem is that you're agitated and that basically you create needless suffering for yourself on a day-to-day basis with your work because you take it so personally and because your identity is so tied up in your work so there's that kind of low-level stress that you create that's not necessary but it's there you don't produce your best work even though you tell yourself that you do and even though it appears that when you crunch and you work your ass off for a few weeks or a few months that you get a lot of stuff done but that's not your best work really because in those high-pressure situations sometimes you can be creative but generally your creativity suffers from overwork it doesn't get better it suffers and also there's burnout you didn't crash and burn like sometimes you're kicking ass and everything's going great and you're doing a lot in your life and you're accomplishing a lot you're feeling really good about that because you're outperforming everyone else but in the long run you crash and burn because you can't sustain that and so your work is in starts and stops right you have this great spurts of growth but then stuff crashes and in the very long term you know over the course of a years what might happen is you just get fed up with the stuff that you're working on to the point where you have to move on to something else or you just give up or quit on it that can be a problem there's also the health problems of overworking and now these are very good at concealing and denying and sweeping under the rug but they're there and they're creeping up on you and they're only going to get worse as you continue with your workaholism those are kind of like the ordinary problems but then what I consider the kiba's problems are as follows these are like the real shames of being or colic is that you don't get to self-actualize not really because what you are is you're just this obsessive robot who's going to work you're really a slave of your work there's facets of your life outside of work that you're neglecting and mostly it's your own personal development your own psychological development right you're stifling yourself there because you're so obsessed with the work and you don't give yourself the time that's necessary to self actualize and so really you miss out on some of them the most greatest aspects of life and you ultimately limit yourself and what you can accomplish in your life you kind of put a glass ceiling on your own inner development and therefore the potential that you're able to express and actually realize in the world you're never gonna be able to grow your consciousness to its full potential as a workaholic which is a shame and also what's the shame is that you miss out on the beauty of life because you're not stopping to smell the roses and so what you're gonna realize on your deathbed is that really your whole life was this string of attempts to work your way into fulfillment and it's never really worked and it was just project after project after project after project at their project and then you're dead and when that happens when you're there when you're approaching it you're gonna have a lot of regrets for not stopping to smell the roses and to appreciate all the different aspects of life that exist outside the domain of work that's just one domain of many domains which include relationships and family and being out in nature and all this other stuff right so you're living a very unbalanced life and ultimately that's going to cost you so you're probably aware of some of that stuff already but let's get to the core issue what's the core issue behind the workaholism well really it's that deep down you believe that you're worthless or you're incomplete it's really that basic here's the thought experiment for you just try this on for a minute imagine that I forced you and pass a law that you cannot work any more in your entire life ever again how would that make you feel picture that for yourself right now imagine it what if you couldn't work at all for the rest of your life how would that make you feel be honest would it make you bummed out depressed anxious outraged how would you feel if it's any of those and it probably is if your work holic then why do you think that's going on do you see that there's something like deep inside of you that's out of whack for that kind of emotional reaction to be happening to never working again see the problem here is that your self-image your very identity at its core is tied up with your work you take pride at out working other people you compare yourself to other people you kind of secretly glow that you're better than others more productive than others more efficient than others more creative than others but also the interesting mechanism that you set up is that you set up this condition in your mind without knowing it that you can feel fulfillment or peace Oh after having worked X amount you know huge amount for you it's a huge amount so what happens is that you're working on a project for a couple of years and then finally you get to the point where you've reached that barrier that you set for yourself and when you reach that threshold finally the project just come let's say complete or released and you get it out there to the world then it's like ah that's nice and you get that sense of peace and relief and fulfillment from all that work you did right and that feels so good it's like a drug and that's the emotion that you were after that whole time for years but see it took a couple of years just to get to that ah peace feeling but then what happens that only lasts for a week maybe a couple days maybe not even a full day that lasts and then what your mind does is it immediately jumps on to the next thing because there's always a new project around the corner and then you do that one for a few years and there's the next project around the corner and you do that one and then the next one and then the next one and all you really got is you've got these couple of days in between these these projects where you actually do feel at peace and you feel satisfied and fulfilled but the rest of the time not really and then you rationalize this to yourself by saying well I got to keep myself motivated what's wrong with that gotta keep myself motivated right can't be complacent but see there's something something wrong with that whole scheme it's kind of like it's rigged against your own happiness and also the way you might be tricking yourself you might saying well Leo there's this there's just this you know this dream project I have if I can just complete that one all these little projects yeah they were kind of like important but I'm working toward that one dream project and when I complete that that's what my life will finally all be complete that's when I'll finally feel like okay I'm good I'm done now but you know what that's never gonna happen news flash that's never gonna happen why because deep down the problem is that you feel worthless and incomplete and that's not going to be solved with external accomplishment not gonna be solved with an external accomplishment see what you're not realizing is that actually you're caught in a mechanism that's man it's it's so beyond your awareness right now this mechanism you're like a mouse spinning in a wheel chasing after some cheese thinking that that cheese will be yours if you just run fast enough long enough but actually if you zoom out and you take a third-person look at situations you can realize that oh that Mouse no ma'am no no matter how long he runs and how hard he tries he's never gonna get the cheese never will the closest he'll get is he'll get his nose a little bit close to us we can kind of sniff it and that will feel nice he just kind of sniffs it but he's never gonna get the cheese because the mechanism is not designed for him to get the cheese you see this what you're doing on a very fundamental level is that you're working to avoid the present moment you're not comfortable just being in the present moment so you feel like you need to be moving on the move like a shark right truck doesn't like to stand still it needs to get oxygen and his gills from the water as it's moving through otherwise its harshest to suffocate and die well that's basically you write and you rationalize it yourself saying well whatever your rationalization is you know like oh well I have work to do you know life needs life needs to be worked on to be meaningful and significant whatever your justifications are but it's something along the lines of I have to work my ass off in order to create value so that I can feel worthwhile and complete inside that's essentially what you're saying to yourself without realizing it because as soon as you stop working have you noticed this if you stop working for a sufficiently long period of time for maybe a wee week or a month what happens is you actually start an existential crisis an existential crisis for you because actually your very identity in your existence as a being as an entity what you feel you are is you feel like you're this thing that needs to generate worth and value otherwise your life is meaningless and so therefore sitting still is like the worst form of torture for you you don't like to sit still you like to run around and do stuff you like activity but have you ever wondered what all this activity is distracting you from seeing see you think that this activity is you creating this activity what if this activity was a mechanism that was designed to prevent you from seeing something that's very flawed at the center of your existence that you don't want to look at and that you don't want to admit and what that is is a very interesting thing you're using your work as a defense mechanism from seeing what I call the void the void the void you can call it the truth of no self and basically what this means and this is an existential fact of everyone's existence is that there's no such thing as worth worth does not exist no matter how hard you work you cannot create earth you can create illusions of worth but not actual worth nor does value exist no matter how hard you work you cannot make yourself any more valuable than any other human being or any more worthwhile than any other human being right and this void also means that meaning does not exist in life the meanings you attach to life and to all the work you do those are illusions the not real and the purpose that you generate in your life is also an illusion it's not real either that's like a fiction of fairy tale in your mind and ultimately all this boils back down to the ultimate truth of your you know your psyche which is that you as a personal entity inside the head there's no entity that there's no you in there there's no you that's the truth that enlightenment reveals to us you know I'm not gonna go into much detail here because it's quite complex and technical and there's a lot of traps that people fall into with this truth if you're interested now go check out my enlightenment videos I have many of them but what I will say here is that I want to focus on this issue of worth because this thing about worth is very profound see in your mind you frame it as well if I accomplish this great project like if I write that amazing novel or fight create that amazing business or if I create this amazing piece of software or if I accomplish this amazing research project then it's like finally I'll be like yeah it relaxed finally like I've proven myself to the world and for you that might be a dollar amount it might be a certain award that you want like the Nobel Prize it might be a certain position in your university or in your business it might be you know taking your business IPO or selling out your business or it might be inventing some new product or whatever maybe getting your your face plastered on a magazine so that people know you getting recognized in some way basically for your work and you might say to yourself well you know Leo I don't really want to be a celebrity but I do want to be recognized for my work what's wrong with that like I want to do great work and just be recognized for being someone who made a difference in the world you know leave a legacy behind isn't that good what's wrong with that and yeah that's that's miles better than just wanting to be a celebrity for fame sake cuz that's real shallow so you know you're a step up from that but the thing you're not facing is that no matter how much work you do and what you accomplish in life it doesn't mean anything it means nothing do you understand this it means nothing because in the end you will die and everything you accomplish will eventually get destroyed this is just a fact you don't like to look at it because when you look at it all the sudden kind of robs you have motivation to do anything in life and that's understandable so we kind of ignore that part and we just kind of work towards something say well it's gonna be meaningful anyways you know might as well do it what else am I gonna do with my life um and that can all seem very innocent but see do you really believe that you're incomplete inside if you're very honest I mean I can't tell you if you if you are or not because you know some people are and some people are not it just depends what was your childhood like what are you really motivated to do with your work is it really just because you're expressing yourself and it's just like this very positive creative expression or is it because you feel like there's a void or a gap inside of you that you're trying to avoid looking at and you feel like you're worthless and you're not complete if somehow you're not doing this work see they might seem kind of very similar on the surface like they and you know both produce the same kind of result in that the person works in both cases really hard but these are very different motivations and what I'm telling you here don't get us wrong I'm not telling you that you shouldn't be working or that you should become a bum or lazy slob or go work at McDonald's something like that be ambitious in life if you want to I'm just telling you aware be aware of the realities that drive you so that at least they're driving you consciously at least understand what's going on inside you because right now you probably have no idea what's really happening here is that you're refusing to accept that life is meaningless you don't want to do this you don't like this to you this is threatening this to starting to ego because your whole ego the way that it works is basically it's not there it's a blank splits a gap it's a void it's nothing that's what it really is but it likes to pretend like it's something so basically what it is is kind of like the Invisible Man for the Invisible Man to see himself what does he do he needs to put on clothing otherwise he doesn't even feel that he's real and that's the thing you're resisting is you're resisting looking at the mirror and seeing a blank nothingness something that has no worth and no value that's what you're resisting and so what you're busy doing is you're busy putting on all these garments jackets and socks and pants and hats and sunglasses and lipstick and all this if you're putting all this stuff on so that you can feel more alive and more real but in fact there's nothing there and so what I suggest to you is that instead of playing that whole game why don't we just take off all the garments and just stare ourselves in the mirror as we are and get comfortable with it because the first time you do this it'll scare the [ __ ] out of you right because this whole mechanism has been designed to keep you on the wheel spinning your wheels and avoiding the void but counter to only what you should do instead is you should turn around and look at the void enter the void and then what you'll have is you'll have liberation you will no longer be a slave to alcoholism and what you'll do is you'll actually embrace this idea that life is meaningless and what a lot of people get wrong when I say that is that they say well if life is meaningless then how come you're shooting all these videos and isn't that a point to be depressed about I mean that's so nihilistic and and sad and and depressing but no not at all the fact that life is meaningless is just a fact of life and it's a beautiful thing it's a beautiful truth because it means nothing you see that don't make the mistake which many people make of turning life is meaningless into a meaning of its own and giving it a negative spin that's not what I'm telling you to do I'm just asking to be very open and self honest about this whole thing look into this idea of worth because you sometimes somehow feel that you know let's say hypothetically we take a bum on the street we take a mangy dirty old dog those two and then we take you as a third comparison we've got these three comparisons a bum on the street a mangy old dog and you and you maybe you're like uh you know a business type of person you like to go out there and earn lots of money and build companies and stuff and have a good put yourself together nicely and drive a nice car and dress very professional you do all this thing but you realize that that's a game right you realize that even though you feel like you have more worth than that mangy dog and that bum on the street actually can you see that you have exactly the same amount of worth as both those things you have no more worth than those bum and dog why is that well because what is worth have you actually looked into it have you actually contemplated what worth is I encourage you to do that as an exercise for yourself perhaps after this video is done you could take a look at that but what you'll come to realize is that worth is not actually in this world doesn't exist does not exist it's a fantasy that you create so you tell yourself you're worth 'fl and you tell yourself that that dog or that bum is worthless and it becomes true for you but that's just like stories in your mind right stories in your mind it's part of the illusion if you look into it it's like worse I mean why would anything in life be worth anything more than anything else only within a social system like yes if you go and you buy a Toyota is going to be worth less than a BMW at the dealership so we say it has less worth or less value and so it's like well I want the BMW I don't want the Toyota but you see that that that's just like a social fiction that we create that's a social fiction in fact if you look at an object it has no worth on it take an object take like take an apple from your kitchen and just sit with it as an exercise and look at it ask yourself where is the worth in this Apple am i worth more than the Apple or am i worth less than the Apple do it once I realize that this whole thing of worth is just like a sham there's no such thing as worth so because of this you know setting up all these obstacles for how you can earn and increase your own personal worth this is not necessary so what I want you to do is to kind of look into that real deeply drop all that stuff drop it and then if you still have the desire to do work go do work what you'll find is that you probably will have the desire and what's gonna happen that you just shed the negative reasons for doing work and you keep the positive ones what it might also be scary is that you might discover that actually if you do this process you discover like oh [ __ ] I've been working for the last 30 years of my life trying to fill this void inside me which is not something that's never gonna fill because it that void is in you that void is there you can't run away from it you can only just turn your back on it for a bit but it's always right right there chasing it's like your shadow you can't run away from your shadow right you might discover that oh [ __ ] man I've been doing this my whole life and it's like and maybe I should just stop working for a while and just see what comes up see where my life takes me maybe I should focus my energy now on family or on my health or on traveling or whatever or maybe not who knows you know usually this this this feeling of worthlessness it comes from your childhood somewhere so maybe you're trying to prove yourself care of dad because your dad didn't approve you remember you're trying to prove yourself to your first grade elementary school teacher because she didn't approve of you and you're still trying to live that up you know these very childish seem like these things these seem so childish but you know this is how our mind tends to work is that it latches on to issues from the past and kind of just creates drives around them so you need to kind of do some introspection look very back in your life far back in your life and ask yourself where could this feeling of worthlessness be coming from why do I feel incomplete and why do I believe that launching some business or some product will somehow make me complete I mean this whole idea of incompleteness you're already completely complete you're complete right now the problems that you're not acknowledging it and so what you do is you set up these circumstances or these kind of rules in your own mind that say something like well I'll be complete when I do blank it's likely oh I'll be complete when I do that project I'll be complete when I publish my novel I'll be complete when I sell my screenplay no you won't because there's no such thing as completeness you're already fully complete all you're doing is just playing games with yourself so why don't you just cut all that [ __ ] out and then you can feel a complete right now and then being complete you can go do it or whatever the [ __ ] you want that's the deep root of the solution and I'll alternate LIGO try to discover no self if you want to really feel complete what you need to do is you need to go get enlightened that's the only way because that's that's the only you know method by which you can face that void and actually realize that void and realize the beauty of that void embrace it and become it because you're already it you just don't realize it yet you can raise your awareness to that point so anyways here's some solutions real quick solutions for how to deal with this workaholic problem workaholism problem so firstly acknowledge yourself that you're running away from the void and to do this you need to start to look inside yourself you do some contemplation on this you know ask yourself why do I feel worthless why do I feel incomplete what's the bottom that the very root of it why am I really feel like I need to be working all the time to feel happy in life why like why it makes no sense because like a dog doesn't have this problem right that mangy dog on the street corner he's not having an existential crisis about the fact that he's not working he's just sitting there he's enjoy live you know maybe he's hungry maybe he's cold or whatever and those are problems for him but he's not having an existential crises Enfield's an interesting really powerful tool for you is meditation I recommend you start meditating daily for 20 minutes at the very least check out my how to meditate video and other videos where I talk about meditation also check out my lammie videos where I talk about how to do a looking process into how to become in lines that video is called how to become enlightened take a look at those those two processes can be very powerful for you I also recommend that you start practicing mindfulness especially on your habit of being a workaholic so you start becoming mindful which just means become aware of what you're doing in the moment that you're doing it so when you're in the grip of that urge to work and to satisfy yourself with worth notice that that's there that that drive is there and that mechanism is there see the mouse running in the wheel see that as being you all right so apply your awareness to the situation as it's happening because it's one thing to do it right now with me but we're kind of you know we're kind of looking back in your past I want you to become aware of it as you're doing it because you do it in a mechanical robotic kind of way also very practically work less stop working so much slow your pace of work down it's okay you don't need to be accomplishing all this [ __ ] in your life to be happy in fact it will work it's gonna backfire on you so maybe instead of working you know six or seven days a week maybe you should cut it back to five days a week and even take the end of Friday night Friday afternoon take that off and go go to the beach go to the park go to the zoo go hang out with your kids with your girlfriend with your boyfriend that sort of thing slow down the pace of your work - do you really need to accomplish that project by the end of this year would it really kill you if you accomplished it in two years instead of one year does it really make a difference in the grand scheme of things probably not so maybe adjust your schedule a bit there and take more vacations the kind of vacations where you're not working on vacation or checking your emails or in that kind of nonsense but like real full-blown vacations take a week here take a week there ah one thing that I'm starting to do is I'm taking more retreats take a meditation retreat take a seminar or do something to actualize yourself right discover the aspects of life that you've kind of ignored and denied and hidden discover the spiritual aspects of life discover the romantic aspects of life discovered natural beauty the natural beauty of life discover art discover music discover culture discover Travel discover a great sex discover cooking whatever you know there's a lot of cool stuff to discover so those are your solutions I'm done I'm signing off go ahead post me a comment down below please click the like button on this video share with a friend and lastly come sign up to my newsletter right here free newsletter and actualize that org or at least release new videos on self-actualization topics every single week you can also go there and get audio versions also actualized at org is now available on iTunes so go ahead and check us out on iTunes you can get these videos and just download them to your mobile device that might be handy for you when you're at the gym or whatever and then you can be moving and expanding yourself growing yourself beyond your current limited psychology that's what ashley is always about is to help expand your psychology because man if there's one thing that you can really expand in this world it's your psychology you can take it from where it is now at like a 1 to 10,000 ten thousand you can really take it to extraordinary Heights and that's one of the most satisfying things in life is growing and seeing and looking at your own potential life and looking at who you really are in this life it's very rewarding I don't want you to miss out on that so sign up I'll see you soon you