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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I'm going to be talking about what I call lifestyle minimalism how you can double the happiest in your life by just slowing the down the pace of your life is totally unacceptable totally unacceptable it's too damn fast it's too hectic you have no time to contemplate you have no time to introspect you have no time to be aware or conscious you have no time to strategize and you have no time for being being as opposed to doing you're all wrapped up in doing and this distinction between being and doing such an important distinction I'm gonna actually shoot a separate episode in future about it but we're going to gloss over it here and I'm going to show you how the pace of your life is affecting the quality of your life which is something you've probably never considered before as part of your self-actualization journey what we're doing here together you know self-improvement this whole journey that we're on to improve ourselves to grow ourselves whatever you want to call that personal development self-help or whatever as part of this journey you're changing your life around right you're learning new stuff you're installing new habits you're maybe you're meditating or whatever you're changing your relationships you're going to the gym more and this kind of stuff right you're eating more healthy okay that's good now let me show you a kind of a high level change structural change you need to actually make to the entirety of your life how you live your whole life in your entire lifestyle and what that is is that you need to make a strategic change and slow down your life strategically you're doing this strategically this is not something you just do for a few days or a few weeks this is something like a change a high-level change you make to your life from here on out until your death and you need to find ways to do this there's multiple ways that you can do this not just one way there's probably a dozen different little changes you need to make to your life but the gist of it is is that you can just slow way down slow way down I'm talking about slowing your life down on the order of 25% to 50% slower than it currently is what does this actually mean this means that you do 50% less whatever activities you're involved with or are committed to you do 50% less of those every day every week every month and those activities that remain you do those activities 50% slower and they take 50% longer than they would have otherwise taken you so even something like sitting down to have a meal which maybe normally you would scoff down in 10 minutes instead of doing it that way now you're going to do it instead of in 10 minutes or do it in 15 minutes and you're going to do it more mindfully with more awareness that's basically what we're talking about that's just one example but you see your life is composed of many of these examples you don't just eat you also do a bunch of other stuff so apply this principle to everything you do in your life yes see that's basically what I'm telling you here now the reason I even started thinking about this topic lately is because I was hanging out with my girlfriend and she has a fetish for minimalism she's been reading some books on minimalism and the kind of minimalism she's talking about is like what I would call material minimalism so it's it's all about this kind of movement maybe you've heard of this this movement of like reducing and decluttering the physical objects in your life so that you don't have too much clothing in your wardrobe and that you don't have too much stuff in your garage in this sort of thing now I think that's a really cool thing and I personally am pretty guilty of not being minimalist I have a bunch of around my around my place that I don't really need that I should probably trash and I can see the benefits of that but anyways I was thinking about this because she was telling me about it she's passionate about this and as I was thinking about this I read like well what's even more important than physical minimalism is I'll sort of like what I would call a lifestyle minimalism because just decluttering the physical objects from your life that's good but what's even more important is decluttering all the activities that are bogging you down bogging down your schedule and sucking up all your free time most people these days the Western typical lifestyle leaves no free time have you noticed this there's no free time in your schedule if you've got the typical American or western lifestyle you go to work and then after work you'd do all this other stuff and before work you're busy and you're just constantly busy from morning to midnight this is a big problem the basic idea here is that you want to aim for living a simple life a simple Spartan lifestyle in the ancient times the Romans ancient Romans they actually had an ideal a kind of a cultural ideal of living a Spartan frugal lifestyle now of course a lot of Romans like the aristocrats they lived very lavish extravagant lifestyles but generally as a culture you know not everyone in Rome was an aristocrat most people were just regular middle class or even lower-class folk and for them there was some kind of ideal about the Spartan lifestyle and even for the aristocracy there was still that ideal of like you know ideally you would live the way that a philosopher lives or the way that a monk lives or the way that an ascetic lives which is just like a very simple very basic way of life you don't pamper yourself too much and we need to get back to that kind of ideal which is what I'm advocating here in this episode the benefit of this is that you have lots of free time to think think of it this way you can measure your wealth in terms of how much money you have in your bank account or you can measure your wealth in terms of how much free time you have to think and to contemplate and just to be aware or to be rather than to do we don't really think of this is something that's very valuable to have free time to think but actually this is one of the most valuable things you can have because it directly impacts your levels of fulfillment in life if you minimize the involvements that you have in life all the activities and hobbies and all that crap that you do if you minimize all that and you leave only the bare essentials what you'll discover is that your life becomes very very fulfilling it's shocking because most people think like well what I need to get fulfilment in my life is more success and more money and then they go chase that for ten years and the correlation between success and fulfillment is much lower than the correlation between free time and fulfillment free time to contemplate and to be aware that's what really produces fulfillment have you noticed that the Western lifestyle that we live these days is not at all conducive to self-actualization work maybe you've tried to implement some of the stuff I tell you through these episodes and you've tried like for a month or two or even more maybe try to install a meditation habit or eating healthier or some kind of being more mindful in relationships this kind of stuff right be more mindful of your emotions you try to do this and maybe you try some of the exercises that I show you in various episodes usually towards the end I gave you an exercise right if you try one of those you've probably noticed that it's hard right it's hard it's hard to do this one of the reasons that your mind is just stubborn and it doesn't like to change but another reason is that the environment that you're in is extremely unhealthy and neurotic it's not conducive to self actualization work at all because that's not what modern society is about this is not an accident not at all an accident you have to start to realize that the modern lifestyle that you have grown up in that you're kind of like a fish in water you don't see the environment that you're in because you're totally surrounded by it and you have been probably from your very birth everyone you know from your friends to your family to your co-workers to your your boss and your your preacher and your teacher and your professor all of these people are in on it right they're all part of the problem they're all part of the modern lifestyle most of them are anyways so you don't really have any good examples of what a proper healthy emotionally healthy self-actualized lifestyle looks like the modern lifestyle is neurotic and it's unhealthy and it's not how human beings lived in the past this is more or less kind of a modern development of the human species it wasn't always this way and its really exacerbated by the rise of technology technology takes it to a whole new level a whole new level of unhealthiness and that's one of the reasons why things like depression and anxiety and phobias are rampant way worse than they were a hundred years ago or a couple thousand years ago right because human beings are not meant to live the way we live right now we've kind of domesticated ourselves in a very toxic way and you don't realize this yet until you're able to kind of like get a clearing a parting of the clouds until you see a ray of light shining through until someone gives you an example of really what a high quality lifestyle looks like and it might not be at all what you think it is for example some people ask me to post videos about like what my lifestyle looks like they tell me like well leo post us some videos about like what your day is like you know I bet you you have the best lifestyle you have such a cool lifestyle but you know what if I posted you a video of my typical day it would be extremely boring to you you would probably be so boring to you that you would look at it and you'd like scratch your head and you'd be like wondering like well what the what the leo ah why am I even following you and listening to you and doing all the self-actualization stuff because it seems like you're just living like the most basic the most ordinary unleash a lifestyle possible like I don't need to work hundreds or thousands of hours to get that kind of lifestyle I could get that right now but see what you fail to realize if you think that way is that actually it'll take you years and maybe even decades to come to the point where you're actually gonna finally grasp with your mind what I'm talking about here and the reason that I'm doing this with my life right I don't want a lavish and extravagant lifestyle why not because I know that it's not going to make me fulfilled you see it's only going to make me more busy it's going to be a veneer of success and kind of a veneer of growth and development but it's not going to be the real deal it's not so let's get back on point here basically what I'm telling you that your schedule is too full you're trying to do too damn much too fast and this fast pace that you're going at is making you unaware of life it's impossible to be mindful and conscious in your life when you have a fast pace for many of you that's exactly why you have a fast pace is because when you first start to become conscious and aware it's actually painful and to avoid that pain what you do is you put the pedal to the metal and you increase the pace and any time you get a little bit of free room in your schedule like you know some time frees up or some like that you immediately fill the vacuum with some other mindless activity because you can't stand being because you're literally addicted to doing and you're addicted to success see you can really get a taste for this you can really notice this if you ever do a meditation retreat or some kind of consciousness retreat I've been doing a lot of these lately over the last couple years and one of the most amazing experiences and I'm not the only person I know people who have gone this exact same experience is you go to something like let's say uh 10-david pause on a meditation retreat at this retreat it's total silence you're not allowed to speak for ten days straight you're also not allowed to use the internet or cell phones or anything so there you are for 10 days doing absolutely nothing you're just basically meditating for 10 12 hours a day and the first 3 to 5 days are real tough it's really painful because you're going through withdrawal symptoms because you're addicted to this stuff but then after you know the fifth day actually it feels wonderful finally you get back to that original place that kind of place where I would guess you know people as humanity well we used to live in this place all the time before the advent of Agriculture and big civilizations happen in religion happened B happened education happened in politics happened before all that kind of stuff you know human beings just lived very simply as hunter-gatherers and life was a lot more simple it was like this it was like I'm a meditation retreat but then here's a really weird part that happens is that after you're done you know you're feeling amazing on the tenth day of the retreat like you're glowing you're probably the happiest and most fulfilled you've ever been in your entire life after those ten days and then immediately you walk back into the airport and the airport everybody's running around everyone's you know crazy and rowdy and everybody talking and your cell phone starts blowing up because all your friends are texting you and your your girlfriend or boyfriend is texting you your family is texting where have you been for 10 days you know your business colleagues are texting you your customers your clients all this stuff so you just get sucked right back in to the fast-paced lifestyle within just a few days and that glow and that fulfillment that you tasted is just completely gone you forget about it and the way that it happens is it's really sneaky it happens to you in such a way that you're not even conscious that it happens to you you have to go to a couple of retreats before you really start to notice what's going on here but most people they just go to one of these retreats once or twice in their life and then for the rest of their life they never experience that kind of level of fulfillment and peace and satisfaction they had during these ten days never again to them it's just like a vacation or feels like oh it's just you know it's a temporary special thing and I shouldn't expect to live my normal life this way well what if we turn that around and what if we made the bulk of your life like a the pass and retreat you know very slow paced very conscious very deliberate very mindful and very present so that you're being more than you're doing and then there's going to be short intervals in your life where you know you're going to go and you're going to do some fast-paced stuff here or there but those are going to be sporadic moments basically the inverse of what you're living right now so I want to help you to actually imagine this let's do a very short visualization just a couple of minutes here all right go ahead get seated sit with your back up straight and close your eyes I just want to quickly get you in touch with what I'm talking about here all right so you're having your eyes closed take a couple of nice deep breaths and just relax get into the present moment clear any images you have in your mind so your mind is completely blank and now what I'd like you to do is imagine what your life would look like and feel like if you slowed your life down by 50% imagine what your life would feel like and look like if you slowed it down by 50% and just take a little bit of time to imagine it especially the feeling I want you to connect to the feeling how would you feel if your life was slowed down by 50% how would you feel in your body how would that impact the quality of your life how would it influence the fulfillment levels that you have on a daily basis how would it affect your mood okay take a few final moments to wrap that up okay good and now you can open your eyes and we're done with that visualization very very simple now the question is what did you imagine did you actually get in touch with what it would feel like and if you did it should have felt nice right it should have felt very nice your mind should intuitively know that slowing your pace down is going to make you feel better it's going to influence and improve your mood and the fulfillment of your life now that's if you're if you're kind of wise and you have a good a sense of intuition sup for some of you you might be so sucked into the fast-paced lifestyle that just by visualizing what I was saying your mind might have actually visualized negatives and it might have said like something like aw but then you know I'm not going to be successful and you know my life is going to be so boring and it's not going to be exciting and it's not going to be fun like this kind of stuff so if for you this visualization wasn't a nice visualization but kind of a negative visualization that just shows you how out of touch you are with being you're addicted you're addicted to stimulation and to success see and don't think this is a good thing this is not a positive addiction this is a very negative addiction because you're not able to be fulfilled and your success realize this that your sex success doesn't count for if you're not fulfilled you see the only reason you're pursuing success supposedly in the first place is to find fulfilment but those two things can diverge and they can take you in opposite direction right fulfillment can be over here and success can be over there and they can just take you a thousand miles apart so you got to be very mindful that what needs to happen is you need to start to cultivate being instead of doing this is a cultivation this is something that is kind of an acquired taste at first especially in modern society because we been so detached from being that you probably haven't really connected to being four years or even decades maybe you have to go back all the way to your childhood to really get some juicy memories of the sweetness and satisfaction of being rather than doing or maybe you can think of something a little bit more recent like a vacation you took or a trip out to some national park that you took or you know other kinds of activities like that maybe a meditation retreat that you did something like that that can get you a real palpable sense of what being is and why it's so important why I'm stressing it here right why are you talking about it you must strategically declutter your life and to do that what this means is you have to pull out of activities you have to pull out of commitments pull out of hobbies and you have to break relationships and ties with people and this is all scary stuff to do you might not yet see the value of doing this it might seem like olio you know my hobbies they give me pleasure and joy why would I pull out of those and you know my activities you know hang out with my friends and socializing and all the partying I do and going to clubs you know this stuff gives me joy in my life leo so why would I want to pull out of those and what about my relationships you know that's crazy to break relationships and ties with people that's crazy why would I want to do that but see that's exactly what I'm talking about is that you do have to do this and this is a counterintuitive move another one of those counterintuitive moves that we come across so often in self actualization work more than just doing this I'll get back to this point in more depth but more than just pulling out of these things what you also have to do this is the most important part is that you have to keep saying no to new stuff that comes by you so not only do you pull out of hobbies and activities and friendships and socialization relationships and all this stuff you pull out of all that and then you're very very vigilant to make sure that you don't reengage any other kind of mindless activities which will inevitably come your way people will come to you and they will tell you I could do this for me and do that for me and let's go do this together and let's go to the movies and let's let's go to the beach and all this kind of stuff and you have to say no no no no no no no no no no and you have to keep saying no for the rest of your life because people will keep coming to you and putting stuff and presenting it to you right these are all distractions but they don't feel like distractions they don't feel like distractions at first you have to spend a few years just kind of like extricate yourself out of this mire and muck this quagmire that you're in of distractions and hobbies and then when you look upon things that come your way you'll be like oh that's obviously distraction but right now you can't see that and this whole process is going to be very difficult very challenging for you and the biggest challenge here goes way deeper than just pulling out of a few hobbies or commitments or breaking a few relationships what I'm really getting at here here is kind of like the really bitter peel that I want you to swallow and I want you to kind of open your mind to this because this is this is a very bitter pill one of the biggest challenges in your life you're going to really self actualize you're going to take this project on seriously is that you can have to make a very counterintuitive long-range strategic move to renounce material life altogether to do this you have to be a strategic thinker I have an F the talks about strategic thinking and some people watch that episode and then they wonder well but how do I apply this in my life you know strategic thinking it seems kind of abstract how does this relate to self-actualization well here's one example for you and I'll give you more in the future but here's one very concrete one strategically as a strategic thinker you see what will happen if you keep living your life the way that everyone around you is living your life you see that if you do that you're going to get exactly the same kind of results that they get and you see that they don't get very good results your friends your family your co-workers they don't get good results even your successful rich boss he doesn't have good results in his life he's not fulfilled with his life don't confuse success with fulfillment so seeing this now your minds start to see like oh there might be a counterintuitive move here in the long term maybe what I got to do is I got a renounce material life altogether because it doesn't work and then you strategize you say okay how do I do that what are the pieces got to put together to actually follow through on this strategy and basically what you have to say before you start implementing is you have to just be honest with yourself and say okay basically what I'm committing to is I'm committing to not have a life I mean I'm alive and I'm going to stay alive until I die but I'm committing to you know in common parlance so as they say to not have a life I'm going to be one of those people who doesn't have a life so that when a group of friends looks at me they're gonna be like man that guy is a boring ass person what is he doing he's got like a stick up his ass he's no fun right because you've committed to not having a life ever ever you're never going to have a life anymore you see this is what self actualization is you're committing to not having a life but it's counterintuitive it's so counter to it's super counterintuitive because in committing to not having a life actually what you gain is you gain true life because the you have now that you call life having a life that's not a life that's you being a gerbil in a wheel spinning round and round around that's not life you're like a domesticated cow and you're calling that life and what I'm showing you is real life which doesn't look like life at first from your perspective right it's the life of living out on the you know on the prairie or out in the woods in the wilderness now a domesticated cow once it gets comfortable being domesticated it can rationalize to itself like well you know I don't want to go out into the woods because that means I'd have to like go uh roam for food that might be difficult you know there might be wolves out there and predators you know that might be dangerous and you know I just want to stay safe and my little herd and you're going to have that you're going to have that you know the fear the fear of taking this kind of leap into the unknown because it sure feels like well Leo you know renouncing life not having a license is not what I'm in for that's not why I started after self-actualization and of course you're right because you started self-actualization because your ego comes into this process and it has this dream of the hyper active lifestyle the glamorous lifestyle the lifestyle of success and fame and luxury and all this kind of stuff that's what you come into this with that's kind of like the initial child childish little dream you have but we've come to the point where we have to shatter some of these dreams that you have and be adults here and be mature and realize what we're really doing and what we have to realize is that all of that is this hyperactive lifestyle is complete there's no happiness there no happiness and anyone that you point to some celebrity or some friend of yours or a boss of yours who you can point to and say what leo look at that person you know he's super hyperactive he's super successful and he lives a glamorous lifestyle and his lifestyle is awesome he's so fulfilled no he's not he's not fulfilled at all the reason he's hyperactive is because he's not fulfilled a fulfilled person doesn't need to be hyperactive you get this this is a very deep truth I challenge you to actually go and find these people who you think have a great hyperactive lifestyle that you want to emulate I challenge you to actually look deeper at what their lifestyle is like and look and actually examine how fulfilled are they now that's a difficult thing to examine because you usually can't ask these people and even if you do a lot of times they'll lie to you and they'll tell you oh yeah my life is great ah because this is such such a subtle thing fulfillment you know successful people lie to themselves about how fulfilled they are all the time because it's scary as to admit that all your success did not get you the fulfillment that you wanted you could spend 10 years building a company that brings in 50 million dollars for you and then a time will come when that person has to be honest with himself or not but the time will come when he has to make that decision of like do I admit that this 50 million dollars in these last 10 years hasn't increased my fulfillment at all or do I just you know at this point it's a sunk cost and it's like I just I'm just gonna keep doing going down this road because even though the road is bleeding towards hell you know already so far down this path that I have no other options I can't turn back most people don't even have the psychological awareness to see that this battle is going on inside of them all this stuff is largely unconscious that's why even talking to these people is not often going to be helpful for you so be very careful about assuming who in the you know in the popular culture as far as celebrities go and so forth is actually fulfilled so these people or not it requires a lot of wisdom on your part I might even say spiritual wisdom to see to really see that this materialistic lifestyle that all your friends are living and that you've been living up to now is is really pointless it's really pointless and on your deathbed if you're lucky to have that moment of just kind of being there and reflecting on your life you're going to regret this you're going to really really really regret this and you're going to really wish that you listened to me right now but it's very difficult to listen to me because you're afraid of where this will take you you're afraid how this might sabotage your already existing success and you're going to feel guilty you're going to feel guilty of pulling out of these social relationships and social obligations that you've committed yourself to but let me tell you a little bit more about the strategy so the strategy here that I'm proposing is that you're going to create space in your life to focus on only a couple of key things and you're going to slice and minimize everything else very ruthlessly so here are the key things there's only like a handful of them I can count them on two hands here are the key things that you need to focus on in life every human being this is true for every human being I don't care who you are don't care if you're a wealthy CEO I don't care if you live in Africa or in Asia or in America or whatever your situation is you need this this is it meditation enlightenment your life purpose learning or education slow deliberate mindful action contemplation and being that's like I don't know is that like eight things seven or eight things those are the things that you need to focus on in life everything else as far as you're concerned you shouldn't even be concerned about all right this means and this is where you're I'm going to get some hate I'm you're gonna hate me for this but oh well this means minimizing your fret chips your relationships your family commitments your hobbies and any kind of entertaining recreational fun activities that you have it means minimizing all this stuff okay if you do this as a strategy think about this be a strategic thinker what's going to happen to your life think it through 10 20 30 years down the road if you do this now I'm not telling you to become like a Unabomber who lives in a shack and hates human beings that's not what I'm saying and you know who never has fun so don't take it to that extreme but just think about it you're meditating you're focusing on enlightenment you're focusing on your life purpose you're focusing on learning and education you're focusing on deliberate mindful action you're focusing on contemplation introspection and you're focusing on just being think about what happens if you do that for 10 20 30 40 years if you do that I don't know if your imagination can even imagine this but your life would be extraordinary I'll be ridiculously satisfying ridiculously satisfying and if you don't do it if you do what the average person does which is kind of just like diddle around with their friends and do a little bit of work and some hobby stuff and a bunch of family crap and some you know fun entertainment go to the movies go to the beach all this kind of you do all this for 10 20 30 40 years what is your life going to look like it's gonna look at the average life you're gonna have a life you're not going to really enjoy what you do you're going to waste a lot of your energy on relationships that aren't even with you anymore you're gonna waste hundreds and thousands of hours and all this emotional labor on relationships people that you don't even know anymore because these people will leave you they will die on you they will they will divorce you they will get angry at you you know all this kind of stuff will happen and you're going to disperse all your energy you're not really going to focus on yourself you're not going to cultivate being you're going to be crack it all the time hamster in a wheel and then you're just gonna be like in your 60s and you're gonna feel like life hasn't really been fulfilling you're gonna feel like you've kind of been cheated at life and you're not even going to be motivated anymore to go out and do anything big because you've kind of felt like well I've already done everything and nothing has really satisfied me and you're gonna really believe that satisfaction is not possible by that point and that's even a kind of a best-case scenario worst-case scenario you get depressed anxious commit suicide that's not out of the question not at the question all so many people are depressed anxious total victims why not because you're not turning in on yourself right you're not strategizing properly you're being a stupid strategic thinker I've been doing this lately in my own life I mean I've been doing this the reason I can speak pretty confidently about this is because I've been doing this basically since I was a teenager since I was a kid even before I was a teenager I've just kind of naturally been gravitating towards this kind of lifestyle my life is not busy I don't fill it with a bunch of activities a bunch of entertainment and this and that and going here and going there and travel and this and that and all these social obligations I don't do that I have some of that I'm not totally isolated but if most people would look at me they'd say oh man your life is kind of like simple it's kind of like even it kind of looks from the surface it almost looks a little bit like below average but let me tell you it's not on the inside my life is like amazing right where it counts it's amazing and lately just over the last few months you know I've been I've been making some tweaks to make it even more amazing by just like recommitting to this strategy because there are times where I kind of deviate from the strategy because I just forget so in a sense this is as much reminder for me as it is for you right but my lifestyle is more like becoming more and more monastic like that of a monk or like that of a sage it's really the lifestyle of a sage that's what I'm really telling you to do here create the lifestyle of a sage so I've been kind of like trying to implement that more and more in my life giving myself more free time more free time to just pick up a book and read it more free time just to meditate for an extra hour if I want to sometimes I'll meditate for 3-4 hours a day when I do that I feel amazing I can't even describe to how amazing I was meditating the other day man-bat meditation session that that's 60 minutes of meditation was it was more powerful and more rewarding than any orgasm you'll ever have in your life and I'm not even that deep into meditation I'm not even talking about a Samadhi experience or an enlightenment Easterners I'm just talking about plain ol just basic meditation with monkey mind still going on but still that experience is amazing the rewards that come when you turn inside and you really focus on yourself through contemplation and cultivation of being is incredible it's incredible I got these like flavors of going back almost a childhood it feels like I'm back in childhood again that kind of like that sense of just being that kind of freedom of being a child of really being connected existentially to reality without a bunch of mental filters and beliefs and stories and you know schedules and having to do this and that just being free like I had memories of me being back in in school you know those really fond memories of being back in school during the summer vacations where you've got nothing to do you can just like lay around the house do nothing and in a sense it's kind of boring but also in a certain sense it's like you're really connecting with life that's what your life should be all the time your life should feel like a summer vacation from school and you better believe that's possible this is something you can create that some of you cultivate but you have to decide on as a strategy because this is not something you just do in a week or in a month this is a long-term strategy takes of years to really follow through on this strategy not to mention its initially very scary encountering too for me personally what this required to start to implement the strategy is a required letting go of success and goals I'm actually very successful oriented guy I'm not some bohemian hippie I love success I have a business that I run right um if the more I work on my business the more money that I earn so for me no this is that this actually very tangible stuff but I have to let go of that stuff so like recently I've been just kind of like letting go of certain goals for my business certain success goals certain financial goals I'll just push those off you know for the next year not to say I'll never pursue them again but just like I'm giving myself more room more room to breathe more room to think to contemplate to read to meditate to be so I've been doing that and that's been a challenge but I've been doing it and I'm still going to keep doing that also what's required of me is to say no a lot so when people come to me with stuff like hey I want you to do this and do that and why don't why don't we do this with the business and what about this here and let's you know let's go out and have fun unless you know just do the social gathering thing and basically I just say no like no no no no no no no because I can see I can connect the dots I see I connect the dot between where I am now and when I may be on my deathbed I connect those dots and I just see that when I'm on my deathbed all this social that's happening it's not going to matter it's not going to matter all this fun entertaining stuff watching movies playing video games all this crap you do is not going to matter what's going to matter is your connection to being to reality are you connected to reality are you conscious of your own existence on a regular basis are you conscious of it like once a month right so what this requires is a cultivation of a spiritual connection to reality that's all spirituality is it's not some voodoo spirituality is a connection to the present moment as it is without all the that your mind spins every single our of every single day that's a connection that needs to be cultivated if you're going to be attempting to implement the strategy remember that's a long-term strategy and that you're not going to be able to for the first few months it's not going to feel like oh my god everything Leo told me is coming true it's not going to feel that way because you haven't cultivated a connection to reality probably for years this is all new to you so it'll take you some time to get it up and running but let me assure you that it's going to be a very worthwhile investment if you do and one final thing that this will require of you it's been requiring it of me is that you let go release and exhaust your carnal cravings what I mean by carnal cravings is cravings for food cravings for sex cravings for drugs cravings for music cravings for fun entertainment and stimulation of every sort you know whatever your favorite addictions are you have to exhaust those release those because as long as you're completely consumed by your carnal cravings you're not going to be able to to execute this strategy so if you're addicted to a bunch of those check out my episode called overcoming addiction it'll help you with that and guess what the solution to that is the solution is just sitting and doing nothing that's the solution it's very simple the problem is you don't want to do it because you don't see far enough down the road to what your current lifestyle is going to produce it's going to produce the lifestyle that you think is great this kind of westernized modern fast-paced lifestyle of success this is a lifestyle it can't even come close not even close not even in the same ballpark not even like three orders of magnitude of closeness to the awesomeness that your life will be like when you actually follow through on this strategy that I'm telling you about of minimizing your lifestyle and you execute on that for let's say five ten twenty years come talk to me then after you've done that you're gonna come talk to me you're gonna look at me tears will pour down your face because you're gonna know that this point right now was the turning point that made the difference between life that was a life that was meaningful for you and enrich and amazing this life of being and the kind of shitty ordinary mundane life of doing and success that you otherwise would have lived right it's literally the difference between a a a fully lived life and a life pissed down the toilet that's the difference so the choice is up to you all right that's it I'm out of here signing off go ahead please click like button for me post your comments down below share this episode friend and lastly come check out actualize that this is my website I have a free newsletter on there that keeps you up to date on this journey like I said if you want to execute on this strategy it's a long-term strategy you can't just do it over one week with a couple of my episodes watch more of them watch a hundred of them watch them for a couple of years it's getting to the point where you know actually said work has been running for like almost three years now - three years somewhere around there I've been releasing videos come very consistently and that people have been watching them and it's getting to the point where people have actually now been implementing some of the stuff that I say for a year or two and man I get emails from them that just tell me exactly what I was just telling you they see the actual results the stuff I'm telling you is some of the most practical most directly applicable things that you could ever hear on this planet for increasing your fulfillment I don't just tell you theories sometimes they sound like theories they're not theories implement them see through your own eyes in your direct experience when you actually implement this in your life what happens test it out if you dare all right go check out the newsletter sign up to it check out my life purpose course that might help you as well and stick around for more and I'll see you soon you