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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this video I'm going to talk about understanding the authentic self no man ever steps into the same river twice for it is not the same river and he is not the same man that is a quote from Heraclitus in this video I want to address a really important foundational concept in personal development and that's the concept of the authentic self one of the things that I hear from people as I interact and coach them and read all my youtube comments is that I see people coming up with this excuse you can also call it an ego defense mechanism you could also call it a way of thinking or a model of the self which goes something along these lines they'll hear some suggestion that I make that they should enact in their life and then they'll come back with this kind of thinking but Leo what you're suggesting that isn't me not me talking to girls that's not me being passionate about life that's not me thinking positive that's not me meditation that's not me being fit and caring about my nutrition that's not me going out partying clubbing going to bars that's not me socializing schmoozing with people small talk that's not me studying hard be a good student that's not me focusing on one thing at a time instead of multitasking That's not me leading others being a leader That's not me learning a little new language That's not me doing art being creative That's not me being a millionaire That's not me talking dirty in bed That's not me working hard having a strong work ethic being disciplined That's not me pushing my comfort zone That's not me and the list goes on on and on and on and I'm sure you've got your one or two things that you think maybe you should be doing in your life but then again your mind says but maybe that's not me maybe that's not like my real personality maybe that's not like my authentic self what would my authentic self do in this situation would my aesthetic self try to be more funny or would my intent itself want to to have the kind of dry personality that I have right now maybe that's authentic me maybe the authentic me is the fat me the unhealthy me not the healthy me maybe the authentic me is the one who thinks negatively who has all these angry thoughts and depressive thoughts maybe the authentic me is the shy me who doesn't want to go and socialize and isn't very extroverted maybe the authentic me is the follower the passive me not the leader not that bold individual who goes and commands and dominates other people maybe the authentic me is just living the simple kind of life that I live right now not living some sort of grand extraordinary ambitious kind of life maybe the authentic me isn't good with women or isn't good with men or isn't good in a marriage or isn't good in a relationship or isn't good with kids maybe the authentic me isn't very artistic is not talented and art is not talented with languages it's not talented with math is not talented with science is not with personal development or some other area of life is a very dangerous thing this game of is it me or is it not me and I want to go and dispel at various levels we're going to dispel this this idea of authentic self actually at three different levels alright there's three layers of depth here and each layer goes deeper and deeper and deeper the third one is incredibly deep you might not even be ready for it right now but I'm going to give you a hint of it and you're going to need to get over this isn't me idea in order to grow yourself because this is one of the most tricky and kind of like just stop you dead in your tracks methods that your brain has for preventing you from growing because take a note as soon as you say that something isn't you something isn't authentic to who you are that immediately cuts off that possibility forever from your life forever you're never going to ever master that area of your life just because you said or you believe in your mind that this thing isn't really you why because there is this incongruity now between what maybe you feel you could be but then what your subconscious mind thinks that you actually are this is getting into the concept of self image which I have a whole video on you can check that out I'll link it below it's called self image but we're going to go even deeper here right even further than self image and really take a look at what it really means to be your authentic self because I see a lot of people getting it confused here and I use this label authentic self and sometimes I use it in different ways so it does get a little bit confusing a little bit tricky let me help you guide let me help guide you through some of these some of these weeds here so here are the three levels that we're going to tackle this at number one is the following the authentic you isn't your present you and it's not your past you it's who you will become after full self-actualization happens which is an ideal you're never going to be fully self actualized you're always going to be working towards that ideal but here's the first mistake that most people make is they think that their past is somehow giving them a sense of who they are and that that's kind of their authentic self that's not your authentic self that's like your weakest version of your possible self right when I talk about authentic self I'm talking about your most evolved ultimate highest possible potential life this means that if you do everything perfectly in your life then you would be moving towards this ideal if for the next 30 or 40 years in your life you worked your ass off every single day working and expanding yourself at every single part of your life that you could think of that would get you towards your authentic self that's how I use this concept when I talk about in my videos this is very different than the way that most of you think about it because a lot of people will use this idea of authentic self to stay in social - comfort zone right and say oh but that's not you know that that requires work that requires labor and and discipline and effort and you know that's not that's not really me that's not what I'm talking about that's not really your authentic self so that's the first level and I'm going to go into more details on this but I want to give you a preview of the next two levels so the second level is really the going back to the original quote from Heraclitus the beginning this video and it's this interesting idea that who you are is constantly changing we like to speak about a self myself yourself authentic self he's being authentic she's being authentic she's this way he's that way but we really talking about this is this is a conceptualization a theoretical notion if we take a look at real life who are you if we say that U is the common-sense notion that we have kind of the unenlightened notion that you are your body you are your brain in your mind if we say that ok let's say that's you then even if we take that idea which we're going to expand on later but let's take that for now what is that that's a system right that's a system comprised of billions of neurons trillions of cells all working in coordination together molecules and chemicals and proteins and fluids and organs all this stuff interacting really you can think of your body almost like a like a country right what is a country a country is just an abstract label for actually what for a of the globe the physical geography of the globe it's also the ocean and the water that's there surrounding the territory you might say but it's also all the people in it it's the ideas that people have so it's this very very abstract high-level idea country right but we speak about countries as though they are real entities really that's kind of a simplification that we have in our mind well it's the same thing when we when we talk about you who you are is constantly changing every second every minute every hour every day every year your body is changing it's not staying the same your mind and your brain is changing so in a very real sense we can say that there is no you you is always evolving always shifting you could be growing you could be declining you could be thriving you could be dying you can be aging all of us are aging right so this is the second level and I'll talk about more about that in a minute but then we have the third the most advanced the deepest level and this is the level that says that really there's no such thing as you at all even the scientific model that says that you are your body and you are your brain in your mind and your thoughts that then that is illusory not only is it that all the molecules and chemicals in your your body and your brain are changing but this idea goes so deep it it says that your even more than that right you literally are the whole of experience in the whole of reality not just your body and your thoughts so on this level this idea of self authentic self is just a total fiction and it's completely a ridiculous concept in fact this is a concept that creates a lot of suffering in your life but this is a very advanced level so I'm not going to go into too much detail on it here check out my videos on enlightenment which I'll be shooting a lot of which will help you to understand this idea if you're curious about it and it's a very fascinating and a very important idea for you to start to understand and just to actually practice in living your life but let's go back for a second to some of these initial levels that we talked about so this initial level the first one which is this idea that the authentic you is the self actualized you who you will become if you expand yourself in all the different areas of your life really this is this is the idea of this distinction that I have between the lazy self and the best self see all of us if we just kind of leave ourselves on the natural trajectory of our own life what is that that is really us being our lazy self that's kind of us running on the same track and doing the easy stuff in life the stuff that's convenient and comfortable the stuff we know we can do the stuff we're very confident in we're very sure about and a lot of people frankly they live their whole life this way after they go through their teens and their 20s they experience all the natural growth that they're going to experience once they get past twenty-one they pretty much start to flat line and Plateau and their life just kind of keeps going like this and it's just more of the same and the same and the same and the same because really what was happening is that inner teens and in their 20s they were experiencing lots of natural growth because your body's growing your brain is growing new new ideas are coming in there you're getting a lot of education and schooling so you're just kind of getting acclimated to the world once you're acclimated as an adult then you're pretty self-sufficient and you can maintain yourself on this consistent even level if you want to and that's the easiest thing to do that's the most natural thing to do right requires no additional education no additional labor no additional development of skills no pushing of any comfort zones so that is kind of the status quo that's the default position now of course natural this idea of natural a lot of people also use this as an ego defense mechanism and say stuff like Balea that's not natural to me it's not natural to me to go talk dirty to my girl insect when I'm having sex with her it's not natural to me to go chat up a girl in a bar or club it's not natural for me to work on this marriage it's not natural for me to go work hard on my career it's not natural for me to learn any language you know it's not natural for me to earn lots of money it's not natural for me to be fit and healthy and have a six-pack so all these kinds of ideas but see this idea of natural what you're really saying there is that you don't want to take the challenge you don't want to take on the challenge it's too much struggle and what you really want to do is you want to stay comfortable do you want to stay in your comfort zone and of course who can blame you who doesn't like being comfortable who doesn't like staying in a comfort zone all the time in modern society it's very easy to be comfortable you get a job that pays your bills and you're pretty much set at that point you can get a comfortable apartment and get comfortable car get a comfortable bed furnish everything you like you can find a comfortable guy or girl to be with and then you can just coast you just coast through life and you eat comfortable foods that make you fatter and fatter and fatter slowly over time destroy your health and you just do kind of the comfortable stuff that's easy to do at work and that makes you mediocre and average at your work nothing's really advanced you're just kind of mediocre and average and you keep going and going and going but it pays the bills so you know you're happy you sit at home you watch a little television you play a little video games you go out to the movies once in a while do some fun stuff with your friends and that's a comfortable life it's not too hard to get that these days it's not but what happens there because of this idea of self-actualization and Abraham Maslow's idea that self-actualization is actually not a luxury but it's a requirement of your psyche once you get the basics in your life down you're not going to just sit there what's going to happen is that your mind is going to slowly start to rot and your soul is going to rot from the inside out because you know that you're destined for something much greater in life you know that you have so much more potential you know that you could be doing something amazing for society you know that you could have an amazing impact you know that you have these strengths and natural talents whatever they are whether they're artistic talents business talents interpersonal skills logical skills mathematical skills you know whatever you're really good at you know that you owe it to yourself to develop those and to work really hard on those so that you can really turn and turn those talents to something that really shines so this idea of being natural watch out for that what's natural is usually and I don't know about you but I don't want a life I don't want a natural life I want the best possible life the self actualized life and for that you have to have this expectation that you're going to be working really hard growing yourself for some people this seems scary and it seems like well why would I want to work so hard leo like what's the point well I can't just I just be like accepting of myself as I am just live this comfortable kind of life well like I said it starts to produce problems down the road for you you start to rot from the inside out and also the greatest fulfillment and pleasure that you get from life is not these low-level pleasures of satisfying some your basic with food and sex and shelter but it's the high-level pleasures of self-actualization work growing yourself pushing yourself in conquering obstacles being on that hero's journey in your life living a life with passion helping other people in whatever way you want to help them by creating some amazing art or creating an amazing company in a business or doing some sort of charitable work you know whatever lights you up that's where you get the deepest sense of fulfillment in life is when you're doing that when you're sharing and greatest gifts so I think you sense that and I think you know that you want that in your life right if you do you have to change this expectation of your authentic self being who you were in the past or who you are presently that's not your authentic self your authentic self is what your to be growing to every single day when you're pushing yourself let me give you a sense of what your authentic self looks like because it's still kind of abstract I wanna make it very concrete and don't think that this doesn't apply to you this description that I'm about to give you applies to you even if right now you feel like this is totally not you this can be you and this must be you if you want to be self actualized here it is your authentic self if you were that right now he or she would be confident completely confident assertive disciplined internally grounded in his or her own values emotionally stable on purpose in life passionate deeply passionate about everything that you're doing in life having zero limiting beliefs of any kind believing not in a idealistic quixotic kind of way but in a in a pragmatic kind of way believing that you can accomplish whatever you want to accomplish in life having that sense of strength and power having a high self-esteem knowing that you deserve it knowing that you deserve enormous success knowing that you deserve enormous happiness in life having a desire to explore all of life not judging it but just wanting to explore and partake in it being fully self expressive not holding back at all for anyone not being hemmed in by anyone's opinions of you having zero fears complete fearlessness being able to go in and tackle any kind of challenge in life any kind of obstacle any kind of project that you want without your fears holding you back it also means being 100 cent positive no negative thoughts of any kind seeing the world as a beautiful amazing positive place and wanting to make it even better it also means being social and outgoing even if right now you're shy or introverted it also means being generous being generous with yourself being generous with your time and really being generous with the work that you're doing doing work that is promoting the good of other people and is making you fulfilled inside just by looking and seeing at the impact that you're having on the world it's being selfless it's not caring so much about a lot of petty little problems in life but being more idealistic being more values driven being driven by higher consciousness it's also having high consciousness it's being a high consciousness state rather than a low consciousness state which is the difference for example when you're meditating high consciousness state when you're fulfilling your goals and your dreams and you're working really hard that puts you in a high consciousness state low consciousness state is when you're watching television or when you're doing drugs or when you're stuffing yourself full of junk food being authentic also means that you're healthy fat is not authentic there's nothing authentic about being fat there's nothing about being overweight there's nothing authentic about doing drugs or other kind of chemical dependencies or addictions so being completely clean completely sober and completely healthy and fit lean the way your body was designed to be your body was designed to be lean whether you're a man or a woman who's going to be lean energetic muscular full of vitality that's authentic that's your authentic self authentic self also means that your sexual highly sexual open about your sexuality comfortable with your sexuality whether you're a man or a woman speaking of man or woman authentic self means that you're comfortable being either very masculine or very feminine or if you're in between somewhere you're comfortable with whatever position your hormones have kind of placed you in in life but you're comfortable with that so if you're very feminine you're comfortable being very feminine if you're very masculine you're comfortable with that and you expand into it and you grow into it and you delight in it authentic self also means that you're you're accepting of the other opposite pole of you as far as gender goes it means that you understand the opposite sex you don't hold resentment towards the opposite sex and it means that you can even partake in the opposite sex as energy yourself sometimes if you're masculine you can be feminine if you're feminine you can be masculine and you're okay with that you're comfortable with that you're secure with that being your authentic self also means that you're completely open-minded no idea offends you no matter how positive or how negative it is you're so open mind that you're willing to consider any kind of idea you're willing to consider that you're wrong you're willing to readjust any beliefs or models that you have about the world and it just also means that you have this sense of nobility about how you approach life you always take the high road rather than the low road in whatever you're doing in your relationships and your interactions with people strangers family members the way you run your business the way you approach your career even the flats that you have there noble thoughts they're not petty thoughts so that's the picture right that's that's all the detail that fills in this abstract notion of authentic self now notice how different this is from what you might think your authentic self is it's very different and even right now as you hear all this you might be saying Billy oh how can you be saying this you don't know me I'm a very unique person I have my own strengths and and personality quirks and everyone's different you might say how can you say that everyone's going to be this way how can you say that everyone's going to be fearless and everyone's going to be masculine or feminine and everyone's gonna be open-minded I say this because on a fundamental level we're all human beings and although there are lots of differences between us we have our little quirks and strengths and talents and and values and all this kind of stuff in the end a human being is is pretty easy to define once you've study human beings for a long time you do a lot of research and on psychology and you study this stuff you see that pretty much there's like this baseline level of what a really proper example of a human being is kind of like an exemplar of a true human being and this is what it is this is kind of what it all boils down to if you're deficient in any one of these areas and it's hard for you to even imagine that you could be extremely confident and assertive and have zero fears and be sexual and be healthy and all this other kind of stuff well that's because you've got a lot of bad social conditioning past traumatic events bad psychology negative thinking limiting beliefs poor self-image poor self-esteem low self confidence all this stuff for you to work on this is all stuff that is kind of like you might think about it this way like I think I've made this analogy before imagine like you're the Sun this bright shining Sun this like fireball of energy and you're just bursting with energy right with energy in every direction just like rays of light shooting out but when you're born as the Sun and as you're growing up in your in your early years through your early 20s what happens is that it really gets gets like caked with lots of grime and dust and smudge and for some people there's so much grime and smudge on the Sun that maybe there's like one little ray shooting out in this direction maybe there's like a little ray shooting out in that direction just like a couple and you think that that's the authentic you that's not the authentic you the authentic you is who you are when all that grime is removed and that's what I'm telling you with all these little characteristics that I just mentioned all these details that's who you will be now don't get me wrong you're going to have your own individuality right your own character strengths are going to be in there your own usually gonna have weaknesses in there in certain places you shouldn't have your own preferences you're gonna have your own values so you're still going to be very different and very unique from everybody else that's out there but stuff like confidence this is a very general characteristic you can be confident about doing your art somebody else can be confident doing their business somebody else can be confident about the marriage they're in or something else like that so confidence is like a very broad characteristic as is assertiveness as is fearlessness as is passion as is being social and outgoing all of these things are just kind of like almost like tools in your tool belt and when you're a fully authentic human being you have like a full tool belt of all these tools that you can literally manipulate anything you want in any way that you want and then it's up to you to choose which tools you use maybe certain tools you'll never really need other tools you'll use a lot that's where the customization comes in but overall you want to have this you know this freedom to do whatever you want with your life okay so really right there everything we just talked about that is covering that first point about the fact that your authentic self is the fully self actualized self now let's go into the second point about your authentic self really not even existing because you're constantly changing all the time see a lot of people they'll say that the self is a thing as though it was a noun right I am a now I'm a thing I'm a person but actually you're not a noun what you are on this second level that we're talking about is you're a verb you're not you you're being you and being is a process this is a dangerous thing to do is is something called nominalization this idea where you take something that's actually a an active process and then you transform it with language and concepts into like this static thing which doesn't actually exist in reality right now I'm talking to you and my brain is rewiring itself as I'm talking to you I'm literally changing as I'm talking to you as I'm hearing what I'm saying that's creating more insights within me that's giving me even deeper understanding of myself all in the span of this this video that's happening right now so who I was when I started shooting this video is not who I am right now in the middle of the video and when I finish this video I want to be a little bit different it's a subtle difference it's not a life-transforming difference but you know what over the years these little differences add up and they can produce enormous changes which is how you can have someone who is fat their whole life then get skinny be shy their whole life then get really confident be horrible with money then start earning millions of dollars be horrible in business then create a billion-dollar business be horrible in relationships or marriages and then find his perfect dream girlfriend or boyfriend and partner for life this is how this stuff could happen and although it's rare it's not the norm you can have this happen in your life it's just a matter of being conscious about wanting it and going out there pursuing it and also knowing how to do it having the right tools strategies mindsets so be careful about this don't don't put yourself in this little box and tell yourself that you're this noun this thing actually you're a process it's always evolving sohow faith that changes are happening within you all the time you just need to direct them in the in the right direction a little bit your brain is literally changing itself every minute good the next point I want to talk about is that you have to realize that this self-image that you have which is a bunch of beliefs about yourself you have a self-image that tells you how beautiful you think you are how attractive you think you are to the opposite sex how good you think you'll be in business how good and talented you think you are at art or at math or science or learning or any other kind of skill in life you have a self-image that tells you how good you think you are as a human being how much value you feel you have in society relative to other people your self-image tells you how how often you think you'll succeed versus how often you think you'll fail and all of this is beliefs and these beliefs they've all been installed simply through your upbringing a lot of people they get very attached to these beliefs and they say well this self-image just is really me this is who I am no you got a you got to be a little bit less serious about it the fact is that your self-image has been shaped largely by influences outside of your control literally by a random fluke look you haven't to be born in a certain country at a certain time instance in in modern society you happen to be raised in a certain type of family go to a certain type of school hang out with certain types of friends watch certain types of TV engage in other certain types of media movies and magazines and books and all these things a lot of them were just random someone gave you a book you read it it changed some part of your self-image you watch the random show on the television that change your self-image somebody called you a bad name at school when you're grown up that affected your self-image your parents maybe they neglected you that affected your self-image but all these things are very random they might have been totally different just complete fluke random it's kind of like noise in the system and a lot of people what I see them doing is they take this noise and they get attached to it they say oh this is me this is me this is who I am don't tell me to change this I'm proud of Who I am there's nothing really to be proud of in this noise don't take it too seriously sure I mean be proud of your accomplishments and be proud of the challenges you went through life but don't be so attached to is so clinging to it that you're so closed-minded now that you can't expand yourself more don't don't don't use this idea to to limit you all your ideas in your self-image should be enabling you to expand even further that's what I want so don't turn your past behaviors your past successes and your past failures into a definition of who you are because you're an undefinable thing you're a limitless thing literally your potential life is so amazing so vast you could take your life in any direction you want right now literally any direction you want you don't even imagine all the directions you could take it in because it would it would overwhelm your brain probably give you a headache but it's all there for you some of it might seem a little more natural than others some of some of those options might seem a lot more challenging or easy than others but you know what that that's fine that doesn't necessarily mean much so here we're going to wrap up with this with this level number two and I want to talk a little bit about level number three because this is a much deeper level and this level really starts to boggle your mind really starts to mess with your concept of identity because we think about this identity we're so attached to our identities but actually what you can come to realize through lots of mindfulness work looking into enlightenment this idea that I'm talking about now is going to it's going to start to bleed into enlightenment and really what we're technically speaking is is this idea is that simply your identity is literally a concept and a concept is a figment of your imagination everything that is a thought that you have in your brain is a conceptualization of reality it's like a fiction of the real thing that's out there and this is the say this is the case with who you think you are and which you can actually discover this is kind of a freaky thing to discover this is the most freaky also the most threatening thing that you can discover is that you literally who you think you are including this body in this mind and this brain in your your past history that that is a fiction it's a very elaborate fiction created by your brain by your ego and which you'll really learn is that there is no authentic self because there's no self period what there is is there is just life living itself and what you are is you are just pure awareness pure awareness of life is what you are of course I'm saying this kind of like as a as a story to you so whether you believe it or don't believe it it won't get you far this is something you can only you can only encounter directly to lots and lots of introspection hard work which I'll help you do I'm going to create more videos about how to go in there do that kind of work but I just want to give you a bit of a preview of where all this stuff is going because it's exciting to think about this stuff at least domain this is kind of where all of personal development ultimately leads to is this kind of idea of no self is a very very powerful idea so whether you think that your pot your this positive person or this negative person whether you think all you have all these strengths and all these advantages to you or you think that you don't and the other what I'm telling you is that none of that stuff is actually real these are just like stories in your mind now what's nice about this is that you no longer need to be like stuck in life because of this you don't longer need to cling to stuff you no longer need to cling to yourself and you need this like sense of relief right because all of your tensions in life where they come from they come from having to preserve this self image which you've got costly preserving it constantly fighting for it constantly being this kind of survival do-or-die type of mode and this makes you very frantic it also makes you very selfish it makes you very petty and it really kind of like blocks you up when you can let go of that when you can let go of your ego when you let go of your selfish and pain desires then like you expand out right you expand you start to see yourself as being more connected with everything and when that happens then you're not held up by fears so much by limiting beliefs so much by all the stuff and all the kind of monkey chatter going on in your brain you let that stuff go and then what you find is you find that you get your best performance in life you find that you just flow smoother that you're like a you're like a superconductor right you're a superconductor of life like it's just electricity just like flows through you life force just flows through you become very creative you become very disciplined very organized very caring about others you really start to move towards this first level idea that I talked about which is all the details of the self actualized fully authentic self you really start to naturally just gravitate and kind of like flow towards that without having to work very hard which is really cool and watch is why I'm I'm so kind of excited about doing in light Network for me and showing you how to do it so that's pretty much it that's a very deep deep deep deep understanding of authentic self hopefully this gets you a lot more clarity when I talk about authentic self from now on I want you to to understand what I'm really talking about this higher level self not the petty self that you think you are and really what this just shows you is that you've got a lot of growth to do and there's so much potential for you there's so much you can have in life it's really a positive positive message this isn't the most positive message you could want is that you are this Sun and you don't need to worry about working too hard all you got to do is like wipe off that grime every day wipe off a little bit of that grime a little bit of that grime and like a new little ray of light will shine through and another one and another one and another one in all directions and then soon enough if you can you know do this personal development journey for a while and really work hard at it then you wipe away a lot of that grime then you can really shine you could turn into an amazing inspirational human being the kind of human being that you read about in a book or you watch a movie about where you hear a story about why do we have stories why do we have myths about these type of people because they inspire us they show us our highest potential they bring us to tears they make us emotional they inspire us to live life to the fullest because you've only got one life and it only lasts for so long and that length of time isn't very long all right this is Leo I'm going to be signing off this is how to understand the authentic self really fast any topic go ahead and post your comments down below please like this video click the like button if you did and of course share it share with your friends throw it on Facebook the more you guys share my videos the more popular they become the more I can release of them for free and finally come and sign up to my newsletter actualise org right here it's a free newsletter sign up and you'll be on track to get my weekly videos I release new content all the time my best content is yet to come I feel myself growing every day I feel myself more and more excited about the possibilities of shooting these videos every single day so many ideas to shoot literally have a list of over a hundred videos that I'm going to make and I love taking requests from you guys for more ideas so feel free to shoot them to me email a comment down below so sign up and you'll be on track with that right because this process of wiping away the grind that's basically what we're doing that's a metaphor for what all of this channel this website is about how to wipe a little bit more that grime off so that you can fully shine be your real authentic self and eventually get to a place where you discover no self which is the ultimate realization that you can have in this life and it's a really powerful it's a really exciting thing and I'm excited to help you to to progress on this journey no matter where you are from the beginning to the middle to the very very end so sign up and you'll be all set you