First of all, many congrats. All these are no small accomplishments!

Very curious if you can expand on this one:

> Eliminated anyone who is parasitic towards me

It would be interesting for me to know how you define "parasitic", and what you did about it!

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Thank you!

I would define 'parasitic' as anyone who takes up my time, energy, money, or well-being without giving much or anything to my life. I believe reciprocation and symbiosis are important to being healthy, balanced, and connected to nature.

I do my best to give more than expected to all my clients, friends, family, lovers. It's just my nature, I realized some people prey on people like me and it's my job to create boundaries if I am to be happy.

Congratulations !

> Scaled my agency/consultancy without any marketing, just referrals and word-of-mouth.

Any hints what do you do ? How lucrative is contract based development / consulting in general ?

Good work speaks for itself. I always go the extra mile for my clients, I save them money, time, and effort. I am transparent with pricing and have a one-page contract that is very direct.

I did this to fund my travels while I did a lot of inner work. I am now equally focused on my own projects as I am on my contracts.

It's not for everyone, this is the only way I knew to maintain my course towards my highest aspirations.

This is great! Nice work and keep it up.

No family responsibilities I take it? (As in you don’t have any kids). I think, off everything you listed if you were to do a 80/20 what’s the 20% here - eliminating parasitic relationships and having healthy habits ? Something different? You put out a long list but I think what the community is most interested is in understanding how they can make their (version of) big changes in their unfulfilled lives and what could they learn from your success. To that effect what’s the cornerstone or foundational things on which everything else was built in your case?

How do you feel after cutting out alcohol and weed? Have you noticed any benefits?

I feel a lot more clear minded, which makes deep work easier. I feel more in tune with my intuition, with drives my creativity. I don't waste time with people who have to drink/smoke to have fun. I make more time for my niece and nephew and my parents, I am a lot more patient with them.

I'm only 29 so this is all revolutionary for me, feels like I am hitting my full stride as I go into my 30's.

First let me say congratulations! I'm curious what triggered the change - I recently gave up FB and IG as well and honestly wish I had done it years ago!

Thanks! It was a number of things: knowing the emptiness of social media (for the most part), spending a lot of time out in the National Parks, taking care of my grandmother in her final month of life, dating an older woman for a few months, ayahuasca and bufo ceremonies, and knowing life is short.

All of this happened in the last year, so it was just a perfect storm of things at one time.

I'm living in a new paradigm I feel as I go into my 30's.

Sorry for your loss of your grandmother, congrats for your new life directions and realizations.

> spending a lot of time out in the National Parks

If you don’t mind me asking, which are your favorites?

An ex of one of my relatives loves going off on Yosemite hikes like the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne.

Thanks, I am grateful for all the time we had together. She was 86 and a widow for a long time, I am happy she isn't suffering anymore.

They are all pretty special but I really enjoyed Glacier National Park for the wildness, the bears, Going-To-The-Sun road.

I lived in Utah for a year and would highly recommend going there at least once to explore Moab and Zion areas. Grand Canyon is not far from Zion, it definitely lives up to it's name.

Congratulations! What was your framework for prioritizing which changes to tacke first, and implementing these changes?

Thanks!

Honestly, I just realized that life is short and most people go to their death beds without realizing their full potential because they are occupied with social concerns. Many people drop the quality of their life by living an unhealthy lifestyle that is disconnected from nature.

This all really set in for me after my grandmother, who I was very close to, passed away in December after having a stroke in November. I helped take care of her because she took care of me when I was a boy. Also, my 43-year-old cousin passed away from ovarian cancer in July. Got news of a kid I met only once being murdered during a robbery, he was only 24.

These realizations are put into practice with each breath, thought, word, and deed with the Eightfold Path that Buddha laid out 2,500 years ago. It's as relevant today as it was back then.

People close to me have died, and I found rather than adding desire to realize full potential, it took away my enthusiasm, because it emphasised the pointlessness and futility of everything I could do and might do.

When those you love are gone, the emptiness is so obvious. Even though the trauma and grief gradually heal, any sense of purpose seems like an empty, made up story. You know you'll die at some point too, everything you do will be undone, and the world probably isn't real anyway. Why even live?

It doesn't stop me working on projects. But they do seem relatively pointless in the end.

The one thing that seems to give things I do value, is when others value them. I'm never sure if that's because they see something I don't, or if they are deeper into self-made illusions.

I don't mean trivia like clothes, status, social media. I mean things others really value, like time together, listening, caring, assisting, relief from poverty, their health, happy times, friendship, that sort of thing.

So from that point of view, I think social concerns of a certain variety are to be prized. Maybe they are the only thing that has meaning.

What you are describing is dukkha and it is something we all know deep down. Aging, sickness, and death are facts of life, this is part of samsara.

This can be seen however a person wants to see it. I am ennobled and encouraged by it, I value life more having seen death up close.

There is a balance and everything is interdependent, so nothing exists in isolation. I do my best work and thinking when alone at my desk or out in nature. Time away from society makes me value time with my family more.

I serve others and create value for them through my agency and I serve society at large with the things I am developing, maybe attending YC for. I have always strived to be of value to society, to make something of lasting value. Now I am.

Instead of living from the mind, I now live from the heart. It looks 'dumb' to the intellectuals but the 'simple people' of the world know this to be wisdom.

Oh dude congrats! That's a whole decade worth of wins right there. Keep it up!

Can you share your blog?

I haven't published it yet, I will share some posts here when I do. They are topics/guides HN would find value in.

What is deep work?

See http://www.calnewport.com/books/deep-work/

Which flip phone?

The is the real question

I am waiting to purchase this : Nokia 2720 Flip [1]. I think it would be a great replacement because it has 4G support, Google Assistant, Maps, and Whatsapp. Pretty simple but also, suffices basic needs.

[1]https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-2720-flip

Thanks for the link! Been looking for something like this.

by 'dhyana' you mean meditation?

Meditation is a bloated term in 2019, spiritual materialism is rampant as well. I am Indian-American and feel more connected to the Sanskrit words for things, they are simpler and more descriptive at the same time.

what would be a good example of spiritual materialism? like meditation centers such as Maharishi in Iowa or Vipassanā?