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Brojo: The Integrity Army
Public • 186 • Free
27 contributions to Brojo: The Integrity Army
3d ago inÂ
What It Means to be Kind to Yourself [pt.1 Self-Love Series]
Daily Dose of Integrity New full length video out today! This video is part 1 of a 6-part series on loving yourself. Let's tackle the struggle of self-acceptance and kindness. I've been frustrated that common self-love advice often lacks practical application, so I wish to provide a solution. This video looks at causes of stress, such as societal pressures and the inability to let go of control, leading to self-loathing and fluctuating self-worth. We'll investigate how coping mechanisms like overworking, substance abuse, and people-pleasing as signs of unresolved self-acceptance issues. We'll look at increasing self-acceptance through the art of reducing stress and fostering genuine kindness towards oneself, akin to how one treats loved ones. Watch the video here: https://theinspirationallifestyle.com/what-it-means-to-be-kind-to-yourself-pt-1-self-love-series/
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New comment 2d ago
3 likes • 3d
A lot of shame and deservingness issues have come from recently trying to consider actually spending my days doing what I enjoy. Ultimately I really want to spend most of my day doing deep math and unwind in the evening playing music, playing with my dog and doing a bit of reading in other topics. As it is my days are often taken up by meetings (6 hours total this Monday >:( ) as well as various errands and busywork. This makes me rather miserable and gives me impulse towards substance abuse to cope and get the tasks done with less unpleasant feeling If I can somehow reduce the total meetings + busywork time to no more than 2-3 hours a day, that would really make a major different in my quality of life and day to day happiness. At this point, though it averages 4-5 hours a day, which really prevents a complete day of deep math then proper relaxation, and so feels overwhelming as far as figuring out how to actually get to that ideal
8d ago inÂ
Time Management and Priorities while getting the most out of life
One of the things that did come up is that in general the project I am working on is very challenging, and so spending 60-70 hours a week on math is necessary in order to develop the research successfully. Overall I mostly enjoy, and can, as Brojo suggested, cultivate enjoyment of all of the actual momentary activities of it. However it doesn't leave much time for other things. But at the same time other things are not so valuable. Emotionally I do have a desire to practice music more than the 5-10 hours a week that the work regimen allows me for. But at the same time I suppose it is purposeless recreation. That is, I did fail as a musician and am generally poorly regarded as a musician and performer in general. So I don't add much value to the world by playing and so engaging with music is self indulgent. Now, with pickup and sex I've made peace with it, but that was easier because I at least had the experience of being sexually attractive and having a highly pleasurable exciting sex life in my 20s, at the sacrifice of having to spend a full time job worth of time on pickup study and practice as well as drug use to make myself more charismatic. And with hedonism rather empty at the end of the day, I can look back at an active sex life as simply a nice memory from my youth. And since I don't want kids there's no external reason to pursue women in that respect. However, with music, I never had the exciting experiences of performing for large audiences. So it's a bit more difficult emotionally to say that I will treat it as a hobby to enjoy myself and refrain from pursuit of performance beyond occasional open mics or busking and refrain from recording and releasing my compositions. I suppose one possibility is having some point in the future to aim for, say in 5 years, when I am successful enough to obtain a semblance of professional security and be able to reduce my work hours closer to 50 and then spending more time on music then. But that's a big if. So is this a matter of simply emotional processing, that is "grieving" that dream of the "compelling musician" experience?
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New comment 5d ago
2 likes • 6d
@Charan Arora Thanks. I talked with a friend about this yesterday for a while. It seems there is an element of shame in actually doing what I enjoy doing for its own sake without other's approval, which as you suggested triggers my obsessive weed consumption. Then indeed it should be that I will play music at home as something to enjoy doing at the end of the day for a couple hours. The hip hop performance thing, it's still a good time and not at all shameful to play at open mics and busk in relatively sparse areas and connect with the occasional person who appreciates it. And for my other instruments, the plan is to just enjoy playing and composing for myself without any intention of performing or releasing my music. Rather just treat it as recreation for my own enjoyment.
2 likes • 6d
In listening to some more of Brojo's recent psychopath course (which is not a shade short of absolute genius, btw) I realized I was making a judgment myself: that by saying that just because a tiny % of people like me doing something then I shouldn't do it publicly, I am actually judging those tiny % of people. There was a show last year, the second video actually, where at the end there were only two audience members. But they still had a good time with my freestyle and I had a pleasant social evening with them after the show. It's expected that half of open mic acts will suck. So if with my hip hop and even other instruments, if I have some songs that I feel express everything I want to express with them, even if most people are bored out of their minds and one person is vibing, why is that a problem? Similar I can be busking on a less busy street and most of the time have a pleasant afternoon playing music in the sun, and occasionally make a friend for an hour or so, then there's no loss, I'm not wasting my time, and I'm also not imposing on people.
9d ago inÂ
Resources and Recommendations Thread
Hey everyone I'll pin this post as a thread we can use to recommend and request resources from each other. So comment below either with your recommended resources (e.g. books, videos, courses you found helpful - from anyone) or ask for recommendations to help solve your issues.
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New comment 5d ago
5 likes • 8d
An excellent book that I believe goes well with Brojo's philosophy is The Pragmatist's Guide to Life by Malcolm and Simone Collins. It presents a comprehensive guide as to how to deliberately define your objective function (the general target of your pursuits), intellectual anthropology (philosophy and spirituality), inner core values, outer behavioral social values, and aesthetics, in a top down congruent way
10d ago inÂ
Ask Dan Anything! Your Confidence Building Questions Answered
In this AMA, I answer the following questions about confidence: - What's the best way - strategies, methods - to really get to know myself and like myself? - How can people stop defining themselves - their actions, life view etc. - by the Nice Guy Syndrome? - Any suggestions and advice for a work confrontation with a colleague who tries to control me? - How to push through with Radical Honesty without backing down when they're resistant? Thanks to the Leaderboard Winners for October for their questions. Hope my answers help!
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New comment 5d ago
5 likes • 10d
Thanks so much, that is really great Preparing for the worst case scenarios and being OK with them is something I just recalled is something the Stoics advocated for A bit grim, but actually I see the logic in "nothing to lose": First fear is everyone gangs up on me "why can't you put your personal conflicts aside and just cooperate" etc. But then just staying firm and saying no is only a matter of discomfort, which is no big deal in the grand scheme on things The real risk is if there is indeed some stipulation in the contract or the department that would permit him to exercise power, or require me to work with him directly. OK then, I still say no. Let him flail about and actually try to enforce it. But immediately reach out to all my contacts in the field outside the EU to prepare to flee (even write a couple today just as a casual just in case stand by inquiry) If as a result I'm fired and/or he sues me, then I apply formally to these other positions. And on to the grim part: if I cannot find an academic math research job anywhere, and so then I have no other choice but to depart life itself, well then so be it. This would still be significantly more preferable to submitting to his authority. Ergo, nothing to lose Putting it in this light makes me realize how my catastrophizing has been just unnecessary suffering. Before modernity, we were never guaranteed a high degree of certainty into the future. An animal simply does not know if it will find food today, the next week, etc. but its job is to try and keep going as long as it can. Similarly going back this year, rather than all of the unaliving ideation and drugs, I should have just pushed back to start with, as you said, from the first inch. Of course if that all resulted in me not having and not being able to find a math research position, then death is the optimal choice. But let HIM make all the steps and actions that would take me there, don't worry about things getting to that grisly end thousands of times in my head, torturing myself.
3 likes • 9d
So it went down today. A few general points: 1) These things are often less conclusive than anticipated. It is more of a start to me having to regularly and constantly say NO to this guy, rather than him stopping his abuse 2) My boss had disappointed me, in the Fall we had discussed the details for this guy to pay me for work he hadn't paid me for that I did in 2023, to complete next year. However, all he had were loose notes rather than the concrete details. So the enemy, in ruthless psychopathic fashion, just flat out refused. The boss accommodated by agreeing to pay me for the work from his budget. 3) The most important thing, that essentially I have control over my budget and specific work, was established. However, it also means a lot of deliverables that is contractually obligatory. 4) Fortunately the work for the project will not be a complete waste of time -- I can make generalist research and software so as to be useful for other projects during and subsequently 5) Overall, it seems it's neither the complete relief that I hoped, nor the utter despair of making arrangements to conclude my life with some sort of excitement. Rather it's war, continuously refuse this colleague, while doing strong performance on the project. After it ends, I should hope to improve my overall profile as well as have a bunch of software libraries that I can use for more research, and even do commercial consulting with. In that sense I should expect to be forced, due to his grip on office politics here, to seek a new position after the project concludes in early 2028, so I should best prepare for this moment.
14d ago inÂ
Q+A session moved to Wed
Hey winners of last months leaderboard, I've had to move the Q+A backa couple days, cheers
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New comment 9d ago
3 likes • 11d
I cannot join tomorrow morning, so I will write my question here: Thursday I will have an important meeting. With the colleague I had been struggling with, there is one more project left. However, formally he doesn't supervise me but we are both Principal Investigator (him of the company, me for the university). He is still pushing me to work on his preferred topics and to just make code for him rather than do research, which would be destructive for my career. He left me with minimal budget to solve a very difficult problem, not enough to hire staff to help. I talked to my boss and he is supportive of my preference to instead do research and make open source code and have a small separate module for his company, and also to hire staff partly financed from other projects. It appears, from what we looked at the contract, that my preference is legal. I'll try to "declare independence" Thursday. Of course, the colleague tolerates nothing less than complete subservience, and has plenty of power as far as connections and purse-strings. So I am concerned as to how it'll go. I realized after watching your videos on stress and pressure that, even for my survival, if he finds some loophole to force power over me, I'll have to flee. Working under his authority this year has resulted in my having regular self-deleting ideation that I've only managed to self-medicate by getting back into hard drugs, (now off and recovering). But if I drop the project, he will sue me for breach of contract so I'd have to find a job in Asia or somewhere. If I do manage to escape his power and work independently, though, as the project is very difficult (although well interesting mathematically) it will mean 60 hour work weeks for the next couple of years to adequately perform. But, if my research and software development is outstanding then it'll create an excellent base for my career subsequently: 1) I can use the software for many additional researcher and commercial projects, and 2) the company may make him pursue more projects with me, giving me hand in the negotiation of the contract.
3 likes • 11d
@Kent Curry Thanks for your support Kent. I have already learned a lot from Dan as far as mistakes I made in not identifying the red flags in this guy, and letting him get away with exploitation before out of people pleasing instincts, that led me to being at the point that I am. So at least already I can appreciate from my time here that if I make it through this the odds of it happening again are now much lower. It'd also solve a lot of other problems, for instance the motivation. I've noticed after having to deal with him it's very difficult to stay focused and enthusiastic, but if I don't talk to him for a while but do talk to other mathematicians who I work well with, I can let myself enjoy the mathematics a lot more. So I really have to do my best to push for independence despite the general "everyone should work together in harmony don't be so obstinately uncooperative" attitude they may have
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Active 19h ago
Joined Jul 22, 2024
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