@Aaron Frater Yes, you're absolutely right. Diet is indeed central to everything, really. I remember an fitness expert say, that six-packs are made in the kitchen not in the gym. I'm not saying to go out and get one. Though through personal experience, once I'd a six pack, it made no darn difference to my life, except for the additional attention from others. Envy from few other men, who didn't have it. And from women, who attributed a six-pack to attractiveness, status and being virile,blah, blah. All untrue, by the way. Both are the wrong kinds of people to invite in one's life. And more importantly, for the wrong reasons. You showed interest in note-taking. Here is a brief description of the system, I use I use Notion with a GTD / PKM (Getting things done, Personal Knowledge management) template. Use Readwise as a read-later tool. The highlights I make there are synced to Notion. Notion has my main domains, Family life, Investor, Spiritual and Mental healing,etc Then projects, tasks are connected onto a calendar. A weekly review system,etc I can import ebooks, pdfs, all kinds of media into Readwise, thus it acts as a filter and top of the funnel for all information. The highlights with tags and comments are synced to Notion. From where they can be connected to domains / projects/ notes,etc. This way, I can have a 30,000 feet view from above and drill down to a road level in areas I want to. Notion is free, and Readwise requires a small payment. Readwise has a reader and the native app. The native app syns highlights from Kindle, iBooks,and many more apps to Readwise itself. So you can summarise it there. The reader has a cool text-to-speech feature so you can listen to books, and documents while walking,etc. I went through a cohort, two different ones, to learn the LIfe management system and the Inbox, calendar, note taking and essentially building a second brain. To control the information overload and manage the important bits that are the most important and meaningful to me.

@Aaron Frater Superb. Nice. I love the contrast between character traits that work and those that don't in your post. And this is how life is too. The more you fight its natural flow, the harder life knocks you around. I tend towards achieving more and being bold in success, and mostly overcompensate. During such foolish moments, I make wrong decisions and move back few steps. I do want to give up this Grandiosity armour and embrace Balance, humility and Flow.

My call was about immediate actions, I could take that would have the biggest payoffs. Improving my relationship with my spouse was the main topic we spoke about. Another theme discussed was not letting anything outside affect your peace of mind. Stoicism and rational thinking were also discussed. Would highly recommend a 1on1 with @Daniel Munro

@Aaron Frater The book is full of golden nuggets. It has helped me understand the 'abandonment distress' clearly. How it's formed in a child, step-by-step. The narcissism of the parent, who's carrying his/her childhood drama passes it onto the child. The projections and the inter projects More importantly, it shows how to reverse the split-off and hiding of the self that happened in childhood. This one has filled in a few gaps, and I'm more aware now that I've been trying to 'achieve/accomplish' my way out of Abond.Distress. And why no achievement was/is big enough to fill the depression. I will be kinder to myself and probably let a few of the achievement-based goals slip by the side. I've griefed, cried , talked,etc. But from the looks of it, I'm still holding on to a lot of grief and anger of my childhood and youth years wasted, the potential not put to good use, for me and the world. However, here is the catch. I'm going out to live out the development goals, while doing a balancing act of not overachieving as a way to feel worthy.

@Aaron Frater Yes, that's Introprojections. Here's coming at it from a different angle. Knowing that incomplete parenting caused stuff. However, the parent in question themselves were incomplete and hence they couldn't mirror back to the child his 'true self', rather they used the child to fulfil their unmet childhood narcissistic needs. Hence, the child, instead of seeing in the parent, a mirror of his good potentialities /qualities, saw instead a need /wish from the parent for him to be a particular way, and that got loved and encouragement. This is where the split-off happened and a false self started to form. The form that was projected from the needs of the parent. This parental need came from the parent's unmet childhood needs. So the bottom line is, it doesn't matter what happened, why it happened in our childhood. The point is, or more pointedly the million-dollar question is. What are you going to do about it? How can you use it as an empowering piece of of information to strengthen yourself to live your most expressive and potential exploiting life ever?

@Ernie Jamison you're right about that. Learning is one thing and doing is where the tyre meets the road. Will keep sharing the lesson and how implementing them goes. Not all may go well though.

@Aaron Frater Thanks for sharing. I totally get you. I've went through AA program in 2015, though I didn't hit rock bottom. I didn't want to take a chance as I had recovered from heroin addiction a decade and a half back, so I knew the addictive side of my personality. Lately, I've enrolled in the School of Hard Knocks. I Shoot, Aim, Ready. And sometimes, that doesn't go well. And there are setbacks and it hurts, especially given CPTSD and other stuff. However, I'll tell you this. It beats living in my head any day. I had a big setback today in trading, which follows a good week, preceded by a bad week earlier. I normally would go in a dark depressive mood, wanting to be alone, beating myself, etc. Today, I just embraced the data for what it was, minimal blame. And I've accepted the strategy isn't working and its caused a serious dent to my previous winnings. I'don't have to catastrophize the hell out of it. There's a lesson there, if I cut out the drama and the IC noise in my head. Learn it and move on, Life's really too short especially for our inner child who has yet to live out his development goals to thrive. Also, have come up with a plan to be able to step away from the computer screen and not be watching quotes the whole time. What a freedom that would bring. Also, this is not a recommended activity for someone with CPTSD or anyone with anxiety issues. Another aspect that came up while reading 'The Drama of the Gifted Child' was the Grandiosity and the Depression, being two sides of a coin called 'False self'. I've been trading big from the Grandiose side to attract the attention my inner child didn't get from my parents, except when over-achieving. And the depression that follows, when true love doesn't come, only second-hand emotions like short-term appreciation from others and that too, too little and not entirely heartfelt. Realizing that, I'm on this roller-coaster was an epiphany. So I will be 'feeling' through the depression and spending time mourning my missed childhood years and development goals. I've made a list to live some of them out too.

@Aaron Frater Even now, I'm guarded. Though, I've started to venture out a little bit. As not doing so would be avoiding/running away from facing uncomfortable feelings and situations. However, its better to grade a situation on two levels. How important attending it is in your overall life and then how you're going to 'handle' your discomfort and few special relatives/ friends who give you a hard time. This way, you pick the most important ones to attend and are prepared. The rest are optional to attend. A nice balance, don't you think?

@Daniel Munro sure thing, That's true for everything in life. We forget though..lately,.I've been reminding myself, "its just a game, nothing's for real...so relax, you're safe"