Appreciation

by Uli on Threesome, Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

3 Habits that Help Me to Live in the Present Moment

Do you know this feeling of losing control over your time and energy? This feeling of being controlled by external forces? If not I envy you. These days I feel like I’m burning out a bit.

Jobwise but also socially a lot of commitments gnaw away my energy – finishing video projects in one job, long nights at the bar-job, mulled wine at the Christmas market ;), family meetings and so on and so on. Plus: I stress myself out in order to finish my personal goals for this year. The end of the year should be the time to hibernate or at least recover and reset, but somehow it is the opposite – busy as f***.

Of course it is up to me, but somehow I can’t help myself right now. Well, there is something I can do in order to reclaim control: Aiming for a life in the present moment!

Time to pull the handbrake – Another threesome is overdue! 😉

1. Breathing actively

Yes, the good old breathe. Without it our whole body wouldn’t work. It doesn’t only provide every cell in our body with oxygen. It also relaxes us. If we pay attention to our breathe we become aware of our body. And as soon as we focus on our body we forget our daily and mainly trivial problems.
That’s why I started to breathe more thoughtfully. Especially in stressful situations a few rounds of deep inhalation and exhalation release a lot of tension.

I always imagine how clean air is flowing into my body. From my nasal wings the air flows into my lungs, where it spreads out into every tiny fibre of my chest. All of a sudden my chest is filled with fresh air which starts circulating through the rest of my body. It wanders through my arms into my fingertips and from my belly into my legs and toes.

Every part of my body gets subserved with oxygen. Through this image I arrive in the present moment as my thoughts become obsolete. Just try it yourself.

2. Acknowledging my location

Well, often the breathing goes hand in hand with locating myself: On the way to the subway I acknowledge my surrounding – the trees, the sky, the colours, the air. I try not to think about my tasks at work.

The other day I read something interesting about “stress”, which made me realise that stress is just an invention of the western society. In Namibia for example the word stress doesn’t even exist. They divide time into rooms. In every moment you are present only in one room. You only act, live, love or work in one room. The next action will eventually take place in a different room. But now you exist only in this one room, so there is no need to be bothered about the next room.

Everything, every action has it’s time and it’s space. If you brush your teeth you don’t tie your shoes. If you tie your shoes, you are not at the subway. If you are in the subway you can’t be bothered about your job. If you experience the present moment – the room you are in – you can’t be bothered about the future.

3. Remembering that I am not my thoughts

We were born with the absence of thoughts. When we were born we didn’t have thought in our head. Basically we were the essence of life, pure existence, true love or however you want to call it. We didn’t have all these doubts and questions in our head. Sometimes in stressful situations I really like to go back to this place in my head. It helps me to take things more easily. I try to see my thoughts just as something temporary that can’t effect my mood.

Just give it a try and drop all your thoughts. Remember that your thoughts are just something superficial you can easily leave behind. Feel the relief and the freedom. This is meditation too.

“That is the simple secret of happiness. Whatever you are doing, don’t let past move your mind; don’t let future disturb you. Because the past is no more, and the future is not yet. To live in the memories, to live in the imagination, is to live in the non-existential. And when you are living in the non-existential, you are missing that which is existential. Naturally you will be miserable, because you will miss your whole life.”

Osho

 
by Uli on Threesome, Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

3 Habits That Make Me Happy(ier)

I still suck at meditating. I’m far away from being a non-smoker (after announcing “I quit smoking” several times.) Sometimes I even leave the house without brushing my teeth (luckily I store a toothbrush at the office). I feel so ill-disciplined in many ways.

BUT in order to stay motivated in the process of incorporating positive new behaviors, I want to share even my small successes and learnings with you. (That’s the whole idea of growthbuddy). There are some healthy things I integrated (nearly) without any effort into my everyday life that improve my day.

I figured that “three” is a good number to skim through. 🙂

1. Showering Cold

In July I read a facebook post about cold showers. This friend was literally raving about the revolutionary effect of cold showers on his life. I was fairly impressed. The benefits of contrast showers in “Kneipp” manor in order to increase the blood circulation were not new to me. In the past I experienced cold showers as an unbeatable hangover-cure. So I gave it a go.

The water in Munich is freezing cold, but luckily it was boiling hot summer during that time. “Why not have this feeling of jumping into a mountain river every morning?”, I thought to myself and ever since I’m finishing (not beginning;) my showers cold.

What can I say? The effects I’ve noticed after three months are staggering:

  • I feel more awake – also during the whole day. No coffee can unleash this level of energy.
  • I feel stronger and happier, because I already master a challenge before I even leave the house. 😉
  • My body is toning automatically: Hot showers increase the blood circulation too, but cold showers are also triggering the so called “brown adipose tissue”. In other words: They burn more fat! Besides that cold showers help draining fluid retention in the body.
  • My hair is more healthy as cold water treats the hair structure.
  • Hungovers are easy to tackle as cold showers help detoxing.;)

2. Stretching and Squatting

During the past ten years I’ve been trying different sports: Yoga, Functional Training, Parcours, (Russian) Martial Arts, Qi-Gong, Running. During the last years I went to the Bouldering gym regularly, but the gaps between my visits vary a lot.

I still exercise as often as I can, but I just don’t really stick with anything. But there is something I found out, that helps me to improve my over-all well-being during the day: Stretching!

What do I do and why?

  • Before I go to bed and in the morning I do back stretches like a forward bend, some qi-gong movements or tricks of my favourite youtube fitness trainer in order to relieve stress and sleep (or wake up) easier.
  • Bridge or downward-facing-dog or even practicing handstand at lunchbreak before the afternoon-low is kicking in (or to cure it).
  • Writing an e-mail or brushing my teeth or doing whatever (sometimes even waiting for the bus, if not too many people are watching) in deep squat position.

Stretching is good. We all know that. The trick is, that I try to integrate it into my day-to-day life as often as I can. I don’t need to “find the time”. But these small exercises help me to relieve stress or tension in my back and my whole body feels more refreshed. I can’t really give you the scientifical reason for it, but it feels like my feet are warmer as well.

3. Walking Different Ways Home

Even if I live in the self-pro-claimed “bike city” Munich, I prefer walking to riding the bicyle. Sometimes I move my ass on the seat of my mountain bike to cruise down Isar – the river in Munich, but I avoid the city traffic completely.

Mainly I’m just lazy, but also I’m afraid of dying – it might sounds ridiculous, but I’m paranoid because of the traffic and the other bikers (because they are so fast and rude, haha.) Instead of stepping into the pedals I read books in the subway and go for extensive pavement walks across the city.

After work I’ve started to drive one station too far or I take a different line to a different area from where I can reach my home within a 20 minutes to two hours walking distance. (depending on how much time I have).

On Sundays the “left-right-left-game” became my favourite occupation. Instead of choosing a route, I navigate into a rough direction and turn left and right alternately. It always leads me to surprising places. I discover new interesting restaurants and meet different people. Sometimes I even walk home 10 km from the city centre just to get “a better feel” for the distances.

What are the benefits of walking?

  • Walking calms my nerves down, when I feel over-exerted or brain-wrecked it improves my over-all well-being.
  • An additional plus to the physical and mental benefits is the fact that I get to know the city much better. Sometimes I even walk slow intentionally to acknowledge my surrounding.
  • I walk between 8 and 15 km nearly every day.
 
by Uli on Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

A Few Things I Understood Recently About The Universe and Myself

There are a few things I understood recently about the universe and myself. But in order not to confuse you too much, I have to start somewhere else..

Part One – Stories of My life

I sent my last post to a friend and he told me with other words, that I seem like an over-optimizer, who is getting lost in too much input.

Well, that blew my mind. I couldn’t believe that he doesn’t see that I’m “on the right track”. I was so sure that my approach is the right one. I thought I just have to tick off the list of self-improving advice and than I can handle my everyday life much more effectively and satisfying.

Unknowingly in the same chat this friend pointed out something really important to me: “Everything will turn out fine by itself. Just stop worrying about it” (Sideinfo: He is more the rational type of guy. He is probably not even the adressee of this blog.)

Don’t get me wrong – I still believe that positive affirmations are a good thing and that fear-setting is a good idea and I’m sure I will dig in deeper in these topics. But I won’t force it.

The funny thing is, that I always know what to do, but I don’t understand what NOT to do. Because there is exactly NOTHING I HAVE to do in order to become a better human being (whatever that means).

Well, there is another incident I want to showcase in this article:

The last weeks I met a lot of people I could connect with. I have to tell you one story of my daily life:

I had a video shooting at a trade fair near Munich and it was a few tough days of work. After finishing this job I was exhausted and a bit depressed, because these kinds of jobs sometimes eat too much of my energy.

Well, I was not in the best place on that day. But for some reason I decided to go to one of the second hand shops in Munich and buy a Dirndl, a traditional bavarian dress. (In this context it is important to know, that I always rejected Dirndls, because I just couldn’t relate to them.) Well, all of a sudden I felt the desire to honour Munich in this way or something like that.

Anyway, the main information is, that I was very very happy after buying this Dirndl, haha. Than I walked down Bayerstraße, a very busy street in Munich these days during Oktoberfest. It didn’t bother me, because there is this vietnamese Restaurant I wanted to try in a while. (Since a few weeks I consider Curry as my “soulfood”;)

I stepped in – still stoked about the purchase of my beautiful dress. Right at the doorstep I bumped into two guys I knew. They greated me with “I know you”. Surprise, surprise, I thought to myself. “Did we meet here?”, Iskender was talking about the restaurant. From the first sight I knew exactly where I met them: “No, we practiced AcrobaticYoga together”, I answered.

My next impulse lead me to a separate table – clutter voice in my head said “What ever… just some of these people…” But another voice from deep inside of me said louder: “You can really relate to these guys” In this moment Iskender waved me over to sit on the table and eat with them.

I ordered this delicious Massamancurry and I shared stories with Oscar and Iskender. Immediately I could tell them about my odd ideas about life and starting businesses like printing individualised toilet paper, haha.

“I like your way of thinking”, Oscar, the other guy paused dining – for a fractional part of a second it seemed like the world had stopped. And all of a sudden this deep sense of understanding filled the air.

Afterwards I was presenting Iskender my whole emotional life for two hours and he opened himself up as well. That night I drove home – knowing, that I had just made new friends. I was exchanging life perspectives with these guys I bumped into RANDOMLY.

Similar situations like this happened over and over again the last weeks… It was just crazy.

Why am I telling you about all this? As I told you at the beginning – I learned something VERY meaningful the last weeks from these situations, which happened unintentionally to me:

I don’t have to plan anything. I dont have to decide. I don’t have to force myself.

All I have to do is to “let go”. And in this way I finally agree with my friend, who I reminded on this hyper-optimization geek type of person.

Just by being “open” just by letting go and following my excitement (eating curry) a miserable day turned into one very fateful…

Part Two – The Coherence Between The Universe and “Letting Go”

“Believe in the universe”

This sentence is on my mind since a very long time. I talked to another friend on the phone the other day and he said. “Forget about the universe. You just have to believe in yourself.”

Well, I figured that it is important to consider every advice as potentially life-changing. But also I have to process advice to deeply comprehend it before I can relate to it.

So, tonight I figured out, that believing in the universe and believing in myself is exactly the same thing, which eventually leads to these incidents I told you about above.

Because “believing in the universe” just means, that it is already there. The universe is there, every desire is already fullfilled, if we believe in it. What is my desire? My desire is to make deep connections with people. My desire is to find friends and not to be alone anymore.

And what is believe? Believing means to accept everything that appears. Believe is to open up for every opportunity that appears. The opportunities are always there. We just have to see them/be aware of them.

And how can I open up? By “letting go”….

Letting go means – putting no pressure on my body and my mind – a very very long time I thought I have to force myself to do things. I have to force myself to excersice, I have to force myself to learn new skills, I have to force myself to get out of my comfort zone, I have to force myself to work in new jobs, to get to know people and so on and so on. I even thought I have to force myself to find purpose in my life.

I’m so happy, that I can finally (kind of) frame my thoughts and that I finally understood, that I DO NOT have to force myself…. It’s just one of these days, when I have this (illusion of) clarity.

What Else did I Learn?

1. Questioning is My Tool

Every sentence, that questions my thoughts and my way of thinking is helpful for me. Questioning things acutally is my tool. It is my tool to develop a new way of thinking. I can’t believe I didn’t realise it all the last years.

2. I’m My Own Teacher

“If the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

This is also a quote haunting in my brain for a very long time. It turned out, that it manifested in my subconsciousness more than I expected. I always asked myself, who this teacher is? Again I thought I HAVE TO find the teacher. FINALLY I understood, that I am the teacher. No – I have to put it differently – the teacher is within me. I just have to let him/her/it guide me by – again – “letting go”.

3. The Difference Between Forcing Yourself and Taking Action

Taking action is – making the first step and than “let go”.

The last weeks I learned, that there is a difference between forcing myself and taking action. Of course I need some discipline, but if I follow my excitement everything will just happen. Like right now –  I just let go. I follow my thoughts and they are like a flow of solutions. They are already there. They are in my body and in my mind. I don’t have to force myself. I just LET GO.

4. Everything Happens for a Reason….

Upcoming Articles should might be about:

  • my tools
  • the teacher
  • how to let go
  • awareness

I love life.