When you hit rock bottom, lick your wounds, do some push-ups and keep going.
Change Of Thinking
Power is Playfulness or How To Spread Light
Do you know these people who set the room on fire with their energy? It can be a colleague, a friend, a friend of a friend, a family member or somebody else you met personally. They spread such a lightness. Their mood affects the whole group.
Intuitively they seem to respond to every (social) situation. They seem to express themselves naturally – in a way like nothing can interfere with their peace. A welcoming aura surrounds them that draws you in…
What do they do differently?
I ask some counterquestions:
When was the last time you started singing in the shower as loud as you can? When was the last time you were smiling at a stranger? – Not just a friendly smile, but a smile from the bottom of your heart? When was the last time you were happy for no obvious reason?
How many days do you spend caught up in the bubble of your head? How many days are you putting up a mask?
The core of our being supplies us with energy. And this energy manifests in happiness, appreciation or expression of excitement.
This energy radiates from the core of our being – if we let it. But a lot of times we don’t let it.
So what about these people who are like a warming fire on a winter’s night?
The energy that radiates around them is the energy of a kid climbing a tree. They act out their inner child – with grace and wonder. They are never getting out of touch with their playfulness.
They don’t only express their excitement (verbally or with their behaviour), but also their vulnerability. And this is what creates trust and in the end encourages people to be themselves too.
They are the real role models – the ones who demonstrate confidence without being manipulative.
Love circulates around them.
If we want to manifest love we have to stop creating walls that disconnect us from our environment and ourselves.
Our mind is always trying to protect ourselves. We are trying to ‘fit in’. This is how our society is organized. We have to fit in. We have to adapt. We can’t follow our own rhythm.
But this is what moves us away from a purposeful and authentic life. And this is the root cause of all problems.
‘Owning your power’ means to be able to celebrate our singularities in any given moment – without a self-regulating voice in our head that tells us how to behave.
To surrender to the moment equals to surrender to yourself.
We have to encounter ourselves and the world around us with kindness and admiration of what is.
This is spreading the seed of unconditional love. This is how we create a sanctuary for the ‘un-loved-ones’ – everybody who is craving connection.
“Breaking the ice” means melting the hardcover.
If we keep sustaining our hardcovers we suspend ourselves from life.
With vulnerability and approachability compassion is possible.
This is how we connect with each other on a core level – by sharing this little spark inside of us.
Let us be the people who shine the light and set the world on fire.
New Years Thoughts
Don’t focus on your limitations. Integrate your feelings. Allow your excitement to pass. Rest whenever possible. Don’t chase happiness, but chase authenticity. Always choose yourself. No matter what life gives you, believe in yourself. Shine. Show your beauty beneath your sadness. Don’t ever be desperate. Just breathe. You can master every challenge. Your strength is beyond what you can ever imagine. Trust in what others see in you. The more you show your true self, the more others can see your true conditioning and this is what you truly are. Trust that what you can see is the reflection of your challenges. These challenges are your work. Smile at all your challenges. Welcome them with open arms. Like old friends. You have been knowing each other for all of your life. Be happy whenever they show up. They are your life. They are your process – nothing more and nothing less. They are the path.
Never give up improving yourself. As soon as you stop trying to get better you stop living. This will to improve yourself is your life force. This is your excitement. Your source of energy. The right person will come who will notice. The person will come who pays attention to what you are. There will be somebody. There will be more than one person who appreciates you for all that you are. Life will reward you for your patience. Trust in that. This is your life’s journey. Remember, you do one step and the universe does three. It is taken care of you as soon as you set your intention right. And what is the right intention? It is based in trust and appreciation. You can only set an intention from a place of absolute appreciation. Gratitude is the fertilizer for your life journey. Everything relies on that. You can achieve nothing without appreciation. Everything becomes a fight and a struggle if you choose your direction from a place of fear.
Failure and mistakes. Trial and error. They are a part of this. They should never lower your trust. Never. It is the opposite. You should be grateful to have them. As I told you, they are your guides. They are part of the plan.
Order and disorder lead to expansion. Without them nothing moves. Nothing within the universe and nothing in your life. Disorder forces you to move towards your pattern. The perfect imperfect pattern of your life. Chaos is a life force. There has to be chaos. There has to be confusion. There has to be struggle. There has to be fear and anxiety. They are the motors of transformation.
Just trust that life takes care of you. You are here to help. You can easily stay positive. You can easily stay connected. Your fears are fundamental. Your joy is fundamental. Every aspect of your nature is fundamental. Your whole being is funda-fucking-mental for the proceeding of the whole universe.
Please live your life with all the ups and downs. There is one thing that you should never loose and this is your momentum. Keep moving. Every push you get, every notion, every rage, every excitement – this is your momentum. Every sensation is here for a reason. They are reminders that you are still alive and you can make a difference. It makes you move. Your melancholy, your sadness, your desire, your imperfection. This is all that moves you. It is here to make you grow above yourself. And this is where you want to be. Beyond yourself. Beyond the definition of your so called personality. Your willingness to be a better person, to be your true self, makes you become a human. It instantly makes you who you want to become.
It is the time to trust. Trust that the right means will come into your life; trust that they are already in your life. Trust that your ego will be shattered. Trust that all your resistance that holds you back will be shattered.
It is already shattered if you allow it now. The ego makes space for love, acceptance and silence. This silence gives you the opportunity to finally listen to what life is trying to tell you.
When the ego is gone you can easily sit with your power without trying to control anything. You don’t take things personally anymore, because they have no impact. Your frequency responds easily to your surrounding. Intuitively you recognize what belongs to you and what doesn’t. Everything that doesn’t belong to you won’t be there anymore. Just relax.
Let go of everything – every minute of your life. Surrender. Surrender to the present moment. Surrender to what is.
Repeat those mantras that serve you – permanently.
Conflict is the Foundation of Compromise
All of my life I tried to avoid conflict. I’d rather shut my mouth, than having an argument.
I’ve started to learn about nonviolent communication years ago. Only recently I found out that I still had a massive misconception around this whole topic in my head.
I connoted conflict in a negative way. I thought it is a bad thing, so I avoided it – especially in intimate relationships. I thought it is bad karma, negative energy, the beginning of the end…
It is the opposite.
It sounds a bit contradictory, but conflict is positive. It is the foundation of compromise. (The diplomats of you will smile at me.)
How? Well, what happens when conflict arises? Let’s assume there are two people who don’t agree on a topic. They blame the other person for not being right. In reality these people are not able to express their needs in a way the other person understands it.
But guess what? We are all humans. So, if we express ourselves in a grounded and compassionate manner most likely the other person will comprehend our point of view.
This is all there is. This is all that needs to be resolved. If everyone would be able to articulate their needs in any given situation a conflict would be part of the solution.
There will be some amount of discomfort involved – sometimes the problem is might be very complex, but in the very end things will smoothly fall into place.
Imagine There Would Be No Past And No Future
Contemplate it for a moment.
The past experience is gone. The future will never come.
Just you and the moment, you and your body and the person in front of you.
There would be nothing to expect, nothing to anticipate.
There would be nothing to judge, because there would be nothing to refer to.
Information would only be available in the very moment.
There would be nothing to be afraid of.
Why? Because there would be no threat to foresee.
Objectively we would observe every object, every plant, every human in front of us.
The world would be full of miracle and full of wonder.
There would be no fear of the future, no fear of missing out and no fear of missing the whole point.
There would be only you with all your senses.
There would be you and your body.
You and your perception.
Your thoughts would be clear because your memories wouldn’t interfere with reality.
There would be only the eternal knowledge.
You would stop living in your head.
You would focus on your action only.
If there was no time, would there be a destination?
Casual Affirmation
Trust that things end when they are supposed to end.
Trust that the right beginning is just around the corner.
Trust that everything happens at the right time and things will fall into place.
Trust that you will have the perfect solution for every problem you are facing.
Trust that everything is already done.
The Emergence Of Excitement or ‘Can You Feel The Burn?’
I’m standing there – embracing the rush.
Love is running through my veins.
A stranger smiles at me – twice.
Another stranger is glancing gently.
It is this moment when I realize that I have found what I had been looking for.
Finally the fire in my heart is burning beautifully.
Where there was repulsion there is passion.
Where there was tension there is lightness.
Where there was envy there is compassion.
Where there was emptiness there is love.
A massive burst erupts the shell.
There is nothing to achieve.
There is nothing to detest.
There is nothing to desire.
All of a sudden I realize that there is no resistance left.
There is only “surrenderance”.
I breathe out everything. I give my lower belly another press to get rid of the last trace of resistance. And then I release my muscles completely.
“Germany is one thing: various,” says the advertisement of the German Government in the subway.
A tear is generously watering my eye.
I realize how much my perception had changed.
I practiced to see.
I practiced to learn.
I practiced to surrender.
All of this became a part of my life. I co-exist. I create energy from a magical place within.
I can easily breathe away the tension. The mentor is within myself.
Have I learnt to utilize my tools yet?
I can see beauty everywhere I go.
My ego is not being busy ‘getting’.
I can fully perceive. I can fully immerse if I’m fully perceptive of my environment.
How can I be fully perceptive?
By not taking things personal.
By not being busy fulfilling needs.
By observation instead of judgement.
By opening the heart and shutting down the mind.
By dropping prejudice, disbelief and compulsive behaviour.
What can happen?
Absolutely nothing if I stop controlling and finally allow imperfection.
I have to replace motives with sympathy, moral with truth, intention with action and hesitation with trust.
It is the recovery of authenticity.
Where does it all start?
It starts with a fire within.
When are you going to understand that the world owes you nothing, but you owe something to the world? – Your excitement.
Inverse Resistance
I lack the understanding of form. This is why I lack the understanding of symbolism. This is why I lack the understanding of boundaries.
Because form – in a sense of entities, in a sense of personalities or roles – doesn’t exist according to my understanding of the world.
This is why I CAN’T define myself or the other. I see through them. I see through me. I see them through me and me through them.
I see myself as a means of transport, a flashlight, a catalyst….
There is nothing to define. There is might be not even something to reflect? There is only to discover. But what there is to discover is not ‘something’. It is it – many before me named it – awareness, consciousness, oneness, ‘the way‘. In the end this is ‘us’.
My thoughts mask my consciousness. My thoughts are trying to define. This way they are closing my eyes.
Lacking the form is a good start. Probably this is something that distinguishes my way of thinking from the thinking of most beings. But the mask is there.
Expansion means to get rid of this mask, get rid of all thoughts. A beginning would be to not believe them. To not do what they are telling me. At a max these thoughts want to point in some direction.
Do you want to come with me?
What is there? Fear? Anger? Doubt? What are you the most afraid of? What seems to be the biggest challenge of your life? Define it. The more precisely you can define it the more shockingly will be the impact. The impact on and of what? The impact on your belief-system by dropping this fear.
The thing you identify has to be the thing to fully let go of.
If you never got in touch with any form of meditation you might have issues with this, but you will get there.
Imagine this challenge, this fear. And now let go of it. How? Drop it, push it over the edge. It doesn’t belong to you. It is only a thought. So let go. Dive into trust instead. Completely.
I imagine this trust as a warming and comforting bathtub. The doubts and threats and dangers are imposed, constructed, dictated. They are trying to hold us back from diving into the soothing bathtub.
What’s the water in the bathtub? It is the essence itself. It is pure love.
If we are ready to immerse into the unknown we are going to experience it.
Resistance and disbelief are the fences. Prejudice and self-hatred are the bouncers at the doorway to paradise.
Paradise how I understand it – a place of unity, a place of wholeness, a place where true innovation is possible.
If we discharge our mind from its responsibility true innovation will be possible.
If we don’t believe our thoughts the unbelievable will be possible.
All we need to do is to get rid of our resistance and dive into trust.
About The Path
Don’t dream about the destination but enjoy your views.
Keep walking even though the trail gets narrow at times.
The conditions might change.
Intimidated by the fog you doubt the path.You may have to double check your map – make small adjustments.
Sometimes you might have to go back and change the route completely.
Or you have to drop weight because the load gets too heavy.The secret is to start every day with the first step.
It’s up to you either to resign – puzzled and paralyzed.
Or to keep calm, to settle within, to study the weather conditions. To adjust and equip and keep walking.
Don’t let the circumstances scare you. Be well aware and well prepared for change.
Let awe and admiration guide you, not dread and doubt or agitation.
This is perseverance. This is the path.
What Would Happen To Your Life If You Turned All The “Shoulds” Into “Dos”?
What would happen if you would pursue the thing you are the most interested in? What if you would choose the one thing you really want to have learnt at the end of your life?
Just imagine it for a moment. How would you feel? And now imagine you wouldn’t pursue this goal?
Yeah, you might fail. Yeah, maybe you will loose all your money, but what if you wouldn’t ever have tried?
What is holding you back from doing it? Is the voice in your head telling you that you don’t have time? You are not good enough? You were never good at it? You don’t have money? You are too old? Your friends won’t like you anymore?
“Your thoughts become your reality.” Yeah right, we’ve heard this a hundred of times.
Only now I understand how fundamental this impact is. If I think negative about myself, if I don’t trust myself, if I continuously think I’m not good enough I will never achieve anything. I will never feel content or satisfied with myself.
More than that: Self-hatred is what manifests. If I don’t change these thoughts I will never manifest self-worth. This is something I have to generate from the core of myself.
You might ask: ‘What does self-worth have to do with pursuing your passion?’
Everything! I have an example for this: Since some time I’m offering coaching in the field of my profession. I give storytelling and video production workshops.
But the beginning was rough. I thought “I’m not good enough.”, “What if I don’t have an answer to all the questions?” The first time I was really fucking nervous. I thought I can never master this. I can never carry the audience. I can never teach anything.
Now, nearly two years later I did it five times and my perspective changed completely.
The other day one girl from a course last year honoured me with the best compliment I’ve ever received in my entire life: “I learnt from you because you are so passionate about it.”
What did I do? I helped her editing a video. Together we shortened a four minute clip to 40 seconds. She told me the way I did it was so inspiring – so calm, with patience and sure instinct.
This blew my mind.
How did I get there? Yes, I learnt the software in university. Yes, I did a lot of internships. What happened? I just liked it. I started to experiment. I edited as much as I could and over the years snipping moving images became a second nature.
But how did this happen? I liked editing, so I edited.
“Make your passion your addiction.”
Now that I write it down here it sounds like a romantic life story. But I tell you what: There are dozens of skills I haven’t started learning yet, because I think I’m not good enough.
How could I not understand this? It is just about doing it. Doing one step at a time. Of course you are not a Mozart from the moment you are starting to compose music and you are not a Picasso the first time you wield the paintbrush. But you are getting there eventually (or at least a bit closer).
Your mind will find thousands of reasons not to aim for the things you really want to do. Is it a lack of money or talent. There will always be something else to do. Something more convenient, something easier or socially more accepted.
The secret is to just get started, to do the first step, to make space for the things you like, to make your passion your priority.
And what happens if you do something you like? You feel joy. So why not make it your addiction?
Make Your Passion Your Priority
Yesterday I was speaking with some people about this topic. There was a guy who just went through a similar learning experience like me.
Our question was: “What do people do differently who are always on ‘doer mode’?” Or my interpretation: What do people do differently who immerse fully in an activity? What do they do to not have these big walls of self-doubt? How do they make the critic shut up?
The secret is that they just follow their intuition. They don’t listen to these voices in their head.
And – if we want to hear it or not – we have the choice if we listen to the voices in our head or not.
What would happen if you would turn all the “I should’s” into “I do’s”? Your life might finally moves into the direction you want. You might discover joy within yourself.
If anybody tells you “follow your passion” is bullshit please don’t believe them.
Go on! “Follow your bliss” as Joseph Campbell would say.
“Finding your passion is the natural outgrowth of healing.”
Margaret Paul, Psychologist
Find your bliss or you will never find joy in your life. Be as passionate as you want. But be passionate. Make it your life mission. What else is this life about?
Life is about feeling alive. So do what makes you feel the most alive.
If you have other suggestions let me know. I’m open minded, but I prefer to do what makes me feel most alive rather than anything else.
“It is not a luxury to pursue this experience [passion], but a necessity. Without this special experience that gives meaning to our lives we tend to wander about, aimlessly looking for someone, something, or some substance to fill the void within us.,” says Margaret Paul. The author of the book I’m studying currently. It is called “Healing Your Aloneness: Finding Love and Wholeness Through Your Inner Child.”
When we are passionate we forget our problems. We are in the flow. We feel content. We get in touch with our true nature. If we manage to fully immerse in an activity there is no future and no past. We arrive in the present moment.
Is there anything healthier in this life than this feeling? I doubt it. By not pursuing our passion, we exist, but do we live? Come on…
Please double check your “I should’s”, your “I always wanted’s” and your “As a kid I always liked to do’s”.
It is up to you to fuel what you are passionate about.
If you can’t find anything it is might be a sign that you are caught up in self-hatred. Then this is might be something you want to deal with?
Go on. Aim for healing, but be nice to you. Give yourself time. Whenever you are impatient ask yourself, why you are in such a hurry to get through your life.
Be patient. Feed your body and nourish your soul and the rest will come.
Start with small changes. Surround yourself with people who do something completely else then you are doing. Get inspired. Don’t resign the battle.
Observe. Soak in the positive vibes of the people who found their bliss – without envy or resentment.
Just be happy to have the chance to be a part of it.
Go ahead and find your happy place!
“The ego is concerned with getting something while the inner self is creating. In this way creation is the motor for unconditional love. “