Minimum Survival Kit

I was a soldier in the Romanian army. For 6 months, I woke up at 5 AM each morning (except during the 6 nights of Romanian Revolution, when I didn’t sleep at all), I practiced fight techniques and learned tremendously..

Romanian army wasn’t what you may call a summer camp. On the contrary. It was a tough place to be in. From the physical environment to the relationship level, everything was rough. When it was cold, it was really cold, we had to sleep with clothes on and didn’t have any other way to get warm. When a superior asked something from you, you didn’t have any other choice than to obey. And most of the time the superiors were asking really humiliating things, like crawling in front of them in the mud for 15 minutes, for no reason at all, other than they being older than you in the army. It was a very clearly enforced power game. Also, when we’re doing fight exercises, sometimes we had to run continuously for 10 kilometers and more with all the fight equipment on us. No wonder that in only a few weeks from the beginning, a quarter of my group become regular clients of the infirmary.

Yes, it was a rough place, but it also had some interesting ups. I was enrolled in what they call a “research and diversion” group. Our goal, as a fight group, was to do research in the enemy field, gather information and create diversions. Exciting, if you look at it form the outside, frightening if you have to do it. Part of our regular exercise was to penetrate other units territory. The soldiers guarding those units had no ideas that we were soldiers too, doing an exercise. They had all the reasons to believe we’re the enemy, and they could open fire at any time. Told you it was rough…

The Survival Exercise

Part of our training involved also learning survival tactics and techniques. I don’t know why I was attracted to that, but fact is I really enjoyed learning all the things they were teaching us about surviving. I know I was always the first to respond when we had surviving classes.

One day the captain came to our dorm and told us: “time to pack your equipment, we’re going out on a survival exercise”. I remember that 2 of our team mates became pale and started to talk something about infirmary. They were the guys who were most of the time ill and did whatever they can to avoid getting involved in anything remotely dangerous. The captain looked at them and said they can stay if they want.

The rest of the group took the fight equipment (no real ammunition was allowed though) and went down. I remember I put a bag of nuts and a bottle of Pepsi in my sac. I always did that when I knew we’re going out on some exercise thing. By the way, at that time, 20 years ago, under the communist regime of Ceausescu, Pepsi was considered almost a medicinal drink and it was barely available on the stores.

Down, a big truck was waiting, engine started. Without many words we get up, squeezed together and the truck started to move. It didn’t went on the regular road, to the city, but took it over the field. Just crossed the field, bumping us up and down while we’re numbly trying to get a grip of where we were.

At some point, after we crossed a few forests and hills, after we didn’t see any house for at least 20 minutes, the truck stopped. “Down, down, down, on the double”, the captain said. He didn’t smile. Usually, he was smiling, but not this time. In less than a minute we were down, near the truck. I confess that I started to feel a little bit strange at that time. What was going to happen, after all?

“Split in teams of two”, said the captain. “You can only use your knife and whatever you can find around yourself. Walk in different directions for 10 minutes, then stop. From that point, you have 48 hours. In 48 hours we’re going to meet in the unit yard. If you can make it earlier, good for you. You’re on your own now.” After that he jumped in the truck. In less than 30 seconds we were alone in the middle of nowhere, looking at the truck becoming smaller and smaller between the hills and after the forests.

We started to walk in different directions for 10 minutes, in teams of two.  Now I was really feeling strange. Suddenly I realized I didn’t have any food, except for the nuts bag and the bottle of Pepsi. Nor did I have anything else except my fight equipment. Out of which I could only use my knife.

In a split of a second I realized also that I was on a real survival situation. Nobody would come to help us. We were really alone there…

The first thing I did was to see what else do I have except myself. We were in teams of two and my team mate was a guy who became famous in our group for sleeping all the time. He was always relaxed and ready to get a nap. Not much of an initiative guy, but a very soothing presence, after all. Well, at least he’s not hysterical, I said to myself.

We were still on a decently populated area. We didn’t see any houses but there were gardens and paths. It wasn’t complete wilderness so in a few minutes I realized that the survival in itself wasn’t such a big deal. I think I was more overwhelmed by the “unexpected” way of the things. Didn’t expect this to happen, yet I was still in the middle of nowhere, with a colleague who was always sleeping, trying to find our way back to the unit.

Little by little, we started to organize things. We established a zero point, marked by scratching small signs under the knee level on trees (signs under the knee level aren’t usually visible in the forests, so we minimize the chances that a potential enemy would find our base camp). We did a few researches in the field, some together, some separately. We put two traps for the birds, made by some rope, some breadcrumbs (my colleague used to carried dried bread in his pockets) and rocks. We didn’t catch any bird, but we soon found some food in a vegetable garden and also got a pretty clear idea of where we were.

It was getting close to the evening so we sit near our zero point and had our dinner. Some vegetables, a part of the nuts I was diligently packed and we drank some Pepsi. Boy, that Pepsi was good!

My team mate was getting pretty sleepy and it was starting to get dark. As we sat near the tree trying to figure out what we should do, I saw a difference in the light. Didn’t knew at first from where it was, but I soon realized it was a moving light. Somewhere between the hills a car with the lights on was moving.

I instantly decided that I wouldn’t wait 48 hours. “Let’s go, you will soon sleep” I said to my team mate and started to move towards that light. In a few minutes I discovered a country road. The car was also a military car and I recognized one of the drivers. “What are you doing here”, I asked where I was close enough. “Patrolling, trying to pick up guys from the survival exercise”. the driver answered. “Well, you found us, we’re from the survival exercise”, I smiled. “Then jump in”, he smiled back.

In fifteen minutes we were back at the unit. In the yard there was a big fire. Half of our colleagues were there too. At the fire, something was cooking. I learned that some of our team mates found some houses and “borrowed” some chickens. Some of them also borrowed potatoes and carrots. From what I saw, what was cooking at the fire was far more than we usually had for dinner. And far more tastier too.

I sat down at the fire, near my colleague who was already snoring on the side. The whole exercise was no longer than 6 hours. While I was getting ready to get my meal, sipping from my bottle of Pepsi, I saw the 2 guys who weren’t with us in the exercise. It may have been because of the fire, but they looked even more pale than usual.

A Survival Situation

Every time I get caught in a really nasty thing, I think at that survival exercise. I remember all the phases of this exercise, all the tools I used, all the results. And every time I apply the things I learned during that exercise, I get over it.

Now, you may wonder what’s a survival situation, after all? How can you differentiate a survival situation from just some tough times? It’s an important distinction, because you will use different tools and attitudes. If you’re just getting through some tough times, a general positive attitude and some reasonable adjustments will get you through.

A survival situation is different in that all your regular resources will disappear, you’re on a different land and your life may be in danger. Now, it may be about your physical life, as in a war, or it may be the life as you used to think about it. Every major breakup or career change may be seen as a survival situation. Every major shift in your existence is in fact a survival situation, because it challenges the way you actually live your life.

Minimal Survival Kit

From that first survival exercise in the army I’ve been through many survival situations. Some of them involved violent financial crisis, others involved personal relationships breakups and others were related to my career choices. Being an entrepreneur is one of the careers when you get loads of survival situations, and I’m not the only one telling you that.

But, somehow, I managed to get out of them. The fact that you’re reading this right now might be the most important proof, by the way . After getting out (and in, for what matters) those difficult times, I started to see some patterns. Some attitudes proved to be better than others and some techniques helped me overcome the obstacles easier.

So, here I come with a minimum survival kit. It’s not a first aid kit, in that it doesn’t tell you what to do immediately after you get hit. I may write another post on that, but for now, let’s just talk about the 5 things you may need to master in order to get out safely from a life survival situation.

1. Be Prepared

That doesn’t mean you should stop living your normal life and act like the end of the world is near. But acknowledge the fact that the life is unexpected and that you may be exposed to situations you’re not really prepared to. In my survival exercise I took that bag of nuts and that bottle of Pepsi. It was a prevention measure. And it proved to be a very good one.

I’m not saying to put aside white money for black days, but be in a continuous movement. Live in such a way that you will always have supplementary resources to resort to, if need will be. In business, although I was successful in my niche, I always had smaller projects going on, just in case. They were just boiling slowly and sometimes those projects saved me from some pretty tough cash-flow situations.

There is a very important part of this approach. The moment you’re prepared, something very powerful happens: you’re getting stronger. By being exposed to those sudden changes, your strength increases. The 2 colleagues who instantly declined the survival exercise were even more pale at the fire. They avoided the challenge but their strength was decreasing.

2. Avoid Excessive Baggage

If you’re on a real survival situation, any excess baggage may drag you down. What does mean in a real life situation? Well, it may mean: sell your stuff fast, don’t get attached to relationships that may drag you down and just be flexible. If you’re going through a survival situation in business this may lead to difficult decisions which may lead to let people go or to sacrifice some part of the business in order to make sure the rest will be fine. As tough as it may seem, this is extremely necessary.

A survival situation will ask each of any resource you may have, so just carrying out extra baggage will make you slower and heavier. During my survival exercise in the army, I was fortunate enough to get out quickly. But I can only imagine what would have happen if I would have to carry out my sleepy partner. In all honesty I tell you that I would just have him parked somewhere and after I would have found some help, just get back to rescue him. Trying to get out of a real survival situation when you’re with a lazy partner is suicide, you’re both going down.

3. Take Good Care Of Your Health

First things first. Eat. Hydrate yourself. Get plenty of sleep. Too often I saw people in survival situations surrendering to worries and neglecting their health. Why? Why spending your night thinking how to pay your mortgage because you’re jobless now, instead of just sleeping? Why jumping on the avoidance side by drowning in alcohol? What’s the use of it? Not only it will never solve your problem but it will ruin your health. And with less and less energy you’ll have less and less resources to break through.

4. Jump To Opportunities

Use whatever you have and once you see something that could prove even remotely helpful, just go for it. Don’t wait. Don’t second thought. Don’t hesitate. Don’t wait for better condition because you may not get any. Don’t assume things will get better, because usually they don’t.

If you’re in a survival situation, you have to act. You have to do stuff, you have to move. When I saw the light of the car, in my survival exercise, I decided I will just go for it. I will follow it and see what happens. It proved to be the best thing that could happen to me. That approach was verified in other survival situations I’ve been through: the moment you summon the courage to take advantage of an opportunity, that opportunity is in fact the end of the survival situation. It’s your escape.

5. Have Hope

I intently left this at the very end, because it’s the most important part of all five. Hope is the fundamental tool in your minimal survival kit. Whatever you’re going through right now, it’s temporary. It shall pass. You can’t get caught forever in this survival situation. At some point the wall will break. Keeping this kind of thoughts in your head means keeping hope.

But if you don’t keep this hope, you’ll lose the battle even before it will start. Because hope is the fundamental ingredient in keeping your sight clean. In keeping your mind fresh and ready to react. If you surrender to worries and negative thinking, your focus will shift from outside to your own internal, dark reality. You may actually miss opportunities, real life opportunities, just because you’re not paying attention. The outside situation is really bad right now, but once you move to the internal part, you’ll lose the hook. You’ll get caught in your own whirl of negative thoughts and you won’t see the light moving through the hills.

Hope is the thing that will make you enjoy the dinner at the fire camp after the survival exercise. Because, in the end, all of these survival situations are only exercises. And, always, they are less scary than we think they are. We may get the shivers in the beginning, but after we’re out, life is even better. Tastier. Nicer.

What does not kill you makes you stronger.

The “Ants” Situation

The other morning, just before we had breakfast, Bianca came to me shouting: “Dad, dad, come, you have to see this!” She doesn’t do this every time, so I rushed to see what was that all about. It might have been something really interesting. As I stumbled into the living room, I saw her on top of the couch, ready to cry and pointing at the other end of the couch, the one close to a big window. “There are ants there, Dad, I’m afraid”.

And oh, she was so right! At the other end of the couch, between the couch and the wall with that big window, I suddenly noticed like several hundreds of ants. Small, black and pretty active ants. Seemed that they had a pretty good time too, since I spotted from place to place very small sand grains. They were building a house and they were building it from some time now. Some of them had wings, some of them not. The ones with the wings were up to the couch and to the window, close to the ceiling. An invasion. An ants invasion.

Meanwhile, Bianca was still on top of the couch, repeating to me that she was afraid of them, just in case I didn’t understand it from the first time. Short thinking pause. At that time in the morning, before breakfast, the meaning of the term “short” may be fluctuating. So I may have stayed there a few dozens of seconds, trying to figure out a way to understand what do I have to do. And, after a few dozens of blinking at Bianca and some short, ugly looks to those nasty ants, I finally come up with an idea. A brilliant idea, of course.

In the kitchen, under the sink, we keep something called broom. That tool looked like something I could really use. A broom. Just before breakfast. Good idea. So, I took the broom and start sweeping around the ants. In a few minutes I had an interesting collection of a few hundreds of them. I took them all, opened the window and throw them away. I didn’t want to kill them. Just to teach them a lesson.

Bianca approached carefully: “Are there still ants here, Dad?”. “No, dear, no more ants” I whispered while letting the breakfast synapses work again. What to eat, how to prepare it, stuff like that. While I was slowly heading to the kitchen, to start making breakfast, I heard Bianca shouting again: “Dad, Dad, there are even more ants”. That couldn’t be true, of course, since I just swept them, but I turned back, just to comfort Bianca. Alas, she was right again.

More Ants

For a moment I thought that the swept ants were able to send some invisible, chemical signals, because the new wave looked much more organized. And, from what I was able to count, they were at least twice the size. More ants. No problem. We got broom. Seeping them away. While Bianca was shouting, of course. Anyway, after a few minutes, the floor was clean again and the second wave of ants was thrown away. Go, ants. Let me have my breakfast.

This time, I didn’t left instantly. I thought it would be a good idea to stay a while near the couch, just in case. “No, there are no ants anymore, but I’m just staying here, just in case, Bianca”. “Good, Dad, because I’m afraid of ants”. Well, that was a clever idea. I’m a clever guy. In just a few minutes, thousands of ants were emerging again from nowhere, filling the space between the couch and the window. Even Bianca looked like she was waiting for them: “Look, Dad, they’re calling their friends”.

“Yes, they have a lot of friends” I thought, while starting to sweep the third wave of ants. “The third tribe”, I thought. In minutes, the third wave of ants was thrown away. I was getting really hungry, while Bianca seemed to rather enjoy all this sudden game. “Are you going to sweep them again, Dad, yes? yes?”. “Well, let’s see what happens next” I tried to be wise, whispering in a low voice.

Of course, the fourth wave of ants appeared in a few minutes. This time, I took a different approach. I observed them carefully, trying to spot the entry points. They weren’t manifested out of thin air, after all. They had to have an entry point. And yes, I saw it. It was a small crack on the floor, near the wall with the window. “Ah-aaa”, I said, and I grabbed the broom. But something prevented me to start sweeping again. An idea. Another brilliant idea. I rushed to the garage, where we keep something called vacuum cleaner. Toldya I’m a clever guy.

The Unavoidable Storm

It was getting warmer and the window was opened. I was somehow in direct sunlight. So I put on a bandana, plugged the vacuum cleaner, aimed for the key entry point and start vacuuming. A bandana, a vacuum cleaner and hundreds of thousands of ants. Sort of a Rambo stopping an invasion. Yeah, baby. Come on. I have a vacuum cleaner for you. Eat it up.

Maybe getting into action without having breakfast had some unexpected consequences, firing up some strange synapses in my brain. I was literally feeling like the main character in an action movie. Well, what the hell, at least I was feeling well. I was a male defending his territory in front of thousands of organized and powerful enemies. “Dad, you’re sweeping the couch” I heard Bianca. “There are no ants anymore”. “Oh, sorry, honey, didn’t saw that”.

I went outside to empty the vacuum cleaner recipient into the dumpster. Yes, there were hundreds of thousands of ants. While I was getting into the house again, I suddenly start to feel bored. Yes, there were ants again between the couch and the wall. Bianca also seemed to get a little bit bored, because she asked me to put her a movie on DVD. Definitely, she lost interest. So was I.

I was just looking outside the window, pointing the vacuum cleaner to the entry point and waiting for the ants to come. There was clearly a lower volume of ants entering and as I looked through the window I suddenly understood why. Some of the ants were leaving. I saw a huge exile of ants going on from that wall, outside in the backyard. But not all of them were leaving. Some of them were still entering the house. “You’‘re on the wrong territory here, ants, can’t you understand this? Don’t you see this huge hurricane which is sucking you up and eventually putting you into the dumpster?” I thought. Nope, apparently a good part of the ants didn’t notice they were on the wrong territory. Out I went emptying the second recipient of the vacuum cleaner.

As I was getting into the house, ready to vacuum the ants again. I started to feel really, really bored. I mean, don’t they understand? What they are still doing here? So, I just sat there with the vacuum cleaner doing its job and letting my mind wandering. And, of course, as my mind was wandering freely, I realized there’s a very deep meaning in this whole “ants” situation.

The Ants Situation Meaning

So, what did I had to learn from this invasion? Three things. Let’s take them one at a time.

1. I put myself for a moment in the ants shoes. From their point of view, the vacuum cleaner was like a big natural disaster. They couldn’t understand the whole picture, like they were on the wrong territory and all, they were just suffering the effects of a force bigger than them. They were swept away and thrown into a dumpster. For no apparent reason at all.

Well, that’s sad. And that’s happening to us too. There are moments in life when we don’t really understand why something violent and destructive is happening to us. We feel like we’re sucked away and all our life is thrown into a dumpster. We’re the toy of a bigger force than us.

What was interesting was that even the ants were able to make a choice. Some of them chose to keep fighting the vacuum cleaner, defending a house and a lifestyle which had no substance at all, while some of them chose to run away, starting fresh. The ones that chose to fight the vacuum cleaner ended up in the dumpster, or dead. The other ones ended up in the wild, starting a new life. A better life, of course.

The fighting ants were defending an illusion. They couldn’t possibly have a good life in my house. They were on the wrong territory. Sooner or later their lifestyle will have been destroyed. They simply made a wrong decision from the very beginning. Of course, they didn’t know that until the storm came, but when the hurricane stroke, they should have realized something’s wrong. The clever ones did, and they saved themselves.

Sometimes, a huge misfortune is just a sign that you’re on the wrong territory. You’re defending an illusion. If you keep fighting, you may end up in a dumpster, or dead. Sometimes, is far more better to start fresh, in the wild.

2. I remembered that a few days ago, in that specific place, I removed a lot of spider webs. I even thought, wow, that’s one hell of a spider corner here, let’s clean this up. I cleaned it up but the result was totally unexpected. I ended up with millions of ants.

Those spiders were there for a reason. They were eating ants. They were preventing them entering the house. They were silently stopping this invasion. But I thought I was better off. Now, I had to do a much nastier job, cleaning up a million of ants and trying to find much difficult ways to stop the invasion.

Every step you take has consequences. I don’t say I will start growing spiders (although I prefer a few controlled spiders over a few millions uncontrolled ants) but my approach changed the balance around my house. And I had to deal with it.

There’s this subtle balance in our lives which keeps things in order. Every time I’m facing an apparently easy decision, like: “should I remove this part of my life, because I don’t even remember why it’s still there?” I take a step back. I do think as much as I can about it. And, most of the time, I keep those things in their place. Maybe I lost the conscious connections, but that doesn’t mean those parts aren’t necessary.

Maybe those “spider webs” are there for a reason. Maybe there is this hidden order in the things which I should just obey and trust.

3. And the last thing I learned is that you can write a successful blog post on self improvement talking about an ants invasion. You don’t believe me? You just read it all, my friend.

33 Ways To Overcome Frustration

I have a huge experience with frustration. I experienced it in so many ways, at so many times in my life, that I feel like I’m some kind of a specialist. If you wonder why I have this huge expertise, here’s the answer: growth never happens without it. The more frustration you are able to harvest, resolve and overcome, the more growth you’re experiencing. Avoiding it, hiding from it, deluding the game, none of these strategies will make you a better human being. On the contrary.

What follows is a list of tools and approaches I used to solve my own frustration and limitation episodes.

1. Accept Reality

Yes, something bad happened. Don’t spend your day imagining how beautiful life could be if it wasn’t for that stupid incident or mistake. This is it. It is frustrating, no doubt about it, but rejecting this reality will not lower the frustration, on the contrary, will make it stronger and stronger. Accept reality.

2. Shift Your Focus

It’s so easy to get caught in a spiral of anger and despair when you’re frustrated, and I know that first hand. Shift your focus by engaging in small but demanding activities. Get involved. Do take the necessary steps to get over the frustrating situation, but do not ignore everything else around you.

3. Talk About It With A Friend

Find somebody you trust and talk about it. Let it out. Don’t let it grow inside yourself until you explode. Most of the time, when you reach this point, it’s too late to make a meaningful change that will restore your reality. Let your worries and your tension fly. After all, this is what friends are for, right?

4. Journal It

If you don’t keep a journal, start now. Write down all your fears, all your sensations and describe them in great detail. Do it until you feel you can’t do it no more. You’re going to feel incredibly better. Writing has this side effect of lowering what you write about, making it more manageable. Just try it.

5. Write A Letter About It

Imagine you’re on a desert island. Sit down and write a letter to somebody who could potentially rescue you. Be verbose. Imagine how your life will be after you leave that desert island. Because if you can’t describe that, you will never leave the island. Then destroy the letter.

6. Write A Worse Case Scenario

What is the worst thing that may happen to you right now? List everything from physical loss to emotional imbalances. Try to foresee every little detail of a worst case scenario. What life will you live if everything will turn out as bad as possible? Then read it. It won’t look as bad as you thought.

7. Identify A List Of Possible Actions

What exactly will make the situation acceptable again? What are the things that you could actually do to improve your current status? Make a list. Try to identify every possible action, as improbable as it may seem, and put it on the list. At the end of this, you’ll feel much better: you have work to do.

8. Sleep Over It

Most of your unconscious life happens while you’re asleep. Try to go to bed with a clear thought of resolution. Don’t try to find a solution, just prepare yourself for getting out of that frustrating circle. During the night your unconscious mind will find resources to make you stronger.

9. Be Your Own Avatar

Try to look at yourself from “the outside”. Write on a piece of paper what an observer would see at you. How do you behave? How do you talk, how do you act? The more you’ll do this exercise, the more you’ll differentiate yourself from the frustrating persona and take control over it at the same time.

10. Read Something Funny

This will not solve your problem, most of the time it will only switch your focus to something else, giving you a temporary break. Do not mistake this technique with avoidance, just use it as a chillout session, then get back on track and solve whatever you have to solve.

11. Stop Blaming Yourself

Maybe you did something really wrong, and your current situation is the result of that mistake. Take responsibility but don’t blame yourself. It’s all in the past. You’re in the present now and you can do something about it. Blame will only put weight on that past and drag you down. Avoid it at all cost.

12. Take A Walk

Even on the wild side, if you like the wild side, but do take a walk. The mere action of moving will set you up for action and hopefully will make your mind a little clearer.  Walking always helps me put my thoughts in order and let off the steam a little bit. And it’s free of charge.

13. See It From The Future

This one goes hand in hand with number 6. Try to describe your current situation and look at it from the future. 1 year from now, your problem will be as  big as it is right now? How about 5 years? Or 10 years? Putting your frustration in a larger context will usually weaken it or at least make it manageable.

14. Cook A Delicious Meal

As simple and mundane as it may seem, cooking is an art. And every time you perform some sort of an art, you’ll see the world through your intuitive mind. You’ll summon your way out of frustration rather than find it through logical inference. And cooking is the cheapest – and tastiest – art one can afford.

15. Go To A Party

Not to be abused and transformed into some sort of escapism but extremely useful to lower your shirtiness. Go out, mingle and see if you can wipe out your frown from your face. You can get back to your problems later, when your body and mind will be more balanced. After the hangover, of course.

16. Write About Your Past Successes

You don’t have to keep a journal for it, you can just sit down at a table and remember all your breakthroughs. Or only the most important ones. Seeing yourself succeeding will definitely weaken all that frustration you feel right now and will also give you some hints about how to completely overcome it.

17. Borrow Some Enthusiasm

Stay around energetic people or get involved in active projects. Choose to be part of something that exhales a lot of energy. Get involved in fresh projects. Being around enthusiastic people will lower the frustration to the point where it can actually become manageable. And it will make you just feel better.

18. Soak and Dry

Let it flow through you until you’re completely overloaded. Just be sure not to do something during this stage. Isolate from the world and allow yourself to be frustrated. Then slowly wait for the frustration to dry out. Sometimes, this “all you can eat” approach is the only way to deal with it in a healthy way.

19. Go Watch A Comedy

As an alternative to number 10, “Read Something Funny”. Giving yourself permission to laugh will lower your anger and hopefully will make things easier to handle. Also, seeing people in strangely hilarious situations will make your own frustration seem awkward. Through a good laugh at it.

20. Attack It With The “Why?” Weapon

Another writing exercise, in which you start to find the root cause of your frustration by asking “why?” questions. “Why am I broke?” – Because I spent too much. “Why did I spent too much” – Because I’m feeling insecure. “Why?…” You got the idea. At some point, something will click inside.

21. Volunteer For Something

Frustration is closely related to your ego, or the part of your being that is concerned with those big phrases starting with “Me…”. If you volunteer to do work for somebody else, you’ll stop feeding your ego with energy. The weaker that part gets, the stronger your authentic and powerful part will be.

22. Stand Up And Fight

Be a soldier. Give yourself orders and follow them. Instill some rough and unquestionable discipline in your life. Get up early in the morning, do your work as if you’re on a battle field and then go to sleep. Repeat until your problems become just situations you can solve by following an easy sequence of new orders.

23. Stop Blaming Others

Similar to number 11, only this time your attitude will turn towards other people, in a desperate attempt to avoid feeling hurt. Just stop it. Although it may seem like a relief, blaming others it’s just a temporary hack, it won’t last. In 99% of the situations, what we experience is the direct result of our own actions.

24. Do Small, Repetitive Tasks

Borrow the behavior of a machine. Do those tiny little things you avoided so much because they seemed so boring. Now it’s the best time to start working on them. Slicing your time and focus will dissolve the pressure. Frustration will slowly dilute in this sea of tiny, repetitive tasks.

25. See It From The Past

Alternative to number 13, looking at your own frustration from the past will color it in a new, fresher light  Most of the time, the feeling triggered by this perspective is: “I’ve been through though times before, I can get over this”. And this is more often than you think true: we have a huge life experience, we just don’t trust it enough.

26. Read Similar Stories

You’re not alone. And even if you find it difficult tot talk to other people you can always do this by yourself: just scorch the Internet using descriptive keyphrases about your own frustration. You’ll discover that you’re not alone. Somebody else have been there too. And now he’s so over it.

27. Assess Progress

Every second of your life changes something. Look for the small steps you’re doing and assess them. The first item on this assessment list may be: “I’m starting to assess my progress and this is in itself a huge step forward”. The more you write, the bigger your progress will seem.

28. Disguise It

Put a mask on it, make it look like something else: “I’m feeling frustration right now, but this is a mask for…” and replace with whatever quality you want to build: discipline, personal power, endurance. Transform it. I usually use the caterpillar – butterfly image: it’s bad now but look what it can become.

29. Contrast It With A Worse Situation

Try to identify a related situation but with a significantly higher degree of damage. If you’re in debt, imagine how it will be to be bankrupt. If you’re having a relationship hickup, try to imagine how it would be to live on a desert island for the rest of your life. Be grateful for what you experience, because it can be worse.

30. Dilute It With Meditation

I don’t preach meditation as an all-in-one cure, but from my personal experience, it does help. Meditation will not only shift your focus from your current situation, but it will also clean your thoughts and help your body regain a subtle energetic balance. Remember you’ll still have to take action, meditation will only dilute it.

31. Get Physical

Start an aggressive exercising routine. Getting physical will make it easier to embrace action and to do it with vigor and determination. A side effect of exercising is the “endorphin effect”: the induction of a well-being state generated by your own body.

32. This Too Shall Pass

Impermanence is at the core of our human nature, is our curse and escape: we’re prisoners of time and everything we experience is bound to it. Laughter and sadness, joy and depression, everything will fade away in time. The same will happen to this frustrating period too: it will pass.

33. Write A List Of 33 Ways To Overcome Frustration

This is an incredible exercise. As funny as it may seem in this context, it’s actually a very powerful standalone approach. Just sit back and try to imagine 33 ways to get over your current frustration. I bet that around number 20 your problem will seem smaller than you thought it was.

About Limitation – My First Podcast

It had to happen: ladies and gents, welcome to my first podcast ever. I admit I struggled with this idea for at least 6 months, but it finally happened. At the end of this post you’ll find my first 5 minutes of talking in an ad-hoc English to the whole blogosphere. But don’t be gentle. Please, be harsh, severe and point me to the points where I’m ridiculous, out of my mind or just plain wrong.

I know I’m doing a lot of bad stuff when it comes to my English, but this time I’m actually talking out loud, with my own voice, so it must be something really entertaining. So please, use the comments to criticize, adjust, rant or just shout in disagreement .

A little bit about the content:

• limitation is sometimes about money, sometimes about social life and sometimes about physical movement.
• standard answer to limitation is frustration, non-standard answer is acceptance.
• how the world changed around me after I accepted limitation and how I got saved by a white horse after I got stuck in snow 4 times.

That being said, thank you so much for listening. I’m ready to be slaughtered. Be merciless

How to Overcome Frustration in 3 Easy Steps

“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion . . .  I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.” – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I used to totally, utterly, absolutely, downright hate frustration. It was an emotional reaction, I just couldn’t help it. Whenever I got caught in its the subtle yet powerful chains I felt like crap. I think you know the feeling. Hands tied up, no possible solution to the current situation and a lot of mess to deal with. Yes, frustration can do that to you.

Being so keen on doing things, starting new projects all the time, entering new challenges almost daily, it was absolutely natural to face a lot of frustration. It was the expected behavior. Only I thought it wasn’t. I thought I didn’t deserve it. Why this is happening to me? Took me a long time to understand, but it really worth the wait.

Be a Friend of Frustration

The good news is that you can overcome frustration. I’m not talking about avoidance here, because, believe it or not, frustration is a key ingredient in your personal development, but rather about a friendship strategy. An alliance with frustration, an armistice. As any other emotional response, frustration leverages huge amounts of energy. And you can use that energy. In fact, it’s such a shame to let it slip away.

Step 1: Acknowledge the Problem

Accept it. Yes, you are frustrated. It’s already happened, can’t bring time back. You’re here and you’re frustrated. You’re not sad, angry or apathetic. You’re frustrated. Write it down on a piece of paper. Find a mirror (preferably in an isolated place) and say to you: “I’m looking at me and I’m frustrated”. Find a good friend, call him and say to him: “Buddy, I’m frustrated”.

This requires a little bit of courage and a little bit of exercise. You need courage to accept it, because frustration is often associated with being powerless. To some extent, you are powerless when you’re frustrated. You really lost your power over the specific events you were trying to control. But only on those events, not over your entire life. You still have enough power to move on. Yes, you lost power over what you’re trying to do, accept that.

Acknowledging the problem will stop your current flow of actions. Maybe you’re doing the same thing for weeks months or years, without any positive results. Acknowledging that you’re frustrated about that will stop you. And that’s a good thing. It’s good to stop when you’re doing stupid things.

Step 2: Change the Status Quo

Now that you know you’re frustrated, start working on the status quo. Start changing the current environment. Somehow. Accepting your frustration already did half of the job: it stopped your current flow of actions. You’re not doing stupid things anymore. That’s good. But that’s not enough. You have to move forward.

Changing the status quo involves reversing part of the actions you’ve done so far. If it’s possible. If there are persons involved, you can start by apologizing to them. If there are broken things, you can start fixing them. If there are damages, you can start covering the loss. Somehow.

Changing the status quo also means acting. Just do things again. Frustration is like a snake venom: paralyzes you, makes your muscles useless and you can’t speak anymore. Reverse that. Start moving around. Stretch your legs, start babbling even if you’re pathetic. Being pathetic means you’re no longer frustrated, you’re just pathetic.

Acting after accepting your situation will reorganize the odds around you. The mere fact of moving in a new direction will bring in some luck. Sometimes enough to put you on the right track again, sometimes much more than you can even imagine. I know for sure that some of my bigger breakthroughs were born out of some of my bigger frustrations.

Step 3: Enjoy your New Level

After you started to act on your status quo, your environment will look better. Sometimes you can completely reverse the situation which causes frustration, sometimes you’re just ameliorating things. Whatever the case, you’re out of the dead hole. You’re on a new track, trying something new. Stay there.

And, above all, enjoy it. There is this popular habit of mild sorrow after you overcome a huge obstacle. Man, it’s good to be here, but before wasn’t so bad after all. Don’t do this to you. Just fully enjoy your new level and leave the past tot the past.

Frustration is not a dead hole, unless you want to make a dead hole out of it. It’s an elevator, a way to quickly reach to a new level. You could take the stairs, of course, and have a leaner course to the top. But if you want to reach there faster, you’ll need more energy. A lot more energy. You’re going to make leaps instead of going step by step.

And what you call frustration, is in fact the manifestation of an elevator right at your fingertips. You asked for it, because you wanted to reach out faster, now you have it. Don’t reject it, don’t misuse it. An elevator can take you in a few seconds to the top of the world, or it could take you to the basement. Be careful what buttons you push.

After all, it’s just an elevator, you’re in command.

Healers and Hurters

Healers

Have you ever met a person who’s smile is instantly making you feel better? A person who’s talking about weather for 2 minutes but makes you happy all of a sudden? A person who’s doing nothing special but being around you and yet, his only presence is making you lighter and joyful?

I call those persons healers. Maybe they don’t even know they have the ability to heal other persons, or maybe they doing it only for the fun, thing is that those persons are like genuine positive energy islands where I anchor my ship every once in a while.

Healers are altruistic, happy and healthy. They laugh a lot, they make a lot of jokes and they’re usually surrounded by people all the time. People they’re unconsciously drawing towards them because of this ability: to offer unconditional (and most of the time unconscious) healing.

Hurters

Have you ever met a person who’s smile is instantly making you feel the deepest cold? A person who’s talking about the weather for 2 minutes but scares the hell out of you? A person who’s doing nothing special but being around you and yet, his only presence is making you heavy and sad?

I call those persons hurters. Maybe they don’t even know they have this effect on other persons, or maybe they doing it just for fun, thing is that those persons are like black, sudden storms that I avoid at all costs to be involved with every time I spot them on my ocean.

Hurters are egoistic, sad and, most of the time, ill. They don’t laugh nor do enjoy being around groups who are laughing a lot and they’re always in search for new people. People they’re using as an object for their abusive (even if unconscious) behavior.

Hurting Others

Hurting has this nasty habit of self-propagation. If you’ve been hurt once you feel entitled to hurt when your turn comes. Or even earlier, sometimes. Being hurt once is like a free pass to hurt others. They did that to me, right? Now I will did that unto others.

Hurting likes hurting. It’s like a sense of identity. If you see others being hurt you suddenly start to be part of a group, to belong. We’re all here to suffer, right, so I might just be in the right place if I’ll start spreading this along.

Hurting others is, as strange as it may seem, a twisted process of healing. Because you’ve been hurt  in the past, you try to let out the pain and the frustration by loading others with it. It’s like you can’t keep it anymore inside and open your safety valves letting it flooding outside without any control whatsoever.

Healing Others

Healing is perceived by many of us as highly improbable, so we tend to put more value in it than we put on hurting. Because it’s harder to find healing than hurting, that makes it precious. Based on what we experienced so far, we find hurting very probable, hence, receiving healing seems to be on the verge of the miracle most of the time. And that makes us perceive it as something beyond our control.

Healing is a natural capacity, yet the abundance of hurting makes it so isolated that we’re putting on the same level with super-natural. The downside of this is that we develop a rather shy relationship with healing. We’re not really expecting it to happen. We’re extremely happy when this is happening, but we’re not expecting it.

You may not know that, but you are capable of healing other people. Most of your relationships are based on this process. Your friends find something in you that helps them be balanced. Unless all your relationships are based on a domination / controlling pattern, you are already healing some of your closest relationships.

Hurting Yourself

You find it easier to hurt yourself than to heal yourself because hurting is so common around you. It seems like the right way to do. Everybody is hurt, so it must be something normal. Or natural. Or acceptable.

It isn’t. You have a choice. You can accept it or you cannot accept it. It’s up to you. Not up to the person who’s trying to hurt you. They may be in that twisted healing process of unloading their pain on others, but you still have a choice.

The moment you understand and accept that, you realize that nobody can hurt you anymore. Nobody, except yourself. You’re the one who allows things to happen to you. So every time you’re hurt, it’s coming from you.

And you can change that.

Healing Yourself

Healing is the mere process of enjoying your life. A healthy person is a person who find joy in life no matter what. It’s nothing more than that, but yet, it’s so rare around us that we often mistake it for a miracle. Something beyond our control. Something super natural.

Well, it isn’t. Enjoying your life means accepting and embracing it with all that it has to offer to you. How can you NOT do that? How can you still embrace hurting (both as a victim and a perpetrator) when smiling is so much easier? It’s so easy to start healing yourself this very moment by simply enjoying everything around you. It’s that simple, yes.

The moment you understand and accept that, you’ll realize that your own life joy and acceptance will soon start overflow onto others. The simple process of not allowing the pain to destroy your joy of life will make you become a healer.

And by healing yourself you’re healing others too.

***

Which one do you chose? Propagate the pain just because people are used to it? Or go the other way around and start enjoying every second of your life, letting your healing flow grow and eventually overflow onto others? You do have a choice, you know.

Which one is it?

How And Why We Get Bored

Boredom. The final frontier. These are the ramblings of a blogger trying to boldly explain what no man ever avoided: why and how we got bored.

What Is Boredom?

Have you ever thought what boredom is? How we end up being bored? How we can strangely reproduce this state so often although we consider it something very uncomfortable? Maybe you tried, but ended up bored in the process…

Boredom is a state of anxiety and low self-respect. We’re educated to get satisfaction from a very limited set of activities. Watching movies, eating, reading, programming (I know my blog is read by some fine geeks too, this one’s for you, guys ), talking with friends, daydreaming. We’re in a state of comfort and balance every time we’re doing something we like. But the moment we’re not doing it anymore, something very subtle, yet extremely powerful happens.

Because we’re not doing what we like anymore, we start not to like who does it too. Meaning us. If we can’t get satisfaction from what we’re doing, in a twisted, yet understandable attempt to stop that activity, we’re trying to hate the person who does it. Which, again, it’s us. It’s like saying: “hey, stop, I’m not enjoying this anymore, I know I have to do it (or I wanted to do it, or it’s good for me or for others around me) but I don’t want to do it anymore”. And from this subtle tension between what we “have” to do and what we “love” to do, boredom rise.

Anxiety And Low Self-Esteem

People who get bored easily are usually anxious people. They’re also having quite a low level of self-esteem. If you’re constantly challenging yourself by trying to stop what you’re doing, because you don’t “like” it, you end up considering yourself an inappropriate person. If you’re considering yourself an inappropriate person, you’ll end up doing things you don’t really want, just to feel a little more “appropriated”. And this is the beginning of your low self-esteem territory.

The bad news is that situation is contagious. It will spread over other areas of your life pretty soon. If you’re constantly getting bored doing stuff you should really do, this will reach to other areas of your life pretty soon. Boredom likes wide spaces, it has an inner sense of expansion. Once allowed in a certain section of your life it will do whatever it can to conquer the rest of you as fast as it can.

What To Do Against Boredom

The simplest way to challenge boredom is to like everything you do, unconditionally. I met some people who were in this state. They were able to extract meaning from and fully rejoice every little thing they were doing, being it spontaneous, self-imposed or just randomly crossed. They were able to dive in and experience everything with equal enthusiasm and energy. Of course, they were all kids.

I haven’t met a balanced child who got bored. Yet. All the boredom capable kids I met where in fact unbalanced kids, children taught they were valuable and loved only if they were doing only a limited set of activities, generally, to please their parents. But normal, non-alienated kids never get bored.

If you can be like a child, free and fearless, I bet you didn’t even reach so far in this article: boredom is something so strange to you that it didn’t raise an ounce of an interest. But if you’re like the rest of humanity, victim of a hedonistic and coercive education, you do get bored. You do get satisfaction only from a limited set of activities and if you’re not doing one of them you’re getting anxious. You have a deep, constant feeling of not being worth anything. The rest of the blog post is for you.

Acceptance

One way to alleviate the effects of boredom, if not ditching them totally, is to accept your current tasks and situations if they are not changeable. For instance, your domestic chores is something that I consider not being changeable. Chances that somebody else will do your domestic chores like laundry and dishes are pretty low, for many of us, so better accept it. Make it part of your life. It’s ok to do the dishes and take care of your clothes. If you’re not going to do this something ugly will happen, You’ll get swamped in a mountain of dirty dishes, wearing filthy clothes. Which will have quite an effect on your social life, if you ask me. Not to mention your self-esteem.

In fact, you’ll discover that many of your boring tasks are the foundation for a proper functioning in this world. Many things you’ll consider source of apathy or lassitude are in fact fundamental for a proper insertion in your day to day life.They are repetitive and this what makes them boring, not the end result.

But there’s a little catch here, which will help you trick the boredom: it will manifest only if you take “repetitive” for granted. If you do that exactly the same each time. You don’t have to take it for granted. Change the way you do your dishes or laundry every time. Ditch the repetitive element out of it. Make it fun. Play roles. Do it at different times of the day. Try to describe the task you’re doing in an exotic foreign language. It’s not the end result which bores you, it’s yourself. Get yourself a kick in your virtual butt and accept what you have to do.

Stop Being Judgemental

If you’re eager to have the first and and final word in a discussion, I bet you’re pretty easily bored. Stop that. This constant need of being right will lead you to the swamp of self-acceptance. If you don’t accept that you can be wrong sometimes, you’ll have to be right all the time just in order to accept yourself. You’ll start searching for situations or contexts in which you are always right and avoid situations or contexts in which you know you can’t be right. You’re alienating yourself in the most common sense of this word: you’re becoming an alien. You’re drastically limiting your choices. Sooner or later you’re going to become your worst censor. And that will make you bored to death.

Learn Something New

One of the most common situations in which you’re getting bored is if you think you know everything. There’s nothing new in this world for you. You already know everything. Well, maybe. But, most likely, maybe not. You think you know everything only because you refuse learning.You found some comfortable refuge in your life, hiding behind a status, a position, your child or your partner, and don’t really want to get out of there.

Well, sooner or later you’ll be forced to learn something new, so you’d better be proactive on that. You can’t hide forever behind somebody else. Statuses are volatile and positions are moving constantly. You can’t be there forever. Actually, the source of your boredom is this very refuge. Go away and learn something new. It will challenge your mind and ruin your comfort zone. And I consider both so empowering.

***

Boredom is an expression of our sense of emptiness and limitation. We think we’re functioning properly only if we do certain types of activities which is inherently wrong.

We’re designed to do anything and to enjoy everything.

Wasted Power

The worst thing that can happen to you is to realize that you have unlimited power. That you can do anything. That you can create everything you want. That there is nothing outside you and everything is inside, waiting to blossom. The worst thing is to realize that you’re here to create your own life. Why?

Because you’ll face some terrible questions.

Life Purpose

First question: what should I do with my life?

It’s so much easier to live without a purpose, thinking that you have limited powers, that your destiny was engraved in stone and you can’t do anything to change it. Asking questions like “what should I do with my life, now that I DO have the power to change it?” it’s a difficult process. Not everyone is ready to ask that question, and even less are ready to give an honest answer. It’s so much easier to put your entire life on somebody else’s plate.

Put it on your parents, they didn’t love you when you were a kid. Put it on the system, it’s making you a 9 to 5 slave. Put it on your spouse, for being lazy or angry or unconsidered. Put on your kids are they are here to steal your precious time, a time that you would otherwise spend on meaningless tv shows or useless gossip.

It’s easier to put the guilt on somebody else, it will free your consciousness and ease your pain. Why live a life with a purpose when there are so many difficulties? Why do something if somebody (your parents, spouse, kids, boss, this out-of-nowhere man) will prevent you for doing it? Why searching for a higher purpose when you can think you’re just a limited individual with limited power and limited beliefs?

Living a life without purpose, without accessing your enormous power is always a safer bet. Admit it: this concept of unlimited power doesn’t fit with your current lifestyle. So, it must not exist at all. (more…)

Finding Your Personal Mission

A personal mission sounds pretty serious, doesn’t it? Living your life by a personal mission must be something really hard and difficult. It means waking up every day and creating your flow of actions according to that personal mission statement, right? That means your freedom is gone. Being spontaneous is doomed and your life enjoyment dead and buried.

The vast majority of people are thinking like this. To be honest, I used to think the same, for a very long part of my life. Having a personal mission always sounded extremely limiting to me. I love to be free, I love to change my mind whenever I feel like, I love to be flexible about stuff and a personal mission sounded like the most effective way to kill all of this. I always rejected the idea of having a personal mission. Life is something you discover every second, right? So why putting labels on it and build limiting fences?

It took me a lot of hard work and a lot of unhappy experiences to understand the benefits of having a personal mission. It took years of delusion and lying to myself, hundreds of artificial values to invest in and tons of social conditioning to bear. It took almost a lifetime.

Why Having A Personal Mission?

First of all, let’s be clear on one thing: right now I live with a personal mission, but I used to live very comfortable for years without one. It’s not mandatory. It’s just far more better for me. This is not, by any means, an evangelist post which aims to make you create your personal mission just because it worked for me. It might not work for you. In fact, it might not work for a lot of people. But it worked for me.

So, why having a personal mission?

• Because it subtly gives a new substance to my everyday activities.
• Because it brings a lot of coherence and meaning to my everyday activities.
• Because it puts me in perspective: how I’m doing today versus how I’ll be doing 5 years from now.
• Because it makes me do the things I do best and avoid the things I’m not good at.
• Because it creates a personal path that I will follow with joy.
• Because it makes me happy about things I can do and prevent me from being unhappy by doing things I don’t want to do.
• Because it’s keeping my energies focused.
• Because it helps me understand why I’m here and how I can live better.

How To Choose Your Personal Mission?

Well, I don’t know how to choose your personal mission, because that’s your job. I do know how I chose my personal mission. (more…)

Accepting your darkside

it’s only by spotting your shadow when you see the direction of light

(anonymous internet quote)

We’re only humans, folks, and our structure is made from both light and dark materials. That is one of the most important things you have to know about your nature when you start a personal development strategy. Each part play a role in your life. Ignoring one of them could lead to unpredictable results, so to speak. The truth is that we’re all here to evolve, we’re in a process, and a process involve some sort of cycling through different stages and milestones that we need to achieve.

What is your darkside?

We all know what is light in your life. Even if it takes different names or is described in different concepts, we all actually know when something is making us shine. Those are the things we thrive for all our life. But what is the darkside in you? It’s the opposite of the stuff you like? Not really. In fact, the darkside of your persona is often a rejected and ignored pile of emotions, situations and phobias that you try to forget with all your power.

Your darkside is what you hate most in yourself. It’s your fear of failure, it’s your extreme shyness or your sexual compulsion. Or maybe a drug or alcohol addiction or an aggressive way of dealing with your closest family and friends.

The darkside it’s also what you hate most in others. Every time a person is making you nuts, it’s because that person touched a very delicate part of your darkside. If somebody suddenly put you in a depressed state by talking about his parents, is because you have a very bad approach with your parents. If you spot a beggar walking in front of you with an image of poverty and suddenly you start to feel the chill about your bank account it’s because that person revealed in you the fear from scarcity.

At some level, your darkside is also the general conception about ugliness. If you’re bald, for instance, and you feel somehow guilty and rejected because of this, it’s because the general opinion is that baldness is something really ugly. The same goes for overweighted people or for extremely tall or short persons.

Why accepting your darkside?

The general approach toward the darkside is to “fight it”. From older religion to modern counseling techniques, you are supposed to “kill the anxiety”, to “destroy the enemy within” or to “have a victory upon yourself”. This is strange. This is a destructive approach. It makes you split your persona in two: the right and the wrong. You can’t really be mentally or spiritually split, unless you suffer from severe schizophrenia.

The acceptance, on the other hand, have some really interesting advantages.

First of all, when you accept that you do have a darkside and that is part of you, all the energy that you spent in fighting it, will suddenly be available for other purposes. You can start to build on your shiny part if you want, because you have an extra energy pack. You don’t need to fight anymore, just by accepting that you are who you are, you will have access to a new source of personal power. You just took some horse power from your regular “I am not this person, I can’t be that bad” sentences that you say to yourself, and used in another part of your activity. Like taking a walk, for example.

Second, when you totally accept yourself, you make a big step toward inner completion, or integrity. I don’t use the term integrity in its moral sense, but in the sense of “whole”-iness. Acting with integrity means acting with all your being, not following some moral code. Following a moral code should be a personal decision, but you can make that decision with integrity, with all your being. Keeping yourself mentally separated in images like: “I am a good person for doing this, but I am a bad person because I have this shopping compulsion” will lead you to a state of constant fatigue, if not illness. We’re not designed to act in a fragmented way, we’re supposed to act as a whole unique person, with good and bad parts.

And third, if you do accept you have a darkside, you establish a starting point. Now I know: “I’m not only this respectable person, but I am also this shy and sad person who fears social contacts. So? This is me, and I know from where I start and to where I end. I established my whole territory now. You can accept me or not, but I know that I accepted myself, and that’s ok.”

How can you accept your darkside?

Of course, in real life, is not that easy. You can’t just wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and say to yourself: “ok, I do have a darkside, have a nice day”. It takes courage and energy. It takes time also. And it takes more than one try, that’s for sure.

How can you start it? A good insertion point would be to start identify your reactions to the stuff you don’t like. Let’s say you watch a movie and suddenly you feel depressed. Identify the context: was because the main character in the movie was left by his girlfriend? Ok, so it was fear from abandon. Try to observe each situation in which your emotions are running crazy and give a name to that situation. It’s difficult at the beginning because emotions are so energy-hungry that you will have so little energy left for observation. But it can be done, it only takes some discipline.

Soon you’ll realize that you have a limited pack of really bad situations. Using those names you will start to actually depict each and every situation in its own words: “now I have a shopping compulsion, now I have an aggressive impulse”. Following that impulse or stopping it is not the question at this stage. But naming it and observing it, is. As a matter of fact, following or not the impulse is strictly a personal choice.

After this stage, try to prepend the word “accept” to those situations. You are probably now in the position to accurately identify all your “dark” contexts and use appropriate names for them, so all you have to do is to put “accept” before the names. So, the situation: “shopping compulsion” becomes “accept shopping compulsion”. I am sure that everybody got the idea now.

This is not an all-in-one technique for accepting your darkside, not even the most efficient one. I’m sure everybody may come with variations or even other techniques for starting to accept the inner darkside. I only try to describe what worked for me.

When do I know I succeeded?

Basically, there isn’t such a moment. Like I already said, you can’t wake up in the morning and say: “aye, this is my darkside and I accept it”. Maybe the results will come in a different form. You may feel some sort of relaxation and some increase in the energy level. Or maybe you will start to feel relaxed in contexts were you used to be tensed.

One other symptom that you really started to accept your self will be the “linearity” in your manifestations. Being it anger or joy, if you could sustain that feeling for longer periods than before, that is a sign that your person is starting to re-conciliate with itself.

And that is your real victory, and it was obtained only by consciously accepting yourself.

Feel free to share your opinions on this.