Living Off The Grid

For the last 3 years I’ve been living completely off the grid. I don’t have a regular job anymore, my income sources are completely erratic, and my personal relationships are either collapsed or very hard to understand from a traditional perspective. I travel a lot and when I work, I set up my own hours and spaces. From the outside, I often characterize myself as a digital nomad, but on the inside, I’m just living off the grid.

It’s an incredibly powerful experience and, the more I get into it, the more I enjoy the whole process. But, as cool as it may look or feel, living off the grid is not easy. Also, it is a socially alienating lifestyle, and that’s for a very good reason: any individual living outside normal rules is intrinsically a threat to the society. Which will in turn do whatever it takes to alienate those who are not obeying its rules. And believe me, I’ve been treated like this by what we call “society” more than once.

What Does “Living Off The Grid” Means?

Before diving too much into the causes and consequences of such a lifestyle, let’s stop for a moment and try to understand what “living off the grid” means. At least for me.

First of all, it means I’m not socially enrolled as a worker. It doesn’t mean I don’t work, it just means I don’t have a regular job. I don’t fit into any socially accepted description of a job, although I do perform a lot of value creating roles. I code iPhone apps, although I’m not a programmer. I write on a popular self-improvement blog (the one you read read right now, that is), although I don’t define myself as a blogger. I wrote 5 books, though I’m not a writer.

In fact, I do have a very odd lifestyle and it took a while even to me to come to the terms with it. After jumping from one definition of what I do to another, from blogger to writer and from entrepreneur to programmer, I finally decided that I’m neither of them. And that I just live outside of a normal grid of rules. With all the good and bad stuff that may come out of this.

Second, living off the grid also affects relationships. I don’t have any of the socially accepted roles in this area, nor do I want to embark on one anymore. I’m not a husband to anyone (I’m twice divorced, as a matter of fact). I’m friend of a few, although I do have a rather eclectic taste in friends. I have short bursts of powerful social interactions, followed by long periods of solitude.

All in all, I’m not following any traditional patterns in living my life. I do not comply with a lot of socially accepted rules. Also, I’m not a nice guy, by any standards. And that’s true, although parts of my blog may have mislead you in this matter.

And yet, I live an incredibly fulfilling life. I don’t experience any of the limitations that come with following the rules. I have an unbelievably diverse field of experiences. I see a lot of places and interact with a lot of people. I create and provide value on many levels. And all this while still maintaining a decent level of comfort, enabling me at least to provide for myself and for my kids.

So, that’s what “living off the grid” means to me. Now let’s move a bit to the reasons for this lifestyle.

After giving it a lot of thought, I came to the conclusion that living off the grid has 3 main reasons: impossibility to adapt, boredom and, finally, curiosity. Let’s talk a bit about each of these and then we’ll go deeper with the implications that this lifestyle had on me for the last 3 years.

1. Lack Of Adaptation

Some of the people living outside of the grid are just unable to cope with the normal rules imposed by society. They simply can’t accept something that is imposed to them. The energy necessary to follow all the rules will simply dry them out. They’re the unadapted.

To some extent, we’re all unadapted. We do not obey to all the rules, all the time. But we do obey to a certain set that allows us to survive in the grid. We’re able to cope with the majority of rules imposed on us, and we do this for the vast majority of time. But once we reach a certain threshold, once we’re not able to fit in properly, we’re off the grid.

If there will be a scale for people living off the grid by lack of adaptation, to the most violent end of it we’ll find criminals, homeless or other “extremes” of the human nature.Their lack of adaptation is so obvious and aggressive that society simply can’t manage them in a frictionless way, and they have to be put away. On the other end of the scale are the shy, unobservable, silent people. So shy and unobservable that we don’t really know they’re there. But they are. We’re only not accepting them in our “circle”.

2. Boredom

Another cause of living off the grid is boredom. You know, when you just had enough and need a break. Everybody needs a break every once in a while. We’re designed in such a way that we need diversity, otherwise we tend to implode sooner or later.

Boredom makes rules so unfulfilling that simply obeying them became a chore in itself. Why being a socially correct individual when you don’t get any excitement back? What’s the good in being correct if you don’t get back anything funny?

And, sadly, this is true: the role of rules is to keep the larger structure going on, not to provide excitement. Rules are made to keep everything under control while excitement, by definition, it’s something completely out of control.

3 Curiosity

That’s the third, and, if I may say that, the most “healthy” reason for living off the grid. If lack of adaptation is your “child” mode and boredom is your “adult” mode, this is what I call your “experimental” mode. The playful one, curiosity in action, but doubled also by responsibility. Trying things outside the normal scope, just to see what happens. How you feel. What you can get off of it.

It’s different from lack of adaptation because you know you can cope with the rules, but now you just want to play. Deep down you know you’re fit, you just try something different.

It’s different from boredom also as it doesn’t set any expectations. In the boredom mode, you expect a thrill as result of your action. In the curiosity mode, you already have the thrill inside, regardless of the outcome of your action.

So, to finish this part, my main reasons for living off the grid are in order: curiosity, boredom and lack of adaptation. I always was almost clinically curious, I was really bored after running my own business for more than 10 years and I also have my share of not coping with the rules. Like I told you, I’m not a nice a guy.

Consequences Of Living Off The Grid

During the last 3 years many things in my life were changed. I will only talk about a few of them, namely about those who may be of interest for a broader audience.

Business

Doing business when you live off the grid is kinda difficult. You must rely only on your own efforts for branding and networking. You won’t get any help back from society: none of your diplomas will work here. It’s only what you know to do and how well are you able to sell it. If you’re good at these, you may end up pretty good. You may create an image of success and you may attract a lot of partners. In my case, I have to admit I also relied heavily on my successful history as an entrepreneur. Before living off the grid, I acted as an important society pillar: I created a big business, which in turn created jobs and generated a lot of extra value. But if I wouldn’t have such a successful history, my current position as an “off the grid” business man would have been very different.

Doing business when you live off the grid is also borderline fraud. Or, to be more correct, this is how it’s perceived by normal society. And why is that? Because you, as an outsider, claim ownership to stuff that is no longer backed up by your lifestyle. You want money, right? But money is a value that was generated inside society. You’re no longer part of that society now, you live by your own rules, so why you still need money? Of course, what’s happening in real life is that you start to align some of your “off the grid” rules to those of a normal, protective society, in order to keep the revenue area in sync, so to speak. Many of the popular icons of this lifestyle are actually doing it. Think Tim Ferris or Steve Pavlina. Although they’re prophets of a lifestyle in freedom, outside a regular job, some of their rules are making (a lot of) room to (a lot of) money.

In my experience, doing business off the grid took a lot of trial and error. The good news is that my initial model, building an online brand around a blog, was validated. This thing is actually working. The bad news is that I have to work way more than I initially thought to make this happen. And I also had to increase the speed of my experiments. If you’re reading my blog, let’s say, twice a month, you wouldn’t have notice any of these. There was very small experiments in monetization, like advertising, affiliate products and so on, each in a very narrow time window. They were taking place at a very high speed, so the regular flow of my messages wasn’t disturbed. Also, I had to invest a lot of time in building some real life connections. These efforts couldn’t be seen also on the blog, but they were part of this new lifestyle.

After 3 years I can finally testify that doing business as an off the grid individual can work in a sustainable way. But it’s not even remotely as easy as doing business in the normal society. So if you wanna take on this path, be prepared to work your arse off.

Personal Relationships

Probably the most challenging area. First of all, when I really got into this new lifestyle, my traditional relationships went bonkers. Although it worked well for a year or two, starting with the third year, my traditional marriage collapsed. It took almost 2 years to solve the whole separation related stuff and it was one of my most painful and difficult times ever. Mostly because my daughter, Bianca, had to witness a lot of unhealthy emotional reactions.

I won’t blame entirely my new lifestyle for my marriage collapse, but it was certainly an important part of it. As much as we, as men, don’t want to believe this, women are also starting partnerships with our images, not with us, as human beings. Just as we, men, are attracted by their exciting shapes or flirtatious games (which are almost never exact mirrors of their real human beings), they’re also attracted by our (often unconsciously projected) images of protection and power. In my case, being “the CEO” had a big impact on my last marriage. So big that when the “CEO” part of me was gone, wasn’t much left, at least in the eyes of my ex-wife. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no one to blame here, this is just how things were and I don’t hold any grudges to anyone.

Subsequently, starting new personal relationships when you live off the grid is equally difficult. You know, before this, every time a woman was asking me what do I do for a living, the answer was easy: “I own my own business”. From that point on, things were usually pretty straightforward. But now, I am having a real hard time trying to explain to my new acquaintances what I do for a living. In the beginning, I was taking this question seriously and started to really explain that I have a blog, and around it I built an ecosystem of products, and brands, and so on. Big mistake. Now I only tell them: “I do everything I can to avoid a 9 to 5 job”. It seems that it keeps their minds busy enough so we can move to other parts of the game.

But even if they eventually understand what I do for a living, the real bonding is very difficult, especially if the other person is very much “into the grid”. As a matter of fact, the higher is on her career path, the most difficult is for a woman to relate properly with a man off the grid. Their minds are pretty hard wired into stability and protection (usually, that’s the main reason behind their effort to climb on the career ladder anyway). So, if at any moment they will perceive (and women are extremely good at perceiving things, you know) that you’re not into this protection role anymore, and you’re just experiencing and looking for adventure, they’ll back off. Of course, there is also the other side of the coin, when your adventurous image will arouse them and made them push things even deeper, just to experience a little bit of the thrill they see inside you. But in the end, the planet represented by society is way bigger than you, and its gravity will attract them back.

There is always the possibility to meet a woman who also lives off the grid, or who has a deeper understanding of the world. In that case, things will really work out. But, as you may imagine, this is an order of magnitude more difficult to happen than a normal, society compliant relationship.

Health

This area was one of the few that benefit 100% from my lifestyle change. I will just start by saying that every time I’m asking an unknown person to tell my age just by looking at me, I invariably get “30, 33 or 30 something”. I will be 41 in 3 months.

The main reason for my huge massive health improvement was that I escaped a very tiring work routine. Getting to work day in and day out, whether you like it or not, well, that’s not a good thing. I know you know that. I’m just saying. Doing things in a forced way is not good for anyone. Unfortunately, when we sign up a social contract to have a job, we gotta follow through, otherwise the whole universe around us will collapse. And that mere thought is literally killing many of us slowly. And don’t even imagine that just because I had my own business I didn’t have to go to work day in and day out. As a matter of fact, I think I worked more than any of my employees.

Another important consequence for my health was that I also had a lot of time to experiment. One of the most interesting health experiments I did in the last 3 years was my raw food diet. I stayed raw for like 9 months. During this time I lost 12 kilos and I felt like I was 14 again (minus the hormones thing). I was sleeping 5 hours a night and felt absolutely great. But in the end I had to give up. The main reason for that: society is not ready for this lifestyle. I simply can’t be 100% raw and still have a normal social life. Right now I’m omnivorous but I also drastically changed my physical exercise routine.

And by that I come to another fortunate consequence of living off the grid: the ability to start complex 30 days challenges. I started a 30 days challenge to exercise 2 years ago. I also started a “taming monkey” experiment in which I re-learned how to run. And in the meantime I did countless of other small improvements in my physical health. Like walking instead of driving and not eating after 7 PM. And more. But there’s a very important caveat to this situation and I’m very much aware of it. None of these experiments would have taken place if I wasn’t a self-improvement obsessed freak. And by that I mean it’s much more difficult to get motivated when you’re off the grid. When we’re sharing our lives with other people, by following the same rules, much of our behavior is on auto-pilot. Most of the time, this is a bad thing. But there are situations when being part of a larger group are beneficial. Like your weekly basketball game, for instance, if you know what I mean.

Social Interactions

And with that, I’m going to the part that was most heavily changed by living off the grid: social interactions. In the beginning, the most important consequence was that I was able to filter all my social contacts based on a simple rule: whether I like them or not. You have no idea how heavily our social contacts are influenced by our jobs and how little we can influence them when we follow the rules. Once you’re off the grid and once you can make a conscious choice, your social life will be completely changed. You will meet only people you want to meet. This simple change will have enormous effects on your social life. You will simply be able to ignore people you don’t like. Because you’re not forced to deal with them anymore. Massive amounts of anger and rejection won’t be triggered at all. Instead, your emotional life will start to heal. At some point, you will grow so strong that you will not need this filter anymore. You will be able to deal with all kind of people the same way you deal only with people that you used to like. And that’s huge. It’s an internal transformation that will literally catapult your social life. As of today, I have no difficulty whatsoever to normally relate with basically anyone. And I mean anyone.

Also, another important consequence was that I started to work from home. For the last 10 years I had an office. All that was “work” was happening in that place and in that place only. But after I sold my company I didn’t want an office anymore. So all my work started to happen at home. As surprising as it may seem, this was one of the most effective disciplinary measures I ever took. Working from home, instead of making me a lazy couch potato, transformed me into a productivity freak. There were also a lot of other lessons I learned from this.

But probably the most important thing that happened to me on the social level was traveling. It may sound strange to you but I never left my country until I was 35. And since 37, when I sold my company I went over the world and back 2 times. I started a company in New Zealand (and thinking to start one in US too). I went to Asia, from Thailand to Japan. I gambled in Vegas, ate cooked rice in Hong Kong and croissants in Paris. Visited half of Europe and also crossed my natal country, Romania, in any conceivable way. I learned how to fly in Christchurch and also made my first tattoo. I simply can’t imagine myself being capable to have all these experiences by living a socially accepted lifestyle. Like having a regular job and so on. If there is one, I simply cannot see it, so I’d greatly appreciate any insights in the comments.

The Most Important Lessons From Living Off The Grid

Living off the grid is cool. It’s also pretty difficult, as you already saw. But there is also one thing that proved to be the most important of all. A thing so simple and yet so powerful. A thing that made me realize that I can really keep this lifestyle for as long as I want to, provided I won’t forget it.

Without further ado, here it is: living off the grid doesn’t have any positive outcome if the grid doesn’t take something back of the outside experiments. In other words, if you’re living off the grid for yourself, you are not improving anyone’s life. In fact, you’re not improving your life either. You may say that, as a result of your actions, you’ll be a different person once you get back to the grid. But, since the grid hasn’t changed at all as a result of your absence, your newly acquired abilities or skills are useless.

So, if you really want to live off the grid, remember to give back. Stop every once in a while, look back and see what you can share with others that will make the grid a better place. Start telling your stories, for instance. Or start teaching others, Or just start providing some service you learned on your off the grid experience.

In my case, I’m giving back on this very blog more than 500 self-improvement articles. All free of charge. Just browse and read at your leisure. Also, I wrote 5 books and created an iOS productivity app. All these are some of my ways to give back to the grid.

Because I have no intention to get back there soon. It’s way too cool out here.

Even if it gets really tough at times.

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.

A Raw Food Diet For Your Soul

By now it should be no secret for the readers of my blog that I am a raw vegan. At this specific moment I have more than 6 month of eating only raw, unprocessed and uncooked food. My health has improved dramatically over the last 6 months. I lost 14 kilos in the process and I sleep like a baby. I had a nail problem at my left hand, a tiny exfoliation that started to slowly aggravate in the last 3-4 years. Never knew the reason, just observed helplessly that my nail started to lose consistence. In the last 2 months this condition has been completely reversed, my nail is practically complete again. During May last year I had a horrible cold, with more than 5 days of high fever (40 degrees Celsius). I never had the tiniest cold since I started the diet, although I was exposed to viral contexts.

The main reason for that dramatic change in my “physical layer” is my diet, without any doubt. It’s the way I eat that improved my physical health in such an incredible way.

Overloaded With Toxins

After more than 6 months of observing my body reaction to my raw food, I can affirm that my main improvement area is in the toxins speed elimination. I can feel that my body is having less toxins than before, and when it happens to have more than normal, it eliminates the extra toxins much faster. I can’t explain exactly how it does, I can only tell you that I experience states of lightness and elasticity. I feel like I’m cleaner and more functional than before. It’s not only my weight and my body elasticity, it’s like my whole body mechanism is functioning at a better rate.

Our divine machine, the body, it’s a sublime project. We humans could only aim to create substances as complete or as functional as our human tissue. When we can create something good, we do it incompletely. Every food supplement out there, a part from providing you with a list of  allegedly needed ingredients, insert into your body loads of incomplete, toxic structures. Each thermal modification of our food (apart from allegedly making it available for more time) fundamentally affects its base molecular structure. Every “improved” food contains in fact much more harmful substances, making your body working extra hours to eliminate them. And this extra stress weakens your sublime machine that you call your body.

I guess there is some point from where we don’t feel this effort anymore. After this point we’re actually overloaded with toxins. Our body surrendered and it’s only a question of time until the weakest link will fall apart, creating an illness. I’m not a doctor nor do I intend to pose into one. I can only speak from my firsthand experience on this topic and this is what I do.

A Raw Food Diet For Your Soul

Well, the other day I had out of the blue this thought: what if my emotional layer would also be fed with only raw, unprocessed emotions? What if I impose a raw food diet on my soul? What does that actually could mean? What would be the obstacles? What would be the expected results?

Without claiming that I already started such a diet, I will try to write in this post my possible answers to all those questions from above. So, let’s start it: (more…)

Raw Food Update – Almost 6 Months Later

After a series of 6 articles about The Making Of An Online Business, I thought it would be wise to write about stuff that has been ignored for long time here on my blog, and also about something a little more personal than business advices. Although they seem to have quite an audience, these advices are not my primary goal for this blog. As I always said, this blog is a continuous search for a personal path.

And that personal path lead me almost 6 months ago on the raw food track. My loyal readers know already what does that mean, but for the new ones I will outline some of the raw food specifics. I don’t eat meat, not any animal food like milk, eggs or cheese. I don’t eat processed food, anything cooked is outside my view. I only eat fruits, vegetables and seeds. The only exception is honey, which is the product of… I don’t know if I can associate it with milk, but whatever, I eat honey.

Although this seems like a very limiting choice of foods, it is in fact a very pleasant one. I eat apples, pears, bananas, avocados and all kind of fruits I can find. I eat a lot of roots like celery, carrots and parsley. I incorporate garlic and onions any time I can and of course I eat a lot of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and capsicum. I discovered several months ago that pine buds are a fantastic food, along with almonds, nuts or pumpkin seeds. During winter I eat a lot of dried fruits like dates, prunes or raisins and of course oranges and mandarines. In fact, I do have a greater variety than before.

Raw Food And Health

I plan to have a complete medical test later this month and I will write in detail the differences from my last medical test. Please note that before going raw vegan I was a lacto-ovo-vegetarian for more than 3 years. I did have some cholesterol anomalies and I did had a colon sensitivity which was in fact pretty disturbing in the last 4-5 years. Before being a vegetarian I was a complete mess in terms of eating, I was also a regular drinker in my early twenties and I guess this can leave pretty powerful marks.

There are visible effects of my health even without the medical tests, which I guess they come clean this time. First of all, the weight loss is constantly at same level. I am 1,82 tall and my weight is between 79-81 kilos regardless of what, when and how I eat. During the first three months of being raw vegan I lost 14 kilos. This is a fantastic benefit and it will well worth a raw food diet even if it would be the only one.

My sleeping patterns are completely upgraded. I can go to sleep anytime now, have around 7 hours a sleep and then wake up relaxed and ready to go. Doesn’t matter if I go to bed at 23:45 or at 21:00, I do sleep 7 hours and feel ok. I had a lot of issues with my sleep before, I either overslept constantly, either made white nights every other week, in order to “win” some time. Not anymore. I literally sleep like a baby.

Oh, and one other thing to mention about my health, which I think it’s pretty important. During last month we were traveling for the holidays. While in Switzerland, Bianca caught a serious cold. She was feverish (around 39-40 degrees Celsius) for 2 nights in a row and had to have antibiotics. Usually, when somebody in the family has a bacterial infection like that one, all the family is picking it up. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t pick it up this time.

The other day, after 2 weeks of kindergarten, Bianca caught another infection (we were warned about that, every time a kid starts socializing like this, there will be an adaptation and immunization period). Didn’t caught this either. While Bianca’s immune system is starting to build up seems like my immune system is already better than before. It’s important to know that last year during May – just two months before starting to eat raw – I had a horrible illness in which I had almost a week of high fever, and it was a bacterial infection. So, it’s definitely a big improvement here.

I’m sure that my body is now in better shape and all its functions are better than 6 months ago thanks to this raw food habit. I also think that there are some better protection processes taking places in my body, but it’s too early now to write about this. I will monitor these patterns closer and see how it’s going. It’s basically about how my body reacts to a serious increase on stress (being it a fitness session, or a bacterial infection). I’m sure there is something much better going on, but without more details I can’t be sure and I really don’t want to go delusional here, keeping it only to the facts for now. (more…)

Overcoming Cravings On A Raw Food Diet

Soon I’ll have the 4th month anniversary of my raw food diet. This has been an exciting time for my body and mind and I think it’s only the beginning. The positive effects I outlined in my other posts describing the health benefits are going steadily, while the side effects, like detox simptoms are slightly fading away. My weight is constantly at the same level and my focus periods are getting better and better. I’m able to work more and feel more relaxed at the same time. To be honest, I barely know what a headache is and I haven’t been ill since this raw food diet started. My emotional flow is constant and even if I’m experiencing emotional detox from time tot time, it’s going better every time. After each emotional detox period I feel stronger and balanced.

There was however, a quite resistent aspect of this diet that concerned me a little and that was about cravings. I wrote before about that and I will write even more today, as I think I found a way to overcome those cravings. Keeping a raw food diet for a month or two is a manageable thing. But after you start to overlap some yearly eating habits, after you enter into a different season, for instance, your body will try to recall what it knows it’s eatable at that time of the year. Since I was taught for almost all my life that in winter we eat a lot of meat, for instance, my body is starting to ask for more meat. The actual needs of my body are easily met with fat rich raw foods like seeds or nuts, and I eat plenty of fat rich raw foods these days. The need is at a psychological level. There is an emotional link between a certain type of foods and my psychological reaction.

It took me some time to understand that. And a little bit more to decide how to break this. And this is how I started to do it.

The Power Of Example

I feel fantastic on this raw food diet, I really do. It’s one of my best periods in terms of health and lucidity. I don’t think I felt like this from my teenage period, when I was doing a lot of exercise and write every day. I feel gorgeous.

But sometimes I tend to forget this. I mean I feel so good that I can’t really imagine how it’s like to feel bad. I’m not tired at all and when I go to bed I usually fall asleep in less than 3 minutes. I sometimes monitor people around me and notice some visible spikes in their energy levels, followed by long periods of apathy. The spikes are mostly related to stimulents like coffee or cigarettes, they last for several minutes, while the apathy periods can last for several hours. Those periods are so clear to me, I can really grasp how the other person is feeling. This empathy boost must be related to the diet too. So, when I see how other people are doing around me, I remember that I used to do the same. I lived the same life and I was convinced that there is no other way of living. (more…)

Raw Food Diet Update – Three Months After

So, today is my 3 months anniversary of being a raw foodist. It’s been actually a full 90 days – and a little bit over – since I haven’t eaten any cooked food. Actually, I had two exceptions, outlined in my first post about raw food, but they were of little significance. Needless to say that I’m feeling better than ever. In this post I’ll try to outline a few opinions about keeping a raw food diet, share some of the side effects, and put together some of the most important benefits.

Weight Loss On A Raw Food Diet

By far the most visible change of this diet was in my weight, exactly in my weight loss. When I started this, I had around 93 kilos, a little bit overweighted for a 1,82 meter tall guy. And this was exactly how I felt: overweighted and not at ease in my own body. At any effort I was ready to sweat and my overall physical endurance was extremely low. Mentally, I had very few clear focus moments and I was struggling with anger and stress. I always felt behind schedule, scared and under pressure. Looking in the mirror didn’t help either, because the guy I saw had more than 15 kilos than the guy I expected to see. But everything changed the moment I started to eat raw.

Starting with the 10th day I logged my weight daily and I also logged what I ate. Today I reviewed everything that I wrote in my journal during this period and then I realized I can even make some visual representation of this. 5 minutes in a spreadsheet application and here we are:

There are some very interesting spots to be mentioned on this chart:

• the weight loss in the first period is dramatic, in two weeks I lost around 4,5 – 5 kilos
• after each month I seemed to have a sudden spike in my wieght, mostly related to some intended changes in the diet
• after the 3rd month the weight loss seemed to stop (I didn’t include the last week in the chart, but during this week my weight was constantly between 79 and 81 kilos, regardless of what and how I would eat)

My eating routine had a very strong point on fruits and vegetables, I’ve been basically eating only fruit and salads. In the first month I used intensively the blender and drank a lot of smoothies, but I gradually came back to a more solid approach in the last two months. I also avoided as much as I could vegetal fat, mostly to avoid an increase in yeast, which seems to be quite common among raw foodists. From what I read, mixing sugar (from fruits) with a lot of fat (even from seeds or high fat fruits like avocado) can create a good environment for yeast growth. In the last few weeks, however, I did start to incorporate more and more fat into my eating habits and I didn’t see any side effect. (more…)

Psychological Benefits And Drawbacks Of A Raw Food Diet

We’ll, it’s been almost 3 months since I am on a raw food diet now, and things are going extremely well for me. I thought to write something about my weight loss and other physical benefits, but then I realized I could wait a little more, like 2 weeks, in order to have a round number of months. And that would be 3 months of raw food diet, on or around 4th November this year.

But until then, I’m sure I can write something about those not so visible benefits and drawbacks of a raw food diet. In my opinion, these are even more important than physical benefits, because those influences appears and manifest on many levels, including the physical level. And, to be honest, they tend o be somehow excluded from the mainstream, where everybody talks about recipes, fitness and raw food processors. So, without further ado, let’s start with this.

Psychological Benefits Of A Raw Food Diet

The mental benefits of a raw food diet are being visible after the first 3-4 weeks, if you had raw food experiences before, or after the 6th or 7th week if not. I guess this lag is related to the adaptation period, and with the fact that your eating habits are being strongly challenged, which in turn takes a lot of your focus. But after this detox period, you will notice that without any trace of confusion.

Mental clarity

This is related to all of your mental states, being relaxation, moderate activity or intense focus. In each and every mental states I experienced an increased clarity and quality. I wish I could explain in a more scientific way the causes for that, but, since I’m not a scientist, I guess I’ll pass this. I just feel a lot of thinking intensity and a greater solving problem capacity. It’s not related only to the blogging activities, but in all areas, from simple day to day life planning, to more complex activities, like planning the move to New Zealand. This mental clarity itself would be enough for me not to try to go back to cook food. (more…)

Raw Food Diet Update: Two Months After

It’s been almost two months since I started the raw food diet and I thought it would be a good time to share some of the effects this diet had so far. For those of you unfamiliar with this type of eating I’ll just say that raw food means eating uncooked and unprocessed food, exclusively fruits, vegetables and seeds. I’ve been on this type of diet before, but now I do it much more strictly, while monitoring its effects more closely. First and foremost, I have to say that there were several exceptions from this diet, all of them because the events were out of my control.

It’s about the trip to New Zealand, which in itself counted as almost 4 days from the total amount of the last month. And two of these days were literally on air, the flight from Bucharest to Auckland is more than 22+ hours. So, on the plane I had to eat some cooked food, but I limited myself only to some bread now and then, some cheese, and the rest of the meals were just the salads, fruits or juice. The stewards were most of the time puzzled by my choice – and I have to admit that I could organize the trip a little better, by informing the airline company in advance about my culinary preferences – but they did their best to accommodate my appetite. So, with a little compromise from my part, I managed not to starve on the 4 transcontinental flights, and still keep the cooked food at a minimal level.

Another exception was an experiment. After reading a lot about B12 vitamin deficiency I decided to incorporate some B12 fortified food in my eating routine. I experimented with some cheese and then settled for B12 fortified cereals. I intend to eat twice a week a plate of B12 fortified cereals with plain water. It’s a compromise I need to make until I have a better understanding of this situation. The vast majority of raw food gurus seems to agree on the B12 necessity, while some other part claims that B12 can be found in seeds, especially sesame seeds. Will see more about that…

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Raw Food Diet

I first started to eat raw food back in 2005. I kept the habit for more than 6 months and then, after several weeks of recession, in which I ate everything including meat, I become a lacto-ovo-vegetarian. That vegetarianism was based on cooked food, which was more than 80% of my regular meals, and the rest was raw fruits and salads. I wasn’t a vegetarian before and I never thought I could become one. To be honest, I haven’t paid too much attention to my food habits in the past, and the fact that I started to eat raw directly, without going through a intermediary vegetarian period, has to do more with my friends than with my own decisions. At that time I started to be more interested in the occult and astrology. Ok, take the “occult” term very vaguely, and define it like something outside our normal cartesian system of thinking, do not imagine that I tried black magic or some other sort of underground manipulating things. The main part of this occult interest was about astrology and although I was an interested reader about astrology facts in the past, I never crossed the line towards a more systemic approach. But during that time I felt that my regular interpretation of reality and myself is somehow limited and maybe there are new ways of understanding what happens with me and with the world. There was a very intense feeling of the “beyond here and now” state, and that pushed me to seriously study astrology.  

But that was not the only thing I’ve done. I also started to read other spiritual authors, like Carlos Castaneda, don Miguel Ruiz, Osho and a plethora of motivational writers, like Og Mandino, for instance. It was an inner burst towards change and a more congruent approach to the way I lived my life. No wonder that during that period I started the relationship that eventually become my current marriage. I plan to write extensively on the spiritual, astrological and personal development topics, so I will stop here these ramblings, which only served as a context for the main topic of this post, which is raw food.

So, why raw food? What’s wrong with the cooked food? What are the ups and downs of being a raw foodist?

(more…)