Taming Monkey Number 11 – The Results

It’s the last day of November and I decided to write a short report about my eleventh monkey. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go read the introductory post. In short, at the beginning of 2011, I decided to ditch my yearly resolutions and replace them with 12 monthly challenges, in which I will “tame an inner monkey”. In other words, try to solve some unfinished business or to cope with some unfulfilled promise I made to myself or to others. If you want to know more about my concept of inner monkey, go read this post.

Relationships. Can’t Live With Them, Can’t Shoot Them

This is precisely how I felt about relationships for a long time. It may feel really counterintuitive, given the fact that not only I run a quite popular blog, but I’m also a very visible person, both business-wise, and social-wise. Like I used to say in my early twenties, “the legend is bigger than me”. At that time I started to notice that there was always somebody who seemed to know me from somewhere. I was moderately popular as a radio anchor, knew a lot of people myself, been very visible (and I still am) as business man, and so on.

Knowing a lot of people is one thing, but having and managing healthy relationships is another one. The last one being always very difficult to me. Why? To make a long story short: I like to be alone. I know it took me thirty something years to realize that, but I made peace with it. I’m a lonely beast and I very much enjoy it this way. I find it tedious to relate to people for longer periods of time. While at the same time, to some extent, I do realize that it’s important for me to maintain relationships for longer periods of time. It’s still fuzzy, as I just can’t put my finger on it, can’t say why that is, I just feel that, for some obscure reason, having and keeping longer relationships may be beneficial. Somehow. A bit of this is explained in the last paragraph of this post, but hold on, don’t jump on it yet.

In short, here’s what I accomplished and what I learned while taming my eleventh monkey.

Relationships On The Move

On one side, I am really happy to have myself involved in a new circle of friendships. Many of these new friendships are in the same social circle as I am: either separated or divorced, and with kids. It was kind of a big step for me to reach out to this kind of people. One of the challenges was to find common pastimes. As a man, on the rare occasions I was going out, it was either running, going to the movies, some business event or the regular Saturday night drinks with the guys. So, I had to search, find and implement a few new pastimes.

One of them is the Saturday pancakes, as I like to call it. The neat thing about keep doing pancakes is that, in time, you become really good at making pancakes. So, I started a series of weekend pancake parties, which of course involved kids and their parents. Huge success. Another pastime was to go to the kids theater. That is on Sundays. Kids are going to see a different play each and every Sunday, while parents are catching their breath with a hot cup of tea or coffee. Of course, there are variations, sometime we go to a specific event or to a kids movie, or whatever.

On another side, I was getting rid of a different type of relationships, which I used to call “empty nutshells”. These are relationships with no core. It may have been that at the time of inception they were necessary, but now the core is consumed. So, I was slowly letting slide into the past a few empty nutshells. It is important to say that I let them slowly. It wasn’t something forced or imposed.

And yet another thing I’ve been massively doing during November: attending to business events. I’ve been called to at least 3, I guess, and at one of them I even wore a suit. I’m serious. I wore a suit and it’s been in the papers and all . At these events I did my best to mingle, interact and start new contacts. I remember I spent like 15 minutes waiting to talk to Doug Richard, which is something really unusual for me. Again, all this mingle and interacting was done without forcing anything. It was actually fun.

The last, and perhaps most important thing I did during November was to start a new business partnership. It’s about the newly revamped WPSumo, in which I am, for the first time, partner with an angel investor. It is by far the most drastic change I did in my business approaches, and one that is still undergoing a lot of changes. But it’s also something that I felt compelled to. Technically, the business partnership started in October, but I counted it for November.

A Surprising Side Effect

Well, I don’t know if it was because I announced this monkey on the blog, or because the Law Of Attraction really works, but something very interesting happened during this month. People started to call me. Like sending me emails, messages on Facebook or Google. Out of nothing, they wrote to me proposing to meet, to start projects, to get counseling (one of them was breaking up with her boyfriend and needed some astrological advice). It was a huge surprise. People are actually reaching out and trying to get in contact with me. I honestly didn’t expect that. But again, it’s fun.

What I Learned From This Monkey

We’re cells. We’re interconnected in a bigger picture. Like we’re really interconnected, it’s not just a word or an empty concept. We function differently when we’re in autonomous mode versus when we’re in interconnection mode. There is a bigger and different flow of energy going on when we’re in interconnection mode. I’m not talking about the quality of it, because energy may be either creative or destructive, I’m just witnessing the fact that human interaction is creating much more energy. Which is bigger than the algebraicl sum of 1 + 1. When in bad relationships, this energy is destructive, of course.

On the other side, it’s not at all impossible to live an isolated life. I’m a living proof of that, by the way.

But an isolated life will eventually lead to some form of energy depletion. Like a cell which is claiming independence from the main body. It may get it at some point, no doubt about it. But it may get it in a very brutal way, like a nail which is being cut. You got your independence, but you’re also expendable.

If you’re not providing to the body somehow, you eventually become unnecessary.

But the good news is that, as humans, we may still choose the way in which we provide back. We’re not so specialized, like a liver cell or heart tissue cell, doing only one thing. We can change our ways as we see fit.

The secret is to find that specific place where your skills, approaches and all the other unspoken gifts you have to give to the world are needed.

And then start giving.

Taming Monkey Number 10: Talk Less, Do More

Every once in a while, when I’m in the middle of a discussion, Bianca, my 5 year old daughter breaks in with a low voice, but very firmly: “dad, you talk too much!” And oh, she is right every time.

I don”t know from where she picked this up. It may be that at some point I said that to her. Or it may be that she simply believes that I do talk too much. And as much as I don’t want to admit it, it’s true. I have this tendency to over-verbalize stuff (I don’t even know if “over-verbalize” is a word, but it looked nice here). I have an obsession for putting things into words and writing them down. On the bright side, this created a blog with 100.000 unique visitors each month. Writing three times a week, for three years, well, that pays back big time.

But on the dark side, this has some surprising side effects. Introducing monkey number 10: “talk less, do more”. If you read my blog for a while, you know that for 2011 I ditched my new year resolutions in favor of a new approach: 12 monthly challenges, in which I will try to “tame an inner monkey”. If you want to know the full scoop, read the introductory post here. And if you want to know more about what an inner monkey is, read this.

The Challenge

When I refer to “talking too much”, the usual suspect is, of course, the blog. This is why I took a huge break in October. I barely wrote 3 articles for the entire month. Which is almost nothing for me. And since I got here, I want to thank to all of you who wrote me to ask if everything is ok. Yes, it is. Better than never actually.

But when I say “talking too much”, I also mean spending too much energy in putting my life into words each and every day, versus actually doing stuff and enjoying it. And that was the biggest challenge for October. There were moments during which I felt a bit lost and adrift. Because I was very much used to anchor myself daily in my own story. Like writing on the blog, engaging in social media, journaling and so on. It was a very secure approach. Gave me stability and a sense of purpose.

But clinging too much on your own story may take you away from other, possibly much more interesting stories. Introversion and self exploration is good, but the world, believe it or not, is also taking place outside. Like in the things you do. Decisions you take and implement. Relationships you start and manage. Waking up each day, doing stuff without writing it down and then going to sleep with that unspeakable sense of fulfilling, only to wake up refreshed and ready to start again next morning. And when you’re immersed in this ocean of events, talking about them may start to feel almost superfluous.

That was the biggest lesson I learned by taming the 10th monkey. I may have talked too much in the past, but I think I found a little bit of balance now. So do expect me to continue to write here, but not at the same pace as before. Or, to be more correct, not in an imposed, artificial pace. If I feel I have to write 3 posts per day, I’ll do it. If I feel I want to write only one post per month, I will write only one post per month.

Life Unfolding

Since the lesson is learned, I think it’s safe to make a short recap of what I actually did during October. And, as you will see, it’s a lot.

Moved out into a new apartment

During the process, I did some of the most empowering stuff I did lately. Namely, I got rid of some of the stuff I wrote as a teenager (among other stuff). When I moved out from the house I still own (rented it to somebody when I decided to move out) I had to get rid of an incredibly high amount of stuff. Literally there were hundreds of useless objects I had to throw away. And, among them, my teenage notebooks. I always thought of what I wrote in those notebooks like something that defined me. And by doing this, I was stuck in that definition of myself. Unable to move out, to change, to explore. Throwing away some of my notebooks (along with other garbage) was a liberating experience. Letting go is tough, but necessary.

Retook my position in WPSumo

I always was very fond of this project. So, when an opportunity to take over the entire WPSumo project from one of the founders emerged, I jumped on it. I’m still putting together the bits and pieces, reframing the strategy and taking care of the usual stuff that a business require, but all in all I’m really happy I’m on board again.

Went to an improv show for the first time

It may seem like a minor event, but for me was important. Also, proved that once you set up your vibration properly, necessary events are created into your life. Seeing this show – which made me laugh incessantly for almost two hours – made me realize that sometimes you just have to go with the flow. Improvise. Expect the unexpected. And, most important, learn to laugh at it, instead of controlling the outcome.

Signed my first independent publishing agreement

Two of my titles will be translated into Korean and sold as ebooks by an independent publisher. This is big. This is something so important for me, that I can barely put it into words. I don’t think it will be huge in terms of revenue – although my publisher said I was a pretty tough negotiator – but it is already very important in terms of personal choices. I do write books and they are needed by people. They are actually published. It’s hard to describe the feeling, believe me.

All in all, I think it was a very dense month.

The 11th Monkey

It will be about relationships. I am committed to strengthen my relationships on all levels: professionals, in the first place, and, most important, personal. I already did a few moves in this area and things are looking pretty good. Also, there are a few supporting events that will make this challenge even more interesting during November.

On 7th, I will be part of a panel at ZileleBiz, a national business event in Romania, where I will speak about digital nomading. On 22nd I’m invited to the biggest Internet event in Romania, NetCamp, and on 23rd I will be again part of VentureConnect, a very special business opportunity, which aims at connecting entrepreneurs with investors.

So, busy times ahead. Like I said: talk less and do more.

The Lottery Scam

You know what a “Lottery Scam” is? If not, just bear with me for a second.

The “lottery scam” is a widely used con. It usually starts with the sending of a letter, in which the winning of a prize is announced. Somehow, you, the receiver of the letter, are suddenly entitled to that prize. You just won something. Isn’t that wonderful?

After you get in contact with the sender to clarify the details of your winnings, you are then asked to pay a little bit of money. It’s not much, compared to the winnings and it makes perfect sense, too. That money is either “processing money” or “tax” that you should just pay. And it’s not that much anyway.

After you pay that small amount of money, all of a sudden, your prize either disappears, or transforms itself into something completely worthless (like coupons for extremely expensive stuff you can’t afford anyway). It’s in that moment that you realize the small amount of money you were required to pay was really important. And lost. And that you’ve been scammed.

The Life Lottery Scam

When presented like this, this scam is relatively easy to be spotted and avoided. But the bad news is that the “lottery scam” works on many other levels. In fact, it activates some very deep switches, making us vulnerable on many areas. I call it “the life lottery scam”. Here are a few examples.

Suppose you’re a man and a beautiful woman enters your life. You are incredibly attracted to her and start telling to yourself that finally something good is coming into your life. She also seems attracted to you, but not too much. Just enough to be seen as a valuable prize, as something that you must fight for.

And fighting is what you do. You fiercely begin your struggle and start spending small amounts of stuff (not talking specifically about money, it’s also time and emotional support) knowing that the value of the final prize will be so big, that will make these small investments look ridiculously small.

And spend, and spend, and spend until, at some point, tired or even broke, you want your prize. You know you won the lottery, you paid your “processing fees” and now you want the reward. Alas, you will instantly find out that the reward was never there. As in the classical lottery scam, it’s either completely nonexistent (the woman simply dumps you) or it’s just something you don’t want (like the “let’s just be friends and I told you already you shouldn’t expect more than that from me anyway” thing we all got at some point in our lives).

What happened? You traded some amounts of your life (translated into various types of support, like time, money or emotions) on something that you thought it will be an order of magnitude higher. But you forgot one essential aspect: you were never signed up to that competition. Most of the time there’s no competition at all. You thought you were in, because you wanted to, and, most of the time, that’s what you’ve been lured to believe. But in reality, there was never an authentic intention for a real bonding from the other side.

Many of the relationships I see around myself are just variations of this specific case. One of the partners is a parasite to the other, feeding with his or her money, or time or emotional support, in an endless expectation of the other partner for a bigger exchange, that, of course, never happens. That’s a very common “life lottery scam”.

But it also happens in jobs, or in professional relationships. For instance, during some conversations with your boss, you suddenly start to perceive small hints that a new promotion will be in place soon. Also, you get some signals that you’re going to be a “real candidate” for it.

What do you do? You start working your ass for it like never before, because you now know that you already won the prize. Finally, something good is happening to you at this stupid job. But when the promotion time arrives, you either learn that it was never something about a promotion, or that somebody else will get it in your place.

Again, you traded your work hours, your ideas, your input for something that you thought it’s a done deal. Only it wasn’t. Just another form of “life lottery scam”.

The Surprising Scammer

One very important difference between the standard “lottery scam” and what I call the “life lottery scam” is about the scammer. In the standard “lottery scam“ this is very easy to spot. It’s another person (sometimes a group) who just wants your money. But in the ”life lottery scam“, the scammer – and I’m sure this is gonna be a huge surprise for you – is not always outside.

Most of the time, the scammer is you. Yes, you. You project your expectations, and goals, and hopes on a certain situation, without properly assessing it. You think you won something, without really taking the time to be sure about it. You just think you did. You take your suppositions for granted and start to build on this incredibly thin foundation. And when the weight of the building is reaching a critical point, namely when you want your ”prize“, the foundation collapses.

And it’s only then that you realize that you weren’t in any competition at all. There was no prize to be won. You just traded your time on a ghost. More important, on a ghost you created yourself.

You Can’t Win A Competition You Never Signed Up For

The bottom line in this scam – and the reason for this blog post – is that you can’t win a nonexistent competition. Or one that you never signed up for. If something looks too good to be true, then it usually is to good to be true. Just ask questions until you get your answers. And, most important, start by asking questions to yourself. Investigate, uncover any half-explained information, immerse yourself totally in any interaction until you find out what you need to find out. Which usually is just the answer to a very simple question: “is this for real?”.

There is this secret desire that something will happen outside us, something that will drastically improve our existence. And this desire grows stronger and stronger over years. The less you do your work, the more you expect somebody else to do it for you.

Well, I got news: there’s nobody out there capable of doing your work. Only you.

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.

Luck, Bad Luck And The Illusion Of Control

I used to be a control freak. No longer than 4-5 years ago I was owning and running a moderately big online business. By “moderately big” I understand a network of websites with more than 1.000.000 unique users each month and a yearly income in the hundreds of thousands of euros. According to today’s economy, I guess this will easily qualify as a big business anyway

My daily management routine was a very tight one. I wanted to keep an eye on each and every aspect of the activity. From human resources to strategy, and from technical expertise to sales. The good part of it was that in time I became really good at pretty much everything that relates to running an online business. The bad part of it was that in 10 years I was completely burned out.

I sold that business 3 years ago. And with it, I also sold my “control freakeness“. Took me almost 10 years to realize that control is nothing more than an illusion.

Luck, Bad Luck, And The Illusion Of Control

The simplest definition of control could be summed up like this: ”no unexpected events“. Everything planned and working as scheduled. Actively preventing any surprises from interfering with our plan and course of actions. Simply put, being in control means you avoid any potential chaos.

But, as surprising as it may feel, our mere notion of ‘luck’ is based exactly on chaos. If you really take the time to think at it, you’ll realize that ”luck“ comes from our desire to have an unexpected crack in the controlled flow of our daily events. Somehow, deep inside, we desperately need to believe in a ”friendly“, supportive chaos.

We all have this clandestine hope that something good may happen to us all of a sudden. And we name this unexpected positive change ”luck“. You can’t plan, schedule and allocate resources for luck; it will just be there, if it’s bound to be there. (Subsequently, you can’t really prepare for ”bad luck“; by definition, ”bad luck“ is something that happens agains all odds).

The Fixed Path

Being a control freak means you’re ignoring any of these two possibilities. You willingly abdicate from luck. And, subsequently, try to protect yourself from bad luck. You simply don’t take them into account anymore. You just negotiate a certain outcome, stick to it and get rid of anything else.

From my personal (long and rich when it comes to being a control freak) experience, reaching your goals may be a little bit more predictable if you’re a control-freak. That’s a fact. But from the same experience, I also know that this approach is not only boring, but also diminishing. It’s true, I achieved a lot with my company by being a control freak.

But it’s also true that I passed by some very interesting opportunities, because, at that time, they were not ”fitting“ into my scheduled course of actions. They were simply things that were happening, out of nothing. Surprises. Unexpected events that I did not follow through, because I already had a schedule in place. I cannot say what my company would have become if I would follow those opportunities. And that’s kinda sad.

Completely protecting yourself from chaos will only give you an illusion. Because life is not predictable. It can’t be controlled. It’s something that just happens. And you always have the choice to ”protect“ from what happens, or to embrace what happens and figure your way as you go along.

For a certain amount of time, being in control will certainly give you a feeling of security. But at the same time it will take away any chance of luck. Or happy accident, as I like to call life events.

3 Ways To Let Go Of Control

It all may sound nice and easy in theory, but what about some actionable stuff? How about some simple (and I mean really simple) things you can do in order to get rid of control, and still be on top of your game?

1. Keep Your Eyes On The Road

And your hand upon the wheel. That means you should never lose sight of your goal but that you’re also ready to steer right or left if something unexpected occurs. And if you’re on a regular road, unexpected things will happen and you will have to steer right or left, or use the brakes from time to time and start again.

If you would have been a control freak, it would have mean your car doesn’t have a steering wheel at all.

2. Assess The Progress Rather Than The Process

If you’re focusing too much over the processes you’re implementing, you’re entering the control freak area. If you’re assessing progress, you can change processes at any time. I know for sure that this is completely against every management technique that you will ever read about. And I don’t really care about that .

It’s more about where you really go, not too much about ”how“ you go. That may change. Be ready.

3. Take Risks

Not too often, not too big. But do take risks regardless of the outcome. Break the patterns and let something new to happen, every once in a while. Challenge the fate. The outcome may be something you don’t really expect, but as long as you’re learning, you’re ok.

For instance, go out an try to meet somebody new. Like right now

Control And Resources

But probably the most important thing about control is your access to resources. If you set course to a certain way of doing things, you’re limiting yourself. You limit your access to resources.

That’s very easy to understand in business. For instance, if you choose only one way to approach your customers, you’re limiting yourself. That’s obvious. Everybody will advice you to use the famous ”marketing mix“, which is, well, a mixture of a lot of different approaches.

But in relationships, for instance, this correlation between control and resources is a little bit more difficult to spot. For instance, if you apply only a one specific strategy in order to meet new people, you’re drastically limiting your potential universe. You will only reach to those prone to be touched by your moves. There will be a lot of people that you may want to meet, but you won’t be able to, because, well… you never change your approach. And that’s because you’re only using a tiny part of your resources.

In fact, you’re having a huge pool of resources out there. Or, should I say, in there. Change the ways, try something new, assess, decide if it’s good for you, and the go on your path.

So, that’s the reason I’m not asking for any comment to this post right now. And I’m ending it quite abruptly, right here.

Unlocking The Wrong Door

My first car was a wreck. A real wreck. The make was Dacia and the model was Nova. The color was metal blue and the engine was a 1.4 liter gasoline. The doors weren’t closing right and rear window exploded one very cold winter while I was waiting at a red light. Don’t ask why, it just exploded. The inside was extremely hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter.

Half of the parts were malfunctioning one way or another. For instance, a heat sensor who was supposed to start the engine cooling system decided to have a life of its own. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. During the summer, if I was using the car more than 2-3 hours a day, at some point thick layers of white steam were starting to emerge from under the hood. Had to pull over and wait until the engine cooled down.

Yes, it was a real wreck. I remember that one day, during a very hot summer, I had a meeting down town. I found a parking spot, locked the car (a useless precaution, more like a habit) and then went to my meeting. I don’t remember well what was I supposed to do at that meeting or if it went well at all, but I remember that I stayed around an hour.

It was noon already and the heat was reaching the “unbearable” point. Once I got to my car, I inserted the key into the door lock and started to spin. Unfortunately, the lock was stuck. Alas, it wasn’t the first time. Like I told you, half of the parts were malfunctioning and my door lock was on that half. I remember there was a subtle sequence of pushing and spinning that I have to do with my key in order to trick the lock.

I think I stayed like 30 minutes using my wrist in the most incredible positions, trying to make that lock open. No chance. I went to the other door, but didn’t get luckier. It was getting hotter and hotter. Drops of sweat were already flowing down from my eyebrows. My shirt was wet and my feet were burning. And that stupid door had no intention to open.

At that point, I did what every frustrated man would have done: decided to punch the car as hard as I can. I clearly remembered that I lifted my right arm, chose the exact spot where my fist was about to land, then lowered it with great speed, waiting for my fist to reach that very familiar scratch on the hood. Yes, I even had a very familiar scratch on my hood.

But then something happened. I remember just as clear that my fist stopped millimeters above the hood, because, well, that familiar scratch, the point where all my fury had to explode in a giant hit, that scratch was gone. No scratch at all. Gone. Puzzled, I stepped down. At first, I thought that heat was playing a trick on me. But no, it was a Dacia. Even more, a Dacia Nova. Metal blue. Same tires. Same steering wheel. But the scratch wasn’t there anymore.

Then, for the first time during that half an hour, my head moved two degrees to the right. Until that moment, all my visual field was locked on the target in front of me: my car. But now it moved to the right a little. Something new and at the same time familiar appeared in my visual field. Another Dacia. 20 centimeters next to the one I wanted to unlock so far. Even more, a Dacia Nova. Metal blue. Same tires. Same steering wheel. Only the hood had that familiar scratch too.

I looked around really fast. Nobody seemed to have noticed anything. I went to that second car, unlocked the door with only one move and left in a split of a second. Yes, I was trying to unlock a different, but somehow familiar car. For the last half an hour, I was focusing on unlocking the wrong door.

Who Are You Talking To?

Yes, you can stop laughing now. Seriously. Are we cool now? Ok, thanks.

The reason I wrote this story is because every time I am coming around a new significant relationship, it kinda pops up into my head. Again and again. That half an hour spent trying to unlock the wrong door seems to be my “relationship red alert”. How come?

Well, because it reminds me about the difference between who I think I’m dealing with and who I’m really dealing with.

In my car situation, I was imagining all the time that I was dealing with something familiar. I went to that car without the blink of an eye. It looked exactly as the one I was expecting to get. Only it wasn’t.

In a similar way, we build an internal image of somebody who is supposed to be our “chosen one” and when we see that image, we’re rushing towards it without the blink of an eye. Only the person behind that image may have nothing in common with our expectations. And, to be honest, it seldom has something in common with our expectations. It’s just an image we built inside and, based on a strange coincidence, it just appeared in our visual field.

I know that because I’ve been there many times. Stumbled upon a familiar image, somebody that was really, really close to my internal ideal of a significant relationship and, based only on this, I imagined that I know whom am I talking to. Only I wasn’t really talking to somebody. It wasn’t a real discussion going on. All I was doing was trying to unstuck the door lock and get into that person heart.

Most of the time spent in these relationships was just an endless effort on the outside. Somehow, I even got used to this game and said to myself all kind of “encouraging“ stuff like “if it takes so much time unlocking this door, it must be really valuable”. Only it wasn’t valuable at all, of course. None of these relationships was even started. All I was doing was staying in the heat, endlessly trying to unlock a door which wasn’t supposed to open for me.

In my experience, a relationship works only when the door unlocks from the first time and you’re getting everything about the other person, without any noise, secrets, decoys, detours or embellishing lies. Ok, you may have to do a few tricks, a little pushing and a little spinning, but the door to the other person heart must open.

That’s the starting point. Without opening the door, you can’t even leave in a journey together. You’re stuck on the parking lot. And what’s even more interesting is that even after you opened the other person’s heart, nobody guarantees that the journey will be peaceful and all happy and pink. It may leave off some thick layers of white steam every once in a while. Parts of it may explode during the winters and sometimes it will feel too cold or too hot. But at least you will have a journey together.

Yes, my first car was a wreck. A real wreck. But it was my car and I loved it. With good stuff and bad stuff.

The First Cut Is The Deepest

When I was 15 I was madly in love with a beautiful girl called M. She was absolutely gorgeous. I still think she must have been one of the most beautiful girls in our town. Tall, thin, only 15, with long black hair flowing just right to her hips, an incredible white and delicate face and a specific way of walking. She was like floating or something. I was on fire.

An important part of my adulation was to gaze at her window for hours. She was living at the fourth (and last) floor of one of the communist blocks in my small town. Oh, I didn’t tell you but until 19 I lived under communism, in a small city in the middle of Romania, near the mountains. We lived in grey, ugly, concrete made and freezing cold blocks.

Luckily, M. was living very close to my place. We were practically in the same building, only her mother’s apartment was on the opposite side. Her windows had the view over a state kindergarten (the one that I attended as a kid) a place which was opened all the time. I used to sneak inside the playgrounds of the kindergarten, find a place from where I could see her window and start my gazing.

Sometimes, I could see a shadow. Sometimes I could see her hair for like 20 seconds, from behind, she was talking to somebody.  Fact is, I stayed in that kindergarten for a few weeks, long afternoon after long afternoon, until she finally noticed me. She opened the window and we finally started to talk. From that moment, we went out together. Well, getting out together is a little exaggeration. We were just having long walks, trying to find hidden remote places where we fooled around for hours.

The Projection

I was absolutely sure I was going to marry her. I even started to plan where to move out. There were rumors that a new neighborhood of blocks was on the city council plans. During those times you didn’t have many options for shelter. You couldn’t own your own house. Your only chance to live in your own apartment was to have a specific job. Your employer was the one giving you the home, which was, exactly, an apartment in a block.

So, the whole city was waiting for this new neighborhood. I even researched the location. It was close to where we lived at that time and I was absolutely sure I was going to have an apartment in one of those blocks. I knew what type of job do I need for getting one of those and I was determined to get it. Yes, there were the same ugly, cold and concrete made blocks. But that was the highest point of my horizon at that time. Living with M. in a one bedroom apartment in a communist city. That was all I could fathom for a happy life.

Time passed by. Next year I went to a different school, spending less and less time in my neighborhood. In a few years I was admitted to college and left my city for good. I was 18. Our long walks became more and more sparse. Somehow, our worlds became more and more distant and each meeting required more and more energy and time to happen. Then I went to the army and shortly after that the Romanian Revolution came, a bloody carnival which basically replaced stupid communists with stupid liars.

Fact is, after a few years, I didn’t even remember that I once wanted to marry a girl called M. If I think now, I don’t think she was as convinced as I was. She didn’t went to college, she stayed in the same city and eventually got a job at her mother’s work place. We saw each other again for a few more times while I was in college and then silence. It was like a candle going off, without any noise or drama. The fuel for our encounters wasn’t there anymore.

25 Years Later

A few weeks ago I spent a week-end at my parents, with Bianca, my 5 year old daughter. I don’t know how, but one afternoon we ended up in the playground of the same state kindergarten I use to sneak in and gaze at my girl window. Bianca started to play and I started to look around. A few things were changed.

The kindergarten had one more floor and a few more playgrounds. The blocks around got parking spaces and modern roofs. And as I was trying to remember the places how they used to be, I realized there were also loads of other changes. This time, it wasn’t about the places. It was about me.

I was having two kids, a boy of 14 and a girl of 5, each coming from its own different relationship. I also had 2 divorces and countless of other longer or shorter relationships (what can I say, I loved women. And I still do ). I was living in my own house, in one of the most soothed after neighborhoods in the main town of the country, Bucharest. And I was also doing business in New Zealand, a place 20.000 kilometers away from that place.

Yes, there were a lot of changes.

But at the fourth floor, where M. used to live, nothing seemed to be changed. I don’t know if it was a coincidence, but even the curtains on the windows looked the same. For a moment, I thought I saw M. at the window. I can’t describe what I felt in that second, but it was enough to make me move my eyes from the window.

The mere thought that I could meet M. again was not at all comfortable. My teenage dreams were ages behind me. I wouldn’t know what to tell her. I wouldn’t know what to do. I wouldn’t know who she really was.

The Current Cut

As I was turning my eyes from that window to the playground where Bianca was having fun with other kids I realized something so important, so deep, and yet so simple, that I had to sit down.

Yes, the first cut will always be the deepest. Your first love will always define the way you understand love. And the first woman you loved will always live in your memories.

But the things is, you’re not living with your first cut anymore. That cut is way back in the past. You’re living with the current cut. What’s in the past will always be in the past. And your memories can only be used as a huge white screen, where you can project every now and then some short movies. Like the movie with the most beautiful girl in town, tall, thin, only 15 and with a fantastic long black hair.

But at the end of the projected movie the white screen must be folded and stowed away. It was just a movie. The reality was right there, right now, playing in a state kindergarten playground.

What The World Should Be

It may seem the easiest thing in the world, to live right now, right here. But in fact it’s the most difficult one. Because we keep these mental representations of what the world “should be” instead of what the world really is.

25 years ago, my ultimate model of happiness consisted in life with a beautiful girl M. in a communist apartment. And there was nothing wrong with that. Right now, my ultimate model of happiness consists in living my life as a digital nomad, all over the world. And there is nothing wrong with this either.

As long as I keep each happiness model in its place. The “life with M.” model is in the past, the “digital nomad” model is in the present. These are two separated entities living in two different times. If somehow, by any chance or misfortune, they will start to collide, my world, as I know it, will collapse.

In fact, for many of us, our world as it should be, is already collapsed. It’s made out of different debris, some from our early childhood, some from our teenage time and some from our present. We combined them in a shiny carousel and we think we’re doing a great job at living it.

But fact is, we’re deluding ourselves. We’re taking dead memories for living creatures. We’re following goals that aren’t ours anymore (and highly doubt that they’ve ever been ours). We’re trying to revive old emotions because we’re afraid to experience new ones. We’re surrounding ourselves with images from the past, trying to create a carnival, but behind those images, there’s nothing. Just emptiness. We’re hanging on to the first cut, to the first big emotion, to the first big achievement, to the first big intuition, forgetting that life is just moving on. And we’re losing the real picture, while focusing on a fake movie screen taken over by shadows.

Slowly, I turned to the playground again. Bianca was playing, laughing and running in circles. The other kids were shouting and laughing big time. I stayed there for a couple of hours just watching them and then headed back to my parents house.

I don’t know why, but for the remaining time spent in the playground, I didn’t feel the urge to look at M.’s window not even once.

7 Simple Ways To Unclog Your Pipes

The other day I was at an online industry event. I do attend from time to time to these events because it’s fun, you get to meet new people and sometimes you get a chance to see old friends. Oh, and also because I’m invited . The event was interesting and smooth and, after a short networking session, I was ready to leave. The location was somewhere in the old downtown, in a nice (and also huge) house, surrounded by narrow streets. So narrow that you could barely park two cars on both sides of the street and still leave some space for the third to pass trough.

As I was walking toward my car, parked on one of those sides, of course, I saw some orange flashing lights. Another car, apparently a bigger one, was completely blocking my car. As I approached, I realized that the car was made from complicated structures, pipes and curved reservoirs. On top of it it was indeed an orange flashing light, like the one that you see on oversized convoys. A huge hose was getting out from the rear, coming towards me and then suddenly stopping at the half of the street, like it was eaten by the ground. After a few more steps I realized it was eaten by the ground. Or to be more specific, it was entering a sewage hole.

It took me only 2 seconds to realize that they had to clean up the shit from some of the underground sewage system. And then I realized that the curved reservoir of that huge car was actually filled with smelly, brown and liquid human residual matter. I couldn’t smell it, of course, but I also couldn’t but notice how dangerously close to my car it was. I asked one of the workers how long it will take. “Well, we already finished the cleaning, we’re just pulling out the hose. 5 minutes, top”. 5 minutes couldn’t be that long, I thought. But the proximity of the reservoir was giving me the chills. A few other event attendees appeared on the street. They couldn’t pass either. We sat together, strangely aware of the big shit reservoir near us, until the workers pulled the house. A few more shouts and they were gone.

As I was entering my car, I experienced a strange feeling of relief. The road was clear. The pipes were unclogged. I could move again.

The Poop Is Real

We’re always facing these situations, but seldom as clearly as the one I experienced. As I drove home I started to understand the importance of our own psychological sewage system. The importance of our internal exhausting pipes. We do have those residual matters floating inside us somehow, until they block something. And we can’t always call for a big car with a dark hose to clean up our internal pipes. We just acknowledge a little bit of resistance, a little bit of difficulty and, maybe, we try to use another way. For instance, if I wouldn’t come by car at that event, I would most likely try to just use another street and head for the subway. This is how we circumvent our own psychological shit: we’re just picking another road, leaving the clogged pipe rotten full.

And most of the time we’re fine. Our internal sewage system is so cleverly designed that we can find new ways of doing things almost all the time. We recover after losing a job. We get back on our feet after an abusive relationship. We’re making it, somehow. But there are times when we are overloaded. When we have no other way of doing things other than cleaning the pipe. We cannot advance. We’re stuck and we have to do something.

Cleaning shit is not a nice job. Cleaning our internal, psychological shit is particularly difficult. Because we tend to think that we’re functioning without any residual matter. Which is entirely false. Everything we do has a little bit of leftover, some parts which are not processed and will never be. Those parts we need to get rid of.

The Alternatives

As I was driving home I tried to imagine a different scenario. What if the car reservoir couldn’t cope with the pressure? The whole shit would have spread over my car, over me and over the other people on the street. Or, if the underground pipe would crack, the whole street would have been covered in poop. Brown, liquid, smelling poop. Fortunately, my little encounter was a happy one. No one was covered in shit.

But our internal sewage system doesn’t work like this. Sometimes the poop explodes. Things that were accumulated for years will eventually find a weak point in your pipes and will explode. And then, just like in my alternative scenario, everybody will be covered in shit. I’m sure you’ve been there. You explode all of a sudden, saying or doing things you wish you wouldn’t. And, at the end of the explosion, everything is so smelly, that you can’t stand it anymore.

How To Unclog Your Pipes

Repressed feelings, anger, sadness, pessimism, all of these are residual substances generated by our day to day activity as human beings. We carry them deep within our emotional body and we’re gradually filling our pipes with them. Until, some day, we wish we have had them cleaned before they exploded. The good news is that we can prevent this from happening. Even if we’re facing some tough times, we can get through. As long as we’re accepting the fact that our pipes are clogged and we have to take action.

I’ve been there too. And not only once. Sometimes the shit exploded, some times not. Over the years I started to learn how to manage this process. Here are seven simple techniques I use in order to take care of my clogged pipes.

1. Write What You Cannot Say

Write a letter to the one who hurt you, but don’t send it. Burry it or just tear it down. But do write everything you wish you’d say to that person. You’ve been hurt and the consequences of that fact are real. Don’t try to hide them. Be as clear as you can. Just don’t engage in a real interaction with that person. Sometimes, this process alone is enough to clear the residual matter of that hurtful encounter. You cannot change the past anyway, nor can you turn things back the way they were. You can only heal yourself. The hurt will never be reversed. But you can be healed.

2. Recycle Aggression

Try to get involved in some very demanding activities. Some people are diving into work after a traumatic event. As long as they aren’t trying to fool themselves that they’re invulnerable, I think this is a good thing. Re-chanelling that aggression into some constant and fulfilling activity is way better than letting it grow inside, chaotically, until the whole system will be blocked. Accept that fact that you’re aggressive and that aggression is a normal reaction, but redirect it to a different context. Take up on some difficult projects. Finish them with glory and then just feel better.

3. Clean Up Your Lenses

You can’t always get it from the first time. You can’t get that promotion, that partner or that trip to India. You have to adjust, to adapt, to find new ways. This is very much like focusing your camera while trying to make a beautiful picture. You rotate the lenses back and forth, going through fuzzy and unclear phases, until you finally reach that crystal clear image you always wanted. If you accept this back and forth process of gradually approaching your goals, then all your failures will become acceptable. They will be part of a managed process. They won’t produce shit anymore.

4. Clean Up Your House

What’s on the outside is a mirror of what’s on the inside. Have you looked at your house lately? At the interior of your car? At your room? If it’s a place you wish you wouldn’t live in, then chances are that your internal pipes are clogged just as well. It’s just a matter of time until they’ll explode and then you’ll cover in shit everyone who’d happen to be around. And you wouldn’t even know why you did it. Well, if your surroundings are neat and clean, throwing psychological shit at others will become much less probable. Because you won’t have any shit anymore. You process it with every house cleaning session.

5. Exercise

Physical exercise, just like the technique above, will act like a mirror to your emotional body. The more you use it, the more fit it will become. Many times our emotional turmoils are just blocked within our physical body. They are finding a place in our organs and they stay there. Until you take action and help those parts of your body to properly communicate. Not to mention that physical exercise is in itself a great way of freeing yourself from frustration. If you don’t believe me, just try to do a kyokushin session with a sparring partner.

6. Get A Massage

That’s also close to the one above, only it requires another partner. Preferably one who really know what she’s doing. A professional masseuse (or masseur, for what matters) can make miracles with your body. And since your physical body is a container for your emotional body, that one will benefit too. One side advantage of getting constant professional massage is that your energy channels will gradually open. And, unless you’re living a really stressful life, they’ll remain open. On an open system, everything will flow smoother. It will be more and more difficult to accumulate residual matter.

7. Talk To Somebody

That’s the equivalent of the huge car with black hoses. You call somebody over. It’s the technique in which you are actually spitting out everything that bothers you. You throw away all what you accumulated. The listener can be a friend, a shrink or just a stranger. The last one being the most adventurous way of doing this, of course. But the mere fact of acknowledging that you have unprocessed stuff in your system and that you are willing to letting it out, well, that will start a much deeper process, in which the entire system will start to rearrange itself in a much more effective way.

***

The image of a life surrounded by horrendously bad smelling shit is not the nicest image you can paint on a blog post. But I did this on purpose. Because this is exactly what you get if you’re not unclogging your pipes. You may get used to the smell and start to ignore it after a while. But the poop will be there. And it will eventually overcome you. Drawn in your own shit.

How does it feel to read something like this? Bad? Really bad? You wish you didn’t start reading this in the first place?

Good. Because if this is how it feels to read this, imagine how it would be to actually experience it.

Go unclog your pipes before the shit will explode.

Are You Copy Pasting Your Life?

Do you know what copy paste is? Of course you do, you must be reading this article on your computer right now (or laptop, or iPad or iPhone), hence you do have a moderate knowledge of how to use it. In fact, everybody knows what copy paste is nowadays. And everybody uses it big time. You copy paste your address, your personal identification number, your phone number or your social media nicknames. You copy paste parts of your messages, photos, songs, and videos. It saves a lot of time and makes your tasks a little less tedious.

Copy pasting is indeed a very powerful process.

But you’re not copy pasting only that. You’re copy pasting a lot more than that. You’re copy pasting behaviors, reactions, attitudes, and processes. During your day, many parts of what you’re doing or you’re reacting to are based on a copy paste process. You’re actually copy pasting big chunks of your life everyday, sometimes without even knowing it.

For instance, when a beggar approaches you on the street, you don’t really take the time to hear his story. Be honest, you don’t. Most of the time your thoughts are following this pattern

1. “Oh, a beggar, I don’t have time for this.”
2. “I really want to get over this and I want to get over this fast.”
3. “Where is that piece of behavior that I usually apply when bumping into a beggar?”
4. “Oh here it is: copy from that remote shelf in my mind.”
5. “And now paste it to the current moment.”

Depending on what your usual behavior is, you might give some cash to the beggar, or you might repel him with a low voice. You may even ignore him. But whatever the choice, you believe that you won some time on your side because you didn’t write the whole action in the moment, you copy pasted it from some other corner of your consciousness. You may think that you won some time on your side, but in fact, you didn’t.

How Copy Pasting Works in Real Life

If you really take the time to assess how copy pasting works, you can identify some common points. In my experience, a typical copy paste situation unfolds in 3 steps.

Step 1: Identifying the Stimuli

We all have something called perception. This quality allows us to identify changes in our universe and match them to our internal history. We may choose to respond or not to respond to those stimuli, based on things like our past experience, intentions or current context. Some stimuli are processed by “lower” parts of our brain, while other stimuli are processed by “higher” parts of our brain.

For instance, every dangerous situation is processed in the “reptilian” brain, one of the oldest parts of our brain. That’s where fear is processed, and in turn where “fight or flight” reactions are generated. Listening to music or reading a book are processed in more recent parts of the brain, which are specialized in performing these types of tasks. That’s where “artistic” emotions take place.

Step 2 Identify the Usual Behavior

If the change in our reality triggers the need for an answer from us, we usually try to identify the most “popular” one. It’s a way for our brain to create shortcuts, it follows “known paths”. So, based on what the stimuli offers, we browse our internal library and pick whatever we think it might be appropriate.

For instance, if the stimuli is a big flame touching our hand, our reptilian brain will trigger a powerful and potentially life-saving response, usually in the form of a “run!” command. It does that in half of a second. It’s perceived as a “fight or flight situation”.

On the other hand, if we are listening to some beautiful music, our cortex may choose to respond by producing endorphins, or “pleasure hormones”, releasing them in our blood. It’s the most appropriate and beneficial answer from our cortex when facing what we may perceive as “beauty“.

Step 3 Copy it and Apply it

After we’ve identified the stimuli and picked up the most appropriate answer, we begin applying it. Our body follows the orders sent by the central unit. If there’s a reptilian brain command to ”run“, our hand muscles will contract and our hand will retreat from the perceived danger of the flame. If there’s a cortex initiated response to release endorphins, our body begins to enjoy positive feelings while listening to the music.

So, every time we identify a change in our reality, we match it to our internal history and we chose wether to respond or not. We may often choose to apply a “verified” model, or contrarily we may choose to start something from scratch.

When Copy Pasting Is Playing Nice

If you burned your hand once, then copy pasting forgoes the need to repeat the contact of your hand with the fire a thousand times to learn the consequences. Just copy paste the “avoid” behavior and move on. That goes for basically all life and death situations you’ve ever been in (or situations that have been “tagged” as such by your reptilian brain).

Being on top of a building and feeling the need to jump, just to experience flying, well, that’s a stimuli you have probably never experienced. Based on the knowledge of your own or others’ previous experience with similar situations however, your brain has most likely tagged this activity as “don’t”. Somehow you know you won’t experience true flying, or you’ll experience it, but at a much higher price than you’re prepared to pay.

Usually, copy pasting works when you’re avoiding past traumas or judging identical traumatic contexts.

What Can Go Wrong

The only part that can really go wrong in this copy pasting process is stimuli identification. The reptilian brain sends very powerful messages, and those messages are generated due to real life and death situations. Every time you overcome a threat by listening to your reptilian brain, your trust in its responses grows. You become more and more sure of your reactions. You start to see the world in black and white. So, the temptation to give “black and white” answers becomes bigger and bigger. You start to evaluate all of the stimuli around you as “black and white” and insert those really fast, primitive responses.

Even if the situation requires more attention and assessment, you assume that by copy pasting some “definitive” reaction, you’ll be safe. So, you don’t really take the time to assess.

For instance, if you had been in a relationship that was wrong for you, then every time you saw a person that reminded you of your ex, you would “instinctively” step back. Your internal history tells you that you’ve been burned by a similar stimuli, so you just pencil in that “secure” behavior by copy pasting your reaction. Which is to withdraw.

Of course that person is not even remotely identical to the person who hurt you. It’s probably only something in the attitude, gestures or even smile that reminds you of the person who hurt you in the past. If you would take the time to assess the situation, without copy pasting your behavior, you’d realize that in a few seconds.

In my experience, copy paste works only on the reptilian brain level. I mean when there is immediate danger and your brain is triggering the fight or flight reaction, you should copy paste. Those are life and death situations. You have to be fast. So copy pasting is probably your best bet.

But above these situations that trigger the reptilian brain, copy pasting doesn’t work as well as expected. The most common problem being that you’re identifying the stimuli in the wrong way. Not every situation should be dealt with using the ‘fight or flight’ response. In other words, you’re missing opportunities. You may have had a bad relationship in the past. Now you meet a new person. He or she reminds you of your ex. You identify a stimuli here, so you copy paste the last best behavior you had (either give in or give out).

But fact is no one person is identical to any other person. People are different. This new person is completely different from the person they resemble. And yet, you limit your experiences and opportunities by categorizing it into the same system, instead of assessing it at face value.

The Exercise

Copy pasting your everyday life, outside the basic survival situations will make you a copy paste person. You will spend so little time assessing what’s actually going on with your life under the present circumstances, and you will automate your reactions at such a level, that you won’t live a life anymore. You will be like a puppet. Trigger, copy paste, trigger, copy paste…

Let’s do a test here: if your normal behavior for reading blog posts is to get over with it and close the browser without a comment, do the opposite now. Even if you don’t agree with what I wrote (or especially if you don’t agree). Just leave a comment and do it with a new level of awareness. See what’s happening with yourself. Describe it in the comment.

Even more, it doesn’t need to be related to this article, just identify some stimuli in your immediate world and see if you’re copy pasting your behavior in response to it right now. If you are, describe the situation.

Because, you know, our worlds are different and your story is completely different than my own. My book of life is written in a different way from yours, and I’m copy pasting in completely different areas.

Let’s see. What are you copy pasting right now in your life?

33 Ways To Care

Caring for somebody is the ultimate form of freedom. Whenever you genuinely care for somebody else, you’re setting yourself free. Free from judging, free to accept the other one exactly for who she/he is, free to express your love without a reason. Caring is also one of the rarest attitudes in the modern world, where most of the time is perceived as a form of weakness, if not as plain stupidity. To such an extent that people almost forgot how to express it. Here are 33 ways to help you remember how to care.

1. Support

Don’t just look at the other, acknowledging from a distance his actions, his intentions, his ideas. Support her/his actions. Put yourself into the other person shoes. Help that person, if you can. Say something nice, at least. Or just do things that will ease or support her/his activities. Be there somehow in flesh and bones.

2. Don’t Hold A Grudge

People say or do things that you may not like. But remember that all people are ok. Their actions may not be in sync with what you want or with what you expect. That doesn’t mean the people who performed those actions are not worthy of your attention. On the contrary. Maybe that’s the time they’ll need you the most.

3. Give Advice Only When It’s Needed

People have their own minds, their own expectations, their own lives. Give advice only when it’s needed, otherwise you will obtain the opposite effect. Your genuine intention to help will be in fact perceived as a pressure. Sometimes, the best thing you can do for somebody is to let him hit his own wall.

4. Don’t Take Crap

Rejecting crap (in all of its forms: words, actions, attitudes) is not only a form of self-respect, but also a way to show them that you really care: “I understand you and I see what you’re doing, but I’m not taking it”. Eventually, they’ll realize there’s something wrong somewhere. If you find it difficult to avoid crap, start practicing your “No”’s.

5. Share

Share a nice word. A good joke. A meal. A book you’ve recently read. A place on the bench in the park. Share your good mood and your ideas. Share your memories and experience. Sharing your life with other people will enrich them at least as much as it will fill you with joy and comfort. Sharing IS caring.

6. Avoid Fighting

When there’s too much pressure in a relationship, that compressed energy tends to explode uncontrollably in fights. Don’t go there. A fight is an act of selfishness: “look, I’m so pissed off that I need to let out steam and I don’t care about you”. Instead, find ways to recycle that aggressiveness and balance your energies.

7. Reciprocate

If you received a nice word, give it back. If you received a gift, give one back. If somebody smiled at you, return the smile. If you don’t reciprocate, you break a subtle channel of energies that are building our day to day experience. Soon, you’ll be disconnected. Not able to receive or to give care anymore.

8. Protect

Things can break down. Relationships can lose momentum. Feelings can fade away. Everything can disappear, dissolve, get lost, unless you don’t actively protect it. Pay attention to your stuff. Fortify your relationships. Nurture you feelings. Protect what you really care for. What you give will come back to you somehow.

9. Get Out Of The Way

Sometimes you gotta understand that you’re the one that’s holding things back. You are the obstacle in the other person way. For the sake of “good old times”, or just because you’re feeling insecure. The best thing to do for somebody is to set her/him free. Get out of the way and let them break free. You’ll be ok. They’ll be ok too.

10. Say Thank You

As often as you can. There is no imaginable context in which you cannot say “thank you” when somebody does something for you. Or at least I can’t imagine such a context. Saying “thank you” is not only the simplest form of respect, but also the easiest way to show that you’re just caring.

11. Listen

At least as much as you talk. If you don’t listen, something strange will happen: soon you’ll run out of things to talk about. Listening is what feeds your thoughts, what triggers new ideas, what confirms your suppositions. Remember how you felt last time when somebody listened to you? That’s what I’m talking about.

12. Trust

If you can. Give to the other person all the freedom she/he’s asking for. Even if that freedom crosses the boundaries you’d be willing to accept. That’s the only way to find out if you’re in a healthy relationship. If you don’t have reasons to trust the other, then don’t. In this case, you will show that you care about yourself.

13. Forgive

Forgiveness is an incredible gift. Unfortunately, it’s heavily underused. We still don’t understand the benefits of forgiveness as a mundane, daily act. We either push it into the religion realm, taking its life away by making it a dead, dogmatic concept, either avoid it all together as a social “faux pas”. Just let go. The person who’s freed by forgiveness is you.

14. Get Involved

One of the miracles of life is that you are at the same time the observer and the player in this huge game. You can watch, but you can also do. Getting involved means helping the game going on. Being just an observer and experiencing feelings of compassion will never help you genuinely care about somebody. You can’t really care if you’re not there.

15. Teach Others

If you learned something, don’t keep it to yourself. Go out and teach others. Maybe you think your life is not worthy of such an honor, maybe you think you’re just an ordinary person. And that might be true. But there are millions of ordinary persons in this world who can benefit from your experience.

16. Inspire

Sometimes all you have to do is to live a life of freedom. Live the adventure, become extraordinaire and others will pick up. It’s called inspiration. Focus on what you do better and in the end, other people will tune in to your vibration and start to do extraordinaire stuff by themselves. Be a great blogger a loving father or just you. But be great at being you.

17. Motivate

If inspiration is not enough, don’t be afraid to push it further, to motivate directly. Motivation does not last, they say, but so it’s bathing. This is why is recommended to be done every day (Zig Ziglar said that, not me). Make a list of what motivates you and share it. You’ll be surprised how many people will care about it.

18. Pay Attention

To what the other one is doing. Just look at how he talks, how he looks, what actions he performs. Your attitude will channel a flow of invisible energy which will somehow validate and support her/him. Your attention, your focus, is what builds your reality. Putting your focus on the other one will make her/him alive.

19. Remember

It’s not only about birthdays or special days from your shared history. Although those are utterly important too, of course. But it’s also about what the other one likes or doesn’t likes. About what she/he thinks about certain things. Remembering all those details is like reinforcing your commitments: “I know and I accept what you want”.

20. Pay Yourself First

Might seem totally counter intuitive and awfully against this post topic. But it’s not. A mindless altruism is the shortest path to decay. Don’t give away your time, your actions or yourself foolishly. Instead, be well so you can help others be well too. Be balanced so you can bring balance to others too. Be self sustained so you can help others achieve self-sustainability too.

21. Be Patient

In everything. Real things are not unfolding instantly, they need time to grow, to manifest. Be patient with the other one if she/he is going through some tough times. It will help getting over the heat. Be patient with the other one if she/he is on the peak of its career. It will make the happy days taste even better.

22. Give Feedback

All the time, in all the imaginable situations. Say out loud you liked or didn’t liked something, but give feedback. As the name implies, feedback will feed something. In this case, the actual relationship. If you don’t care about a relationship, the easiest way to break it is to stop giving feedback. It will die in a few weeks.

23. Ignore The Unimportant

Too much time and attention are wasted on useless, not important things. Either by uncontrollable addiction, either by lack of personal values. Ignore what’s unimportant about the other one until you get to her/his real, indivisible core. That’s where you should put the attention. Learning to ignore should be taught in schools.

24. Surprise Him/Her

Break the flow of the predictable events in her/his life with small surprises. Might be just an unexpected end of the evening or a sudden trip to the countryside. Surprises are a way to fracture the other one familiar reality and fill the crack with pleasant, enjoyable life slices. The bigger the surprise, the more enjoyable the life slice…

25. Think Nicely About Her/Him

You do what you repeatedly tell to yourself to do. Your actions are a direct consequences of your thoughts. If you keep having supportive thoughts about the other one, your actions will eventually follow. The root of everything you do or experience is in your thoughts. Don’t let them wander at lost.

26. Make Plans Together

Making plans will always make God laugh, that’s true. But that doesn’t mean you should stop doing them. On the contrary, you should keep God laughing for as much as you can, wouldn’t you? Projecting a new reality together is an incredibly powerful form of caring. You may never be there, in that new reality, but at least your tried together.

27. Talk

Ask questions. Respond to questions. Say yes or no. But do talk. Keep the communication channels opened. Don’t think the other one should guess what you want, what you need or what you may want to happen in your life. Give clear answers, and ask clear questions. An uncomfortable truth shows more caring than a comfortable but deceiving silence.

28. Smile

As often as you can. There are persons who are somehow killing your smile before it’s even born. With pessimism, anger or just constant irony and arrogance. Smile in their presence even more, regardless of the fact that it will take incredibly more effort from you. Smiling is the cheapest and most effective act of caring.

29. Write A Letter

Doesn’t necessarily have to be a full letter. Leave a note on the fridge. Send a short email out of the blue. Even the message doesn’t have to be something deep, or serious or fundamental. Just a simple “wish you a good day” or “I’m thinking at you” will do miracles. Start now.

30. Cook For Her/Him

Sharing food used to be an ecstatic and spiritual experience. Traces of this my be found in our modern society, when inviting somebody over to dinner has most of the time hidden meanings. Again, doesn’t have to be an exotic meal, but the mere fact of feeding the other one will trigger some deeply buried feelings of security and comfort.

31. Give A Present Out Of The Blue

Giving presents is a great way to mark special occasions, but giving presents out of the blue will make any occasion a special one. The only thing you should pay attention to is not to buy your way to the other one’s heart, because it wouldn’t last long. But a genuine, carefully taught present, will always leave a positive mark.

32. Criticize. Constructively

If you don’t agree with something, speak up. Maybe the other one doesn’t realize that her/his path is a wrong one. If you sense something bad, it’s not only an act of kindness to point (politely and gently) to the other one’s mistakes, but also a respected act of responsibility. An honest and good critique always ends up with a “thank you”.

33. Eliminate Expectations

People are people.Don’t act like they follow a certain algorithm. They will never do. People are doing strange things. They will surprise you, amaze you or disappoint you. Eliminate all expectations and just be happy because you share this moment, this place or this life. Life is not fair sometimes, that’s true. But it’s always beautiful.

You Have The Right To Hit Your Own Wall

I don’t know why, but I always hated to be taken care of. I can’t stand to be helped when I don’t want to. Even as a kid, I didn’t feel comfortable when my parents were overprotective or when some challenges were silently removed with the help of other people. I felt like I was missing something. And it wasn’t always the thrill of the risk, it was something more.

The Hidden Poison

Later on, when I grew up and started to engage in my own relationships, something interesting happened. I started to notice when other people were heading against a “wall” too. In other words, I started to see how the outcome of a certain activity a certain person was engaging in, would be toxic for that specific person. Call it experience, or intuition, or luck, fact is I started to notice the “walls” the people were heading against. And they were literally running for that wall, with a lot of confidence and full speed.

In my early relationships I took the protective role. Every time I was perceiving such a wall, I took pride in letting the other person know about it. You’re heading against a wall, you’re going to get hurt. I even explained the whole process and how exactly the wall is going to hit. Most of the time, the other person would listen to me.

But, surprisingly enough, every time the partner was listening to me and the wall was circumvented following my advice, the relationship was slowly starting to degrade. Not immediately and not visibly, but there was a certain trend, a nuance that in a few months or years evolved in a much stronger difference of opinions. It was like avoiding the wall poisoned the relationship. Of course, my warnings were correct, and from an individual perspective, everything was better than before: the other person avoided a major crisis. But at the relationship level, something was rotten.

That Tired, Protective Guy

Let me give you an example. I had a girlfriend who was rather impulsive. Although we had quite a lot of emotional bonding and an overall healthy and friendly relationship, there were a lot of times when her impulsivity made her say stupid things or act in violent ways. Of course, those rants had consequences. Very close to the consequences you get after you hit a wall. Because I really enjoyed the other part of the relationship, I took the protective approach. Every time she was ready to hit another “wall” of impulsivity I was there, subtly turning the events in a different direction. For a good amount of time I was able to maintain a balance.

But then something different started to emerge. Not only was I supposed to give more and more support, but my peaceful approach was taken for granted. It was like keeping the relationship sane and safe was my job, and my job only. Quite a difference from the beginning, when we were just two people who were enjoying each other and their life together. Now I was supposed to calm her down all the time, to swallow in silence every fight and to be there at any sign of imbalance. Instead of being her friend I become her shrink.

Took me a while to realize that I don’t want to be a shrink for my personal relationships, but I eventually did it. And at that moment I left. And I congratulate myself every single day for that decision. When I did it, things were already in pretty bad shape. I was “guilty” for everything in the Universe, for her failures, for my failures, for her decisions as well as for mines. Quite a mess. And the breaking up didn’t went well either.

However, in a few months the silence slowly covered the whole mess and I was able to start fresh. This time, with a valuable lesson learned. I entered a new relationship ready to let the other person made her own mistakes. I made a commitment to be there after the hit, if and when she needs me, of course, but basically leave her alone to act exactly as she wants.

Now, back to the first relationship. We met again a few months ago, now from totally different positions. We still have a lot in common (I won’t detail more, but we still have some lifelong commitments). Fact is that even when we met again, the “you gotta solve this mess” approach was still there. Dormant, immobile and silent, but ready to be awaken at the slightest sign of complacency from my part. Of course, I didn’t gave such a sign, nor do I intend to do it. Everybody has their own walls to be hit.

Help and Growth

Hitting your own wall, doing your own mistakes and recovering from them is fundamental. You can’t function in a balanced way if you avoid doing that. Most of the time, people are avoiding difficult challenges upfront. But sometimes, our so-called friends and partners act in an over-protective way, preventing us from dealing with our problems.

Many marriages are based on this rotten approach. The wife is not autonomous because she is afraid of getting a job (afraid of failure, afraid of spending too much time there as opposed to being a mother or afraid of being on her own). And the partner will start to provide more and more, in order to keep her sane and safe. Hitting the wall of “getting a job” and “being autonomous” is exactly what the wife needs in order to grow. By providing her cut of the revenue too, husband will block this process. And, after a certain amount of time, husband will find himself in the very awkward position of providing a lot of other stuff besides the material support. Enormous emotional support being the most common one.

Instead of a balanced relationship between two people who are enjoying themselves and their time together, they now have a binomial: one of the members is in constant need (material, emotional) and the other one is constantly providing. And because of the nature of the exchange, the one who provides will never be perceived as a partner, but as a provider. It will be more like a parent-child relationship.

Now, I know what you think: if you, as a personal development blogger, tell us to go ahead and hit our own walls, what exactly are you doing here? How do you expect us to find something useful for our problems in your blog? Well, that’s an interesting question and I hear it a lot (sometimes in a different form, but it’s very common). “What exactly are you doing with this personal development thing?”

Well, I’m not here, as a personal development blogger, to solve your problems. I’m not here to prevent you from hitting your own walls. Hitting your own walls is a fundamental right. I’m not going to take that away from you. Here, on this blog, I share my experiences in the hope that they will be motivational and inspiring. I try to ignite the spark of action. The spark of change. But that spark alone won’t do a thing by itself. You have to give it more oxygen in order to make it a fire. You have to do things. Even if that means hitting your own wall.

Warnings and Mistakes

Now that you’re prepared to start doing your own mistakes, let’s finish with a nice joke about warnings:

Two monks were sitting on the side of the road, with huge signs in big letters: “The end is near. Repent!” Cars were passing by pretty fast and of course, nobody would stop.. After a few seconds, powerful crash sounds were coming from behind the monks. And after each sound, the monks were trying to be even more persuasive, almost shouting.

After a few hours of doing this, one of them, apparently the younger one, asks the other: “Father, don’t you think it would be better to just write on those signs: broken bridge ahead?”.

I know, I laughed too.