This is a longer one. No time? Scroll down for the 3 min TL;DR.
It’s 2 am. I’ve just finished watching a new documentary on the effects of the mRNA vaccines (see here). It’s a crazy world. I realise this is a very controversial topic and this newsletter is not about Covid. But it is the reason I am typing these lines at 2 am in bed.
After I finished watching it, I could not fall asleep and as I was contemplating life, my journey, the world and how much I have changed since my days as a London investment banker or as an entrepreneur in Brazil, the thought popped into my mind, how good we are at creating misery - based on my very own experience. Both our individual mysery as well as mysery in the world - which are just two sides of the same thing. And also, how easy it is to get out of mysery. Which is what this episode is about.
As I am contemplating this thought, my mind goes like, fuck it, I haven’t slept properly the last two nights and rather than lying in bed unsuccessfully trying to fall asleep, I rather create something and turn obstacle into opportunity. So here we are.
Getting what I desire is easy. We can all have it. Right now. After years of seeking, the clue I finally discovered and that articulated itself in my head in these early morning hours is: I need to ask the right question. Einstein famously said: “If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”
What we are doing most if not all the time is working hard at getting what we want rather than pondering the question: Is this what I really want? Why do I want it? And if I get it, will I be where I want?
If you think about your last success in getting what you want. And you reflect on how you felt while you wanted it and how you feel now, do you feel better? I’m not talking about the very moment you got it, surely that must have felt great, the release of dopamine of having achieved it. I am talking a week later or a month later or a year later. Does your life feel better to you? But rather than speculating about you, let me use myself to illustrate.
Nothing I ever achieved had a long-term effect on my well-being. And how do I define well-being? By how I feel. And how do I measure how I feel? By simply asking, how do I feel? Or how happy am I? Or how fulfilled? Right now. On a scale from 1-10. What’s your number?
Mine is 10. And I know what you are likely thinking: Ahh, yea, whatever, he’s just saying that. Or worse: He is lying to himself, false positivity. I don’t blame you. I would probably have thought that not too long ago, had I read such a statement. Especially if I would add to that, that I am single, I am not seeing someone, I am sharing an apartment with someone else and that at age 44! I have no kids or family. I don’t have a normal job. Worse, my current bed is a single (the last time I slept in a single bed I was still living at home and going to high school).
And yet I am telling you I am 10 out of 10. That doesn’t make any sense. You are right. It does not make any sense from a conventional perspective. But I am very confident it would make all the sense if you were in my shoes right with my perception of the world and life.
The reason why life feels like the never-ending chase after this seemingly elusive happiness is because I have been chasing all my life something I don’t really "want". To be more precise, I have been chasing things that I think will give me what I really want but they don’t.
Most of us are chasing success, wealth, passionate love, great sex, influence, power, being someone, add your desire here. But what we truly want is to be happy. We think these things will bring us happiness but at best they do so temporary and at worst they don’t and we keep on chasing hoping it will happen when we get the next promotion, the next car, the next partner, the next bonus, … and one day we drop dead and that was it. A life chasing after happiness but never really bathing in it.
We are all meant to live profoundly happy lives. It is our birthright. Yet, to do so, I need to learn the game. I had the blessing of spending the last eight years trying to understand the game and how to best play it. 98-99% of the time in those eight years I was far from away from a 10 out of 10. Worse, most of the time, no matter how adventurous and exciting or successful my life was, I was suffering in some form or shape. I was anxious about what could go wrong or I was annoyed with something or someone that didn’t work out.
I was never quite at peace. And then, over the course of the last two months, something started to change. And as they say: Gradually and then suddenly - it all came together. I came to the moment of revalation on the Hero’s journey. The exact moment was the end of this night:
In this night, I surrendered all of my old self and it died. It was very intense and painful. And the reward was rebirth. Looking back, it was so simple and clear what and that I had to do it. My mind goes: You could have done that years ago. But that’s the mind doing its old thing of making up stories. It happened at the exact right moment and the only moment it could have happened: When I was ready.
And to be ready, I needed to go through all the previous experiences including overcoming my resistance to striping naked (also, see 37/ ayahuasca - jumping over the edge) and every single other life experience. They were all pieces of the puzzle. And then what needed to happen to unlock the beauty of life was to be willing to let go of everything. And I was able to contemplate and ultimately be willing to do that only because of all these experiences and insights I had before. It's like one thing builds on top of the other. You can't birth a child without a partner to make one. And then it takes time to gestate...
That was why I need to be on this 7-8 year journey. I say 7-8 because it‘s been 8 years since I left my last company/job and it‘s been 7 years to the week since I embarked on this seeking answers to life journey by attending my first coaching course. Seven year cycles in life are a real thing. But that‘s for another post.
You might think, yea, I hear you but I don‘t want to have your life and be happy. I want the life I want and be happy. I am not saying let go of everything (neither have I, read 38/ ayahuasca - being bathed in love ). In fact, it‘s not about changing my life at all. My life hasn‘t changed since that experience. I am living in the same place, same circumstances and sleep in the same small bed. But what has completely, 180 degrees changed is my relationship with life.
I am no longer feeling like a victim of circumstances or other people nor the need to control life or have it my way. I am simply bathing in the experience of whatever is. And wow, it feels great. I feel I am finally surfing the wave of life without needing anything. I enjoy every moment of it, even the difficult ones, because that is what life is about. It‘s a journey. It was never meant to be about where I'm at or where I think I need to get to.
The moment I live from this place of surrender, presence, openness and curiosity which comes with deep gratitude for every single bit of my journey, including being fired from investment banking, betrayed and ousted from my company by my co-founder, two heart-breaking breakups, losing a fortune trading, and all the other painful stuff. Everything was a gift because, without those profound lessons, I would not be writing these lines and feeling the way I am feeling now. All of that needed to happen.
And while it was all very painful at the time, it was the medicine I needed to be able to take the steps to live in surrender to the beauty of life. And from there, magic starts to unfold. I can tell you wholeheartedly, I don‘t want to be in any other place. It‘s 3.10 am and I am so clear about who I am, what I am here to do and so full of gratitude, I could not care less about the actual circumstances of my life. And I know that this is only the beginning. The best is yet to come. That feeling of clarity, peace and serenity. No one and nothing can take this from me. And that‘s priceless.
Here‘s the TL;DR
We all want to be happy. Happiness is being in love. Not romantically but with life itself, with the experience of life, with every moment. Being in love is the absence of fear. Fear of not being rich, beautiful, successful, safe, secure, understand, loved or appreciated enough. That (unconscious or conscious) fear keeps us chasing the future. And it makes the present moment, the moment right now an unpleasant and un-present one. Pun intended.
How I now feel and realise I always wanted to (and I believe we all want to) is to be at peace, trusting, in love with life and curious about what the future brings - rather than worrying about it. And that feeling we can all have right now by stopping to want our current reality to be any different. The problem I had was that I thought things needed to be different for me to be happy. But that was the wrong answer/belief (at least if my journey has any meaning).
We can all have what we really desire - which is this feeling of love for life - by letting go of the need for it to be different and thereby dropping into the present moment. Meaning: When I have a conversation I am fully present to and fully with the other person rather than thinking about my next meeting or what a friend said to me on the phone earlier. I am here right now. Damn, you can even find joy in a Nazi concentration camp as Victor Frankl‘ shows us in Man‘s Search for Meaning (it's a beautiful book). And believe me, I don‘t say this lightly being half German.
It is the context that we give things that creates our experience. We are both the experiencer and the creator of our experience: I choose how the experience feels inside of me. It is not the experience that makes me feel good or bad but rather my interpretation of the experience, the meaning I give it. All life is context. If I believe I need a big house to be happy, I will not be happy until I have it. And when I have it, I will find something else I need until I can be happy. Result: Happiness never arrives and then I drop dead. And when I don't realise I need nothing to be happy, then I start having everything. Both figuratively and in due time literally. Though ironically (as life is) I no longer need those things to be happy then. Isn't that funny? I found life to be full of seeming paradoxes.
It‘s 3:31 am and it‘s time to give my body another chance to sleep. I hope this episode touched you in one way or another and it is a step towards finding more joy in life. Taking baby steps is perfect too. Remember, I needed to seek for nearly a decade only to then have a full breakdown of my existence so I could finally taste this freedom. 100s of hours in deep, long meditations, try a million things including drinking Ayahuasca numerous times, endless exploring. It was a long journey.
But I didn‘t really know what I was looking for. You can have all of this without all of my drama. The moment you realise that your life is perfect the way it is because you are simply living an experience and you are the creator of this experience and the moment you realise that, everything changes. Everything.
I first heard the following song in my recent Ayahuasca experience and it profoundly touched me. I have since then listened many times to it and cried tears of joy and gratitude. It beautifully tells the story of a journey of seeking from darkness to light. Maybe it resonates within you too.
Thank you for being with me on this journey. I love you and I wish you find this deep love for life in yourself very soon too.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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