Food for Thoughts

Life is uncertainty. It is a lottery game, because none of us knows what will happen and only a fool thinks he is “safe” in life. 

As long as you are alive, you just cannot be “safe”. You are „safe“ only when you are in the grave. Before that it is not possible.

Where should “security” come from? There are illnesses, death, your partner can die, the bank can go bankrupt, you can lose your job or become paralyzed in an accident. 

The misconception that you can get “security” is the real problem. Because nobody, really nobody in this world can make “security” possible. 

Life and death belong together. It is like breathing in and breathing out, like light and darkness, like love and hate. 

If you want an alive man, you have to take risks. Such a man is „dangerous“. Maybe he will fall in love with another woman and leave you? But if you are alive too, you can also fall in love with someone else. This is exactly how life is: it simply ignores morality and law. 

Only over „death“ you can have control. You are then also easier to control: maybe you are in a “dead” marriage and have everything else – a middle-class house, a well-filled bank account, a car, children, a great job … all this might looks like “security” for your neighbor. Maybe you yourself have the feeling that this is the “security” you always wanted … but is it really true? Do you feel alive?

Security in life is not provided for us by the universe. The just mentioned things are only pleasantnesses, which can come and go. And that from today and tomorrow. 

The only “security” we have is uncertainty and smart is the one who can enjoy it. Because if you embrace uncertainty, something wonderful happens: it will disappear. 

Sounds paradoxical – but the whole life is paradoxical!

You might then not feel safer, but there will be less worries and fears in your life. And this is the beginning of an exciting journey towards more curiosity and excitement about what the next day will bring. 

And that is exactly what will keep you alive. And that’s important because there are already so many people who have stopped living before their natural death. They have stopped listening to the music of life, dancing instead of walking, and recognizing the beauty in small things. Yet our life is best lived totally and intensely – as if you wanted to extract all the nectar from every moment without losing a single drop.

Remove yourself from the idea that the right decision is only a right decision if it leads to immediate gain. In life, it is often the detours, the obstacles and difficulties that make us grow and bring us to our inner strength. From them we learn to be the person we have always wanted to be.

It is no use waiting for the right moment, because it does not exist.

Waiting for it would only lead to you waiting all your life but not getting into action.

Whether it is the right decision, you will not know at the moment of decision. But what does “right” decision mean? Whether you get a job with even more money? Whether it is the trip to France? The conversation with your partner about a difficult topic? The decision to move into another town?

What if it’s not so much the right decision that matters, but rather the fact that you can have a variety of different experiences in your life, and thus also experiences at all? That you can allow yourself to be sad and to feel happy. That you are allowed to lose or fail, as well as to be successful? To the fact that it is your life and that you can take the time to realign the compass of your life’s path? That you are allowed to feel how things really are in an environment that was unknown to you until then?

None of these decisions is good or bad. Stop evaluating and judging. Every single one of these decisions will bring you a little further on the path to your inner strength and to your desired life.

And just because you decided for or against something today, doesn’t mean you are bound to it for the rest of your life.

What is important is that you act and that you finally start running instead of waiting.

Only then will you find the right path for you personally.

How else will you find out whether the direction is the right or the wrong one for you? Only to test and to actually live a decision will bring you further. 

My impression is that most people, once asked, assume that fear has its origin in external factors. They refer to the deep black of the night they are afraid of, to potential diseases that could afflict them, to the fear of death, which although so inevitable is best tabooed, and so much more. 

What if the fear as described above, however, does not originate in the outside, but in our mind? If fear ultimately finds itself in our aggressive thoughts, in our resentment and our complaining. And yes, we all have those moments at least now and then – that’s human. 

I love to exchange ideas with people. Best bilaterally, because conversations are then allowed to go deeper, intimacy emerges. And best are conversations during an activity, like making sports, embarking on an unknown adventure or creating art together. If I listen to my conversation partner and, of course, to myself, I notice how often – even unconsciously – we talk in negative terms. What typically follows is encouragement, empathy, pity and similar „responses“. 

Last year I stopped consuming news, newspapers and the like. I still have in mind that they are full of dramaturgy – the game with fear creates attention, it is contagious and likes to take over. 

An important point in this context: Our mind works with projections. The world we see is always a re-action to our thinking. 

This realization was a game changer for me. THE WORLD WE SEE IS ALWAYS A REACTION TO OUR THINKING.

If we have aggression and negativity in us, we live in the sense that the world is attacking us in turn. We are in defense mode. The world is seen as threatening and that puts us in fear mode. And the fear can then manifest itself in really anything for that very person: the darkness of the night, the uncertainty of the future, potential killer viruses, the greed of people, the infidelity of a partner, the fear of being abandoned …  – the list is unfortunately limitless.

So, where does fear originate now? In us, in our inner being, in our mind.

Wow.

Further, as corny as it sounds: the opposite pole to fear is love. 

Love and fear are mutually exclusive. They cannot exist at the same time. It is always either or. I cannot meet the world with an enthusiasm for the unknown, an embrace of the new, and at the same time remain in fear of exactly the same. 

The love of life with all its edges – the all-embracing love – is meant with the expression „love“. With this kind of love we can naturally grow beyond ourselves. With it we manage to approach the situations and adversities of life and the people around us creatively and openly. With this we see life as a big stage on which we can only learn, only win (even if it may temporarily look like a loss). Life is a great adventure. 

We may then be also able to understand that life is nothing to be a afraid of. 

Life is nothing for sissies. Fate will ALWAYS throw life challenges at you. That IS life. 

This or something similar was once said by the philosopher Seneca. 

I’ve noticed that we humans like to wallow in self-pity. Just last week I met a acquaintance who told me why he believes he is not capable of having a relationship, even at the age of forty. He said the disastrous partnership of his parents brought him to where he is today: not capable of committing to a woman. Self-pity. A diabolical thought process.

The next day, I met a colleague who calls herself a feminist and gave me an epic presentation of how much injustice has been done to women over the last millennia. Self-pity, too, but a collective one.

Self-pity seems to be en vogue. Especially when it comes to work with coaches. It’s called coming to terms with the past. And this refers not only to the individual, but also to whole groups of people. They see themselves as victims of incidents that have been going on for centuries. Occasionally, this is analyzed and evaluated in detail by scientists, psychologists and universities. 

This includes, for example, homosexuals, immigrants, blacks and indigenous people. Do not misunderstand: All this is comprehensible, justifiable and justified. 

My question is the following: does putting a large portion of attention/ energy into this really brings us that much further? And how many centuries should we go back to reappraise certain events? A decade, a century, several centuries?

Self-pity and the victimhood that goes with it is one of the most counterproductive behaviors I think there is in life. 

Self-pity is like a whirlwind that carries us along stronger and stronger the closer we get to it. Once in it, it’s easy to border paranoia: Some people then feel that a group of people, humanity, or even the entire universe is ganging up on them. 

Instead, how about ACCEPTING the adversities and injustices of the past in order to manage them and deal with them better TODAY? What’s the point of rehashing, taking apart our childhood and finding things we would rather have forgotten, but which we can now use to blame for our current situation?

Many people won’t like what I’m about to write, but let’s face it: I can’t really blame my parents alone for certain behaviors and characteristics of my person when I’m over 40. What if it is rather an immature behavior? After all, isn’t there an expiration date for blaming others? And when does personal responsibility for one’s own life begin? And yes, even in criminal law, mitigating circumstances are often thrown into the ring that occurred early in childhood – in many cases, I don’t understand that reasoning. 

Every single one of us has – that’s how I see it – the duty to clean up his own shit in life and if she/he doesn’t do that after a certain level maturity in life, maybe she/he should bear 100% of the responsibility for it?

As simple as this – it is also part of an EMPOWERED lifestyle to me: To show up and bear responsibility without excuses of the past. 

You have two options.

Either you put your energy into the glory of humankind or you try to crash it all down into degradation.

The decision is up to you and nobody else. If you are smiling to the person sitting next to you in the tram, you have voted for the glory. If you are nasty to the guy of the mobile telephone hotline, you went for degradation. Making a donation for a good cause is for the glory. Lying and cheating is for degradation. Listening to a charming jazz concert is glory, taking badly about your partner behind her/his back is degradation. Do you get what I mean?

A good way to increase the vibe of humankind is to do anything that challenges us, makes us smile and laugh, improves us, let us strive to become a better person. It all brings us into the golden light of glory.

Each of us can be the change we request for the world.

You too – by simply deciding whether you go for the glory or for the degradation.

I know you might say that you cannot stand this f* talk about being good anymore.

But there is the law of reciprocity. You will receive in life what you have planted before. And it is true. It is the good karma principle. Being good is a pure private thing.

Keep it for yourself, do not tell anybody but practice it and watch what is happening.

Don’t try to change other people to become good.

Don’t brag.

Just be good without any words.

Nature nourishes my soul and fuels my heart. There’s actually never a day I am not amazed in some ways by nature. 

I was growing up in a little village on the countryside, left for the big wide world living in urban areas like Paris, London or New York but have found myself over the last years (re-)connecting more and more to nature. 

The music of singing birds, the softness of rain, the heat of the sun, the magic of waterfalls – but more than any than that: the energy that nature gives. 

Anytime I feel disconnection, anger, sadness or discomfort, nature is my place to recharge, relax and find calmness. 

Our planet truly is amazing. It has already all we need. 

I LOVE YOU RIGHT NOW, IN THIS VERY MOMENT, BUT I DONT KNOW WHETHER THIS WILL ALSO BE VALID TOMORROW 

This statement is full of truth.
But I assume you feel the same resistance that I did when I heard it for the first time.

Your ego might call and ask for a secured love – for love under a security umbrella, with the guarantee for endless validity, a love with the stamp “forever” on it. 

Think about it with a clear, objective mind. Can a promise like this – “I love you forever” – ever been kept? 

Love is an emotion and emotions come and go as waves have their inner movements of ups and downs. 
Love is a feeling and feelings are far from being permanent. 

Our mind, our ego or whatever you might call that inner voice claims love and all other positive sensations to last forever as they make us feel being so perfectly fine, comfortable or even high.

But the truth is: emotions come and go, so does love.

The only, real truthful and sincere love declaration would be: I LOVE YOU RIGHT NOW, IN THIS VERY MOMENT, BUT DONT KNOW WHETHER THIS WILL BE VALID TOMORROW.

Because nobody knows what tomorrow will be. No one can. All we know is that IT IS AS IT IS – right now … in this very moment. 

A creative mindset might be one step in the right direction as it helps you to
– Find comfort with the uncertainties of life
– Understand yourself better 
– Master your mind instead of being mastered by your mind 

Do you yet have the inner strength to live in that space of unknown ?