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  • Why change is so hard and what you can do about it

    The World has turned upside down in the past decade. That’s very exciting and scary at the same time. No matter how you feel about it, the fact is that there is going to be a hell of a lot more of changes in our lives in the future. The concept of so called technological singularity explains that the pace of change has been accelerating fast throughout history and that means the future will bring even more new radical changes (and uncertainty).

    We are directly on the edge of the next, fourth, big revolution – the biotechnological revolution. Robots will become more human and we will become more like robots. We will have self-driving cars, drones, we will live on other planets, nano-robots will cure our illnesses and so on. Yes, with all the new technology the world will become even more exciting place to live, but also more complex, fast changing and (mentally) tough.

    Tech changes
    Speed of technology change will soon be vertical on the graph above . How can you cope with that?

    Therefore it makes sense to analyze why we resist new things and changes so much and cling to certainty at all costs and what you can do about it.

    Simplified, we like certainty, because it makes us feel safe and secure. Even though the change is the only real constant in life, besides taxes, we hate it. This hate towards change is written in our genes for millions of years as a mechanism for survival in the dangerous world.

    Not that long ago, you could very easily have gotten killed (in the jungle for example) and to be frank, you still can in some parts of the world. Even if you live in the 21st century and there is no tigers that can eat you, your brains and biological-emotional system still lives in a jungle (or the most dangerous parts of the world). An unknown and unstable environment most often brings threats to you and to your life. This is how you experience change on the emotional level. Certainty brings higher probability of safety and survival, simply because you know what you are dealing with.

    In addition to that, every change demands effort to adjust. Think of how annoying it is for the first few times when Facebook implements a new change on their site.

    So there are the two main reasons why we don’t like change:

    • Something new = Potential danger (not to survive or mate)
    • Something new = More effort to adjust and learn (more struggle)
    • More changes = More stress
    • The paradox = Only r(evolution) leads to more safety and better life

    There is one important trick in the whole picture. With gradual change (evolution) we can usually manage the pace of change quite well (spear to a better version of spear), but when it comes to the big changes – revolution or disruptive innovation (spear to gun) we feel more threatened at our existential level. And when we are dealing with an existential threat, we have encoded a survival response mechanism in our genes.

    When we don’t feel safe and secure on existential level there are three possible responses: fight, flight or freeze. All the three responses are extremely stressful for our bodies.

    The important fact is, that our need for safety does not stop at the physical level, at the level of life or death threats. The same formula applies for psychological challenges. When we feel we won’t be able to fulfill our desires and expectations towards life, due to colossal internal or external obstacles, we usually have the same response – fight, run or freeze.

    None of the responses are good in today’s time. You don’t live in a jungle anymore. You can’t fight information overload. You can’t fight market complexity. It’s like trying to save the Titanic with a small pot; or fighting against 100 tigers at once. As an alternative you could run, but you’d miss out on the whole meaning of life and throw away an opportunity to really enjoy the benefits of today’s world. Freezing, however, is the worst. It means nothing but living in fear and hoping that things will get in order by themselves somehow. When we freeze in life, we become like zombies. Not really living life but just passing through; waiting for death to come.

    Fight Flight
    Burn out yourself with fighting the unstoppable trends, blame technology and capitalism. Deny progress, don’t use new technologies, think about good old days and back off to isolation.
    Freeze Transcendent
    Become a zombie, wait for life to pass away, watching TV, and wasting time on social networks. Understand and optimize your mindset not only for efficiency, but also for adaptability.

    So what can you really do about it?

    Understand and transcendent

    The good news is that there is a fourth alternative to fight, flight or freeze. It’s the fundamental part of the agile and lean life. The fourth alternative is to understand and transcend. Transcend only means that you develop a virtue how to live a quality life in an unpredictable and fast changing world and even more that you live life with purpose that is stronger than any problem or change you encounter.

    You have to decide if all these changes are, and will be, a problem or an opportunity for you in the future. The situation doesn’t differ from the moment when fire was invented. You can get burned with fire or you can cook a delicious dinner. The choice is yours. Remember, every change is a threat or an opportunity.

    Instead of feeling overwhelmed and stuck in all the complexity, you can take advantage of it and build the dream life you want; the dream life that was quite impossible to live until now, especially if you are not the type for uncertainty. You just have to understand, use the right tools and transcend. Here is the magic trick:

    You have to start optimizing your life not only for efficiency, but also for adaptability. The same as nature does.

    Here are a few ideas how:

    You can find many similar ideas how to optimize your life for adaptability on this blog. Managing life will only get harder in the future; with more uncertainty, more global competition and more things to master. But if you play your cards right, you can also live the most exciting and fulfilling life ever in the history of mankind.

  • Living in the present moment

    There are some simple rules in life. If you live in your negative past, you soon become bitter, depressed or overwhelmed by regret. It’s a double knockdown by life (tough past, tough present) and a challenging negative spiral. If you’re afraid of not controlling your future completely or repeating your past mistakes in the upcoming times, you become a very anxious person. And if you aren’t aware of your personal power that you always have in the present moment, you can become a too extreme hedonist or a fatalist, going only where life kicks you; and life often kicks you where you certainly don’t want to be.

    Living in the past, living in the future or not being aware of your personal power in the present create a lot of pain in personal life. Emotional pain is, in a way, nothing but a kind of self-created inner resistance to external things that happened to you or are happening to you and you can’t control. You feel pain when you aren’t satisfied with how things are but don’t feel powerful enough to change them. You aren’t flexible enough, wise/rational enough or aware of the personal power that you possess in the present moment. The good news is that pain is most often an inner experience and, as I mentioned, a psychological resistance to the outer world, which means that you can do something about it and transform it. One way to do it is to live more in the present moment by developing wisdom and controlling your mind.

    As we’ve learned in the article Positive orientation towards your past, the best combination for improving your quality of life and eliminating pain is being positively oriented towards your past, a moderate hedonist in the present and goal-oriented towards your future; but not too goal-oriented towards your future, which also leads to you living in the future and forgetting to enjoy the present moment. That way, the past gives you strong roots and foundations, your present gives you feelings of personal power and proactive behavior, and your future gives you the wings to seize all the things you want in life as part of your life vision.

    Past Present Future
    Positives

    Negatives

    		 (moderate) Hedonist

    Fatalist

    		 Goal-oriented

    Afterlife rewards

    But living in the present isn’t that easy, so let’s look at some techniques that can help you shift your focus from painful parts of your past or desired future to the present moment. The tricks for living in the present moment are:

    • Developing Zen Buddhist wisdom
    • Holding your frame and thinking like a Stoic
    • Constantly paying attention to your needs and satisfying them
    • Having list of things you enjoy in personal life
    • Following general rules that contribute to happiness

    Possessing Zen Buddhist wisdom

    Zen is the Japanese form of the Sanskrit word dhyana, which means meditation. Zen is a school of Buddhism, most popular in Japan and the Western world, but it originated from China and was strongly influenced by Taoism. The foundation of Zen philosophy is that an individual’s goal should be to develop their mind, which leads to personal wisdom and personal freedom.

    Mental development can especially be achieved with mediation and concentration. As Buddha said, a human mind is filled with drunken monkeys, jumping around, screeching, chattering, carrying on endlessly. You can’t banish or fight the monkeys because of resistance, but you can calm them down by focusing on your breathing and a positive mantra.

    The final goal of mental development and training your brain monkeys is to cultivate the ability to respond to each moment with wisdom, compassion, generosity, kindness, creativity and responsibility.

    Here’s a cool definition of Zen from Urban Dictionary: “A total state of focus that incorporates a total togetherness of body and mind. Zen is a way of being. It also is a state of mind. Zen involves dropping illusion and seeing things without distortion created by your own thoughts.”

    As I mentioned, paying attention to your breathing and your mind with meditation are the key tools of Zen Buddhism, but Zen philosophy also offers many wise ideas for coping with everyday problems and changing the way we look at things.

    Zen wisdom for coping with everyday problems

    Everything that happens to you is the best possible thing that can happen to you in a specific moment for the fastest learning and growth. Universe (or whoever) hits you where it hurts the most so that you become stronger and grow in life where you’re weak. Consequently, you develop into a better version of yourself.

    Nonetheless, life gives you only challenges that you are capable of overcoming, no matter how difficult they are. The problems you face in life are never harder than your character. That’s the philosophy you should follow when things go wrong. But what if you desire something you don’t have? Everything in life happens when the right time comes and never sooner. You have to be ready and wise enough for a change or something new in your life or something you desire. You have to follow the process, and compound wisdom. You only reap what you sow.

    Nevertheless, happiness or sadness aren’t the consequences of what’s happening to you, but how you interpret what’s happening to you. You can always change your angle (how you look at things) and that is the biggest power you have in life. You can always change your thinking, because your mind is everything and you become what you think. Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your actions become your habits, and your habits become your values and destiny.

    Even your worst enemy can’t hurt you as badly as your untamed mind can. As mentioned before, to tame your mind (or monkeys, if you want) you should pay attention to your breathing and to your thoughts, but there’s also another trick. You can switch your focus from your mind to your body. Your body is always giving you feedback on what’s really important for you in a certain moment. Always listen to your body.

    To live more in the present moment, you shouldn’t make great plans for the future, but instead be constantly aware of your surroundings in the state of active waiting. Active waiting means no day-dreaming, planning, thinking about your past or any other distractions. It means just doing your job in the present moment, like you’re aware that something serious or very important could happen at any moment. Don’t waste your inner resources to create problems and wasteful thinking.

    You have to be grateful for what you have and you have to learn how to forgive in life. How to let go. Be happy with what you currently have and who you are. Nobody can take that away from you.

    Last but not least, nothing gets destroyed or vanished, it only changes its form. Life is energy and you should have as positive energy as possible. Here’s a nice story that teaches you how to let go:

    An elder and a young monk were making a pilgrimage together. One day, they came to a deep river with a strong current. At the edge of the river, a young woman sat weeping, because she was afraid to cross the river without help. She begged the two monks to help her.

    Since the members of their order were forbidden to touch women, the younger monk turned his back to the woman. But the elder monk volunteered and carried the woman across the river. The junior monk was very upset, but said nothing for a long time.

    At the end of the day, the elder monk noticed that his younger friend was very upset and asked him if something is wrong. The younger monk explained that he is very upset because as monks, they aren’t permitted to touch women, but he dared carry the woman on his shoulders. The elder monk replied “I only carried her across the river. You’ve been carrying her all day.”

    Let go when it’s time to let go. As I mentioned, there are two main tools that Zen Buddhists use to control their minds (train the monkey mind) and to live more in the present moment:

    • Meditation
    • Breathing control

    Daily Meditation

    Meditation

    The most important tool of Zen Buddhists for learning how to control your mind is meditation. It’s scientifically proven that meditation helps you a lot with relaxation and taming your mind. Actually, your brain physically changes with regular meditation and increases your capacity for creativity, focus and managing anxiety. I know so many people who claim that meditation changed their lives. You can find many different forms and types of meditation, but for a busy lifestyle, Transcendental Meditation, that you practice 20 minutes twice a day, is quite popular and probably the best fit.

    I don’t do anything advanced and regular, because I prefer self-reflection to meditation. Nevertheless, I sometimes use the Headspace application and meditate for 10 minutes in the morning when I wake up. A good alternative to meditation that can definitely help you in the same way is yoga. If you have problems with living in the present moment, meditation, yoga or proper breathing can do miracles for you, besides hardcore psychological therapy (psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology etc.).

    Learn how to breathe properly

    If you want to live in the present moment, you have to learn how to breathe properly. It may sound strange, but a lot of people don’t know how to breathe the right way and there is a strong connection between your thoughts, feelings, posture and breathing. You can find many resources online on why proper breathing is important, but you may start with two simple exercises explained below and then continue with more advanced techniques.

    1-4-2 Formula

    I use the 1-4-2 formula exercise to have better awareness of my breathing, develop lung capacity and accelerate the cleaning of toxins from capillary veins.

    I especially like doing this exercise when I take a walk in nature and thus fill my lungs with fresh air and my mind with positive thoughts. I learned this technique from the world-known self-help Guru Anthony Robbins.

    The 1-4-2 is the ratio for how many seconds you breathe in, hold your breath and breathe out. I use 5 seconds to slowly breathe in air, then I hold my breath for 20 seconds and slowly exhale air for 10 seconds. I repeat that 3 to 5 times. If you get dizzy, you can try with shorter periods (3 seconds, 12 seconds, 6 seconds or even less) or at the very beginning, you can instead start with the belly breathing exercise.

    Belly Breathing

    You can find a lot of information online about belly breathing, but to summarize it, you sit down in a relaxed position. You put your right hand on your stomach. You slowly breathe in through your nose and make sure that your stomach expands first and then your lungs. Your hand on your belly should move first and then your lungs should be filled with air.

    Then you breathe out and first you empty your lungs and then your belly, and while doing it, you pull your stomach and hand inwards, towards your spine. You should repeat that 20 – 30 times and you will definitely feel more relaxed. You’ll slowly learn how to control your breathing and breathe more properly, that is by engaging your belly more than your lungs.

    Thinking like a Stoic

    The second very influential ancient philosophy that can help you with living in the present moment is the Stoic Philosophy. Many ideas are quite similar to Zen philosophy, but we can still find a few additional useful ideas. Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Ancient Greece by Zeno of Citium (born in Cyprus) somewhere in the 3rd century BC.

    For many centuries, Stoicism was one of the most influential philosophies in Ancient Greece and Ancient Roman Empire. The four core virtues of Stoic philosophy are wisdom, courage, justice and temperance. Some of the most famous Stoics were Seneca, Epictetus and one of the wisest Roman Emperors, Marcus Aurelius (his book Meditations is one of my favorite books).

    Here is a cool definition of a Stoic person from Urban Dictionary: “A Stoic is someone who does not give a shit about the stupid things in this world that most people care so much about. Stoics do have emotions, but only for the things in this world that really matter. They are the most real people alive.”

    The fist important idea of Stoicism, that you’re already familiar with from Zen Buddhism, is that hedonism isn’t really the true path to happiness in life. You have to be a moderate hedonist in life, but living only for fun, fame and fortune isn’t the right path. They’re all overrated and don’t bring real happiness in life, especially because they depend on other people, items and circumstances, and are therefore always easy to lose. Excessive hedonism is the counter-point to Stoicism.

    Don’t get me wrong: fun, fame and fortune are important and do hold value, and are part of a good life, but they shouldn’t distract you from the only thing that can really bring happiness in life, which is an excellent, rational and wise mental state.

    Much like Zen Buddhists, Stoics also advocate the idea that everything is temporary. Therefore you shouldn’t really be deeply and unhealthy attached to anything in life, neither material things nor relationships or any ideas. The more attached you are, the greater the pain somewhere in the future (and less lean and agile you are). Have nothing in life that you aren’t prepared to lose. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t love, but true love doesn’t mean control, unhealthy attachment and possessiveness.

    Even if nothing lasts forever, you can extend the longevity of things and relationships you have in life with positive actions, regular maintenance, constant growth and personal improvement. The good news is also that even your unhappiness or misfortune are only temporary, like everything else in life. You should also resist materialism and live a minimalistic life. You should live as simply as possible.

    If you’re unhappy, it’s your fault. Nobody else’s, only yours. If other people are unhappy, it’s entirely their fault and you shouldn’t try to make them happy, because you will fail. Don’t try to change other people and don’t expect other people to change you. All that can be changed is you changing yourself. You should strive to maximize your positive emotions and minimize negative emotions. Not with hedonism, but by controlling you mind, behavior and healthy mental blueprint.

    The most important part of a healthy mental blueprint is that you don’t look for ideal situations in life, because they don’t exist. You should also learn to accept things that aren’t in your control. And as mentioned, always be aware that outer things, like possessions and other people, can’t make you happy. Nevertheless, you can find satisfaction and happiness through the actions you take with things and relationships. For example, a computer can’t make you happy, but what you can do with a computer can, because it helps you create value and contribute.

    You should have the strength to accept the things you cannot change in life, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

    You should never feel like a victim, because it takes away your personal power. You can always regroup and rephrase your goals so that you have more control, even if it only means changing the angle of how you look at things. In the end, the ultimate control you have is the control over your judgments and your mental state or, in other words, how you interpret the things that happen to you.

    Last but not least, you should respect and live in accordance with the human nature. Being a part of nature means that you’re a small part of a larger, organic system, shaped by many processes that are out of your control, including the behavior and actions of other people. Nonetheless, humans are predictable and you should pay attention not to what a person says but to how they behave (what they do).

    Living in accordance with nature also means that hardship, pain, suffering and, of course, also death are all parts of nature and life, and thus inevitable. Life is like a river with a strong current: you can’t paddle against it, but you can decide whether you’re going to resist and suffer or accept it and handle it with good grace.

    In order to accept life with good grace, you should invest a lot of effort into the struggle of controlling yourself. Do what you can, and be happy for your personal efforts and progress in life. If at first you don’t succeed, then try again and again. Don’t be afraid of slow improvement, be afraid of stopping and becoming a zombie. Your capacity for self-improvement and overcoming adversity in life isn’t fixed, but it can be increased with training and a selective, but progressive, exposure to stress. Or, in other words, regularly going out of the comfort zone.

    Reframing

    Optimal thinking, cognitive reframing and holding your frame

    As we’ve learned, the only thing that can really bring happiness in life is an excellent, rational and wise mental state. It’s also called optimal thinking. You should always ask yourself: what is the optimal thinking in my current situation? You’ll most often find that optimal thinking consists of the Zen and Stoic philosophies. No matter how bad of a situation you’re in, your best option is always to remind yourself of the following facts:

    • Nothing lasts forever and this too shall pass.
    • There is no ideal situation in life and pain is an inevitable part of it.
    • I should make fun of winter with a cold morning shower.
    • Life wants me to fight and grow, so I won’t feel sorry for myself and be a victim.
    • My challenges are never bigger than my character or more important than my why.
    • I can always find the positive in a negative situation.
    • I should take a deep breath, smile, and innovate my way out.
    • I have to focus on the positive and take action.
    • You’re the result of 4 billion years of evolutionary success. Act like it.

    Every time you feel sorry for yourself, you should reframe your thoughts and change how you look at things. Cognitive reframing is a way of viewing and experiencing events, ideas, concepts and emotions to find more positive alternatives. Frame is the filter through which you perceive reality, and you can always find a new better frame. When you do, you should hold it strongly, because your mind (monkey), together with your emotions, will try to wander. Don’t slack off, hold your frame no matter what.

    Paying attention and satisfying your needs

    It’s true that you must have realistic expectations in life and not lose yourself in hedonism or materialism. Next to that, you also have to manage your ego and detach yourself from unhealthy attachments. But that’s only one part of the equation. As we said, you also have to be a moderate hedonist in the present.

    That means that you must pay close attention to your needs and you must strive to satisfy these needs. You have to find the right balance between two extremes – one extreme being a monk, having absolutely nothing and detaching himself from everything, and the other extreme being a greedy, perpetually dissatisfied person only looking for surrogates (money, addictions etc.) to replace the lack of loving and healthy relationships and creating valuable things while enjoying the work.

    It’s very easy to blame ego for both extremes, but poor ego does nothing but serves three masters and does what it can to bring them into harmony with one another. The three masters are id (primitive impulses), superego (rules, conflicts, morals etc.) and the external world with all its limitations. So you shouldn’t blame the ego for your unhappiness. You should pay more attention to your needs and find the right balance between id, superego and external limitations. A bitter person is a person who doesn’t pay attention to their real needs and doesn’t enjoy life. Therefore you should work hard on self-reflection and:

    • Know what you want in life and enjoy it every day. Start with your life vision.
    • Strive to have loving and deep relationships and a feeling of inner security
    • Cultivate more rough energies and feelings (aggression, hate etc.) and wishes that can’t be fulfilled through sublimation (where wishes are channeled rather than dammed or diverted) with doing meaningful work, sports, arts, following meaningful goals and having a sense of humor
    • Be an outstanding communicator and learn to communicate your wishes and desires with yourself and others
    • Just do it, act, you have every right to fulfill your desires in the right civilized way

    List of all the things you enjoy

    It may sound silly, but if you don’t know how to be a moderate hedonist in life, you have to learn it. The first step you should do, if you don’t know how to properly enjoy life, is to make a list of all the things you really enjoy in life. The point of this exercise is just to become aware of all the things that make you happy and give you satisfaction in life. This exercise is especially important if you’re a workaholic or don’t know how to relax and enjoy everyday life.

    The more bitter, tense and serious you are, the less you probably know how to really enjoy life and relax. You may not even know what really makes you happy and which things you enjoy. Therefore sit down, take a piece of paper and think of all the times in life when you forgot about the time and everything around you; think about the precious moments when you lost yourself in the moment and just really enjoyed the happening in the flow.

    Here you can find my list, as an example, since I’m an extremely serious person and often forget how to enjoy life. From time to time, I look at the list and remind myself that I’m also here on this planet to enjoy life and experience as many things as possible.

    General rules of personal happiness

    Now it’s time to go from the philosophical level to more practical advice for other things you can do to be happier in life and live more in the present moment. There are seven general rules that contribute to your happiness and your ability to live more in the present. They can’t really make you happy per se, but if you follow the rules, you have greater chances of really being happy and a moderate hedonist in the present. If you have the right mental blueprint (framework) and a compassionate inner dialogue, these things do add to your everyday quality of life.

    Have enough margin on a daily basis

    You simply can’t live a happy and stress-free life if you don’t have enough margin in life. You can’t live happily in the present moment if you’re drowning in work, debt or negative relationships. Margin is the space between your load and your limits. Margin is the opposite of overload and a bigger margin leads to higher quality and happiness in life. Make sure you have enough margin to function without feeling overwhelmed day by day.

    Here are some ideas for increasing margin in your life:

    • Clean up your to-do list
    • Kill some projects that don’t bring a lot of value
    • Don’t go out every weekend but take time for yourself
    • Delete all unread e-mails that are older than two weeks
    • Change your phone number and give it only to a few people
    • Delete your social media accounts
    • Get rid of your smart phone etc.
    • Have an emergency fund for at least 6 months of your monthly costs

    Exercise regularly

    Healthy mind in a healthy body. Period. There are so many benefits of exercise, but you already know that. Especially doing exercise in nature. Here, you can find 50 benefits of exercise and physical activity.

    If you don’t like to exercise, walk 30 minutes every day. Walk to your office. Walk and talk with your spouse in the afternoon in the nature. As an alternative, you can also exercise by taking care of your garden or doing a sport you love or anything else that gets your body moving.

    Even better than just walking is torturing your fat until it cries (a.k.a. sweats) like a little baby four to five times per week. Combine aerobic and anaerobic exercise and regularly take care of your body with grooming, spa, massages and so on.

    Next to that, get enough sleep every night, eat healthy and don’t forget about passionate sex. Drink enough water, add veggies to every meal and help yourself with food supplements if needed. Also take care of your posture and flexibility.

    Never forget that your body is the vessel that holds your soul. Your body is a temple you must take care of. Your first priority should be to take care of yourself and your temple. An ill, obese or burnt-out person is rarely a happy person. So take care of your body and you’ll be repaid in many forms, including being happier in life. Exercise should be a part of you being a moderate hedonist in the present, day by day. At the end of the day, you’re always only one workout away from good mood.

    Stay fit to have great sex

    Have deep connections and socialize

    Greed, lust, envy, addictions and other destructive behaviors are all forms of a low capacity for love. They drag you away from personal happiness and real enjoyment of life. If you want to be happy in life, you have to love yourself first, develop a great capacity for love (feeling of inner security), and then you can also love others with all your heart. Love, not control or unhealthy attachment.

    Have deep connections and socialize enough with:

    • Your spouse
    • Your primary and secondary family
    • Your friends

    You need three strong pillars of love and deep connections. Your spouse, your family and your friends. Deep and loving connections will fill you with love, joy and happiness. If you don’t socialize enough and spend quality time with the people you love, you have zero chances of being happy in life. Love yourself, be connected, and love other people. Life can be tough and we’re here to help each other with loving and supportive energies.

    Work on something meaningful

    You can’t be a happy person and live in the present moment if you hate your job. You spend more than a third of your time at your workplace. If you don’t like what you do and the culture of the company where you work, you’ll be miserable. You simply can’t be happy if you spend 8 – 10 hours in a place you hate. Emotions carry over to you from the atmosphere and other people you spend time with. Unhappy people, unhappy environment, unhappy you; not living in the present moment but only feeling sorry for yourself and living a fatalist life.

    Therefore a very important goal you should have in life in order to be happy is finding meaningful work and an environment where you can thrive. You must feel good about your work and contributing to the society, creating value and being a part of an organization that has encouraging culture and a powerful mission. That kind of an environment and people won’t come to you, you have to fight and find your fit.

    People who love their job thrive, people who hate their job die inside.

    When you’re working, you should be in the flow for as much time as possible. The flow is an elusive state of hyper-performance where you forget about everything and just create, create and create. Hours can pass without you noticing. Usually it’s for a task that’s a little bit more challenging than your skillset and you just can’t wait to undertake the challenge, learn, create value and overcome any obstacle on the path. That means being fully in the present moment in a god-like state.

    At this point, we also have to mention money. Up to 100.000 $ of annual income (depends on where you live, of course, but let’s say around double the average salary), money is a great contributor to happiness and living a relaxed life in the present moment. After that, money can’t really contribute to your happiness anymore. If you’re poor, you definitely have a hard time being happy.

    Forget the myth that poor and fat people are happy people. Money solves many problems in life. You shouldn’t expect that money will make you happy, but you need to develop your competence level to the point where you earn enough money and being poor doesn’t take away your happiness.

    • Step 1: Develop emotional security and strong social connections.
    • Step 2: Develop enough inner resources (competences) that you trust yourself and know you can always create enough outer resources. Find meaningful work that you will master and enjoy, and with which you will contribute to the world.
    • Step 3: Earn enough money and have enough wealth that you don’t struggle by living from paycheck to paycheck.

    The path matters, not the end

    For everything you want in life, there’s always a process before the final event (getting what you want). Respect and follow the process, and you’ll get to the goal someday. It’s better to arrive late than to arrive ugly. In other words, the only place where success comes before hard work is in the dictionary. Everything you want in life, you can get by following a carefully orchestrated process.

    But you should definitely enjoy the whole process not only the final event. You should enjoy learning, growing, overcoming obstacles, facing new challenges and finding new, better ways to do things. You should enjoy innovating, day-to-day work and unexpected challenges while staying agile about how you will get to your goal. Success is never a linear path. Focus on the process, focus on the path and just enjoy the ride. It’s an important part of the life experience.

    Trust yourself and have faith in life

    Have you ever asked yourself why some people are happy by default and others aren’t? Well, most often the reason is that they were raised in a positive and happy environment, where they were able to develop inner security and faith in life. Their inner dialog is positive, they believe in themselves, they trust in life and, as optimists, look on the bright side of life.

    If you want to be happy, you also need to develop that kind of inner security and faith in life, if you haven’t gotten it from your primary and secondary socialization. There are many tools for developing more psychological capital and faith in life and inner security, from cognitive psychology, psychotherapy, meditation, transactional analysis, trauma release exercises, yoga, neuro-linguistic programming and many other methods. You must find the method that works for you and suits you best.

    If you’re insecure, everything that doesn’t go according to your expectations will annoy you and negative feelings will prevail. The more insecure you are, the smaller the things that will drive you mad and throw you off. You can’t be happy if you’re constantly mad. You can’t be happy if you don’t know how to adapt and stay flexible. So if you aren’t feeling emotionally secure, that is where you should begin to feel happier in life and live more in the present moment.

    At this point, it’s also important to mention overall realistic expectations. With all the exposure to ads, marketing and products, we often gain unrealistic expectations for life. According to the media world, you should be beautiful, smart, rich, stylish and a hundred other things. That’s totally unrealistic. The more unrealistic expectations you have towards life, the greater the disappointments that await you; and there goes your happiness. Thus you must have realistic expectations towards your life and what you can achieve and experience.

    Have positive thoughts

    You can’t live a positive life with a negative mind. Only positive thoughts are the ones that lead to happiness. But what are positive thoughts, really? Positive thoughts are the thoughts of connecting. You can’t have a positive and a negative thought at the same time. You also can’t have a thought of connecting and a thought of division at the same time. You either bring closer or push away.

    Thoughts of connecting are thoughts that bring everything closer, and their energy is gentle, tolerant, open, creative and welcoming. Every time your thoughts aren’t connecting people, ideas and things, flip your mind over and do the opposite. Connect.

    • Do you want to gossip about your coworker? Invite them for coffee instead.
    • Are you mad at your partner for not putting down the toilet lid? Hug and kiss them good night instead, and just forget about it.
    • You don’t like something about yourself and it’s all over your mind? Instead find positive things about yourself and change your inner dialogue. Be more connected to yourself.

    Things aren’t that simple, of course. You can’t just start thinking positively. If your mind is occupied with negative thoughts and cognitive distortions a lot, you can help yourself with emotional accounting. First of all, count all your negative thoughts, just to become aware of them. In the second step, start correcting your negative thoughts. For example: if your initial thought is “I’m so clumsy”, correct it with something like “I may sometimes spill milk, but so do other people and it only happens to me occasionally, therefore I’m not really clumsy.” Here you can learn more about how to do emotional accounting. If that is too hard for you, start with listening to your body as mentioned in the beginning of this blog post.

    Additional ideas for living in the present moment

    To slowly end the article, here are ten additional ideas that may help you live more in the present moment:

    • Do one thing at a time. Use different speeds for different types of tasks.
    • Do that one thing with an inner smile, slowly and consistently
    • Shut down all your smart devices, IM apps, and everything else that distracts you.
    • Take 5 minutes off and stretch.
    • Walk more slowly and eat more slowly.
    • Be grateful and appreciate that another day was given to you.
    • Hug the people you love and compliment the people you meet.
    • Remind yourself of your whys and that they’re much more important than any problem or worry you have to face in life.
    • Say Fuck it out loud when something goes wrong and continue with your work.
    • Only spend time with people who are happy most of the time and who support you.

  • Extremely good or bad times are real relationships test

    In normal, or even slightly good or bad times, anyone can be a good friend, a good business partner or a good spouse. Normal times never show the darkest part of a person’s character, unless the person is an asshole by default. Extremes do. Extremes show whose personality really is larger than life and whose character is lower than a snake’s belly. Well, everyone makes a mistake or breaks from time to time, but if you see consistently atypical behavior in extreme times when interacting with someone, you can see deep down their soul. You don’t even have to look them in their eyes.

    When things go really badly, people very clearly show how strong their rational part is compared to their instincts as well as how stable their emotional self is. They show their true nature and how mature they really are to other people. Surprisingly, when things go extremely well, the darker human nature often comes into play even more. You probably heard the quote that nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test man’s character, give him power.

    Thus we have two real life relationships test – both extremes, when things go either really well or really badly, put relationships to a tough test, especially the closest ones.

    When things go extremely badly

    Bad times are usually a very tough testing period for relationships. Any kind of adversity, losses and other tragic situations, big or small, have a huge impact on your life and your relationship with other people. Job loss, money issues, accidents, death of the people you love, you name it.

    From what I’ve seen, there are only two possible outcomes when things go extremely badly. Either people turn on each other and start fighting, or the extremely bad situation gives them an opportunity to connect even more and deepen the relationship. The fact is that relationships that endure extremely tough times usually become even more substantial.

    In bad times you have only two options in a relationship in your life:

    1. You can turn to each other and start fighting
    2. You can connect even more and deepen the relationship

    I guess the second options is a good thing in a bad thing. But unfortunately people prefer to turn on each other than find a deeper mutual connection. But why? Many times, extremely bad times make you feel bad about yourself, they hinder your self-confidence, and they make you feel more insecure and intolerant. Consequently, your capacity for love decreases.

    The more your self-confidence is damaged by an external event, the more your capacity for love decreases. If your perception of value was, for example, strongly grounded in your fancy job and you lost the job, you feel unworthy and thus your perception of your value in a relationship changes as well. By fighting, you usually want to make people love you more and chain them onto yourself in a very aggressive way. It’s a kind of unhealthy compensation for the feeling of lost value.

    The second thing that often happens is that it’s much easier to blame others for many types of different failures and bad things happening to you. It’s much easier to blame the partner that s/he didn’t support you enough etc. than it is to admit to yourself that you f*cked up. You protect yourself and your feeling of value by blaming others. Ironically, the easiest way to start a fight is with the people you love and care about the most. That’s the point when relationships start to go south in tough times. You get insecure, aggressive and start accusing your loved ones instead of facing the truth and building even stronger relationships based on more effective communication, mutual care, empathy and understanding. It can be done, but it takes a lot more effort.

    Sad couple

    When things go extremely well

    Much less obvious is why people fight when things go extremely well; well, usually they go extremely well for one person in a relationship or even both parties. Examples of extremely good times are when someone gets a big promotion, enters a new well-known social circle, gets to know new people who rank higher than them on the sexual market value and is exposed to their affection, when business goes really well, when someone acquires larger sums of money etc.

    Two things very often happen in that kind of a situation. First of all, outer stimuli (good happening) stroke the ego too much. When the ego gets too much stroking, people often start getting full of themselves, they become cocky and arrogant, and suddenly they feel like they don’t need some people around them anymore so much. They enjoy their extremely good (many times unexpected) situation so much that suddenly they don’t give a f*ck about the people around them anymore or they feel superior to them.

    The second thing that often surfaces is the natural human tendency of trying to progress and strive for better things in life. When something extremely good happens to you, you get a new reference point. You feel much better than you used to. So everything around you must be much better than it used to be, from items to people; and so you start looking for things and social circles in the same new league. Because your perception of value increased, you also look for people who have higher value in your eyes.

    It’s some kind of The Diderot Effect: The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new (fancy) possession often creates a spiral of consumption which leads you to acquire more new (fancy) things. As a result, you end up buying things that your previous self never needed to feel happy or fulfilled. It happens pretty the same in the relationships.

    Both things, the illusion of ego and the new view of higher self-worth, lead to a big relationship test with all the people with whom you had normal and totally good relationships before that extremely good thing happened. But there’s a big trick in this game. You still have some kind of an attachment to the people in your life, which leads to internal conflict. You still care for them but you want to move on at the same time.

    Secondly, your new perception of self-worth makes you feel good when you’re with them because you feel superior to them. But they start feeling shitty when they’re around you. Last but not least, there is always also a question of what will happen when good times go away and your luck strikes out, who will you go to then? In movies, you can often see the moment when someone realizes that a good thing is not as shiny as s/he thought, and they come back to old friends.

    If that happens once, it’s kind of understandable, but if it happens many times, it’s an ugly form of hypocrisy. There’s nothing wrong with being self-confident, maybe even a little bit cocky sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to become better and better and be surrounded by better and better people, items and stuff. There’s nothing wrong in deciding to end a relationship if you feel that its expiration date has come because you’ve progressed faster than the other person. It may not be nice, some people would already see that kind of behavior as proof of a lousy friendship, but at least it’s honest.

    What definitely isn’t right is (1) having a relationship with someone only when things go bad, constantly leaving them at good times and coming back at bad times, (2) being around someone just to feel superior to them or seeing them as plan B, and what definitely isn’t right is (3) going against someone you love (seeing them as less valuable) just because something good is happening to you.

    When things go really well, your instincts should be to share your happiness and success with the people you love, not feeling superior to them and seeing them as less valuable. Even if your emotional self does feel a little better for a second, your rational part should correct your emotions immediately. If your emotions march off, you have to put them back into the right frame with your intellect. Just remind yourself why a relationship with someone is really important to you and what they contribute to your life.

    In bad times you have only two options in a relationship in your life:

    1. You can share your happiness and success with people you love
    2. You can start feeling superior and full of yourself and become a hypocrite (in this case is better to end a relationship)

    I have seen it a hundred times in personal and professional lives. Suddenly a business takes off. One partner would like to cash out, the other to reinvest. They don’t communicate enough. Both of them see each other as an unnecessary part of the business and a burden to their own goals and interests. They start fighting. Business goes down. Before, they were best friends. After the first real success, they become the worst enemies. A similar situation often happens in the personal life.

    Ask yourself the questions below. They do sound a little bit silly, but if you know how to be honest with yourself, they’ll tell you a lot about you and your relationships:

    • If Jenifer Lawrence/Channing Tatum or whichever famous person is your favorite actor fell in love with you and tried to seduce you, what would you do? It doesn’t even have to be a famous Hollywood star, make it your national or local TV star, or your last crush or whoever you maybe feel attracted to and is out of your league.
    • If you won a big amount of money in the lottery, let’s say 10 million EUR/USD, or if your business started generating 30,000 EUR/USD profit per month, what would you do?

    Would you stay with your spouse and friends and family or in any other relationship? Would you spend more or less time with them? Would you start fooling around and find new friends or would you share your success with old friends? Ask yourself sincerely and you’ll see very well what would be the relationship test outcome of extremely good times.

    If the answer is that you’d keep a specific relationship, or invest even more into it and share all of your success without feeling superior, there’s a very good chance that a relationship would pass that kind of a life test. If you’re tentative and undecided or if questions like that piss you off, you should probably rethink your relationships. We’re talking about only one context here, and that’s what would happen to your relationships if your position were to drastically improve. There are many other elements and angles that influence the quality and duration of relationships, but this kind of a test can still tell you a lot.

    When things go extremely badly and extremely well

    There’s also a third situation, when things go both extremely badly and extremely well at the same time. In those kind of times, relationships and people’s characters are put to an even harder test.

    An example would be when parents die and inheritance has to be split among siblings. The extremely bad situation (and a shocking one) is the parents’ death. Kind of a good situation for many people is the inheritance, and usually there’s a bigger sum of wealth in play because of the real estate. There are so many families where people really had strong bonds with each other, until something like that happened. It’s heartbreaking how many families fall apart because of the inheritance fight.

    The same situation often happens in business, when things go well in some ways (generating money, usually), but there are also many challenges present. People are afraid of losing something valuable and they often prefer to blame others than themselves for all the problems. Relationships become relationshits.

    Everyone breaks sometimes

    We all sometimes make mistakes in relationships. We hurt people and people hurt us. We’re all human and we all make mistakes. That’s fine. What’s not okay is if you start behaving toxically and you cripple your relationships every time something extremely good or extremely bad happens to you.

    Those are the times when you should put in extra effort to strengthen the most valuable relationships in your life. If they’re really valuable to you, and not only plan B or a compromise you think you had to make because of your temporary situation, you’ll make sure that extremely good or extremely bad times bring out the best in you and the people you love.

    The key takeaways are the following:

    • Extremely good and extremely bad times will have a big influence on your ego, self-worth and your perception of yourself and your relationships.
    • If a relationship is really sincere, based on love, mutual respect and is valuable to you, you’ll look for ways to enhance, strengthen and deepen the relationship in both extremes. You’ll open yourself up more, you’ll invest yourself more, you’ll communicate more, and you’ll show more loving and tender energies. You should see extremely good and extremely bad situations as an opportunity to build even more quality relationships. Both extremes should bring out the best version of yourself and you should bring out the best in other people.
    • Many relationships won’t pass the test. Maybe because of you, maybe because of others. That’s okay, you just have to be fair and sincere, to yourself and to others. Even if it’s time to end a relationship, you can do it the right way. There’s nothing wrong with moving on, but you shouldn’t keep things open. Give a close to a relationship that you think has to end.
    • But what you definitely shouldn’t do is start fighting with the closest people in your life only because things go bad for you and it’s the easiest thing to do. Don’t blame or abuse others because of your own sorrows. And what you also definitely shouldn’t do is keep relationships in your life only as plan B or only to make you feel good about yourself, feel all superior, because currently things are going really well for you. That’s an ugly form of hypocrisy.
    • The good news is that real life relationships test will help you to keep the relationships that really matter in your life and clean all the others. It may hurt, but in the long run such a relationship cleaning will help you make a room for the new people – people who fit you better in your new period of life.

  • When your ego blocks your progress

    One day, I had to make a withdrawal on an ATM. I entered my PIN and the wrong PIN message appeared on the screen. I entered the same PIN, same message. I got a little pissed off and entered the same PIN the third time. The ATM took my card and I had to go to the bank the next day to get it back. Immediately after entering the wrong number for the last time, I remembered that my card had been renewed a few days ago and my PIN had also been changed.

    Here’s another story. I got a creative idea for acquiring traffic by using paid channels for this blog. It should have attracted a lot of visitors for a good price. I executed the idea, but it didn’t drive even nearly as much traffic as expected. So I threw in even more money. “It has to work, it’s such a good idea,” I thought to myself. It still didn’t work, so I threw in even more money. After the third investment with no return, I admitted to myself that the idea was, at the end of the day, not that good.

    “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” as the famous quote goes. But it’s really easy to say that. In both cases, I was so sure of myself, I was 100 % confident that I knew what I’m doing. There was no other option. Even after getting the first feedback showing me that something is not working, my ego overshadowed the facts. I was repeating the same thing and expecting different results.

    It’s good to feel alive, but it can also be painful

    First of all, wrong assumptions are the mother of all fuckups. That’s why the idea of the Agile and Lean life is not to make big risky bets based only on your assumptions, but to start with small experiments that show you the right way through validated learning. You minimize the risk as much as possible by making small steps and gathering feedback from your environment as soon as possible.

    Starting to follow the agile and lean strategy is quite a big mental leap. You don’t fall in love with your idea, person or anything else, and blindly follow it hoping that you’ll get lucky. You see everything you do in life as an experiment that will lead you to the outcome you want. You start small, you test everything and you stay as agile and flexible as possible. You know what you want to experience but you have no assumptions on how it will manifest. You let tests and experiments lead the way.

    The problem with staying lean and agile is that it’s extremely boring and difficult. Taking risks, having an idea, falling in love, being right, having a strong opinion… All this brings excitement into your life, makes you feel good about yourself and feel worthy. It’s fuel for your ego. But if you’re wrong and blindly follow your ego, disappointments may come sooner or later; and usually they do. All the highs become deep lows.

    Thus a much better strategy is to wait for an opportunity where the risk is low, but there are a great possibilities for a big gain. To do that, you need a different approach. You need knowledge, patience, stamina, insights, to be surrounded with the right people etc. To gain all that, you need to scientifically test, experiment, learn, understand and be committed to real progress while staying flexible. You have to do all the boring and hard stuff day by day. You have to admit to yourself that you were wrong almost after every experiment.

    Egocentric person

    Never let your ego block your progress

    The first big challenge for your ego is changing how you act in life. You should switch from acting out of your ego, meaning your assumptions, beliefs and convictions, to acting out of feedback that you regularly gather from your environment by performing experiments. It’s the best way to stay flexible.

    The second challenge is facing the results when data disprove your ego assumptions. The feedback you get from your environment is different from what you expected. It hurts. It seems impossible. It lowers your feeling of self-worth. You don’t feel so smart anymore.

    You entered the wrong PIN. Period. The campaign is not delivering any results. Period. She does not share your feelings. Period.

    It’s hard to face the fact that you’re wrong. It’s so hard to admit that the objective reality is different from your subjective reality, just because your subjective reality feels so real. That’s why you build illusions in your head. You also have a tendency to finish things that you begin. For example, you usually watch a movie until the end, even if it’s bad. Those are all reasons why you want to persist at things that don’t work. It’s hard to stop doing something that you’re so sure of and on top of that you want to finish what you have started. That’s why you need the search mode in your life – to start small, to gather feedback from day one, to fail fast and stop doing things that are not working.

    Here are some additional tips on how to deal with your ego:

    • Make sure you see validated learning as progress. Make sure learning feeds your ego, simply because you’re following a superior life strategy, you are gathering insights how to live a better life, more suitable for you, independent of your interpretation of the world.
    • Don’t get stuck in analysis-paralysis. Just write down experiments you’ll make and start gathering feedback from your environment.
    • Always question everything. Follow your curiosity more than your ego. Don’t ever let your ego prevent you from learning something new.
    • Have a system for when to persist at something and when to stop and try new things. Make sure you follow your system, and that your ego and your emotions don’t distract you.

    Tough decision

    When to persist

    The tough question is when to persist and when to admit to yourself that something isn’t working and you should leave it behind. It’s more art than science, but there are some indicators that can help you identify what the optimal thing to do is.

    In lean start-up, there is a rule that you don’t fall in love with your business idea, but you become passionate about finding the right solution for the problem your business idea is solving. By experimenting and gaining customer insight, you may find out that your idea was not that good, but you may also find a much better solution to the problem. You have a vision, you’re passionate about the problem to fix, but you stay totally flexible about how to fix it. It’s the same in your personal life.

    • Don’t fall in love with the idea that you’ll meet one person who will stay with you forever, be loyal to you no matter what, and everything will be perfect all the time; like in Hollywood movies. Fall in love with the idea that you’ll have honest and loving relationships with superior communication and extra contribution. The right people will come into your life.
    • Don’t fall in love with the idea of having a magazine cover body in three months. Fall in love with the idea that your body is a temple you must take care of. A temple that needs healthy food to function, regular stretching and exercising, and so on. Fall in love with the idea that you’ll take care of your body, and stay flexible about what it needs and when.
    • Don’t fall in love with the idea of an ideally paid job. Fall in love with an industry you really know you can contribute to, fall in love with the idea of developing your competences to the full and providing as much value as possible to the market. Stay flexible about how things will manifest. Maybe you can contribute much more value by being an entrepreneur or a freelancer.

    It goes the same for all other areas of life.

    Another rule in lean startup is to make a pivot when each additional experiment leads to less progress. In such a case, you hit a local maximum. Pivot refers to a fundamental change in your business strategy. You change direction but you stay grounded in your vision and learned facts.

    After knowing that and applying it to your personal life, there really is no more dilemma of when to persist at something and when not. It’s not about letting something go, but about redefining your strategy based on what you’ve you learned along the way. You still follow your heart, your vision, the things you want to experience in life, you just take different steps, manifesting it in a different way. You should fall in love with what you want to experience in life, not how it should manifest. Then there is no question of whether you should persist or not, just what your next step is.

    Here are some examples of that kind of thinking and their healthier alternatives:

    • The relationship didn’t work out, I’m never going to find the right partner. And I was so in love. I don’t want to fall in love anymore.
    • I had a great experience with a person, but we aren’t the right fit. I tried many things to improve the relationship, but everything led to the same result – fighting. Still, I’m grateful for the experience and I’ve learned that it’s not acceptable for me if my intimate partner smokes. It just bothers me too much and I become passive aggressive. I am keeping my heart open and my love capacity full for the next person I’ll spend a part of my life with. After my sadness of breaking up passes, I’m going to start making new acquaintances.
    • I’ll never find a job I really love. I sent so many applications, but I didn’t get any interviews. I guess I have to send out another fifty.
    • Sending out CVs doesn’t work. But I know I’m really good at marketing. I’m going to read one book about marketing each week, I’m going to go to all marketing meetups. I’m going to start a blog about marketing, I will send personalized creative presentations of myself and my skills to a few companies I really want to work for.

    But if you don’t stay flexible and you let your ego ground you in your subjective reality, you have a great chance of becoming a zombie and living a zombie life – where being a zombie means you invest a lot of energy into something with no or little progress. You get more and more depressed after each CV you send out. You hope that your partner will magically change, just because you’re in love. On the one hand, there is no growth and progress, and on the other, you’re consuming your resources and draining your energy. But that is a big waste of your precious life.

  • Do the opposite

    Sometimes the best approach to start improving your life is doing the exact opposite from what other people are doing or what have you been doing in the past. Especially when the expectations of the society and the behavioral patterns are so extreme that nearly everyone is doing the same thing. Like every December. Sometimes the best cure is to take a totally different step from expected when the social pressure is the strongest.

    DoTheOpposite

    Here are some ideas how.

    Life experiment ideas
    Practical examples

    Instead of stuffing yourself, gaining weight and feeling fatigued throughout all December and half of January, do the opposite – exercise every day and eat super healthy. Bring your own carrots and bananas to parties. No, I’m just kidding, don’t do the latter, but you get the point.

    Instead of buying yourself expensive gifts, because you deserve them for having worked so hard all year, do the opposite – save some money, pay off some debt or invest into your future. Trust me, there will be moments when you will need your money much more than you want to spend it on luxuries now.

    Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on expensive gifts, write a personal thank you note to all the people that really matter to you and donate some money or buy gifts for poor kids. Don’t let Santa be a scumbag who buys rich kids more gifts than the poor ones.

    Instead of writing down goals for next year, plan two agile sprints that you will do in December, and actually come closer to your goals. While everybody eats, parties, drinks alcohol and forgets their daily life for a second, you should fight hard for what you really want in life.

    Instead of decorating a Christmas tree, get rid of all the filth, dirt and clutter as well as all other things you don’t use, and make room in your life. Sell some of the things, give away others, throw away the rest of them. Make your surroundings and consequently your mind super clean. You don’t need a nicely decorated tree for good family spirit; just tell your spouse and your kids that you love them more than anything in the world and spend twice as much quality time with them, without the TV and other distractions. Well, some minimalistic Christmas decorations are acceptable for the spirit. :)

    Instead of partying and socializing too much, decide that you will find a connection with your true self. Decide to reconnect with your inner voice and your true desires. Instead of torturing your body and living a “YOLO” life, decide to be gentle to yourself and to feel good in your skin. Without any alcohol and being a party animal.

    Do The Opposite Be Different
    What would be the outcome if you did the opposite?

    Don’t get me wrong. Rituals are very important in life. They remind us of what’s really important and they have a critical role in making us feel connected to other people. That’s perfectly okay. But you can do this in a healthy, economical, environment-friendly and really loving way. Not at all like it’s promoted in the ads. You should increase your margin on holidays, not decreasing it.

    It’s also the way to opening a creativity door

    Asking yourself what end result you would achieve and what would happen if you did things the opposite way from what you were doing in the past or from what other people are doing is a great way to open the doors to creativity.

    It’s not like the opposite way is always better. But merely asking yourself this question makes you challenge yourself, your beliefs and your actions. You open your mind to new possibilities. It’s your new starting point from which you can brainstorm alternative options.

    Sometimes asking yourself about the opposite way releases you of mental limitations. It puts you into the realm of out-of-the-box thinking. Improving yourself means nothing but finding new and better ways to do things. Thus you always have to challenge yourself and question everything, from why you are doing something in a specific kind of way to whether there are any other, better ways to do it.

    Maybe the opposite way is a much better way, or there is another better way that’s very close to the opposite. Try it.

  • Fears & traps when trying new things in life – the challenges of the search mode

    I call the systematic testing and experimenting with new things in life in order to find better ways to perform and achieve higher quality of life the search mode.

    Introducing the search mode into your life is a totally new concept. Rare are the people to whom the search mode (constantly experimenting with new things) comes naturally and for whom it is easy to do it.

    The reason for that is because you have to go regularly out of your comfort zone, experiment with new things that bring uncertainty and accept little failure you can learn from along the way.

    Trying new things in life is hard for most people.

    The “free spirit” explorers who always want something new are probably the closest to the character needed in the search mode. Nevertheless this type of people usually lack the abilities to switch from the search to the execution mode.

    Well, the good news is that being in the search mode (trying new things in life) is nothing but a skill and everybody can learn it.

    First, a few words about the search mode

    One of the best ways to learn about yourself and the world is the so-called “search mode”. The better you know yourself and your environment, the better you can execute, and consequently achieve your true goals much faster.

    The search mode is a phase and a process that helps you to get to know yourself and your environment better, as well as build up an adequate life strategy based on tested facts, instead of only assumptions.

    The main idea is that before committing yourself to anything you have to first do enough searching, experimenting and trying, to make sure you are committing to the right thing – your fit.

    In the search phase, you just try many different things, experiment, observe, reflect and learn about yourself and the world. In the search mode, you make and test different assumptions (beliefs, convictions, facts etc.) you have.

    Search mode is about going out of the comfort zone and experimenting with completely new things with the goal to improve your life.

    After you find your fit, you enter the execution mode. In the execution mode, you execute and optimize what you preserve from the search mode.

    And now all the traps you must avoid when trying new things in life.

    All the fears and traps when trying new things in life

    There are five major fears and traps when trying new things in life:

    1. Analysis paralysis
    2. No presence of validated learning (learning as an excuse)
    3. Dealing with uncertainty
    4. Sticking to NEW things that don’t work
    5. Unrealistic expectations and other irrational fears

    Analysis paralysis

    1. Analysis paralysis – if you never do anything, all that analyzing time was wasted

    The most obvious challenge of the search mode is the analysis paralysis. There are two types of analysis paralysis scenarios.

    The first scenario is quite well-known everywhere in life. You read about it, you talk about it, you think about it, but you never start doing it.

    Well, if you never do anything, all that time was wasted. It shouldn’t take you more than a few days to do research and then set and conduct the first experiments. After that you can continue researching and thus improving your further experiments.

    A ton of theory can’t compare to a single gram of solid real-life experience.. You can read all about swimming but until you set foot in water, your knowledge is very limited. The solution is very simple.

    After everything you read while doing the research, you should write down the bottom lines and make a few hypotheses out of it. These are the hypotheses that you are going to test and see whether they work for you personally.

    The second analysis paralysis trap is not switching from the search mode to the execution mode. There are many reasons for why that can be in case, but whatever it is, make sure you move to the execution phase when you find your fit.

    The secret is to move really fast in the search mode in order to find your perfect fit and get to the execution mode as quickly as possible. In today’s turbulent and complex world, extreme speed is the main ingredient of success.

    That is why you need focus, that is why you need to learn and progress systematically and quickly, that is why you need a superior strategy. You have to find out what works for you as soon as possible.

    The solution is simple. Your goal should be to get to the execution phase as quickly as possible. It usually takes a few months to get there. The goal of the search mode is to find your perfect fit and then do a perfect execution. You don’t want to stay a “startup” forever.

    Executing perfectly means setting execution intervals, doing sprints, measuring your progress really closely and meeting your goals as quickly as possible.

    Even in the execution mode you are still conducting experiments and trying new things to some extent, but what’s more important is that you do regular sprints and measure your progress in a more traditional way (KPIs). After the search mode you know what you want, so in the execution mode you make sure you get it.

    • The search mode = Find what you really want, what’s really your fit
    • The execution mode = Make sure you get what you want
    Validated learning
    Validated learning cycle

    2. No validated learning – don’t use learning as an excuse

    Besides analysis paralysis there is another big trap you can fall into in the search mode. The goal of the search mode is to learn about yourself and the world around you, to find your perfect fit and then build a superior life strategy, and after that to move into the execution mode as quickly as possible.

    The goal of the search mode is to lean the ladder against the right wall, while getting to know which material the ladder is built of, how long it is, what the traps of climbing it are, how the top looks like etc.

    To learn about all that, you have to fail a lot. Success is nothing but going from failure to failure until you succeed without losing motivation. But the key point is that you learn something every time you fail – it’s called validated learning. And you should take that as progress.

    There are two possible outcomes to failing in the search mode.

    Learning as an excuse

    Well, I tried a new thing, it didn’t work out, but I have learned something. That sounds nice, but it clearly shows that you haven’t learned anything. It clearly shows that learning is just an excuse for you to feel better while failing. But that is the real failure.

    An example of validated learning

    My hypothesis was that introducing a no-interruptions day once a week to my calendar would dramatically increase my productivity (you can even set the measures for how much). I did my first no-interruptions day and my hypothesis was rejected. After a self-reflection, I had learned the following:

    • I don’t have enough concentration to work the whole day
    • It’s really hard to get rid of all interruptions, especially on the computer
    • I need a task that motivates me enough to work several hours straight

    Based on what I’ve learned, I will conduct a new experiment. (1) I will try a half-day (4 hours) no-interruptions day to test and train my focusing abilities. (2) I will try three different big tasks for the next three no-interruption days – one document analysis, writing one article and one brainstorming session. I will see what will engage me the most.

    (3) I will test two locations – my balcony and my local cafe, with my laptop that has no games installed and is without an internet connection.

    The idea is to find your perfect location and your perfect setting so you can have one no-interruption day per week at some point. Imagine what such a day could do to your productivity once you find the right setting.

    That’s 50 completely productive days per year. It may be the difference between you being average or really successful. Of course it’s worth it to test several different settings to find the best one and to train your focus while conducting experiments.

    If you have learned something new, you haven’t failed in the search mode. That should be your motivation and perspective for overcoming failure.

    If you haven’t learned anything new, you have failed big time and wasted resources on top of that. To learn something new, you have to keep setting and testing hypotheses all the time. That is called “validated learning”. Here are the steps how to do it:

    • Do research first if needed
    • Write down the first set of hypotheses
    • Conduct experiments
    • Validate or reject hypotheses
    • Reflect
    • Write down a new set of hypotheses
    • Make your execution plan

    Facing uncertainty

    3. Dealing with uncertainty – to live an extraordinary life, you must do extraordinary things

    It’s quite easy to understand why we love certainty and are scared to death of uncertainty. We like certainty because it makes us feel safe and secure. Even though change is the only real constant in life (besides taxes), we hate it.

    This hate towards change has been written into our genes as a mechanism for survival in a dangerous world. Not that long ago, you could very easily have gotten killed and to be frank, you still can in some parts of the world.

    An unknown and unstable environment brings threats to us and to our lives. That is why we don’t like uncertainty and why it’s so hard for us to try new things.

    The really big problem is that testing is not your natural state, because of the lack of security, because of the unknown. Trying something new can be scary from time to time. But you know, you need guts in order to live an amazing life. Nothing worthwhile in life comes easily.

    Here are some tricks for how to deal with uncertainty:

    The gain has to be bigger than the pain

    Write down all the rewards that experimenting and finding a new lifestyle will bring to you. All the rewards. All of them. The rewards must be so big that they strongly outweigh your pain and the trouble of trying out new things.

    If you don’t see the final reward clearly, you won’t be motivated enough to try anything new. You must have a strong why that is more powerful that uncertainty.

    Build your safety nets and take calculated risks

    A big plus of today’s world is that you can experiment without risking your life or lives of others, at least in most cases, and where such a danger exists, you should avoid it.

    You should carefully define the downsides, build some safety nets and not do anything stupid. Testing, experimenting and trying new things should not sound like a risk at all.

    If you do too big steps at a time, you go from the learning zone into the panic zone. The panic zone doesn’t bring anything good at all, as it means that you have lost control.

    Entering the panic zone means awakening negative feelings and you will consequently develop hate towards trying new things. Therefore you should always take small steps and master one step at a time. But move quickly while doing that.

    Just make the first step

    Making the first step is the biggest pain in the ass. But you have to do it as soon as possible. The second step is much easier and the third one is even easier, if you do it the right way. But you always need the motivation to kick yourself in the ass and take the first step.

    There is a trick to doing it. Timebox your first step. Open your calendar. Schedule an hour or two for the first step and when the time comes, just do it. Don’t think, don’t overanalyze, no matter how you feel, just do it. After the first few minutes you will start feeling proud of yourself.

    Make it fun, consider it play

    See yourself as an explorer and adventurist. See the whole search mode as a tool to not waste your life and live it to the full. Surround yourself with people who support you and want to try new things in life with you.

    Have fun while doing it, even if you fail. Learn from your failures. Then there are no failures at all, just validated learning. Laugh. Smile. Have fun. Never settle into a routine.
    Einstein - Quote about insanity

    4. Don’t waste your life by sticking to things that don’t work

    Our psychological tendencies dictate that we finish what we begin. For example, it’s quite difficult for the human mind to stop watching a movie in the middle, even if the movie sucks.

    I know that it’s kind of ironic. Initially it’s so hard to try and do new things, especially the ones that aren’t the most pleasant, and then we want to stick to something even if it doesn’t work.

    That is a big trap that you can fall into in the search mode. For example, when I was searching for my perfect diet I also tried the raw food diet. Well, I even tried different types of raw food diets, from the fruitarian one to the fatty and green one.

    It was extremely hard to start and stick to that kind of an extreme diet, but once I started, I regarded it as a magical solution for all my health problems.

    It was more than obvious that the raw food diet didn’t work for me, but I had stuck to it for too long ­­- for more than a year to be exact. And before that, I was a vegan for two years and a vegetarian for five.

    It was only after a severe burnout, fatigue, dry skin, cavity, sugar intolerance, vitamin deficiency and other health issues that I came to the conclusion that this diet really doesn’t work for me.

    It’s very strange, but by going to that kind of an extreme diet, your beliefs about health and diet also become quite extreme. In the raw food community, all negative effects of the diet are connected to the fact that the body is cleansing.

    Their standpoint is that you just have to do it a little while longer and all negative effects will go away. It’s the price you pay for not being on the raw food diet straight after breast feeding.

    Since I’m very persistent and disciplined, that was quite a big downside in this situation. I waited for the body to cleanse, but that was not really the case. The diet didn’t work for me and I was starting to damage my own health.

    Back then I didn’t see changing the diet as an experiment, but rather as an ultimate solution that I had to stick to no matter what. That was pretty stupid, but it can easily happen to everybody.

    Thus you have to make sure that you set the boundaries and limitations to your experiments very specifically. Here are some other ideas how to make sure that you don’t become stubborn about the wrong thing and keep your final goal in mind while staying flexible when experimenting:

    Do regular reflections and always question everything

    Do regular reflections after experiments and after sprints. Every reflection event should be an opportunity to question everything you are doing. Do you see the progress in your life, how is the environment reacting, how does it influence your short-term and long-term goals, is that something for you or not etc.

    Define the hypothesis and the experiment very exactly

    The more explicitly that you define what you want to test, the limits and the duration of the experiment, and the expected results, the more you will learn and the quality of the experiment will be that much higher.

    When defining the hypothesis and the experiment you can also incorporate enough safety nets that stop you when you are going to an extreme that isn’t giving the right results.

    Make sure that you aren’t causing any damage to yourself or to your environment

    Whatever experiment you are doing, make sure that you’re not doing anything really dangerous. Make sure that you aren’t causing any damage to yourself, to other people or to the environment. Consult with a specialist, do enough research and take small steps. Don’t be stupid.

    We have invented standards and averages (diet, working day etc.), because they represent the safest thing for most people. It doesn’t give the best results for every individual but it’s safe and good enough for all people. Deviating from the average means that you are looking for something that is better for you as an individual.

    Thus you have to take some risks. But they must be calculated risks (small downside, big upside) done in the right kind of way, not being really dangerous.

    At some point it’s more art than science

    There is a very thin line between giving up just before you start to see some results and sticking to something that doesn’t work. At this point we are talking more about art than science.

    You have to listen to your inner voice, do an enormous amount of self-reflection and know yourself to the point where you recognize when you are being lazy, when you are procrastinating, when you are not investing enough into it and when it really does make sense to stop.

    Don’t experiment to compensate for your negative feelings

    Make sure that you’re doing all experiments and new things with positive emotions of excitement, love, respect for yourself and others. Your negative emotions like anger could lead you to do extreme things just to prove something to yourself and others.

    In that case you can do a lot of damage to yourself and others. It’s extremely important that you are tender to yourself in all kinds of ways. Nothing good comes out of rough accession. Yes, you have to be tough, yes, you have to be fair, but acting out of extreme negative emotions means nothing but hurting yourself.

    Trying new things in life

    5. Don’t have unrealistic expectations and manage your irrational fears properly

    There is one more trap you can fall into in the search mode and it’s by far the most difficult one. People love short-term results.

    But all real results are long-term and they come after years and years of hard work. You usually overestimate what you can achieve in a few months and underestimate what you can achieve in a few years.

    While being in the search mode, you can find out how hard it really is to achieve big goals. It takes years to get yourself in really good shape. Going to the gym a few times is not even remotely close to getting into extraordinary shape.

    People in magazines devote their lives to their bodies. In much the same way, it can also take decades to build up personal wealth. You have to make many hard decisions in order to progress in life. It’s not easy and it never becomes easier, you only get better at it.

    Well there’s good news and there’s bad news for all this. The bad news is that I have zero tricks at this point. You either want it badly enough or not. If you want it badly enough, you will always find a way; if not, you will always find an excuse.

    The hardest thing to do is to motivate an unmotivated person. And a blessing is giving the direction and tools to a motivated person. You will have to decide for yourself if you want it badly enough.

    Here is an ancient story that shows this point really well:

    A young man visited Socrates and asked him for the secret to success. Socrates told the young man to meet him near the river the next morning. They met. Socrates asked the young man to walk with him towards the river. When the water got up to their neck, Socrates took the young man by surprise and ducked him into the water.

    The boy struggled to get out but Socrates was strong and kept him there until the boy started turning blue. Socrates pulled his head out of the water and the first thing the young man did was to gasp and take a deep breath of air.

    Socrates asked, ‘What did you want the most when you were there, under the water?” The boy replied, “Air.” Socrates said, “That is the secret to success. When you want success as badly as you wanted the air, then you will get it.”

    And here come the good news. It really takes brutal efforts to get to the top. It really takes brutal efforts to have a perfect athletic body, to become super rich, to win a Nobel Prize etc. But it doesn’t take that much effort to live a life happy and true to yourself.

    It doesn’t take that much to live healthy, to have enough financial intelligence to properly manage your money, to find your dream career etc. That’s something that anyone can do. And you can do it too. You just have to kick yourself in the ass a little bit harder.

    At the end of the day, you have to decide what you want out of life. Just don’t settle for average and for the society’s expectations for you. You want to live your own life with your own goals. So start experimenting without any irrational fear.