Blaz Kos

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  • A day without a screen

    I’m a big fan of technology. Technology is a big productivity leverage and general contributor to a much higher quality of life. But as any leverage, it’s a double-edged sword. Technology is like fire, you can cook yourself a meal with it or you can burn yourself. How you burn yourself with technology is pretty simple.

    It’s when you stop using technology to your advantage and start abusing it instead. There are two pretty common ways how people start abusing technology. The first one is about quality and the second one is about quantity.

    In this blog, we will talk about how large quantities lead to abuse, but before we get there let’s just scratch the other type – the so-called quality abuse. It’s pretty simple. You have one of the most capable computers in your head available for use, a product of billions of years of evolution.

    Next to that, you have most of the knowledge ever created by humankind available everywhere you go on your mobile phone. This is so revolutionary, so groundbreaking, and we’re often not even aware of it.

    If you tried to explain to someone from 200 years ago that they would be able to carry all humankind knowledge on a small device in their pocket, they’d think you were nuts.

    But here comes the important question: Why would you use your brain and the internet for browsing funny pictures of cats?

    That’s what 90 % of people do, and with that kind of actions they’re on the wrong side of the double-edged sword. Make sure you’re on the right side by setting up a proper infostructure.

    Now let’s move to quantity.

    Technology detox

    As mentioned I’m a big fan of technology, but I’m an even bigger fan of regular technology detox. The average person checks their smartphone a few hundred times a day. A few hundred times. Doing that continuously day by day, week by week, month by month and even year after year, of course, leaves negative consequences.

    Too much of anything, even good things, becomes toxic.

    There are many negative consequences of abusing technology:

    • Being unable to focus and concentrate
    • Reducing the ability to live in the present moment
    • Stifling your creative potential
    • Losing connection with yourself
    • Running away from real-life problems
    • Damaging your posture
    • Hurting your eyesight, etc.

    The only way to make sure you don’t abuse technology is to set very strict and hard limits, when and how often to take time completely off and away from technology.

    Here are the suggested minimums for technology detox, how often you should turn off all devices that need electricity:

    • A few hours before you go to sleep, if you want to get quality sleep
    • One whole day every two weeks (two days a month, basically)
    • One extended weekend every quarter (3 – 4 days)
    • One or two whole weeks during the summer vacation

    The main catch is that it may sound much easier than it really is.

    Don’t just agree, really try it for yourself

    One thing is to read about “a day without screen” concept and somehow agree with it, it’s a completely different thing to really implement it. We’ve become so addicted to technology that it takes severe discipline and preparation to really follow this trough.

    If you think having a day without a screen is easy, it’s not. There are screens everywhere.

    First of all, you have screens everywhere. In most cases that includes your:

    • Mobile phone
    • Tablet
    • Computer
    • Laptop
    • TV
    • Smartwatch (if you don’t have it, it will probably be your next one)
    • VR headset (if you don’t have it yet, you’ll have it soon)
    • Kindle (discussable whether it’s a screen or not)
    • And probably another device or two

    Now when you wake up, you probably look at your smartwatch, especially to see how many people liked your statuses on social networks. Then you take your smartphone to the toilet and check all the emails. And this is only the beginning of a day.

    Then you spend the whole working day behind a computer or a laptop. And before you go to sleep, you browse news on your tablet and then watch a bit of TV, just to relax and forget about the daily worries.

    Even if it’s weekend, you may not work that much on your computer, but you definitely play a game or two or watch new funny vines or try to relax in some other way (by staring at a screen).

    It may not look 100 % exactly like that – funny vines may be replaced by the daily news, TV with Netflix, playing games with a VR headset, but anyway, you get the picture. There are screens everywhere in your life, and there’s going to be even more screens in your life in the future.

    Fridge, car, closets, clothes, glasses, windows, mirrors, you name it. Everything will have a screen, everything will be connected to the internet and interact with you, which is awesome. But only if you have the discipline and the will to manage all this technology and not let the technology manage you and dictate your life.

    A day without a screen

    With a day without a screen, something magical will happen to you

    Instead of just agreeing with how abuse of technology can be toxic, really try to have one day without a single look at any screen. Because it’s hard, you have to strategically prepare yourself for that kind of radical action. The best way to do it is to dramatically increase the transaction costs for starting to use any type of screen.

    That means completely unplugging your TV, locking all the devices in a safe and making sure you don’t know the unlock code, but only someone you trust who won’t give it to you for that day. You have to drain batteries from all your devices, make sure there are no “urgent” emails to answer, and so on.

    You have to do it the day before, and you have to make sure that every single electronic device is dead and locked away. It may sound silly, but you’ll see how hard it is.

    But even more importantly, you will see that without any screen something magical will happen.

    You may get confused the moment you wake up. There is no watch, smartphone or whatever to get distracted. What to do? Hug your spouse. Be grateful that you are alive. Stretch a little bit. Pay attention to your body and how you feel.

    If nothing else, you’ll probably have to go to the toilet. Sitting on the toilet, you may again get confused. There is no email or 9gag. Should you read labels on shampoos? Should you think about the meaning of life? Or maybe about what you should do through the day.

    But what should you really do throughout the day? Remember, no TV, no computer, no tablet. It’s really confusing. Since you aren’t a robot and can’t just shut down, this is the point where the magic will start to happen. You will naturally and slowly get drawn to really interesting and inspiring primal human activities.

    You may actually go out into the nature and play. You may start talking to your spouse and reconnect. You may pick up a book and start reading. You may take a notebook and start brainstorming or planning your future.

    Confusion will slowly start turning into clarity. You will become more relaxed. You will be more present. You will start feeling more connected to yourself. You will become more alert to your surroundings and how you interact with the world.

    You’ll be able to think better and more creatively, connect with people on a deeper level, and you will start to feel your batteries recharging. You will feel FUCKING ALIVE. The electronic devices’ batteries will be empty, but yours will be full.

    Here are a few ideas for what you can do when you decide to have a day without a screen:

    And what not to do:

    The first few hours may be very confusing and alien to you. But after a few hours, oh boy. You will completely forget about email. You won’t care about all the likes and messages anymore. You won’t care what will happen in the next episode of your favorite show.

    Because suddenly, you’ll realize what you’ve been missing out on. Real life. Being really connected to yourself, nature and other people is what makes you feel alive. And it’s so awesome. Just try it for one day, as an experiment.

    Nevertheless, it might be a good idea to relay on some old tech, such as a mechanical watch. You still want to know what time it is. There are many options for superwatches, that are mechanical, not digital type.

    Have the best of both worlds

    I see many parents who forbid their kids from using technology. I think that’s silly. Because mastering technology is a really big advantage in life and an important competence. Technology helped me so much in my life advancement and following my goals, and it’ll be even more important in the future.

    Technical literacy has become as important as general literacy. So, you shouldn’t be afraid of technology, avoid it at all costs or see it as a bad thing. Technology is not good or bad. It all depends on how you use it. If you ignore it, it’s definitely bad. And if you abuse it, it’s also definitely bad.

    Mind the quality and the quantity and you’ll be okay.

    All you have to do is set healthy limits. Like with everything in life. You shouldn’t deprive yourself of anything. You should have the best of everything life has to offer.

    Having the best of both worlds means being connected to yourself, nature and other people, and using technology to your advantage – to be more productive, to learn faster and to have fun from time to time. And to communicate with people on the other side of the world.

    The best way to meet healthy limits regarding technology is to set daily limits of technology usage and to plan a day without a screen from time to time.

    As an experiment, open your calendar and select the most appropriate day, when you’ll give priority to the people you love instead of emails, enjoy life in nature instead of watch TV, and listen more to yourself than poke people on social networks.

    Make sure technology isn’t turning you into a zombie. Use technology to your advantage, don’t abuse it.

  • A thin line between good and bad quality of life

    There is a thin line in life – not only between love and hate, as the most known saying goes, but also in many other aspects that determine your happiness and quality of life at its core.

    In order to live the best life possible, the good life, you want to be on the right side of the thin lines.

    Interestingly, the side of the thin line you stand on is more or less determined by how well you can handle your emotions and how much you think before you act.

    If you want to be on the right side, you have to learn to use your brain and you have to learn to manage your emotions. You can’t be on the right side of the lines, if you are emotionally immature person.

    You have to become a general of your own life, not only a warrior. Someone who has a superior life strategy and knows how to make data-driven decisions and, even more, trains the inner emotional beast to get the best possible outcome out of every situation.

    You can’t follow only your brains or only your heart, you need to pay attention to both. Once you stop listening to one of them, you cross the line and go to the dark side. It’s especially hard to listen to your emotions in the right kind of way.

    A thin line

    Your emotions are the ones fueling your visions, passions and whys; they’re like a feedback mechanism telling you whether you’re following your true north. But emotions also have no shape and can quickly start running all over the place like a headless chicken.

    When you’re drunk on emotion (hate, love or any other severe feeling), your reality becomes distorted and you start making bad decisions. You ignoring your emotions in any way can only cause them to become stronger. Like a small cute monster that turns into an indocile one. And then you get pushed on the wrong side of the thin lines.

    That’s why you need to listen to your emotions, but also train them not to mislead you when you have to make tough rational strategic decisions; decisions that will lead you closer to your goals, even when it emotionally seems impossible to get there.

    Without training your inner beast, you can never be happy in life. Mind and heart must work together in a well-coordinated tandem.

    Training your inner beast is what determines the side of the thin line you stand on. Even though it’s a thin line, standing on one or the other side makes a huge difference in how you live your life. A huge difference – what you get out of life and what you leave behind.

    Genius = Happiness Madman
    Facing bad fears Making stupid decisions
    Being a good person, knowing the limits Buying attention by being a good person
    Having a healthy limit regarding money Being a greedy monster
    Mindfully centered Self-castrated vague person
    A healthy assertive person Overly aggressive person
    Living a life of love Living a life of hate

    A thin line between courage and stupidity

    You ruin your life by making one big stupid decision or several small stupid decisions. A stupid decision, big or small, is something that irreparably harms your quality of life and your capacity to achieve your goals and dreams.

    If you want to live a successful life, you simply can’t afford a great number of stupid decisions. Stupid choices will only bring real misery into your life.

    Ironically, people often confuse stupid decisions with courage. Usually because their ego is at stake or emotions are running too high.

    You marry someone only for their looks. You take too much debt to buy things you can’t really afford to show off. You drive drunk or race cars on the street, endangering others. You jump off the cliff without knowing how deep the water is. You get into a fight. You trash talk your boss. You have unprotected sex with a stranger. Whatever.

    You want to prove yourself, you want to show that you’re better, you want to be the man; and you may have won many times in such a situation with such stupid behavior.

    But then things don’t turn out as planned only once. And you can destroy the quality of your life with one single move; sometimes even permanently.

    You don’t want to lock yourself in a safe. But you also don’t want to make stupid decisions.

    So make sure you don’t make any stupid, irrational decisions. No dangerous pissing contents will bring you long-term happiness.

    Always think twice about the short and long-term impact that your decision will have on your life. No matter how drunk you are.

    On the other hand, you don’t want to be a wussy, suffering from a victim mindset. You don’t want to just bitch, whine and complain how hard life is without doing anything. You don’t want to be a passive player of life. Just a reactive one.

    You want to be bold and courageous. You want to have your own goals. You want to have your own dreams and fight for them; fight for them with all of your heart and brain, fight vigorously for what you deserve in life. That takes courage. But courage does not mean stupid decisions.

    Fear can be a good compass. Fear shows where you have to grow in life. But you have to distinguish bad fear from the good one.

    Good fear is what prevents you from making a stupid decision. Bad fear only keeps you in an emotional cage. Locked. “Safe”. Not living life.

    In the same way, you need experience in life. Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions. But bad decisions and validated learning are not the same as stupid decisions.

    You make mistakes when you learn how to drive. You learn so much when you start your own business based on calculated risks. But driving drunk is stupid. Texting while driving is stupid. Taking a big loan to start a risky business is stupid (in most cases).

    A thin line between being a good person and buying attention with kindness

    Being a good person means that you build your social reputation on prestige, not dominance. You use dominance only on rare occasions when it’s really necessary.

    You are a loyal and honest friend, a gentleman that holds the door for the old lady. You have a lot of integrity and morals, and you try to make the right decision, even when your darkest desires are tested.

    Nevertheless, you know you’re only human and can make mistakes from time to time. You have no problems saying you’re sorry and fixing the damage you’ve done to the highest possible extent. You don’t beat yourself up over and over again when you make an honest mistake.

    Being an emotionally healthy good person also means that you know where to draw the line. You know you have to take care of yourself first if you want to give to others.

    You know you must first have things in life before you can share them with people and the world in the next step, be it money, love or any other thing. You’re aware that being a good person means putting yourself first.

    You should have no problem saying no when necessary. You should have no problem protecting yourself. You should have no problem standing up for yourself.

    You should have no problem drawing the line. You should have no problem making money and providing value. And still staying a good person.

    The most you can do for the world is to go home and love your family.

    But being on the wrong side of a thin line as a good person means that you’re good to other people only to get attention.

    You are a needy person, hoping deep down that others will take more care of you somehow, so you try to care for others as much as possible, even to the point when you are damaging yourself and others. You help them even if they don’t need or deserve help.

    You’re being nice with a deep hope that people will finally realize how awesome and what a good person you are.

    So you have a hard time saying no and setting strict boundaries. If you say no, you can only think of how that could backfire and hurt you. But when you don’t know where to draw the line, you aren’t a good person anymore. You’re an attention whore being used by others.

    A thin line in this case is determined by having a center on yourself and not determining your self value based on the gratefulness of people you offer help to.

    The side you stand on is determined by how strong your sense of self is and how aware you are of your own needs, making sure they’re met and that other people don’t exploit you.

    A thin line between being greedy and protecting your material assets

    A healthy assertive person strives to materially protect themselves. They strive to own (or rent) a home where they live, have a sound financial situation and aren’t drowning in debt.

    That may mean owning a piece of land, having a few sound investments, an emergency fund for the rainy days etc. An emotionally healthy person has an emotionally healthy relationship with money and the material world.

    Meditating in a forest and having nothing is not a solution for a happier life, it usually only shows that it’s just too painful for the person to deal with material things. They prefer to run away from the material world rather than embrace it.

    The other side of the same coin is being too greedy. When you are greedy, you try to fill the emotional void with material assets.

    For a happy life, you should deny neither the physical nor the spiritual world.

    The only problem is that you can never really feel the void with material things. It’s like a barrel without a bottom.

    You need more and more, no matter how much you have; and you submit all of your life decisions to one single thing – trying to fed yourself at least once. But it never happens.

    Setting a healthy limit is the solution – how much you think you need in life in order to be happy defines the side of the thin line you stand on.

    Having a healthy limit for how much you need puts you on one of the sides, either being a healthy assertive person materially or a greedy never satisfied monster.

    Of course, if you are in business and your business is thriving, you can make a lot more money than you ever need. The key question then becomes: what do you do with all your money?

    Even with billions of dollars, you may feel inadequate, hoping that you’ll make even more money and take all your material treasures with you once you pass away; or, much better, you can do good with your money, a lot of good things.

    The healthy limit for how much you need doesn’t instigate that you shouldn’t be rich or enjoy material abundance.

    The healthy limit only becomes visible when you have to make decisions for what you will do with your surpluses. Think Bill Gates, Warren Buffet or Mark Zuckerberg.

    Good vs bad

    A thin line between mindfulness and self-castration

    You can very easily mistake mindfulness (a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique) with self-castration.

    If you don’t know how to assert yourself in the physical and real world, you may start to compensate by building a kinder world in your head. A soft and naïve world you can survive in.

    A soft and naïve world built only in your head, where you don’t have to act, where you don’t have to face your problems and fight for love, money, health and happiness.

    You may build a world in your head where everything is given to you, without even trying, and often even given to others, and then humankind can finally live in peace.

    It may feel as if you’ve found your mindfulness, but that’s just fake mindfulness. It’s a fairytale. It’s running away from the real world.

    It’s running away from facing all the challenges life has prepared for you. In the long term, it only means that you stifle your real nature. You don’t follow your true north and that brings you nothing but bitterness in life.

    Real mindfulness comes from trusting yourself; asserting yourself; knowing that you are strong enough to face any challenge.

    Real mindfulness comes from accepting world as it is; and while doing that, trying to make it a better place with your thoughts and actions. But first accepting it as it is, with all its pluses and minuses. And there are many minuses.

    Real mindfulness comes from properly managing your thoughts, training your inner emotional beast, taking care of your health, following your true north and being a proactive not reactive person.

    Real mindfulness comes from becoming the best version of yourself and being aware of the value you can provide. Real mindfulness comes when you always give 110 % from yourself and you can accept any outcome.

    Meditation, abundance mindset, emotional intelligence and having a center on yourself are all the tools that can help you with real mindfulness.

    The goal of these tools is not to run away, to hide in your own little dream world, but to face the challenges of the world fiercely and still in the most civilized way possible.

    The thin line you stand on is determined by whether you lie to yourself about the harsh reality or accept it; accepting that the glass is already broken and that you have to somehow deal and live with it.

    No true love, no lottery ticket, no positive vibes or whatever else will do the work instead of you; while you enjoy your soft and naïve little world in your mind.

    The thin line is determined by facing the reality or running away from it and becoming a completely unassertive person. A coward.

    A thin line between assertiveness and aggressiveness

    If you aren’t assertive in life you become miserable and depressed.

    An assertive person likes themselves as they are, they have a strong sense of self and their autonomy, they have no problems with their needs being met, they know how to express feelings, where they’re going in life and what they want, they aren’t afraid of conflict and know how to set boundaries, and they take initiative and contribute creative ideas.

    An assertive person is aware of their own toxic fears and feelings, and they try to overcome them. They aren’t too shy or too introverted, they’re constantly developing social skills and emotional intelligence. They are aware that they deserve to have a place in the sun.

    Nevertheless, assertiveness can quickly turn into aggressiveness. You can quickly start pushing yourself and the people around you somewhere they don’t want to go, just to satisfy your ego.

    You can start to manipulate, threaten, intimidate, harm and control people. The thin line between assertiveness and aggression becomes most visible when things go wrong.

    Aggression is always based on severe negative feelings about yourself, others and the situation you are in. You want to get out of it, you want to get to the top, no matter what; even if you hurt yourself or others.

    You can only see one way forward and that is the way that drives you to a better position, ignoring the harmful price and, even more sadly, not seeing any other options.

    Standing up for yourself is the right thing to do. Following your own goals is the right thing to do. But there is a thing called a “win-win” situation.

    It can’t always be achieved, but it can be achieved most of the time. If you are aggressive towards others, others are aggressive towards you, and that is not a life you want to live.

    Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.

    The side you stand on is usually determined by your thoughts, emotion management capabilities and intentions. If you have positive thoughts, emotions and intentions, you tend to share, include, connect, and look for the best situation for all parties involved.

    If your intentions are bad and your thoughts are weak, you see everything as a zero-sum game and you don’t want to be the fool in a room. So you exploit others and make them fools.

    Negative intentions usually mean complete absence of the abundance mindset. They mean severe fear and egoistic behavior, with the goal of winning no matter what.

    That is very rarely necessary in life. Even more rarely is that a nice life to live. You can be assertive and follow your own goals without trampling other people. You should empower other people instead, and sleep much better at night.

    Love vs hate

    A thin line between love and hate

    Hate is a passion that is of equal interest to love. And you have a choice. Will you lead a life of love or a life of hate?

    You can switch from one to the other in a second. If you want to live a life of love, you must first love yourself. You can never truly love others if you hate yourself.

    Your ultimate goal should be to not hate anybody – to respect the differences, to respect variety and to understand other people.

    When you don’t hate anybody anymore, you really start loving yourself. You know there is enough for everyone and that you matter and that you are unique and different; but so is everybody else.

    It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

    If you’re on the right side of the thin line between love and hate, you know that there are many things wrong with this world.

    But you also know that you do nothing if you have even more evil thoughts, feelings or even, God forbid, actions.

    You know that the most you can do for the people you love and the whole world is to transcend negative feelings, show love, provide value and create things that will make the world just a slightly better place to live. That is the greatest legacy you can leave behind for your offspring.

    If you’re on the right side of the thin line, you know that with hate, you only bring misery into your life and to others.

    It’s like wanting to throw a burning rock into someone. You only burn yourself.

    A thin line between being a genius and insane

    Last but not least, there is a thin line between being a genius and being insane. To be a genius, you have to be different than others.

    Well, actually being only different is not enough. You also have to be better. Different and better.

    You have to think outside the box, you must possess courage to be yourself, you must be assertive and love what you do. You have to become obsessed with making the world a better place. Just a little bit.

    You can possess entirely the same characteristics as a genius and become insane, only by crossing the thin line just a little bit.

    When you do that, you don’t have a center on yourself anymore and you don’t have good intentions.

    • You are aggressive instead of being assertive.
    • You are greedy instead of healthy ambitious.
    • You hate diversity and other people instead of loving them.

    Then your inner genius turns into insanity. You manipulate, you take only for yourself, you build your life based on fear and intimidation. That is not a life you want to live.

    You want to be a genius. You want to be on the right side of the thin line. This is where life becomes more art than science. This is where it all comes down to one thing.

    What kind of a legacy do you want to leave, what kind of an impact do you want to have on your family and the world? I hope it’s the positive one and you choose to be on the right side of the thin line. If you do, choose to be a good person.

    Which side of the thin line are you on?

    Genius = Happiness Madman
    Facing bad fears Making stupid decisions
    Being a good person, knowing the limits Buying attention by being a good person
    Having a healthy limit regarding money Being a greedy monster
    Mindfully centered Self-castrated vague person
    A healthy assertive person Overly aggressive person
    Living a life of love Living a life of hate

  • How to develop an abundance mindset

    If you want to be happy and successful in life, you must have an abundance mindset; otherwise you may catch yourself in a vicious greed-based competition or in (symbolical) self-castration and procrastination – both making you unhappy. The abundance mindset consists of the three crucial elements:

    (1) Seeing all the possibilities the world has to offer in order to create, connect, grow and enjoy, (2) knowing that you deserve love and prosperity, and (3) realizing that if you’d experience only plentitude in life, it would be boring as hell and you wouldn’t appreciate anything you have at all.

    The opposite of the abundance mindset is a scarcity mentality. The scarcity mentality doesn’t only lead to an impoverishment of life, it also makes you take malicious actions towards yourself and others.

    Knowing that limited resources are a part of life on this planet and experiencing not having every single thing you want can be a great teacher in adult life, and can make you appreciate things you do have. However, learning and personal growth can happen only if they’re supported with an abundance mindset.

    If it sounds confusing, here’s an example from the financial area of life: Being broke is a temporary situation in life. Being poor is usually a state of mind. If you are broke and have an abundance mindset, you’re aware that you have options and that you can do something about it as well as learn about yourself and life while being broke.

    But being poor and drowning in the victim mindset is based on a scarcity mindset and doesn’t bring anything good into your life. Even more: you become blind to learning and personal growth.

    There is a big difference between suffering the scarcity mentality and experiencing a temporary shortage in life, while keeping the abundance mindset.

    If you aren’t sure whether you are suffering from the scarcity mindset, here are the signs of a severe scarcity mentality:

    • Aggressive competition where other people and also you might get hurt (physically, emotionally)
    • Trouble sharing with others (things, power, credit, profit)
    • Greed and gluttony, there is simply never enough
    • Envy and jealousy
    • Desire to control people
    • Being obsessed with how much other people make and what they own
    • Hating it when other people succeed and being happy when misfortune happens to them
    • Self-castration and procrastination
    • Shyness, bitterness, depression and isolation
    • Avoiding any kind of responsibility and commitment (in relationships)
    • Having a victim mentality
    • Scarcity mentality is closely connected to the fixed mindset

    In this article you will learn:

    • How the scarcity mindset develops
    • Why is the abundance mindset so important
    • The difference between the scarcity mindset and a temporary shortage of something
    • What you can do in general to develop the abundance mindset
    • A few tricks to develop the abundance mindset in different areas of life
    • How not to confuse the abundance mindset with foolishness

    A word of caution: this is not a short article. But you know, there is no easy way to switch from the scarcity mindset to the abundance mindset. It’s not like you only have to spend a little more time with people who have the abundance mindset and you will miraculously develop it; or do “10 other things” that most blog posts recommend.

    Well, spending time with people who have the abundance mindset may definitely help you catch the right way of thinking, but first you will probably drown in envy.

    The bottom line is that the abundance mentality can only help you focus on the right kind of things and actions and be happier in life in general. You have to strategically develop your mindset step by step and simultaneously support new thinking with actions.

    If the abundance mentality is not supported by action, it’s not a real abundance mentality. It’s naivety and shutting your eyes to the facts of real life. Yes, it’s a very long and demanding process to switch to the abundance mentality; but also very rewarding.

    But first things first. If you want to overcome any negative internal emotional and mental state in your life, you have to first understand it very well. So let’s analyze how the scarcity or the abundance mindsets really develops. It will help you tackle the problem at its core and deal with it once and for all.

    Abundance mindset

    How the scarcity or abundance mindsets develop

    The essence of the scarcity or the abundance mindsets development as a part of your psyche is how your needs were being met when you were growing up. In the first few years, right after you were born, the emotional availability of your parents was the number one thing that imprinted into your subjective map of reality of how much the world has to offer to you and how much you deserve.

    If there was plenty of love and attention in the early years, you developed trust in yourself, life and people, and later you can see all the abundance the world has to offer in terms of relationships. If you weren’t exposed to that kind of attention and pampering as an infant, emotional scarcity developed. You now assume people aren’t trustworthy and that there isn’t much love for you out there.

    Only love isn’t enough, of course. The second important aspect of your upbringing is whether there was any consideration for what you really want (not what others thought was best for you) and if there was any encouragement present for your needs of discovering the world.

    If you were only an extension of your parents, strictly under their controlling behavior and criticism, if there was no room for your autonomy and initiative, your own ideas, creativity, play and sports, you slowly become blind to all the opportunities the world has to offer.

    You become blind, because instead of seeing yourself as an individual with your own needs and wishes and all the right to meet them in a respectful and healthy manner (one of the purposes of life is constantly fulfilling your needs), you feel guilt and shame following something you really want. Because deep down you aren’t sure if your parents would approve of it. Probably not, if it’s not medical school.

    It’s much easier to become blind to the opportunities than to become aware of your toxic feelings that block your assertiveness and cause symbolical self-castration.

    But there is more, of course. After emotional needs, we have intellectual needs. As you start to talk and become more and more aware of the world, curiosity develops.

    You develop a need to understand the world, to develop your intellect and competence. If you didn’t have an environment that helped you develop your intellectual potential, creative and analytical one, inferiority and identity confusion may develop. Especially now in the creative age.

    You don’t see all the opportunities because you think you aren’t capable of competing with others when it comes to using your mind. Again, it’s easier to become blind and live in denial rather than to face the fact that you are maybe more capable than you think you are.

    The good news is that if your emotional and intellectual needs were properly met, your spiritual needs are usually also well-developed. The spiritual aspect of life gives you a sense of hope, purpose and contribution. The spiritual aspect is based on a deep trust in yourself, your competences, your values, life in general and your mission. You can only imagine how a lack of those hinders you in life.

    Body, emotions, mind and soul. If they were exposed to an abundance of attention, love, information, encouragement and a positive and stable environment, they all greatly contribute to the abundance mindset. It’s a lot to take in. But we aren’t done yet. There are two more important categories of life.

    First, we have the social aspect. We are social beings and as soon as you’re exposed to other people outside of your home, you have a need to belong to different social groups. How well you fit into social groups especially depends on your values. If there are people around you with the same values, you feel like a part of a group. In such a case, you can have many friends and even more, you have a tribe to protect you.

    If your values are so different from the majority that you don’t find a group to belong to, you tend to isolate yourself. Isolation is usually a strong sign of the scarcity mindset. As a kid, there isn’t much you can do. If you don’t feel like you get along well with your schoolmates and other people in your life, you simply must suffer.

    Consequently, you develop the scarcity mindset. In your subjective reality map, there is no group you could belong to, because you never experienced real social belonging.

    Last but not least, we have money and material abundance. Well, emotional and intellectual poverty aren’t discussed as often as the financial one, because the financial one is so much more obvious.

    There have been many studies done, clearly showing how much damage poverty makes. The fact is that unfortunately, poverty in most cases leads to the scarcity mindset. Because of poverty, you develop the mindset that there isn’t enough out there and especially not for you.

    The scarcity and poverty mindset don’t develop only because you’re exposed to a deprivation of material things, it’s usually also transferred together with different toxic beliefs about money. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Rich people are corrupt people. If you are rich, you will never go to heaven. Just to name a few.

    This is how the scarcity mentality develops – being exposed to emotional, intellectual, social, encouragement, attention and financial poverty. Consequently, you think there is not enough out there and even more, that there isn’t enough for you.

    Before you get mad, I know, no parents are perfect. Actually, there must be errors made in upbringing, because errors bring friction and internal frictions drive personal growth. But there is a big difference between making a few errors or raising a kid in a toxic environment. There is a big difference between the two.

    You may further argue, for example: how can I expose my kid to material abundance if I’m drowning in debt? You see, it actually isn’t how much you really buy for your kid. It’s how you make your kid feel when you buy him something.

    If buying something for your kid is associated with how much you had to suffer and sacrifice, logically material guilt will develop and with it the scarcity mindset. When I get something I want, people I love have to suffer. Isn’t the internal conflict obvious?

    If we go from financial scarcity to the emotional and intellectual one, I know it often doesn’t happen on purpose, but because parents have to deal with their own shit and they probably lived in the same kind of poverty, so they don’t know how to do better, they lack knowledge and so on.

    Here are just a few examples of what you may have experienced in your home environment and how your scarcity mindset developed. Ironically, sometimes this happened even when parents thought they were doing what was best for you and your future.

    • Parents making all the choices instead of you, without considering your wishes and needs
    • Overprotective and over-controlling parents
    • Depressed parents occupied with their own shit
    • Switching all the emotional attention to a younger sibling when they were born
    • Overly critical parents
    • Parents stifling your curiosity and creativity
    • Here you can find more types of toxic behaviors

    If you were exposed to that kind of environment and consequently developed the scarcity mindset, I am sorry. But now you’re an adult and you can do something about it. As mentioned, becoming blind to opportunities, focusing on the negative and feeling sorry for yourself is much easier than dealing with mistrust, guilt, shame and inferiority.

    But you are reading this blog post, so you have the courage and will to do something about it. The good news is that you can come out of the scarcity mindset stronger and greater than ever.

    Because you will understand both mindsets very well, and you will become much more empathic. If you aren’t completely sure yet, let’s further examine what kind of damage you’re doing to yourself and others with the scarcity mindset.

    Scarcity mindset

    The maliciousness of the scarcity mindset

    Here is a big epiphany. Abundance is not the root of all evil. A lack of the abundance mindset is the root of all evil. There are three reasons why, 3 Cs:

    • Compensation
    • Control
    • Competition

    First of all, with the scarcity mindset you try to eagerly compensate for your early deprivation, whichever kind of deprivation it was – emotional, financial etc. It’s called greed. The scarcity mindset leads to a never satisfied soul that wants more and more of something only to feel fed somehow.

    The scarcity mindset leads to a never satisfied soul that wants more and more of something only to feel fed somehow. The scarcity mindset leads to a greedy soul. It can be greed for money, knowledge, attention, food, getting high or whatever.

    Money is not the root of all evil. Lack of money is the root of all evil.

    And don’t be fooled, there is no direct connection. You may have suffered financial poverty when you were young and later became overwhelmed by financial greed or any other type of greed.

    You may have suffered emotional scarcity in an early age and you may have become a sexual addict or, for example, money is the compensation helping you cope with your deprivation pain. There are many possible combinations.

    In any case, greed causes a lot of damage to you and people around you. With a greedy soul, it’s hard to set limits, it’s hard to ever be happy and satisfied, you just need more and more to somehow quench all the thirst.

    When greed takes over, you have no problem taking from the hands of other people, even in a very aggressive and demolishing way. People often do it not only in immoral, but also illegal ways.

    Then we have control. If you feel like you don’t have enough, because you didn’t get enough when you were young, you want to have as much control as possible over the things you do have – every relationship, every job, every dollar available to you, and so on.

    You cling to it like it’s a matter of life and death, even if you’re only trapped in an emotional cage – in a job you hate; an abusive relationship; money that isn’t yours or whatever.

    When you can’t control something, you go crazy. And you’re trying to control things that need to flow, not stand still. Money needs to flow, love needs to flow, markets need to flow. They can’t be controlled. When you’re trying to do such a thing, you’re going directly against the natural order of things, only hurting yourself and others.

    Last but not least, there is a fierce competition. If there isn’t enough out there and you have to compete with others for that little something, healthy competition becomes an overly aggressive one. Markets can definitely be tough.

    But seeing everyone as an enemy, as someone who is trying to take something away from you and you have to stamp down, is definitely not a nice life to live.

    With the scarcity mindset, nothing but aggressive competition, seeing danger in everything, over-controlling behavior and greed develop. You also don’t see opportunities at all and you feel like you don’t deserve things in life.

    Developing an abundance mindset

    Now it’s time to take action and to see how you can switch from the scarcity mindset to the abundance one. As mentioned, first you have to distinguish if you were exposed to real toxic deprivation in the early years – a lack of something in the combination with severe negative feelings – or were only small mistakes made in your upbringing.

    Secondly, you won’t achieve anything by feeling sorry for yourself or being mad at your parents, life, God or whoever. Now you are an adult and you are responsible for everything in your life. Even your scarcity mindset. The only winning situation is if you start doing something about it. And forgive, but that is a matter of another blog post.

    The important fact is also that you were probably only exposed to one kind of scarcity in your life. Maybe you were raised in a materially rich, but emotionally poor family. Or vice-versa. Maybe only your intellectual potential wasn’t stimulated.

    You have to see the good that was done to you in your upbringing, not only what you lacked. It’s the first step towards the abundance mindset. But it’s also true that the more areas that were influenced by poverty, the more work waits for you. On the bright side, you will learn so much more. So let’s start.

    An error in your subjective map

    The first thing you have to see is that the scarcity mindset is only a big error in your subjective map of reality, supported by a bunch of toxic beliefs and severe negative feelings. With the scarcity mindset, you are focused on what you lack in life most of the time.

    This is strongly corroborated by damaging (unconscious) beliefs and negative feelings of why you deserve such a thing. By focusing on something you lack, you’re either blind to all the opportunities or there is never enough, nothing can satisfy your thirst.

    Besides severe negative feelings (doubt, shame, inferiority etc.), there are many different toxic beliefs that can support your scarcity mindset. Here are a few examples of toxic supportive beliefs:

    • We are here on Earth to suffer, so I must also suffer (emotional scarcity)
    • There are so many people in poverty, so why would I deserve to be rich (material scarcity)
    • Rich people are corrupt and evil people (material scarcity)
    • Happy people are spoiled people who don’t know the hard realities of life (emotional scarcity)
    • Emotions are bad and only make you weak (emotional scarcity)
    • I must take away from others to have more in my life, so others will suffer if I take more (emotional scarcity)

    And:

    • It’s eat or be eaten and I’m not playing this game (material scarcity)
    • It’s eat or be eaten, so I must be tough on the people I love, and they will survive better
    • I don’t deserve to have that in life, because I’m a bad person (material scarcity)
    • Nobody really loves me; everyone just wants something from me (social scarcity)
    • I am not a creative person at all and I don’t know how to use computers (intellectual scarcity)
    • There are no right job opportunities for me and I don’t have good business ideas (competence scarcity)
    • I will never meet the right spouse for me and even if I do, there is not much I can offer in a relationship (emotional scarcity)

    There are hundreds of similar toxic beliefs that can support your scarcity mindset. They help you cling to the scarcity mindset at all costs and prevent you from seeing any different reality – usually because it’s too painful to see what you deserve and can have in life.

    So let’s try to find a few counterarguments that can collapse in ruin toxic beliefs.

    Abundance meme

    Proof of abundance in the world

    Let’s start first with the actual data about the world, the data that you probably somehow don’t see when your scarcity mindset is active. Here is the actual proof of abundance in the world:

    • There are around 7,000,000,000 people in the world, all your potential lovers, spouses, friends, social groups to join etc.
    • There is more than 4,000,000,000,000 USD in circulation (M0). Let’s not even mention all the virtual money and other material assets (land, gold etc.).
    • There are around 1,000,000,000 webpages and more than 130,000,000 books you can learn from – and more than a million books and new webpages published every day.
    • Only in the UK, they throw away 7 million tons of food and drink every year. It’s the first data I found online, I’m not singling out the UK for any specific reason.
    • There are more than 190 million registered companies you can work for in the world, 45,000 of them listed on the stock exchange.
    • There are more than 190 countries you can travel to and around 2,000,000 cities worldwide.
    • There are more than 200 different types of hobbies, more than 1000 different sports, more than 70 religions and belief systems, more than 30 different types of art, and so on.
    • You can buy the cheapest smartphone for around 30$.

    7,000,000,000 people and you would suffer in isolation; 4,000,000,000,000 USD and you don’t have any idea of how to contribute to the markets to make money; 130,000,000 books and you can’t find a book to be curious about; 190,000,000 companies and you don’t know how to find a job; 2,000,000 cities and you don’t like the place where you live; 1,200 different hobbies and sports, and you are bored. It can only happen if you are captured in an emotional cage.

    There is enough – for everyone. Also for you (if you don’t suffer from greed). And you deserve it. This doesn’t mean that poverty is not a real world problem (more about that later). But don’t let your scarcity mindset shift focus now. There is enough. For you as well. Period.

    See all the damage you’re doing with the scarcity mindset

    Now you know that there is enough for all of us in this world. Also for you. Now don’t fight it. Let’s take a step further instead. What is the real benefit of the scarcity mindset you have? Ask yourself honestly: does the scarcity mindset bring any good into your life, the life of the people you love or the world in general? It definitely brings the following things into your life:

    • You have to compensate for a shortage of something with greed in other areas of life
    • You are usually (unconsciously) envious of other people
    • You don’t contribute to the world as much with your talents as you could
    • You become a more and more bitter person and spread bitterness around to other people
    • If you don’t have it, you can’t give it and share it with others
    • Others won’t be better off if you sacrifice yourself, because there is enough for everyone
    • Last but not least, there is no room for failure and error with the scarcity mindset, because the risks are so much higher.

    Do you see all the bad that the scarcity mindset brings into your life? On the one hand, you have to compensate for your fears of not having enough, because you didn’t get enough as a small child. And usually you need to compensate exponentially.

    You may need to constantly feed your hungry soul with more money, sexual partners, social status etc. Because there is never enough. There can’t be.

    On the other hand, if you don’t feed your greed and somehow follow your goals and needs, you may become bitter, shy, extremely introverted, you symbolically castrate yourself not to do anything at all in life and you waste your potentials with procrastination, and so on. No good comes from the scarcity mindset, one way or the other.

    Find me one good thing that comes out of the scarcity mindset. None. So why are you clinging to it so hard?

    It’s not a zero-sum game

    As mentioned, the scarcity mindset develops because you were exposed to some kind of poverty. When there is a lack of something in life, fierce competition always develops.

    The underlying belief is that if you want something in life, you have to take it away from others, even with aggression. You don’t deserve it just because you are. Taking a toy from the hands of your sibling, doing a stupid thing as a kid to get attention from your parents etc.

    Even more. Because you didn’t get what you needed when growing up, you have trouble believing that people will give you what you need in (personal/business) relationships now that you’re an adult – love, attention, respect, payment.

    You don’t believe that people will give you all these things just because you are and you deserve them per se (because you can provide value and thus you are valuable), so you enforce politics, manipulation, control and drama in your relationships.

    You try to make sure you will get what you need, even in a shady way if necessary. You may even be doing it unconsciously, only to win the game, only to be on top of others and make sure you don’t lose.

    It may work if you’re good in domination and fierce competition, but what kind of a life is that, always watching your back to see who will try to out-throne you?

    The scarcity mindset is based on feudalism. There isn’t enough for everyone, so I better enslave others before they enslave me. If I want to have something, I must take it away from other people. But is life really a zero-sum game? Is there really no healthy alternative?

    • Is there really no way you can have enough and also share it with others?
    • Is there really no way to compete in a healthy way and encourage others instead of stifling them? And, of course, protect yourself with domination only when really necessary.
    • Is there no way you can give all the love needed to all your kids equally?
    • Is there really no way to see all the jobs you can work at, all the people you can connect with, all the things you can experience in life, without being scared? There may be a way.

    What do you say about the abundance model?

    Now let’s see how a life with the abundance mindset would look like. The abundance model is based on the following facts:

    • You deserve to take care of your needs in a healthy and respectful manner
    • You focus on all the opportunities you have and on becoming the best version of yourself
    • There are no limits to how much love, creativity and encouragement you can share
    • You can satisfy your material needs based on the market economy, not trampling other people
    • You can share material surpluses you make with the people you love and with communities
    • You use domination exclusively when you must protect yourself and are in danger

    If you aren’t greedy because of the scarcity mindset, you do have healthy limits as to how many material things you need in life. You deserve to live a quality and comfortable life, and you don’t need billions for that. With healthy limits, there is enough for everybody.

    You can make money for comfortable living by providing value to the market. You develop your talents as much as possible and the more value you provide, the more you can earn. There’s nothing wrong with that, if it’s not based on greed, where you want more and more, and outwork yourself to exhaustion and step over dead bodies to make another few dollars.

    Money has a tendency to concentrate, so if you are good, you can make a lot of money. Much more than you need. It’s not like you can limit how much your stock worth will increase. But with the abundance mindset, you shouldn’t have any problems sharing your surpluses with others. You can invest, donate money, build new businesses, there are many ways of doing good with a surplus of money.

    You just have to see how lucky you are. You live in the best times ever. A few hundred years ago, in the slave-based economy, that wasn’t even possible. Now in capitalism, you have the opportunity to be paid as much as you create value. History was based on the primitive scarcity mindset together with fear and violence. That’s why it’s so dark. That isn’t a mindset you want to operate on; and you don’t have to.

    The abundance mindset doesn’t mean that you should have unlimited material resources in life. It means that deep inside, you feel that you deserve good things in life; that you see all the opportunities you have and are grateful for them; that you have no problem sharing; and that you act out of prestige not dominance when fulfilling your needs, all in order to achieve a win-win situation in your relationships.

    With the abundance mindset, you know there are many people you can be friends with, you can always make new friends if you desire or a potential spouse. You trust yourself, you know you deserve love and you aren’t afraid of rejections or losing. You are aware that every rejection only means that you have to meet other people who are a better fit for you at the time.

    In relationships, you have no problem giving and receiving. You know there has to be balance. You aren’t envious or jealous, and you don’t compete with the people you love. Because there is enough for everybody.

    If you lose a job, you know you will find a new one. If you need more money to buy yourself something, you know there are many ways of making more money. If you feel lonely, you can always make new friends. With today’s technology, everything is accessible to you. You just have to see it; you just have to change your focus.

    With the abundance mindset, it still hurts when someone betrays you. It’s not easy if a love wears out. It’s not easy when you experience a setback in career or your finances. But it’s not the end of the world. You let yourself emotionally work through failure, and then you focus on the positive and life goes on. Without self-pity. Without aggression. Without self-castration. With gratefulness for what you have experienced in life and what you have.

    You let yourself emotionally work through failure, and then you focus on the positive and life goes on. Without self-pity. Without aggression. Without self-castration. With gratefulness for what you have experienced in life and what you have.

    Do you think that is a model you could live by? Something far away from the zero-sum game mindset? If you think so, let’s look at a few tricks that may help you achieve that.

    Secrets of Life

    A few tricks to develop an abundance mindset

    As mentioned many times, the first step you have to make is to see how much harm you’re doing to yourself and others with the scarcity mindset, then you have to become aware of the alternatives you have and, last but not least, you have to slowly change your mindset and destroy the underlying toxic beliefs, everything supported by action and execution.

    I honestly think that if your scarcity mindset is really strong, therapy is one of the best ways to tackle the problem. But if your thinking is only somehow damaged, there are a few tricks of developing an abundance mindset. To be more positive, here is the best news ever regarding the abundance mindset:

    It doesn’t cost you a single penny to update your mentality from the scarce to the abundance one. All you need is a little bit of courage.

    General tricks

    One very useful thing you can do to rattle the scarcity mindset is to write down all the things you already have in life and are grateful for. You have to focus on what you have if you want to attract even more into your life.

    You have to see that you deserve abundance on all levels and if you appreciate all the small things you already have, you can change your inner state to deserve the big things as well.

    The second thing you can do is to play with your fears. The scarcity mindset is especially based on the following fears:

    • Fear of rejection
    • Fear of abandonment
    • Fear of humiliation
    • Fear of being dependent on other people
    • Fear of missing out
    • Fear of being alone in life
    • Fear of your needs not being met

    Play with all these fears. Face them. Get rejected. Isolate yourself in monk mode. Be vulnerable. Try to curb your temptations. Practice minimalism. But be careful, the idea is not to stifle your needs and wishes even further, the idea is to face your fears, so you can more easily accept the abundance mentality by mastering your fears.

    The next thing you can do is to compare the life areas where you operate out of the abundance mindset with the areas you operate out of the scarcity mindset. Usually there are some areas where you have a strong mindset, you see all the positives and are a real peaceful warrior, and others where you struggle with the scarcity mindset and an emotional cage.

    You may, for example, have no problem earning and enjoying huge amounts of money, but on the other hand, you struggle with intimate relationship, not seeing all the opportunities or having many friends and social groups in life. Or vice versa.

    Find your strong convictions and your weak ones. Compare those two areas in your life. What are your underlying beliefs? Why do you have the abundance mindset in one area and not the other? How can you transfer the abundance mindset you’re enjoying in one area of life to all other areas where you struggle with the scarcity mindset?

    What you can also do is to have a good sense of how to distinguish between temporary states of lack and the general scarcity mindset. Everything in life and nature happens in cycles. Weather seasons. Market movements. An exchange of abundance and lack is always present. Nothing goes up forever.

    Even with the abundance mentality, you usually have to face the pain of shortage of resources from time to time. Remember, being broke is a temporary state, but being poor is a state of mind.

    Your job here on this beautiful planet is to learn and grow. Learning and growing can happen when you’re enjoying abundance and when you have to face limited resources. Both abundance and scarcity are great teachers.

    See the positive side of scarcity. You can learn many things about yourself and life from scarcity, much like you can from abundance. If you had an abundance of everything all the time, life would be boring, there would be no challenges and soon you would get used to it, so it wouldn’t even feel like abundance anymore.

    Scarcity is a part of life, with purpose. It’s a way to be more motivated and grateful for what you have. As you know, it’s quite hard to be grateful for something that you always had, because you don’t have a different experience. But don’t confuse limited resources with the scarcity mindset.

    With the abundance mindset, you should finally realize how little you need to be happy in life.

    Money

    Now let’s move from general advice to money. First of all, read statistics on how much money is out there. Read how much people spend on gambling, entertainment, food, investments etc. When you read about those numbers, you get the right perspective of how rich the world actually is.

    Then tackle your inner money beliefs. Start with sentences like Rich people are… and I am poor, because… and Money is…, and write down everything that comes to your mind. You will start tackling toxic beliefs.

    Ask yourself “why” 5 times, after you complete each sentence. You will get really good insight into your limiting convictions. Remember, being broke is a temporary situation but being poor is a state of mind.

    Have an amount of cash in your wallet that makes you uncomfortable (and you won’t seriously damage your finances if you get robbed). Make sure you never spend it. It must only serve as a reminder that you deserve it and that you can have enough money in life, the only thing preventing you from enjoying abundance is your scarcity mindset.

    When you get used to the amount in your wallet, add a few more bills.

    A similar thing you can do is to ask for a raise (if you deserve it), charge more on an hourly rate, find a better paying job or clients, and so on. You may not earn more working with the same people as you do now, but you can start working with new ones who are prepared to pay you more, if you only provide enough value.

    Or try to find one client that will pay you 10x more than what you’re currently earning per hour. Just try it, to rattle your inner beliefs of how much you deserve.

    Visualize money flowing into your life and having enough money on your bank account. Make sure you internalize how good it feels when you have money in your life. It’s not that it will actually happen if you only visualize it and do nothing.

    The purpose of this exercise is to change your inner state, your inner feelings about money. If you feel uncomfortable when visualizing big sums of money (I don’t deserve it…), it means that your scarcity mindset is controlling you.

    Read a lot about money management. I mean really a lot. By reading, you will update your money mindset by default. You will see how people with the abundance mindset think, what their money management strategies are, and so on. If reading any kind of money makes you throw up, you know you have big problems with the scarcity mindset.

    Also read biographies of people who were poor and became wealthy. Try to see whether their property is based on greed or on a healthy money blueprint, superior management and admissible assertiveness (do they share, do they exploit or provide value etc.).

    Analyze if they are doing good with their money or not. In addition to reading biographies, observe people and money beliefs of people who surround you. How where they raised. Do they act out of the scarcity or the abundance mindset? You will learn so much about yourself.

    Do things that annoy your toxic money beliefs and then analyze them through self-reflection. Don’t give a tip in a restaurant, if it’s not legally mandatory. Or give a much bigger tip than you usually do. Take all the change with every single penny when you make a purchase, if you don’t always do that. Or leave a few coins if you always take every single coin. Do the opposite in very small doses and observe how you feel.

    Career and competences

    Prepare a list of all your skills and strengths. Analyze which talents you can develop further, what the market demands are and how you can provide the most value to the world. Hang a list of your competences somewhere you can always see.

    In the second step, prepare a list of 50 companies you’d like to work for. Go through different directories, lists, companies you buy from etc. For every single company on your list, write down why you want to work there, how you can contribute and help them grow, and so on.

    Prepare a list of 100 business ideas for how you could make additional income in your life. Write down 20 people who can help you get a new job, can vouch for you or you can sell them something. Prepare an outstanding CV.

    Put everything in front of you and see all the options you have in life.

    Relationships

    Now comes the hardest part – relationships. It’s the hardest part because the scarcity mindset is developed out of relationships. The only real step you have to make to develop the abundance mindset is to increase your capacity of love, giving and receiving. Anyway, if that sounds too abstract, here are a few things that help manage relationships when you’re an emotional midget.

    First of all, go to a social skills course or take one online. Being good with people in general is a skill everybody can learn and nothing else. It’s only practice that you have to do and do it a lot – how to shake hands, smile, break the ice and hold a conversation.

    It’s a skill and so learn how to master it, no matter how scared and introverted you are. It will give you the courage to face your deepest fears and negative feelings.

    Secondly, know that we are all already connected. There is actually no ice to break. We all share the same planet, we are all made from the same material, we all have our own struggles and fights. Just show genuine interest in people and know that you’re already connected with everybody.

    Look for shared interests and values. With every new person you manage to truly connect with, you increase your capacity for love a little bit.

    Then always keep in mind that there are approximately 7,000,000,000 people in the world. Among them, there are your many potential friends, lovers, business partners. It’s impossible to be lonely with so many different people on the planet, as long as you don’t allow fears and the scarcity mindset to prevail.

    The toughest part to deal with are rejections. If someone rejects connecting with you, it can definitely hurt, especially if you suffer from the scarcity mindset. But it only means that this isn’t the right timing for this particular connection to be made. Luckily there are 6,999,999,999 or whatever number of other people you can connect with.

    Only rejections can lead you to the right people you have to connect with.

    One way to deal with rejections is to get more exposed to them. Face your fears. Your fears show you where you have to grow in life. Meet new people, open new conversations, be curious and proactive. You may throw up after the first few rejections, but you know, if you’re going through hell, keep going.

    To find the perfect spouse, brush up on your dating skills. It’s as necessary as learning social skills. Don’t be naïve and hope that a love fairy will do all the work instead of you.

    There are so many courses out there on how to be better at dating, you just have to be serious about achieving what you want in life. Raise your sexual market value, learn how to flirt, open new conversations, and so on.

    And as we mentioned, the scarcity mindset is a mindset of fear and control. So you may naively hope that love will do everything instead of you and bring the right person into your life, and then you can keep that person in your life with manipulation, control, only giving and not receiving or vice-versa, and so on. Work hard to start distinguishing between real love and connection and a desire to control people.

    It’s no different than tackling the scarcity mindset in other areas of life. Shift your focus to the positive. Take action. You deserve it.

    Abundance not

    What the abundance mindset isn’t

    There is one more topic we have to cover before we finish. Let’s analyze what the abundance mindset isn’t and how you can apply it into your life in a completely wrong way.

    As mentioned many times before, an abundance mindset is not a mindset based on greed. Greed comes from the scarcity mindset. If healthy competition, collaboration, sharing, positive feelings and prestige are involved, the abundance mindset is in play.

    If manipulation, exploitation, aggression, greed and humiliation are present, the scarcity mindset is in play.

    Positive = connecting and sharing

    Having an abundance mindset doesn’t mean that you delude yourself into thinking that there is no poverty in life and that there is no great gap between the rich and the poor. It exists and it’s a big problem.

    But only if you have abundance in your life, only if you serve as a role model, only if you are in power can you do something about it; and it’s your duty to help make the world a better place for generations to come.

    It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

    The abundance mindset is also not a naïve mindset that life is perfect and that you won’t encounter any problems. The world is tough. There is competition. Some resources are limited.

    There are people who will try to trample you, people who will disappoint you. It’s not that you should forget about it. You have to protect yourself. You have to be assertive in life. But it’s not how you should live the majority of your life.

    • You shouldn’t be a pussy in life, drowning in self-pity and procrastination. Life wants you to fight and become the best version of yourself, and make sure you provide enough value to acquire enough resources to live a quality life as well as share with others. You can achieve that by creating, not exploiting other people.
    • You have to focus on the positive and see all the opportunities you have in life and what the world has to offer to you.
    • You must make sure you don’t become a greedy person who fights to win by trampling down and destroying others.

    There is a fine balance between both extremes – greed and self-castration. Both are run on the scarcity mindset and in the middle lies the sweet spot, based on the abundance mindset. There come times when you have to be tough, sure. There will be times when you have to show that you have a spine of steel.

    But now you know. When people try to hurt you, they act out of the scarcity mindset. Now you understand that better. You can talk to them; you can explain to them what’s happening. And if it doesn’t work, don’t let haters ruin your life. Maybe you are the one clinging to them, because of the scarcity mindset.

    You can choose who you will spend time with. In your personal and professional life, you can definitely find people that will make your journey really worthwhile. You can always find people you respect and they will respect you. You can always find people with the abundance mentality and teach others how to live the positive life.

    Last but not least, you probably know now that the abundance mentality doesn’t mean having unlimited material resources in life. That’s not the point of the story. It’s how you experience the world.

    Homework

    The abundance mindset homework

    You read the whole article, bravo. You’re one of the few people who reached its end. That means you are serious about changing your mindset from the scarcity mindset to the abundance one. Here’s some simple homework you should to do to apply the theory in practice.

    Step 1: Rate from 1 to 10 how much you were exposed to poverty and how much to abundance in your early life in different life areas (emotional, intellectual, financial etc.). 1 means complete poverty and 10 complete abundance.

    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
    General stability of the home environment
    Attention to needs and wants
    Emotional availability of parents
    Intellectual stimulation
    Feeling of social belonging to family
    Money situation

    Step 2: For the areas in which you were exposed to poverty, further analyze your underlying toxic beliefs. Write down beginnings of sentences like Emotions are… and Money makes people… and so on, and write down everything that pops into your mind. After every sentence you write down, ask yourself “why” five times.

    Step 3: Observe yourself to see when you’re acting out of the scarcity mindset. When you don’t allow yourself to fail, when you don’t see all the options you have and what the world has to offer to you, when you’re acting out of negative feelings. Just become aware of your actions out of the scarcity mindset.

    Step 4: Attack. Go to therapy if necessary. Visualize. Do the opposite. Read. Share with others when you don’t want to. Get exposed. Get rejected. Prepare a list of how much the world has to offer. Get creative. Talk to other people. Win. Good luck.

  • Why you will never find happiness in life

    If you’re reading this article you’re probably not a super happy person; or maybe you think you should be happier in life than you actually are.

    I assume you already read dozens of articles listing “top ten things you should do” in life to be happier, and they surprisingly didn’t work. Probably you haven’t even tried those ten things, because you intuitively know they don’t work.

    Well, let’s build up a case here, see why these things don’t work, with a ray of hope at the end of the blog post for how you may actually find your own piece of happiness in life. If you’re looking for any miraculous solutions, you can stop reading the article at this point.

    How to find happiness in life

    Other people can’t make you happy

    The first wrong assumption is that other people can make you happy. If you hope that other people will make you happy, you’ve put your happiness into very risky hands. Other people will sooner make you miserable than happy, when you put your happiness in their hands.

    You may assume, for example, that you will be happy when you fall in love with the right person. Someone who will really love you back and understand you to the bone. And then it happens. And you’re happy all the way up to the first fight. Or the first time your love is in a bad mood. Or they flirt with someone else. Or whatever. Then everything collapses. And you’re unhappy again.

    Neither a perfect lover nor a perfect boss can make you happy. Or a new friend. Or an alien. Other people will sooner make you miserable than happy. Many unintentionally and many on purpose. Because they are just humans like you are. Much like you make others’ lives tougher if you’re unhappy. Why? Because people have to listen to all your bitching, whining and complaining, while deep inside they might hope you’ll make them happy.

    Much like you make others’ lives tougher if you’re unhappy. Why? Because people have to listen to all your bitching, whining and complaining, while deep inside they might hope you’ll make them happy.

    I know it kind of sucks. You can’t make other people permanently happy, other people can’t make you a happier person, but they can surely make you unhappy – an abusive partner or parents, a jackass boss or an ignorant friend or whoever you love.

    So here is what you should do regarding relationships and happiness:

    First of all, you should at all costs avoid people who make your life miserable intentionally or are zombies or energy vampires. And you should surround yourself with happy, encouraging and supportive people who bring out the best in you. While doing that, make sure you aren’t infecting them with your unhappiness.

    Then you should expect that even the loveliest people, even the most positive living beings, will hurt you from time to time. So you should always have a center on yourself, and be aware that your happiness shouldn’t depend on other people (we will see how you can achieve that at the end of the blog post).

    You can absolutely be in a bad mood when someone disappoints you, but you should also get yourself back in your center after a short while.

    Other people can’t make you a happy person, but they can make your life a little bit happier or completely miserable. So don’t put your happiness in the hands of other people, but make sure people aren’t the ones making you unhappy and miserable.

    If you cut out of your life all the negative people who drag your happiness level down, it may be a solution to being happier in life. But unfortunately, that’s rarely the case.

    You will probably find other things to be unhappy about or attract other assholes in life who will make you unhappy again. The outside world, including your relationships, only mirrors your inner emotional state and processes.

    If you’re unhappy, it’s very hard to have happy relationships. And if you were a happy person, you would have ditched the negative people in your life a long time ago. To sum up:

    • Crappy people in your life = May be the reason why you are unhappy in your life
    • No crappy people in your life = If you are still unhappy, read on

    Shopping will only make you happy for a while

    Shopping and fucking is the picture of happiness in the 21st century. Excuse my French. MTV, reality shows, ads. Shopping and fucking should make you really happy. Let’s dive deep into that assumption.

    In the previous epiphany, we already figured out that other people can’t make you happy. That includes their bodies. A lot of passionate sex can definitely contribute greatly to your quality of life, but it can’t make you happy.

    Much like any other addiction can’t, from alcohol to drugs and gambling. Right after the climax, you face the reality of life once again.

    It’s no different with shopping. Material things can bring you a short-term feeling of happiness. I’m happy like a child when I buy myself a new computer. But after a few days, my happiness level stabilizes to the default level. There is no possession in the world that could make you happy forever.

    You won’t believe it, but I did ride a jet ski once and was not very happy.

    Research has shown that when extremely good things, like winning the lottery, or extremely bad things, like accidents, happen to people, it only influences their happiness level in the short term. After a while, people are generally as happy or unhappy as they used to be.

    So shopping and fucking won’t bring real happiness into your life. At least not in the long term.

    • Shopping = Short-term happiness
    • Addictions = Short-term happiness
    • If you go too far with addictions or, in addition, you get yourself even more in debt for your unnecessary shopping excursions, it’s the perfect recipe for being even less happy in the long term

    Shopping is not happiness

    Money only helps in the beginning

    I was really poor when I was young. And I worked hard as hell to save some money on my bank account. Money can’t make you happy, but a lack of it can definitely make your life miserable. If you can’t afford a thing and you’re constantly scared of how you’ll go through the next month, you don’t have time to be happy.

    Worry takes everything away. Much like if a lousy boss destroys your day the moment you walk into the office.

    You see, it’s the same as it is with people. A shitty relationship will make you unhappy. Lack of money will definitely make you unhappy. But having both will only contribute a little to your long-term happiness level. Go figure.

    So yes, money can contribute a lot to happiness to a certain point. It’s an enabler of happiness, like good relationships are. It’s hard to be happy if you are poor and drowning in debt or if you have an energy vampire spouse.

    I guess the magical amount of money is somewhere between 2x and 3x of an average salary in your living area (and not drowning in debt) when money still plays a great role in your happiness levels.

    With savings in your bank account, there’s still a great probability that you’ll be unhappy at some point, but you are at least not that stressed out. Yes, money can’t buy happiness, but it can make you less unhappy and less under pressure. And it can solve many of your problems.

    But after 2-3x of average salary, money has zero contribution to your happiness level.

    • Poverty = Definitely a strong reason why you can’t be happy
    • You have quality relationships in your life with no zombies, you don’t look for happiness in material things and addictions, you earn 2-3x of average salary, but are still unhappy? Read on.

    Accomplishments aren’t happiness

    The next thing you may confuse is happiness with accomplishments. When you achieve something new, when there is a new accomplishment to add to your success list, you probably feel happy. But again, only for a while.

    Here’s the first issue. Your brain prefers to remember all your failures rather than successes. In a jungle, if you failed to escape a tiger that would have been much more tragic and mandatory to remember than if you won a village coconut tree climbing competition.

    Thus you tend to forget every one of your accomplishments very quickly and every failure sticks with you much longer. If you fail at public speaking, for example, your brain will make sure that it’s going to be much harder to step on the podium next time.

    That’s what you have to deal with. Success brings short-term happiness and soon you forget about everything. You can experience a failure and it can stay with you for a long time, especially if you don’t gather the courage to manage and overcome your fears.

    It definitely helps to have a list of your past accomplishments to remind you how awesome you are. It helps you see the objective reality and it helps to gather courage for new challenges and get out of the comfort zone. But it’s not the recipe for long-term happiness.

    • You need accomplishments in life to feel happy and good in your skin
    • Accomplishments won’t bring you real happiness in life

    Things that increase happiness just a little bit

    Research has shown that there are a few things that greatly contribute to your happiness level:

    1. Regular exercise
    2. Enough socializing
    3. Meaningful work
    4. Not being overwhelmed by work
    5. Gratefulness

    These things definitely contribute to your happiness level. You can read more here about these six things that contribute to being a more happy person.

    They will definitely increase your happiness level to a certain degree, but they won’t convert you from an unhappy to a happy person. Unfortunately, the doors to eternal happiness are not that easy to open. Again there’s a twisted catch.

    If you don’t socialize enough and isolate yourself, you will definitely become unhappy sooner or later. Short-term isolation (like being in monk mode) may sometimes help you advance in life, but we are social beings, so we have to socialize.

    If you don’t take care of your body, you will have health problems sooner or later, and health issues will definitely make your life miserable. You will feel great after exercise. But it won’t make you a permanently happy person.

    If you work at a job you don’t like, aren’t good at what you do or don’t feel like you contribute, it’s hard to be happy. You spend one third of your life at work. You can’t hate what you do 1/3 of your life and be a happy person. Maybe for a few hours on a Friday night, but that’s it.

    Another mistake of how you can chase away happiness is to be drowning in tasks, even if you enjoy your work. It’s an addiction, it’s called workaholism. Sooner or later the stress levels become too high. When you get the feeling that you have more on your plate than you can handle, your nervous system will go crazy, goodbye happiness.

    And it’s really hard to be happy if you don’t see what you have in life, and you only focus on what you lack. Gratefulness really can change your perspective on life. But it usually makes you a more grateful (obviously) and peaceful person, not happy.

    If you don’t have all these things in life it’s hard to be happy – modest exercise, a job you love, enough socializing, and gratefulness. But even if you have all of them, happiness is not guaranteed.

    If you are chronically unhappy all these things may help you a little bit, but in general you will still find 1001 reasons to be unhappy.

    So what is the solution then? Wait a moment, before we go to the true source of unhappiness, there’s one more trap.

    Expectations Vs Reality

    Gap between expectations and reality

    The media world is creating a big gap between expectations and reality. In the media world, everyone is handsome, rich, happy and living their dream. Every day, you’re exposed to thousands of ads showing you all these happy people.

    Not surprisingly, that’s also why you connect happiness with buying new things. And you figure out that shopping doesn’t really bring long-term happiness.

    Now if you sit on the subway in any major city in the world, you see that the media world is far from reality. Beautiful people are not that common. People have life scars and bruises on their faces. Many people seem sad and depressed. It’s no paradise. It’s a fight.

    Accepting reality isn’t easy. Everybody wants to live like a Hollywood star, but only one out of million is that lucky. And not all movie superstars are super happy. Money, fame and looks help live a quality life in a great way, but they don’t bring happiness, as we’ve discussed earlier.

    But hoping and expecting that you’ll live the life of a Hollywood star by posting a few photos on social media is a recipe for a happiness disaster. It’s the same as if you expect that love will do all the hard relationship work instead of you or that you will have a six-pack by going to the gym once in a while.

    Everything you want to have in life, you have to work hard for. And many times you don’t even get it. Some things are not even accessible to you at all. In some life areas, you’re better off, in others you’re far behind the average, depending on your genes, smarts, inheritance etc.

    Life isn’t fair and you have to play with the cards you were dealt. If you don’t accept that, you will always be unhappy. If you will live in a naïve illusion of how the world should be and that you may get lucky someday, you will definitely be unhappy. To be really happy, you have to accept the reality of life.

    But if you decide to accept it, there is a big trap you can fall into. Instead of accepting reality, you lower your standards. You give up and decide to not fight. To not strive for progress and improvements.

    Instead of accepting that you have to work hard for years to get a good-looking body, to find the work you enjoy, a person who is your perfect fit for a spouse, you simply give up and go where life kicks you. And usually that isn’t any place nice. If you aren’t going forward, you’re going backwards. If you’re going backwards, your unhappiness slowly rises.

    It’s a tricky situation again. You have to narrow the gap between your expectations and what is really achievable in life from your starting point.

    At the same time, you mustn’t lower your standards and make sure you keep the growth mindset. Not going forward means a disaster in life sooner or later, and disasters are nothing but a big pile of unhappiness.

    • Living in a naïve media world of fame of fortune = Fake happiness
    • Accepting reality = Hard but the only way of being truly happy
    • Lowering your standards and not going forward in life = Unhappiness comes sooner or later

    To sum up, here is what you should do to be happy in life, but even if you do it, it’s not a guarantee that you will really be happy. Probably not.

    • Having a happiness center on yourself (being aware that you are the only one responsible for your happiness)
    • No crappy people in your life
    • Lots of socializing and love – spouse, family, friends
    • Earning 2x – 3x of the average salary in an industry you love
    • Understanding that material things and shopping won’t bring happiness
    • You need accomplishments, but they are a different category from happiness
    • Be as healthy as possible with regular exercise
    • Do meaningful work and don’t be drowning in tasks
    • Focus on what you have in life, not what you lack; practice gratefulness
    • Make sure you go forward in life with the growth mindset
    • Don’t live in a naive fictional world, accept reality as it is

    All that, but happiness is still not guaranteed? Now it may seem that everything is hopeless. So let’s try to turn things around a little bit. Here is the right question.

    What causes you to naturally do all the things stated above, without forcing yourself to do it? Loving yourself and life. Lack of it is the real reason behind your unhappiness.

    The secret to why you aren’t happy in life

    Here is a simplified model. When you are born, your mother is your whole world. Read that again. Your whole world. Her emotional availability, her smile, her relationship with your father, her attention to your needs, that’s your whole world.

    When you become just a little bigger, your home becomes your whole world. The relationship with your mother, father, siblings and other relatives. Your home becomes your whole world.

    You see where this is going. Your relationships with your parents, your home and your early experiences in life become the basic model on which you interpret how the world looks like. Your map. Your subjective reality. Your happiness potential.

    If your parents were not happy, if your home was not a happy environment, how could you be a really happy person?

    Now here are the two tricks.

    You have to see your parents as perfect when you are little, so you feel secure. Because only perfect parents can protect you. Consequently, you project their faults on yourself.

    You’re the one responsible for their imperfections – fights, divorce, misfortune and sadness. You think it’s you. The shittier their relationship, the shittier you see yourself. Harder to be happy.

    Here’s another catch.

    You need an environment that is loving, stable, encouraging, and pays attention to your needs and potentials. If you have all that, you develop trust in life and people, you have a sense of autonomy, you take initiative and you become aware of how you can contribute to the world with your competences.

    If you don’t have a stable and loving home, shame, guilt, doubt and inferiority develop.

    Have you ever seen a happy person being torn apart by shame, guilt and doubt when following their own goals? No. A happy person:

    • Likes themselves as they are
    • Has a strong sense of self and their autonomy
    • Has no problems with their needs being met
    • Knows how to express feelings
    • Knows where they’re going in life and what they want
    • Is not afraid of conflict and knows how to set boundaries
    • Takes initiative and contributes creative ideas

    If you don’t express and assert yourself in a healty kind of way, no shopping spree, accomplishment or relationship will help you with your happiness levels.

    Again, here is a very simplified version of what happens. Over the years, you internalize your mother’s voice and your father’s voice and the voice of other people who brought you up as your inner voice. And you see the world as you saw your “home” environment.

    Now, no environment is perfect, there must be friction, because friction causes a desire for personal growth and development. But there is a point where the environment becomes toxic and basically destroys a child’s life and their potential for happiness.

    That’s the main reason why you are unhappy. Your inner voice and your subjective map of the world. That can happen in hundreds of different ways, from a depressed mother when you were infant, an unstable home with lots of fights or moving from city to city, an emotionally cold home, overly critical parents, nobody considering your needs etc.

    Here’s one more catch. You remember when I mentioned that you have to see your parents as perfect. Well, many people never realize that their parents aren’t perfect. They still think their unhappiness has nothing to do with their home environment. It has.

    Unfortunately, if you can’t see this, you often do the same things to your kids. No one can be the perfect parent. But it’s mandatory to not be a toxic parent.

    I don’t know how your unhappiness was triggered in your home environment. But I certainly know that every article starting with “10 things you should do to be happier” is misleading you. It may help a little, but it’s not the source of your real problem. To blame your home environment or your past also won’t do any good.

    That’s the main reason why you are unhappy. Your cold and critical inner voice and your subjective map of the world where there is no place for your happiness.

    There is actually only one thing you have to do, assuming that there is no other solid thing that can be blocking your happiness, like drowning in debt, having a shitty boss etc. You have to change how you see yourself and how you see the world. You need to rewire your brain. You need to finally allow yourself to be happy. There is no outside factor that can make you really happy in life.

    You need to reshape your internal perception; you have to upgrade your subjective reality map and your inner voice. The good news is that it can be done. The bad news is that it’s a long and demanding process. But if you’ve read the article all the way to this point I have no doubt that you’re motivated.

    Unhappy home environment

    Cognitive therapy and emotional accounting

    You are unhappy because of your negative inner dialogue. In other words, your negative thoughts. You may not be even aware of it. Your inner voice is constantly there and it’s similar to the environment you were raised in.

    It can be a cold voice, a critical voice, a pessimistic one, or negative in any other kind of way. That is what is causing your unhappiness.

    Sometimes it slips out of people as self-dialogue. I’m such a clumsy person. Many people are not even aware of their inner voice. But the extent of your negative inner voice is enormous. It makes you unhappy, your mood slumps, your self-image crumbles, your body doesn’t function properly, your willpower gets paralyzed, etc.

    There are 10 different types of negative thinking that make you an unhappy person:

    • All-or-nothing thinking
    • Overgeneralization
    • Mental filter
    • Disqualifying the positive
    • Jumping to conclusions
    • Magnification and minimization
    • Emotional reasoning
    • Should statements
    • Labeling and mislabeling
    • Personalization

    The first step of becoming aware of your negative inner dialogue is to pay better attention to it. You have to build a better connection with yourself and really hear your inner voice.

    You will hear your parents, your experiences, your environment in it. And then you will see how negative it is. How it makes you unhappy. How is never ever anything good enough.

    Here’s a simple exercise you should start with. First get familiar with all 10 different types of negative thinking. Then count the number of negative thoughts that pop up in your head every day. Buy some kind of a counter and start counting them. Just to become aware. It’s called mental biofeedback.

    If there is no inner smile on your face, you are thinking something negative. Now become aware of it!

    When you become a master of observing your inner dialogue, you need to slowly change it. It’s called emotional accounting. You basically draw a table with five columns:

    • Negative thought (“I am so clumsy”)
    • What kind of a negative feeling it causes and its intensity from 1 to 10 (“Anger, 9”)
    • Type of negative thinking (“Overgeneralization”)
    • Rational response – correction (“Not true; it does happen to me from time to time, like every other person alive. I am handy at lots of things, for example …”)
    • Intensity of the negative feeling after the correction (“Anger, 3”)

    The key is to correct your inner voice with a rational response. That way, you slowly begin changing your inner voice to a more positive one. Not surprisingly, you also become a more positive and happy person.

    It’s a demanding task, but worth it. If you find it too difficult, you can maybe do it with a therapist. There are many good cognitive therapists that will help you to fix your inner dialogue and give you additional advice on how to become a happier person.

    But even with cognitive therapy, there is one more thing you’re missing.

    Rewriting your brain with the new experience

    Only updating your inner dialogue may not be enough, especially if you do it the wrong way. For example, if you try to force yourself to change your inner dialogue. You only make it even more negative. You reinforce its negativity.

    The ultimate way to rewrite your childhood experience is a new experience. An experience of a stable, loving, encouraging and warm environment that pays attention to your needs. You experience a new kind of relationship that becomes your new inner voice.

    As you might have guessed, that takes years of work, but it’s probably the ultimate way of becoming a happier person. It’s one of the aspects of how psychoanalysis works. More about it in one of the following blog posts.

    If you are unhappy, your unhappiness will only grow stronger with age. I thought it was the hardest in adolescence, but I was wrong. There are a few things you can do to really become a happier person. But they aren’t as easy as many articles suggest.

    Nevertheless, if you decide to do something about your happiness levels, it’s time you start doing research and find more information on how it can really be done. Start by researching cognitive psychology and psychoanalysis.

  • The power of creative visualization

    Visualization is one of the most widespread tools of popular psychology. Despite being a very popular tool, the general public expresses a lot of scepticism over whether visualization can even have a positive effect on your life.

    So does visualization work? The answer is yes and no, and it depends greatly on the approach of how you start using visualization in practice.

    In this article you will learn:

    • What is visualization and what is so special about it
    • In which cases visualization works and when it doesn’t
    • How you can improve your life with visualization
    • A few additional ideas for how you can take advantage of visualization
    • How I use visualization

    The concept of visualization is pretty simple. You use the power of your imagination to create visions of what you want in life and how you will make them happen. You play a movie (or imagine pictures) in your head of what and how you want something to happen.

    It can be a goal you want to achieve, a performance you want to execute, behavioral changes you want to make, or you can imagine a run-through of a success process you’re following (getting rich, in shape, etc.).

    The main science behind visualization is that the brain has a hard job distinguishing between what really happens in your life and what you imagine. So when you imagine something, you psychologically create new neural connections in your brain, as they would if the thing you imagined really happened to you.

    It’s like having a rehearsal and preparing yourself for performing before it really happens. Not surprisingly, visualization is quite popular in sports, where players imagine how they score and win a game. It’s part of mental preparation.

    Before we go on, let’s look at a very clear picture of how visualization absolutely doesn’t work. This is how many abuse visualization, taking it as a shortcut that doesn’t really exist.

    Something along the lines of: keep laying in front of the TV, imagine how pretty, rich and happy you are, and all of it will happen all by itself, as long as you visualize it strongly enough. It doesn’t work like that. There are no shortcuts in life.

    If you don’t believe me, here’s an experiment you can do. Install some software on your computer that you don’t know how to use. AutoCad or something. Now spend a few days in a row visualizing how you can really master the software without opening it at all. Just visualize hard. After a few days, open your computer, run the software and see what happens.

    Research has also shown that only visualizing without taking action can make you into a daydreamer. It relaxes you; you imagine that you already achieved what you wanted (remember, your brain actually thinks that), so you become demotivated. Yes, visualization can be counter-productive.

    The false hope of a shortcut and visualization without action are two of the most common reasons why visualization is often the subject of ridicule. If nothing else, such an approach violates the basic spiritual and practical guideline that you reap only what you sow.

    If a mental action isn’t supported with a certain physical action, it makes no sense. I haven’t yet met a single person who got fit by watching television with a hamburger in their hand (and visualizing being fit). Quite the contrary, to be fit, you have to invest a lot of energy, time, effort and have iron-clad will.

    So, if you’re hoping visualization will change your life as long as you imagine things in your mind over and over again, the answer is, of course, that it doesn’t work. But visualization can be a strong tool if you use it the right way.

    It’s a tool with which you can change your internal mental processes, but only if you reinforce everything with direct action. In that case, visualization can work. Let’s look at how and what.

    Visualization

    Getting big visions and new ideas through imagination and visualization

    The first necessary thing to mention is the power of your brain. Humans are the only living beings on Earth who can visualize things before they are materialized. You can imagine things that don’t even yet exist in reality. It’s an incredible ability and a way to empower visualization.

    Imagine how the future will look like and then make it happen. Create things you want to have in future.

    This is why Albert Einstein claimed that imagination is more important than knowledge. Everyone has the ability to imagine what has not yet been created as well as the power to create it. It was one of Steve Jobs’ greatest epiphanies.

    Everything that surrounds you and wasn’t created by Mother Nature was created by man. You have the power to do the same, to contribute, to create.

    Before something was created, it was born as an idea or a thought in someone’s head. Someone imagined a solution in their heads and then made it come true.

    And this is also the main mission of every person on this planet: to create (besides enjoying life and becoming the best version of yourself). Every idea is born twice, first in your head, with help of visualization, and then it materializes through work.

    Be like Elon create things

    The first incredible power of visualization is that it helps you think of new ideas. The second, even more important, leverage of visualization is that you can see a vision before it’s reality. You can imagine how the future will look like. Then through actions, you also have the power to make it come true.

    Only individuals with an incredibly strong vision changed the world. The vision has to be so strong that it’s above all the problems you encounter on your way. All problems must become irrelevant when you think of your big vision.

    A good example is Henry Ford who had the vision that the car will be accessible to everyone. Before his vision, the car was only accessible to the richest individuals. And he had the vision that the entire planet will be full of cars. If you look around now, you can see that his vision came true.

    Visualization like that has an additional advantage. You use your own imagination to wipe away the barriers of limiting convictions. If you know lucid dreaming or if you remember any of your wilder and more unusual dreams, you can immediately recall that in the dream world, physical borders don’t apply. When you visualize, you can dream a little bit – without limits.

    I do defend the fact that on our planet, there are laws of physics and not everything is possible. But many barriers are only barriers in your mind. And imagination can help you overcome these barriers. By using visualization to come to a solution, you move things into a different context.

    An example are brothers Wright, who lived only to fly in the skies. Because human beings don’t have wings, they of course can’t fly. But brothers Wright found a solution in a device, and became the first mortals to see the world through a bird’s eye view. This is how you can break down boundaries that humans set for themselves and that often limit you.

    Changing your inner mental state

    Neurolinguistic programming is a branch of psychotherapy that studies how your brain works. With scientific experiments, scientists found out that everyone has a subjective reality map, consisting of different records, whereby internal mental pictures prevail.

    The subjective reality map dictates your response to every situation you encounter in life, but it also forms your convictions. Many times limiting and negative ones.

    What does that mean? For example, two people have an entirely different reaction to meeting a dog. One person immediately runs towards the dog and starts petting it, while the other one carefully moves away.

    Of course the person who moves away either had a bad experience in the past or their parents said that a dog will bite them. Consequently, when they meet a dog, they get a negative picture as a protective survival mechanism and they move away. In this, you have countless situations where your survival isn’t at risk at all, but negative mental patterns that limit your life and luck still exist.

    This is why an incredibly useful power of visualization is the ability to identify negative mental patterns. Visualization can help you identify your inner beliefs and negative internal representations. Here’s an exercise you can do.

    Homework

    Go somewhere where you can be alone, connect with yourself, pay close attention to your reactions and then: vividly imagine that you go to an ATM to check your balance and you have 1,000,000€ on your account. Then imagine that you’re speaking in front of 10,000 people. Thirdly, imagine that you are perfectly fit, with well-developed muscles. Finally imagine that by your side is a partner who is truly physically attractive.

    Now it’s time to be honest. Did any of the mentioned ideas make you feel a bit uncomfortable when you imagined them? Maybe only a little, somewhere deep inside you. If we take money, for example, and a potential inner dialogue:

    I can’t possibly have that much money on my account, I’m always in the red. Or, this is really a lot of money, 10,000€ maybe, but not more. Maybe you only got a slightly uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach.

    What is happening? Everyone has countless acquired negative patterns that prevent you from realizing all your potential (together with negative inner representation, often in shape of photos).

    Somewhere deep down is hiding a sincere wish that’s covered with a lot of negativism that you obtain during primary and secondary socialization and through the media.

    If you really want something (something positive, of course) and get a bad feeling thinking about it, that means that you have negative patterns that you need to get rid of.

    As long as you have a negative picture of a certain thing and as long as 1,000,000€ on your account, for example, releases a wave of feelings such as: I don’t deserve that, rich people are corrupt, I come from a poor family etc., you will diligently avoid such a state with all your actions. So the possibility of that thing coming true in your life is zero or at least very close to zero.

    Until you believe, deep down inside, that you can’t achieve something, you will not work in that direction. Even if you did achieve it, you’d feel uncomfortable and make sure that you’d lose it quite quickly (check lottery winners statistics for that). A positive belief usually also means positive internal representations on your subjective map of reality and a positive feeling associated with it.

    This is how we come to the most important leverage of using visualization. By visualizing different feelings in a certain situation you want (by imagining a positive photo or a movie), you can change your internal state (your beliefs). It’s how visualization can help you do an identity shift – with a combination of visualization, action and enforcing new beliefs and behavioral patterns.

    If you don’t only imagine that you have 1,000,000€ on your account but also that you deserve such an amount, that you feel great being rich and how you will come to this kind of money, your internal reality map will change. And you will make an identity shift. You’ll see yourself as a wealthy person. And you’ll feel good about it. Only once you accept something inside can that thing also materialize, never before. And as mentioned many times before, you have to take action besides dealing with your internal state.

    The outside always mirrors the inside.

    So visualization is an incredibly powerful tool. If visualization changes your internal reality map from negative imaginings to positive ones, your thoughts will also change, which will consequently change your actions and this will lead to a different result.

    Thus, visualization supported by actions that stem from your will to do something for the quality of your life can have an incredibly positive effect on you reaching your goals.

    This is why many different fields of life have successful stories from people who helped themselves with visualization. A successful sales meeting, an incredible performance in front of a public, a winning match, a new successful company, and so on. Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, many successful people used visualization as one of their success tools.

    Life experiment ideas

    Here are a few best ways of practising visualization:

    Visualization as a morning or evening habit

    When you wake up or when you go to sleep (as part of your morning or evening habits) visualize a goal you want to achieve or how you perform in a certain situation or how you change your habits. Envision yourself physically in action, and use all of your senses.

    When you do it, you also have to feel positive emotions. That is a must. See yourself achieving what you want and how good you feel about it. If you feel bad about it in the beginning (like “I can never achieve that”), practice more and with time, your feelings will change. You wouldn’t believe it.

    Vision board

    Visualizing as many things in life as possible (to-do lists, schedules, workflows, prototypes, etc.) can dramatically increase your personal productivity. It’s part of the Kanban theory and practice. In the same way, you can also visualize your goals by having a vision board.

    You simply hang a wooden board on a wall where you can see it as often as possible, and you put photos of things that represent success to you on that board. When you pass by the board you stop, and you visualize yourself achieving all the things you have on your board. One by one. With actions and positive emotions.

    Maybe you can also use Pinterest for that if you have too many goals, but it probably won’t work as effectively.

    Changing your internal representations

    Imagine something that you fear, a person or a situation like public speaking. Now think of it and try to identify what kind of an internal picture you have as a representation of that fear. Your representational image is probably scary or dark.

    Try to change that image. If you’re afraid of your boss, for example, your internal image may be one of how s/he yells at you. Now create a picture of your boss being happy and kind to you. Or how you stand up to your boss or aren’t scared. Or him or her on a toilet. Play with it. Exchange the dark picture with a new one. Mentally, like you would with photo-editing software.

    Your boss won’t miraculously change, but changing your internal representation may help you manage your fear better and become more self-confident and proactive.

    As a bonus, here are some creative ideas for using creative visualization as an experiment:

    • Think of an unhealthy food you can’t avoid. Now imagine how its taste sucks, over and over again. Do it for a month and see what happens. And don’t eat it while you do it.
    • Take one of your worst personality traits. Like anger issues or being late. Now imagine how you react calmly when somebody pisses you off. Think of a person who pisses you off the most and imagine reacting calmly.
    • Imagine believing the opposite. Think of one of your strong political, religious, sexual or cultural one. Or a belief about yourself. Maybe even something that limits you a lot. Like believing you aren’t good with computers. Now imagine your life having an opposite belief or thinking the opposite about yourself. How does your life look like? What are you afraid of? Play with it.
    • Face your fears. What are the top 3 irrational fears you have? Public speaking, talking to the opposite gender, asking for a raise. Imagine doing it over and over again in your head. See what happens.

    Expect good

    Visualization and spirituality

    When speaking of visualization, you can also stray into slightly more spiritual spheres. I agree that this is incredibly shaky ground. But my work is based on the thought that it’s necessary to try as many things as possible and then keep those that benefit and work for you, and get rid of those that don’t hold any value added. I also believe it’s my duty to mention these things.

    My experience from a more spiritual perspective is kind of that you do not get a single wish without also getting the power to make it come true. When you want something strongly enough, situations also start unfolding in such a direction that things come true.

    One part can, of course, be explained with the previously mentioned facts. When you want something strongly enough and you start working in that direction, your new actions lead to a new result.

    But it often happened to me that even without any action, my environment changed so that I was able to realize my vision more easily. I’m not talking about any miracles, but about simple and practical things. The outside always mirrors the inside.

    Let me give you a few examples. I thought of a new project and started meeting people who helped me. For example, when I decided to start writing this blog and was making the first steps in that direction, a lot of things started unfolding all on their own.

    And it has happened to all of us that we thought about someone after a long time and then met that person or got a phone call from them.

    After a lot of similar experiences, I don’t believe in coincidences anymore. I’m closer to believing that life, the universe, God or whoever you want, support you in your wishes. If you truly want something and if you also start working in that direction, things start happening.

    It feels like visualization has the power to change your inner vibrations and to start radiating your new course to the universe. When you share your new vibrations with the World, the right people, ideas, knowledge, and situations can come into your life.

    Sometimes support even comes in the shape of new challenges as a test, so that it becomes clear if you truly want something or not, and sometimes it means meeting the right people, coming to the right place at the right time. When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

    The main takeaways

    Here are the main takeaways:

    • Visualization doesn’t work if you want to employ it as a shortcut to success.
    • Visualization isn’t about fantasizing how you can achieve something without any effort and without overcoming obstacles. You have to be careful that you don’t only daydream, but also take action.
    • With visualization, you can get to know yourself better and unravel your inner beliefs (imagine something and observe how you feel).
    • Visualization can help you make an identity shift to see yourself differently (imagine something for so long that you start to feel it as part of yourself).
    • You can use visualization as a kind of rehearsal to boost your self-confidence by clearly imagining an outcome you want and how you will perform to achieve it.
    • Visualization can help you adjust your inner state to a new vibrational level and attract the right people and opportunities in your life. And when you expect good, good things do happen to you.

  • Emotional roller-coaster

    It’s widely known that building a startup is like a wild emotional roller-coaster ride. One moment, you’re in the depths of despair and the other, you’re on top of the world; and in between, you’re hopefully enjoying an adrenaline filled journey.

    It can even happen that you’re at the peak of positive emotions and at the very bottom a few times in a single day.

    You get a new client. Excellent. One of your biggest clients starts complaining about your service. Yikes. You release a successful update for your product. Hooray. Someone in your team has a bad day and nags and spreads doubts. Sucks. You just got a new order. Yes. And so on.

    But starting your own business isn’t the only thing that can be represented by an emotional roller-coaster ride. Actually, all the things we consider important in life are more or less nothing but wild roller-coaster rides.

    You have a baby. You’re super happy and it changes your life forever. Pure emotional peak and happiness. But then you don’t sleep and it demands an extraordinary amount of energy and attention. Maybe even more than you expected. But then your baby smiles. And you forget everything. Roller-coaster ride.

    You fall in love. You go crazy. It’s like being on drugs. And then the first fight comes. How could that happen? But then also the make-up sex. And then your loved one has to travel somewhere. An abstinence crisis occurs. But then you see and hug your love again. Roller-coaster ride.

    You decide to take care of your health more. You go jogging and you feel wonderful. Then you want more and faster results. You see more results and you’re on top. Yes! Then you injure yourself. And you go straight to the bottom. You have to rest, but you want to train. And then you heal. And you start training again. You feel great.

    Now you take it slowly, all the way until you overtrain again and injure yourself. And this time, you also decided to improve your diet. And you just ate a cookie. And you’re mad and you can’t train. But it’s okay because you know that tomorrow is a new beginning. The next day, you do much better and you’re proud of yourself. Roller-coaster ride.

    You start investing your money. You’re super excited. You’re going to be an investor. You make your first investment. And you lose money. You go buy a few books and invest in your knowledge. You get motivated again. You make an investment. You lose money again. You’re disappointed and it hurts. You feel stupid, but you don’t give up.

    You have the last thousand dollars to invest. Then you make a small ROI. Hope gets stronger. But after that, you make a really good investment. Doors to heaven open up. And then you get cocky. And you bet everything on an investment that’s a total disaster. You can’t believe you did that. You start again, this time in a more mature way, even when you make ROI. Roller-coaster ride.

    Let’s stay with investing for one more second. The first and the most important rule of investing is “don’t lose money”. As important of a rule as that is, don’t let emotions get out of your control. Always manage your emotions, especially in extremes. Bears make money, bulls make money, pigs get slaughtered. Pigs are greedy investors who stop managing their emotions and get greedy.

    Don’t let emotions get out of your control. Always manage your emotions, especially in extremes.

    The picture is pretty much the same in all other important areas of life. You ride the emotional roller-coaster. Wealth, health, relationships. If you want to successfully finish the ride, you have to learn how to manage your emotions. All in order to not get lost in depression and self-pity, and to not believe that any of your successes are a predictor of future successes. You have to stay Zen, Stoic, cool and calm.

    Actually, there’s nothing wrong with feeling severe negative emotions when you fail. There’s nothing wrong with being super excited and proud of yourself. But you have to manage your emotions to the point of staying down to Earth when you’re making your next move. You have to make sure that emotions don’t distort your subjective reality to the point where you don’t see things as clearly as you should and where you start making bad decisions.

    You have to make sure that emotions don’t distort your subjective reality to the point where you don’t see things as clearly as you should and where you start making bad decisions.

    You start emotionally abusing your kid, because they demand so much energy and attention; or you’re so mesmerized by their smile or feel so guilty when they cry that you don’t set any boundaries.

    You exaggerate with training to the point of really hurting yourself. Or you stop training at all when the first pitfall occurs.

    You’re so confident in your investment that you put all eggs in one basket. Or you get completely depressed when you lose some money.

    Emotional Roller Coaster

    It’s completely natural to have severe feelings after successes or failures, but you have to first deal with your emotions by calming yourself down and making sure that they don’t cloud your rational judgment.

    Whatever your goal in life is, if it’s an important and big one, you’ll experience highs and you’ll experience lows. The more the goals matter to you, the more you care, the more you want something, the more intense the extremes are.

    The more intense extreme situation in life mean nothing but better knowing how to handle your emotions.

    No matter how extreme the situation you are in, never see the world as black and white. There is no pure success and pure failure.

    Besides never seeing the world only as black and white, by far the best solution for managing your emotions is to take a scientific approach to everything. You see life as nothing but a bunch of experiments, tests and experiences where some things work for you as an individual and for your relationships, and others don’t.

    You stop doing what doesn’t work, keep in your life what does work, and regularly adjust to the changes in your environment.

    The point of life is to experience the whole emotional palette, from the most negative to the most positive emotions. You just have to be careful to not get stuck anywhere on the palette.

    The things that work for you, you have to preserve in your life and be grateful without getting your judgment clouded by too positive emotions. And you must know that nothing lasts forever.

    For things that bring you sorrow, you either have to pivot to a different fit, change your perspective, level up your game, deal with cognitive distortions, innovate your way out or something else. There is always a move you can make.

    And again, nothing lasts forever, neither the positive nor the negative. Just don’t get stuck. If you’re going to wait for the negative to pass without fighting, you may wait all the way until the end. Because life wants you to fight.

    Well, it’s time for you to go after the best that life can offer. The first step is to embark on the roller-coaster called life. It may be a bit turbulent and uncomfortable at the beginning, but when you learn how to manage your emotions and become more skillful at it, the ride can truly become unforgettable.

    Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. So enjoy the wild emotional roller-coaster ride.

    You can fly high only if you care. But it can also hurts the most, when you care.