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  • Personal Infostructure

    Infostructure is a system and a process of how you consume, manage and share information. In the creative society, a quality infostructure has become as important as a quality infrastructure. What you feed your mind with matters a lot. A quality (good) infostructure will help you become more creative, competent and resourceful. A bad infostructure, on the other hand, is the biggest time waster ever, killing your creative potential, making you into an obedient consumer and a zombie – something that you definitely don’t want to become, but may happen if you don’t put any effort into building an outstanding infostructure for yourself.

    What you will learn

    In this post, you will learn about the following key things:

    • The difference between infrastructure and infostructure
    • Why infostructure is as important as infostructure in the creative economy
    • Why infostructure is like fire when it comes to technological advancement; nothing more than a tool with which you can either cook yourself dinner or burn yourself badly, depending on how you use it
    • How infostructure can lower the quality of your life by killing your creative potential, turning you into a consumer and a zombie
    • How bad infostructure can become the biggest time waster ever and how to avoid that
    • How you can build yourself an outstanding infostructure that will help you be incredibly more resourceful, creative and competent
    • How I built my own outstanding infostructure and how you can do it as well

    Infrastructure vs. Infostructure

    You probably know what infrastructure is and even if you don’t, you definitely use it all the time. Infrastructure are the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities needed for the operation of a society, be it a country, state, city, county or even enterprise. The main parts of an infrastructure are buildings, roads, power supplies, utilities, sanitary systems, and so on.

    There’s definitely a big correlation between well-developed infrastructure and efficient productivity. Without sufficient infrastructure, the society is bogged down with higher operating costs, structural production problems and everyday frustrations, consequently suffering from a big competitive disadvantage, especially on the global markets. There’s no doubt that better infrastructure means a better quality of life, higher productivity and efficiency, and generally a better environment for business.

    I’m sure you pay a lot of attention to where you live, how you organize your home and your office, what car you drive, how far away your favorite facilities, like shops, are etc. You definitely want to have electricity, water and other housing supplies all the time.

    With all the loans, mortgages, rents, housing and transportation costs, you probably spend an extensive proportion of your paycheck for the infrastructure you use (your private and public part of the infrastructure). It’s logical that you do, because a better infrastructure brings a better quality of life, it helps you create more value for the markets, and so on. With a bigger paycheck, people often first invest into better infrastructure.

    But we live in the creative economy and post-information age, where is not only infrastructure that’s important. In developed countries, adequate infrastructure is more or less taken care of. So infrastructure isn’t as important as it used to be for competitive advantage and success. You can see that very well in the business world. The best businesses don’t compete with better facilities, plants, equipment and manufacturing machines anymore. The best businesses today compete with creativity, innovation, intellectual property and new business models.

    You’ve probably heard that Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate.

    If the competitive advantage of a business can fall on the CEO’s toes, it’s not real competitive advantage in the creative economy.

    In developed countries, you can rent infrastructure when you need it and as much of it as you need it. In some cases, all you need is a laptop and a good connection to the internet, and you can compete on the global markets. Don’t get me wrong. Infrastructure is very important. It’s hard to be creative if your toilet isn’t working, if it takes you hours to get to the office or if you’re freezing in your apartment. But in today’s world, creativity, innovation and information are as important, if not even more important, than outstanding infrastructure if you want to compete, create, deliver and capture (make money) as much value as possible.

    Your Personal Infostructure

    What do I really mean by personal infostructure?

    If in the contemporary creative economy, innovation and information are as important for creating value as infrastructure is, one of your key competitive advantages is a system and a process of how you consume, manage and share information. That’s your personal infostructure.

    Infostructure is a system and a process of how you consume, manage and share information.

    The main idea of a good infostructure is that you acquire as much knowledge as possible as quickly as possible. Knowledge is nevertheless an important part of your competence level. Knowledge means knowing a certain field. It means you have a complete set of information that you imprinted into your consciousness. And you can do things with it – you can create and deliver value. A good infostructure also helps you continuously acquire knowledge. It’s called life-long learning based on an informal education.

    Even more. Good infostructure definitely contributes to your creativity. Creativity is nothing but the ability to perceive the world in new ways, find hidden patterns, make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and generate solutions. With more information and knowledge, you can more easily connect the dots never before connected . The more right information and knowledge you have (depth, complexity, interdisciplinary …), the more creative and “aha” moments you can have in your life. Because you see connections others can’t see. Because they lack the same combination of knowledge.

    Knowledge is power, there’s no doubt about it (actually, applying knowledge is power, but more about that later). Good infostructure means more knowledge, and more knowledge means more power. That’s why you should pay a lot of attention to your personal infostructure if you want to be successful in life. Good infrastructure as part of the outer assets (money, status etc.) is simply not enough anymore. You also need lots of inner assets (competences), and a superior infostructure can help you with that.

    But there’s one big trick regarding infostructure. The society (with market demand) has already built one for you; much like it has also built most of the infrastructure. With one big difference, which is that the purpose of the public infostructure is to program you into an obedient and stupid consumer. That’s why I call it bad infostructure, the one you’re pushed into by default.

    Bad personal infostructure

    As I mentioned, bad infostructure is unfortunately the one that society has already built for you. More than 99 % of people probably use this default infostructure regularly, which consequently heavily contributes towards to living unhappy, average or even zombie lives. If you do what other people do, you get what other people have; and that’s usually an average life. And you don’t want that. So what is the default bad infostructure that society has built for you? Well, there are a few core media used in the default infostructure that are programing you into an obedient consumer. In addition to that, they more or less help you only with mental masturbation and are big time wasters. Here they are:

    Television and radio

    TV is nothing but a “multimedia ad player”, since you more or less only watch ads that are programming you into a good consumer. The content is usually no better than ads. Reality shows, watching other people play sports, watching people who live the life you probably want to live, be it the leading superheroes in a movie, saving the world, or the main actors themselves having fun filming and making millions. You’re obviously on the wrong side of the screen.

    Here’s another trap. Maybe you haven’t turned on the TV for decades and you can tell yourself that you don’t watch it. But on the other hand, you still watch movies and TV shows, just not on the TV. We know video on demand now, we have Netflix, iTunes etc. Or you can even go to the movie theater too often. So you don’t have to sit in front of the TV to watch “TV”.

    It’s pretty much the same with channels like Discovery, History and other “educational” channels or even MTV. They play nothing but semi-reality or reality TV shows. You either watch other people travelling, cooking, exploring or doing other amazing things or, on the other hand, you watch them get humiliated in front of a few judges and thousands of people so you can feel a little bit better about yourself. No thanks.

    Don’t get me wrong. A good movie or an episode of a TV show can be very relaxing from time to time. And we all need some relaxation; we aren’t robots. But spending hours and hours in front of the TV watching commercials is definitely not the life you want to live. Wake up.

    Radio is not much different from TV. You listen to thousands and thousands of commercials and stupid talk shows. You maybe hear a song you like once a day, after listening to hours of useless content. On the main radio stations, you can listen to the same bad news every half hour (it’s like it’s really programing you to be negative), and most interviews and discussions have zero valuable content and are only there to entertain the masses. I don’t remember the last time I heard something useful on the radio. And if you want to listen to music, you have iTunes and other music streaming services.

    News (print, online) and most magazines

    The daily news gives you a sense of connection with the world as well as a sense of urgency and importance. You feel like you’re in the flow of global happenings. In addition to that, we’re all prone to drama in life, from the evolutionary point of view. Drama and negative information raise your adrenalin levels and make you feel more alive. They make you feel like you’re running from a virtual tiger. Something important is happening, you better pay attention. Not. Most news pieces are negative because your mind loves negative information. You don’t want to fill your mind with negative information. It will only bring the negative into your life.

    You can’t live a positive life, with a negative mind. You can’t have positive mind if you constantly consume negative information.

    Additionally, news is history. It already happened. You have zero influence on that. And everybody reads it, so it brings zero competitive advantage into your life. Even if you spend hours and hours catching up on tech news, startup news or whatever, the value added of that kind of information is really low. If you want to co-create the future, you need to empty your mind, make some creative free time, read some heavily useful stuff or level up your skills and focus on your goals. Only your goals, nothing else. No drama.

    The good thing (somehow, I guess) is that you don’t have to worry at all: even if you unsubscribe yourself from all the news, the most “important” (the most negative or shocking) news will definitely reach you sooner or later. Because everybody shares it, 99 % of people are little beacons of negative information.

    On mobile phone

    Social networks

    Social networks have become an important part of our lives. People spend hours and hours on social networks. For most people, it’s extremely hard to escape from being on the most popular social networks. This means at least Facebook and Twitter, but I can probably also add Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram and many others to the list. It won’t get any better in the future. There will be even more websites fighting for your time and attention.

    Now ask yourself honestly, will hours and hours of looking at pictures of what your friends and acquaintances are doing really help you progress in life? Definitely not. And to be realistic, Facebook and other social networks aren’t even close to showing the real lives that people are living. People are only posting beautiful moments, the few peaks they get in their lives. Behind these beautiful moments, every human being must face challenges, disappointments, struggles and other burdens.

    At the end of the day, looking at the good moments of your Facebook friends makes you feel like you’re the only weirdo who doesn’t enjoy life to the full. Not a perception you want to program your mind with. And a big distraction from your own goals.

    Pub debates

    An important source of information for everyone are also their friends. That’s why social networks are so popular. Because people love to “stalk” other people and they’re so interested in what other people are thinking or doing. The same mental masturbation effect often also happens in real life, especially in pubs, coffee shops and similar locations. People love talking about politics, big world problems and negative events, and we can also add gossiping, criticizing, whining and complaining to the list.

    A debate among a group of friends is rarely about brainstorming new ideas, challenging beliefs, pushing each other to the next level, looking for positives in life, and so on. I see that only among really successful people who sit at the same table, without any bozos present. People you spend time with are an extremely important source of your information and therefore also an important source of your motivation and creativity. You can’t live a positive life with a negative mind. In the same way, you can’t live a positive life being surrounded by negative people and participating in stupid pub debates.

    Numerous trashy internet sites

    Like every technology, internet has brought a lot of good, but also a few bad things into our lives. Just to mention a few good ones: internet has enabled us higher productivity, faster access to quality information, new ways of communication, and so on. The bad, on the other hand, is especially the fact that internet also gave everyone very easy access to shitty content and shitty information. With a single click. People are spending hours and hours on the internet browsing stupid internet sites.

    From watching porn, arguing on forums, posting hateful comments and reading tabloids to watching “funny” vines, browsing through thousands of social network statuses, and so on. Well, at the end of the day, most people consume on the internet what they used to consume only with TV, daily news, magazines, gaming consoles and pub debates. Now with the internet, everything is intensified and accelerated.

    You simply don’t want to have that kind of an infostructure in your life. Much like you want your toilet to work in your home, have nice roads without holes and bumps when you drive to your job, like you want lights in your office when it gets dark and a nice working car, why wouldn’t you want to get the same from the infostructure that feeds your mind and consequently also defines your quality of life, happiness level, competence level and potential?

    It doesn’t make any sense to fight for outstanding infrastructure and not pay any attention to your infostructure.

    Outstanding personal infostructure

    Now we know what the bad default infostructure that society has built for you looks like and how it influences your life. Something that 99 % of people use and something that’s very hard to avoid in everyday life. Why? Because people like it (demand) and everybody profits from you using the default bad infostructure. Producers, advertising companies, media houses, even your country and your neighbors (so they don’t have to be envious), everybody profits. Except you.

    Therefore, you have to put an enormous amount of energy, will and self-discipline into changing the default infostructure to a better one and regularly using it. The good news is that people have also built and created the good part of the infostructure, available to you with one click. Unfortunately, the masses just don’t use it as much as they use the mainstream media, so it takes a little bit more effort to surround yourself with the right content. That’s the beauty of today’s world: you have choices and you have the power to decide what you’ll consume. Fast food or quality stuff.

    To be fair, there are temptations every hour of every day, fighting for your time, attention and money, trying to make you to go back to the default bad infostructure. But you have to be strong. You have to make the right choices most of the time (let’s say 95 %). You can never completely run away from a bad infostructure (there’s always a movie or a TV show you really can’t miss). But you can definitely build yourself an outstanding system for consuming and managing information that will help you achieve your goals and become the best version of yourself.

    Here’s how your infrastructure should look like:

    Books and carefully selected blogs and magazines

    By far the best text source of knowledge and information are still books. You should read at least one book per month. Even better if you read one book per week. Some people read one book per day. You can take a speed-reading course and join a “one book per day” club. I should do that. An average person spends hours in front of the TV every day. Imagine if all that time were spent on reading top books.

    I guarantee that if you read a quality book per day, then you will definitely become a lean, mean, creative knowledge machine in a year. And it never takes a year to get obsessed with reading. In a few months of regular reading habits, you’ll automatically start reading a book every time someone in the family turns on the TV, simply because you’ll see and experience all the benefits of reading.

    What about other reading material? Well, the general rule is that you acquire a lot more useful knowledge by reading a quality book than by reading dozens of blog posts. Nevertheless, some blogs are pure gold (like this one :). You should find those rare ones and follow them. The same goes for magazines. You can find magazines of really high quality in some industries and for some topics, while for others not so much.

    Always follow the rule to go for the best (knowledge) and forget the rest.

    Before you buy a book and start reading it, check the reviews and the table of contents. Make sure the book is really something that will help you advance in life. Maybe you can read a summary of the book and then decide. The idea is that by reading a book, you “download” an upgraded software version of a specific topic to your brain. You must get creative ideas and learn new and better ways of doing things in life. And then do them. Apply them. Only reading will probably only bring you better language skills.

    Reading a book

    Audiobooks and carefully selected podcasts

    We all have very busy schedules. Consequently, it’s often hard to find the time to sit down and read in peace. Well, if you really want it, you can make it. Anyhow, audiobooks are also a good way to accelerate your learning. You can listen to audiobooks when you drive, wait in queues or take a walk. You can simply buy and download audiobooks to your smart phone, and listen to them when the opportunity pops up. There are more and more audiobooks available, no matter the topic you want to listen to and get educated about.

    Much like the comparison of books and blogs, the same goes for podcasts compared to audiobooks. There are only a few podcasts that are really good and useful. The reason for that is probably the fact that most podcasts are free. And as we said, because people love to consume useless information (demand), other people (producers) are producing tons of useless content (because as a producer, you have to listen to the markets). Therefore, you have to put in the effort and break through all the bad content in order to find the best one.

    MOOCs and educational videos

    Massive online open courses have become an extremely important source of learning for successful people. The good news is that you can find many quality courses, even from the best universities like Harvard, MIT and the best worldwide experts from many industries and life areas. You can follow the selected material at your own pace, you’re usually connected online with a group of peers who try to acquire the same knowledge as you, and so on. In short, it’s a great way to learn from the best.

    The bad news is that the majority of people who subscribe to MOOCs never really take and finish the course. They only subscribe and participate in a lecture or two at the most. Some research shows that only around 2 % finish the courses they subscribe to. Well, to be honest, it’s not easy to finish an online course. It takes effort, self-discipline, motivation, there’s no teacher to motivate you etc. It’s much easier to turn on the TV and watch a reality show than to listen to an open course. But those 2 % are the ones who do advance in life while other people stagnate. It’s what separates successful people from average ones. You have to decide for yourself. The trick is that the hard road becomes easy with time and the easy road becomes hard.

    Besides MOOCs, you can find many motivating and educational videos online. When you have only 20 minutes to do something useful or when you’re waiting at the doctors, you can plug in your earphones and watch a talk online that will help you with your goals and progress in life. There’s so much useful content online, you just have to put in the effort to find it and avoid all the crap.

    Seminars, lectures and carefully selected conferences

    An important part of your infostructure should also be seminars, lectures and a few carefully selected conferences that you visit as an individual as well as for business purposes (you should only work for a company that’s prepared to invest into your knowledge). Sometimes even advancing in formal education makes sense. The main problem with previously mentioned MOOCs is that you can get bored easily, especially if you’re not an introvert. Being in a group of people with the same goal and with dates and times set in advance in the real, not virtual, life helps a lot with motivation and self-discipline. And you can make new business and personal connections more easily.

    This is why you should make offline seminars and lectures an important part of your infostructure, especially if you encounter problems with self-discipline behind a computer. Conferences can also be useful sometimes, but more or less for motivational purposes, networking and having fun. If you go to too many conferences, you often start wasting your precious time. Here’s why.

    A mastermind group and a mentor

    The most important part of your infostructure should be your mastermind group and your mentor(s). Your mastermind group are all the people you ask for advice and go for important information from your industry, about life, and so on.

    Your mastermind group are your trusted coworkers, hopefully your boss, your ambitious and educated friends as well as the best lawyers, doctors and consultants you can still afford. People that help you grow, progress and advance in life.

    Part of your infostructure system should also be your personal mentor. You should always have a personal mentor. Someone who pushes you, helps you to focus, does introductions to help you expand your professional network and directs you to the right information resources. Instead of gossiping in the pub and complaining about life, brainstorming about your next move in life with the right mentor could change your life forever.

    Group discussions (online and offline)

    Besides all the hateful comments on the internet and useless forum arguments, there’s also a positive side to group discussions. You can find many useful forums and communities online and offline. They should be an important part of your infostructure.

    We love to belong and being part of a community enhances your desire and discipline to learn and acquire new knowledge. Therefore, online forums and offline meet-ups can be a great way to learn and to meet new people with the same interests as you. Again, you have to very carefully select where to join and where to invest your energy. If the quality of information starts to decline, you shouldn’t have any emotional problems finding new better groups.

    Other resources

    There are, of course, many extremely useful internet sites, eBooks and other resources you can find online (and offline) with only a few clicks. If you have high enough standards for what kind of content to consume, you’ll be fine. Just remember that you become what you consume. So go for the best and forget the rest.

    The process of consuming information

    The sources (specific media) where you go get information and how you get it (type of media) is a system you set as part of your infostructure. As already mentioned, even if you don’t build your own system consciously, your environment (family, society etc.) has built a system for you. The other part of the equation is when, how often and for how long you consume information as well as how you manage what you’ve read. It’s called the process, and the purpose of the process is to help you with self-discipline and to stay away from the default bad infostructure.

    Here are the general recommendations for the process (and also system) you should set for yourself for acquiring and managing knowledge:

    • Go for the best (knowledge), forget the rest. Carefully chose what you consume. Help yourself with reviews, summaries etc. before you really bite into anything. Sometimes the best knowledge is a best-seller book, other times a blog post you find after hours of browsing.
    • Especially consume information that you can apply to your life and then apply it. At the end of the day, knowledge is not power. Applying knowledge is. When reading material, you should get new creative ideas or ideas for how to do things differently.
    • If possible, do a mind map or structure the new acquired knowledge in some other way after reading specific material. Connect the new acquired knowledge with what you already know. Write down the best new ideas from the material and try to come up with your own new ideas.
    • If you start reading something and you figure out it has no value for you (nothing new), stop reading it. It sounds funny but for most of people, it’s not an easy thing to do. We have the natural psychological tendency to finish what we start. For example, you rarely leave a theater, even if the movie sucks. Don’t do that. If the material sucks, move on. Don’t move on because a page loads for a second longer than you expected, but because of the bad quality.
    • Don’t read the material you already know. People have a tendency to read the stuff they already know over and over again. Because it’s easier. Don’t do that. The exception is if you’re refreshing your knowledge or revising material.
    • Read materials from very different areas you’re interested in and try to combine the knowledge in new ways. That’s called creativity. Don’t consume material only from one topic or industry. Be a curious human.
    • Try to structure the most important knowledge you have in your own presentations, blog posts, lectures etc. Teaching others is a great way to reinforce and structure the knowledge you possess.
    • Consume more difficult subjects when you’re well rested and lighter material when you’re already tired. You have to push yourself, but don’t push yourself over the limit. An important part of acquiring knowledge is that you enjoy it.

    And a few recommendations regarding the limits of the process:

    • Read something positive and motivational the first thing when you wake up.
    • Don’t go to sleep if you haven’t read at least one page that day.
    • Read for at least one hour per day.
    • Read at least one book per month.
    • Take at least one day per month only to upgrade your competences. Mark a no-interruptions day in your calendar and focus just on learning.
    • Go to one educational seminar or do one MOOC at least once every six months.
    • Go to one motivational conference at least once a year, especially for motivational purposes.
    • A good way to learn is while you earn. Your work should always be slightly more demanding than your skills, so you have to learn while you work. Also make sure to work at a company that’s prepared to invest in your knowledge, if you aren’t your own boss.
    • Limit mental masturbation (consuming useless content, social networking etc.) to 5 hours per week at the most.
    • Sharing is caring. Share and spread good information. People desperately need it.

    Well, reading can also mean watching, listening or participating in a group discussion.

    Sharing information

    An important part of infostructure is also sharing information, not only consuming it. The first rule is that you should produce only quality content. The world is already polluted enough with shitty content. So no hateful comments, no gossiping and talking about reality shows.

    You should become a human beacon of positive and quality information and knowledge.

    The second rule is that sharing is caring. If it’s not exactly a trade secret, you should share quality information with people. There’s this karma rule regarding knowledge. The more knowledge you share, the more knowledge you get. But also don’t have any constraints to charge for your knowledge.

    You should be aware that in the information age, you share information and content all the time, with every move you make behind your computer and, of course, every time you open your mouth. Every e‑mail, every social media update, every blog comment and content recommendation is part of your infostructure. Much like you should be very careful about the content you consume, so you should carefully watch what you share

    At the end of the day, what comes out of your mouth is more or less determined by what goes into your mind.

    Practical example

    My personal infostructure

    Now let’s get on the practical level. Let’s look at my own personal infostructure, the system of how I get information and how I handle it. First of all, I follow the asset-light living philosophy, so I have everything digitalized and own no physical books, magazines, CDs or any other material (except an exercise book for language learning). An important part of my infostructure are also my digital brains.

    I buy books on Amazon. I have a Kindle eReader and a Kindle app on my smartphone, tablet and PC. I try to read at least one book per week. Books are my primary source of acquiring new knowledge. The only magazine I read is the Harvard Business Review.

    Before I buy a book, I read the summary. I use Blinkist for book summaries and, from the bottom of my heart, I can say that it’s a really awesome app. If I like the summary, I buy and read the book. Next to that, I try to read at least one book summary per day. I read books/summaries at every opportunity I have. When I wake up, before I go to sleep, when I wait in lines, when I have a few minutes to waste, I open the Kindle app or Blinkist and I start reading.

    My Infostructure
    My favorite apps

    I use Feedly as a RSS app for the few blogs I’m subscribed to. I used to be subscribed to more than 100 blogs but I felt overloaded. Now I’m subscribed only to a few really good blogs from different niches (startups, internet marketing, personal development, productivity …). To be honest, I often run out of time to read the blog posts and I don’t put pressure on myself to read all the blog posts. I have no problem with having many unread blog posts as long as I read books on a daily basis. I used to be a big fan of reading apps, like Flipboard, etc., but now they’re more or less no different from reading the daily news. So again, I go back to books.

    I use Audible for audiobooks. I listen to audiobooks when I walk, wait in a queue and sometimes when I’m driving (if I’m well rested). I also listen to audiobooks when I’m doing the dishes and other chores. I don’t really listen to podcasts, except to Tai Lopez sometimes (or similar authors).

    MOOCs are an important part of my infostructure. I regularly buy courses on Udemy. I’m subscribed to Lynda, Threehouse and Tutsplus, especially now when I’m leveling up my IT competences. As a source of motivational talks, I watch TED Talks from time to time.

    I don’t watch TV at all. I don’t listen to the radio. I don’t read the daily news. I don’t participate in useless debates. And I don’t visit useless internet sites. I do watch TV shows from time to time, but with an upper limit of 3 hours per week (except when I’m ill and can’t do anything else than stare at either a TV screen or a wall). I’ve turned my social networks into a source of quality content. I do visit 9gag from time to time. That’s my weak point, I guess. When in any kind of dilemma, my philosophy is to go back to quality books. An even more important part of my philosophy is to apply the acquired knowledge and experience it for myself.

  • The happiness index and the happiness chart

    If your body gets hurt, you feel physical pain. One of the roles of physical pain is to tell you what not to do, for example to not hit your head against the wall over and over again or play with fire. Besides having many other functions, emotions can also play a pretty similar role. They can tell you whether you’re on the right path, if you’re following your life vision and what your whys are (even if your emotions are repressed and you aren’t even aware of them) or if you’re going against yourself, marching in the wrong direction and being in the wrong environment with the wrong people.

    The compass is simple. A longer period of positive emotions shows that you’re going in the right direction, while negative emotions (anger, dissatisfaction, sadness…) warn you that you aren’t on the right path; negative feelings could be a signpost that you aren’t on the path that’s meant for you. If you are accompanied by constant negative emotions, it means that your soul is suffering.

    Just as a reminder, being on the wrong path is one of the options why you are experiencing negative feelings, but there may be many other potential reasons. You must carefully analyze yourself and find out what the real source of your negative feelings is. For example, besides being on the wrong path, cognitive distortions can also cause you to have constant negative feelings. You may be on the right path and just think too negative. But now let’s get back to being on the wrong path.

    The good news is that your emotions sense something is wrong and that you aren’t going in the right direction way before you can arrive at the same conclusion with your rational and analytical mind. It’s called instinct. Something either feels right or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t feel right and you still do it, you usually go against yourself and bring misery and unhappiness into your life. Therefore, your emotions are a great predictor of your future and your quality of life.

    • If you know you aren’t with the right person, but you still stay in a relationship just because you’re afraid to be alone, you’re going to be miserable.
    • If you sense that your bosses aren’t running the company professionally and that it’s just a matter of time before things go south, but still don’t do anything about it (search for a new job), you’re going to feel miserable.
    • If you’re driving in a car with a lunatic and you don’t have control, you won’t feel good because you feel that there’s a great probability that something dangerous will happen. But in real life, you have control in the most of situations if you only listen to your emotions, are aware of your personal power and you act.
    Happiness Index
    Happiness Index, Source: Agile trail

    Happiness and productivity

    If you’re happy, you’re more productive (some studies show you’re around 12 % more productive), you’re more optimistic and have higher level of motivation, you nurture relationships better at home and at work, and you have no problems with expressing gratitude, you are more innovative and creative. You can also enter the workflow without distractions more easily and are more committed to your goals. You also help to create better working or home environments. Nevertheless, there are several issues we have to address, because things aren’t that simple.

    First of all, we all love to ignore our emotions and what we really want. Maybe you’re afraid, maybe you’re clinging to safety, maybe you aren’t aware of your personal power, maybe something else. But if we take one step back, you most often aren’t even consciously aware of how you feel throughout the day, you don’t pay much attention to your emotions, you just get mad at your spouse or a coworker, or become grumpy in a traffic jam or whatever, but you don’t ask yourself why; in that case, you unfortunately don’t live, you only exist. You may even be a zombie. So the first important rule is to regularly and systematically monitor your emotions and become aware of them. Then ask yourself why.

    The second thing is that there are three areas for monitoring your emotions. One is your home environment. If you don’t have loving and caring personal relationships and don’t feel home at home, you can’t feel happy in life. Home should be like your temple of positive energy, emotional security and deep relationship bonds with people you love the most.

    Then we have the working environment. You spend one third of your life at work, so you must have good relationships there (do you have a best friend at work?), you must do meaningful work and fit into the company culture. You can’t be happy in life if you hate your job.

    Last but not least, you’re here to grow and enjoy life. You can’t be happy if you aren’t progressing from your real to your ideal self and if you aren’t enjoying life in the moment (while having realistic expectations). The bottom line is that you have to monitor your emotions in all three areas, and if one area is suffering, all areas are suffering.

    1. Your home environment
    2. Your work environment
    3. You

    And the third thing is that our emotions are complicated. They aren’t so easy to understand. If you decide to pay attention to your emotions, you’ll have to spend a lot of time dealing with self-analysis and how to live a life honest and true to yourself. It may seem that everything is in order in your life, but you may be totally unhappy and not even aware of it. When you decide to really pay attention to your emotions, you must start living life with courage and full of love towards yourself and others, and always be truthful to yourself. No dishonesty. It’s hard work but it pays off.

    Even if our emotions are complicated, there are two simple exercises you can do every day, as the first steps towards better understanding yourself and how you feel – they’re called the happiness index and the happiness chart.

    The happiness chart

    There’s a really simple method of monitoring your emotions and doing basic emotional accounting. It’s called the happiness chart. The main advantage/point of the happiness chart is to never forget about yourself or lose awareness of how you’re really feeling, even if you’re very busy. You put yourself first. Many times, if you aren’t super happy, angry, depressed or feeling some other extreme emotion, you just go through the day like you’re used to. Some people smile because they’re used to it, some people are grumpy all day because they’re used to it, and so on. You wear a social mask out of habit. But you never know what you’re really feeling and why. That’s existing, not living; that’s being a zombie.

    With the happiness chart you will:

    • Always be aware of your emotions
    • Have early alerts for things are going in the wrong direction
    • Easily communicate your emotions with others (spouse, team etc.)
    • Have a basis for further analyzing your emotions further
    • Link your happiness level to your productivity level and see how happiness influences your day
    Happiness Index Calendar
    Happiness Index Calendar, Source: Agile Trail

    The idea is pretty simple. You have an uncomplicated chart with different indicators showing how happy you are. Every day, when you wake up, go to sleep or while working, you put an indicator on the chart, marking how you’re feeling.

    You have three charts on which you indicate the happiness level every day:

    • Me (that you share with yourself)
    • Intimate relationship (that you share with your spouse)
    • Work (that you share with your team)

    It makes sense to engage other people to use the happiness chart, of course. For example, you also ask your spouse to mark their level of happiness on the chart and when the mark from you or your spouse goes below a certain level, it’s time to talk and communicate more intensively about what’s going in the wrong direction and why.

    After marking your happiness level on the happiness chart, you should ask yourself four questions:

    • Mark how happy you are (at home, in a relationship, at work etc.) on a scale from 1 to 10. Why the x number? Watch out that you aren’t always in the average (5, 6, 7, 8). If you are, use only 1, 2, 3 and 9, 10 as a scale. Because you’re either happy or you aren’t. You can even simplify it with three smiley symbols: :) , :| and :(
    • What feels right at the moment?
    • What feels the worst or wrong right now?
    • What should I do to increase my happiness?

    When you have your answers to all four questions that should be enough material to do a retrospection (maybe at the end of the week or your sprint), where you answer three additional questions:

    • What should I start doing in my life?
    • What should I stop doing in my life?
    • What should I continue doing in my life?

    The most important thing while using the happiness index and the happiness chart is to be really honest and true to yourself. If you’re lying to yourself about your feelings, you repress them and ignore them. But they’re like an evil monster that starts growing if you ignore it. The evil monster keeps growing in you and will come back in times and places you least expect (you start destroying your relationships, become depressed etc.). Therefore kill the monster while it’s still small. The happiness chart will be the first to tell you when a small monster is born. Pay attention to your emotions, because they matter the most!

  • Living in the present moment

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

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

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

    Past Present Future
    Positives

    Negatives

    		 (moderate) Hedonist

    Fatalist

    		 Goal-oriented

    Afterlife rewards

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

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

    Possessing Zen Buddhist wisdom

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

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

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

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

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

    Zen wisdom for coping with everyday problems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    • Meditation
    • Breathing control

    Daily Meditation

    Meditation

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

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

    Learn how to breathe properly

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

    1-4-2 Formula

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

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

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

    Belly Breathing

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

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

    Thinking like a Stoic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Reframing

    Optimal thinking, cognitive reframing and holding your frame

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

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

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

    Paying attention and satisfying your needs

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

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

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

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

    List of all the things you enjoy

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

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

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

    General rules of personal happiness

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

    Have enough margin on a daily basis

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

    Here are some ideas for increasing margin in your life:

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

    Exercise regularly

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

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

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

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

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

    Stay fit to have great sex

    Have deep connections and socialize

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

    Have deep connections and socialize enough with:

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

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

    Work on something meaningful

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The path matters, not the end

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

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

    Trust yourself and have faith in life

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

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

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

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

    Have positive thoughts

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

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

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

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

    Additional ideas for living in the present moment

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

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

  • Positive orientation towards your past

    We know three time zones – the past, the present and the future; all three time zones very much define your life, from who you are to where you were, where you are and where you’re going. The renowned psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who was also responsible for the (in)famous Stanford Prison Experiment, found that the way you orient yourself towards your past, present and future defines your level of success and happiness. His suggestion is that you calibrate your outlook on time to improve the quality of your life.

    You have two options for your orientation for every time zone (past, present, future). You can focus on the positives or the negatives from your past. You can be a hedonist or a fatalist in the present. And for your future, you can be goal-oriented or oriented towards post-life rewards, like going to heaven.

    The best combination for improving your life is having a positive orientation towards the past, being a moderate hedonist in the present and being goal-oriented towards the future; but not so much goal-oriented towards the future that you also live in the future and forget to enjoy the present. That way, the past gives you strong roots and foundations, your present gives you feelings of personal power and proactive behavior, and your future gives you the wings to seize all the things you want in life.

    Past Present Future
    Positives

    Negatives

    		 Hedonist

    Fatalist

    		 Goal-oriented

    Post-life rewards

    Any other combination gives much worse results. If you’re focused on the negatives from your past, you hinder yourself with anger and depression and can’t act in the present, if you’re a fatalist in the present, you never act and you place all your freedom and personal power into the hands of others, and being oriented only towards post-life rewards doesn’t give you any ambition to fulfill your own desires and needs. You must also be careful to not be too big of a hedonist in the present, not thinking about the future at all, or be too goal-oriented, not enjoying the present at all. The latter only brings anxiety and a potential burnout into your life.

    If we focus more on the past now, the question is how to switch your orientation towards your past (from negative to positive), especially to see all the positive things that happened to you, not only the negatives.

    There are four things that can help you have a more positive orientation towards your past, if you have any struggles with that (I hope you had such a nice past that you don’t, but many people do have struggles). Here they are:

    1. Accepting your starting point and being honest with yourself about your limitations
    2. Having a list of personal strengths
    3. Having a list of your past accomplishments
    4. Having a list of things you’re grateful for

    Accepting your starting point

    If you had a good starting point in life, accepting your starting point is the easy thing to do. The shittier the starting situation you had in life, the harder it may be to accept it. The most important part of your starting point is how much sense of emotional security you have and how much love and affection you received, especially from your mother from when you were born to up to five years of age or so.

    Well, it all contributes to the feeling of emotional security – the relationship with your parents, the relationship between them and other primary family members, how stable your environment was at an early age, and so on. Let’s also not forget about the quality of the genes you got and the intelligence level you inherited (nonetheless, this can be developed to a certain extent later on with hard work).

    Then we have upbringing. There’s a strong correlation between how much energy your parents invested into your upbringing and your potential for success. The more they read to you, took you to museums, music festivals, art shows, sports games and the more they encouraged your hobbies and confidence, the more talents you could develop and the better picture you got of how the world works and all the possibilities.

    If they were too critical, they may have hindered your self-esteem forever; if they never let you overcome challenges completely by yourself, you may feel that you always need someone to push you to do something. Their behavioral patterns for money, running a household, diet and so on, their values and beliefs more or less became a part of your personality, also influencing your destiny.

    On top of that, we also have your family’s wealth and their social network, the quality of formal education, the country you were born in, market and social trends, political and economic stability, the technological development level of your country, demographic trends, cultural inheritance and many other factors that define your starting point. Where you were born and to whom are two of the biggest advantages you can have in life.

    You starting point may be great, it may be average or it may suck. You can’t change your past, the only thing that you can do is accept it. The good news is that in your adult life, you have the power to change many things. Your starting point may somehow limit your potential, but only to a certain extent. If you take full responsibility for your thoughts, words, emotions, attitude and actions, you can achieve a lot in life, no matter how tough your starting point was. But how can you accept your starting point?

    If your past was really traumatic, one way to deal with it is cognitive psychology. With emotional accounting, you can identify cognitive distortions or negative thoughts that influence your dark perception of life and yourself, and correct them. Besides that, there are many other tools for building emotional stability that are more or less scientific, for example psychotherapy, meditation, transactional analysis, trauma release exercises, yoga and many other methods. You have to search and try different options and find the right tool, the right fit that can help you the most with managing your emotions.

    If you hadn’t had such a harsh and traumatic past that you need to deal with it with professional help, but still have a hard time making peace with it, let’s look at some less scientific and lighter tools and techniques that can help you see your past more positively.

    Seeing what you did get, not only what you didn’t

    The first step you can make is focus on the positives. You cannot change what happened, only how you view it. Your past cannot be changed and it may never be forgotten, but it can always be used. No matter how bad your starting point was, there must be positive things you got, be it on the physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual or material level. You should be focused on the thing you did get, not only on what you didn’t. There are, of course, big differences in starting points, but nobody gets everything and nobody gets nothing. Try to find the things that you got, the things you’re proud of, the lucky parts of your past that you’re grateful for. Add them to your gratitude list (more about that at the end of the article).

    Your job is to diminish the gap

    You have three missions in this life. One is to enjoy life, the second one to contribute (create value) and the third to personally grow, to become the best possible version of yourself. Personal growth is nothing but diminishing the gap between your starting point and who you want to become (your ideal self). Obviously the worse your starting point and the bigger your ambitions, the bigger the gap. But that’s the job you have to do, that’s your mission.

    The bigger the gap, the bigger the opportunity for you to grow. The bigger the gap, the more demanding the level you’re playing the game of life in. Consequently, you can become much more skillful and resourceful.

    At one point, you realize that you only have two choices in life – the blue or the red pill. You can either feel sorry for yourself for the rest of your life or you take full responsibility for your life and how things are. If you have emotional issues, you talk to a therapist, if you want to progress intellectually, you read, do math or whatever, if you have bad relationship patterns, you read everything about relationships and commit to becoming an authority on how to excel in relationships, if all of your ancestors were fat and you inherited genes that make you gain weight faster, interrupt the unhealthy pattern and become obsessed with being totally fit and living a healthy lifestyle. Whatever it is, you have to take responsibility and deal with it at some point. As I’ve already mentioned, that’s one of your missions in this life, something that life expects from you.

    You also have to know that accepting your past is not a one-time event, it’s a process. It’s a process of ups and downs; the harder the past, the longer the process with all its highs and lows. But it can be done. If we look at the bottom line, your past may shape your present, but it can’t control it.

    Having a realistic perspective of wealth

    Your family’s wealth is, of course, a very important part of your starting point. But you must have realistic perspective of where you stand. Usually people are in a much better position than they think. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have ambitions to earn more and acquire more wealth in the future, but when we’re talking about the inherited wealth and your family’s wealth, you should know where you stand.

    These figures may not be totally accurate, but just so that you get the general picture and a feeling of how poor the word really is. If you have around 2,200$ in the bank, you’re in the top 50% of the wealthiest people in this world. If you have 60,000$ of assets, you’re among the 10% of the richest adults in the world and if you earn 25,000$ or more annually, you’re in the top 10% of the world’s income-earners. If you have more than 50,000$ of income per year, you’re in the top 1% of the world’s income earners and if you have more than 500,000$ in assets, you’re part of the richest 1% of the world (source: MSN Money).

    GlobalRichList may help you see your more exact wealth position. The point is: it doesn’t matter if your parents helped you financially or not, you’re probably the lucky one from the macro perspective, and you should be thankful for that.

    List of your personal strengths

    Your past is the reason behind who you are, with all your strengths and weaknesses. You may not like certain parts of your character, but you should definitely be proud of your strengths. And let me repeat that again: your strengths are a consequence of your past.

    A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor. Good times are only producing soft people. So your strengths more or less developed from the tough times in your past. The stronger you are, the more difficult situations you probably had to encounter.

    Therefore you should definitely perform a personal SWOT analysis, in which you list all your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats; you should see all the strengths you acquired as the aftermath of the battles you fought in the past.

    Last but not least, you mustn’t forget. Strength aren’t only muscles and power and being better than others at something. The strengths also mean admitting all the limitations you have, being humble and knowing also how to be interdependent relationships, and being loving and caring towards others. Love and tenderness are the biggest strengths you can have in life. To act out of love is not the same as being soft and naïve.

    List of your past accomplishments

    Your brain has a function that can sometimes protect you from dying, but often also clouds your self-image and self-esteem. What am I talking about? Your brain functions in a way that you remember bad events that happened to you much better and vigorously than good events from your past. Delivered a good speech on a stage. Okay, whatever. Delivered a bad speech. Oh, let’s really remember it, especially before speaking the next time.

    Back when humans were still living in a jungle, your brain had to make sure you really remembered everything dangerous – from meeting a tiger to touching fire. The more the world we live in develops, the fewer times you encounter life-threatening situations. Despite that, the same biological mechanism still applies, but instead of meeting a tiger you really remember all the times when you’re in a really stressful situation (like public speaking or whatever) or you failed at something that caused you a lot of emotional stress. Your brain, together with all the strong negative emotions, remembers those moments very well and tries to protect you from doing the same thing again. That is also why comfort zone is so cozy.

    On the other hand, all your achievements, moments of success and victories are not that special because they aren’t life-threatening. So there’s no need for remembering them. You tend to quickly forget about all your past victories, especially in the long run. In the short term, victories encourage you to achieve even more and boost your self-esteem, but when the first failure comes, you can quickly forget about all the past victories you achieved and see only your past failures.

    A good solution for focusing your brain on the right things is to have a list of your past accomplishments. When your self-esteem goes down or you feel bad after a failure, you should look at the list, just to remind yourself that you’re a winner and that you have many past accomplishments. Every single person on the planet has bigger or smaller accomplishments in their lives that they can list and that can definitely help them see the past in a more positive way.

    Gratitude list

    Gratitude list

    The last technique that can help you to see your past more positively is a gratitude list. Many times, you simply forget how much you already have and all the things that you can be grateful for.

    Gratitude shifts your focus from what your life lacks to the abundance that’s already present. Research in psychology has shown that being thankful makes you happier and healthier, it reduces stress and makes you stronger and more resilient. If you remind yourself what you are grateful for every morning, it will definitely increase your level of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, optimism and energy in everyday life.

    If you don’t know what to be grateful for, here are some ideas. You can be grateful that you woke up this morning, breathing and with a heartbeat. Life itself is a precious gift. You can be grateful for your health, spouse, family, friends, the employment or business you have, the value you’re able to create, your genes, looks, the outdoors, the technology you can use, the things you own, food and shelter, free time, things you enjoy and so on. If you need additional ideas, you can find many good ideas online, simply search for things to be thankful for in life, although it’s much better if you write them down straight from your heart.

    By practicing everyday gratitude, you’ll put your life into a more positive perspective, you’ll realize how much you already really have and you’ll definitely accept your past more easily. With your personal gratitude list, you’ll constantly be aware of the wonderful things in your life.

    It may be hard to begin, but you should see gratitude as an emotional muscle that will grow and strengthen with use. There’s always something to be grateful for, so make your list. Last but not least, the more gratitude you have in your life, the more you open yourself up for abundance, meaning getting even more excited about your future.

    If you think successful people don’t do that kind of stuff, you’re wrong. Extraordinary results demand an extraordinary way of thinking and actions, that’s a fact. Average people only read about it, successful people really do it. Let me give you an example.

    Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, sets himself annual challenges. In 2010, he committed to learning Mandarin, in 2011 to eating only animals he slaughtered himself, and in 2013 to meeting someone new each day. And guess what, in 2014 he wrote at least one well-considered thank you note every day (Source: Bloomberg).

  • Multidimensional relationships – how to build the deepest bonds possible

    A very important realization in life is that there’s no absolute good or bad. Everything has a good side and a bad side. Everything has its own advantages and disadvantages. One side may be more dominant (good or bad), but it contains at least a drop of the opposite nevertheless. Even more than that: one side cannot exist without the other. Good cannot exist without bad. Life cannot exist without death. Happiness cannot exist without sadness. These dynamics of life are best represented by the yin and yang symbols, from the very well-known Taoist philosophy.

    Yin anf Yang

    Understanding the duality of life without any absolutes can help you with at least two things. The first one is keeping your mind open. As Scott Fitzgerald said, the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. Money is good and bad. Each of your personal characteristics is a strength and a weakness at the same time. A clock can go clockwise or counterclockwise at the same time, depending on your perspective. You cannot be both at the same time, but if you change perspective, you can change the interpretation. Changing perspective can lead to either manipulation of truth or better understanding, and you should strive for the latter.

    The second thing you can take from this philosophy is understanding the bad sides of three main cognitive distortions. Understanding duality and non-absolutism can help you deal with perfectionism, all-or-nothing thinking and disqualifying the positive. No perfect thing exists in life, never has and never will. If you can only be satisfied with perfect, you’ll never be satisfied. Because of emotional dissatisfaction, you will waste your life. Maybe good enough is already a level that should bring you a feeling of satisfaction.

    You can also better understand that there’s always “all in nothing” and “nothing in everything.” Life flows somewhere in the middle, not in having it all or having nothing. Life is colorful, not black and white. And last but not least, the duality of life helps you understand that there’s always something positive in the negative. Sometimes you can see the brightest stars in the darkest night.

    Being aware of duality and absolutes can help us a lot in understanding the dynamics of life. But there’s a step further we can take, above duality. It’s the concept that brings life from a mere gray mixture of black and white to a colorful rainbow, full of different experiences and levels of connectedness. I call it multidimensional relationships, be it relationships with people, animals, nature, things and even ideas. The concept best applies to personal relationships, but there are many other situations where understanding the concept of several dimensions can help us enrich our lives.

    Stronger together

    Multidimensional relationships

    Relationships are always multidimensional and the more dimensions present, the richer and the more varied they are. You often experience or build relationships only on a few of the easiest and most obvious dimensions. But why stop at a certain point, if life is offering so much more. Only a greater awareness and a bigger investment into relationships can help you build newer and newer dimensions and thus an even stronger bond with someone over time.

    What am I talking about? If you have a one-night stand with someone, the relationship only has only one dimension – physical, and even that in a sort of a limited way. If you have a friend with benefits, there may be two dimensions – physical contact and friendship. If you also share a flat with someone like that, there’s yet another dimension, sharing resources.

    It’s obvious that we usually have the most dimensions with our chosen spouse, but even so, many people experience far from all the dimensions that they could in their closest relationships.

    Here are only some of the dimensions you can experience in an intimate relationship:

    • Tenderness and other soft physical contact
    • Erotic touch and sexual intercourse
    • Tantric and other spiritual kinds of erotic experience
    • Intellectual stimulation and information exchange
    • Emotional experience with a different palette and depth of feelings (negative and positive – see the picture below)
    • Co-development and personal growth based on common hobbies and goals
    • Sharing economic resources
    • Friendship
    • Teamwork and mutual support in life and in career development
    • Running a household or a side business
    • Joint spiritual or religious experience
    • Experiencing the world together – traveling, mountain climbing etc.
    • Having fun together – playing games, cooking etc.
    • Raising a plant, an animal or a child etc.
    • Socializing in larger groups and helping other people together etc.

    With other people, outside your intimate relationships, there may be fewer possible dimensions, but many people still neglect numerous dimensions, consciously and unconsciously, consequently hindering the relationship potential and growth potential of both people involved.

    List of emotions
    Source: Plutchik

    For example, many people focus only on a few dimensions when raising a child. Be it education or play or something else. But there are so many dimensions you can build in a relationship with your kid. A physical dimension, like doing sports, cooking healthy food etc., a strong emotional bond and security, an intellectual connection, passing on all your experience and knowledge, letting the kid have their own opinion and go their own path, and so on. There are so many relationship dimensions you can experience, if you only open your mind and let love be the center of it.

    The good thing about multidimensional relationships is that in most cases, you don’t lose anything if you give more. If a relationship is built on the right foundations (respect/boundaries and love/positive energies), the more you give, the more you receive. For example, if you’re happy and you put someone in a good mood, so they’re also happy, there’s a high probability that you’ll simply stay happy afterwards, assuming the relationship is not of an abusive nature.

    The key thing is that when you’re spending time with someone, you should try to activate as many dimensions as possible. For example, if you’re playing with your kid, don’t let it be only play. It can also be an opportunity to enrich your emotional bond and the child’s inner sense of security, provide intellectual stimulation, and so on. You should try to activate as many dimensions as viable, possible and sensible in a specific relationship.

    If you go mountain climbing with your spouse, there can again be many dimensions you can experience. It’s a physical experience of taking care of your body, it can also be a healthy competition, intellectual bonding, emotional bonding (if there are any thrills on the path), maybe you can even have sex at the top of the mountain. The idea is that you don’t climb a mountain just to kill time with someone, but to engage as many dimensions of a relationship as possible in everything you do.

    In order to do that you have to, of course, turn off your phone, let all your worries go, and completely focus on the present and on a specific person or group. In a relationship, you have to be present with your body, heart, mind and soul. Fully present. Otherwise you’re blocking some of the dimensions and thus killing the relationship potential.

    While doing that, don’t forget that relationships are a two-way street. The more you invest, the more the other person should invest. The more dimensions you try to activate, the more dimensions the other person should try to activate. There are many people out there who will only try to take advantage of your surplus investment. Thus you also need to know how to set boundaries and you need to have as realistic expectations as possible. Some people don’t have the capacity to go really deep, others just won’t. That’s why you need to find your perfect fit and work hard from there.

    Relationship and trust - Multidimensional relationships

    Other multidimensional perceptions

    Not as important as personal relationships, but still a powerful concept, is having a multidimensional perception of other things in life. The more usage you can see in something, the more valuable that thing becomes to you or, even more than that, you understand it better. Let’s look at a few examples.

    For example, money can have many functions alongside the standard four, namely being a medium of exchange, a measurement of value, a standard of deferred payment and a store of value. Based on these standard four functions, you can see it as only something you work for in order to buy goods after earning it. But to understand it better, you can also see money as an idea – a piece of paper with numbers. Money can also be an employee that works for you (investing) – for example to make more money or to realize your ideas. Money can also be a way to contribute to the society (donating). You can also see money as the measurement of your value added to markets. You can see money as energy or an interpreter of your mindset. You can see money as a generator of social clusters, and so on.

    You can see your home as only a place where you come after work or whatever. But there are so many dimensions you can add. You can see it as a meditation temple, an art project, a place where you hang out with your loved ones, a place of security, the biggest financial investment of your life, an opportunity to meet new people in a neighborhood, a joint project with your spouse, and so on. Home can have many different dimensions and can thus hold different meanings to you.

    As for the third example, you can start your own business only to get rich or make extra money. But you can also start a business to bring your ideas to life, to employ people and develop yourself as a boss; you can start a business to have better control over your time, you can see it as a tax shield/shelter or a vehicle for leveraging other people’s money. There can be many dimensions how you see your business and it can serve you with many different purposes.

    The more dimensions you see, the clearer the picture you can have about something, what it means to you and how you can extract value from it. Even more importantly, you usually enjoy it more, it enriches you and makes you into who you really are. That’s why understanding the multidimensional side of life is so important.

    There are four options regarding your perception of dimensions:

    • You are aware of an important dimension in a relationship (good, continue building on it)
    • You are not aware of a dimension that already exists (become aware of it)
    • A dimension could exist and you know about it, but it doesn’t (build it)
    • A dimension could exist, but you are not yet aware of it (observe, read, learn)

    Since we started with duality and absolutes, we should also finish on the same note. Nothing is only good and bad, and so there’s also no pure gold in multidimensional relationships. The more dimensions that exist, the more we’re usually invested into a relationship and the more value it has for us; thus it also holds a bigger potential to hurt us once the expiration date comes. As Taoism teaches us: nothing lasts forever. But that shouldn’t stop us from living life with courage and engage with as many dimensions as possible. Nothing lasts forever, but what we’ve experienced stays, and we should be thankful for that.

  • Problem-solving mindset

    Let me tell you two stories. The first one is about my water heater. One morning I wanted to make myself a nice tasty herbal tea. There is a button (1) on my water heater that opens the lid (2), where you pour in the water (see picture below). I pressed the button and it was stuck. I couldn’t make the button unstuck and I couldn’t open the lid. I was struggling for like ten minutes until I gave up. I boiled my water using the stove, which is just a little bit more work, but I was still pissed off. My only positive thought was about how water heater is a good invention. But the important part is that I was really annoyed.

    A few minutes after my water started to boil, my girlfriend woke up and came into the kitchen. She saw what I was doing and she knew that the water heater button for opening the lid was stuck. She said to me: “Why don’t you simply pour water through the hole (3) where the water comes out?” I was like, fcuk, such a simple solution to the problem and I hadn’t been able to see it myself, because I was too annoyed with the problem to even start thinking about alternative solutions. It’s no deal but it would safe me some effort and lots of emotional energy.

    Water Heater

    The same day, a friend sent me a link to a Kickstarter campaign named Smartphone Workout Shorts – Better Than Armbands. In the past two years, I have been in the gym many times. Several times, I took my mobile phone with me. I never liked arm bands and I always had the problem of where to put my phone. It slides out of your pocket, there are many exercises with weights that can crack your screen and so on.

    I was always bitching and complaining and thinking to myself about how “uncomfortable” life can be. I wonder how I would have survived a decade or two ago without all the technology we have available now that makes our lives super comfortable (well, toilet paper was invented not early than 1857). But to get back to the point: I never even once shifted my thinking from my pain/problem to possible solutions. The lesson here is not about the product itself, but about the simple solution every one of us could think of, if we had a problem-solving mindset instead of a bitch-whine-and-complain one. Having a problem-solving mindset is how you notice good business ideas.

    Working Out Pants

    From whining to problem-solving

    The next time you encounter a problem that pisses you off and you start to bitch, whine and complain, pause for a moment. Start managing you emotions and opening your mind to creative problem-solving thinking. That is what producers do. Start asking yourself questions like:

    • How could I solve my problem in the most creative and innovative way?
    • What kind of a product or service would solve my problem? Could I build it?
    • How could I innovate my way out of this situation?
    • What are the alternative ways of achieving my goal?
    • What would happen if I do the opposite?
    • What would MacGyver do in this kind of a situation?
    • Etc.

    You can’t be focused on a problem pissing you off and negatively thinking about “how hard” your life is, and be looking for a creative solution at the same time. Bitching, whining and complaining just takes too much of your mental bandwidth. Feeling like a victim in a specific situation has never brought any good solutions and creative ideas. But on the other hand, being inventive, creative, proactive and entrepreneurial usually always leads to some kind of progress. Maybe you don’t only solve a problem for yourself, but also come up with a million-dollar idea. There is always a step you can make, if you just keep your mind open and don’t block it with negative emotions.

    Always remember the famous quote: “Your mind is like a parachute, it only works when it’s open.” Your mind being open especially means that you know how to manage your negative emotions and thoughts that are preventing you from looking for the most creative solutions.

    For example, one of the cognitive distortions is called jumping to conclusions. If your mindset when facing a problem is that nothing will work, no matter what you try, then you definitely won’t find a solution.

    Thus keep you mind open, be creative and when you whine, bitch or complain about a problem, stop for a moment and shift your way of thinking. Ask yourself: what is the optimal way of thinking in the situation and how could I creatively solve the problem; keep your mind open and start brainstorming, testing and experimenting.