In my undoubtedly biased opinion, all profound realizations I’ve ever had, as well as any accomplishments that I feel inclined to give myself credit for, have only become possible because of my willingness to question and disregard many of those rules that others have been eager to impose on me. Needless to say, this is only part of the picture. Solely relying on breaking or bending rules isn’t likely to get anyone far in life. We also have to replace the rules we dismiss or bypass with better ones that we can either pick up or make up. And, we need to hone our ability to navigate within the framework conditions that society presents us with. For all intents and purposes, we have to adjust and calibrate our internal guidance system in order to take control of those reactive patterns that shape our everyday reality. But also, we’re well advised to do all this in a purpose-driven manner as there’s no point in doing things differently just for the sake of rebellion.
Some people, after having had a glimpse into what I do on a daily basis, turn out to have a hard time wrapping their heads around the fact that my personal approach to lifestyle design and goal attainment is indeed mostly about following the path of least resistance in the most strategic way. I don’t consider my daily schedule to be much of a secret. When someone asks me what I do, I usually don’t mind telling them. However, life is about more than just going through certain movements. To the majority of people, much of what I do isn’t necessarily obvious and totally self-explanatory, as it is based on many viewpoints and approaches that a lot of people aren’t intimately familiar with.
For instance, I occasionally point out that I haven’t taken a warm shower since August 2018. And, of course, I usually dampen the blow of this potentially irritating piece of information by clarifying that this is not due to me having an issue with personal hygiene. Every morning, I take a shower in cold spring water, which is a detail about my personal life that typically gets perceived with a certain level of amazement. To most people, even just imagining getting a full-body cleanse with ice-cold water during winter before 7 AM feels highly repelling. However, I’d wish for people to refrain from thinking about the discomfort they’d experience if they were doing the same thing. In fact, I’d greatly prefer for people to take an interest in why I do what I do and what it does for me. I don’t care if you consider yourself even remotely willing to do anything similar. Also, I don’t necessarily expect my approaches to be replicated verbatim. Instead, I want my readers to make use of the underlying concepts that my approaches are based on in order to truly benefit from the perspectives and tools of thinking that I talk about in this blog.
In my professional career as a coach, consultant, and seminar facilitator, I’ve come to get to know a lot of people on a quite personal level. I’ve met individuals who eagerly tried to make me understand how important it is for them to change their lives for the better. Others pointed out how strongly they felt about taking the next steps in order to build on what they’ve accomplished so far. In fact, many people I’ve met strongly insisted that they had already made more than one effort to get to the next level, investing quite a bit of time, money, and energy in the process. However, on some of those occasions, the way how these people talked about the attempts they had made in their past in order to create certain outcomes made me feel rather inclined to disagree. Base on the vibe I perceived, it looked like they had intended and possibly even made plans to take concrete action steps in order to reach specific objectives. Some of them had obviously followed up on at least part of their plan. However, quite often, the action steps they had taken weren’t actually suited to lead to the desired outcome. Meaning, at least in my book, that they hadn’t actually tried, but rather set themselves up for mediocrity.
Interestingly enough, for the vast majority of people it’s remarkably easy to commit to approaches that are doomed to underdeliver. However, for the same people, it can feel quite difficult to follow strategies that are likely to create results that will truly satisfy them in the long term. The thing is, in order to create outstanding outcomes on a consistent basis, we need to become comfortable with standing out ourselves. We need to grant ourselves permission to de-identify from certain patterns of normality that all of us have been deeply imprinted with. We need to acknowledge the fact that we don’t have to lose as much as we’d like to believe, simply because most people’s lives tend to be much more habitual than actually satisfying. So, we’re well advised to become comfortable with spending time outside of our habitual comfort zone in order for us to be able to create more of the results and experiences we’re looking for in less arduous ways. Which, frankly speaking, is the exact opposite of what most people have trained themselves to do.
This morning, I got up at half past four, without needing an alarm clock. I had no coffee, no tea, nor anything that contains caffeine. All I had is some water with a bit of natural rock salt added. Just like every day, it took me about three hours to finish all the tasks that are part of my morning routine. This wasn’t an exception. It’s how I’ve designed my mornings to look like. 7 days a week, 365 days per year. Although, there are days when I get up an hour earlier. To me, this requires hardly any willpower at all. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s easier for me to get in gear this early in the morning than it is for many people to get up and going several hours later.
Obviously, this is not what most people would describe as normal. Then again, what the average person considers to be normal typically leads to outcomes that are average at best. Doing things in unconventional ways helps me keep my head above the water. It helps me stay out of the field of conformity that so many people’s spirits appear to drown in. I’m by no means saying that anyone else needs to do the exact same things that I do in order to reach their purpose and live the kind of life they want to live. Still, I do urge anyone who wants to attain goals that most people wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable aiming for to adopt strategies that allow for them to be highly functional. In fact, my hope is that the content of this blog will help you put a set of strategies together that are right for you and any purpose you choose.
What I consider a life worth living is quite different from the mundane and shallow existence that my upbringing has defined as a universal standard for well-adapted functioning as a small cogwheel in the machine of society. To me, exploring the meaning of life is a lot about following through with approaches that are aimed at constantly improving, upgrading, and expanding what my everyday reality is all about. I work a lot, however, I’m not a workaholic, and I’m not a prisoner of the structures I’ve built in order to maintain the lifestyle I’ve created for myself. I live in the Austrian alps, right next to one of the largest and most beautiful wildlife reserves in Europe, making it relatively easy for me to spend time in nature on a regular basis. For most people, this is the kind of place that they only get to see when they go on vacation. So, it doesn’t come as a surprise that there’s a notable number of wealthy individuals who’ve acquired real estate and put down roots in the vicinity, alongside the people working in the hospitality industry, and, of course, the rural population that has always lived in these mountains.
Over the last decades, the strategies that I’ve either created for myself or picked up and usually customized to my needs have allowed me to spent ever more time focusing on what I actually want to do. Compared to a lot of people, I consider myself to be lucky because I essentially get paid for acquiring as well as applying knowledge and skills that I’m truly interested in. In a manner of speaking, my job is all about moving toward my personal and professional goals in ways that are aligned with my beliefs and values. The life I live today doesn’t bear any resemblance to the picture of my future that my parents painted while I grew up in Germany. And, I’m certainly grateful that, while proceeding on my path, I’ve had the privilege to work with more than a thousand people from six continents and more than thirty countries in a broad variety of constellations and capacities, allowing me to collect a range of experiences that few people can claim to have gathered.
Still, my life isn’t perfect and it certainly has never been without challenges. I occasionally point out that, given the chance to live my life again, I’d refrain from doing all the exact same things in the exact same order. I’d feel like an idiot to volunteer for reliving certain situations in my life that I never want to experience again. I mean, more of an idiot than what has to be considered an inevitable part of the human condition that we’re all imprinted with and deeply affected by on a daily basis. I like to believe that I know better now than I knew in my past. Today, I’d waste a lot less time and I’d save myself a lot of pain and trouble by making smarter decisions. I’m aware how much I’ve learned from my mistakes, however, that doesn’t mean I’d be happy to make these mistakes again. In fact, when I meet someone who takes a contradicting stand in this regard, I feel tempted to assume that this person either hasn’t lived on the edge enough, or hasn’t experienced an ample amount of shit that would have helped them build some worldly wisdom.
Needless to say, if my life had been all cozy and flawless over the last decades, I wouldn’t be writing this blog. The thing is, I couldn’t offer much of a contribution to the topics I write about, if I hadn’t made a decent number of questionable decisions and encountered a broad range of obstacles, leading to all kinds of valuable insights and experiences. Those people who keep telling you that they’ve always had a normal and mostly picture-perfect life quite usually have a distinct tendency to perceive reality through rose-tinted spectacles. To them, missing out on opportunities is not much of an issue as long as is helps them dodging risky situations and chances to fail. More often than not, these people don’t have much knowledge to offer when it comes to dealing with matters that they’ve never felt the need to get a handle on. So, becoming one of these people has never been my goal.
The way I’ve come to see it, it’s essentially impossible to move forward in life at a decent speed toward auspicious goals if you constantly hold yourself back in order to avoid taking wrong turns. So, I’m by no means eager to obsess over past mistakes. Then again, this doesn’t mean I can’t put a strong focus on making use of opportunities that either allow me to avoid pointless detours, or bear the potential to help me fail more expediently as well as draw better conclusions from those experiences I make.
Many of my articles touch upon stories and aha moments from my life, or talk about people who I’ve encountered and deemed intriguing, inspiring, or just remarkable enough to learn from. Still, this blog is not to be considered some kind of memoir. Instead, it should be perceived as an invitation that I extent to anyone interested in benefitting from those conclusions and realizations that I’ve either come up with or encountered. It is an opportunity to gain insight into my preferred takes on dealing with everyday reality as well as a chance to witness some of the experiments and experiences that I create for myself these days in order to make my life happen. In this sense, it is a collection of lessons in strategic thinking, presented in a way that’s intended to provoke your brain into making new connections. What I write about is meant to inspire you to utilize my trains of thought as mental tools and catalysts for the establishing of a more diverse as well as expedient view on your everyday reality. But also, at the same time, this blog offers me a chance to constantly improve and refine my own understanding of what I do by compelling me to find the right words that allow for my experiences and viewpoints to become accessible to others.
The articles in this blog are supposed to put only as much focus on me and my personal history as necessary in order to help clarify the points I make. My goal is to shed light on human nature from many perspectives. What’s more, I enjoy catering to the idea that all of our lives should be much more about unlocking potentials and acquiring the kind of valuable skills that the educational system has never been designed to help us master. The content I present to you is aimed to map out concepts and strategies that I take an interest in, learn about in depth, experiment with, adapt to my needs, and merge into systems that I can apply to my everyday reality. But also, to an equal extent, it’s about conveying the importance of surrendering to intuition and going down the kind of winding road that doesn’t always allow for reliable predictions about what to expect behind the next corner. And, last but not least, it’s about the freedom that comes from realizing that there’s an important choice that we should all feel inclined to make, if we like it or not.
This choice is far from complicated. We can either side with those whose lives are predominantly focused on stacking diversions in order to kill time while making questionable compromises in order to meet other people’s expectations. Meaning, we can stick to the narrative that it’s difficult to decide what else to do and where to look for alternatives. Or, we can explore the ways in which truly interesting and unique individuals approach life, many of whom we aren’t particularly likely to seek out as long our eyes are largely fixated on mainstream media and its underlying gospel of conformity. So, this second option is about becoming deeply familiar with what it means to think outside the box that our upbringing was essentially intended to confine us in, most probably not with evil intent but in order to keep us safe. Meaning that, in order to qualify as a member of the second group, we’ll need to take the perceived risk of delving into ideas and concepts that aren’t part of the map of reality that we’ve been raised to identify with.
Obviously, I cannot stop you from picking the first option. If keeping up appearances and living a life protected by the powers that shape and nurture the mental models that mainstream thinking is comprised from at its core does actually feel important and fulfilling to you, so be it. However, you might want to take into account that choosing the second option doesn’t mean that you have to change who you are. All it will ask from you is to do what’s necessary to let go of your attachment to the self-description that you’ve developed as a response to the experiences you’ve made with yourself and other people over the course of your life. In other words, embarking on this journey will urge you to consciously decide who you want to be, and push you to refrain from letting your personal history dictate your fate.