Transformation

by Uli on Affirmations, Transformation Inventory

Morning Conversations

Good morning human,

who? Yes, you!

How are you today? You don’t know? You look worried. What’s up? Is the future scaring you? Don’t worry it does only look threatening from the distance. And what are you carrying on your shoulders? Oh, it’s the past. Drop it, it’s too heavy. You don’t need it as long as you stay with me.

Why don’t you leave it where it is? It will get heavier and heavier. You can’t move on like this.

Please human, why can’t you see that you have everything right here?

And why are you in such a hurry? Yeah right, slow down a bit. Take a look around. It’s nice here in the present moment. Can you see the blue of the sky? The green of the trees? This planet is here – for you too. And what are you doing? You are creating your own reality instead of appreciating this one.

The light breeze that plays in the tree tops. It is the same breeze that gives you your life energy.

I invite you to take it all in. As deep as you can. Every moment you are invited. You want to meet me more often? Don’t forget to breathe, because it is your mean of transport.

My door is always open for you. I’m here for you.The past is gone. You can remember her, she is a close friend of mine too. But we never get to meet.

And the future? Well, I’m paving your way. If you walk with me I will guide you. You want to see a map? Well, maps are something you invented. You don’t need it. All you need is to trust me.

I will hand you the right tools, I will prepare you. I will show you the direction. But only if you take the time to stay with me.

What’s up? I can see you rushing again. Only by watching you I get dizzy. You are getting lost.

Please take a moment to inhale deeply. As deeep as you can. And now again and again and again.

Here we go. Do you notice something?

Stay present, stay here.

Where are you going.

Don’t disappear.

I’m always here for you.

“The Now”

 
by Uli on Micro Habit Challenge, Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized, Writing Experiment

Writing Transformation Challenge 0.0

This is another type of challenge right here. I’m tired of all the notes in my notebook. I’m tired of scrolling through all my endless drafts. Something worthwhile needs time, yes. I got that. But by rewriting an article a hundred of rounds I might lose my original idea and in the end I risk improving for the worse.

Many times I don’t publish only because I think: “That’s not good enough.” “Somebody said this before.” “I can do better.”

Of course I can do better. But when is better good enough? A lot of times I feel like the more I’m trying to improve the more I’m destroying my own writing. I feel like I’m loosing messages that could be worthwhile for somebody.

The other day I went to a writing meetup in Munich. I always like the exchange with other writers. Only now I realize how important it is for my motivation to hear about the broad experience of all these novel authors, script writers, ‘conceptioners’ and comic scribblers.

This time I met Marie from France again and we were talking about a phenomenon: Every so often a book doesn’t get published, because the author changes his or her mind. “I heard this from many publishers.”, Marie contemplated. “You better publish quickly before you can change your mind.”, she encouraged me to silent the judge before it can execute.

The suspicion is close that I’m not brave enough. “I have the feeling you are hiding yourself.”, a couple of weeks ago a friend and potential work partner pointed out to me. And yes, it is true – I am hiding. I’m afraid to publish.

But this blog here is not about me. There are millions of people going through the same things like me – they suffer from anxiety, depression, a broken heart, insecurity, self-doubts, pms, every topic that I address … I have to stop considering my writing as ‘my baby’.

It is my baby in a way, of course. But why am I writing? I’m writing because I want to change perspectives. I change my perspective by reading books, listening to lectures and talking to people. Realistically I’m nothing more than a catalyst of what I read and what I experience in the real life.

These experiences are not unique to me. What is unique is the way everybody processes these experiences. I’m doing it in this way here. Writing is my therapy, creativity is my valve.

I most likely experience real freedom while filling an empty page with my own words. Unfortunately a state of flow is still rather an exception than a rule.

Being a writer is a gift and a curse – however I need to put myself out there in order to fulfill the purpose.

Why do I call it “Writing Transformation Challenge”? I want to develop my own writing style. But by polishing my articles to a point of unrecognizability I kill my style. With this challenge I want to see if pressure makes the diamond…

The goal is to publish a post every day the next 14 days. Day one will be tomorrow.

 
by Uli on Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

Invite the Pain – It Wants to Tell You Something

“Life is difficult.” This is the first sentence of M. Scott Peck’s book “The road less travelled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth” – for me one of the most comprehensive (and comprehensible) classics on the ‘spiritual book shelf’. I really don’t know how to rephrase this sentence. Life is filled with loneliness, misunderstandings, expectations, fear, failure and despair. This is reality. But somehow ‘society’ / us / our ‘cultural storytellers’ want to tell us something else.

We Whitewash Our Pain

Happiness became a business. Society wants to see us smile. As a result we expect to be happy all the time. And if we are not happy? We are trying to find a remedy – instantly. And how are we supposedly ‘curing’ ourselves from stress and dis-ease? How do we ‘get over’ fatigue, grief and misery? We go to retreats. We consume goods and substances. We fill our bodies but we don’t nourish our souls. We survive but we don’t sustain.

Instead of learning to integrate our unpleasant feelings we build barriers that disconnect us from our pain. Where we are meant to find connection we are closing ourselves off. Instead of facing the lessons of life we are finding comfort in distraction.

Inner emptiness, a loss of the ability of self-care, addiction and diseases are caused by this lack of connection.

Acknowledge The Pain (And Embrace The Fear)

If we want to connect with ourselves we need to connect with our pain. Or with the words of John Green (“The fault in our stars”): “Pain demands to be felt”. We don’t have to travel into former lives or visit the anacondas in the rainforest of the Amazonas to get a glimpse of what our pain feels like.

If we want to connect to ourselves we need to connect to our pain.

So, how can we deal with suffering in our life? How can we ‘humanize’ the pain demon? How do we embrace the fear?

The first step is to look into the mirror with all honesty. Firstly we have to admit that something is wrong.

Initially we don’t know much about our pain. All we feel is emptiness / a lack of purpose or motivation. Some sort of unwillingness or this huge hole we fall into every Sunday. Or a real physical pain. It can be an infection, a backache or an autoimmune disease. It can be anxiety, depression or paranoia. It can be an unbearable feeling in our chest that makes us unable to feel joy or to make a decision. It can be an enduring conflict with a family member or our partner. It can be any feeling of unease that reappears in certain situations or lasts for a period long enough to restrain our life.

Instead of running away from it – instead of distracting ourselves with scrolling through instagram, opening the fridge or escaping into a phone call with a friend, going to a party, taking drugs, rushing to work, we need to take a moment to acknowledge the pain.

Questions Are Our Tools

What do you feel?

A subtle fear of pain leaves us in a state of faint. How do we get out of this state of powerlessness?

Through the years I was looking into my pain a little deeper. I asked myself questions: “Where is the pain coming from?” “Why do I envy others?” “Why am I aggressive sometimes?” “Why do I have issues with my health?” “Why do I complain so much?” “Why do I feel empty / a lack of motivation / a lack of trust?”

I had no immediate answers to these questions, but all of a sudden I spotlighted some corners of my psyche that had never seen the light before.

At the beginning this was overwhelming. All these fears behind this pain seemed to be threatening. I preferred to keep a safe distance. But as the feeling of pain kept recurring I dared to step closer and say “hi”.

Our Fears Are Like Watchdogs

All of a sudden these big fears looked less life-threatening. As soon as I came closer the demons turned into cute dogs. I understood: Our fears are like watchdogs. They look scary from the distance, but in reality they are our friends. Incredibly grateful they are waving their tale when we finally pay attention to them.

I understood that these feelings wanted to tell me something. More than that – they wanted to show me a direction. What I didn’t know at the beginning of this journey was that these watchdogs are my guides, my mentors. They show me the changes to make and the way to go.

All the time I was so occupied with ‘avoiding the pain’ that I preferred to give away my control. Fears dominated my thoughts. What I had to do instead was taking the time to get attuned with my fears. I needed to learn the language of these watchdogs in order to gain a relationship with them.

By integrating these fears into my life I’ve started to take responsibility for my thoughts and actions. I learnt to take care of these dogs. After a while we were able to comfort each other and to withstand the hardships of life – together.

Feeling the pain opens up the opportunity to get in touch with our unconscious. We get to know our deep rooted fears. And through these fears we learn about our real desires.

What’s there? The fear of being alone. The fear of failure. The fear of decision making. The fear of making the wrong decision. The fear of choosing the wrong path in life. The fear of getting married to the wrong partner. The fear of getting hurt. The fear of hurting somebody. The fear of giving birth. The fear of missing out. The fear of not fitting in. The fear of not having friends. The fear of commitment. The fear of taking full responsibility for every action, every decision. The fear of the fear. The fear of life?

What Do You Like About Your Suffering?

When we catch a greater look at our pain we identify the fears behind it. But before we are able to walk our watchdogs we need to accept discomfort as part of the process. At the beginning we are distrustful, because we don’t speak the same language. We might only wave at our fears from the distance and duck back down. We might cling to our suffering instead of facing the fear.

Suffering has always a reason. It is something that can keep us alive, something that can accommodate us in a weird way. We get used to it. What do you like about your suffering? If you are not willing to end it, you are might be not suffering ‘enough’?

Pain is necessary in order to find new solutions. If you are not happy with a situation and you suffer so much that you can’t handle the situation anymore you need to change something. Pain is a means of transformation – if you are willing to break the barriers.

If you accept the challenge, if you deal with it you might emerge strong-minded and more self-aware from a negative experience.

It’s not about overcoming your fear. It’s about feeling it and transforming it into positive action.

Nobody Said It Was Easy

“Those things that hurt, instruct.”

Benjamin Franklin

A therapist, your friends, books or even conversations with random strangers can light you the way. But you have to walk it yourself. The secret is to have patience and persistence. Of course you need to be strong and nobody said it is easy. Nope, life is difficult.

We can read many books. We can pray, trust and believe. But we must walk. We must greet our challenges, we must get to know our demons personally and grow together.

There is no shortcut to enlightenment. There are all these crossroads. We have to choose one. Even if we get lost at times – deep inside we know the way.

 
by Uli on Transformation Inventory

Reclaiming Happiness

On a random morning a little girl grabbed my hand in the hallway. She was neither my daughter nor related to me in any other way. “Mama, unten”, she pulled my arm pointing down the stairway in anticipation. Her mom was waiting for her in front of the door together with her sister. We proceeded down the stairs with care. It took a few minutes until her mother could welcome us with a warm smile.

A “dankeschön” from this two-year-old and the blink of gratefulness in the eyes of her mother would make this start of the day a special one.

These little fingers squeezing my hands reminded me of what real happiness is. It is connection. It is understanding. It is trust. It is this feeling of being in the right place at the right time.

Happiness is being in the flow. It is merging into the presence. Being one with the moment – without any obligations. It is a moment of unity in this highly individualized world.

When was the last time you experienced a moment like this?

In Wrong Pursuit of Happiness

How many times are we wrapped up in our head? In our personal reality?

We are busy ticking off to-do-lists, achieving the next career level, finding the right partner or financial investment. We network, we ‘do business’, we socialize, but are we happy? Are we really connecting with each other? Or are we so caught up in our bright future?

“We have been taught that freedom is the freedom to pursue our petty, trivial desires. Real freedom is freedom from our petty, trivial desires.” I stumbled upon this quote the other day. Adam Curtis is talking about addiction here, but isn’t our obsession of pursuing material (or immaterial) wealth also some kind of addiction?

Instead of pursuing our real needs we are misleading ourselves with substitutions.

Are We Slaves to Our Desires?

We mistaken ‘fulfilling our petty trivial desires’ with ‘happiness’. And this is what makes us feel discontent: As long as we are only longing for satisfaction we are pursuing happiness from an ego perspective.

What do I mean by that? We are compensating our search for meaning / figuring out what we really want with substitutions. ‘Making a living’ on this planet seems to be a very big issue for us whereas an ant can easily subsist.

But ants are might be a topic for another article. Back to us: Pursuing our desires – that means we value what is ‘of use’ for us. With this attempt we bound our ability to connect with the people around us. And where we are meant to find connection we are closing ourselves off.

This is addictive behavior. All we do is consuming fast food for our soul. We fill ourselves, but we don’t nourish us. We are so busy ‘creating’ ourselves that we don’t conceive that we are already here. We think we are freeing ourselves, but in reality we trap ourselves.

Everything that is accessible has to be achieved as fast as possible. Delay of gratification outworn its significance in our society. Like an addict always looking for the next thrill we blur our senses.

In the end our desire ‘to be happy’ is what holds us back from being happy.

The Circle of Happiness

What we don’t understand is that we find happiness only by connecting with each other in the real world. Life is what happens in the hallway or on the street or at the dinner table. Life is real time experience.

The circle of happiness starts in the presence. It starts with being aware of the small moments. Being ready to connect with the outside world and the people around us at any moment in time.

Instead of aiming for a certain lifestyle we should re-discover our true values: sharing love, cultivating a sense of community, being ‘there’ for each other. ‘Creating ourselves’ should be replaced with ‘self-care’ or ‘creating healthy relationships’. This is what makes us happy.

It seems like the circle of happiness becomes a thing on this blog.

 
by Uli on Rough Diamonds, Transformation Inventory

The Beginning of Darkness

Like a monstrous burden anxiety suspends me from aliveness.

Sensory input turns into an impenetrable nebula. I can’t distinguish between me and the rest.

A painful transformation disrupts my being. My existence morphs into vacuum.

This time I don’t resist. I sit and breathe. There is only black. I stare into the nothingness.

Is this the beginning or the end?

A void is clearing my chest. The fated moment of surrender has arrived.

Something cracks with a bubbly sound. The next level is here. Subconsciousness ruptures into recognition. Presence reciprocates.

I thought I won’t make it. I thought opium would be the only tranquilizer for my perturbed brain.

But life has other plans. Effortlessly I’m peeling off the old layer. Experience updated its metaphysics.

Life had started again with a new sort of darkness.

 
by Uli on Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

Learning to Unlearn

At the beginning of this blog in summer 2017 I thought this is all about ‘learning’. My aim was to expand my toolbox in order to be more productive, more balanced, more happy (Whatever that meant to me at this point in time.). I thought: “If I’d just learnt this lifehack.” “If I’d just be able to master my mind like successful person xy.”, everything would be perfect.

I failed adapting most of productivity hacks. I couldn’t develop these ‘healthy routines’ that supposedly would project an undreamt-of-degree of happiness into my life. Nothing improved. I might got slightly more stuff done, but my overall well-being hadn’t improved. And: I didn’t have the slightest idea how I wanted to feel.

“Why do you only think black and white?”, my therapist during this time called upon my lacking self-compassion. I didn’t have a proper answer. There was only this massive wall of perfectionism sealing off my potential. I could touch it, but I didn’t know how to demolish it.

I had to dig deeper. This was for sure. What I found was a lot of pain buried deep down under my obsessive will to ‘improve myself’. Under the pain there were my strengths downtrodden by my negative thinking patterns and destructive behaviours.

My mission was not to add something to my personality, but to reveal my individual traits. These characteristics are my weapons. These are the tools that help me to fulfill my purpose in this world. Happiness or let’s call it contentment is what comes naturally with accepting and integrating these peculiarities.

My task in this lifetime is to eradicate toxic habits in order to root up my real me. This requires commitment and courage. I can’t just ‘adapt’ other peoples methods of being productive, creative or self-disciplined. I have to develop my own strategies.

What I found out was that my bad habits and my thinking-patterns are not my own. I adopted them. I’m conditioned to think in a certain way. I’m conditioned to judge, to react, to be afraid. The good news is: I have the power to change.

But how? How do I unlearn? How do I re-condition? By pausing. By observing and by questioning my behaviour and my thoughts. The following to-do’s are not necessarily consecutive, they are interdependent. You will understand why:

1. Observe Your Behaviour

The first step in our process of unlearning is to observe. By observing we create a gap between us and our actions. Things change aggregate state as soon as we look at them. Habits lose their power as soon as we catch them unattended. They move from a subconscious level to consciousness.

This is something we can integrate into our daily life. “Again I wasted my energy for some stupid shit.” So what? This realization is the type of observation we need in order to create a gap.

It doesn’t only apply to actions, but also to thoughts. If the immoderate perfectionism is lurking, we just ask him what he wants. And there it is again: The gap. As soon as you look right into the eyes of your perfectionism it loses its power.

2. Detach From Your Conditions

If I keep telling myself “Stop this stupid perfectionism” I’m narrowing this gap again. I become a victim of the characteristic that I want to eliminate.

By punishing myself my mind becomes my enemy again. My whole body gets tight. I’m falling into subconscious behaviour.

The only option is “to let go”, to detach from it. To not see it as my trait, but as something that occurs every now and then. This way I look at my supposedly mistakes and surrender. If I take them lightly I don’t get trapped again.

3. Question Your Desires

Questioning became my tool to explore my needs and get to the core of my being. I found out that I can’t know what I want, but I can feel it – if I ask honest questions and take the time to find the answer.

To stay with the example of poisonous perfectionism: I asked myself. “Why am I such a perfectionist?”. The answer is that I’m not allowing myself mistakes, because I’m afraid to not be lovable. So, the desire under my desire to be perfect is to be loved. This reveals a complete different need. My need is not to be perfect, but to be loved.

More and more it becomes obvious why all my attempts to live happily failed. By following all these notions and desires blindly I distracted myself. I cured the symtoms, but I didn’t try to heal myself.

4. Connect With Yourself

I didn’t question if what I wanted was what I really wanted or just what I was told to be wanting or what I thought could fix my lack of self-esteem.

I wanted to become somebody instead of accepting who I am. I was not able to connect with myself and find out about my real qualities. It is not possible to find purpose anywhere else apart from at the very core of my being.

5. Alter Your Habits

There is always this thin line between not being too hard on myself and becoming the person who I want to be. But after all it is inevitable to start walking on the tight-rope of self-improvement.

In order to unlearn we need to be willing to change. That’s the only reason why we should look at our behaviours, question them, detach from them and finally connect with ourselves. The next step is to do what is good for you – for your real you. And then DO IT. Alter it. Don’t do what doesn’t serve you anymore…. (I know, it’s harder said than done, but it is possible by making conscious choices!).

Through this whole procedure we reach a complete new layer of consciousness. This is how we are diving into the unknown – how we connect with the divine of our existence. This is how we enter new territory – by overcoming our old destructive behavioral patterns and reconstructing our self-worth.

 
by Uli on Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

Hintuition

What if what we want is not what we need and what we need is not what we want?

What if our happiness leads us in the right direction and not the career path we choose?

What if all we need is to smile, to give love to our surrounding and to ourselves? And that’s it.

What if everything we need will just come and what we really need will stay with us as soon as we let go?

“You are good at listening to yourself.” A friend of mine awarded me a couple of months earlier during a time, when I was not at all in tune with myself. Actually during these days I felt like I’m the worst at listening to my inner self.

I could literally see myself standing in my own way, darkening my own light. With extensive thinking I was blocking my energy channels. My intuition was not accessible. But in order to follow my path I need to follow my intuition.

I had to think about that. What is intuition? According to cambridge dictionary it is “the ability to understand or know something immediately based on our feelings rather than on facts.”

Let’s look at it from a neuroscientific perspective briefly: A situation/some sort of input stimulates our brain. This stimulus gives us access to a “library of information”. These information are stored in our system from past experiences or even transmitted from our forefathers through our DNA.

As soon as our brain accesses this library it sends us a hint. This makes us (re)act or not (re)act in a given situation. If we are hungry we eat. If we are late we hurry. And if we need to make a decision we think.

Thinking is good to a certain extend, but with a lot of thinking we easily cover up our intuition. This precious library imprinted into our genes becomes inaccessible.

With our mind we gather information about a situation whereas intuition just knows. While our mind is trying to figure out the perfect solution our intuition might already made the decision for us long beforehand. We just don’t take the time to listen.

With our busy mind we become victims of the circumstances – nothing else. If we let our thoughts control all the time we give away our true power.

We become victims of information by always trying to make the perfectly thought-through decision. What if our decision is just right there? Behind this curtain of thoughts?

Making decisions could be so easy. Arouses an idea a feeling of happiness/excitement/fulfillment? This warm feeling in the stomach that expands in the whole body? The feeling of “I just have to do it.” Then this is might be the way to go even if our mind wants to tell us something else. This is the ‘hint’.

But there they are: Thoughts and doubts tie up our intuition. And beneath this corset? There is the ‘hint’ unable to be transmitted to our consciousness.

All the thinking holds us back from experiencing. But this is how we learn – through experience. This is how we update our “intuition library”.

We can not “know” what we want, we can only feel it. We get to do what makes us happy from the core of our being, but we need to listen closely.

Am I the only one who understands this only now? I need to meditate on this. (Soon an article about meditation is overdue.)

 
by Uli on Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

The Universe Doesn’t Understand “No”

Imagine you grow a tomato plant on your windowsill. You plant the seed and a couple of days later a tiny seedling is making its way towards the sun. Would you think: “This is not a tomato plant.” ?

No, you would water and nurture it. At some point – sooner than later – this plant will carry fruits and provide you with vitamins and minerals.

I get nothing done by being busy telling myself “I’m so unproductive”. My perfectionism clearly is holding me back from growing on any level. I screw myself deeper into the spiral of negative thinking with every negative thought that I phrase.

Instead I need to focus on the progress I already made. Not even this – all I have to do is to set my intention right, the rest will follow. To rephrase this: “We learn despite of ourselves.”. This is something the wise Don Juan is pointing out in Castaneda’s learnings. (“The teachings of Don Juan”) And it is so true – to me still surprisingly true.

Right now I’m not able to make any decisions for the future. I beat myself up and up and up for being so confused and unable to set my target right. Instead I should be grateful for having many opportunities and directions to go – the decision will come by itself anyway as soon as I go along.

It is possible to project this belief on any given situation, any “subject of learning”. The limiting belief of “not having” something [love, money, health, success] is holding us back from receiving it.

This seems to be not my personal problem, but a problem of our western society. We don’t even see the wealth and the opportunities that we have. Instead we always need something more. “I have enough” is the new “I want more”.

Now I’m sitting here in the shine of the candle light. It is early morning of what we define as christmas eve over here on my end of the world. I’m still protected by the dark of the night. I’m a bit irritated, because I don’t understand how this thought could dawn me only now?

But hey, here we go again. There it is again: the limiting belief system. A healthy thought should be: “Thank you for the insight, universe (or who ever feels responsible)”.

This is another example for: “Our thoughts become our reality”. If something is not happening yet, it is still about to grow.

Let’s keep watering the plants. We can only harvest the fruits of the seeds that we sow. Instead of being afraid of creation I turn my fear into creation.

Peace out and merry christmas to everyone!