Transformation

by Uli on Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

Black, White, All Or Nothing?

Pizza or pasta? Tea or coffee? Should I stay or should I go? Over and over I catch myself paralyzed by the same thinking-pattern: I’m searching for the best solution, the perfect answer, the right decision, the only path that leads to happiness.

I beat myself up over and over again for having not enough discipline – for not being “straight” enough. If I’d just learn another language/did more yoga/became a software developer/travelled to place xy… my life would be perfect. Violently I’m pondering every possibility. The restaurant (Pizza or Pasta?) is just one venue of competition. The toughest fights I stage within myself.

“Should I start a new job?” “Should I work this or that job? “Should I travel to Portugal or Indonesia?” – to name just a few of my ridiculous first-world-problems.

Why am I struggling so much with making decisions? And why am I beating myself down for not doing the “right” things? I have a suspicion: It is all in my head! The problem is, that my mind still wants to convince me that there is one perfect decision. If I’d just consider ALL available data I couldn’t go wrong. But you know what? There is no such thing like “all data”. How can we know the outcome of a decision in advance? How do we know who we are going to meet, who might changes our “path” in an irreversible way? How do we know which outlook awaits us behind the next curve of this windy road called life?

A lot of times I’m trying so hard to make the “right” decision that I’m loosing sight of what I actually want. Sometimes I want none of the things, I think I want. 

My own thoughts keep me trapped somewhere between past and future –  but for sure they hold me back from the now. Often I’m loosing contact with the present moment completely. And wait a minute – this moment is all that we have!

It is time for me to really accept that there is no “right” decision – for sure not when it comes to choosing pizza or pasta, but what about the “real” decisions? Where do I want to live? Should I change my job? Should I quit? Travel? Get pregnant? Break up? Get married? Stay single? And what exactly should I do?

The word “should” already implies that the answers to these questions often enough are not mine. They are the answers of society, my family, my friends or my “peer-group”. (if this is a word)

The truth is that we have to create our own reality by walking our own way. As long as we are searching for the “right” answer or our “recipe to happiness” we forget to live.

We will probably never find what we are looking for – but what we will find is even more thrilling and beautiful: surprises, connections, friendships – the pleasure of the unknown.

If we stop thinking black or white we will discover how colorful this world is.

So how am I going to overcome this narrow decision-making-fight? I’m following my excitement by doing what I enjoy doing, by following my heart and dropping my thoughts completely.

The difficult part is to give an ear to my heart, my inner voice. The chatterbox in my head still likes to dominate, but my heart wins with trust and patience.

 
by Uli on Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

The Revival of the Growthbuddy

Something is itching and aching. Twisted in pain I’m playing hide and seek. Disparaging my insights – disregarding my emotions. There is this void in front of me – this abyss of the unknown. I’m scared, but it’s time to wake up from this paralysis.

The past months I neglected my growthbuddy. If I really want to transform I need more self-discipline. Come on? One article every two months – that’s a joke and it is not the idea of this blog.

Oh dear, I’m not even trying to find any excuses. It was more comfortable to just crawl into my shell for a little while instead of turning my interior to the outside. Before I go down deeper any rabbit hole, it is now the time to make a leap again. It is time for manifestation.

Growthbuddy 2.0 – here we go. I will blog my heart out – at any costs – with flaws and losses.

This is a very demanding time. In these days I’m facing big challenges – learning the language of my heart while muting the voices in my head. Tada: I changed my whole life again and now I’m hesitating. Was it a good idea to give up my room and become a nomad? I have to admit that this is pretty fucking hard.

But NOW is the time to write. Now I’m growing above me – tomorrow is another day. So, what’s the plan? I want to honour my (growth)buddy again and post post post whatever and whenever I can (at least once a week).

  • I want to revive my threesome.
  • I want to resurrect the dead wood in my notes. There are tons of articles that I started and never finished.
  • I want to drop my perfectionism and post something more intuitive here. I’m not sure – maybe I even start some column or something like this.

Stay tuned buddies and love yourself more!

 
by Uli on Rough Diamonds, Transformation Inventory

Confusion Coma

My perfectionism disables my productivity – the fear of failure makes me powerless. Paralyzed I scrape around – unable to get started.

When decision making becomes a torture every idea turns into a burden.
When opportunities become obstacles, openness closes doors.

I don’t see the wood for all the trees, because my senses are occupied by self-consciousness.

There is no way forward – as long as I don’t “make way”. Unfortunately nobody can help me with this.

Deep inside of me I know that I have to push through. Deep inside of me there is wisdom beyond that pain. The pain that is part of humanization. The pain that demands to be felt.

But from time to time and often enough I ask myself: Why? Why do I ask all these questions without answers?

 
by Uli on Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

The Growthbuddy is Growing

This morning I woke up with a concrete slab on my body – literally of course – otherwise I couldn’t sit here and write.

Since I’ve started with growthbuddy, I have started to re-think my life more intensively – yes “Uli-you-think-too-much”-friends, you read right…

And I have to admit: It’s not easy –  I’m facing new abysses of my psyche everyday. So far so good, let’s jump right into the void (and stop being pathetic).

I was laying in my bed and like every morning I thought to myself “I could stay in bed or I could get up and make the most of the day.” The last weeks this decision process took a little longer.

So I stared into space asking myself, what it is worth to get up for. I felt demotivated and frustrated with a slightly tang of worthlessness. But there was this little voice inside of me. It whispered quietly but self-assured: “Come on, get out of here!” – “Aye, aye!”

Since years I’m reading books about personal growth, dealing with fears, productivity, living in the “now” – nearly non-stop or at least once in a while. The last couple of weeks I was watching a lot of TED talks of all these great people, who are changing the world and share their advice.

But today I realized, I’m not applying the advice to my own life – at least not enthusiastically enough.

“It takes a lot of reinforcement to incorporate new concepts into your behavior, so commit yourself to doing the exercises. The amount of improvement you experience will depend on how much you are willing to participate actively.” Susan Jeffers

All of a sudden I understood:  In order to change my way of thinking, I have to change my behaviour actively. I really have to do the homework. Of course: Reading is good – sucking in all sorts of information is healthy, but it is only half the rent.

My Learnings Today:

  1. I have to get active and actually work on my personal development. DO the exercises Tim Ferris and Susan Jeffers are talking about instead of postponing them, which makes me come to my second learning of the day:
  2. I have to consider this personal growth thing including this blog – but mainly the growth action behind the scenes – as a business. My life-business. And it definitely has the same or an even higher significance than any other job.
  3. The mind is like a computer. (according to Elon Musk;) And a computer can be rebooted, configured newly, updated or upgraded. Or you can just throw it out of the window. I don’t want to get rid of my mind – at least not infinitely – but I can definitely change my running system, if I really want to.
  4. Also I understood, that I don’t know enough about my brain. Well, this is not necessarily a new insight. More importantly I understood, that I can change it. My goal is it, before getting more specific, I need to learn more about the prefrontal cortex and about Elon Musk. (Yes, he is one of my idols in terms of rationality and willpower.;)

The bath of self-pity is still warm and cozy. But I want to drain it down the tub. What am I talking about? Well, I want to find out, what is really hindering me from living a satisfying life, why am I always doubting my purpose? Where is the lack of self-confidence coming from?

My Next Steps:

  • defining my fears
  • learning more about self-love/acceptance
  • reading more about Elon Musk 😉 (Biography already ordered)

“Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the phantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised, when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams – we have refused to Fight the Good Fight.” Paulo Coehlo

People, who make their dreams come true are commited to pain and suffering. They are willing to “fight the good fight”. They go out there. They accept the hard work of mastering challenges and overcoming obstacles.

I’m fighting for more self-confidence, less insecurities, anxiety and self-hatred. But in order to do this, I have to change myself actively – not only by reading and talking to people. But step-by-step I have to change my habits and reboot my system.

Don’t renounce the battle – fight the fight.