Really wanting it

There always seems to be one main idea that I get from a good book, the idea that will stick in my mind and keep inspiring me. I hear from other people that this is quite common and perhaps this is the reason why good books should be read many times over and over again – to grasp other ideas too.

After I have several times enjoyed Ken Robinson’s brilliant lecture on our present educations systems, I read his book The Element and a short episode he describes there has been on my mind ever since. Robinson describes how he approached an extremely talented keyboard player after a gig in a club, to tell him how much he enjoyed his music and how he would love to be able to play keyboards that well.

“No, you wouldn’t,” the musician responded.

Robinson insisted that he actually really would love to play keyboards.

The musician replied: “No, you just like the idea of playing keyboards. If you’d really love to play them, you’d be doing it.” He himself practiced three to four hours per day, in addition to performing. That made him a good musician, nothing else.

This clear example totally kicked me out of my socks. It is so simple and clear: great musicians are great not because they sit in their armchairs, daydreaming about music, but because they practice all the time. Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers claims the magic number is 10.000 hours. This amount of hours of practice turns a mere practitioner into a master, an artist, an expert… Now, to be honest, I don’t think there’s anything I have done for 10.000 hours. Except for breathing.

But still I hear myself saying so many times: “I would really like to play guitar well. Or piano.” No, in fact I wouldn’t! If I really wanted that, I would be playing days and nights and become a great musician in practically no time. “Oh, I would really like to run a full marathon, but, you see, I just don’t have time to train regularly…” Bullshit, if I really wanted to, there would be no way of stopping me and my intention. But I just like the idea of me, a great marathon man, sadly unable to train.

When I worked as a psychotherapist, many years ago, with some world class sportists, it was rather obvious, hearing their stories, what made them sticking out from their national teams. They were far more determined. When their mates were whining and hoping the training to end, they begged the coach to prolong the training, to do more, to practice more…

Also, when working with pretty vast number of people, either when running workshops and trainings or when coaching individuals, I keep noticing there appear to be two main approaches to life, in this regards, that we people take:

• the victim approach: you complain over the circumstances, scream on the passenger’s seat, whine and cry.
• the explorer approach: you research, walk, you fall and you get up, again and again, you sweat and you wipe your forehead and continue running, you try this way and if it doesn’t work, well, you have learned something and you try the other way…

The first is about seeking safety and evidence that nothing can be done, the second is about boldly stepping into the unknown.

The first is about seeking less problems, the second is about seeking more skills.

Yes, it comes down to whether to evolve or whether to not evolve from the stage of a kid writing a wish list to the Father Christmas, on to a stage of a grown up person, making responsible choices and persisting through the uncomfortable parts of the journey.

My New Year’s Resolutions actualy work!

For many years my New Year’s Resolutions were mostly a joke. Something I kept copy-pasting from the previous Januarys to the present ones – again and again: I want to take care of my body and health, be more proactive, improve this relationship and cancel that one, start this and finish that… And the copy-pasting ritual was actually frustrating, starting my New Years with the thoughts about what a failure I was.

Finally I realized I needed to become more specific with my resolutions and split them up into smaller and achievable steps, something I would be able to do on a weekly or even daily basis. I also realized I wanted to clearly measure and evaluate my progress as I moved, in order to be able to react on time and introduce the adjustments needed. And I also realized I needed electronic reminders as well as human support, coaching, that would keep my intention alive, so that I would not waste even more time falling into the same traps as always: forgetting it all, being just too lazy to climb out of automatisms…

So now I have the system that works for me:

1. At the beginning of the year I go through the last year, celebrate achievements and think about what I want to work on next. I think about my needs that I kept neglecting, I think about my core values that I want my life to be aligned with, I think about what kind of person I want to be and what kind of life do I want to live… I try to see as complete picture as I can, taking my existence as seriously as possible.
2. Then I split it all up according to different realms of my life: physical, spiritual, life inspiration and meaning, relationship with my wife, relationships with our kids, other relationships, my work… In each realm of my life I write down where I want to move and what I want to do in order to be more fulfilled.
3. Then I talk it all over with my wife, we compare our intentions and talk about how we can support each other and how we actually WILL support each other.
4. Then I split all these intentions of mine into monthly, weekly and daily plans. I print it out (for every month, as they come) in the form of a complex table, and post it on the wall right next to my computer in my office so that it bites me in my face non-stop.
5. Afterwards I tell it all to my friend (and he tells me about his plans). He is my free coach and I am his. It’s fun.
6. And then the most important thing begins: with a thick red marker I tick off every thing that I complete, for every day, for every week, for every month. The blank spaces painfully remind me that I have not done what I wanted in order to have a more fulfilled life.
7. At the beginning of every month I send to my friend (and he does the same to me) a report about how I have been doing through the previous months. Since it is rather embarrassing to say I have not done anything, it motivates me to actually do more than I would have otherwise. When we see the other one is not reaching his own goals, we open this up and offer more support in dealing with the issue. Helps keeping focus incredibly.
8. I sit down with my wife very regularly and we talk about whether we are progressing in the ways we would love. Do we live according to our values and needs? Do we progress towards where our passions are…? Do we drive our lives or are we being driven by them?

So it is basically all about stopping often, checking the direction and the pace, observing and measuring and evaluating, refocusing… In a way, it is anything but forgetting it all until the next January.

And it works, it really works and I am very happy to look back over the last year and see that I have moved considerably. Physically I feel better (not every moment of the year was like this), my body is more in shape, more healthy… There’s still work to be done on providing my body with more sleep on the regular basis. An hour more per day would be great. Sounds really a petty thing, but it influences the whole of my life pretty much, my well-being, my relationships…

My relationship with my wife is great, doing better and better actually, especially after some breakthrough moments at the NVC training in Greece in September. There will be more of this in the coming year and I am already looking forward to this.

I am also happy with my relationship with all three of our teenagers – not the easiest thing to deal with, as you can imagine, but there is trust, openness, respect, love, easiness, support and open flow of communication. And relating to them is truly enjoyable and fulfilling most of the time. I managed to have quite some quality time with them this year, at home as well as abroad… And I have a vicious plan for the next year – to drag them into the nature. Will see how this works out.

Inspiration: hey, there’s loads of this nowadays, I have been involved in so many inspiring events, especially in regards to NVC, Zen, Dialogue Process, Intercultural Communication and all the notes from these events will take me a whole week to sort them out and bring them down to Earth. And, hey, we wrote a book and it is going to be published in a few months time.

And, the most important thing for me, the question of meaning; things are definitely moving in this area and I am slowly moving towards doing more ultimately meaningful things…

So, my New Year’s Resolutions are already forming and I am already celebrating the fact that they will improve my life even more.

This sounds weird – I am celebrating today that I will be happier tomorrow. Sounds like the ultimate definition of optimism…

The one that shook my world

The other day my dear friend Ian wrote a post about the ten books that shook his world. I immediately thought that was a great idea and decided to do it myself too.
After a minute I realized I was not going to do it, after all. It would just take too much time and effort of trying to remember them all, write about them as well as what they meant too me…, nah, just too much. I am not as dedicated as Ian and he wins. Touché.
But, in the process of thinking about it I did remember one of the very important books of my life, one that I haven’t been thinking about for a long long time since I read it, say, 25 years or so ago, when I was pretty young: Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game.
When I discovered Hesse I read many of his novels and I loved them all: Demian, Siddharta, Journey to the East and especially Steppenwolf. By the way, do people still read Hesse at all? Anybody knows what the situation is nowadays? In my time if you were into personal growth, Hesse was a must. I believe even more so if you were male, as I remember. Which, now that I think of it, is quite interesting.
Anyway, for me The Glass Bead Game was above it all. I still remember how very shocked I felt when reaching the last page and reading something I was totally unprepared for. After everything the main characters has gone through, after finally achieving the very top of the world, he decides to let it all go. He decides to abandon it all and to step into something very simple yet meaningful, into serving. But then, finally feeling completely free and content, he suddenly dies. Abruptly. The end. No more.
I can so easily reconnect with that moment, lying in my bed with the last page in front of me, my heart pounding hard and my face staring in disbelief. It felt as if all the four existential dilemmas (freedom, death, isolation, meaninglessness) suddenly hit me in my forehead, really hard. For days my mind was pulsating with thoughts: “Everything I begin, will end. Everything I build, will eventually crush down. Nothing is permanent and whatever I may achieve, whatever peak I might reach, even if I reach the absolute freedom, it will all end in total isolation and with death I will vanish from this world. So what is the meaning of it all? What difference does anything make? Why move? Why try?“
The romantic worlds and illusions started to crush down and I kept attempting to build them up again, and again, and again. I wanted to have a nice illusion of absolute meaning, of eternity, of connectedness and free choice, yet the pictures never held for very long and there were always pieces missing. Only in the last couple of years I seem to be starting to come to peace with it all.
Well, that book definitely shook my world. I believe I would be somewhat different had I not read it. But I am totally happy I did, of course. No mourning here, just a celebration.

 

Being looked after – in Cairo and everywhere, actually

The congress was great but I will write about it another time (there’s just too much to write right now). I also managed to find the “Tanzanian park” (very emotional moment for me), but did not find the priest – it’s been 26 years already, in the meantime Cairo got a metro and some new streets that replaced buildings… I was surprised by all this and did not have enough time or this unplanned thorough research. Which makes a perfect reason to go back to Cairo soon and give it another shot. Yupeeee!

But I did manage to walk around the town a lot, sitting down to drink a tea and smoke a shisha, enjoying the absence of tourists (I guess they sort of step, from their fancy hotels, straight into the a/c dark glassed luxury buses and head to Pyramids or whatever, avoiding to spoil their clean goretex heavy duty fancy walking shoes with the unclean surfaces of Cairo streets. Yes, I know, I am being cynical here. And I love it!). And I yet again experienced on several occasions how a community formed immediately, a little street community that instantaneously, if I was open and respectful of course, accepted me and tried to care of my needs. Not for money or anything else, but just for the joy of giving and providing, as it seemed.

Memories were flooding through my mind, tons of them, and the picture became clearer and clearer, until it hit me hard: I realized that I was being looked after so much in my life, so often and so lovingly, that I, upon this realization, felt utterly touched and humbled.

Yes, I have been looked after on so many occasions in my life, and by so open and eagerly giving and providing people, that I am not even going to try to write it all down since it would literally take hundreds of pages. But yes, while writing this, pictures just keep flashing somewhere inside my mind, from Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan, I mean, from everywhere and from everytime.

Why did they do it? Why did they collect a glass of buffalo milk (not a small thing in that area)  in the nearby village to greet us somewhere in the dark night of Pakistan, us, who were the only people to have electricity (in our van) kilometres around? Why were guys waking me up each time I rolled, in my sleep, toward the edge on the roof of the train in Sudan? Why did my aunt spend hundreds of hours with me when I was a little boy – why did she play with me, take me on the long walks around the meadows and forests? Why did my dear friend from Belgrade, after reading about my accident, immediately call me and offered to sit in his car and drive over (a six-hour drive) to take care of me?

OK, folks, right now I am so overwhelmed with all these memories of being looked after in my life, by friends, family as well as by the total strangers, that I am sure this in not my story only. I believe this relates to all of us. I dare to say we are being taken care of and looked after all of the time, by people around us, through tiny little things. And sometimes through very big deeds. It must be Ubuntu alive somewhere within us. It must be that love is all around…

But I guess we just prefer to look the other way. It seems we prefer to look for and focus on the bad stuff. Rather than appreciate the good stuff and build on that. Perhaps we just like to be victims, perhaps we find this survivalistic discourse so darn entertaining. Or perhaps we were just never taught differently by our families, teachers, cultures…

Well, I will definitely, from now on, do my best to appreciate and cherish the good, the love, the attention and the appreciation. I will try to see it and enjoy it fully, with gratitude.

It would be such a waste to look the other way, wouldn’t it?

Both sides of the same shiny coin

It is funny how being a trainer and a facilitator makes me think very deeply over and over about certain issues of my own personal life – I guess much deeper than I would have, had I worked as, say, an engineer. Perhaps.

Anyway, one of the issues we often play with on my workshops is the question of crucial turning moments of our lives. Moments when we took a big leap into the unknown and so our lives took a radically different course. And so, while working on these things with the groups, I think about my own turning points over and over again.

It seems to me that one of the main turning points in my life was when I, at the age of 17, in secret packed my backpack, took my passport and a few bucks I have had, and left home. This ended in a half-a-year hippy style roaming through the Balkans, Middle East and North-East and East Africa. Partially this was a turning point because I finally ceased whining over my imperfect life, imperfect parents, imperfect teachers…, but rather chose to do something about it; made a bold step into the unknown to see what turns out. I still can not really understand where did I get the courage to do that from. I must had been pretty desperate.

But perhaps even more importantly, this step forced me to start facing the existential dilemma of freedom – at the age of 17. You see, on the one hand there was an utter beauty to the freedom I was experiencing from the moment I walked away from my pre-set life. Suddenly I was totally free, free to go wherever I wanted, free to do whatever I choose to. I was free to rediscover myself every single day, to live or to not live, to carry on a virtuous life or to lie and steal… Suddenly all the moral and cultural obligations started to melt away and the feeling of freedom while moving through my days somewhere on the South Balkans, was incredibly uplifting and intoxicating.

But soon enough I started to discover the other side of the coin, the other side of freedom; the responsibility. When I, a brave free guy, found myself with zero money on the streets of Istanbul, freedom was not so fun anymore. When I was going hungry in the dodgy parts of Cairo, I couldn’t just go home and open the fridge – since there was no home anywhere near. I was free and I was fully responsible for myself at the same time – there was nobody to blame anymore, the way I was used to blame everybody in my previous and not-so-free life. I was also completely free and fully responsible to choose whether I wanted to wait a few weeks – in the company of about a trillion blood-thirsty mosquitoes – in Southern Sudan for the jungle river to recede after the rainy season so that the truck could pass through, or to ford it (neck deep) with the risk of a close encounter with a crocodile, and keep walking on the other side through the wilderness until, well, until I got somewhere. When a drunken soldier had his gun pointed at my head somewhere in the middle of Ugandan forests, demanding money which I did, of course, not have and which I was actually needing just about as badly as he was, it was completely within my responsibility to find a way of getting my ass out of it. Nobody volunteered to take the responsibility for it and I was not in a position to call my daddy to help me out. And so on and so forth…

To cut the long story short, the choice of making that step into the unknown certainly reshaped my life and after that nothing was anywhere near the way it used to be. Not only did all these experiences utterly reshaped my perception and interpretation of life, but the freedom and the responsibility entered full throttle, and they were not just fun. Speaking of freedom; not so long afterwards the freedom crash-landed when I was called to do the obligatory military service. Oh boy, was this a different story altogether, ha ha…

The both sides of this freedom/responsibility coin I am still taking dead seriously – as you may track down throughout this rambling of mine in this blog. And perhaps this is also the reason why I get so irritated with people whining over the imperfect circumstances in their life and acting out this victim role forever. Because I used to waste my time there too and I am still a bit embarrassed by that period.

And perhaps this is why I struggle and juggle so seriously with this dilemma as a parent of teenagers, trying to get the responsibility side of that damn coin across, not as an moral obligation, but simply as another aspect of life. Because I would truly love to contribute to the lives of my teenagers in a way that would help them to at least start sorting out this eternal dilemma of life as soon as possible and enter the adult lives with more inner clarity than I have had. Which is, in the absence of maturity rituals and while trying to not use power over them, not the easiest thing on Earth. But being aware that learning to take full responsibility for one’s own choices and feelings seems to be a crucial step on the path of emotional growing up and also on the path toward a fulfilling life, I just feel that as a parent I definitely wish to find a way to help them in this matter.

Just an ordinary guy

The extent to which we tend to be concerned with our own image, trying to place ourselves and our own worth somewhere on the scale, the amount of attention and energy we dedicate to the impression management, self-promotion…, it all seems pretty ridiculous to me. There are so many other things to worry about in this world of ours.

The tiny little good news – in regards to my tiny little unimportant existence – is that, as it seems to me, lately there has been less urge or even tendency to polish my self image and worry about it at all. To a great deal of relief, because the thing used to be darn exhausting. I used to really cherish this sweet hidden idea that I am special, very special. And that the world yet needs to recognize this. I remember the first cracks on this shiny little devil started with some heavy blows on my thick head long time ago, a sort of waking-up experiences.

One that I really love to remember and still find incredibly funny happened on my first trip to India. I went there, at the age of 20, for the enlightenment and total liberation, of course. I guess thousands of people went to India with the same goal. So, I was not so very special in this regard, but I did like the thought that I would definitely be the one who will actually attain enlightenment, not like the rest of losers who came home humiliated.

So, there I was in a search of a guru. I visited many and was not satisfied (this already sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it?) and finally learned about a wise man in a small village up north in Uttar Pradesh, where the Himalayas begin. On my first visit to the village, despite the intense search, I did not find the man. I thought this actually was a good spiritual sign, showing that the path to enlightenment was damn thorny. I loved it. I felt I was ready for any sort of sacrifices, I believed I was ready to face all the tortures needed for the liberation, with a blessed smile of Buddha on my smart face.

Next week, after gathering more info, I returned to the village and finally found him; he was a simple, kind, shiny, skinny old man, with soft eyes, white beard and soft voice. Just what I was looking for. He looked just like Ramana Maharshi and I believed this was the perfect sign. He did not make a big fuzz about himself or his teachings, but invited me to come back in the afternoon, to his home, and to meditate a bit with his friends. I learned later that he did not call anybody a disciple or a student, but just simple friends with whom he liked to meditate. Another good sign for me. He modestly asked me whether I was able to sit down on the floor and meditate for a while and was then overwhelmed with my self-promotion about how well experienced in meditation I was, how I loved to meditate and so forth.

So, I came back later that afternoon and we all sat down, about 6 or so of us, in this little meditation room. The old man lit a candle, explained the form of meditation he was inviting me to practice, and just before we closed our eyes he said that I did not need to worry about time at all since he was going to announce the end of the meditation with a bell, after 4 hours.

What??????? Four hours? Four hours of sitting in lotus, not moving, just meditating?

I did manage to maintain the enlightened smile of a Buddha, but my mind exploded. I never ever did more than 40 minutes in a row, and here I was, on bare concrete floor, with this weird man and his weird friends, to sit for four hours???

It was a 4-hour-torture, to my body as well as to my mind. I did manage to maintain my image, my dignity, my ego, but that was definitely not a meditation.

So, the horrible 4 hours passed, the little bell rung, I slowly started to stretch my burning legs, atempting to preserve my blessed smile. And the old man, with some curious sparks in his eyes and a tiny smile on his face, turned to me and said: “I apologize for being so short with time today and so we were only able to do this much. But tomorrow you are invited to come at 8 in the morning and we will do a longer and more deep meditation, I was thinking about doing an eight-hour stretch.”

This time I was ready and I did not blink: “Great, I will be delighted to come, thank you for inviting me.” I had a plan in my mind already (I had plenty of time in the past four hours to develop a plan, you see) and next morning I caught the first bus out of the village, before 6 AM and oh, boy, was I happy to be on that bus. I did save what was left of my dignity by not showing up, well, sort of, , but my self image was not idealized anymore. Reality started to knock on the door.

So, it indeed is a relief to notice, after a couple of decades, to be less burdened by my own image, not evaluating or comparing myself with others too much anymore, in other words, not taking myself too seriously.

This indeed is how I understand the concept of personal growth: not necessarily seeing chakras all over the place and remembering past lives, but acting out the role of a victim less and be fully responsible in relationships, being aware of my own very human needs, humbly being aware of my own limitations, developing genuine empathy for other people’s needs, overcoming fear of stepping into the unknown… simple things like that.

So, perhaps the fact that I don’t think anymore that I am anything special and the fact that I almost don’t spend any time in front of the mirror – perhaps this is a sign of some improvements.

The day I became a rebel against God

So, here’s this story. In the period between 1990 and 1991 I spent nine months in Australia, learning about human psychology and getting trained as a psychotherapist. During that time yoga and yogic meditation was my method of personal growth, and it was a big thing in my life. At the same time an acquaintance of mine from my home town was in New Zealand, staying with a rather radical Christian community. And so we were exchanging letters back and forth, about what was going on in our lives etc. Yes, this was the pre-internet era, good old pencils were still in use back then. But we did have electricity already…

Anyway, in one of the letters I mentioned my yoga practice and this information sort of freaked him out, as it seems. Soon I got a really looooong letter from him, warning me about this non-Godly practice of mine. He told me that God Almighty was really unhappy with people doing yoga, Zen, Buddhism, actually anything but the only right spiritual practice (which was, by sheer coincidence, the one he was using). He informed me that all the other spiritual practices, philosophies and religions were the work of Devil and that with them God was testing our faith. He warned me that God always severely punishes every soul that dares to follow other practices. This was supposed to be a sign of his divine love for us (frankly, I really struggled with this one). At the end he told me I should really be careful about my choices, choose God’s way and save my soul, otherwise I was going to be doomed forever.

This was some heavy stuff to read, as you can imagine.

But, since at that time I was discovering amazing things about the human mind, I knew that the mind was a very tricky matter and utterly blurring our perception of ourselves, others and life. Therefore I knew that I actually did not know anything at all, so I decided to not throw away anything as crap, but to ponder it, take it as a possibility and see how it influenced my life.

So for a couple of days or so I was actually trying to open my mind up to the possibility that the universe actually was the way my acquaintance was describing – ruled by a merciless God, who was willing to tolerate only perfect followers, and throwing everybody with any sort of a free thinking mind into an eternal fire. Forever. Out of love!

Now, during this time I was being trained as a psychotherapist, remember?, and so the more I thought about this universal possibility, the more I thought that this guy, I mean God, could use some help. Some psychotherapy. You know, to learn to accept and respect diversity, to learn to respect other individuals, to not behave so aggressively, to learn to express love in a way that would be acceptable to receivers as well, to deflate his Ego a bit…

But there was also something else that became very clear to me, a strong feeling from within, connected to my core values, right from the backbone of my soul, of myself. A feeling that was far more alive than any sort of fears could ever be.

You see, it became totally clear to me that I would rather burn in hell than obey such a narcissistic, aggressive, brutal, manipulative, non-respectful, full of hatred, non-empathetic, cruel control freak. Not only that, I felt I was ready to fight this monster because this was not the universe I would want to support.

It was a liberating feeling. I did not care about anything, I felt I regained my identity and I was happy, peaceful, loving. And just to make sure this was clear to anybody who might had been witnessing, while standing in the meadow I turned my face toward the sky (don’t know why, it just somehow felt as the right direction) and said it all out loud. That I did not approve of this tyranny and that I was going to rebel against it. Forever.

So, my friends, I guess I am doomed.