I’m 29 and refuse to trade time for money. Here’s how you can do it too.
“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger (…). I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.” — Leo Tolstoy in Family Happiness
At 25, I had an epiphany. I hated to sacrifice half of my waking hours to work for someone else. Even though my job at a multinational company was okay, a feeling of suffocation crept over me with every day I turned on my computer.
My dream is to travel to every country. Meanwhile, I want to read a book every month…
Everything I learned from analyzing my relationships for 6 months
“Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something.”
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
How good is your ability to open up and deeply connect with other people? You can easily answer this question by thinking back to when and how often someone said one of the following sentences to you:
- “You’re the first person I have ever told this.”
- “You’re the only one who understands this.”
- “You’re the only one I can really talk with about this.”
If this is stuff people say to you regularly, congratulations: You certainly know how to open…
A complete, stress-free guide to more through less
While lots of ideas from the minimalist movement brought me plenty of joy and enhanced my quality of life, many essays and videos from self-proclaimed minimalist gurus make me sad.
I could go on forever about what minimalism isn’t supposed to be. Instead, let’s focus on what minimalism is, away from the trends and the hashtags, and how you can make it work for you.
Me and Minimalism
Minimalism with a big M came into my life in a state of flux: Between 2016 and 2019 I moved three times and traveled for a total of 12 months. …
Also, you don’t have to love yourself.
Every day, I’m feeling better and better.
I’m good enough.
I love my body.
I’ve been given endless talents which I begin to utilize today.
A river of compassion washes away my anger and replaces it with love.
Ugh, I don’t know about you but just reading these makes me feel worse.
Nevertheless, we’re taught we need a positive outlook in life.
Turns out, it isn’t just my intuition that struggles with the notion of positive affirmations. …
Breathe in strength, breathe out bullsh*t.
As a natural night owl, I was at war with mornings for most of my life. I have serious trouble waking up early. With the constant feeling of sleeping for too long and wasting my day, I was never good at a morning routine.
When I started to read loads of self-help books and follow self-proclaimed gurus online this turned into a full-blown self-worth crisis.
If you believe the mainstream advice of successful people there’s no way you’ll ever become something if you don’t wake up early and kick off your day with a life-changing and science-backed morning routine. …
Hard-earned lessons from 5 years as a digital entrepreneur.
“Find a job you enjoy doing and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
That’s everybody’s dream, right?
Mark Twain’s words are a north star if you ask yourself whether you should quit your boring office job. They were mine when I dreamed of becoming a full-time creative and follow my passion every day.
Today, I’m a digital entrepreneur and make $1,500 on autopilot every month. At the same time, I do what I enjoy every day. Nevertheless, the two aren’t related — I don’t live off my passions. I make time for them instead.
Mark…
Personal limits protect your energy, dignity, privacy, identity, and more—but your culture may not have taught you how to set and maintain them
“You can be a good person with a kind heart and still tell people to f*ck off if necessary.” — Madeleine Darya Alizadeh
Boundaries are important for everyone. Still, I decided to write this guide for women.
Patriarchy suggests disparate implicit social rules for the genders. Hence, personal boundaries are a different issue for women than for men. That’s why, as a woman, I wrote the following paragraphs about female boundaries and how I learned to set them.
I went to psychotherapy for a year, worked with plant medicine, and spent a tremendous amount of time exploring my depths through…
It’s a harsh teacher.
Every few weeks, my bed becomes a place of dread and horror. I’ve struggled with insomnia ever since I was a child.
Sometimes, it’s just one night of bad sleep. Sometimes, it’s weeks. Once, I didn’t sleep at all for three days before I dragged myself to a psychiatric walk-in clinic.
Insomnia sucks. It’s a cruel and unpredictable villain and an expert at temporarily derailing your life.
Nevertheless, today I find it hard to imagine what my life would be like without it. Today, insomnia is something I can more or less control with medication and thanks to my flexible…
An exploration of fear, the most faithful human companion.
I’m a natural worrier. While I enjoy the little spontaneities of everyday life, on bad days, fear gets the best of me. To not know which calamities await me further down the road and what I can do to prevent them can drive me into a hell ride of worry and anxiety.
I’ve been dealing with worry and fear since my teenage years.
Thanks to a disrupted sense of object permanence during my childhood I‘m swallowed by an almost unbearable fear of abandonment when something triggers me.
Before I tackled my fears (with the help of therapy, books, and even…
These five grounding techniques—backed by science and ancient philosophy—help me worry less and enjoy life more. Here is how I make each one a habit.
“We are fundamentally alone, and there is nothing anywhere to hold on to. Moreover, this is not a problem. In fact, it allows us to finally discover a completely unfabricated state of being.” — Pema Chödrön
I’m a worrier. While I enjoy the little spontaneities of everyday life, on bad days, uncertainty gets the best of me. To not know which calamities await me further down the road and what I can do to prevent them can drive me into a hell ride of worry and anxiety.
As Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki Roshi put it, after all:
“Life is like…
