The Biggest Secret

All You Need To Know And More

59 min readMay 31, 2019

I don’t know exactly when the biggest secret was finally revealed to me.

Those details are lost in the fog of time.

A fog so dense that only a handful of memories managed to outrun it. And those few memories are now etched in my brain forever.

Among them, my first and last cigarette, my first and last beer and even my first line of coke.

Luckily, also my last one.

Oops, that got too dark too fast.

Let’s back up a bit.

It’s crazy that those are the memories that will outlast all others.

I almost forgot how both my grandfathers looked like but I can still tell you, in breathtaking detail, how that first cigarette tasted.

In fact, I could write a 10k word post just talking about my first cigarette.

Relax, I’m not gonna.

That’s not what this is.

This post is about the biggest secret, and figuring it out was the single best thing that ever happened to me.

I changed on the spot.

It happens to everyone, when they get it.

You won’t be an exception.

The Teacher Was Always There

I’ve always known.

On some level.

And the other insiders, well, they’ve also known deep down.

The moment you’re born, you know everything you’ll ever need.

I truly believe that.

It’s only much later, through civilization and socialization, that we lose our sacred knowledge.

But we never really ‘lose’ it.

Because when you’ll finally figure out the biggest secret, you’ll realize that you knew it all along.

At least, that’s how it played out for me.

I also realized that people had been trying to tell me the secret many times over.

In fact, now that I’m in the know, whenever I review my past, all I see is an endless string of conversations about the secret.

But I never understood what people were trying to tell me back then.

Only when I started to open up and look beyond my ego, did I start to decipher the writing on the wall.

There’s a saying in Buddhism:

When you’re ready, the teacher will appear.

I used to think that this saying involved magical thinking. That the teacher would somehow ‘magically’ appear the moment you were ready.

That’s not at all how it is.

The teacher was always right there, right next to you, protecting you on your journey.

It’s just that you weren’t paying attention, you were not yet ready to see the teacher as a teacher.

You probably thought he was a fool, a stalker or an extra.

I was no different.

My teachers were always right there next to me, helping me out and trying to make me see the way.

But I was never paying any attention.

I was too distracted by success in the material realm.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not downplaying worldly success. It’s not something to sniff at.

Because in some ways, success in the material realm, or outer realm, is necessary to achieve success in the infinite realm, or inner realm.

But you need balance in life.

Too many people are unbalanced.

And that’s how they get in trouble.

Connecting The Dots

Being happy was always difficult for me.

Whatever I tried, nothing ever seemed to stick.

I asked friends and family for clues, but their advice never worked for me. In the long term, that is.

Because achieving other people’s ambitions is one of the biggest traps of them all.

A trap that held me back for almost thirty years.

Yes, looking back, I could have figured out the biggest secret much earlier because I already had all the data-points needed to see the way.

But I never connected the dots.

It’s funny how we always seem to reject the simple explanations.

Human beings are suckers for complicated abstractions and I’m no different.

There was a time when I spend all my evenings in bars, drinking with my ‘friends’.

Of course there were other people too, people who had things figured out. The ones who always went home early and never became a slave to alcohol.

Back then, we thought those people were losers.

But looking back, I’m sure that they just connected the dots earlier.

Time is relative after all.

It took me thirty years to figure out the biggest secret and that’s an unbelievable long time.

I know that.

But there are people in their seventies who still haven’t figured it out.

And it’s not that nobody ever told them, it’s more that they’ve simply given up.

That’s a shame.

Luckily though, it’s never too late for the biggest secret.

That’s why you’re reading this now.

The Law Of Attraction

Software and hardware.

Those terms always come to mind whenever I think about the secret.

I see hardware as part of the material realm, it’s sturdy, tangible and cannot easily be changed.

Software, in my view, is more part of the infinite realm. It’s liquid, can be changed on the spot and has infinite potential.

Hardware is atoms. Software is bits.

I’m oversimplifying but that’s OK for once.

Simple will do for now.

Think of our body as hardware and our mindset as software. Hardly an original thought, I know.

A lot of the self-help people embraced the magic of mindset management and achieved amazing results with it.

Mindset is not the secret.

Or to be more correct, mindset is only a small part of the biggest secret.

Having the right mindset really makes a difference, I’m not debating that.

Take me for example.

I used to be a very negative person and every single person I knew was also negative.

Including friends and family.

Things have totally changed now.

My goal is now to be a positive person all the time and to surround myself with positive people.

I’m slowly getting there.

Yes, there are still some negative people in my environment but I don’t spend any time or energy on them.

Positivity attracts positivity.

Still not the secret.

But getting there.

Again, I’m not telling you anything original here. The law of attraction has been known for millennia.

But it’s worth repeating.

Negativity breeds negativity.

Tripping In A Forest

They’ve always been there.

I’m talking about the positive people in my life.

They’ve always been part of my life.

In a way.

But when I was negative myself, I simply ignored them. Positive people were invisible to me back then.

Just like negative people are invisible to me now.

Positive people will appear when you’re positive, like the teacher will appear when you’re ready.

It reminds me of something embarrassing that happened to me the other day.

While walking through a forest, I tripped over a tree root and almost ended up face down in the mud.

I barely managed to stay upright.

And right then, I spotted a beautiful purple flower next to the malicious tree root.

I stopped breathing for a couple of seconds because it was so beautiful. Everything about it was amazing:

The color, shape and even the smell.

And I almost brought it home with me.

But then, when I walked back home, I suddenly saw the same flower everywhere in the forest.

Even in the gardens next to my home.

It turned out to be a very common wildflower.

But one I had never really ‘seen’ before.

Our mind ignores almost everything to keep us functional.

That’s a good thing.

But now I’m wondering what else I missed during my many walks in the forest.

I’m so anxious to move up in the world that I’m ignoring the obvious beauty around me.

It makes me want to take things slow and be a better observer, because I have been taking things for granted.

I’ve been living in the same town for thirty-three years now and yet, I can walk for five minutes in any direction and end up in a spot I’ve never ‘been’ before.

The other day, when I was visiting my parents, I checked up on my old room. You know, the one I had been sleeping in for about eighteen years straight.

I challenged myself to notice at least ten things I had never seen before.

What should have been difficult, turned out to be rather easy and it took me no more than thirty seconds to come up with ten things.

And when I continued observing my childhood bedroom, I probably saw dozens of things I’ve never seen before.

I’m talking about a room I spent eighteen years of my life in.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

My Toughest Addiction

I’m obsessed by lessons.

Or to be more correct, I’m obsessed by everything that make me better.

That’s why I have spent many hours learning about learning and eventually, I found out that I learned the most by doing.

That’s how nature, our ultimate teacher, prefers to learn as well.

That insight is part of the biggest secret.

I stumbled upon that secret when I tried to remove processed sugars from my diet altogether.

Remember that I have successfully quit alcohol and cigarettes. And that’s why I consider myself somewhat of a disciplined guy.

But to my surprise, cutting sugar was much more difficult than quitting alcohol and cigarettes ever was.

Combined.

This did not make sense to me at all and I really wanted to figure out why sugar was my toughest addiction yet.

After a couple of days of brooding on the subject, it finally hit me.

The reason why I eventually succeeded in quitting alcohol and cigarettes was because I was truly motivated.

I knew that the two substances were very dangerous for my health and well-being, and I was absolutely motivated to never deal with them again.

In fact, nothing in this earthly realm could entice me to use those substances ever again.

That’s how determined I was. And am.

My resolve almost burns a hole in my chest.

That’s how hard you have to want it.

Of course, it was not the first time that I tried quitting alcohol or cigarettes.

I needed many tries.

Die-hard smokers or drinkers understand why.

But the moment I truly decided that I wanted to quit, I never touched the stuff again.

I wasn’t even tempted.

This realization forced me to be honest and realize that I never had the same hard-core feelings about cutting sugar.

Yes, I know that consuming a lot of processed sugar is detrimental to my health.

After all, I’m no idiot.

But knowing was not enough. I simply didn’t feel about sugar like I felt about alcohol and cigarettes.

And it showed.

Because whenever I was tempted, and there are always temptations, I would tell myself that one cookie was not going to kill me.

And that’s true after all.

One cookie never killed anyone.

But it never ends with one cookie, that one cookie usually sets off a chain reaction ending with me snorting chocolate flakes and worse.

I’m exaggerating of course, after all, I’m a storyteller.

But I do have addictive tendencies and that’s no joke.

And after quitting alcohol, cigarettes, junk-food and the like, that addictive trait has only one way to express itself.

By consuming sugar by the boatload.

That had to stop.

And I knew exactly what to do, because I’ve been there many times before. Overcoming addictions is my middle name.

The trick was wanting it badly enough.

And that’s when things started to click.

A Whole Different Ballgame

I started thinking about reality.

The nature of reality in particular.

The outer realm, what normal people call the material world, seems set in stone.

At least to us, puny humans.

But is it?

I stopped smoking in a second and never touched a cigarette ever since, so one decision changed my outer realm for ever.

That means the outer realm, the material world, is totally malleable.

Think about it.

You could decide right now to move to another country and if you were motivated enough, nobody could stop you.

That’s how easy it is to change environments.

It’s the same thing with toxic people.

I don’t have those in my life right now, but I used to.

Here’s what I learned:

You can decide, right now, to never see those people ever again.

And poof, they’re gone.

Yes, you could argue that they could still find a way to stalk you, harass you or worse.

That might be true.

But if you really want to delete someone out of your life, if you’re truly motivated, there’s nothing the other can do.

That’s how easy it is to change your outer realm.

The inner realm, by contrast, is the total opposite.

For the record, when I’m talking about the inner realm, I’m talking about everything that’s not in the material world.

Your thoughts, feelings, experiences, memories, and the like. Some people would even add soul or spirit.

Everything you can’t put your hands on.

I used to think that my inner realm, what other people call your self, was malleable and fluid.

That’s not really the case.

I mean, not when you compare it to your outer realm.

Can you really change who you are?

I would argue that we can’t, not in any profound way.

We simply become who we’re meant to be.

The inner realm is eternal and fixed.

That was quite the insight.

Because, like most people, I had been confused.

I assumed that I had to change myself to fit in with the outside world.

It’s something we’re all taught from a young age.

And basically the sole reason why education exists, is to conform your infinite self into the narrow requirements of society.

I tried playing that game too for a while, until I was depressed to the core.

It took me a great deal of time to understand the real truth:

You are fixed and the world is malleable.

Of course, I’m not talking about your mindset or body, those attributes of the self should and will change over time.

I’m talking about your inner realm.

Who you really are down to the core.

That is fixed.

You don’t have to change to keep up with the outside world and it’s not your inner realm that has to conform to your outer realm.

It’s the other way around.

Your outside world, or your perception of it, has to change to line up with your inside world.

The outer realm always aligns with the inner realm.

That’s a while different ballgame.

An Infinite Universe Inside Of Us

Nobody ever told me this.

Or to be more correct, nobody ever told it like this.

Because yes, people have been trying to tell me this truth all the time, I realize that now.

Real life people like teachers, mentors or parents and even historical figures or famous authors.

And only when I started to understand what they were trying to tell me, was I close to figuring out the secret.

We all have an infinite universe inside of us.

I honestly don’t know where I read the line but it resonated with me.

Mind you, until a couple of years ago, I would have dismissed it as too ‘out there’ for me.

I’ve changed though.

And I’ve come to see the way.

We have everything we ever need inside of us.

In fact, the great tragedy of life is not what happens to us in the outer realm but that some of us lose touch with their inner realm.

That’s a real shame.

And I can honestly say that, for about twelve years, I’ve been exactly in that spot.

I thought the outer realm was all that matters, all that existed even, and I neglected my inner realm.

That didn’t work out great.

Now that I realize my mistake, I don’t ever want to take my inner realm for granted.

It’s truly an infinite universe inside of all us and gives us everything we want.

But only if you want it badly enough.

It turned out that I was motivated enough to quit alcohol and cigarettes.

And that’s how I became sober:

By willing an alternative future into existence.

But sugar was a different case.

I knew that it was bad for my health but I was not desperate enough to give it up.

And as a result, my outer realm, my perception of the material world, didn’t change.

Sugar remained an option in my outer realm.

I’m getting close to the secret now by the way. So close in fact, that you might have figured it out on your own.

Because realizing that your inner realm is infinite is a big piece of the puzzle.

For the record, your inner realm houses your infinite best and your infinite worst.

That’s right.

Both are in there, waiting to express themselves and it’s up to you to pick a lane.

And yes, making a lasting choice is hard.

I would know because I switched between lanes on a couple of occasions. And you have too, unless you’re a total saint or the absolute devil.

But we have to make that choice.

Because your infinite realm can give you everything you want, if you really want it.

And it does that by changing your outer realm.

That’s why people tell you that the future is ripe with opportunity.

Because it is.

You don’t have to be a slave to the outer realm and react to its every whim. In fact, you’re the one in control and it’s up to you to change your outer realm.

You do that by nurturing your inner realm.

But you have to want it badly enough.

Wanting is the key.

Tell Me What You Want

And that’s a problem.

Knowing what you want, what you really really want, is probably one of the most difficult things in life.

I can honestly say, and I’ve written about it on multiple occasions, that I needed more than thirty years to figure out what I want.

And I’m still not quite there yet.

What do I want in life?

I know the answers others have given me. Be it society, parents, teachers or other authority figures.

But what I really wanted, well, I simply didn’t know.

And I’m not the only one.

Many others have not yet figured out their true want, in fact, there’s almost nobody who has.

And it makes sense when you think about it.

Because everything in society, and I truly mean everything, is geared toward distracting you from your true calling.

It’s all distractions on top of distractions.

The distractions used to be material in nature.

We were led to believe that if we would only buy enough shiny gadgets, our inner void would be magically filled.

It’s still a strong narrative.

Yet shifting somewhat.

Now, the distraction machine is pointing us towards ‘experiences’.

Experiences are the new shiny gadgets.

Maybe you think it’s a step in the right direction, because experiences are free.

Right?

Well, apparently the experiences that count these days are not free at all. The ‘cabal’ wants you to pay everything you own and more to experience ‘stuff’.

That’s what college is now turning into.

Distracting you and me from our true calling is the biggest game out there and billions are made (and lost) playing it.

That is not going to end any time soon.

The only thing you and I can do to stop our own exploitation, is to wake up and figure out what’s going on.

I too was asleep for the first ten years of my adult years and was spending all my time and energy on chasing goals that were not mine.

It turned out that studying engineering was not my true calling at all. In fact, I didn’t even know what an engineer was supposed to do.

Being a engineer was highly valued by society at large, that’s all I was told.

‘They’ thought that that would be enough.

But it wasn’t.

I eventually dropped out and experienced a full blown identity crisis, all because I never took the time to figure out what I really really wanted.

It’s a mistake everyone makes at some point in their life.

We assume that something is a good idea because the people we love and respect believe it is.

That sometimes works out.

But more often than not, it doesn’t.

Shut Up And Listen

I’m not here to tell you how to live.

That wouldn’t work at all.

You have to figure it all out on your own, we all have to do that.

There were countless of times that wise men and women tried to show me the light.

But when I was young, I was cocky and set on doing my own thing.

That’s not even a bad thing really.

Because if I had listened to cooler heads, I would not have been writing on Medium.

So it sometimes pays to be stubborn and go your own way.

But listening to people who have been thriving for many more years in the wild, is the sensible thing to do.

Nowadays, whenever someone tries to tell me something, I shut up and listen.

Everyone can teach you something.

I truly believe that.

We all have a different perspective on this crazy thing called life and we’re all carrying our unique piece of the puzzle.

Here’s how I gain insight these days.

Whenever I’m at some kind of gathering, what normal people call a party, I try to spot the oldest person in the room and start talking to them.

And it always amazes me how generous old people are, most of them give away their hard-earned life wisdom for free.

All they ask in return is your genuine attention and kind heart.

That’s truly amazing.

By the way, that’s one of the issues (one of many) I have with contemporary society.

We seem determined to delete our history in many ways.

Censoring old people is one way to do that, allowing our cathedrals to burn down is another one.

Anyway.

Knowing what you want is easy when you know who you are.

Too bad that almost nobody is willing to go through that painful process of discovering the self.

Most people are spending countless of hours binge-watching their favorite series.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I’m also a sucker for the old Netflix and chill.

But tell those same people to meditate everyday for an hour and suddenly they’re awfully busy and shit.

Entering the Silence an a regular basis is really really crucial though. And it doesn’t even matter how you do it:

Meditation, walking, running …

Whatever works for your.

But you need to spend time in your inner realm. That’s the only way to know who you really are and what you really want.

It worked for me too.

Because it wasn’t until I connected deep down, that I saw a way out of the mess I created.

Happiness is a skill that can be learned.

I wrote that many times before and it still remains one of my favorite lines.

Discovering your self and your true wants, is a crucial chapter on that road to happiness.

Trust me.

I suffered for years with bipolar tendencies, fueled by excessive alcohol consumption and irregular sleep schedules.

But now, those tendencies are completely gone.

Cutting alcohol was a big part of the recovery.

But the crucial thing was figuring out my purpose and living according to it.

That one saved me.

Do You Even Purpose, Bro?

We’re almost there.

At the place where the biggest secret gets revealed.

Because talking about purpose is basically giving it away.

Having a purpose changed my life overnight.

I spent more than thirty years in the dark because I didn’t know what my purpose was supposed to be.

In fact, I probably didn’t even know what the word meant.

But now, I finally have one.

If you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably read about it once or two:

My purpose in life is to be the best I can be and become a beacon of light in the darkness.

That’s it.

That’s what the fuzz is all about.

It sounds easy but it’s actually quite hard, because it applies to every single thing in my life.

Every second of my day, I want to be the best person that I can be.

Past me would have been satisfied with just helping someone, but I have raised the bar now.

Not only do I want to do the right thing at all times, but I also want to do the right thing for the right reasons.

I want to help people because I love helping them, not because it inflates my ego.

My purpose came to me in a dream.

I’m not kidding.

I had been complaining in a couple of posts about not having a purpose yet.

But then, one night, I dreamed of having a meeting with my former mentor in a coffee shop.

And he said in that dream that I was an idiot for not knowing my purpose because it was clearly obvious.

‘Your purpose in life is to be a beacon of light in the darkness.’

And then I woke up, instantly knowing deep down that that was indeed my true purpose.

I never looked back since.

Life has been much easier since I have a purpose.

Yes, I went through break-ups, got dumped twice in two months, lost a loved one and whatnot.

But because I was fulfilling my purpose, I was never really miserable.

‘If you learn how to read, you’ll never be alone again.’

It’s a familiar saying and it’s true, but here’s a line that’s even more powerful:

If you find your purpose, you’ll never be miserable again.

I’m not saying that having a purpose is the magical silver bullet. All I’m saying is that if you don’t have a purpose, life will be very difficult for you.

That’s why I recommend you take some time off, listen to your inner realm and figure out what your purpose in life is.

It’s the single best thing you could do right now.

I’m totally serious.

How Change Occurs

Purpose will lift you up.

Little by little.

There are a lot of people convinced that life is short, miserable and brute.

I for one, understand where they’re coming from because I’ve been there as well.

Without a purpose, it all seems pointless and useless.

The misery, blood thirst and egomania.

With a purpose however, everything changes on the spot.

I can now look at the universe at large, and my life in particular, and see that everything is as it’s supposed to be.

No, I’m nowhere near perfect.

You should have figured this out by now.

But I’m improving every day and that’s what matters to me.

Yes, there’s a lot of evil and misery in this world, I’m not blind to that. In fact, I’m battling evil just as hard as the next guy.

But I have to start as small as possible.

Before you can set the universe right, you have to start with fixing this planet.

Before you can fix the planet, you have to start with fixing your country.

Before you can fix your country, you have to start with fixing your family.

Before you can fix your family, you have to start with fixing yourself.

Before you can fix yourself, you have to fix your own heart.

And before you can fix your own heart, you have to figure out who you are.

It’s as simple as that.

Every good deed in the world starts with being good to your own being, and that means nurturing your inner realm.

The idea of fixing yourself first, before you start fixing your family or country is very old.

Every important thinker worth their keep has mentioned it, Confucius among others.

I now truly understand the power of that idea.

Because in the past, when I was younger and more idealistic, I also wanted to tackle the big problems first.

Wealth redistribution, solving global hunger and the like.

But I wasn’t even capable of fixing my own life.

The irony was lost on my younger self.

But now, I honestly believe that solving all problems starts on a personal scale.

All that is required is for everyone to start listening to their inner realm. Instead of getting distracted by the so called existential problems of our time.

Because here’s the thing:

They’re not really existential.

Don’t get me wrong, there are existential problems. I truly believe that.

But they’re not the ones everyone is mentioning.

Anyway, the solution is quite simple:

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Again, I didn’t come up with this. This quote is attributed to a certain Ghandi and boy, was he ever right.

Too many people are complaining that humankind lost its decency.

For the record, I’m not debating that.

But it strikes me that the ones complaining about the loss of human decency are always the ones who are the most vulgar and toxic to their perceived ‘opponents’.

Isn’t it ironic?

The Useful Idiots

And also tragic.

The other day I was talking to someone who figured out the secret as well.

He comes from a different walk of life and used to be (and probably still is) a devout Christian.

I’m sure he figured out the secret through his religion.

We all get there in a different way.

I was brought up as a Catholic, turned atheist around the age of 15 and then agnostic around the age of 31.

And now, I’m a lot of things.

I don’t like to label myself, as you probably know by now.

There’s only one label I can live with and it’s being a way-seer, because I know the biggest secret.

The secret is not religious in nature, by the way. In fact, it was a full blooded atheist who finally revealed it to me.

The last time, when I truly got it.

Countless of people have tried to explain it before, but I was not ready back then to understand what they were trying to share me.

The friend I was talking to, the devout Christian, was kind of ridiculing the ‘uninitiated’ a bit.

He’s frustrated that people don’t simply understand what’s going on and calls almost everyone else ‘useful idiots’.

I don’t think he has a lot of friends by the way.

But to me at least, he’s a great man and extremely generous.

Anyway.

We were talking about the secret, as we usually do, and I kept asking the same question:

‘Why don’t the others get it?’

My friend looked at me, took a bite of his apple, and replied:

‘It’s too simple and it won’t get you any money.’

I thought about this for a couple of seconds and I had to agree with him. Because the truth is too simple, it can’t make you money.

And because it can’t make you money, nobody is really interested in spreading it.

It’s true that whenever you figure it out, your life changes on the spot. But there’s no real incentive to tell other people afterwards.

I think that’s why the secret is not well-known.

Parts of it go viral though, time and time again.

But most of the time, those parts are so diluted that it has nowhere near the sheer impact of the original message.

Other times, the secret gets twisted in ways that this materialistic society craves.

For example, a good friend of mine had heard one of those distorted versions and called me one day.

Totally ecstatic.

She was talking about a magical trick that always seemed to work.

You simply had to write down your deepest desire fifteen times on a piece of paper, every single day, without fail.

And within a couple of months, your wish would come true.

Back then, the secret was already revealed to me, so I knew that the ‘magical’ trick would work.

But it’s so far divorced from the real secret, that it’s like the comic book version of it.

Something you’d tell a five year old.

Left, Right, Up Or Down

I tried telling her the secret.

And believe me, I give it my all.

But she would have none of it.

She thought I had finally gone crazy.

I mean, she knows me as as ‘out there’ on the best of days, but this thing I was telling her now was just way too weird.

Instead she just stuck to the ‘magical trick’ of writing her wishes down fifteen times a day.

Every single day.

And of course, a couple of months later, she called me to confirm that the thing worked.

I wasn’t surprised at all.

And because I thought she would now be more open to the secret, I tried going there again.

But the moment she started to figure out what was about to go down, she stopped me again.

She just likes her world rational and secular, thank you very much.

And hey, I appreciate people who can say no. It’s a rare quality in these ‘modern’ times.

But this time, I really thought she should have been a bit more open minded.

Fun fact, she’s the one who introduced me to the concept of a vision board.

That’s what counts as rational these days.

All this to tell you that the secret is hard to fathom.

Even people comfortable with Ouija and stuff like that, don’t want to talk about the secret.

And it’s not a religious thing either.

Because, like I just told you, there are devout Christians as well as atheists among the ‘enlightened’ ones.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if members of every religion are represented among the ones in the know.

It has nothing to do with religion, or even culture.

Every creed and culture is among us.

It has nothing to do with left or right, or above or below. Those are the big artificial divides in society these days.

People have to choose between left or right, or between religious and secular (up or down).

Left, right, up or down.

These divisions are artificial and a way of boxing people in.

Divide and conquer.

The Romans already knew this trick and used it to their advantage.

We never stopped dividing the populace ever since.

And now, it’s all about being left or right and up or down.

I’m here to tell you that these are false choices and we should forget about them.

There is a choice to make.

Yes, that much is definitely true.

But the choice is not between left, right, up or down. That’s what the owners of the farm want us to believe.

The true choice is between outside and inside.

Outside being the material realm and inside being the inner realm.

That’s what the next phase of enlightenment will be about, it’s going to be a fight for your inner realm.

Because you have to realize one thing:

Whoever controls your outer realm is set on controlling your inner realm as well.

Because that’s where the true power is hidden.

A power that they cannot unilaterally corrupt.

Or simply said, they need you to surrender your inner realm voluntarily.

That’s the secret they don’t want you to know.

You are in charge of it all.

As long as you control your inner realm, that is.

And we’re losing control fast.

A Lambo For Your Thoughts

That’s the nature of this world.

Whenever things are breaking down or even deteriorating on a regular schedule, some people assume that there’s some grand conspiracy behind it.

Spreading conspiracies is our number one pastime these days.

And it doesn’t matter what convictions you carry in your heart, because we all succumb to conspiracy theories.

I know because those grand conspiracies attracted me in the past as well.

But to paraphrase a certain smart cookie:

Don’t invoke conspiracy theories, when you can attribute something to simple stupidity.

It could be the millennial version of Occam’s Razor.

Yes, there are a lot of things going wrong in the world.

Right now as we speak.

But none of them really need conspiracy theories as an explanation.

In most cases, human stupidity combined with short-term thinking and excessive greed can explain everything.

Extremely smart people, all of them much smarter than me, have been warning us about incentive traps all along.

Sometimes, perfect rational beings can make perfect rational decisions that favor them, yet bring society to the brink of collapse by doing that.

Most of our ‘existential’ problems we face these days are the result of incentive traps.

And the fact that we humans are about to give away our inner realms forever, is the result of incentive traps as well.

I don’t think there’s a grand conspiracy to keep us trapped in the outer realm.

No, I believe that we’re losing control of our inner realm the same way we’re losing control in every other way:

By gladly giving it away one iota at a time.

How?

Well, it’s that famous expression all over again:

Follow the money.

Except for the hardcore communists, we all want to make a dime.

So think about what that means for a second or two.

How do you make a buck?

The answer is simple:

By creating value.

The moment you convince someone to pay more for something than you yourself paid for it, you’re making money.

Yes, I’m keeping things extremely simple for now, maybe even too simple.

But stay with me for a second.

You can only make a dime if you can convince someone to pay more for something than you initially had to pay for it in money, time or energy.

That’s basically how every transaction in the history of humanity ever came about.

I haven’t stated anything controversial for now.

But here’s where the notorious incentive traps come in.

You can only make a buck to feed your hungry twins or buy a lambo, whatever floats your boat, if you can convince people to give you said buck.

So you need to capture the attention of at least one person.

And that person better have at least something to spend, otherwise you wasted your time and energy for nothing.

It’s a mistake we’ve all made.

The Hidden Agenda

Well, suppose your mark has a dime or two.

And rumor has it that he spends his money like a drunken sailor on leave. Or better, maybe he is a drunken sailor on leave.

Hey, I’m not judging you.

We all gotta eat and that lambo is not going to pay for itself, is it?

But now we’ve come to the crucial part in our little vaudeville:

Convincing this person that he has to spend his dime on your ‘thing’.

And before you can convince someone, you have to capture their attention.

That’s where we needed to be all along.

All this to tell you that in order to make money, people need to bother others. Ever single second of every single day.

You can call it ‘capturing their attention’, others would call it ‘stalking their every waking moment’.

Whatever you call it, money doesn’t exchange hands until someone is convinced.

And someone can only be convinced when they’re aware of your widget.

That’s why their inner realm needs to be perturbed.

Someone spending all their time in their inner realm, if that’s even possible, would be a lousy customer.

So that’s why the destruction of our inner realm is not really a grand conspiracy in my opinion.

It’s more that everybody is incentivized to capture everybody else’s attention and violate everyone’s inner realm in the process.

All that to make a buck.

That’s why it’s so hard to protect your inner realm.

Especially because there’s no grand conspiracy.

There are no four horsemen of the apocalypse intent on destroying you. It’s more like a myriad of actors actively cooperating to distract you.

That’s what social media is. Or the mainstream news.

Or banner ads.

Everybody who’s vying for your attention has a hidden agenda.

Including me.

Now you’re probably wondering what my angle is.

Why am I telling you all this for free?

Well, the reason why I started writing is because I felt like I had something to tell.

I’ve had my share of struggles but somehow soared above all the misery and found a way to be better.

That could motivate others who are dealing with the same stuff.

Or so I thought.

That was the only reason why I started writing and it was enough at first.

But along the way, I began to realize that I really love this process of writing because it helps me to clarify my thinking and forces me to act.

So most of the time, when I’m writing about things you need to do, I’m really talking to my future self.

So when I’m talking about taking back your inner realm, I’m basically addressing my future self.

I want to be in full control of my inner realm.

That’s my number one goal.

And in order to achieve that goal, I have to write it down and spell it out.

Because I can be easy on myself sometimes.

Too easy.

The Best Story-Tellers In History

We all have our biases.

My bias for the longest time was the material realm, I was obsessed by making money and acquiring shiny gadgets.

And for a short time in my life, I was convinced that that was all that mattered.

That short stint almost destroyed me.

My bias towards the material realm caused me to forget about my inner realm and left me with no purpose, meaning or direction.

That lack of meaning would eventually saddle me up with a powerful depression.

It’s the number one problem I see with a lot of friends my age:

They’re too busy living their life.

That in itself is not a bad thing because we should all live our life to the fullest.

But they conflated living their life to the fullest with being busy all the time. All they do is work, chase external validation and acquire material trappings.

Most of them don’t spend time nurturing their inner realm.

In fact, most people don’t even know that there’s such a thing as the inner realm.

There are many reasons for that.

My generation is the most secular ever and thinks that spirituality is something toxic.

As a result, this generation is extremely depressed, burnt out and sick of it all.

I know because I’ve been there.

Luckily there’s always a positive side.

In this case, the positive side is that we can take back our inner realm because it can never be lost or corrupted by others.

Your inner realm is eternally yours.

What can happen though, and it does happen all the time, is that you voluntary give it away in exchange for a cheap buck.

But that’s okay.

Because, like I’ve said, you can take it back.

Right now.

And you should.

How?

I’ll show you how.

By now, I’ve spent the better half of this essay trying to paint the picture.

And hopefully, I captured your attention and convinced you that there is even a problem to begin with.

Now, I’m going to spend the other half on showing you how to tackle that problem.

Or at the very least, I’ll tell you how I did it.

Reclaiming your inner realm is easier than you think.

Because you have to realize that it has been done over and over throughout history.

It’s what all the greatest spiritual leaders have been talking about and most of them are much better story-tellers than I’ll ever be.

Having said that, since you’re reading me instead of them, I guess you’re stuck with me.

Don’t worry, I’ll reveal the secret.

And I guarantee you that when you get to the end, you’ll be in control of your inner realm in no time.

If you want it badly enough, that is.

That makes all the difference.

The Chef And The Cook

So where do you begin?

I bet you’re familiar with the topic of self help, I found out that most of my readers are.

Nothing to be ashamed of really.

But that also means you’re already familiar with the greatest hits:

Eating healthy, working out, having a great quality of sleep, doing meditation, having a purpose, being grateful and the like.

For a start, those things work and I can only recommend that you do them ASAP.

Really.

But I needed a bit more than the traditional ‘self help world’ could give me, and that’s where the story of the cook and the chef comes in.

‘What’s the difference between a cook and a chef?’

Well, all chefs are cooks but not all cooks are chefs, because a chef performs on a higher level than a cook.

Both are capable of making a mean mac and cheese, sure, but the chef is just in his own league.

The cook simply follows recipes but the chef invents new ones.

The cook doesn’t like surprises yet the chef seeks them out.

The cook finds it hard to cook in someone else’s kitchen, the chef can cook everywhere.

The cook doesn’t like to be outside his comfort-zone, the chef spends most of his waking hours there.

Chefs are leaders and don’t follow trends but invent them.

Everyone can be a decent cook but few people have what it takes to be a chef.

I for one, changed from cook to chef on a couple of occasions.

The first time, as an aspiring trader, is the transformation I remember best.

At first, I didn’t even know whether I was going to be successful at all, so I gladly copied my trading rules out of a book.

A great book, but still a book.

That’s how I traded the first couple of months.

Because I didn’t have any experience, I just followed said book like it was scripture itself.

And to my utter surprise, copying its strategy worked and I became a profitable trader.

But I was still a cook.

Then one day, I challenged myself to read one hundred trading books and, not gonna lie, failed that goal.

But I got pretty close.

By reading a lot of trading books, I started to pick up certain tricks from other traders and added them to my trading plan.

Slowly but surely, I was building out my own working mix of strategies and rules.

I was turning into a chef instead of staying a cook.

Funnily enough, being a trading ‘chef’ makes it harder to teach students now, because I can’t point them to one single book.

I guess I should write my own trading book one day.

There’s still time.

Home To Both Light And Darkness

So that’s the difference.

And it’s a crucial one.

The cook knows all the rules and follows them like his life depends on it. The chef knows all the rules as well but knows when it’s OK to break them.

The chef knows why the rules are there in the first place.

It’s the same thing in writing as well.

At first, I was a writing ‘cook’ too. I was basically following ‘the rules’, too afraid to do my own thing.

Luckily, after writing 433 posts, that fear has left the building.

I’m slowly becoming a writing ‘chef’ now.

And my number one goal right now is to become a chef in all pursuits of life.

If that goal seems daunting, think of it this way:

Becoming a chef is what inevitably happens if you’re a decent cook, one who follows and challenges the rules.

Chef-hood is inevitable if you keep asking questions.

And especially if you’re passionate about your subject and always willing to learn more, you’re going to be a chef in no time.

In fact, I’m sure you’re already a chef in one or two topics.

So you already know what it takes to get there.

You just have to take the skills you have in that one area of competence and export them to your other passions.

And before you can blink twice, you’ll be a master in multiple subjects. In fact, that’s why true masters are proficient in everything.

They mastered mastery.

That’s the level of excellence you should strive for and guess what, it’s totally possible.

Because mastery of mastery is open to everyone.

I write down the same sentence a couple of times a day:

Every day and in every way, I am getting better.

This line basically sums up this post.

Photo by Maximilian Manavi-Huber on Unsplash

I had a discussion with a friend the other day.

We were having one of those philosophical moods and started arguing whether good or evil exists.

My friend seems to think that absolute good or evil doesn’t exist and that everything is a matter of perspective.

He seems to think that when you see someone doing something evil, you just don’t have the same reference frame or value system.

For the record, I don’t believe that, that’s why we were having the discussion in the first place.

I truly believe that absolute good or evil exists in this world.

In fact, I even believe that absolute good or evil exist in every one of us.

Right now.

My inner realm is an infinite universe and it’s home to both extremes of the spectrum.

In fact, I know for a fact that absolute evil is part of my being because I’ve experienced it in the past.

I know that I’m capable of utter and abject evil.

Luckily, I’m also capable of being good.

Out Of Excuses

It’s a choice we all have to make.

We’re capable of being infinitely good or infinitely bad at every single moment.

But we have to actively (and sometimes passively) choose between the two.

I’m not a religious person but that’s how I would frame the eternal fight between good and evil.

Like someone once said:

The dividing line between good and evil runs through all of our hearts.

It’s your move now.

Are you going to spend your limited time on this earthly realm by acting out your worst impulses?

I’ve been doing that for over twelve years and it almost destroyed me in the process.

0/5. Would not recommend.

Or are you going to strive to become the best version of yourself?

Like I said before, both versions are already present in your inner realm and it’s up to you to decide which one will surface.

That’s why I talked about mastery before.

Or to be more exact, mastery of mastery.

I truly believe that mastery is one way to strive towards that infinite good version of you.

Because think about it:

Everything you ever do in life is a skill.

A skill you can master.

That’s why I’m always a bit irritated when people tell me they could never be a trader, investor or writer.

And frankly, I even used to cringe when someone told me that they’re not good with money and that there’s nothing they can do about that.

Everything in life is a skill, including mastering money.

And hey, some people are truly not interested in money.

I get that.

And most of those people are lucky that they have someone in their circle of trust that has mad money skills.

But nobody can say that they don’t have what it takes to master money.

There are no excuses.

Some people claim that they could never meditate because their mind is too active and sitting still for even a minute is like torture for them.

Again, another excuse.

I can now drop into a deep trance in a matter of seconds, I’m not denying that one bit.

But that didn’t happen overnight.

It literately took me almost ten years of practicing over and over again to get to this point.

And once in a while, I think back at my first attempt at meditation.

Spoiler alert:

It was totally embarrassing.

The goal was to count my breaths and get to ten, but whenever I got to two or three, I had already lost the count.

I kid you not.

That’s how hostile my mind was back then.

Yes, I could have given up and told myself that my mind was simply too volatile.

It even sounds like a credible excuse.

I’m glad I never did though.

Because meditation lead me to this.

Whatever this is.

The Ultimate Secret

And this is only the start.

For both of us.

Because the moment we realize that all progress is internal, everything changes on the spot.

Yes, the material outside realm is an important part of our existence, I’m not denying that.

But it can be shaped, especially in the long term, to align with your eternal inner realm.

And that’s the secret right there.

We finally got there.

I needed more than five thousand words to get here, but it was totally worth it.

And frankly, you’re having it easy.

Because it took me thirty years of agony and self-sabotage to get here.

In fact, I’m grateful I got there at all.

The outside world will mirror your inner realm over time.

That’s it.

That’s why aggressive people always seem to attract discussions, fights and outright violence.

Some of my friends and family, bless their hearts, are always obsessed with what can go wrong.

And of course, taking out insurance and hedging yourself against possible downside is the responsible thing to do.

I’m not suddenly against insurance now.

But most people always take things too far and are too obsessed with what can go wrong.

That’s the worst thing you could do.

Because by spending your precious time running negative scenario’s, you’re actively choosing to flood your awareness with suffering.

That in itself is already a waste of infinite awareness.

But that’s not all.

By spending your time, energy and attention on negative scenario’s, you’re forcing them to happen.

Worrying is like praying for things you don’t want.

By the way, now is a great time to tell you that none of this is backed by science.

If you want clinical trials and academic consensus, you’re in the wrong place. I’m sure you already figured that out on your own.

So let’s be totally clear about things:

This is me spitballing.

Anyway.

The negative people who are easily scared, the majority of any population, are making things worse for themselves.

Not only are they spoiling their present by agonizing over possible catastrophes, they’re also actively making them happen in their future.

And that’s not even all.

It gets worse.

If those people focus their negative attention on you, they’re also destroying your future.

I know this sounds crazy but I truly believe that.

There are people in my tribe who are really sweet and mean well, bless their hearts, but they’re always stressing about my future.

They’re spending so much brainpower, time, energy and attention on worrying about me, that they’re impacting my future in doing so.

And not in a good way.

I only recently realized that.

Luckily, I found a hack.

A Dirty Look

Here’s what I learned.

I refuse to let anybody scare me these days.

Even those well-meaning but always frightened friends and family members have come to realize that.

It doesn’t stop them one bit of course.

They’re still trying to frighten me, by lobbing ever more ridiculous and crazy scenario’s my way.

But I’m rebuking them with an ease of mind like it’s all I’ve ever done.

I’m ruthless these days about my mindset.

And even more important, I’m ruthless about my inner realm. Managing it is now my biggest priority.

None of this came easy to me by the way.

Don’t ever think that.

If you would have talked about meditation twenty years ago, I would have laughed you out of the door.

I was being loud, obnoxious, even aggressive and I liked it.

The idea that I could just as well be thoughtful, generous and positive was farfetched back then.

Now, it’s all I can think of.

I manage my inner realm like my life depended on it.

How?

Simple.

I stopped consuming garbage.

I’m talking mainstream news, political opinion pieces, junk writing and the like.

Instead of consuming stuff, I started creating it.

And I became mindful of my moods.

Whenever something upsets me, I take time off to figure out why.

By doing that, I realized I was wasting a lot of my precious time in this realm on agonizing about virtual numbers going up or down.

Talk about meaningless dribble.

And it was even worse than that:

I could have had the perfect meeting and still would feel bad inside.

In the past, I thought that was normal.

But now, I sit down and try to figure out why a perfect meeting would spoil my mood.

And eventually, I would realize that I felt bad because of a dirty look given to me by one of the guys at that particular meeting.

A look that lasted barely half a second.

One that nobody else seemed to have noticed and that maybe only happened in my mind.

Who knows, right?

Yet, I still allowed it to ruin my day.

At least, in the past.

Now I force myself to be honest about all those little mood swings and see them for what they really are.

Distractions.

Whenever something small threatens to put me in a bad mood, I take a mindful breath or two.

And I force myself to feel grateful for where I am and what is given to me.

On every given moment, I can feel grateful for at least ten separate things in my life.

That’s as good as any superpower, trust me.

You should do the gratefulness exercise at least once a day because it will truly change your world.

After dissecting your psyche for a couple of months and forcing yourself to be grateful whenever you need it, something strange will happen.

It was the strangest thing that ever happened to me.

In fact, I’m still not used to it.

Outside things won’t change your state of mind any more.

Word.

As Powerful As Any Genie

It sounds strange.

I understand.

But that’s where I’m now.

Good things won’t make me manic and bad things won’t make me depressed.

In fact, my baseline stays the same over time and nothing in the outside realm really changes my mood any more.

In reality, there are still minor swings at times and that’s OK.

But the big swings are gone.

Maybe you think that’s a bad thing, well, I used to think that as well.

Not any more though.

As a trader I would make 10k a day and be ecstatic for a while, rightly so.

But the next day, I would lose 10k a day and be totally depressed.

That’s the other side of the coin.

If you allow numbers on a spreadsheet to alter your emotions, it will work both ways.

And here’s the thing:

The sadness will cut much deeper than winning ever feels good, that’s the way of the world.

It’s the same in all games:

Love, war and everything in between.

That’s why I actually learned to isolate outside factors, in this case numbers on a spreadsheet, and keep them from messing with my mood.

It’s a crucial thing for traders to learn.

But also useful for every person dealing with volatile results in the outer realm.

Or in short, every human being.

And hey, I’m not detached from reality.

That’s not what I’m trying to do.

I made that mistake in the beginning. Losing would hurt so much, that I stopped looking at my numbers.

Trying to ignore the losses and pretending that everything was going awesome, was not a great way to deal with the pain.

I soon realized that.

You can never ever ignore the truth.

In fact, you should surround yourself at all times with the cold hard truth and be totally aware of the impact of your actions on the world.

But it should not effect your inner realm.

You should think of your inner realm as sacred and eternal, something that simply cannot be corrupted by the mundane, material realm.

The weather will be amazing one day, and awful the next day. That’s how life is and the swings shouldn’t impact you more than need be.

When it rains, it simply means that you have to bring an umbrella.

It doesn’t mean that you’re a sad piece of shit now.

Maybe you’re laughing, but that’s how I truly felt back in the day.

My self-worth would change by the hour based on random observations of the outside realm.

That’s no way to live.

If you want to leave all that behind, start with managing your inner realm. And over time, that inner realm will force the outer realm to reshape itself.

That’s when the magic happens.

Again, some of this, maybe even all of this, sounds esoteric. I get that.

And I can’t prove anything.

But I’m just telling you what I’ve been observing throughout the years.

As a kid, you believe magic is real and as an adult, you find out that it isn’t.

But that’s not the whole truth.

Because magic is real, in more ways than one.

You’re as powerful as any genie.

How I Opened My Mind

And this has always been true.

Throughout history, people had to learn and relearn that basic truth.

We’re all-powerful entities.

Yes, the laws of physics are ironclad, I’m not debating that.

Not one bit.

If you run into a concrete wall at top speed, that will hurt.

A lot.

And if you jump off a sixty story building, that will probably be the end of you in this realm.

We all know that.

But the hard laws of physics are just the base of the knowledge pyramid. Almost everything in modernity is intent on making you forget that.

And you should never forget that.

‘They’ want you to only focus on the material realm and ignore everything else.

And that ‘everything else’, that’s where the magic happens.

Not literally of course. I’m not truly claiming that magic is real, that’s not what the secret is all about.

Sorry to disappoint you.

All I’m saying is that controlling your inner realm is the closest you’ll ever come to performing real magic.

That’s why I claim that we’re all-powerful.

It’s something all great heroes have known.

They knew that if they wanted something badly enough and never gave up, that their vision would eventually materialize in the outer realm.

Like I told you before, many people have been trying to tell me this secret over and over again.

And most of the time, I was ignoring them.

In the earliest part of my adult life, I was an engineering student only interested in the cold hard truth.

If someone would have started talking about inner realms and infinite intelligence, I would have dropped my shit and left.

That’s how I was back then.

In fact, that’s how all of us engineering students were back in the day. We believed that science would always prevail.

And to be fair, science works wonders in the material world.

The huge improvement of quality of life, of material quality of life, in the last two centuries is the biggest feat of our time.

Again, nobody is debating that.

But material quality of life is just the beginning, not the end.

That should be obvious by now.

And that was exactly what I couldn’t see back then as a budding engineering student.

Luckily, I opened my mind throughout the years.

It first started when I was playing poker.

Sometimes the most ridiculous set-ups would happen.

I would win or lose utterly crazy hands and it was hard to ignore the karmic aspect of most of them.

Of course, at first, I did just that.

I ignored the obvious.

And would blame my fortune or misfortune on plain coincidence.

However, over time, that simple explanation could not satisfy me. My gut tried to tell me that there was more to it all.

And then, the strangest thing ever happened to me. It thoroughly changed my life and instantly killed my skeptic mind.

I was at the peak of my poker playing career and started participating in a rigged game.

Looking back, I can’t remember why it seemed like a good idea at the time and, in my defense, I did none of the rigging.

But I knew that the game was rigged and I still participated in it. And to make a long story short, I made a killing in that game.

Though I never won a hand ever since.

True story.

My skeptic mind could not deal with that fact.

And things would get worse.

Getting Exactly What You Want

I eventually had to give it all back.

In fact, I eventually lost everything I ever won with poker after participating in those rigged games.

Through bad luck, bad play or both.

Doing the wrong thing is always the wrong thing.

I wish I could have understood that back then.

Yes, it was a remarkable chain of events, but I could not read more into it. I just thought it was plain bad luck.

A couple of years later, when I reinvented myself as a profitable trader, I spent a lot of time with other traders absorbing their skills.

That really got me thinking.

I realized that the market is much bigger than all of us.

She’s an all-powerful entity that can kill you, or more likely bankrupt you, if you’re not skilled enough.

And a lot of beginning traders are not skilled enough.

I was no different.

My problem was that I wasn’t really convinced that I was a profitable trader. Whenever I made a couple of dimes, I would give it all back.

And after talking to experienced traders and reading a lot of trading books, I realized that that happens to almost everyone.

In fact, there’s a saying among traders:

The market will give you exactly what you want.

If you want abundance, the market will give that to you.

But if you want adrenaline and euphoria mixed with bouts of crippling depression, the market will give that to you as well.

In spades.

And if it’s pain you’re after, the market will certainly give that to you.

This all might seem a bit dark to some, but it’s exactly what I had to understand before I could become a profitable trader at heart.

The market will give you exactly what you want.

So it’s up to you, as a trader, to make sure you’re trading for the right reasons.

And a lot of traders aren’t.

They think they’re trading to make money, we all think that at first, but that’s not always true.

Only the trader truly knows why they’re trading.

If your inner realm is not sound, the market is going to bulldozer you into oblivion.

That’s what I needed to understand to get my thinking and trading to the next level.

I realized that before I could become a profitable trader and even more important, a decent human being, I had to work on myself.

And that’s where the so-called magic of the universe comes in.

Whatever you want, the universe will give it you.

Just like the market does.

And that’s why managing your inner realm is so important, because whatever you want to happen, will happen.

And just like we think that all traders want to make money, we also think that all humans want happiness.

That’s not true at all.

Some people want pain in their lives.

Maybe not consciously, but their inner realm craves for pain and conflict nevertheless.

And guess what, pain and conflict is what they’ll get.

The universe gives you what you really want.

Always.

Let’s Get Practical

That’s why you have to be careful.

Careful with what you put out there.

Because you will attract whatever you spend time, energy and attention on. That’s where the ‘law of attraction’ people have it right.

Maybe you think you’re a decent human being, and hey, you could be right.

I’m not judging you.

But here’s the kicker:

We all think we’re a decent human being and we all think we’re the hero in our own story.

That doesn’t make it so.

You really have to take the time to step into the Silence and figure out what makes you tick.

There are infinite ways to do that.

Take writing for instance, that activity works for me.

Whenever I read some older stuff, I’m always amazed at how much I’ve grown.

I used to be petty, jealous and small minded and it clearly showed in my writing.

And hey, maybe I’m still all those things. That’s perfectly possible.

But at least, I’m now aware of my short-comings and actively trying to fix them.

Anyway.

It’s all about the inner realm.

That’s why forgiving your ‘enemies’ is such a killer move, one not directed towards your enemies but towards your self.

Because you can’t live with hate in your inner realm.

Hating your enemies hurts you more than it hurts them.

I realized that turning the other cheek is not about being ‘soft’, but about being hard as nails.

It’s about protecting your inner realm above all else.

That’s hardcore.

It’s an insight I could have never gotten a couple of years ago and it took me years of growth, literally, to exist on that level.

Of course, it’s only easy when you get it.

Or, like a famous soccer player once said:

You get it when you see it.

That was my story as well.

Now that I’m starting to fully understand the biggest secret, I’m seeing it everywhere I look.

Many wise men and women have talked about it:

The stoics, Socrates, The Exalted One, The Christ, and many others.

It’s everywhere, if you know what to look for.

They all knew how to control the inner realm and I’m almost there as well.

And that’s why I’m extremely hopeful for the future.

Because when we’re all actively managing our inner realm, the world can truly become a better place.

There’s a saying among futurists:

The future is already here, but it’s unevenly distributed.

The same can be said about abundance. Or enlightenment. Or Paradise.

Anyway, let’s tone things down a bit.

Because I like to think of myself as a practical guy handing out practical advice.

Holding hands and singing Kumbaya might be fun but is not always practical.

I realize that.

So let’s actually do it.

Let’s get practical.

Let’s look at easy ways to manage your inner realm.

Or at least, let’s look at ways to take that first step.

Ways that work for you.

Getting To The Great Stuff

That’s the crucial part.

Because you and your inner realm are unique.

That’s why things that work for me don’t necessarily work for you.

‘So Molly, what works for you?’

Let’s start with a couple of the usual answers:

Meditation, yoga, working out, eating healthy, …

On a daily basis.

Then come the more exotic habits:

Writing, practicing penmanship and playing my instrument.

And then there are the truly weird things, things nobody else probably does. I can’t talk about all of them in detail but some of them are very rewarding.

Things like doing confirmations, writing down my personal goals and spending a lot of time listening to my inner self.

That last thing is very esoteric, I know.

Practical, rational people don’t like to be told that they need to ‘listen to their inner self’.

I used to be rational too and look at me now:

Doing confirmations, engaging in lucid dreaming and other weird shit.

By the way, you could end up there too so I want you to be careful.

Above all, I’m obsessed with living truthfully, even when it hurts.

Especially when it hurts.

The moment I realized that everything I need is already inside me, that’s when things started to click.

Call it soul, spirit, mind, intuition, or whatever really. Words are just words after all.

Labels.

What you understand is unfortunately a small subset of what I’m telling you.

I don’t want to put you down, that’s just how communication between individuals work.

And what I’m telling you is only a small subset of what I can put into words.

Finally, what I can put into words is only a small subset of what I know.

That means that what you understand is only a very small subset of what I know.

And vice versa by the way.

What I understand is only a small subset of what you know because confusion is a two-way street.

That’s why you have to start doing instead of reading.

Be a chef instead of a cook.

Start exploring your inner realm and figure out how to truly connect with your self.

Only you can do that, nobody else can.

In fact, every incentive structure in the world is designed to keep you from connecting with your inner realm.

Because that’s where the money is.

You probably understand that by now.

If you want to find true happiness, achieve your purpose and align with your deepest calling, then it’s up to you to do that.

Only you.

And hey, it’s not going to be easy.

Nobody said it would be easy.

That’s how you know you’re doing something worthwhile.

Because it’s hard.

Not everything hard is worth your while, but everything worth your while is going to be hard.

That’s just how things are.

Something Bigger Than Myself

Hardship is inevitable.

That’s how life should be.

Opening up your heart and mind is hard.

Being alone with your deepest inner thoughts and truly confronting them is also hard.

And believing that the universe is always perfect is an almost impossible task at first.

But so is learning how to walk.

And after all, most of us figured out how to do that.

Nobody gave up that ‘walking thing’ after slamming a couple of times into the ground.

I honestly don’t remember what happened but I must have tried time and time again, until I fell no more.

It’s a magical process and we all take it for granted.

Almost everyone achieved at least that first milestone.

But somewhere along the line, it became perfectly acceptable to give up and stop trying.

There are people in my life who proclaim, with a touch of pride even, that they’re just not good with money and that they never will be.

Or that they just don’t know how to deal with ‘computers’.

Or that meditation doesn’t work for them.

Or that they don’t have time to work out.

The excuses are always the same.

I started this writing ‘thing’ by writing one sentence every day for a year.

And when I mentioned that in one of my posts, some people liked the idea.

So to my surprise, some of my followers took on the habit as well and are now also writing one sentence a day.

That’s amazing for them.

But then there are others.

They’re clearly interested in becoming a writer and you can tell they would be awesome because their replies are always witty and original.

Yet, these people proclaim that they don’t have the time to write.

And that’s it.

Even when I tell them that writing one sentence a day takes maybe one minute at most, they’re still not convinced.

For the record, I’m not trying to push random strangers into writing. These are people who are excited by the possibility of becoming a writer.

But they let inertia beat them to it.

Sad

Or better, it used to make me sad.

Now, I realize that life is always perfect.

Think of it this way:

There are two category of people in this world.

The people who understand what’s truly possible if you’re persistent and in touch with your inner realm.

And the people who are about to understand, one day.

For the longest time, I was a member of the former group but, one day, I switched groups.

I’m glad I did.

Some people would call it a leap of faith and maybe it is.

Because I truly believe there are no atheists in this world.

There are just the people who figured out what god they’re serving and the ones who haven’t figured it out yet.

I think the god I’m serving is the infinite good version of my self.

Again, I’m not religious and you can probably tell by now.

But I’m really starting to believe in something bigger than just myself.

Whatever that may be.

Dying A Little Bit Inside

I’m going to be honest.

There’s no exact day when all of this clicked.

I know that’s how Hollywood would script it.

The protagonist would have gotten all kinds of clues from various wise men and woman throughout the story.

But he would find himself in a shit-show of his own making nevertheless.

And then, in his darkest hour, he would stare our of the window and see the sun appear from behind a cloud.

Hollywood likes to be on the nose.

And then his eyes would glaze over and something would just click in his mind.

You can tell by the sound-track.

Some kind of lyrical theme would start playing and people would realize that we’re ready for the turnaround.

And our protagonist would change in that very instant.

If he smoked, he would throw away his cigarettes. If he was overweight, he would start working out.

And there would be some kind of weird training montage on screen, preferably with eighties music in the background.

Hollywood screwed up our perception of real life.

Because in real life, there’s very rarely a light-bulb moment.

At least not in mine.

Instead, it was a slow improvement over many years, too boring for your average audience.

There was no sudden eureka moment or ‘darkest before dawn’ shit.

It was just me, desperate to become better with each passing day.

That’s how all this started.

Looking back, I realize that almost everyone in my life was trying their best to hand me their piece of the puzzle.

But it took me ages to see the whole thing at once.

Again, Hollywood-style epiphanies are rare.

Real life is more subtle.

It’s more like little realizations, one after another, that you’re heading in the right direction.

Take my first time that I went to a party and didn’t have a craving for a cigarette.

Or my first time that I sat sober in a bar and nobody, including me, thought it was awkward.

And of course, the first time I asked out a girl while being sober.

Those little things make all the difference in the end.

In fact, if I had to tattoo something on my body, it would be:

Celebrate the small wins.

The small wins remind me why I’m doing what I’m doing and why I even started this journey in the first place.

In fact, I rarely even celebrate big wins anymore.

You know, the things normal people celebrate:

Birthdays, promotions, a new car…

Most of these things are victories in the outer realm and I like to focus on victories in my inner realm.

Those victories would be lame to you, I get that.

But they matter to me.

The other day I was having dinner with friends at a fancy restaurant and I ate my appetizer with the wrong knife.

Maybe the waiter had a bad day or something, because he started to make fun of me in front of the entire table.

For the rest of the evening.

I laughed along every single time and even tipped the guy more than usually.

My brother-in-law later asked me:

‘So that night, did you die a little bit inside?’

At first I didn’t even know what he meant because I felt totally comfortable and in control throughout the whole dinner.

That’s a clear win for me.

In the past, I would have agonized for weeks over the whole thing, trust me.

That, my friend, is growth.

The Rock And The Ocean

And that’s how to get ‘there’.

Not that I have a clear concept of ‘there’.

But I bet it’s gonna be good.

How can it not be?

My quality of life has easily doubled over the course of a year. And frankly, I was already doing great last year.

About one year ago, I was telling people over and over that I was in a perfect spot.

And I wasn’t lying back then, life was pretty good.

But nowhere near as good as it is now, because I improved in ways I could not fathom back then.

That’s the awesome thing about improving every day, you never know where it might lead you.

For instance, I have started practicing my instrument again this year.

That’s big for me.

Because in the past, I had some regrets about never playing any more. Luckily, I dealt with regrets the only way I know how.

By acting and being better.

My life is still not perfect, I’ll grant you that.

But I’m happy with where I am.

And that makes all the difference.

I used to base my life philosophy on a popular one-liner coined by Bruce Lee:

Be like water, my friend.

It’s still good advice.

But I took it too literal in the past and I was too flexible.

And because I often changed on a whim to suit the environment, I started losing sight of who I really was.

I saw the universe as an infinite ocean and thought I had to surf the waves to have any chance of survival.

My viewpoint has changed, I prefer to be steadfast now.

The universe is still an infinite ocean but I’m the rock standing its ground.

I stopped chasing things because it’s not necessary any more.

Being aligned with my inner realm is enough, because everything I need or want is already there.

In my inner realm.

And the outside world, that infinite ocean, will sooner or later align with my inner realm.

Be like water was good advice then, and it’s still good advice now.

But don’t forget who you are in the process and don’t lose track of your inner realm.

Ignore your self at your own peril.

Unhappiness is at an all time high in our current society because nurturing our inner realm is no longer incentivized.

It’s even frowned upon or worse.

I can’t give you a billion dollar or double your lifespan but trust me, reclaiming your inner realm is as valuable.

And if that would be the only thing you remember from this insane long post, I would be honored.

Do you remember the last time you truly felt peaceful and when time lost all its meaning?

I experience that feeling a couple of times a day lately.

It makes all the struggles in my past, present and future totally worth it.

I wish I could grant you that feeling.

Getting Shit Done

It’s real.

I’m talking about entering your inner realm on a regular base.

It’s possible and, frankly, mandatory.

So figure out your way of entry.

For some it’s exercise, others swear by yoga or meditation. And some people even take the more unconventional route.

Whatever works.

The beauty of humanity is that we’re all unique individuals, with unique needs and wants.

And a unique way to enter the inner realm.

Just find the way that works for you.

And yes, there will be a way.

There’s always a way.

In the end, it all comes down to being mindful about your self and observing your state of mind.

I remember being in the deepest crevices of my depression.

And one day, out of nowhere, I decided to make a two hour hike. I hadn’t been out for months at that point.

The weather was amazing.

And as I was walking ‘out there’, there was not a single human being in sight.

There was only the beauty of nature in all her glory, as far as the eye could see.

It didn’t really do that much for me at that point because I was still depressed and wallowing in my problems for most of the hike.

But there was one point, near the end of the hike, that the wind was blowing in my face and I was starting to feel my legs.

And for a fleeting second or two, something akin to happiness flooded my system.

In those couple of seconds, all my problems were gone.

That instantly woke me up.

I realized that there was more than just misery in my future.

Of course, I didn’t know anything about the inner realm or stuff like that. All I knew was that I had felt ‘something’ for a brief second.

And that was enough for me to hang in there.

For the next couple of months, I tried to get to that particular spot as often as I could.

Nothing ever happened again.

But walking in nature was good for me and I slowly started to get my shit together.

And I learned about mindfulness and meditation.

The rest is history.

Whatever you’re going through, it all works out in the end.

Take it from a fellow survivor, one that has been close to giving up on a couple of occasions.

But something deep inside always reminded me that there was more in my future.

And that kept me in the game.

My inner realm saved me, that’s how important it is.

So here’s my ultimate advice to you:

Love yourself.

Like your life depended on it.

Because it does.

Don’t wait until the warning signals are flashing all over your face, that was my favorite strategy as well.

It’s not a good look.

And as always, I’m here to help you figure things out. I’m not a life coach, purpose hacker or whatever the new thing is.

But I know a thing or two about not connecting with your inner realm and losing the will to live.

Luckily, I also know how to turn things around.

And getting shit done.

So here we are.

Near the end.

And you’re probably still wondering about the magical formula.

After all, I opened this post by dangling the biggest secret in front of your nose and I all but literally promised that I would fork it over to you.

A simple one-liner that solves all your problems or a secret password that gets you out of any trouble.

Your own personal Holy Grail.

I hate to disappoint you, but there is no biggest secret.

Not really.

Yes, the universe is magic, but it also adheres to the laws of physics.

Yes, we can do amazing things if we’re persistent enough, but persistence is so rare in human specimens.

Yes, love is the ultimate answer, but you have to wade through a lot of hate to get there.

Yes, you can shape the universe to your own vision, but you have to figure out who you are first.

Yes, it all works out in the end, but there’s a lot of shit in the middle.

Yes, you’re an awesome human being, but that’s not going to get you a free lunch.

And yes, there’s a free lunch, but you’ll pay nevertheless.

Maybe all of this is very confusing to you or maybe my writing is clearer than it’s ever been.

It’s hard to tell at this point.

That’s what happens when you go all in without a safety net:

You sometimes end up on the cold hard floor.

Luckily, there’s always next time.

So whenever you’re down, pick yourself up and climb that ladder again.

Because success awaits you.

Maybe.

And if it doesn’t, well, at least you had fun in the process.

This moment is why you’re alive.

No, not to read me.

But to realize that you’re an amazing human being, capable of the most astonishing feats and, unfortunately, with limited time to your disposal.

Be careful with your time.

And be careful with your powers as well, because by now you should realize that they’re practically unlimited.

Master your inner realm and fate will take care of you.

Because the universe is infinitely good.

And everything works out in the end.

That, my friend, is as close as we’ll ever get to that magic formula.

That’s the biggest secret.