Transcription
To mobilize energy means to know exactly where am I focusing my attention and therefore where attention goes, there the energy flows. Yes. So this is what focus means for me.
If you want to create something, it's better to know where does your attention go. It's not that you are like walking this path and then you are like becoming superhuman or anything like this. It is very, very simple. You just become less compulsive and less reactive to whatever is going on in this world.
Because this is where I felt like at some point, I don't want this anymore. I don't want to be driven by what is going on out there in the world. I don't want to be driven by what is happening out there where I feel like I have no influence on. It can be the decision of the governments. It can be the decision of whatever is being propagated in this world which is ultimately affecting me. And I just didn't feel like I want to be dependent on external circumstances because this just doesn't feel like my life is in my hands.
How can it be that people around me, circumstances around me that I literally have really no influence on? How can it be that all of this is influencing my life to such an extent that it makes me suffer, that it is frustrating me, that I feel depressed about it, that I feel angry about it, that I feel sad about it? At some point, I just felt like it's very unstable. And so I start to ask myself, how come that I cannot manage myself in a better way? And this is where now all this so-called inner work starts to take place, where the self-mastery takes place.
You are not trying to solve the issues of your government. You are not trying to solve the problems of your neighbor. The first thing you try to solve is everything that is able to trigger you to not be at ease with how this life is.
What is the ultimate outcome of starting to invest some time in yourself? I would say you are getting more at ease regardless of what is happening on the outside. It doesn't mean you are becoming more ignorant to it. That is also a misconception. It is just the fact that the world around you, everything is like still in turmoil and everything is still burning. But because you are at ease, because you have become more stable, at least in this burning surrounding, you can now still be the guide to help the people out of the house. Because if you lose your temper and if you are getting stressed when the house is burning, who's going to guide the way?
And this is how I felt my life was also slowly, slowly developing in the sense that if I really feel like I would like to contribute something to this world, to this society, then it can only be done if I'm already at ease and with peace inside of myself, that then I can carry out in the world.
Try to just be a good human. Be a good human. Or if you like to play this visual game, we look into the world and there's so many things to complain about. There's so much like to to complain what goes wrong and how should somebody behave and how should humanity be. Okay. What would be your ideal representation on a human being on this earth if you had the chance to create that human? How would that be? And then slowly you really start to do your own research and start to understand which is the most harmonious way to create what you feel like can be created.
So, and if this is the type of foundation where you start to feel that in a way we are all connected, when you don't view yourself as an individual who is fighting against the rest of the 8 billion people, in the moment this happens, when the connection is being established, decisions will be different. The way of how you think will be different and ultimately hopefully translating into some positive impact for the next generation, the next one.
The only reason to change anything about our life would be if that change that we are looking for is resulting in the fact that we going to feel better. We usually wouldn't go for any type of change knowing it's going to make us feel worse than where we are right now.
So the whole idea is changing for the better. So now the question where you are finding yourself right now, you say you want to change to the better. It expresses to me you need to become light. You need to become free and you need to liberate from the things that are holding you down. So first question right now is, what is it that is weighing down on you? And if it is what happened to you in the past, well, you need to solve it. Whether you take responsibility for it or not, the fact is there is something it's still weighing down on you and it needs to be solved.
And this is the way why sometimes we say in order to become light, sometimes we need to look very, very deep where it looks dark, where the light hasn't been placed upon yet inside of yourself. And going even deeper, there is even something where you yourself maybe don't even want to go there anymore because you know it's going to crash the own view that you have upon yourself until now. But this is the only way in order to make everything that is dark and heavy inside of you to start becoming light. You need to shine the light where it hasn't been before.
Can you do this without staying humble? You can't. If you think you're the best already, you won't do this. You are still nourishing the illusion. Yeah. And you are pretending and not wanting to actually look into what is it you really went through this lifetime.
Only when you start to see the whole complex and everything, the light and the dark, the heavy, when you see all everything that brought you here. Now with that road map, you see where you come from. You see what is it that has shaped you. You can see how did all of these circumstances, situations, what was the consequence you still carry until the way of how you take decisions nowadays. Why are there certain words? Why are there certain topics that when somebody starts even mention that word, something inside of you starts to pop up? All of this is there are processes which are still running our life whether they are unconscious or somewhere happening in the subconscious, but they are there are patterns, there are cycles, there are repetitive things that keep popping up in your life. And it's the question if you at some point want to break out of the cycle. And this can only be done in the moment where you start to learn and understand what is it to live a life more aware and more based on being conscious about what you do and removing everything from these unconscious layers. Yes.
And it's a journey. The understanding will change throughout your journey, really depending on how profound is your view upon your life and the life around you. How profound are you living this type of life? And so it really means it changes from person to person. I can't tell to somebody this is what it means for you. It's up to you to put in your thoughts what does it mean to you.
What is sure is that everybody has always been given the possibilities to change something. The other truth is at some point when you're oblivious about things and you just really don't want to see, you can't see it, then the signs sometimes become bigger. And then at some point it could even happen that something is going to occur which will make you change. If you want or not, it is going to make you change. You will have no choice anymore. You had the choices before, but you didn't use them. And this is why sometimes I talk about this ability to really listen a little bit carefully. Sometimes it is like this, we take the most recent example, like before a burnout happens, your body told you way before that something is not okay. So you ended up where you are unhappy right now, but you say you didn't do it. So who you want to blame right now?
And what does it ultimately mean? It means that the last 40 years, who was running your life then? You don't need to travel the world and look for somebody above there and worship them. You should, in a way, bring out your own best version or the master.
You are doing similar things that at some point maybe a robot could do. The whole life, the whole daily structure starts to follow patterns. There is no freedom anymore. It is a pattern. You are being driven. You are a part of a wheel, part of a system. It just is a small one. But there's no chance for you to sometimes just get out and do something beyond that. So the longer you feel trapped inside the system and just are functioning, you're just functioning, you're living a functional life. But when you're out there walking in the garden or walking in the forest, there is nothing that the forest and the nature needs from you. You don't need to function when you walk through the forest. The only thing you need to do is realize this is that's what it is. Welcome to existence. There is nothing to add to this. There is nothing to change about this. It is just about the realization that is it. And the less of this type of moments you have in your life and the more you're like functioning, I would say these are the indications you're being driven.
Well, without it, we for sure wouldn't be here. But my definition or right now the understanding of the nature was really on a vast scale. You might change your job. One day you might change the location where you're living. The surrounding is going to change. The people that you're dealing with is going to change. But there's always one one thing that always remains the same, which is you always carry yourself along the way. So you can't escape yourself. You can't escape your dark sides. You can't escape your pain and your suffering and everything that in a way is triggering you also.
And this is where I feel like to have this, let's say concept at the moment to really invest time in bringing out understanding yourself better and then build yourself up in all layers that nowadays we can dive into.
How do you build up energy? It is by giving your mind something where you need to have willpower to maintain it. Willpower and development of energy go hand in hand with each other. The will to live, the will to keep going, the will, the will, strong will, iron will, energy is also very high. And so literally some of these positions are so demanding on the body that in order to maintain this position, you have to have will. You need to create something about yourself where you are pushing yourself.
Progress meaning setting goals, achieving something, doing something. The quickest way to not waste lifetime is when you really set up a schedule and just do the work. Free from how you feel. Because also feelings sometimes you wake up one day, you feel this way, you wake up the next day, you feel another way. And it's just not helpful to base your structure or your goal on how you feel.
Discipline meaning you stick to what you put there on paper. You take your time, you make the plan and unless you really are sick or have some type of higher excuse, you just do what you have committed to. And this struggling of there are still so many distractions every day coming up. No, but you stick to the plan. You stick to your plan. This is what I feel like is a part of discipline, to do what you have committed yourself to. It's the one area. And at the same time, discipline also meaning you don't do the things you already know are not good for you. Discipline is not just about the active part of doing something. It also relates to the passive part of leaving the things out of your life where you already know is not going to help you. Both of these areas is, let's say, discipline.
Focus for me is the ability to mobilize your energy. Energy maybe doesn't tell anything to the people. Your intention, your mind, your awareness. Let's say I need to do some type of work. I need to write the email. Simple. The quickest way, most accurate way to write this email is if you are completely with your awareness, you are focused in writing this email. Right now, you don't look at the mobile phone at the same time. You don't listen to music. You don't watch another television show on the screen. You don't eat something at the same time. Your focus is on that one task because your focus is on that one task. This is why everything that you are made out of can flow into whatever you are creating there. You don't do like the bench press and do something for the legs at the same time. It doesn't make sense.
No matter who, no matter how holy sometimes I look, I have my dark moments of the past and I made mistakes in the past. You need to clean that. You need to clean your past because if there's any type of debris, any type of weight still lingering inside of our own life, you cannot move on in a clear and clean way.
So ultimately the way to self-mastery, the self-assessment, the self-observation with what aim to clean yourself from the roles that you started creating in this lifetime, to clean yourself from the identity you started investing so much effort and energy in order to maintain it. And all of this taken together meaning, in a way, also in the moment you understand what is your source and what is your essence, the view on this world becomes different. The way of how you live your life, the way how you interact with people in this lifetime starts to tremendously change in the moment where you are starting to understand that we all play a role. And it's time for some people that they don't want to play the role anymore because the role is always limiting you to something that you in essence are not. That's why the role, keeping up the identity, keeping up the personality, this persona, at some point becomes unbearable because it is pressurizing you. And that is the sign for me somebody's telling you this role that you're playing, it's becoming too small for what you really are.
The idea is when right now the only thing you are doing the whole day long is sleeping, eating, sitting in the office, coming home without knowing you, I can tell your body's unhappy. Your body is unhappy. And together with the fact of your body is not being used properly, you don't have a good connection to your body. You don't have a good connection to your body. You don't know what the signals of the body are. You can't communicate with the body. You're missing out on very, very subtle signs. Signs of does your body feel well? What does your body need? Are you overstressing the body? Do you need more rest? Is it time to regenerate? Is your diet right? Is your diet wrong? All of these things, healthy body carries the possibility for healthy mind.
This is why the emphasis of very basic breathing techniques, standing practice, mobility practice, just warming up joint exercises that is just to get some awareness back into the body. In, out. So at some point the breath and the body start to move in harmony. So, and this is where in the field of martial arts we talk about that now when this type of connection starts to happen, energy, breath, and body start to work now together. Whatever your body is doing, it's not doing it superficially, it's doing it also filled up with the proper energy.
So now the helpful aspect about the breath is also that we are able to actually connect our mind to the breath. So which ultimately meaning where the breath is there, your mind is. Where you place the mind, where you place the attention, this is where the energy goes. I place my attention somewhere else, my energy goes somewhere else. And this is the reason why when I sit here, when I'm physically here, my energy is also here. Because if not, if you are physically sitting here, but your attention is somewhere else, it's a hollow shell. And it feels differently.
And if I walk through the city, I know when I walk, when I talk, I know I talk. When I do a movement, I know I do the movement. When I work, I work. When I sleep, I sleep. When I eat, I eat. You do things in harmony. You do things as a one unit. You don't sit here and think about the holidays. Then you travel to the holidays, but you are thinking about work. This is the type of you see it's conflicting because you have too many misaligned areas of your life.
So now previously I tried to explain a little bit this general idea of the approach, simplify your life. Yeah. So the more separated you see things in your life, the more complicated it is to manage all of it. And it can be expressed and really trained and felt just by like this, inhale, exhale. At some point it even becomes that you really feel that the mind also actually starts to arrive in the present moment. Meaning, why is it so important? Because a lot of stress is also related to the fact of you are sitting here, but the mind is dwelling about something from the past, or your body is here, but the mind is jumping into the worries of the future. So already a big part of destressing yourself is remain more in the present moment. This is already one way to integrate.
Second thing is, let's assume you don't do these movements. Nevertheless, it is a practice to always observe yourself and catch yourself directly when the mind is starting to create his next illusion in order to make you suffer. Whether you walk in London streets and then start to dwell about something, but ask yourself why. Does it change anything for you to now dwell on something that already happened? Do you have an influence on that or not? So the regulation of sorts is a very important aspect along this line.
There are people who have a lot of impact regardless of what type of source. It really is a lot, but they, in a way, still can maintain, but it's the pressure. They're still maintaining and functioning with the pressure on them. This is one type of person. But there are also other people who break with the first challenge, who don't have any type of resilience at all. So first of all, the question is, what type of being are you?
When I think about myself, I have very stressful days and based on my education and on my training, I'm simply able to endure for a long time and remaining inside being pressurized. My problem is that at some point, even me, I need a valve, but I'm able to like let things build up, build up, build up, build up. So, it has positive things. It also has negative. But in general, living this life is not easy. So it starts with that fact. It's not that you're getting born and now can expect that everything is going to bow to you and give you a beautiful life. No, in a way, at least this is my observation, at some point sometimes you also have to express the willingness to sacrifice something about you to get what you want. Now, everybody wants something. But the question is if you are actually also willing to sacrifice what is needed to get what you want. And in the same way it goes now with the ability of taking the workload, taking the pressure, taking the critics, taking the conflicts. So somewhere along the line, the ability to regulate yourself in the world that tries to bend you, this is what it is. It will never happen that you walk through this lifetime and everybody's going to bow to you. It's not going to happen. No matter how good you think you live your life, what you have brought to the world, there will always be something or someone. There will be a natural force that is always testing you.
If you are able to remain straight, to remain straight, to really practice even if you feel like, okay, this is now really, really unfair. Yeah. Internally, you feel I actually don't deserve this conversation right now. Yeah. And you still receive all the you will still receive it all. But this is exactly it. What would the majority of the people nowadays do? It feels unfair. Get angry and boom, express the same way. You have seen it. Everybody has done it. It is never the solution. It never was. It never will be. So what is the way?
There were struggles our parents had to deal with. Some struggles they started transcending and overcome them. Other struggles they kept and were not able to overcome them. What our parents couldn't solve is your problem now. What my parents couldn't solve, it's someone from our family who needs to solve it. And when I now know, yeah, my next generation is already walking on this earth, the more I can solve. When I know what are my problems in this world, I don't do it for me. I do it for my next generation because I know what I will not solve in this lifetime, he will have to do it.
What's life's purpose? Pass on your best version to the next. The more real your view about this existence, about your life becomes. And what it means is you start to appreciate way more what you have right now instead of running around starting to chase some things over and over again to afterwards realize you come alone, you go alone. Very simple.
We talk a lot about mindset. It's all about mind. This is the essence of the Shaolin practices. Not to forget this is the essence. This is where all of the beautiful forms, the hardening, the fighting aspect of it where at the end all of it boils down to the point, how much have you understood about your life during this lifetime that you have available? That is the core.
It depends on the openness of the mind. Eventually everything on the openness of yourself. So if somebody is 50 years old but he is still open to life. Open to life means you actually realize about yourself that you know nothing about this lifetime. You have 50 years of human life. Yeah. But 50 years is 50 years. So it really depends on how open are you staying throughout your journey in this lifetime. If you always take care of staying open, there is no limit in terms of how much and how much more are you able to develop yourself. The more limited, the more restricted, the more closed you are, the more you think you are perfect, the less you're going to change.
Sometimes you are meeting situations that you have to face and that you have to go through. Meaning you're going to meet conflict at one or another point. You're going to meet the feeling of having competition. How does all this physicality, all this practicing of using the body? How does it eventually translate into your mindset, translate into what type of character are you? Do you have patience? Do you have discipline? Do you have willpower? This is the question.
Because when we go to school, there are subjects that we are learning. Mathematics, biology, physics, chemistry. But every human being has something. We have something inside of us. Some people you would say they have discipline, other people they don't have it. Some people have gratefulness, other people don't have it. Some people have a natural sense of respect, other people don't have it. So the question is, is it coincidence that you are born with respect or that you are born with discipline, or is these character traits something that need to be and can be developed inside the human being? Because if you are disciplined, you're going to have this discipline because it's part of your character. You're going to carry it on for whatever you are doing. Going to school, going to university, having your first job, building up your own company, doesn't matter what it is.
This is that interesting part. What all of this Shaolin practices, what it is about. It is about figuring out what is the core of you as a human being that you can develop and then afterwards what you are doing with this core really doesn't matter. Some people make a professional life in sports. Other people make a profession by being an entrepreneur. Other people they stay employed. Other people build houses. It doesn't really matter. The thing is along the way of creating something in this lifetime, there are some helpful human character traits or mindsets that I think they need development. And the question is now how to develop them.
From my observation and sensing into myself, the more you're used or getting used to something, the more habits actually you are starting to develop. So we humans are beings of habit. The question is if 20 years long you lived a type of life where there was not a lot of discipline involved. You can still develop it of course in the 21st years and onwards, but before that we have to somehow balance out these 20 years of your habit of being undisciplined. What it means is the older you get, the more habits you already have, the more difficult it will become to change any of them. This is why starting as early as possible is the easiest way to program yourself, condition yourself in the right direction of what type of habits, what type of thinking patterns you would like to develop in yourself.
How much struggle and how much suffering are you willing to take in your life? This is a really, really big question. On the one side, you can make your ideas about what you would like to have, where you would like to be. The other question is, what are you willing to sacrifice? Through how many different pains, conflicts, challenges are you willing to go through? Because there is something that goes hand in hand. Walking up the mountain, walking to the peak is not going to get more easy. The higher the altitude, the more difficult it becomes. The challenges are not going to get easier the higher you reach. It fits in so many different ways. Like also when it comes to the haters, especially in the field of social media, the more exposure, the more haters. Suddenly it feels like they might affect you until you realize it's natural because you're getting higher.
I like to ride motorcycle. I like to ride scooter. And so there was one time when I was riding a mountain road, a 4-hour drive, and on top of that mountain there was a coffee and I also like to drink coffee from time to time. Mhm. After riding the bike there, looking forward to have like the first coffee at half of the journey and then I was standing there at this terrace in the middle of the jungle. Standing there with a coffee cup looking down at the valley which is the jungle and seeing the monkeys jumping around there. For me, that was such a moment I remember where something, I don't know, something shifted a little bit where I would really say that was the time I felt again how I arrived. There was nothing to want in that moment. It was the realization in a way. Yeah. And then this internal smile comes out. It's like the heart starts to laugh from inside. It's like it feels really joyful. These are like moments that sometimes pop up over and over again. And what all of them I think have in common is there is something about arriving. Arriving in the moment. The past you don't know the past is there. The future, there are no thoughts about the future. You just arrive. You just arrive and realize, what if that's it? There's no wanting anymore. It's full already. The fullness has entered your perception. You have realized it's full right now already. And so this is a very, very special feeling that I don't know if I would call it happiness, but it is a very, very fulfilling moment.
So these moments of fullness, of being fulfilled, sometimes these moments you have in a partnership when it's really, really fulfilling. The only problem is you have that moment, but it's based on a condition. It's outsourced to your partner. So with the partner, you have it. Without the partner, it's gone. So that again, it means something outsourced. M. Therefore, it's nice to be able to have this type of relationship, but it would be even better if you find the answer to that state of being by yourself completely and then whoever accompanies you. It doesn't matter.
I like that. Stop making two concrete plans and ideas how your life is supposed to look like. Let's just imagine we plan everything into detail. You plan it so well that actually you know already where you are going to be in 10 years. What's the point of waiting 10 years long knowing already what's going to be the outcome? Like you know right now already what's going to await you in 10 years. It's pointless. There is something completely missing that we humans are able to tap into. And this means sometimes that spontaneous things is what is adding the salt, that is adding the spices into it. If everything would be planned, let's put it like this. It's boring.
I think it is the balance, a personal balance or people need to find for themsel about I am determined. I commit to something. I give my life a direction. Let's put it like this. You give a direction. But what appears along the way walking towards the direction, this is your open to it. It's a kind of combination. It's not that you like freely float around in all directions. No. You are committed. You have a goal. That one is fine. But along this way, there is still something about spontaneity. There's still something about being able to adapt, being flexible, and also to sometimes immerse yourself into something that inside of your plan just wasn't there at the point of planning.
Is that structure and the pattern of you are never enough of where you are. There is always something more. There was a time we had no mobile phones. It came out. Of course, there was a time we wanted to have it. We did everything. We went to work. We earned the money. You got it. You got it. It didn't last. You looked for the next thing for achieving. You look for the next trophy to get again. You got the trophy. Not enough. It's going to collect dust. You need the next one. So there I see there is a pattern. The pattern of how to spend your lifetime running after achievements and running after trophies that at the end of the day going to collect dust. You're going to not take them with you wherever you're going to go when you pass away. So very quickly for me I said it's maybe part of how you can spend your lifetime is not fulfilling. And this is the moment where then maybe some people talk about spirituality, the higher sense, a purpose. This is where then it came to me where I started asking myself questions. What is it essentially I would like to do with this lifetime that has been given to me?
It's not about knowing. It's not about knowing. There are patterns. It's not about knowing this is good, this is bad. It's about you know it, what you going to do with it. What is your human expression with the knowledge that you have just attained in this lifetime? Everybody knows smoking too much is not good. What you going to do with it? And this is where this practice comes in because it's hard. We need to practice because you cannot just like jump in the ocean and then start swimming if you never done it before. You're just going to drown. So what you going to do? Step by step train, practice. Grow in confidence, grow in skill. And what's the advantage of it? A big threat is being taken off from your life. A big threat of just like going in the ocean and drowning. Instead of drowning, even, you will start to realize how nice it probably even is to simply be in the wide, wide ocean free. There's something special about it, but only if you have the skill. Without skill, it's like deadly. It's not the ocean that is the danger. The danger is that you are putting yourself in situations into life without proper skills.
How much real energy, real effort, real discipline have you put into your daily life in order to get to those 100 push-ups? And this is the whole idea about what is it? Skill. You don't get skill as a present in this lifetime. You might get a talent. You might have a gift coming to this world, maybe from your parents, maybe from another source, you are gifted with something, but if you don't cultivate that gift on a regular basis, even that gift will just dissolve. And therefore skill means there is some continuity to it and there is the conscious investment of going through hardship because why can't you do the 100? Because you have never forced yourself pushing through your limits. When your muscles started hurting, you already stopped. Yeah. That's why you go to the point where it's burning. You get used to the burning and next day you continue. So there's something about hitting the limit and step by step overcoming it.
So, and this is where like this relation for me from the physical martial art practice taking it back to how to build a proper purposeful fulfilling lifetime. I think it is very much related upon skill. How skillful are you walking through this lifetime? And the more skillful you are, the more beautiful, the more easy, the more playful, the more enjoyable you can walk through it. This is like the whole analogy how I can maybe express it.
If you want to go deep in something, time is necessary in how much you're spending with something. But at the same time, it's also your ability to observe. I also witness quite a lot like feeling inside the people. The mind sometimes I feel is not there. They are physically at a very beautiful place. Physically they are there, but the mind seems absent because apparently the mind and the body is nothing which naturally is regarded as being together. And this is the result of why? Because sometimes of the system, because you continuously look and search for something which is not here right now. So what does it mean? It means body is here, but your mind is looking for something. And if you don't pay attention to this, it can just manifest and express itself in exactly such things. You find yourself actually in the place which is super beautiful, which is offering everything that you need, but you are not going to recognize it because your mind is a step already again ahead of it. And if this type of pattern, if this type of habit and conditioning you don't realize about yourself, I really think you're missing some essential part about living this lifetime, which is about the enjoyment of what you have.
So does it mean I should always enjoy just what I have at the moment without ambition? No. Again, balance. Work for things you you like to have. Do the work in order to get it, but observe yourself at the same time when it comes, when it enters your life. Do you still have the ability to really forget everything else and just enjoy what you have? There's something about balance there. It's really helpful and especially it doesn't cost anything. This is the best part about all of these sharings and teachings that it only depends on your perspective.
Everybody already has his or her own perspective. But the more perspective you have, the more possibilities, the more choices you have. At the end of the day, you are the one. It's your life. You decide and you take the consequences.
If sometimes in this lifetime, you feel I'm stuck somehow. Why? Why are you stuck? Because you continuously try to move forward with the old patterns that also haven't worked the last 10 times. It's time for a new perspective.
The seniors are very highly regarded, the parents, the grandparents. Why is that? Of course, they come from another generation. Yeah, but doesn't mean that their thoughts are outdated. So, it's good father, mother, what do you think about this and that. It's not that you have to do it like this, but it helps me also to understand the world from other people's perspective. Then it just widens my horizon. That's what it does. And at the end, I see the situation from this angle, from that angle, from that one, from that one, from that one, from that one. So that means I see many perspectives. This is why I probably see many more solutions. And then at the end, I choose the one which I think is appropriate for what I can do and also which consequences and they will come.
Every every decision will have a consequence. The question is, can you live with it or not. This is also like, is it good or is it bad to do this and that. I don't think about good or bad. Nothing is ultimately good and nothing is ultimately bad. Let's just say for an example, this idea of yin and yang, small and big, high and low. So those two fingers, if that one right now is considered small and this one is considered big. What I just said before. There is nothing ultimately good. There is nothing ultimately bad. Nothing is ultimately small. Nothing is ultimately big because it depends on relation. In this constellation, that one is the small one, that one is the large one. In this constellation, it just shifted. So, it's not right to say that this one is always the big one. It's not true. Only in this constellation, it's true. Same now goes for nothing is ultimately good, nothing is ultimately bad. It depends on in which relation to what. Based on this thinking, it's not useful for me to judge the world by this is good, by this is bad. So therefore, how to take decisions based on consequence. Whatever you do, it's going to bring out consequences and you decide if you are able to live. That's it. This is what you base your decision on. Is it good to do this or not? Is it bad to do this or not? I don't know what's the consequence of this and what's the consequence of that. Which one of these two you prefer to live with in the future? That one you take. It's an individual choice.
There are people who have the luck who for themselves they just tap into their intuition. They follow their gut feeling or they follow their heart. Sometimes you have people like this. They never take any advice from anybody else around them, but their life is running good. They are happy with the decisions and the outcome. Yeah, the people are different. Maybe this is a type of person he has some type of clarity already. This is why the intuition helps, why he can so quickly identify it and follow up upon it. But intuition is also something not everybody has it in the same amount. It depends on the openness of the mind. Eventually everything on the openness of yourself. So if somebody is 50 years old but he is still open to life. Open to life means you actually realize about yourself that you know nothing about this lifetime. You have 50 years of human life. Yeah. But 50 years is 50 years. Yeah. So it really depends on how open are you staying throughout your journey in this lifetime. If you always take care of staying open, there is no limit in terms of how much and how much more are you able to develop yourself. The more limited, the more restricted, the more closed you are, the more you think you are perfect, the less you're going to change.
Right now we can sit here. We have we call this life. We all wish that now we have life. We hope this life is going to be 70, 80, 90, maybe 100 years long and after these 100 years then death can come. >> Yeah. >> Death and life is not a chronology. Who gives you the guarantee? Not right now. No matter how healthy you're living, you get a heart attack right now. Where's the guarantee? >> I don't have one. It is one of my fears. >> Yeah. Me, I don't have it either. I don't have the guarantee. I don't know every morning if I wake up, death is not coming later. Life and death simultaneously at the same time. So using this type of perspective, success and failure. There is no successful person I know in this world who does not at the same time has success on this side and can prove to me on the other side all of the failures that eventually led to to his success. True.
So what it means is to live in a world where you think that we are living in a world which is about life. It is about light. It is about moving upwards. It is about successful. It is about beautiful. It is about higher, faster, better. This type of propaganda of making the human believe this life is one directional and that you can choose, I think is a misconception. And one day I feel the very hard reality is going to come. And the reality is that this one and this one losing, failure, letting go, dying, getting sick, it is a part of every human being's lifetime. Now just looking at the world, what is it that is propagated? Where is all the energy of the human being going? It only goes in this direction because it feels comfortable. Security, insecurity is nothing. Uncertainty is nothing that you feel comfortable to deal with it. Well, what I'm saying is this and that they belong together. There is no way out. And the earlier you start to realize this, the more real your view about this existence, about your life becomes. And what it means is you start to appreciate way more what you have right now instead of running around starting to chase some things over and over again to afterwards realize you come alone, you go alone. Very simple.
We talk a lot about mindset. It's all about mind. This is the essence of the Shaolin practices. Not to forget this is the essence. This is where all of the beautiful forms, the hardening, the fighting aspect of it where at the end all of it boils down to the point, how much have you understood about your life during this lifetime that you have available? That is the core.
Definition of freedom to do what you want at any time that you want, just feel free without any type of restriction. I don't think this is the way how a human in this world is learning to grow. There is derived from the ancient teachings a saying, there is no progress, there is no development without restriction. And this means sometimes you need to have somebody telling you what you are supposed to do. Even if you feel like sleeping until like 10, 11:00, well, it's not good to do. It's wake up, do your discipline structure and then learn to just do things which are not based on your own sense of comfort. But this sense of comfort is not helpful when it comes to developing yourself. This lifetime is not just about roses and butterflies. Sometimes you are meeting situations that you have to face and that you have to go through. Meaning you're going to meet conflict at one or another point. You're going to meet the feeling of having competition.
How does all this physicality, all this practicing of using the body translate into your mindset, translate into what type of character are you? Do you have patience? Do you have discipline? Do you have willpower? This is the question. Because when we go to school, there are subjects that we are learning. Mathematics, biology, physics, chemistry. But every human being has something. We have something inside of us. Some people you would say they have discipline, other people they don't have it. Some people have gratefulness, other people don't have it. Some people have a natural sense of respect, other people don't have it. So the question is, is it coincidence that you are born with respect or that you are born with discipline, or is these character traits something that need to be and can be developed inside the human being? Because if you are disciplined, you're going to have this discipline because it's part of your character. You're going to carry it on for whatever you are doing. Going to school, going to university, having your first job, building up your own company. Doesn't matter what it is.
This is that interesting part. What all of this Shaolin practices, what it is about. It is about figuring out what is the core of you as a human being that you can develop and then afterwards what you are doing with this core really doesn't matter. Some people make a professional life in sports. Other people make a profession by being an entrepreneur. Other people they stay employed. Other people build houses. It doesn't really matter. The thing is along the way of creating something in this lifetime, there are some helpful human character traits or mindsets that I think they need development. And the question is now how to develop them.
My observation and sensing into myself. The more you're used or getting used to something, the more habits actually you are starting to develop. So we humans are beings of habit.
The question is if 20 years long you lived a type of life where there was not a lot of discipline involved. You can still develop it of course in the 21st years and onwards. But before that we have to somehow balance out these 20 years of your habit of being undisiplined. What it means is the older you get, the more habits you already have, the more difficult it will become to change any of them. This is why starting as early as possible is the easiest way to program yourself, condition yourself in the right direction of what type of habits, what type of thinking patterns you would like to develop in yourself.
The main point is to actually figure out for yourself how much and to what are you attached in your lifetime and everything you're attached to is what makes you heavy. Meaning makes you become unmovable. You can't move. You cannot proceed. You are stuck somehow. If you are stuck, you can't move. The problem is the whole universe and this life is about moving on. And the best way how to continuously move on is to not have too many attachments in your lifetime. Everybody has different attachments. It's always the same structure. The more you are attached, the more difficult it is to move on. That is the general pattern.
At the end, it is going to boil down to how important is your life to you. Which means if you are willing to wake up already in the morning and have these negative thoughts affecting your day, then going into work dealing again with all the mind conflicts that you have. Go home in the evening still thinking about what happened during the day and continue like this for weeks and months and years. And there will always be some non-satisfaction about the way of how you are living. This is one type of choice. So you stay in the situation where you are right now because trying to change other people, at least for me, is no way. It is not working. I wouldn't even, let's say, invest time in trying to change other people. So the first idea would be, are you able to stay in that situation imagining that all of the colleagues out there, they would never change? Are you still able to figure out a way for yourself to still remaining in a state of the mind that is not destroying your health?
If you say it's impossible, I am too much attached to the surrounding, to what the other people do or don't do. Then there's only one way. Either you're going to stay in that situation and take all the health issues that were going to come on the long term, or you are setting your priority and say, no, this is my life. This is not the way how I imagined my life to be, waking up and going to bed with like negative thoughts or unhealthy thoughts. And then you must change your surrounding. That's it. There is no alternative to these two things, taking into consideration that we cannot change other people and cannot change the outside circumstances. So either you change yourself or you change the surrounding and the environment that you are placed upon.
But now comes the problem. If you think you just say, okay, then I'm leaving this company and I'm moving to the next one, you're going to meet the same problem. Why? Because it's not the problem of the people. It's the problem because something inside of you is not able yet to solve this challenge. And this is where again, it's about self-mastery. Meaning, everything that you feel is a challenge to you, ask yourself, what is it inside of yourself that is causing this conflict, that is causing this challenge for you, and solve it inside of you. This is where to look at. And in the moment this happens, well, something, something very valuable has been developed there. It's not an easy way. It is not the most common way that people do, but it is the way that from many, many centuries and millennia, different traditions have embedded in their way of being.
And yeah, there is the saying that watch your thought because your thoughts are forming your words. Be careful about your words because your words are shaping your actions. Be careful of what type of actions you're doing because they are shaping your habits. Be careful about what type of habits you have because they are shaping your character. Be careful what type of character you are cultivating because it shapes your destiny. Okay. So what I'm saying is that there is a chain, a chain of cause and effect. Your thoughts affecting the words, the words affecting your actions, the actions affecting all the way down until your character, until what you are going to encounter in the future, described before as destiny.
And this is the reason why everything that in this world has taken form. Everything, let's put it simple. There was a time on this earth where we didn't have any rocket flying. There was no rocket, but meanwhile, you can see technology has went on. We have rockets flying and landing. So the question is, how can something like a rocket come to the earth? How did it happen? So there must be a person who somehow saw something in his mind. How can he see something that he never saw before because it was not there? And this is the powerful part about the mind. Our mind can see things that are not even existing yet on this earth. This is the power of the mind. And the first thing to, let's say, bringing from the word of God something into this world. This is done by the word, then by maybe writing them down, then by visualizing it, and afterwards by constructing it, and then it starts to take form. But the beginning of every form comes from an area which is formless. The mind.
It's already when you look at the person, what is your mind connection to the person? What inside of you, without speaking? What is your energy inside towards a person? And this is the important part. Don't waste your lifetime and adjust everything that's possible inside of your life that you make the best out of it. That's it. Finished. Yeah. It's not about punting. It's not about kicking. It's not about anything super complicated. It is about that our lifetime is limited. And I think for right now, it's the best thing to appreciate what we have and adjust everything that is in our hands to make this lifetime pleasant for yourself and also for people around you. That is the mission.
The main essence of our lifetime. What will give us the freedom? It's mind-related. So power of the mind, in my opinion, is the essence. It is the mind that is in the focus of all development. Now comes the button. This type of realization cannot come in the beginning. It cannot come in the beginning in the world. That is all the time based on looks, attraction of the eye, physicality, which means our world, the earth itself, everything beautiful in this world. What is beautiful about it? It is beautiful because it looks beautiful. We are focused on look. This is what is attractive to us. What we can see, this is what matters. Okay, the world of forms is important. What I do with my body, what I do with my shape, how I take care of the matter that I have in my lifetime to take care of this matters 100%. But it is only as the bridge to the mind. Very important. I make it simple. This body, no matter how fit, no matter how well-trained, one day is going to go back to the earth. No matter how much you have taken care of this body, it's going to leave you. Therefore, the main emphasis is in figuring out what is there about yourself even beyond the body.
Sometimes we are just thinking too much. We are thinking too much, but remaining where you are and just thinking, thinking, thinking all the time is not going to make it better. So my very first suggestion would be, put in a new structure of the day. This can mean already you wake up 10 minutes, 15 minutes earlier than you usually do, and in these 10 or 15 minutes, you put in any type of practice. It doesn't matter if you go on YouTube and just, for example, look for my name, you find so many free practices to just join in. So this is again something where I say it's very, very helpful to just put in directly some practice, some action, some doing, except for just dwelling thoughts in the mind, looking for the proper way of how to now start the transformation. The transformation already happens in the moment your daily structure starts to look different.
And now the question is, with what do you fill up this additional space that you have created? Well, and this is now the point of, put the physical exercises in because it is going to be the bridge to everything that will follow afterwards. That would be my advice. Why I say this is not my teaching. It's hard to imagine, but I am just coming from the field of martial art. Yeah. I make my push-ups. I make my punches. I make my strikes. I make my forms. I make my breathing exercise. And from time to time, then if somebody asks me a question, then sometimes something wise comes out.