So, this is it! My first newsletter after 20 people signed up for it. I hope that you can take something away from it.
The thing that moves me at the moment: Farewell
I am so introverted that I even have a concept for suffering. So, what I usually do after having a crisis related to my private life is to continue with the thing that always keeps me distracted but is not meaningless to me: I work. A few examples are:
- When I suffered my first loss within my family in September 2015, I said goodbye at his bed the very day. One day later, I traveled back to my home at that time (Halle an der Saale), reviewed my exam, a day later traveled to Frankfurt and participated in an event as a board member for my junior enterprise BDSU. The same day, I traveled back to my hometown during the night in order to attend the funeral.
- When somebody else in my family died in February 2016, I took over my father's restaurant for about a week because he needed to join my family in Italy and traveled to an assessment center called "Join the Best". Oh boy... that went soooo bad. But that is another story.
- When my ex-girlfriend & I broke up in 2019, we had been together for almost five years. Nevertheless, I started a new project at my (at that time) newest client Airbus one day after and canceled my flights to Greece for a long vacation which included one of my best friend's weddings. As a consequence, I still needed to pay for my ex & myself the accommodation and my then best friend and I have never talked again since.
As you 20 subscribers are all privately related to me, I think I can openly share that my family suffered a great loss last month. This led me to get deep into the time I "lost" in recent years (approx. 5) since I became self-employed and constantly worked.
Generally speaking, I believe that one of the most important things in life is to really make conscious decisions in order to mitigate any regrets. To give you an example from the Tuesday morning a few weeks ago:
I get the note while driving to work on the highway. I feel the immediate urge to cry which is why I hung up quickly to give me the room to let it out which is what I did in the upcoming minutes. But after having expressed my feelings, I knew that I had to make a decision.
The first instinct was to drive to my family instead of work because of two reasons:
- My sense of responsibility towards them, to be "there" when things are bad. To have the comfort of being together and not hurting alone, facing the complex challenges of my work life.
- But my second thought was much more analytical: My family was already together and did not need me to be there physically necessarily. In addition, I was/am at the very end of a project cycle which is an important stepping stone for my plans. And my plans always serve my family first.
So I went to work, told the guys I might be off with my thoughts at some point in time, and moved on. Still, I helped my family to get the paperwork done in order to be allowed to travel to Italy because of Covid restrictions. And I knew that I still needed time to grieve.
This is what I did two Saturdays in May all day long. And while I was at it, I went through a lot of photos, videos, and people which showed me how fast time passed by. That emphasized the sadness by a big margin.
I cried a lot, felt guilty about driving people away, felt grateful for the ones who stayed, said goodbye to places & memories, felt proud of myself... and felt a lot of love for life & the people who are with me on this marvelous journey.
To bring it all together in one takeaway: I believe that life is really about feeling. Feeling yourself, feeling the emotions in moments of time, going through the range of emotions, positive and negative, letting them overwhelm you but never let them get in control of you.
… which brings me to an issue: The Comfort Crisis
This brings me to a great book I started reading: The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. It reminded me of Antifragile by Nassim Taleb (which is the much better book). But what I like about Michael is that he went through the discomfort and describes those experiences.
So what is The Comfort Crisis? While Easter doesn’t explicitly state it, considering the paradigm above, the comfort crisis can be defined as a point of such extremely high standards of living that we are starting to think good things are bad. This happens - despite the things being legitimately good for you - because we have basically eliminated the true bad from our lives which leaves us without any Frame of Reference. Without that reference for what is bad, we don’t even realize how good we have it. We’re ungrateful, overweight, lazy as well as avoiding anything that is slightly uncomfortable as we believe it to be a negative thing (doing groceries). Some example:
Physical effort (stairways vs. escalators) which leads to less physical stability
The nature of being rejected but building up self-esteem in the process (Tinder, Badoo, etc. which I have never even touched) which leads to less emotional stability
Being sad or spending time by yourself which leads to less mental stability
Mental state of the World Report 2020 - Sapien Labs
Creating real life connections with difficult conversations instead of consuming digital realities which leads to more social anxiety
Getting dirty which improves Immune system stability
The recommendation in the book is basically to use Hormesis to improve your systems:
- Fast to feel real hunger again
- Confront your body with coldness to increase the "basal metabolism"
- Exercise "rucking" which is basically hiking with a heavy bag
So, as a takeaway: What I experienced with the extreme sadness is a new reference in my Frame of References. So if something is not going very well, I will have this reference to compare my current state of mind to and I will feel much better because I know: There really bad things which might happen at any moment but this is not one of them.
My sincerely-subjective opinion: Focus on yourself
To make it clear: I really believe - with full conviction - that we live too comfy in Western societies. One argument: Why the f*ck does everybody care about everything that is other people's business when your life is far away from being perfect? Here are some examples (of which I am partially also guilty of):
- Cancel culture: You want to tell me that you have never done anything which you accuse other people about? Get the f*ck out of here!
- Victimhood: "I was maliciously treated by xyz and this is why I am f*cked up." Well, while it may certainly be part of it, you also like to be f*cked up because it brings you attention. Ah, and by the way: Nobody gives a sh*t.
- Abortion: Guys, if you are not able to get pregnant, just shut the f*ck up. You do not have the right to have an opinion.
- Tabloid stuff: If you watch those dumbed-down tv shows, you just like the feeling of looking down on other people as you can ridicule their behavior safe from your living.
All those things are giving you the feeling of moral superiority, of "grandstanding" which is disgusting. The reason is plain and simple: You are not and you are obviously lying to yourself. If something like a moral measurement exists, you need to measure it across all areas of your daily life, not just the one you prefer. And sorry for all the "f*cks".
Objectively speaking: Am I looking down on other people right now? Yes, I am kind of.
But sincerely-subjective: I am trying to communicate to backing up on judging others and focus on improving yourself. I am myself a vegetarian for years now but neither am I judging a person based on eating meat nor am I trying to convince to stop doing as it is only one facet in one specific context.
To finish with a great quote by Nassim related to his facets in different contexts:
"I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist.