Oh man, so many things going on. So many other things going through my mind. But I do not have much time so it's gonna be a short one. Where do I start?
A dream come true 1 - Dinner with clients at our Restaurant
I think I have never received so many positive and encouraging messages on Instagram than when I posted that I will have dinner with two clients from Airbus at my father's restaurant which was always something that I had wished for.
You know how important my family is to me and unfortunately they are not really able to connect to what I doing for work because it is a foreign world for them. But I guess that this is actually more normal than I thought it would except for the children who follow their parents in their footsteps.
So this was really a chance that my father could directly experience the impact I have on people. In this case the senior management of a multinational corporation.
We really had a great conversation for 3.5 hours about everything. We started with me explaining exactly what I just explained to you. This is what I usually do in conversations: I am brutally honest, sometimes even making the other people feel uncomfortable first as they are not used to such a straight forward kind of appreciation.
Then we went over my youth, as they wanted to know what my relation to the restaurant was, changed to the meaning of life, our relation to death, the resulting motivation which is retrieved from the tight bond with our family members (for them it is more about their kids) and ended up with reviewing the project we worked on together.
Simultaneously, we let my father create the menu which ended up containing three courses with rosé wine he brought directly from Italy. It contains grapes from our inherited vineyard in San Pancrazio Salentino.
What can I say? Even if you dislike me, my values and my looks, you should nevertheless marry me just because of family.
Another dream coming true 2 - My first real estate deal
Unfortunately, I cannot tell too much yet because we are still negotiating the details. But I suppose, we will close it next week.
Still, we have the GO from the bank, I created the contracts, we signed most of them, so just a matter of closing the purchase agreement.
Another dream coming true 3 - I move again
Yeah, I know: Moving again after just 1.5 years and especially from one of the most wanted areas in Hamburg (Mühlenkamp, Winterhude) and leaving a three room apartment behind when being in my end 20s seems to be absurd.
Especially, if you consider the costs, which are reasonable, the environment (I had dinner with the owners two weeks ago who live on the 1st floor) and my deep wish to start a family.
BUT: I am single (if you know somebody...), I hate talking to people (so it is better to have a more anonymous environment) and I want to lose less time changing between home, office and gym. Therefore, this apartment is perfect because my gym and office are like literally in front of my door (Gänsemarkt).
How did it happen although not searching intensively for an apartment? It found me.
I have my two best friends A. and J. - who are within the very small group of people who I consciously decide to spend time with - and serendipity wanted that her roommate's sister lived in the exact area combining the exact requirements I imagined for my single city life apartment.
Serendipitously J. is searching for an apartment to move in with her boyfriend.
Now, guess who's apartment they both fell in love with?
Funny how life happens.
The world of visibility and toxic comparison
I loved this piece written by Morgan Housel: Harder Than It Looks, Not as Fun as It Seems.
It touches a concept that I realized a few years ago when I visited London with my ex-girlfriend.
So, to explain upfront: I am a dreamer and I like to imagine living in someone else's shoes.
Therefore I imagined living in one of the city apartments, watching out of the window in the heart of the City (near the pwc building if you want to know where exactly). What I realized at that moment is that from down "here" it seemed super cool and something to appreciate. But if you are actually looking out of that window, you would see the balcony of the people in the opposing building and think "F*ck, they have it better!". Even worse: If you would be so lucky to enjoy sitting on a balcony in LONDON, you would look straight at the terrace of another building and you would think the same (hence the title image).
The same concept applies to the different Business Models one could choose for his/her business. I like how Nat Eliason highlighted it in his last Medley:
- When you’re running an agency, you’re jealous of people who have a digital product they can more easily scale. (Johannes? :D)
- When you have a product, you’re jealous of service businesses that can more easily start earning revenue.
- When you’re running a lifestyle business, you’re jealous of people with a team to handle the parts of the business you don’t want to do.
There are multiple things to consider when undergoing this intuitive rabbit hole:
- It’s tough to keep in mind how much everyone else is struggling with things you’re not thinking of, probably because you’re not struggling with them. Or you are not seeing because they are not showing them.
- It’s easy to forget how great you have certain things, because to you those things are normal. This is typically happening when your peers are living a similar life: You start to live in a bubble minimizing your Frame of Reference.
- The last point is from Morgan Housel's piece:
"Everyone’s dealing with problems they don’t advertise, at least until you get to know them well. Keep that in mind and you become more forgiving – to yourself and others."
That is exactly what I do not want to convey with the stuff I am writing about: My life is great, don't get me wrong. Nevertheless, I am writing this newsletter on Sundays to reconvince myself that I am great. As it is also the day when I realize how broken I am, how afraid I am when thinking about the next day, how lonely it is when you sit at home by yourself, nobody is waiting for while not wanting to see or talk to anybody. Wow, that went dark very fast!
Takeaway: I don’t think that impulse ever goes away. So we just have to try to be better about redirecting our thoughts to the things we have and appreciate those as well as reminding oneself that the facets we see in other people's lifes is exactly that: a facet which might inspire us but not getting jealous.
Feedback from Rainy Sunday 1
As some of you asked about Antifragile - Book, I decided to finish the book notes this week and publish them. I will let you know next week if I was able to finish them.
The next feedback was what I will get into detail to when I am finished with my current Epic. Some of them are the following:
- Epic: Stay fit & healthy while being busy: If you work a lot, it is very hard to bring up the willpower to put effort in eating healthy or push yourself to work out. But it is not as difficult as you think.
- Epic: Mental Models: Who am I? What do I want? What is important to me? How do I formulate what I want to another person?
- Epic: How to be remarkable: How to connect with people authentically, get to know them deeply and be somebody special in everybody's life you touch.
I appreciate your encouraging words.