About Me

I am Daniel. Behavior Designer. Writer. Digital Nomad.

Who the fuck are you?

My name is Daniel Karim, I´m 30 years old. I grew up in Hamburg, Germany.
I studied psychology for 6 years in my hometown. I traveled all over the world and I have been to 50 plus countries.

I’m a basketball player who can do a 360 dunk but will brick every free-throw he takes, even if my life would depend on it.

I enjoy books and doing stupid dangerous things with my friends.

This can include jumping out of airplanes or playing beer pong right before I’m scuba diving in the great barrier reef.

So, why do you write about this psychology stuff?

Did you ever hear the phrase that all psychology students are messed up themselves?

Well, for me this was certainly the case.

Many years ago I was diagnosed with F 60. 32 G. This is doctors Code for Depression. Or in much more casual words I was not happy. Since neither doctors nor pills were able to help me I took it upon myself to look for ways to hack my way to happiness. Hence this Blog is a manifesto of my own journey to my happiness.

What is your psychology podcast about?

Listen to my Podcast

In the Psychology Podcasts, I interview extraordinary people and pick their brains.

Who do I interview?

Each episode features a world leading expert who will inspire your mind and give you a different perspective on the many paths that can lead to a fulfilled and rich life.

Why did I start a Podcast?

As a lifelong student of human behavior, I am interested in gathering happy habits, success secrets and strategies from world leaders that you and I can use for our daily life to grow and emulate their results.

My Podcast is my way of taking part in the democratization of expert knowledge.

This is why I seek out the best of the best and deconstruct where their excellence comes from.

Latest Episodes

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Adrian Blackwood – The AI Collision
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James Holmes – How To Overcome The Bully In Your Brain
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Dr. Brian Lowery – The Psychology Of White Privilege
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Dr. Paul Conti – How Trauma Works & How We Can Heal From It
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Jordan Kales – The Psychology Of Persuasion
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Christop Rehage – Take The Longest Way
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Christos Nikas – The Instagram Professor
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Dr. Nadine Macaluso – Healing From Traumatic Love
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Dr. Guy Winch – The Dangers Of Hope
Listen Now

Nada Lena Nasserdeen – The Power Of Confidence.

View all Episodes

What is your Book Club about?

Here I explore books that have been recommended to me by out of the box thinkers, pioneers, and world-changers.

The books that you will find in my book club not only helped me to defeat my own depression but also empowered me to architect a meaningful and rich life around myself that justified its inescapable suffering.

I believe that everybody should be a reader and I hope from the bottom of my heart that the list of books will help you as much as they helped me.

My Top 3 Books

Go to my book club

What’s up with this excessive travelling?

Did you ever wonder why people from Africa seem to laugh so wholeheartedly? Or why people in South America seem to dance more? Or why the French seem to have a better time eating with their families?
Well, I sure did, so I went there and asked them myself!
I travelled the world to observe and interview people from different cultures. I went to Africa, Australia, Asia, and South America to find out steal-able commonalities and habits among the happiest people could find.

I love living as a nomad. The Idea of travelling like a vagabond around the world and learning about the different paths that can lead to happiness was always compelling to me.

On my global journey of investigating the different expressions of human psychology I could combine my hunger for knowledge with my wanderlust.

Traveling around the globe in order to learn from humanities most outstanding teachers in science, spirituality, business in order to crack the code of human peak performance.

Ranging from Psychology Professors at Stanford, to Spiritual masters in India, to silicon valley entrepreneurs to fulfilled stoic fisherman in Laos.

The goal is to find habits, patterns, stories, tools and strategies that will help me become the best version of myself and share my findings with the world. And have a shit ton of fun while doing so!

I am on warpath with the western working way of 9-5. I believe there is absolutely no reason for doing something that you hate. On this blog, I share my travel journals and vlogs with you in order to motivate you to take active steps and start your own dream life as well.
If an idiot like me can live a life on his terms, so can you.

Create habits that lead to success

I will help you tap into the power of habit formation in just few days.

So why do you create this website? {Caution soulstriptease ahead}

I very early discovered that the job description of a classical psychologist is not fitting my personal talents and needs or desires.

“All” I wanted from a job was to write all day, learn new stuff, travel around the world, read all day, surround myself with the most inspiring people on the planet and help thousands of people along the way.

Well, turns out the number of jobs out there, that fit these exact criteria is absolutely zero. So I thought “fuck it” why not create a new job for myself! Thus my idea of becoming a “digital nomad psychologist” was born.

So, I had to think of ways how I can serve and add value to the world, travel and have an awful lot of fun at the same time.

I always had the habit of dreaming big and being a bit delusional. So I decided that I wanted to help people at scale. As a “digital nomad psychologist” my capacity of helping was not limited to one, but in theory, I could help a thousand people at the same time.

Outside of having a shitton of fun, I decided to make this dream of becoming a “digital nomad psychologist” a reality because of two reasons

„It is my dream that I create a system around myself where I become a professional learner. That my job is to get better, to evolve and to add value to others.“

Daniel Karim

1. Infuse my past with meaning

A couple of years back when I was struggling with my depressive episodes, I experienced how hard it actually is to get help when you struggle. In Germany when you are depressed you need to “apply” for help. Very similar to the process of getting a job. Everybody knows how hard this is, believe me, getting a therapy spot is harder.

The process involves you getting active as hell, writing, calling and visiting dozens of therapists yourself. Which is pretty problematic when you can’t leave your bed anymore.

Then if you are lucky, you get on a waitlist that will very often last 4-12 months till you get a sample hour with a therapist.

I still remember when I tried to check myself into a psychiatric facility due to my struggle with substance abuse and one of the conditions was that you have to sober for at least 2 months. It was ridiculous. If I would have been able to handle that I wouldn’t need therapy in the first place.

I still remember like it was yesterday getting thrown out of the waiting room because I threw the damn application board at the doctors head after he told me that I either wait 2-4 months to “apply” again or I come back when I am acutely suicidal.

This was the moment I snapped.

I was so upset and disappointed with the western psychiatric system that I decided to go rogue and do my part and become the change that I wanted myself.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the many thousands of persons who were asking for help, and who had to go through this chicane.

I decided that I am going to become the person that I would have needed back then and that I would document my journey so that other people can follow my footprints.

And although changing an entire system is damn near impossible, what I could do was to start with myself, and become the hero of my own story and show you that if an idiot like me can get his shit together, that human transformation is possible

In order to do so I read every darn psychology book I could get my hands on, interviewed hundreds of case studies in order to find patterns to emulate, and patterns to stay away from. I traveled the world, tried out supplements, implemented new habits, created a new world around myself with new people.

Nowadays I am reaching out to world experts and extraordinary people to investigate high performers and happy people, in order to give you guys case studies after whom you can model your own behavior and life after.

The idea of this website is to make you think, and bring you books, tools, biohacks, and world-class experts that will light up your darkness so that you yourself, can go out in the world and kick ass.

2. I am a selfish human guinea pig

I see myself as a human guinea pig. For me happiness is progress. I’m constantly on the hunt for stuff that makes me better. Stuff that makes me better will make you better also. So I thought I can add value by sharing actual life advice and biohacks that don’t suck.

I see myself as a professional learner. My job is to get better, to evolve and to add value to others by sharing with you guys what I discovered, and what advice you should ignore.

I realized that not everybody has the time or the desire to look all day, every day for those hacks, so I hope that I can save you some time by researching and testing those things on myself so that you will hopefully reach higher levels of physical and mental performance as well.

I don’t want to bullshit you, this blog is not a charity project, I freaking love blogging. My journey hence is also for me. I want to make my life fun, and I believe I serve best when I am happy. Traveling and discovering ways to enhance my psychological and physical performance and share those findings with the world is a way of life that excites me and gives me goosebumps on a daily basis.

How did you learn about all this stuff?

1. I’m a weirdo

From day one I was a proud member of nerd-nation. While other kids my age were playing video games and were watching Pokemon, I was reading Nietzsche. I was a weirdo (and totally still am). My mom bombarded me with books about philosophy and psychology when I was still in my early teens. Growing up with rather limited financial resources, books became my escape. I always wanted to live an extraordinary life and very early I believed that books were the vehicle that could transform me into the person I needed to become to live that life. Progress is my form of happiness. The more I grow the better I feel.

2. I get bored quickly

I get bored easily. This gets me into trouble a lot, but it also causes me to live what other people would consider quite the extreme life with tons of „learning experiences“( i.e., crazy, stupid fuckups on my behalf). I think I got kicked out of every educational facility I ever was in(even preschool ). I’ve traveled to over 50 countries and I had a big crisis on every continent I was on. This includes surviving the biggest hurricane in Australia’s history or outrunning a gang of angry machete-wielding jakuzas in Thailand. I’ve gone broke multiple times, I struggled with alcohol and substance abuse and lived on people’s couches. I bring this up only to point out that I think real understanding only comes from living through failures. And I’ve never shied away from failure. After all, failure is never boring.

3. Study Psychology

After 6 years of studying psychology, it became more and more clear that my true passion lies in studying behavior and habit formation. I believed that if you have the power to change your behavior, you have the power to change your life.

Because of my mental illness, I had to take a temporary break from work. In that time psychology became my escape, something that I could, and needed to put my head into in order to get better. I became my own case study, and psychology allowed me to find meaning and purpose in what I prior saw as a curse and a liability.

I became obsessed with behavior and clinical psychology, reading every book and paper that I could get my hands on. I thought that by turning myself into an expert in clinical and behavior psychology I could not only make sense of my mess but also help others. I wanted to become the person that I needed back when I couldn’t get out of bed anymore.

Eventually, this pursuit of deconstructing the art of change led me to look for the worlds leading experts in behavior psychology.

I was determined to learn from the best in the world. So I started to look where all the best psychologist in the world were at that time and the answer was clear: Stanford.

While listening to an Interview, I heard Tim Ferris say that there is a particular professor in Stanford who is totally kicking ass. This Professor was Ph.D. Bj Fogg and he was running the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University.

I decided to reach out to him in order to learn about habit formation. Turned out that he actually had a programme where he was training habit coaches. I scrambled together all the money that I had and took that course. To this day the best investment that I ever made.

I became a certified Tiny Habits Coach and I personally learned from the world-leading expert in habit formation.

And although I am always in learning mode, I can now proudly say that I, as a habit coach can help people with this method to change their behavior and form new habits more quickly and easily than any method that I came across.

How would you summarize your philosophy?

Growing up in Germany I was always disappointed in the lack of collaboration among the separate medical disciplines in our western health system.

Having two chronically sick parents, I always held a childish grudge against our health system because I thought it failed to provide the help its promised.
Being the rebellious idiot that I am I didn’t feel fully represented by the already existing psychological and medical disciplines.

So I thought Fuck it, I create my own approach.
This approach is centered around my vision of holistic psychology.

The 4 pillars of holistic psychology are Mind, Body, Spirit, and social psychology.

In my opinion, a true psychologist is one who masters those four disciplines as much as possible.
Hence this blog is my journey to grow my expertise in each of those 4 disciplines

The 4 Principles

Mind

In this segment, I’m writing about psychological mechanisms and life hacks that I have read about and tested on myself that boosted/inhibited my mental performance.

Here I mostly talk about books I have read and seminars I took that accelerated my learning process and were game changers for me. This could be for example tips and tricks to implement habits of high performers or how to get rid of habits of unhappiness.

I’m focusing here on learning new behavior that results in happiness and ways to accelerate behavioral change. This could be as simple as a presentation of a book about speed reading. Or as extreme as self-experiments which involve jumping out of airplanes to fight anxiety.

Biohacking

I see myself as a human guinea pig. In this segment, I’m writing on ways to hack your way to higher physical performance.

Via trial and error, I try stuff on myself in order to become better. This can be as simple as me testing a new diet or a new sleep mask, or it can be as crazy as me emulating Wim Hof method and taking a bath in a frozen lake. In this section, I’m going to present nutritional experiments, gadgets, supplements or smart drugs which will enable you to hack your way to your happiness and high physical performance.

Spirit

Here I’m writing about ways to hack my way to spiritual health. This could be me testing different meditation practices such as Transcended Meditations or different guided meditations. Or me writing about my participation in spiritual ceremonies that include taking ayuhaska in the Colombian jungle.

Social Psychology

This aspect is dedicated to finding ways to hack the things that are around us. This can be for example ways and experiments to master your finances. Or it can be ways to improve relationships with your loved ones. This can be for example me reporting over a Tony Robbins workshop I participated in. Or a comfort zone experiments that includes me totally embarrassing myself in order to fight my anxiety issues.

Do you have a normal job? How do you make money?

Support Me on Patreon

Excellent question. Here is a cookie.

I have this weird medical condition which is called digital nomadism. It is an allergy to 9-5 jobs. This “disease” pretty much makes it impossible for me to have a normal job. So I’m stuck with being a blogger.

I also don’t run ads on my blog or freelance, or write for anybody else but for me.

So you might ask yourself, how the fuck can you do this and not starve?

I’m a ninja when it comes to stealing food from my roommates( pschht don’t tell them)
With your help.

This blog is a passion project for me and not only do I share with you 99% of my work for free, but blogging and podcasting is also actually pretty expensive.

In order to remain independent and to keep sharing my weird thoughts with you, I depend on your support.

I believe that me blogging is a much better way to serve humanity with my gifts than to prostitute my soul and work on something that somebody else could do better.

Click here to learn more about how you can support me.

You make a lot of spelling mistakes, are you an idiot?

Yes, I am.

You curse a lot. Do you have the tourette syndrom?

No, I am just trying to be cool.

So I want to tell you how I love/hate your blog, can I write you personally?

Contact Me

Yes, you can. I suck at follow up, but I try to answer every email I get. If you decide to write me a hate mail get your ass ready to get insulted back. I am a master at roasting so if you have ill intentions write me at your own risk.

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