What Are You And How Many?

“Jump!“

“Do it!“

“DO IT!“

Those were the words I heard on an ordinary afternoon while sitting on top of Table Mountain in the winter of 2018.

The internal voices were followed by a sudden and uncontrolled rush of tension in my legs – they were getting ready to catapult myself into the abyss.

This was not the first time this had happened to me, and I knew what to do.

I immediately grabbed the handrail, took a few deep breaths, cramped my hand up and did not let go of it until my shadow possession was over.

“…Fck off Tristan, not today“ I mumbled to myself.

I looked around to see if anybody noticed.

This is a picture of me in South-Africa

One of the friends I travelled with did, “You good bro?“

“Of course, I will catch up with you guys in a minute.“

As I took a couple of deep breaths, my muscles eased up, and I started to walk slowly again.

The voices were getting quieter and quieter until they finally faded out:

“You are not enough, and you never will be”.

”Your family will be better off without you”.

” You are making a fool out of yourself”.

”You are unlovable”.

”Nobody wants you”.

Possessed By Sadness

Luckily for me, I discovered many years before that incident in Capetown that I was not one thing but many.

”Tristan the loud one” was the name I choose for the depressed entity within myself.

The name Tristan, contrary to ordinary belief has nothing to do with the French word triste, which means sadness.  The name Tristan was originally derived from the Celtic language, and it means ”noise”.

I figured that this name was appropriate because this fragment of my soul kept whispering little toxic lies to myself over a great many years.

Painting by Aj Giel

While I hated every single visit of my inner critic, I have learned to live with him and to understand what I can to do keep this ”part” of myself in check.

Now, you might ask yourself: What the hell Daniel, are you suggesting that we all have multiple personality disorder?

Precisely, follow me into the rabbit hole…

The Composition Of The Psyche

What are you?

To answer this question, I would like to introduce you to today’s teacher:

Sigismund Schlomo Freud (1856-1939), arguably the most famous person in the history of psychology.

Freud’s discovery of the unconscious, the theory that states that our behaviour is driven by biological forces of which we are mostly unaware of are nowadays deeply entrenched in the world of psychiatry, at his time, it was a revolutionary idea.

Before Freud came along, people thought about the mind in predominantly philosophical terms.

The idea was that a human being is what they are aware of (think of Descartes quote – I think therefore I am).

It was furthermore assumed that we have control over ourselves.

Freud questioned those ideas.

Rather than seeing the mind as one thing, he acknowledged that there are invisible forces under the surface of the mind that govern our behavior.1

The idea that we possess a significantly smaller amount of self-regulation than we would like to have is indeed scary, but I believe that deep down we all know this to be true.

You have encountered this principle before; do you remember seeing the famous snickers commercial ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry’?

In those commercials, you have a series of masculine men whom all transform into histrionic women because they are possessed by their hunger.

This idea that your hunger, your lust, your sadness, and your anger are autonomous entities who reside within you and who have the power to overrule you to get what they want is a Freudian idea.2

Did you ever have a moment where somebody you cared about violated your boundaries, and you found yourself possessed by anger and you said or did something for which later, once you regained control you had to apologise?

Let me tell you how I learned about anger…

Possessed By Anger

The first time I noticed that in certain social settings, invisible behavioural drivers could be awakened was when one of my classmates tried to kill me.

I was in the sixth grade of a bad school in a bad neighbourhood.

After I had been bullied for quite some time, and I learned that becoming a bully is indeed much better than being bullied.

Myself (left) scuffling around with one of my classmates

Since I wanted to be left in peace by other aggressive kids in my class, I occasionally had to ”prove” myself to establish my standing in the school dominance hierarchy – meaning that I had to pick on somebody else.

My choice was clear- Steven, a kid who I was sure I could pick on without immediate consequences.

After a couple of word fights between Steven and me, it got physical.

He threw a swinger at me but missed; I did not miss with mine.

After my punch successfully landed on his nose, I managed to put him in a headlock and choked him until we were separated by a teacher.

What then followed was something that I am never going to forget in my life.

I expected the scuffle to end.

I assumed that Steven would accept his defeat and I figured that since everybody witnessed my ”victory”, the other tough kids would think twice before picking on me.

I was as wrong.

Steven just stood there, staring at his hand that was covered with his own nose blood.

After regaining his breath, he tilted his head in my direction, and his stare hit me.

There was something about Stevens’s eyes that changed after he saw his own blood.

After what felt like an eternity Steven smirked and opened his mouth,

I’m going to kill you”.

Steven proceeded by pushing our teacher out of the way as if she was made out of cotton.

She fell on the floor.

He walked right over her and grabbed the big scissors that were placed on her desk.

There he was, a chubby kid with glasses, pulsating skin, fletching teeth, eyes focused on me and only with one mission in mind: Stab him.

I ran as fast as I ever did in my life.

I did not return to school for a week.

I had nightmares for months, where I would see Steven’s facial expression over and over again.

Painting by Leah Justyce

My young and naive brain just could not contemplate what it had seen.

At that time, my mother always told me that human beings are good and pure at their core, but that look, those eyes, that smile, those weird movements did not fit into my understanding of the human condition.

What I saw was not Steven, that was not my classmate.

But if it was not him, who was it?

Freud and other psychoanalytical thinkers believed that rather than being one thing, we are a house in which many spirits live, and he made the terrifying notion that we are not the undisputed ruler of that house.

The ego is not master in its own house”.― Sigmund Freud

The thing that I could not understand about Steven’s transformation was that it did not fit my understanding of how emotions were supposed to work.

Growing up, I was taught that we have emotions, but in Steven’s case, it was different, it seemed to me that his emotions had him.

He was not angry; he was anger.

Steven was not transformed at that moment; it seemed to me as if something else within him, something that was already there got activated and overruled him.

That “Steven“ had a different body posture, he had different values, after all, he was not one bit concerned with his well-being in the long run, what he cared about was eliminating the source of the threat, and he willingly accepted the possibility of ruining his life for that satisfaction.

Behavioural Orchestra

Two years ago, I had lunch with a mentor of mine Peter, a systematic family therapist and his son Till, a business psychologist who also happens to be my best friend.

While eating oysters and drinking red wine, Peter eventually opened up about his counselling philosophy

When I start interviewing a client, I like to learn about their behavioural orchestra.

Most counselling approaches focus on the individual and the individual alone; a family therapist who is worth his gold will not ignore the fact that human beings are systematic creatures.

Learning about the different forces that shape the behaviour of the client helps me to draw better conclusions about the situation that is at hand.

With children, I often use an orchestra analogy.

What are the children’s parents like?  What kind of friends does the kid have?  Is the child surrounded by high-quality teachers?

By learning about the external drivers of the client, I can counsel them emphatically because I can vaguely understand what it is like to be in their shoes”.

I loved the metaphor of the behavioural orchestra, but I believed it was missing something, don’t we all have an internal orchestra as well?

I could not put it in words on that day, but to me, it seemed that we are a subset of different modes of beings.  This ecosystem consists of external and internal drivers who all affect us behaviourally, emotionally, socially, and cognitively.

 

2013 Seb Eriksson

Modern consciousness researches have concluded that rather than being one thing, the human psyche seems to be composed of various “ego-states”.

The concept of the ego was first written about between AD 397 and 400 by Augustine of Hippo in his masterpiece “Confessions“.

Saint Augustine of Hippo

Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage.  Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are”.  ― Augustine of Hippo

The word ego is Greek, and it simply means – “self“.

Many modern therapists confirm the theory that rather than having a unitary personality, we are a house with many rooms, and in those rooms live different “selves“.

Each of those “selves“ is distinct in its character and is equipped with a full range of emotions, desires, habits, values, beliefs, and even genders, sexual orientations or talents.3

From that idea we can make a terrifying derivation: We are conflicted by nature.

What if two sub-modalities want something different at the same time?

We go to war with ourselves…

Possessed By Pleasure

In 2019, my friends and I travelled for a month through Europe in a van.

After almost five thousand kilometres on the road we received the exciting news that another friend of ours, Richard, an actor, wanted to join us on our adventure, all we had to do was to drive to Venice and pick him up.

In our euphoria about the imminent arrival of our dear friend, we somehow managed to arrive an entire day too early in Venice.

But it was not any other day; it was a Saturday.

Once we arrived in the city, we immediately armed ourselves with enough wine bottles to take out a wild Rhino.

After some drunk strolling through the most beautiful city in the world, we finally found a relatively undisturbed little bridge where we could marvel at the stars and philosophise about life.

Photo by Massimo Adami

Venice has a special meaning for me; years ago I travelled here with my girlfriend at the time.

It was the first cities where I told a girl that I loved her and meant it.

So, it is fair to say that my heart was in turmoil on that day.

After another bottle of red wine, my friends had to take a leak.

That conversational break was welcomed by me, I had a short moment for myself to dwell into memories and mourn… or at least this is what I thought.

My melancholia was interrupted by a loud “SPLASH“.

My friend Chrissi had slipped and fallen into the canal.

I am not sure if I had ever laughed this hard in my life.

While holding my belly, I saw that it was not only the disgusting water of Venice that was dripping down my friend’s hand; it was also blood.

My friend Till and I were instantly sobered up by that scene, so it was time to head back to the bar street of Venice because our friend clearly needed some first aid and more importantly, we needed to get ourselves drunk again.

Cup by cup, I became less and less Daniel and transformed slowly but surely into a two-meter tall ravaging drunk.

I talked to every person, made all of the jokes, danced on every table, and ordered all of the drinks.

As the last bar kicked us out, my friend Till suggested that it is time to go home.

I was not too fond of the idea, I somehow managed to befriend a local Italian cocaine dealer, and he proposed to me the idea that we should not go home but to go with him to an underground party where we could continue to intoxicate ourselves.

I tried to convince Till that this plan is indeed far superior to going home, but my pitch remained unsuccessful.

After five minutes of debating, I just decided to go with my “new friend“ to the rave.

Till saw this and jumped in front of me and told me with a parental voice  “Jaques it’s time to go home“.

Jaques was the nickname my friends picked years earlier for my intoxicated persona.

While “Daniel“ is in love with books, people, and his future, “Jaques“ can only be described as a playful idiot who worships the moment and chooses endless excess no matter the cost.

Artist: Jeremy Wilson

It was not only my friend who stood in front of me, but it was also reason itself, and “Jaques“ did not want to have any part of it, he simply did not want his mania to end just yet.

My friend, however, would not budge down, so he pushed me and said again fiercely “Jaques time to go home“.

Another thing “Jaques“ is not a fan of is someone telling him what to do, so “he“ took a swing at my friend.

My friend went down.

He got back up, walked right past me and whispered: “go and have your misery, you stupid son of a bitch“.

The fight sobered me up and scared my new Italian “friend“ away, and I found myself alone at night in the middle of Venice.

My regained senses could not help themselves but be endlessly intrigued by the depths of my own shadow.

I remember mumbling to myself “Did I just punch my best friend because he wanted to protect myself from drugs and bad people?“.

My mania had ended… time to go home.

Or so I thought…

I have little to no orientation skills even when I am sober, but finding my way drunk out of Venice was a lost cause from the start.

After wandering around aimlessly for hours, I surrendered to the maze of the old town.

Luckily, I met what seemed to be the last person awake in Venice, an old tattooed Vaporetto captain.

After some desperate negotiation, he agreed to give me a ride home in his boat.

Just as the sun started to kiss Venice awake, I found myself in the backseat of a luxurious- mahogany-speed-boatish-water taxi heading with god speed towards the camping ground where our van was parked.

(If you ever get drunk and lost in Venice, do not forget to bring enough cash to get a water taxi home.  The water taxis do not take credit cards.)

The very first thing I did the next morning was to write in my journal and rip the entire page out and handed it to Till, the letter said:

Good friends go to war with you.

Best friends go to war against you, if necessary.

I am sorry.

Yours

Daniel“

He forgave me at that moment, we hugged, and I shed a tear of gratitude because I realised that my friend wants the best for the best part in me.

The next day came, our friend Richard arrived, but nobody partied that night, we all had enough…

In the video above, you will see my hungover friends and myself finally catching up with our friend Richard.  See the bandage on my friend’s right hand?  Yes, he really fell in the canal the day before and injured himself mildly while doing so…and I will forever roasting him for it…

Do You Hear Voices?  Yes, Me Too

Dr Richard Schwartz, one of the most eminent thinkers in the field of Internal Family Systems Therapy, noticed something strange in the early 1980s while working with clients who had severe eating disorders.

During that time, many family therapists believed that the origins of psychological disorders were caused by dysfunctional structures in the family.  This means that if you want to change the behaviour of the client, you must change the organisation of the family itself.

He soon discovered that his “textbook family therapy techniques” of reorganising the family structure proved to be ineffective, most of his clients kept binging and purging.4

Art by Tanja Silvestrini

Out of frustration, Dr Schwartz began to ask what was happening inside his clients.5

His clients would then open up and tell him about the extensive conversations they had with what they called different “parts” of themselves.

At first, Dr Schwartz thought that these conversations where metaphors for their feelings, but his clients all described these “parts” as distinct personalities who made them do things.

Dr Schwartz first wondered if his clients had multiple personality disorder, but then he had a terrifying discovery:

I have those voices too”.

One of his clients, Diane, told him, for example, about a pessimistic voice that she was hearing who always told her that everything was hopeless.

Dr Schwartz approached that “part” of Diane as if it was a distinct person and much to his surprise the voice responded to him and confessed that if she prevented Diane from taking any risks, she would not get hurt.

That “part” of Diane was trying to protect her.

Dr Schwartz was ecstatic, if this inner pessimist was driven by a benign intent, then Diane might be able to negotiate a different role for it.

But Diane did not want to have anything to do with this “part” of herself; in fact, she hated her inner pessimist.

I asked her why she was so rude to the pessimist, and she went on a long dialogue, describing how that voice had made every step she took in life a major hurdle”.

Dr Schwartz realised something even more bizarre; he was not talking to Diane; he was talking to the “part” of her that was at war with the inner pessimist.

There was one “part” in her who was cracking the whip to drive her towards achievement while another “part” of herself was trying to protect Diane from the pain of failure while concurrently being sorry for her because she had to work so very hard.

Dr Schwartz stepped in and told Diane to focus on the voice that was at war with the pessimist and ask it to stop interfering in her negotiations with the inner pessimist.

To Dr Schwartz’s amazement, that “part” of Diane agreed to “step back”.

He again asked Diane how she felt about her inner pessimist:

In a calm, caring voice, Diane said she was grateful for her inner pessimist for trying to protect her and felt sorry that it had to work so hard”.

From that point, negotiations with her inner pessimists were easy, and Diane ultimately healed.

Encounters like the one with Diane led Dr Schwarz to create a new therapy approach where he acknowledges the existence of those “parts“ in his clients and even in himself.

One could say that it is really the job of the therapist to get all of these different “parts“ to talk to each other and negotiate the physical and psychological health of all of the “parts“ of the client.

This form of spiritual integration and mediation seems to be crucial for the therapeutic betterment of the client.

The opinion of other eminent thinkers confirms this assertion.  Let me cite some examples:

Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one’s being, but by the integration of the contraries”.

― Carl Gustav Jung

“A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow”.
― Djuna Barnes

“The individual does actually carry on a double existence: one designed to serve his own purposes and another as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own”.
― Sigmund Freud

“Confront the dark parts of yourself and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness.  Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing”.

― August Wilson

Two decades after Dr Schwartz’s discovery that the human psyche is not unitary but composed of ”parts” has led him to restructure his psychotherapeutic approach entirely.

While in Diane’s case, he discovered that he could mediate the different ”parts” of his clients, he now understood that he had to mediate his own ”parts” as well to be successful in providing curative therapy.

You will see in the following case study how Dr Schwartz integrates and acknowledges both of his own ”selves” and the ”selves” of the client:

I am meeting for the first time with an anorexic client, Margie, in a residential treatment centre where I am a consultant.  She has fought with her anorexia for 19 years and has found that whenever she starts feeling better about herself, she stops eating.  Before the session, I focus on my internal world – to centre myself.  I hear a familiar voice of fear saying that she is obviously very fragile and I should not do anything to upset her.  I tell that part of me that I will be sensitive to her condition, and ask that it trust me and let my heart open again.  I focus on my heart and sense the protective crust that had enveloped it as I approached the time of the session melt away.  I can feel more sensation now in my chest and abdomen, with vibrating energy running through my limbs.  I feel calm and confident as Margie enters the office and sits down.

She looks like a cadaver and has a feeding tube in her nose.  Her movements are controlled and rigid.  She eyes me warily.  At once, I feel great compassion for her and respect for the parts of her that do not trust me.  And may not want to work with me.  I am not invested in a certain outcome for this session.  I would like to help her, but I will be fine if she chooses not to let me in.  I am curious about what her anorexia has been up to all these years, yet I am certain that it has good reasons for doing this to her.  I feel the energy in my body, extending nonverbally through my heart toward her, and trust that at some level, she can sense it.  I am confident that, if I can remain in this state, whatever is supposed to happen will – I do not have to make anything happen.

I introduce myself and tell her that I am good at helping people with the parts of them that make them not eat.  I ask Margie where she finds that voice of anorexia in her body and how she feels toward it.  She closes her eyes and says it is in her stomach, and she is angry at it.  She says that it tells her that it is going to kill her and that there is nothing she can do about it.  I feel a jolt of fear clenching my gut and hear a familiar inner voice saying, “it’s determined to kill her and is succeeding.  What if you say something that makes it even more determined!” Again, I quickly reassure the fear with words like, “Trust me.  Remember that if I stay present something good always happens”.  My abdomen immediately relaxes, and the soft, flowing energy returns to my body.

In a calm, confident voice, I tell Margie, “It makes sense that you’re angry with the eating disorder part because its avowed purpose is to screw up your life or even kill you.  But right now, we just want to get to know it a little better, and it’s hard to do that when you’re so angry with it.  We’re not going to give it more power by doing that – just get to know more about why it wants to kill you.  So see if the part of you that’s so angry with it is willing to trust you and me for a few minutes.  See if it’s willing to relax to watch maybe as we try to get to know the eating disorder part”.  She says okay, and when I ask how she feels toward the eating disorder now, she says she’s tired of battling with it.  I have her ask that part to relax and step back too, and then another part that was very confused by the disorder.  Remarkably for someone in her condition, each time she asks a part to step back, it does.  Finally, in response to my question of “how do you feel toward the eating disorder now?” she says in a compassionate voice, “Like, I want to help it”.

— Dr Richard Schwartz

No matter how often I read the story above, every time I get to the point where Margie shows some form of emphatic understanding and love for the anorexic ”part” in herself I get goosebumps and teary eyes.

Painting by Gloria Perez Herrero

Margie’s superego, the punishing sub-modality within herself expanded to a point where it told her that she does not deserve to eat anymore.  To show some kind of compassion for that “part“ of herself that nearly punished her out of existence deeply moved me.

The Dissociative Table

While I have never been anorexic and thank god for that, I decided to go full soul striptease mode in this article to show you that I know what it is like to be tormented by my spirits.  I think that if you are honest with yourself,  you also have some “parts” within you that you are at war with.

One of the reasons why I was depressed for years was because I was living in a constant state of playing tug of war with my inner ”parts”.

Rather than accepting, negotiating, and integrating my different ”parts” I hated everything about me that was not virtuous.

The moment I stopped my attempts to eradicate my ”weak” or ”ugly” ”parts” and instead started to converse with them was when I started to heal and stopped living in a tyrannical relationship with myself.

Jay Early, a psychotherapist, put it best when he said:

The human mind is not a unitary thing that sometimes has irrational feelings.  It is a complex system of interacting parts, each with a mind of its own.  It is like an internal family — with wounded children, impulsive teenagers, rigid adults, hypercritical parents, caring friends, nurturing relatives, and so on”.6

Each ”part” of yourself, even the ”parts” that you do not like, were once born to protect you, and most of them have a time and place where they still can be useful to you.

Some of your ”parts” are friendly and perfectly socially acceptable, while others were born to protect you against yourself or external threats.

What I am trying to say is: Being a human being is an internal team sport.

If you are not everything you could be, it could be helpful to call an ”internal team meeting”.

A perfect technique for that occasion is The Dissociative Table developed by George Fraser in 1991.7

The technique consists of inviting all of your ”inner people”, ”parts”, ” alter” or ”ego-selves”, or whatever you like to call them, to gather around an internal table and sit down and talk.

The goal of that technique is to get to know your different “parts” and discuss what an optimal pathway through life could look like for you.

The purpose of this exercise is to move away from internal conflict and towards psychological fusion.

Illustration by Ayan Mukherjee

There are three ways you can mediate this internal gathering:

  1. You do this with a therapist.
  2. You close your eyes and meditate with this exercise.
  3. You write about this internal conversation.

For me personally, I prefer to use writing and meditation for this technique because I was not successful so far in finding a therapist who is familiar with ego states.

Here is how I used Fraser’s dissociative table technique for myself:

Mediation

  • Do some deep breathing exercises or something that helps you to relax (no alcohol allowed).
  • Close your eyes.
  • Picture yourself sitting in a secure and safe room with a beautiful oval table.
  • One after another, you see people sitting at the table, those people are your different ”parts”.
  • What do your sub-modalities look like?  How many are they?
  • Allow each of your ”parts” to introduce themselves to you.
  • Interview them and ask them what they want and what they think is best for you.
  • Some questions that I like to ask my ”parts” are:
    • The name of the ”part”
    • When and why the ”part” was created
    • What does the ”part” look like
    • What does the ”part” want
    • How does the ”part” talk
    • What does this ”part” feel like and when do you feel it
    • How does this ”part” make you behave
    • How does this ”part” make you see the world
    • How can you integrate this ”part” into your life
    • What pain has this ”part” caused you
    • What pain has this ”part” protected you from
    • What benefits will you gain if you make this ”part” an ally of yourself
  • When you want to end the conversation make sure to thank all of your ”parts” for coming, remind them that you are all in this together and that all ”parts” should work together to make this adventure everything it can be.
  • Open your eyes.

While meditating about your ”parts” can be curative by itself, I had the most success in writing about the different sub-modalities that reside within myself.

Unknown artist

While my modes of being are distinctive and unique to me, schema therapists have found that people often have very similar ”parts” in themselves.8

Below, you will find a couple of ”parts” that my coaching clients have identified within themselves:

The Workaholic

The workaholic equals their productivity with their self-worth.  They love to be busy, and they willingly ignore the host’s basic human needs for play, love, balance, and recovery.

They love being admired and praised for the long hours they put in and is more concerned with their projects than with their own physical and psychological well-being.

They neglect the people around them and is often confused about the origins of their unhappiness.  Their primary way of coping with pain is to drown themselves in work.

Painting by Eric Chow

Symptoms: Exhaustion, relationship problems, isolation, feelings of meaninglessness, ignorance of human core needs, feelings of inadequacy, loneliness.

Example: “My way of showing love for my family is by putting in the work to create a better future for them, to give them opportunities I did not have”.

Yes, this means that I will not make it to my kid’s baseball games and yes this means that I cannot go to the movies with my wife, but that is my role, that is who I am, that is what being a man means.  We work.

Tired?  In my line of work, there is no tired; there is no sick; there are results, and results do not come from anything else but from putting in the hours.  Of course, I feel lonely and unhappy, but success has a cost, and I am willing to pay for it“.

The Depressed Self

The depressed self is a mode that gets activated when one person thinks they are defeated by life.  The depressed self gets activated when a person has their human core needs not met and is not operating on a sufficient level on their eight dimensions of life.

The depressed self feels that the current life path is only bringing more misery towards the host, so they feel that the proper course of action is to protect themselves from everything by freezing, hiding, and numbing the host.

The depressed self is concerned with detecting the immediate threats in the world and are ignoring any positive signs because they are focused on survival, and they do not care about happiness.

Artwork by Shawn Coss

Symptoms: Lethargy, constant pain, avoidance, fighting with the partner, feeling tired, hopelessness, melancholia, numbness, behavioural paralysis, short term thinking, bad coping habits, self-mutilation, suicidal voices, anxiety.

Example: “When I’m in a depressed state, it’s hard for me to get out of bed.  Showering becomes a victory.  Leaving the house becomes a miracle.  All I want to do is sleep.

I feel strong feelings of hate and disgust towards myself, and it is impossible to trust the people around because let us be honest, who stays with a miserable person like me.

Being around other people is a drain, I often do a bad job of hiding my misery, this is why I choose to be alone for now, so I do not pull other people down with my horsecrap.

I know I am not enough, and sometimes I worry if ever will be“.

The Drug Abuser

The drug abuser is a “part“ that is concerned with instant gratification and instant pain mitigation.  They are concerned with the now and willingly throws away health and prosperity in the future for their anxiety and responsibility liberation.

They turn a blind eye to the long-term consequences of their toxic behaviour and accepts negative consequences for their physical and psychological health.

The drug abuser uses unhealthy habits to ease their existential anxiety, and they often have very intelligent ways of rationalising and even romanticising their pathological conduct.

Painting by Valerie Patterson

Symptoms: Drug use, overeating, lying, rationalising, self- medication,  having toxic relationships around him, procrastination, freezing, mania, unprotected sex, financial mismanagement.

Example: “When I drink, I’m a different person.  Normally, I’m quite introverted, and there are few people whom I click with naturally when I drink, I feel that I’m funnier and people are attracted to me.

I do not have much joy in my job and do not get me started on my relationship… but when its Friday night, I am the heart of the party, and I am…like somebody else.  I talk differently, dress different, and I make different decisions.  Of course, there is a price, I am often hungover and in a bad state at the end of the weekend.  But hey, we all have that right?”

The Ashamed Fourteen-Year-Old

We all have times where we were hurt, where we encountered malevolence, and where our perception of who we thought we were was damaged or even shattered.

Traumatic and psychological catastrophes often give birth to new “parts“ whose job it is to protect us in the future from that traumatic source of danger.

While it is helpful to create a coping persona to help us survive being mobbed in preschool or something similar, this “part“ should probably not be the primary decision maker for the rest of our life.

Painting by Annie Ravi

Symptoms: You still dream about painful experiences that are more than eighteen months old, compulsiveness, snapping at your partner, drug use,  avoidance, nightmares, black and white thinking.

Example: “Just the thought about my upcoming talk scares the living daylights out of me.  When I was fourteen, I was stuttering very badly, and I remember Mrs Jones, my English teacher forcing me to talk in front of the entire school.  I was so so afraid that I stuttered horribly.

Dozens of kids pointed at me and laughed at my expense.

To this day, when I talk in front of a group of people, I sweat like crazy.

I avoid situations like that every time I can.

Filters Of Life

So why does all of this matter?

Why did I choose to share with you the weird composition of my psyche?

Why did I tell you about the mental makeup of my murderous classmate or the psychology of anorexic girls?

I decided to write this article because I believe that the quality of your inner dialogue either makes or breaks you.

Another reason I wrote this article: NOBODY EVER TOLD ME THIS SHIT.

I have had to learn very painfully over the years that each of my psychic “parts” has a place and a purpose.

Not knowing that there are spirits that need to be governed makes you a slave to your emotional entities because you never even realise that you are entangled in a constant war for the steering wheel of your life.

If you are currently not happy with how the world manifests itself to you, it might be the case that your brain is currently governed by one of your ”parts” who is seeing the world in a way that is unhelpful to you.

Unknown artist

Just like we use filters for Instagram to make our pictures look a certain way, each of our ”parts” has a unique perception that allows you to see things that are relevant to the goals of that mode of being.

I am sure you have experienced this:

  • When your inner critic had the steering wheel, and all you could see was what was wrong with you.
  • When your inner hero had the steering wheel, and you could not help yourself but see all of your problems as possibilities for growth.
  • When your inner drug abuser had the steering wheel, and all you cared about was losing yourself in the night as if there would not be a tomorrow.

Being aware of who it is that governs your behaviour can be a matter of life and death.

And, nobody knows this better than Kevin Hines, the man who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge because his inner terrorist convinced him to do so.

The moment you start to meet and view your undesired psychic parts with compassion, understanding, and curiosity is the moment when you will heal and unlock your potential.

Success is not a one-man game, align your “parts“, and work together to make your life everything it can be.

Thank you for reading,

Yours

Daniel (and all the other “parts” that reside within me)

 

Walden — Hendrik David Thoreau {Book Review}

When Tim Ferris packed his stuff to vagabond around the world, he took two books with him.  The first one was Vagabonding by Rolf Potts; the second one was Walden by Hendrik David Thoreau.

Tim Ferris was one of the guys who inspired me to found my own psychology podcast.

The $6 that I spend on this gem are easily in the discussion for the best investment of my life, and I believe wholeheartedly, that this book has the potential to enrich if not change your life.

I started to read Walden when I was flying towards Portugal, and I finished it while watching the sunset in a small village near Guimaraes.

In Walden, Thoreau writes about his experiment of living in the woods near Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts in solitude for two years.  He lives there completely self-reliant, in the shack he built, as simple as possible, and supported by no one else but himself.

The timing could have not been better for me in finding this gem.  At the time of my discovery of Walden, I had the biggest financial trouble of my recent memory, and I was on the summit of Brokeback Mountain, surrounded by a large storm of horse crap.

The stoicism that is depicted in Thoreau’s Walden, not only gave me a new perspective but made me realise that the things that matter to me most cannot be taken away from me, ever.

As long as I have the people I love, my orange backpack, my blog, and my dream, I have everything that I need.

That I am free.

What Is The Book Walden About?

In Walden, Thoreau writes about his experiment of living in the woods near Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts in solitude for two years.  He lives there completely self-reliant, in the shack he built himself, as simple as possible, and supported by no one else but himself.

In total, he spent on his cabin just 28 dollars.  To sustain himself, Thoreau grows and sells vegetables, mostly beans.  His day to day diet consists mainly of rye bread, salt pork, rice, beans, and potatoes.

Thoreau’s idea was that during modern society, and within day to day ordinary life, one can lose his or her true identity.

Thoreau moving to Walden was a radical experiment to see what remains at the core of the human soul if one eliminates variables such as possession, social connections, career, and external validation.

Henry was motivated for this experiment by his mentor and role model Ralph Waldo Emerson, and I would think that they belong to the school of transcendentalism, which assumes that there is a true self to discover.

Thoreau goes into great detail about his observations about the nature that surrounded him in the forest in Walden.  The book Walden is not only a book about self-discovery and stoicism, but it is also about mindfulness, minimalism, gratitude, and our spiritual connection to nature.

In Walden, Thoreau shows his great love for numbers, and he goes into detail how much he spends to build his cabin in the woods, and how much money he spent on salt from 1845 to 1847.  To us, this may seem weird or trivial(2), but to Thoreau, it was important.  In his opinion, modern society with its blind devotion to consumerism, technology, and hedonism is enslaving the human soul with its dependencies. It is ultimately robbing us of our most precious gift: our freedom.

According to him, we create our own prison.

He spends, however, not the entire time in his little cabin in the woods working on the little farm that he builds.  Thoreau spent only as much time on labour and work as was necessary to sustain himself.

He went into the woods to think, to feel, and to observe nature.

You can see that he had little to no respect for material things and possessions.

Thoreau was proud and fascinated by how little he spent, and how little he actually needed.  He spends less money on building a house and living there than he had to spend studying in Harvard.

Thoreau was a true free spirit; he even refused to acknowledge the days of the week or month; he was only guided by the season that changed slowly in front of him.

After two years of living in the forest, Thoreau left Walden.  Thoreau announced that his project at the pond was over on September 6, 1847.  He felt that humans live many lives and that his life living at the pond was finished.  He then admonishes us to meet our lives, and live fully.

Who Is Hendrik David Thoreau?

Henry David Thoreau was a philosopher and writer best known for his attacks on American social institutions and his respect for nature and simple living.  He was heavily influenced by the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, who introduced Thoreau to the ideas of transcendentalism, a philosophy central to Thoreau’s thinking and writing.  In addition to Civil Disobedience (1849), Thoreau is best known for his book Walden (1854), which documents his experiences living alone on Walden Pond in Massachusetts from 1845 to 1847.  Throughout his life, Thoreau emphasised the importance of individuality and self-reliance.  He practised civil disobedience in his own life and spent a night in jail for his refusal to pay taxes in protest of the Mexican War.  (Thoreau was opposed to the practice of slavery in some of the territories involved).  It is thought that this night in jail prompted Thoreau to write Civil Disobedience.  Thoreau delivered the first draft of the treatise as an oration to the Concord Lyceum in 1848, and the text was published in 1849 under the title Resistance to Civil Government.(1)

3 Lessons That I Learned From Walden

The Importance Of Self-Reliance

A clear theme in the book Walden is the importance of Self-Reliance.  A huge influence for Thoreau was the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, and in particular, the essay Self-Reliance is one of the finest pieces of literature ever written in my opinion.

One could say that Thoreau’s experiment to live without money in the woods for 2 years was motivated by proving the ideals of Emerson that are depicted in the letter self-reliance of 1841.

Man is his own star; and the soul that can

Render an honest and a perfect man,

Commands all light, all influence, all fate;

Nothing to him falls early or too late.

Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,

Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”

Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher’s Honest Man’s Fortune

In Walden, Thoreau explains that a person needs financial independence more than the neediness that millions live by in our hedonistic societies that only aim at acquiring more material wealth.

Thoreau goes into great detail on how much money he spends in his experiment; he even mentioned that the amount of money he spent 1845-1847 on salt.  To “normal” people this may be trivial, to Thoreau, this meant control.  Controlling his own finances and not be dependent on banks, jobs, and other people is ultimately the ability to control one’s own fortune and life.

Thoreau’s experiment to live in the woods is not only an experiment to liberate himself from the strings of the capitalistic cravings that are mandatory to live in our society, but he also aims at cutting strings with his social life.  He very rarely was visited by other people in his time by the woods.

And, if he was visited by friends, they were most likely also poets or thinkers.

This was a profound lesson for me.  Being independent and self-reliant means to be in control.  I believe psychologically three things, among many others, are causing depression.

Perceived lack of control over one’s own life, financial scarcity, and our craving for external validation.

By eliminating the need for those three basic human needs, Thoreau gives us a uniquely different manual of how to deal with anxiety and depression, in my opinion.

Our brain is an overreactive son of a b*tch.  Every time one of our bills is overdue, we fear social exclusion and starvation.

Thoreau goes to extreme lengths to become the boss of his own life, something we all should try to be, and it seems that the psychological benefit of feeling in charge is fundamental when it comes to preserving our sanity.

Walden has taught me that to battle my depression and anxiety; I need to feel more in control.  Limiting our dependencies is a liberation of the soul.

The second benefit of being more self-reliant is to stress less about things that are not in your control.

The identification and separation of matters that we can influence are key.  There are many things in life that we can influence and change, and by all means, am I an advocate of striving to become better and doing everything we can, but there is a lot of stuff that we cannot change from accidents to illness to losing a loved one.

By focusing on the things, we cannot change, we dig our own graves and invest in our anxiety.

What we always can change, however, is how we deal with things that we cannot change.  Our attitude and emotion toward misfortune are in our control.  Always.

Even if you are suffering, you are in control of what coping mechanism you choose.  Years back, I interviewed two brothers.  Their father had died of severe alcoholism.  One of them became an addict, as well.  I asked him why he thought that he was so vulnerable to addiction, and he hinted that he had no other choice because his father lived this way and that he inherited those bad habits.

The other brother was doing fairly well in life, and I asked him why he was doing so good.  He gave me the same answer.  He told me he was doing so good because we wanted to be the opposite of his father and learn from his mistakes and not bring that level of pain and suffering into the world.

We all need the feeling of control.  If you feel overwhelmed in life, focus on the little things that are in your power.

Often, we underestimate the power of the culmination of doing tiny things regularly.

The Value Of Stoicism

In Walden, Thoreau dedicated an entire chapter to the idea of simplicity.  Thoreau depicts the idea that humans, in our capitalistic society, have a tendency to be dissatisfied with one’s possessions.

Something true for most of us.  We are all, in some way, in the process of creating the means of getting more.

There are two ways according to Thoreau of dealing with this dissatisfaction.  We either acquire more, or we reduce our desires.

Thoreau goes to extreme lengths of reducing his desires by living alone in the woods.

From building his own shack to having a simplistic diet.  To him, the devotion to acquiring luxurious extravagancies is not only unnecessary but a real liability and impediment.

It is crazy how these ideas are still relevant 150 years later.

We work our asses off to get a house that is too big for us, with money that we borrowed from the bank, drive a car that we do not really need, work a job to buy stuff that we not only could easily live without but is actually hindering us of becoming happy and fulfilled.

Thoreau goes as far as discussing whether humans need shelter at all because he believes our skin is enough of a tent.

This thinking deeply liberated me in times of financial struggle that my worst-case scenario is actually not that bad.

Stoics would go as far as to practice misfortune regularly.  By training our brain that the condition that we fear most is actually not that bad, we liberate our self from fear and anxiety.

Gary V, for example, visualises his worst-case scenario (the death of his loved ones) every morning.  I know this is crazy.  But he believes that this is the source of his level of gratitude.

Stoics do not aim at devoting their life to acquiring more, but to become the best person they can become.

This is of extreme importance when it comes to how we see ourselves and how we judge our self and others.

What do you appreciate in yourself and in others?  Who do you respect and why?

Do you respect people who are kicking ass in their career?  Do you look up to financially successful people?

Or do you respect people who are doing good?  Who is adding value?  Who puts a smile daily on other people’s faces?

We live in a society where we only value performance, we worship people in power, and we do not pay attention to kindness, love, and happiness.

So I urge you to go into introspection.  What do you value yourself for?

Often, people have a value paradigm that ignores beautiful qualities.

If you only value people in power, people who are “successful” and you are not this person yet; you are digging your own grave and create self-hate and self-doubt.

Do not forget to praise yourself for the things that really matter.  Are you a good listener?  Can you make other people smile?  Are you a devoted person?  Can you be happy for others?  Are you patient with your parents?  Are you there for your friends when they truly need you?

In my interviews with depressed people, they often speak about how much better the world would be without them, that they cannot do anything, and that they have no skills.

By scaling down and praising yourself for stoic values, you not only gain happiness, but you gain clarity and truth because you are a beautiful person, you may have just not yet realised it because you are using the wrong template to evaluate yourself correctly.

Everything Is Ephemeral

So, if possession, achievement, social validation do not matter, what does?

This very moment does.  Now matters.

In my last article, Take The Road Less Travelled, I talked about how overrated feelings are, and that more often than not, we over-evaluate the importance of feelings.  The end of our emotions very often is nothing.

I had this insight while watching the endless panoramic view in Guimaraes, realising that if everything is ephemeral, there is no need to stress about the future or the past.

Depression is often an obsession with the past.  Anxiety, on the other side, is the fear of worrying about everything sh*tty that might happen to us in the future.

This leaves no place for the importance of the now.

A great mentor here is Marcus Aurelius.  One of my favourite stoic thinkers.

Run down the list of those who felt intense anger at something: the most famous, the most unfortunate, the most hated, the most whatever: Where is all that now?  Smoke, dust, legend…or not even a legend.  Think of all the examples.  And how trivial the things we want so passionately are.” Marcus Aurelius.

While I read Walden in Portugal, I felt liberated.  After receiving some major bad news, I was super anxious and felt like dog sh*t.

It made me think.  How many times in my life did my bitchy emotions tell me that the world was going to end, that I will not make it, that everybody will hate me, and that I have no future?

How often did the world actually end?

Yup, not one time.

We fail exams, and we think we just lost our one and only shot at success.  We fight through a breakup, and we believe no one ever will love us again.  We see a dream not working out, and we feel like we just lost our one and only shot at happiness.

Yet still, life goes on.  Whether we like it or not.

The seasons in Walden that Thoreau describes so playfully showed me that life is going to go on.

Always.

And as I realised in Portugal, we matter a lot less than we are willing to admit.

This is a good thing.  Nihilism can be liberating.  If nothing matters and everything is trivial, why not do what the f*ck makes you happy and stress less about things.

Whether you die, or the President of the United States, the same thing is coming for both of you.  So why stress out so much.

Take it easy, live life fully, and be open for the endless beauty that this world has to offer.

Thoreau believed that a human lives many lives.

As he left the forest that he lived in for two years, I felt that the life he had to live near the pond of this forest was over.

The same goes for you and for me.  What life are you living right now that is coming to an end?

What life do you choose to live next?

You decide.

Who Recommended It?

Tim Ferris.

What Did I Not Like?

His writing style is contrary to his simple philosophy.  If you are not a native English speaker, this gem is going to be really hard for you to understand.

I had my fair share of trouble with understanding Thoreau’s Walden.

His sentences are very long and complicated at times.  Besides that, I have nothing to argue about.

The Art Of Choosing What To Give A F*ck About – Porto Part 4 {Travel Journal}

This year I was drunk in eight different countries.  Not the most elegant statistic, still noteworthy, I thought.

I remember cannonballing into the sea in West Sweden at 5 in the morning.  I remember playing flunky ball in the middle of the night in Aarhus with two girls from Texas.

I remember finding out that a quiet night out in Krakow means to Pilger from one pijalnia wodki to the next, and only to drink vodka shots.

I remember dancing with my friend in the rain in Barcelona in the middle of the day.  I remember seeing showers of shooting stars in the Mecklenburgerische Seenplatte.

And, I remember drinking vino in Paris in the middle of the longest first date of my life (6 days).

Drinking port wine in Guimaraes with my friends in a villa will be a memory that I will keep with me.

It is Friday morning.  I am having Natas for breakfast.  Again.  Natas are basically tiny pudding cakes from Portugal.  I realise now that I am not only having Natas, but I am also having a good year.

As I am writing this, my brain feels like it was deep fried yesterday in a microwave.  I hate hangovers.

My gang and I kicked it yesterday in Porto till 7 in the morning.  I am horrible at finding an ending.

So, genius me lost all of my pals.  It was about an hour to travel back to the village where our villa is.

Yesterday, my iPhone battery died and with it the address of the house where we are staying.

My sense of orientation is laughable.

So my ravaging night was rewarded with 4 hours of hiking through the mountains of Guimaraes without a second of sleep and without success.  So, I went to a hospital asking them to charge my phone.  After some bewildered, they asked me if I am ok.  I said that I am not, but this is not why I am here.

After calling my friends from the hospital with my freshly charged phone, I finally managed to get a taxi to drive me home.  Turns out, I was not even in the same district.

To find some learning in this mess, I stood in front of a psychological decision.  What do I choose to give a f*ck about today?

Do I focus on the awesome night that I had, or do I focus on the hangover?

Travelling taught me that I am the editor of my life.  That I can decide what moments to remember, and which to forget.

How Traveling Has Taught Me What To Give F*ck About

Travelling has also taught me what to give a f*ck about.  I want to talk with you today about the power of focus.

Although we are not always in control of how things develop, we are all in control of what we focus on.

We are all in control of what we give a f*ck about, how we deal with the unchangeable.  How we deal with the fact that there is no time machine yet, and that we have to accept things.

Psychological focus has been something that has fascinated me for years.  A classical phenomenon from clinical psychology is, for example, that people with depression tend to focus more on the negative and on the things they cannot change.

For years, I had a superpower of seeing problems where there were none.  Or in different words, I choose poorly what I gave a f*ck about.

While successful people, on the opposite, focus on what they can do to change the situation.

A fundamental difference in two groups who choose differently what they give a f*ck about.
It made me think about what group I would belong right now.  So, I asked myself: In three years, what moments will I remember?  If I would watch a movie of my last 5 years, what scenes will I edit out, and what will I leave in?

Is the scene that I am stressing out over right now, really that bad that it needs to be in my movie?  Will it make the final cut?

This trip is teaching me that I need to do a better job of creating custom-made values for myself.  Each and every one of my friends, of the people I met here in Portugal, have their own way of walking through life.

Every moment of travelling is teaching us something.  Whether we like the lesson or not.  From communicating without speaking the same language with locals to realising that even the wide world is not enough to escape from yourself.

And as I sit here, tanned, wrinkly as an old avocado, with little to no money, I realise that I am in charge.  I decide what to give a f*ck about today.

And years from now, I will not remember me whining about a little headache, I will remember setting out into the world with my little orange backpack, my blog, and my dream.

As always, thank you for reading.

Alone With Everybody — Mecklenburgische Seenplatte {Travel Journal Day 5/5}

The car is moving at 50 miles per hour.  The window is open.  My hand glides through the air.  There are rings on my fingers.  My friend has an old iPod that accompanied him all over the world.  It is his gem.  We listen to Noah and the Whale.

It is 36 degrees outside.  The car is overheating.  We do not want to blow the engine, so we drive slowly, much to the disgust of everybody else on the highway.  We do not care.

We are driving towards home.  There is no rush, it is not going anywhere.  My friend is reluctant to go back.  He just became an engineer, and he needs to start working soon.  He is not happy about that.

We talk about what travelling means for us.  He tells me tales about tramping through South America.  We come to a mutual consensus that planning is overrated.  Adventure is found in the unknown.

He tells me a story.  He started travelling in Chile after finishing his university there.  He decided that he wanted to go to a city in southern Chile.  He was picked up by a stunning woman headed in the same direction.  Instead of going to his original targeted city, he went with Valentina.  That was her name.  To this day, the most intense romantic and painful experience of his life.

Journeys where we are guided by randomness, really make the best stories.  We are in a weird emotional state of nostalgia—longing for something that is both behind and in front of us.

The topic shifts to regret.  How stupid decisions sometimes show us most what we really want.  What we do not want.

Mistakes, for me, often equal profound personal discoveries.  I learn through failure.  And, oh boy, do I fail a lot.

I think I have had a crisis on every continent so far.  Bribing the police in Africa.  Being chased by yakuza in Thailand.  Driving straight into Australia’s biggest hurricane ever.  Overdosing in Columbia.  Losing all my credit cards in Cambodia.  I could go on for hours.

Every time I thought I messed up to the point of no return, life continued anyway.  I believe that real understanding comes through failure.  Something that I never shied away from, and to this point, it has been everything but boring.

Last night was our last night.  Because of the thunderstorm, there were no clouds all day.  The chances of experiencing another starry night were high.  What I did not expect was a profound spiritual experience.

After another day of canoeing, we exhaustingly arrived at our final camping spot—a hill in a forest where we could oversee the calm lake.  The floor is covered with acorns.  Since I have no sleeping pad, I know I am in for a rough night.

I need to write.  So I get away.  I walk away from my friends.  I get the canoe and paddle to the middle of the lake.  Alone.  I can let my guard down.

Nobody is here.  I stop paddling.  The lake becomes a mirror.  I start writing.

I think about my journey.  I feel the emotions of strange wistfulness about upcoming events.

The people I travel with were a couple of strangers just a few days ago.  In this short time, we created a temporary place of warmth, friendship, and contentment.

It is too quiet.  I hear only my heartbeat.  It is too loud.  I do not like it.  It sounds like a clock.  I am weirded out by my own urge to get away.  I wonder why I feel most alone when I am with everybody.  I seem to have an inexplicable urge to push people away.  Close friends, people I love even.  My anxieties bore me.

I wonder how many people right now are having the same thoughts.  Seeing the same thing.  Living the same life.

Wishes

The sun turns golden.  I want to head back.  I am hungry.  I paddle back to the shore.  We eat on top of the small hill.  We are entertained by the sunset, passing over the calm lake., slowly vanishing behind the acorn forest.  We eat pasta.  For the 4th day in a row.  It is starting to get dark.  We light a candle, and my friends drink beer.  We laugh and make memories.

We decide to sleep at the lake today, counting stars and talking about life.  We move our sleeping bags to the footbridge next to our canoes.  We cuddle and wait till it gets pitch black.

As the sun goes down, the moon comes up.  I am a city kid.  I always loved watching the stars.  In the city, however, you barely see any.

As we lay there together on the wood of the footbridge, stars appear everywhere.  Our head is just at the edge of the wood of the lake.  We can see the entire Milky Way.  The thunderstorm of last night took all the clouds with him it seems.  We see satellites passing over our heads.  Mars is blazing with a red flash above our heads.

Showers of shooting stars journey through the sky.  We make countless wishes.  They will all come true.  One of the girls says that this trip changed her.  I agree.  They asked me what I wish for; I told them more muscles.  They think I am joking.  I am not.  We talk about where we would want to be in a year from now.  I say maybe, Harvard.  Instantly, I regret using the word maybe.

My friend says that in one year he wants to be happy.  I think that happiness is overrated.  He gets up and pees in the lake.  We laugh.  The moonlight shines on his chalky behind.  Mosquitos are having a feast.  We fall asleep anyway.

I am in doubt whether or not my journey of becoming a wandering psychologist will be successful.  I know, however, that I will do it anyway.  I have no plan B.  Plan B’s are for wimps.  I am not a wimp.  Only sometimes.

As my eyes close, I think about a question.  If I could make my dream come true right now, would I do it?  Would you do it?

I want to finish today’s post by borrowing the words of Allan Watts.  As always, thank you for reading and following me on my weird journey.

Let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream and that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time, or any length of time you wanted to have.

And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfil all your wishes.  You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive.  And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say “Well that was pretty great”. But now let’s have a surprise, let’s have a dream which isn’t under control, where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it’s gonna be.

And you would dig that and would come out of that, and you would say “Wow that was a close shave, wasn’t it?”.  Then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further- and further-out gambles what you would dream.  And finally, you would dream where you are now.  You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.  Alan Watts

Reconnecting With Nature — Mecklenburgische Seenplatte {Travel Journal Day 3}

Solitude

As I write these words, I am alone on my canoe, watching the burning sun vanish slowly behind the pine trees.  In my hand, I have my pen and my blog, I am writing.  On the surface of the water, I see the reflection of the gloaming sunset, it looks like there are two horizons, and I feel like I am flying.

Although I had an amazing day with my friends canoeing through the nature parks, I needed some time for myself.  I wanted to recharge and manifest the profound experiences that I made today.  Although I seem very extroverted, at heart, I am a loner, and being around people too much, to a degree also exhausts me.

Today, I learned many things, one of them is that apparently, mosquitos are really into me, good thing malaria is not a thing in Europe.  Sleeping on the floor is a different experience from sleeping in a made bed.  My core intention of this trip was to liberate myself from materialism for a few days and to practice poverty.

My thinking was to internalise that the worst condition, which for many is to have no money and no house, is actually not that bad.  I am a person who is sometimes very driven but also very anxious.  For me, understanding that the very condition that I feared so much is actually not that bad, liberated me to a degree from the process of inner turmoil and fear that was buzzing inside my head for far too long.

The reason that I started to write was that I wanted to portray my weird journey around the world of trying to get my stuff together.  I was just tired of messing up, and I wanted to start my own pursuit of investigating unhappiness.  I wanted to share my findings with the world in order to add some value this way.  Hence on this blog, I will write about habits, tools, books, and real-world case studies and adventures that have helped me to battle depression.

So, while other travel bloggers might focus on the best spots to party, I want to gather natural antidepressants.  I want to engineer myself away from lethargic and depressed, and towards happiness, contribution, and adventure.  I feel that if a weirdo with my background manages to overcome his demons and make his dream come true of becoming a digital nomad, that this will show others that transformation is possible, necessary even.

Sleeping hungover in a tent, however, as stoically romantic as it sounds also has its price.  Waking up, I feel a bit like the guy from Full Metal Jacket who was beaten by the other soldiers with socks full of soap.

My inner demons particularly love mornings, and voices of self-doubt and fear are the loudest when my body is the weakest.  For some time, I was looking for morning habits, in particular, those that help me to keep those voices in check, or at least turn the volume down a bit.

So, I was walking around the camp, looking like a zombie from the walking dead, lethargic and moody.

Freedom

My friend spots this and insists, that instead of showering, I need to swim in the cold lake first thing in the morning, naked, free willy style.

I have no choice he tells me.

As my friend pulls down his shorts, he walks/dangles into the lake majestically.  I told you guys in the last article that my buddy looks like Patrick Swayze from Point Break, and I do not know why but everything he does looks kind of cool.  I am the opposite.  If there were a goof scale, I would be at the end of it.

So, I pull down my pants also and run, giggling like a little girl (a 2m and 105 kilos little girl), into the cold water.

What follows is a profound experience of freedom.  My body and mind are refreshed, renewed even.  I am unable to think; I am just there.

I decide to backstroke slowly, and as I dip my head into the water, I unplug.  As I dip my ears in the water and glide slowly backwards, the only thing that I hear is the lake, my own breath, and my heartbeat.  It feels like I am floating in space.

I am fascinated by this simple but deep experience.  Diving into a world far away from my normal daily trance of paying bills, worrying, and stressing out about if other people like me or not.

As I float in this lake, my eyes wander around all of the surrounding pine forests.  I feel at home.  I cannot help but think about the many people who are plagued by pain and depression that could be healed here.  What if the epidemic of global unhappiness is founded by our lost connection to nature.

What if the missing puzzle piece for treating depression and suffering lies in nature.  Modern psychological medicine is always looking for new ways to treat people.  But what if the direction is wrong, what if we need to look backwards.

As I swim in the cold lake, I dive into the green water; I stop breathing.  My emotions stop.  I am just surviving.  There is no conditioned mindset in my brain anymore today; I am free.

How To Take A Broke-Ass Road Trip — Mecklenburgische Lake Archipelago {Travel Journal Day 1}

Derive

There is a French word that describes spontaneous and unplanned journeys.

As I write, it is 00.36 on a Monday night, all my roomies are asleep, and in the background, I listen to a song from Xavier Rudd.  Tomorrow I am heading off to another adventure, and I only have had a few trips in my life that were as unprepared as this one is today.

At the weekend, we threw a house party at our dorm, and I reconnected with a friend of mine, and he asked me casually if I want to join him for a 4-day road trip by canoe around the Seenplatte in Mecklenburg Vorpommern (German is really the most beautiful language in the world haha).  It is basically a unique lake archipelago in north Germany, and some of Europe’s finest natural reserve parks are to be found there.

In my last blog post, I reviewed the book Vagabonding, by Rolf Potts, and one of his core missions is to eliminate the mental fallacy that travelling is only reserved for the rich.

At the moment, my university is eating up all of my money, and the only thing that stops me from regarding myself as broke is that I stopped checking my bank account. x)

However, I thought that this might be a perfect opportunity for another experiment.

Is it possible to travel so cheaply that you actually save a bit of money?

Right now, I spend about 15 dollars a day on food (jab those gains cost me a lot actually), and I need to buy tickets for public transportation, which is about 5 bucks also.

So, over the next 4 days, I plan to make a badass road trip, and actually save some money while doing so!  Renting a canoe costs 5 euros a day, we sleep in a tent in the woods, so that is no money, and we have to pay for gas for the car.  All in all, for 4 days, it will be roughly around 20 for canoe and 25 for the car so 45 total.  For food, I am going all minimalist on you guys over the next 4 days; kidney beans, sardines, and rice is on the menu.  Jab this is going to suck a bit, but hey, do you want to eat a pizza or do you want to travel.

The point I am trying to make guys is that working more is not always the answer, spending less can be just as efficient.

So my plea for you today is: revaluate your excuses.

What is it really that is stopping you from getting or doing the things you want.  People think they do not work out because they have no time, but they watch 2 hours of Netflix in the evening; others think they cannot afford travel because they do not have enough money, while in reality, it is that they are bad at finding where they can spend less money on bullshit they do not really need.

Travelling does not start when you book a flight, it starts with a conscious decision in your everyday life.  Evaluate your financial habits, where can you save some money?  Do you have some stuff that you do not need anymore?  Fcking sell it.  You got an extra room that you do not use?  Air BnB it.  Do you spend too much money on restaurants?  Go vegan for a month and only eat healthy greens.  You love going out with your friends?  Have a party at your house, so you do not have to play club entry.  I think you catch my drift guys.

Being a vagabond is not only about travelling, but it is also about mindset and habits.  The psychology of a traveller is different than from somebody who does not know what they want in life.  And, from personal experience, I never regretted a shitty job that I had that enabled me to fly around the world, and I never thought back on an unspectacular meal that I had and regretted it.  We are in the business of collecting moments, not things, guys.

So fellow crazy people, thx for reading, and write in the comments what sacrifices you make to travel.

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