Founder & CEO @ Close
A lot of spiritual practices try to teach you to become something or someone else, achieve a certain state of being. But you don’t need that. Inner work is not about getting to some magical place where everything will be different. It’s about living your own truth. You already are what you need to become. …
We chat about a surreal short story by Michael Ende named “Einer langen Reise Ziel” (Destination of a Long Journey). It’s the first story in his collection of short stories called Das Gefängnis der Freiheit (Prison of Freedom), and how “search and you shall find” might sometimes mean something very different from what we commonly …
I won’t even try to describe what this episode is about.
I’ve always been a very cerebral person, relying primarily on my intellect to achieve my goals and solve problems I encounter. For a very long time, I equated the mind with myself. I viewed the body as a vehicle that just carries my mind. But as I started getting more in touch with my feelings, …
I’ve often used the words presence and awareness interchangeably—but they’re really not. They’re two distinctly different things, and in this episode, I discuss the difference, and talk about my recent experiments with awareness. TRANSCRIPT:[00:00:00] what is the difference between awareness and presence? [00:00:04] awareness is the foundation on which you can be present, but it’s …
Here’s a conversation we’ve had about Michael Ende, Author of The Neverending Story, Momo, and other great books (like “Das Gefängnis der Freiheit“). We then touched on the beauty of poetry and song lyrics, going on awareness walks, having 1-on-1’s with my sons, how interpreting my mother’s dream put my patience to the test, the …
How do you design your optimal morning? Every night as we sleep and dream, we enter a profoundly altered state of consciousness, we process and integrate our experiences of the day. Rather than immediately jumping into tackling tasks for the day, or distracting yourself with social media, build a set of morning rituals that become …
It’s so easy to lose yourself in all the things you “should be doing”. It’s so easy to come up with an endless list of things that would be good for your career, your wealth, your well-being. But if you do all these things, more often than not you’ll end up climbing a ladder that …
What you most reject is what holds the greatest potential for growth. Whether it’s a feeling you don’t want to feel, a person with whom you have a challenging relationship—it’s typically what you want to avoid that reveals your deep truths. Which is one of the reasons why I try to embrace life’s perfect imperfections …
Imagine having a friend with a drinking problem. You can clearly see they’re on a path that’ll lead them down a bad road. You offer your help and invite them to stay with you in your home. You’ll take care of them so that they can get their life together. Except, that your friend doesn’t …
Every year I want to change, evolve, level up. I hate stagnation, fear it. There’s nothing more terrifying to me than the thought that I could have peaked already, that it’s never going to be more than what is now. I still think that the wish to evolve and grow is fine. But being terrified …
Ever since reading Carl Jung, I got interested in dream interpretation, but most of the time I don’t feel like interpreting my dreams. A dream I recently had though made me think that there was a message waiting for me. So in this episode, I go through the exercise of decoding my dream . TRANSCRIPT:[00:00:00] …
Oftentimes the people who think they need help the least are the ones that need it the most. I’ve always been a giver. I always loved to help others. But asking for, and receiving help, that was something I struggled much more with in some areas of my life. And I know plenty of people …
After 100 episodes of intimate navel-gazing and serious inner work, it’s time so start sharing some of the silly goofing around we do in between. Expect nothing meaningful from this episode. We’re talking Jocko Willink, Charles Bukowski, the courage of degenerates, and the cowardice of choosing to live your life in the safe harbor of …
I started paying more attention to the soundtrack of my live—that inner narator that constantly makes up stories about what it is I do. And I started experimenting with it: What if I change the narration? What if I switch it off? What if I give my narration a theme, so that whatever I do …
Recently while on vacation in Greece I was looking for some more lighthearted literature and picked up Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski. Well, let’s say it wasn’t exactly the feelgood read I sought, but the story of the potato chip friendship stuck with me. TRANSCRIPT:[00:00:00] I’ve been reading Rye on Ham from Charles Bukowski. …
First of all: My friend is not an insecure loser. He’s an amazing person that I enjoy to spend time with and learn from. But he sometimes thinks that others think of him as a loser. And let’s be honest: Deep down, most of us are scared on some level that we’re losers. I’m very …
I was recently on vacation with my family and shared a very special moment with my mother: For the first time in decades, I felt like the child of my mother—and her being my parent. I’ve stepped into the role of being her protector, coach, caretaker, and teacher for such a long time that I …
It was 2007, I had just moved to the US, when I received a call from my brother: My grandfather had died. I was his namesake, and his favorite grandchild. People always told me how much I came after him. He was a larger than life character, always believed that I was special, that I …
My youngest son has a seemingly insatiable desire for attention, especially from his mom. Sometimes it escalates into awkward neediness, and it hurt me seeing my son feel this way. I tried to step in and “save” him from feeling this way—but to no avail. Only his mom’s attention would do. And recently, I wondered: …
In this episode I share my thoughts after reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime And Punishment. A much more effortful, and less rewarding read than I had hoped, but I do love how deep it goes into the central theme of the story—which is what happens when we go against our own moral compass. [00:00:00] The book. Crimes …
I’ve yet again learned about another part of myself: It’s the part that I call The Endurer, and it’s one of the parts that my core Self hasn’t fully integrated, or even acknowledged enough. I like to highlights other parts of myself that seem more impressive and heroic. But much of inner work is seeing …
“Lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth” wrote Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment. We discuss how you arrive at the truth through lying, and then about the twisted lies of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, how her insistence on denying her own truth eventually leads to her ending her own life. TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] lying …
Sometimes we don’t learn from our mistakes at all, and we keep repeating them again and again. And sometimes we overcorrect our mistakes so much, that we just replaced one distortion with another. Doing inner work requires a lot of sensitivity. You have to be aware of your own emotional reaction, but then also be …