TRUST YOUR HEART IF SEAS CATCH FIRE

“Trust your heart if seas catch fire. Live by love though stars go backwards!” E.E. Cummings

This quote is from a movie that I had watched last night on my sofa.

I had no idea what I was expecting, I had just been looking to watch something easy and inspiring…and ended up seeing something that stirred a big turmoil inside of me.

I want to write about it a little more and share this with you.

The movie I had been watching is called: Charlie St. Cloud.

The movie has no big cast and the story is simple, but the characters are deep. It was a story about letting go, about the beauty of life and stunned me with pictures of outstanding Canadian scenery and it’s breath-taking, complementing world of nature! The movie made me want to learn how to sail a boat but most of all, it was about taking chances; about taking risks.

Sometimes, we’re faced with mayor decisions in our life, which we know will be life changing.

It’s the moment we feel the urge to do certain things, follow a certain path or make a certain decision.

On one side, those moments are filled with an inner drive, enthusiasm and excitement. Our heart is on fire and there is this power stirring within us waiting to be released. On the other side we’re eye to eye with the feeling of fear, frustration and resentment.

I’ve been at those crossroads before in my life.

Sometimes I took the chances and sometimes I pulled out and away from them. Sometimes, the voice in my heart was stronger, and sometimes my brain got in the way and made me follow a different path.

What does it mean to take a ‘risk’?

Taking a risk comes with a negative taste and seems unwise and dangerous, resulting from an underlying, subconscious perception of the possibility of a bad outcome.

The dull and raw taste of a ‘risk’ sometimes makes me agonizing over every decision, squeezing antique memories of failures through the kneading trough and I’m choking up bad retentions.

But the more I start looking back, the lighter the taste of a risk is getting. It is starting to melt away.

The further I look back, the more I realize that I’m not the old person anymore. My believes have changed (thank god, otherwise I would still sit here thinking that ‘success’ in life means winning the gold medal at school race!) and that no two moments are the same.

Some ‘risks’ don’t pay off, others do more the less, I used to think, but in the end, actually any ‘risk’ I ever took in live has paid off one way or the other. It wasn’t really a risk, it was a chance.

It wasn’t necessarily about the expected, planned outcome but about the journey itself.

It was never a path of failure but a journey of collecting experience, knowledge, learning and growing.

Taking risks makes way to unforeseen opportunities leading to even bigger visions, which I haven’t even considered before!

Basically, there is no such thing as a risk, since there is nothing for us to loose.

Sounds unreasonable, right?

My way of thinking here is quite simple.

Have you never realised that something that happened and seemed like a big disaster in your life, turned out as a blessing in disguise?

I’m pretty sure you’re good at remembering some life-changing disasters of your life. Write down one or two, write down everything about it and how it made you feel….and then find 3 good things that came from it.

I’m pretty sure, that after some time of resistance and severe impulses of reluctance you will be able to find even more than only 3 positive benefits that had happened to you ever since.

And there you realise, there is never a real loss, things are just shifting and always in our favour!

Taking a ‘risk’ means to set out on your journey, to relax into the uncomfortable feeling of not knowing exactly how and where it is going.

This moment makes us feel extremely vulnerable due to the loss of control and perception.

A beautiful person throughout once said to me: “Taking risks and chances isn't necessarily a part of existence but it is essential to living. Heading for the unknown turns a journey to an adventure.”

What does it mean taking NO risks?

It means we are shutting ourselves away from the world, making our own life grey and turn our fields of creativity and happiness into a desert wasteland.

A lot of times, the cost we pay by NOT taking chances is much higher than when surrendering to dive right into it.

There were moments in my life where I wished I had been more courageous, been less wary and where I wished I had trusted in myself more instead of underestimating my own ability to handle consequences of the ‘risk’ taken.

What’s been holding me back mostly in the past was my severe concern of what others might think?

I didn’t want to hurt anyone, let anyone down and didn’t want anyone dear to me to be disappointed. I didn’t want to loose the self-image I had put up over the years and I cared too much about what others might think and took responsibility to what they might feel about it!

These circumstances haven’t got me nowhere near to where I want to be in life and how I want to live and most of all it has been suffocating my ability to live passionately and to expand and grow, since true growth is only possible in the eye of change and getting out of our comfort zone.

I’ve come to realize that sometimes I have to take a risk in order to be true to who I am and to be able to maintain my values.

I’ve learned that I don’t have to jump into things with eyes closed, but to open my eyes, face the fear and the delicacy of vulnerability - and jump nevertheless.

Following my gut against reason has turned many moments of my life in mere miracles and transformed me into who I am today, so believe me when I say:

“Take chances, take risks! Paint your life with colors of passion and get out of your comfort zone! Get out of your head and into your life, trust what you already know is right and always remember: YOU CAN’T GET IT WRONG!”

LET’S STOP TAKING ‘RISKS’ – LET’S START TAKING CHANCES!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzgOvvMi8Lg

A MIX TAPE

“A mix tape, Mali, is a beautiful thing. Sadly it pretty much died out with cassette decks in the early 90s but for you I felt a revival was justified. A mix tape is a cassette of various tracks from one person’s music collection, lovingly hand picked for a special and very lucky recipient and individually recorded into a little album for them. It’s the craft and investment of time that let’s the recipient know they’re special, even if the actual product was pretty bad! For your modern day email equivalent we’ll have to set the artificial 12-track limit to make sure each track is important. You up for it?”

Hell I was!

I never had a mix tape done for myself, never done one for someone else either!

It sounded like an awesome new thing to do, so I sat down and started browsing my music collection and playlists.

There is a certain atmosphere to music.

Since music is vibration it affects our emotions bluntly.

If we look at the playlists of other people and friends we get an idea about how they roll.

We identify with the music we listen; we express our emotions, feelings and beliefs through music because we choose (mostly subconsciously) genres and songs that reflect parts of our character.

That’s why I found putting together a mix tape quite challenging.

It made me feel slightly vulnerable, sharing parts of myself with someone else, giving someone an understanding to my emotional world.

I put up a folder and started putting some of my favourite songs in there…by the time I got tired my playlist has reached the amount of 34 songs and I wasn’t even half way through my music collection!

That was the moment I got totally hooked with the idea of a mix tape!

Back then in the old times there was of course less artists to chose from, whilst nowadays new artists, bands and songs are sprouting like weed everyday!

Whenever I share music with friends, we usually swap pen drives with about 50 songs or sth like that and yes, I am always happy about this, but this was different!

I started listening to all the songs carefully. Each song carried memories or was stirring emotions inside of me. I had to dig deep and ask myself if this is what I wanted to share with my mix-tape-companion.

What was it I wanted to share?

What was it that I wanted to express?

And what is it that I wanted my mix-tape-companion to feel?

Quickly I got down to only 16 songs, and finally to quiver of only 12 tracks.

I found doing a mix-tape digitally was also quite fun, since nowadays you can find a lot of webpages that do mix tapes for you!

You can choose the look of the tape, upload the pictures, choose colours, style, and fonts for writing and so on. The list is endless!

Finally, there I was, staring at my fully individualized first mix-tape ever! Digital or not, it felt amazing and I sent it off.

Making a mix tape is fun and great experience, but receiving one is even more thrilling!

The excitement before the first song comes up is nearly unbearable and when the first song hit me, it’s like entering a rollercoaster ride for the next 30min.!!!

The first mix tape I received was amazing!!!

From the very first song, it hit me like a gun with a song that fitted into my very emotional state right away.

Each following song was new to me, felt like a great tune I could connect beautiful memories to and resonated with me, whilst also representing a part of my mix-tape-companion!

At the moment, out here in bigT, the sun is slowly rising.

I can slightly hear the shorebreak of the ocean through my headphones whilst coasting on my longboard past the sea out of town, listening to my first mix-tape ever!

With “Coolio – Cruising” I’m totally thrilled and fully touched, thinking: “Man, that’s one of the best presents ever!!!”

“A mix tape is like a letter…only on a higher vibration!”

EVERYONE OUT THERE, MAKE A MIX TAPE!

BLACK OR WHITE..other colours of life!!!

I have a confession to make:

“I was bloody scared!”

All through my life I believed in the fact that there is only two truths: BLACK OR WHITE.

Well, I didn’t know I believed in all-or-nothing scenarios, but my behaviour spoke for itself.

What is black-and-white thinking?

Apart from it being a rash way of thinking, it mostly is a way of seeing the world and its contents in only two ways.

I was seeing life in good or bad, in black and white, and with a vile all-or-nothing attitude.

Now, that way of thinking always used to seem absolutely logic to me. To me, there was only a YES or NO.

That way of thinking gave me clarity, but actually, can we put and see life into a BLACK-AND- WHITE pattern?

I’ve come to the conclusion, that we can’t, since life is much more complex than just black and white – its way more colourful and recently I had to realise that it is full of grey zones.

I was never good dealing with grey zones; they scared the living shit out of me, because I didn’t feel save. Seeing things in black-and-white gave me a feel of security (although true security never will be gained by using our minds!). I thought, at least then I know with what I was dealing.

I reckon, my all-or-nothing attitude was based on fear.

The fear of not knowing where I am at or what to do, so I used to rush decisions, quickly made up ideas and conclusions in a Black-and-White pattern in order to gain clarity.

I think, that I must’ve picked that up when I was really little, because back then, I had no choice but to develop a mistaken thinking pattern.

I had to create a save reality in order to maintain a healthy faith, whilst the world around me had crumbled into pieces.

It was necessary for me to survive, to trust and find a certain kind of happiness, but now that I’m grown up, I realise, that this kind of thinking actually doesn’t work that well.

Life, as it is, doesn’t reveal itself always in black-and-white, sometimes there are moments in which nothing is clear. Neither are our feelings or people.

Life is full of grey zones and because I had found myself in one recently, I had to realise the destructive and unproductive way I deal with them, because in order to reach the ‘security’ I sought I tried to alter my mind and make black-and-white decisions.

And based on that, with my all-or-nothing attitude I nearly destroyed a beautiful friendship, a congruent lifestyle and my plans for my future life.

Because, what I didn’t realise was, that there is so many more possibilities in grey zones. When floating in a grey zone I allow a lot of things to happen and work out the way I would like them to be, whilst when living in a black-and-white belief I hinder a lot of possibilities from evolving.

Now, I found the beauty in not having to have control over what happens and forcing things to have to make sense to me and fit into a certain pattern.

Neither for friendships, my feelings nor for the path of my life I walk on, as long as I know WHY I walk them, everything is great as it is.

And don’t get me wrong, only living in grey zones is not good either, because sometimes we have to just make a choice, say YES or NO and push ourselves a bit so we will reach what we dream of.

In the end, it again is about the balance.

When to accept grey zones, sit with the unsolved and unclear things, but also, when it’s time to make things clear to ourselves, which never should be based on fear but on the positive power of problem solving.

I myself found the beautiful and infinite power in grey zones, which before were a nightmare to me and let me tell you what:

I gained more than just more possibilities in my life.

I gained more FREEDOM, because now I don’t have the need to control and know things anymore.

Soul and other Mates

Why do relationships fail so often? Why do partners suffer so much being with each other?

And why do we sometimes suffer a break-up wondering, how was this possible, although there still is so much love for the other?

I think, the reason why a lot of relationships and marriages fail is not because of a lack of love.

I think, it’s due to a lack of friendship.

Actually, there is no difference between true love and friendship. But the way we see and define love makes it being a big difference.

The love for a friend often comes more unconditionally, whilst the love for a partner we fill with conditions.

When we search for a love to share our lives with, we often fail and end up with someone who doesn’t really fit to us.

Because what we don’t realise is, that subconsciously we have an idea about the right partner, how he has to be, what he has to look like – we put up conditions.

Those ideas, expectations, are based on deeper reasons, mostly on a lack we feel in our life and we actually expect the partner to fill that lack. To add what we are missing.

What we do, my friend and I, we call “Window-shopping”.

We only see what is visible to the eye mixed with our expectations and seldom we are our true selves when we enter a relationship.

We hang up a good picture of ourselves so the other doesn’t notice our faults and weaknesses. We don’t really show who we really are and a lot of times, we keep doing that over years until we are so unhappy that we break up and the magic is gone.

Now, in friendship things work differently.

Because there are no such expectations, we tend to behave more natural. We can behave shit, we can be angry, weak, cry and laugh at the same time and our best friend is not giving a damn gram of shit. Our best friend sees the demons in us, but also accepts them as a part of ourselves.

It’s called intimacy and is one of the most beautiful and freeing moments in our lives. When we can me ALL of us and we can feel ok about it.

Our best friend would eat the last slice of pizza and laugh right in our face, but to a regular partner, we wouldn’t be so forgiving! And whilst the perfect partner we have in mind would bail us out of jail, our best friend would be sitting in jail next to us saying: “That was soooo awesome!!!”

Meanwhile I think, the best thing that can happen to us is, to get married to your best friend!

Or let me call it, your SOULMATE, and let me stop you here from floating through purple clouds thinking about a flawless union where there is only peace and love.

Because, unlike to what people believe a SOULMATE is, I think it is the opposite!

I used to think, that a true SOULMATE is a picture-perfect and the flawless fit and everything is just wonderful, but I now realised, it is actually the contrary.

I think, a SOULMATE actually is a mirror you look into every single day of your life and all you see is just an image of your true Self.

A SOULMATE shows us everything about us, everything we truly are, not only the light but also the shadows that lure inside of us.

They bring our greatest fears and desires to our own attention so we can change our life accordingly. They display us obstacles, demolishing our walls we put up and punch us awake.

Our SOULMATE”S purpose is to split apart our ego, breaking our shielded hearts open so new light can set upon our fears and restrictions, and by that freeing us more than anything else we will come across in life.

They make us angry and happy at the same time – they make us feel alive.

And don’t get me wrong; our true SOULMATE is not one of those who is promising the stars to us, but one of the kind that lays down with us to watch them for a while.

I am pretty sure, that our SOULMATE is the one, that doesn’t end up turning us into the person we really ARE, but into a person we ALWAYS WANTED TO BECOME!