Looking around I see way too many people that look like they feel trapped in their lives, living a routine that they do not truly like. Many followed the path which others set for them. Many even felt like they made a free choice. Did they? Did you?
Sooner or later many take a step back and look at their lives. People quit their jobs, leave their partners or get sick. I ask you: why wait? Get the life you deserve right now. It took me about 2 years to turn my life around. My wife and I are more in love with one another than ever and I was able to leave a job that was no longer aligned with my goals and focus on my personal growth and on sharing everything which made us successful. It took us 20 years to build the foundation and 2 more years to downsize our financial footprint which resulted in additional freedom. If we would have to start again with our current knowledge it would probably take no more than 5 years in total.
When I left my job, I wanted to take a step back and edit content based on the following key pillars which give us the freedom of choice which we enjoy today. However, I got an offer that I embraced with joy: a job aligned with things I care about. Product quality, autonomy, and being able to make everybody’s life better through security where it matters most.
In our free moments, my wife and I invest especially in projects concerning the conversion of agricultural land into biologically diverse edible forests. That involves permaculture methods, we’d also love to develop aquaponics and all these interests currently converge into our Earthship project.
Health & High Energy
A healthy mind in a healthy body.
While some extraordinary few overcame disabilities with their extraordinary mind, for most people a healthy, high-energy body is the basis for the development of the potential of their mind. And I do not mean intellectual capabilities alone. If you want to let go and follow your heart, then you need to be able to forget your body. It is easier to forget your body if it performs optimally so that you can almost take it for granted.
My wife and I have spent many years listening to our bodies and have naturally evolved toward a diet and eating schedule which enables us to indulge and enjoy the best foods of the world while staying slim and fit without practicing any sport at all. We also have some special advice concerning hair loss and for staying healthy when most others sneeze and cough.
We wanted to write a guide that explains the whys and hows in detail, but I wonder when I will have time for that, so I can only give you the main recipe that works for us: stop cereals. Totally. Stop them by 1st eating as many fresh fruits as you want and can, then by eating fresh veggies, then by adding eggs and nuts and fish and eventually meat … and you will realize that you will not be hungry even if you stop cereals totally. If you need to understand the whys we recommend reading books from Irène Grosjean. Stop cereals and start listening to your body.
Wealth & Financial Freedom
Spend extravagantly on the things you love, and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t. – Ramit Sethi
Being rich: in German “rich” means “reich” which shares the same root as the word “reichen” which means “suffice”. That means that you can consider yourself rich as long as you “have enough”.
Being free: total freedom in terms of total independence does not exist. We always depend on somebody. A landlord depends on the payments of the tenant. A shareholder depends on the performance of the companies and their dividends. Your freedom will be stronger if your revenues are resilient and if you are able to reduce your dependence on single sources of income.
How did we start: following a two-year grace period we had to pay ground taxes for our newly-built home. However, we spent every penny on finishing and improving it. We got the bill and we were broke and for two months we had to live off scrapes. Another time we made the mistake of buying furniture on credit, blocking our savings and investment capacity for almost a year. Both experiences shaped our life. We said: never again. The result was a yearly plan which was, of course, reviewed based on our changing needs. This plan and a few principles kept us on track.
We learned many useful lessons which laid the foundation, but we really turned things around through radical changes in our mindset after having read a lot of books and having followed hours of coaching from people like Robert Kiyosaki, Bodo Schäfer (Germany’s top financial coach), Napolean Hill, Bob Proctor and many more.
We literally spent years building our personal Financial Success Framework. I wanted to update our Excel-based financial planning tool so that it can be used universally and on a manual that summarizes our keys for financial success. But again, I am not finding the time for it … so I can only recommend reading the main books of the above specialists and investing time into your financial education – there are hours and hours of free Youtube videos on these subjects out there.
Skills & Learning
When you are young, work to learn, not to earn. – Robert Kiyosaki
While I left two studies after only one year, my wife redoubled her efforts to finish hers. While I started into a well-earning job early, she struggled to find a job at the level of her diploma for seven years.
Later I had the choice of getting a big raise in Paris doing the same relatively dull job or moving further south for a smaller raise and a big challenge. My career may have been at a dead end when my initial employer closed the company two years later. Instead, I grew to be something like a rockstar in my own field. Well, a local rockstar 😉
While our strategy towards a happy life may seem simple (e.g. leave studies early, invest early), there are a few secrets that you need to learn in order to make this strategy work for you. Otherwise, you will pick any kind of job which earns well to save as much money as possible to leave the life you hate as soon as possible. This is what many frugalists do and we believe that this is a horrible waste of lifetime. First, a job you hate, then a life turning pennies around? We believe that you should strive to be the best version of yourself, doing something you love, being well paid and being able to make free choices in your life – and why not leave a job for a better personal project at a given time?
I lived and worked in Germany, France and Hungary and completed missions in many countries – especially Europe, but also in the USA, North Africa and India. The different approaches to education are fascinating and many make fundamental errors of judgment when it comes to their education or the education of their children.
While we experimented with everything between classroom education, remote education, evening school, seminars, and auto-didactical training – we both have careers full of passion and we accelerated our knowledge of the workings of the human mind by studying the teachings of Idriss Aberkane, Gunter Pauli, Céline Alvarez and many more.
We also wanted to write a guide that can help you to know yourself or your children better and to help you choose the best possible path toward a happy evolution of your mind and heart. We favor continuous learning and growth which focuses on the heart and the soul. However, as time is short here are a few key ingredients: your skills are high in domains where you think most people are stupid, maybe they are not stupid, and maybe your skill is not normal, but a superpower. 😉 I started to be successful when I started to invest in my invisible skills, things that were easy and not things that were fascinating. If something fascinates you, then maybe it is out of your league.
Heart & Mind Alignment
The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
True freedom origins in the heart: we learned to always align everything we do with our hearts. Many people will start to walk a more spiritual path at one point in their lives. They arrive at a point in life and ask themselves: what’s next? If not already done they will focus on bodily health and eventually also throw themselves at various spiritual paths. We found out that the spiritual alignment is not the end, but rather the beginning of the journey. The earlier you learn to align your mindful actions with your heart’s desire, the faster you will grow personally – and if such is your desire – grow your wealth and you will fulfill your potential much earlier in life.
We studied religion, the power of prayer and finally moved to a more quantic understanding of our world having studied the so-called law of attraction. The Japanese define the ultimate happiness as Ikigai, which means being able to do something you love, that you do really well, something that people are willing to pay for and that is useful in the world. Let’s take any artisanal activity as an example: you may love your creations, you are good at creating them, they are useful and people pay you for your creations. If you suffer external constraints such as raising rents, then you may no longer be able to invest as much love and time into your articles. You may be forced to work for people or companies you do not feel aligned with. Therefore it is important that you master your own world so that everything that happens is a good opportunity for you. It will sound and feel a bit bizarre – I understand have been there shaking my head – so I understand fully that you may not feel ready for this fourth proposal – if so, then go ahead and benefit from the three other more down-to-earth manuals above – but if you feel ready for a leap of faith for discovering the true nature of our existence then we would like to share with you what we have learned by studying the teachings of people like Dr. Joe Dispenza, Bob Proctor, Samuel Stemmer, Vadim Zealand, Neale Donald Walsch, Eckhart Tolle, Laurent Gounelle and many more.
We would actually like to encourage you to study the teachings of the above, it took us years to grasp, believe, integrate and apply the concepts, but that time was well spent. We would love to summarize the teachings of the above (and more) into a world-view that could enable you to create your own world and live in a reality in which the forces of the universe work for your benefit, but seriously, every day we realize that we are only at the beginning of a long journey of understanding. However, we’d love to discuss it eventually with fellow “students”.