Most people think they will find answers when they think things through hard and long enough.

But in truth, they are looking for the wrong thing.

You don’t need answers. You need to learn to be OK with living with uncertainty.

That’s the whole game of life.

You are living with limited knowledge in an unknown world. All your stress is coming from trying to know things that you are not supposed to know.

It’s as if there was an unwanted guest in your mind that is always trying to play god.

But all the while, you are not supposed to have it all figured out. You are supposed to live.

Here’s how to become someone who always lives instead of fighting reality:

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Surrender - not ignore

The guest inside your mind wants you to fight him.

Surrender is the third option he doesn’t have a move against.

But what is surrender?

It’s not letting the unwanted ego guest rule. Neither is it passively accepting bullshit that other people give you.

It’s the sacred practice of accepting your current circumstances.

That doesn’t mean you have to celebrate the bad things that happen. You don’t have to celebrate the guys at work that give you a hard time. You don’t have to celebrate politicians taxing you until nothing is left. You don’t have to celebrate any of the things you hate.

All you have to do is see them clearly. Can you currently change it? If yes, courageously change it. If not, move on. Focus on yourself. Focus on your attitude and growth.

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Don’t fear

Easier said than done.

If you embody a fear, it is because you learned to embody it for practical reasons early on.

Maybe running from the situation was a good idea when your parents’ reactions to your requests felt like death.

Maybe freezing was a good idea when the big boys in school hurt you because it made you not feel the pain.

I had to live with social anxiety for years, because I never took the time to overcome my fear of rejection that has been living inside my body ever since I was a child.

Not making requests was the right reaction when requests would lead to being hurt by my father as a child.

The guest’s whole leverage is convincing you that there are still circumstances that justify the fear response. That there is something beneath the fear. There isn’t.

All the things you are afraid of only exist in your head. The actual experience is going to be much less intense than the unwanted guest makes you believe they are.

That’s why it is anxiety and not fear. Fear is when there is an actual danger. Anxiety is when the danger only exists in your head.

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Be brutally realistic (uncertainty has no deadline)

You have to come to terms with the fact that the fundamentals will not change.

You can have amazing success, yes. You can change your life’s circumstances in substantial ways. You can have new careers, new partners, new neighbourhoods, all of it.

But the fundamentals will not change.

The unwanted guest in your mind wants to convince you they will. But they won’t.

As long as you inhabit this body, you will have limited knowledge. Uncertainty is here to stay.

For years, I’ve been waiting for my life to slow down. It doesn’t.

When I was broke, I thought it would become quiet when I was financially stable. Now that I’m stable, I have to deal with my criminal neighbour. When that story is over, life will have a new challenge for me.

And I can’t possibly know what it is. That’s life.

Life is a series of challenges hand-picked for you.

You can either embrace the challenges and enjoy the messy ride through them, or you can let the challenges crush you and hope for death to eventually release you from the struggle.

But in the end, you are probably going to be thrown back into the challenge until you get the lesson.

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Nobody is certain of anything

Don’t let the people who pretend to have it all figured out fool you. They don’t.

They are just really good at keeping their struggles private and playing the confident one.

And through doing so, they mostly hurt themselves because being fake hurts your soul.

I’ve been there. I pretended to be confident and happy when at home I was a mess and deeply confused. It was a life of daily self-betrayal.

I personally believe it causes physiological sickness. It is incoherent living. You live outside of synchronicity with your mind, body, and soul. And eventually the cells in your body respond.

You have to make living in alignment with your truth your number 1 priority.

It’s the best investment in your health and life experience you’ll ever make.

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Live in your body, not only your head

The ego guest only exists in your head. He can’t follow you into your body.

This is the greatest life hack that exists.

Modern culture nudges you to live in your head all the time.

News, commercials, the modern workplace, entertainment, the smartphone. They all nudge you to live in your head.

They all trigger thoughts but no bodily experiences.

That’s why all the practices that bring you back into your body can work such wonders.

Breathwork, yoga and movement, body-connected meditations and visualizations. They all have in common that they move your awareness back into your body and activate your body’s inherent unmatched intelligence.

Through that, the nervous system can release what it has been carrying for years. Tension that built without you even noticing.

The practices give you physiological AND spiritual release happening at once.

You don’t need a mystical floating moment to practice this — the principle applies to everyday tension.

Name physical sensations you are usually ignoring. Don’t explain them. Just notice.

Then stay with it in pure presence for some time. Not with the intention to change or fix it. With the intention to feel it.

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You think you know why you want what you want.

You don’t.

I just spent a week in the Bavarian Alps without internet.

It was intense, and at one point I was sitting on this bench.

It felt otherworldly. It’s a public place. A simple wooden bench on a hill.

But the view is so magnificent. Indescribably beautiful for my soul. Like being in paradise.

I grew up a comfortable 50-minute train ride from this view, and I’ve never been there.

There are other breathtaking places like this in the area. It is an unbelievably beautiful stretch of earth.

And I have never been there. Through my whole childhood, I’ve never been there.

That’s what I realized recently sitting on this bench.

I realized that I grew up in one of the most beautiful cities of the world, definitely the most beautiful place I ever lived, and that I left it in my early 20s because I never learned to see its beauty.

I left it to chase something for almost ten years that I never truly wanted.

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Who is deciding?

We tend to think that our big decisions are ours. That we make them from a place of understanding and reason.

But in reality, many of them are actually made through our parents’ unprocessed pain.

I grew up in Munich and couldn’t see its beauty and value to this day, because the trauma of my parents made me see it in a dark, cynical, and negative light.

Don’t get me wrong: I do not want to blame them. I love them and know they did their best, just as I am doing my best with my children. But I do want to name my truth.

They projected their unprocessed pain onto their environment to be able to explain their discontentment. It’s understandable. It’s a hard-to-break human instinct.

When you don’t like yourself, because you’ve been through hell, you find comfort in blaming others.

So I ran from home chasing a theater acting career I somehow made myself believe I wanted to have, but now, in hindsight know: I never truly wanted that.

If you can’t trust why you wanted what you wanted, what do you actually do with that?

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I hated the theater

As a 10-year-old, I happened to be at the set of Tom Tykwer’s “Heaven” featuring Cate Blanchett, because my mother was friends with a famous German actress and screenwriter.

Ever since that moment, I was drawn to acting because it felt so special.

But being honest, I never was interested in acting itself. All I was interested in was the fame and the feeling of being seen and celebrated as something special.

I remember having no interest at all in theater performances of any kind as a teen. I had friends who enjoyed going there, but I never would.

But somehow I ended up studying theater acting and going to all the performances and making myself be interested in them. Now I know it was never because I was truly interested in theater or acting. It was all because I wanted to be seen and celebrated.

I was chasing a feeling I never had.

Maybe you’re doing this right now too. A title, a body, a relationship, a number in your account. Calling it desire, when it’s actually a want beneath the want you simply haven’t become aware enough of.

It cost me a lot! I spent almost a decade in ugly, unattractive small cities in Austria and Germany, constantly moving, never having a close circle of friends, missing a lot of the great experiences others are having in their 20s.

That realization landed in my body when I sat on this bench 2 weeks ago:

I never could see the beauty in any of this, and my parents’ unresolved traumas made me waste my 20s chasing a career I never wanted for a feeling I never had.

I would have never left this beautiful place if I could have seen it through the eyes I’m looking at it with now.

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You don’t see the world for what it is

No one sees the world for what it is.

Because you learned to see it a specific way, long before you had any say in it.

You can not help but inherit the perception of your parents. It’s part of growing up. It’s part of the natural development of human life.

But it is your responsibility to introduce more and more truth to your perception as you grow up. It is your responsibility to let the parts of yourself die that tainted the world in grey colors.

The lens your parents saw the world through becomes the lens you see it through, including how you see your own home, your own worth, your own options.

You can leave the house. You can leave the country. But you can’t leave the eyes unless you notice you’re wearing them.

What decision have you made based on inherited perception and assumptions you never questioned?

Chances are that in truth you are trying to get what you could never have.

Go deep and find out what it is you truly want. The want beneath the want you can spell out easily.

When you come to a realization like that, it can be hard, because you can clearly see what cost you paid or what feels like wasted time and energy.

But then again, without the detour you could’ve never come to the realization.

So what do you actually practically do with that realization?

The practice must be to cultivate your peace with the challenge you’ve been given.

You inherited your “package”, your unique combination of trauma, and it is your life’s challenge to resolve it and live your truth.

Realizing what you might have wasted and how you betrayed yourself is part of the process. If you now allow that to turn into more grief again, you are only hindering the process.

Observe yourself: What even small daily decisions are you unconsciously making from inheritance, but not from truth?

Start with adjusting those and stay open.

When you finally realize why you made the decisions you made, you become free, because now you can start choosing from the options you have without being influenced by the trauma you inherited or got stuck in.

It is worth facing your regrets.

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Most people do not rest.

They numb.

They call it switching off.

They call it relaxing.

“I just need to relax.”

Because that sounds better than admitting they are afraid of silence.

Take my neighbors for example. I do not enjoy spying on them.

But they never lower the blinds, and their living room sits right opposite my kitchen.

I do spend a lot of time there because I make the dishes for the whole family of five.

And so I couldn’t help but notice that they are watching TV all day!

At almost every point of the day, one of them is watching TV.

He watches YouTube and occasionally plays a video game, and she watches reality TV. Dating shows. Love Island and that type of bullshit.

Why do I share this?

Because that behavior is just one way of the same pattern playing out all over society.

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The Normal Mask

It doesn’t look dramatic, but it turns into the most dramatic thing that can happen to your life.

Watching TV, scrolling YouTube, following sports details, reality shows, porn, video games. It all serves the same purpose.

“I just need to switch off, sometimes.”

When the “sometimes” in that sentence is true: OK.

But for most, “sometimes” turns into “always” or at least “way too often” quickly and quietly.

And when you let that happen, your life will go past you. It is the worst thing that can happen to you.

Real drama, and real suffering experienced, is still a life lived.

But passively wasting your precious time in this body consuming endless amounts of flicker is a life wasted.

You literally burn the divine energy you were given for consumption.

You were made in the image of the creator, but instead of creating, you are consuming.

It’s the worst way to spend your life.

Wasting your life consuming flickering images is not resting.

That’s just how your addicted mind frames it.

In reality, it is numbing.

You can tell the difference easily: Real rest leaves you restored and more available to life.

The fake rest, that really is numbing, leaves you dull, irritated, secretly ashamed, and makes showing up for real life even harder.

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I Know The Pattern

I distracted myself with almost everything for years.

Entertainment, video games, porn, and most recently work.

And not only did it cost me an immense amount of time and energy. It also brought me out of touch with my true self.

It’s impossible to hear your deep voice of intuition and guidance when you are constantly distracted by your patterns of numbing.

And it doesn’t help to just stop the distraction for a short time to find that deep voice again. You have to really quiet down for a significant amount of time to rediscover it.

You have to make stillness become habitual.

This is not about moral judgment.

This is about making an honest distinction between what creates aliveness and connection and what destroys it.

It’s that simple.

You are here to act in alignment with your deepest intuition and truth. And you won’t be able to convince me that binge-watching behavior is your deepest truth and purpose.

Too much consumption makes you forget what you truly want. That is the real tragedy.

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What You Are Really Avoiding

When you can’t face stillness, that means you are afraid of what the stillness reveals.

Stillness brings up the things you have been outrunning.

All the energies and feelings you once stored away in your inner cellar because it felt too challenging to face them.

Once you allow real stillness, they come up the stairs out of the cellar and knock on your door.

You believe they are monsters, but in reality they are just the parts of you that feel a little harder to meet.

They are beautiful and kind; you just unlearned to see their beauty.

You may not watch Love Island like an addict, as my neighbour does.

Maybe your distraction is work or reading instead of feeling or taking bold action.

What remains true is that your pattern of distraction is not random. It is organized around the parts of you that scare you.

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My moment in the stillness of the Alps

I just spent a few days alone in the Bavarian Alps.

No WiFi, no smartphone. Just me and the mountains.

Just me and the water, the rocks, the thin air, and the closeness of the sun.

And then stillness tested me in a way I did not expect.

While hiking through a challenging, steep, and rocky patch of pure natural beauty, something unexpected happened:

I experienced an avalanche of erotic sexual thoughts and images. And an activation in my body that came with it.

It felt like I needed to have sex right now. My whole body became hot and filled with this indistinct energy of horniness.

In the past, that level of activation would have sent me directly into porn. It would have wanted me to hide somewhere, watch my favorite porn scene, and masturbate.

I wouldn’t have known of any other way to channel that energy, but through porn.

And I couldn’t have been waiting for it for long. If there had been no other option, I would even choose a public toilet to watch it.

But now I can simply be with the thoughts and feelings. I can let the thoughts and feelings move through my body. I can stay present with it and use my body as a grounding instrument.

I do not feel shame for having the experience anymore. I do not feel lesser for not having an exciting sexual adventure.

I can continue making good, healthy decisions, and stay present and upbeat with my experiences.

This is the result of my year-long practice of openness, vulnerability, and stillness.

The result of investing in myself energetically for many years.

This is freedom. Not the absence of activation or urges, but the ability to stay present while activation moves through you.

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Stillness Is A Capacity

Let me tell you something that I know is true about you, without me knowing you personally:

You do not have to be afraid of stillness and emptiness. You are not too weak for silence.

What you are is out of practice.

There are many ways to make stillness habitual, and the best approach is very personal to you.

What is a simple yet powerful way to introduce some stillness into your day?

Maybe start the day without your smartphone.

Maybe a ritual of sitting on the couch for 10 minutes a day without any distractions.

Whatever you choose, the important intention to bring is curiosity.

Bring curiosity for what arises when you are quiet and undistracted.

Don’t expect immediate deep insights, answers, or solutions.

Can you maybe even let go of any expectations and just trust that the stillness will bring you what you need?

No matter what you have learned, even if your nervous system has learned at some point during your life that stillness is dangerous: It will not kill you.

The unknown is not the enemy, but the source of life energy.

You can learn to stay with it. You can learn to feel fear without making it dominate your experience.

What it takes is time and deliberate practice.

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Here are your only choices

You can keep watching TV, or giving in to your pattern of distraction, just like my neighbours do.

Or you can start facing what needs to be faced.

Path one will lead you to the biggest and most unbearable regret that you can possibly experience, and only God knows what that will lead to after the death of your body.

Path two will be hard and sometimes feel unbearable too. But you will get out of the tunnel on the other side with the most precious gift available to a human: The feeling of true connection to yourself and true contentment.

Priceless.

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How does it feel when I tell you this:

You feel the pull to have a child, but you keep hiding behind “rational” and “practical” objections.

If this feels mildly like I’m rubbing salt into your wounds, you know I speak to you.

I am telling you: You should have children.

That is especially true if you wonder regularly why there is no meaning to be found.

Are you building your career?

Are you excelling in what you do, are successful by everybody’s terms, and yet still that feeling is haunting you?

That feeling of emptiness that always returns when there is nothing to do for a moment.

When your home is empty and still on the weekend.

If that’s you, find a good enough partner and have some children already.

Here’s why:

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It’s the perfect interruption

A child will be the perfect interruption to the negative patterns playing out in your life.

Will you have less money? Probably.

Will you have less freedom? Almost guaranteed.

So the modern person already quits reading on at this point and doesn’t even think this through, because our culture fetishizes freedom and wealth.

And yet we all know it won’t make us happy.

Once your basic needs are met, what moves the needle on your happiness is not more money or more material possessions.

It’s the amount of meaning you experience in your day-to-day life.

And a child can bring you into direct contact with that.

Your brain is wired to love them. You won’t help but love them.

Only extremely deranged individuals manage to not love their offspring, and if you are reading this, you are very likely not one of them. Because if you are reading this, I know you care.

My first baby made my shadow impossible to deny

I remember fighting with my wife. I don’t even remember anymore what we fought about, which shows how unimportant and unnecessary that was.

I remember how I screamed at her and slammed the door.

With our first baby playing on the floor in the same room.

I will never forget that moment, because the look in my baby daughter’s eyes was indescribable.

She looked at me, and in this very moment I knew I had to change.

Before I could discuss it away. I would have been able to justify my behavior. To explain it and run from having to change through complicating it.

But when she looked at me in that moment, something shifted inside me.

It became undeniably clear that my behavior is not OK, and that I would have to change.

She was just a baby, and she didn’t have words yet, and still she was able to make me go heal myself.

That’s what children can do to you. It is invaluable.

They will reveal your unconscious patterns to you, and if you are someone who still manages to run from changing, even though you already know what you need to work on, a child can make the difference for you.

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But I can’t afford a child

That is absolutely true.

If you think about whether you can afford children, you will never get to the point when you will say “now I can.”

They are crazy expensive. Even more so if you truly care about them.

Space, food, clothes, medicine, school, and on and on and on.

You could say they are an economic mess.

But whether or not they make sense economically is the wrong question in the first place.

This shouldn’t be the deepest question you ask about a human being.

Why can you calculate the economic cost of a child so well, but can’t calculate the meaning it will add to your life?

Isn’t it interesting that we are so incredibly bad at having the imagination for what an event will bring to our life?

I had no fucking idea what it would mean to be a parent before I became one.

I was never the person thinking long and hard about decisions that felt just right. So before I was a parent, I wasn’t thinking about the sleep I would lose, or the higher rent I would have to pay. I wasn’t calculating the childcare costs, or that I would become less spontaneous.

But you might be.

And so I want to tell you: All of these things are real.

But here is something you simply can not imagine before you haven’t felt it:

The feeling of loving your child.

It’s fucking irreplaceable.

How many more people will have to tell you so until you start believing them?

Watching them grow and thrive is sooooooo awesome.

It’s the best feeling in the world.

No Slack message, no paycheck, no client acquisition, no new car, no trip, no nothing can compare to it.

When another life depends on your presence, you receive a dose of purpose unlike anything else.

Because here is a vulnerable human that cannot flourish without your love, without your attention, structure, protection, and presence.

You will be forced into responsibility.

Your flaws will be brutally exposed, and you will feel the urge to become better.

How some parents can be parents without that urge is beyond me.

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It’s going to suck

The price you have to pay for this irreplaceable feeling is real.

It’s going to suck real hard sometimes.

You will spend a lot of nights not being able to go where you think you want to go.

You will have times when it is going to be real hard to find some time for deep work.

You will feel like you do not get the space you need.

They will cross your plans. A lot.

But every time you can manage to love in these moments, instead of cursing at life, you are turning yourself into a beacon of love.

You are turning yourself into someone who is capable of the most beautiful thing a human is capable of.

Choosing love over resentment, when resentment is the much simpler choice.

And not only that. They will also push you to be more capable in the more practical sense:

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Children force you to become a more useful version of yourself

My children, for example, forced me to become an absolute master of time management.

They need so much attention, it will simply take a lot of your time.

And at the same time you have to work efficiently to be able to provide for yourself and them.

To be able to do that, the time-waste has to go.

You will have to work on what matters when you have time to work.

And if you want to see them thrive and have a good relationship to them, you will have to spend undistracted time with them.

It’s a real form of pressure for that immature part of you that still feels like it is not capable.

But that exact pressure is also what can reveal the strength inside you, that you did not know you had.

If you had shown me the level of focus I can muster these days, and the level of effort I can bring every single day in service of my family, I would never have believed that this is me.

I was socially anxious, playing video games, and watching porn.

That was my life.

And if you had shown that past version of me what he is capable of today, I would not have believed you.

Becoming a father is the best thing I have ever done.

And I have to write this down here, because even I tend to forget it in moments in which it is simply hard.

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I was broke before being a father

Children are expensive.

We’ve been there.

I’m not going to hide that fact.

But they can also force you to discover the ways in which you can create value.

Making money is simply creating value and being paid in return.

If you suddenly have to make money, guess what: You will become creative about it.

At least that’s how it played out for me.

When I suddenly was a father, depending on the state for welfare suddenly wasn’t an acceptable option anymore.

It made me surrender my pride. I accepted that my job was now to provide.

And through that detour, I found my deeper purpose in life and the kind of work I feel called to do.

Being a father made me become serious about being useful.

And being useful is what makes money.

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You were sold a fake version of freedom

Independence. Always keeping the options open. No commitment.

Those are the “qualities” embodied by the sexy pop symbols of our time.

You might not even notice how this is being sold to you, simply through the presence of the sexy characters you are being shown on TV and social media all the time.

And it subtly suggests that you can have and sustain that life and that it will feel awesome and good.

But the true freedom is acquired differently.

It is acquired through rediscovering your true sense for what feels right and what doesn’t.

True commitment is the harder way. And the harder way gives you much greater rewards.

You think you can avoid being trapped through never committing to anyone and anything.

You think that by keeping all your options open you will stay free.

But what it does to you without you noticing is that it makes you float in mid-air without meaning.

Your being misses the tethering it needs to receive meaning.

You want purpose, but fear the very commitment that creates it.

Parenthood is the most clear commitment you can make. Once the baby is there, the only escape from the commitment is betrayal. That’s what makes it so unique.

And that is also why it works in generating the meaning and purpose you are secretly yearning for.

You will never be ready for it.

But you have what it takes already inside.

Claim it.

Have these children already.

It will connect you to a source of power more ancient, human, and real than anything the modern world can offer you.

It makes love practical.

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I really don’t care what it is that you want to start.

But when you are honest with yourself, you know what it is.

Deep inside, you know the path that is calling you.

And you avoid walking it because you are afraid of the challenges it will bring.

Because you are afraid of the feelings of instability and uncertainty that walking that path will bring.

As if feelings had the power to harm you.

Spoiler alert: They don’t.

It’s not the logistics.

What stops you from walking the path of your calling is not the complexity that seemingly exists around walking the path.

It’s not that you do not know the next step.

Maybe some clarity around it would help, but when you are honest, you will see it is not the main reason stopping you.

Let me bust some of your excuses so you can finally get to living your truth and walking your path:

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But I have no credentials

Fuck that.

The era of credentials is over.

Whether you seek a better job or are building a business, whether clients or employers have to choose you for your success:

In the age of AI, they will not scan for credentials. The people who hold the potential of becoming your source of income will not choose you because of the shiny medals you are wearing on your shirt.

In the age of AI, anyone can acquire almost any credential and accumulate any knowledge.

Knowledge has become worthless. And what is more valuable than ever before is authenticity, reliability, and confidence.

Your people will choose you because they can feel that you are trustworthy.

They are looking for someone who stands in their power.

Here’s another very common way of self-sabotage:

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Your definition of success is wrong

Before you even start you are already attached to a romantic and useless idea of success.

Have you ever asked yourself how you define success in what you are about to do?

Here’s how I sabotaged myself in this way:

For years I thought success as a coach meant impacting people. If you had asked me what defines a successful coach, I would have said that they deeply serve their clients by enabling transformation for them.

Of course that is still my goal. When I work with a client I give that goal my all.

But it’s not how I define success anymore, and that makes a huge difference.

Because if I were to be attached to that definition of success, it would put so much pressure on me, that I couldn’t work at my best anymore.

I wouldn’t be free enough to actually do my best work, because I would be paralyzed by the need to create change in another person.

But their transformation is not in my hands!

People only change through their own doing.

The attachment to the idea of being responsible for another person’s personal transformation stunted me for years, and kept me from showing up for this deep work that I feel called to do.

When I allowed myself to have a more relaxed definition of success, I became free to walk the path.

Now success for me is creating clarity for my clients, because I can reliably do that.

And what they do with that clarity is out of my hands. I can and should not make their day-to-day decisions.

Same with this writing.

If my definition of success was to write like Aldous Huxley, I would fail even before I started.

But if my definition of success was to show up for the writing even in weeks when I’d rather stay in the comfort of silence and to hit publish even when my mind still hates the article, I’m free to do it.

And only through these reps do I get closer and closer to excellent writing and coaching.

You cannot become a master without being a beginner first.

So. How do you sabotage yourself through your idealized definition of success?

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You don’t have the qualification!

Have you been told that before?

Or are you telling yourself that?

How real is it?

In most fields, qualification is gained through experience and intention.

Society has created ivory towers as entry barriers for certain fields of profession.

But before these ivory towers were created, pioneers just did the work.

C.G. Jung, for example, studied medicine and then worked in a psychiatric hospital.

He became one of the most influential and most cited psychologists without ever having any formal qualification in the field.

His qualification was dedication and experience.

I don’t know about you, but if I needed support with my mental health, I’d rather trust someone who lives what he preaches and clearly has deep dedication to his life’s work, than someone who has all the degrees, but no experience.

Don’t just accept the superficial definitions of what qualifies someone.

Really take the definitions apart and then ask yourself what is needed from you to qualify yourself for what you are about to do.

It’s probably much less than you were told by those who want to keep you in check.

Question: Are you willing to dedicate yourself to something or do you accept the excuse that society approves of that says, “you are not qualified”?

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You are not a child anymore

What experience created that belief in you that you are not capable?

It is really helpful to know that.

But once you know it, what is even more helpful is understanding that that experience is not your reality anymore.

You are not the child anymore who learned that it must not be ambitious.

You are not the teenager anymore who learned that going against the groupthink is dangerous.

The dangers your inner child still believes to be real are not.

Your anxieties are founded on an illusion.

An at least somewhat dysfunctional system, be it a family system, a school system, a religious system, or another system, taught you a useless lesson and ingrained it so deeply into your subconscious that your whole nervous system and being now act as if it was the truth.

But it is not.

And it is on you to retrain your being.

The system taught you that you need permission.

And now, even when you know that that is not real, you still wait for it.

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I started for free

The first coaching work I offered was free.

Why?

Because I simply couldn’t get myself to see the value in it yet.

No matter what I told my mind, my nervous system wouldn’t believe it. My nervous system needed the felt experience of being able to serve someone.

These coaching sessions I gave back then were nowhere near the level of my work today.

But I was always honest and intense.

I did not pretend to be more experienced than I was.

I made a clear agreement.

I followed the real pull that I could help.

And the feedback was good.

I did not become qualified by waiting until I was perfect.

I became capable by entering the work with humility and letting real experience train me.

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The Feeling Comes After the Experience

You want to feel qualified before taking action.

But that is simply not how life works.

Children know that. They ride the bicycle even when they are really afraid. They would love to wait until they know how to ride a bike and have a guarantee that it won’t hurt. But they also simply accept that that’s not how life goes.

So they risk the crash. And even when they crash hard and blood is running from their bodies and to them it feels like the end of the world, they step onto the bike again on the next day at the latest!

Grownups would love to just change the rules. They secretly hope that if they just hide from the challenge for long enough they will find peace with not being able to ride the bike.

It’s not going to happen.

You will look back at now and think “Fuck, I should have at least given it a try.”

And your regret will be at least as painful as the isolation felt by a child that must sit on the sidelines while the other children play their favorite game.

You cannot wait your way into confidence.

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Sensitivity Is Not the Problem

If you are sensitive, you know it.

Your body responds heavily when your anxieties are triggered.

Being “rejected” by my wife or a prospect used to feel like death to me.

It could knock me out for days.

But here’s the thing: There is power in that sensitivity!

It’s just that I couldn’t see and reliably access it.

Because it needs integration.

It can’t just be pure unhinged sensitivity that is protecting your ego.

But once you’ve done the shadow work, these experiences cannot make you go into an emotional downward spiral anymore.

And that’s when the other side of the sensitivity can shine.

The other side is your immense capability of feeling into the emotions and thoughts of others. You can feel their desires and feelings and that makes you a great friend, lover, business partner, parent, etc.

It elevates your presence and capability in every role you have in your life, because every part you play in this life is only as valuable as your ability to connect to others.

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What are you avoiding?

What is the path you know deep down you are avoiding because of your past wounds?

Become aware of it.

Then step onto it courageously. Because only that courage will give you the confidence you desire to feel.

If this spoke to you, you’ll enjoy my upcoming articles as well. Subscribe now to never miss one:

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You want to achieve the goddamn thing, so you keep pushing.

You do the late-night work, the extra reps, but at some point you fall back into that old pattern.

Procrastination, confusion, numbing.

Then the guilt cycle starts. And the longer you compound the shame, the harder it is to break it again.

If that continues to happen to you, it’s because your approach is not sustainable.

But there is an ancient symbol that codifies the real essence of sustainability like no other:

Yin-Yang.

When a symbol has been used again and again for millennia, that is because there is deep truth encoded in it.

This symbol teaches us what balance truly is, why achievements are not the result of pure discipline, and how true sustainable effort can be created.

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The dot is the whole point

The black side holds a white dot. The white side holds a black dot.

What could this mean?

If the symbol were only about opposites, only about balance, the dots would not matter. But the dots are there.

They are where the teaching of this powerful symbol hides.

They show that each energy at the core contains the energy of the opposing energy.

What does this mean when it comes to functioning as a human in this world?

We tend to believe that achievement comes from effort. From discipline. From grit.

If the black side of the symbol is that - then what is at its core?

Exactly. Calm. Relaxation. Rest. Trust.

Simply that means in high-intensity situations, what is needed at the core is calm.

In low-intensity situations, what is needed at the core is presence.

However, most people do the opposite: They become frantic during effort and unconscious during rest.

They work all stressed out, losing their core. Then they numb themselves through entertainment and drugs, losing their presence.

They betray the sacred teachings encoded in the yin-yang symbol and wonder why things never work out and why contentment seems unachievable.

Their nervous system never really learns to be rooted in power, because they are always missing the essence.

And once you see this, the way most people chase success starts to look insane.

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It’s encoded in your body

This truth is not encoded in the symbol. It is encoded in your body.

Your nervous system is constantly adjusting between two modes: sympathetic and parasympathetic.

This is not just an interesting biological observation. When you become aware of your nervous system’s state, you open the door to perfect alignment.

The sympathetic nervous system supports activation: effort, alertness, exertion, stress response.

The parasympathetic nervous system supports recovery: digestion, repair, downshifting, restoration.

That is the built-in yin-yang intelligence of the body.

And the symbol clearly shows: The goal is not to live in parasympathetic chill-mode all the time.

The goal is to create true balance. True flexibility. Active inaction and inactive action.

The goal is to activate without stress and panic. To rest without boredom. To push yourself and stay in control. To be able to stop and take breaks without the fear of losing control.

It’s encoded into your body on so many levels. For example, there is also the fascia. A connective tissue that runs through your whole body. It responds to pressure, movement, and load dynamically.

It can translate stress into exactly what is needed for the body to stay resilient and adaptable.

Just like your body, you can translate stress into what you need, when you meet it consciously instead of from fear.

This only becomes real when you can feel it under pressure.

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Running like a Norwegian

I do these Norwegian running workouts. (No idea why they are called Norwegian btw.)

That’s 4 minutes running as fast as you can, then very slow for 3 minutes so you can do it again. 4 times in total.

It’s very intense, and I hate it and love it at the same time.

In the high-intensity phase, usually around 2-3 minutes, there is this moment when the heart rate goes to zones 4-5, and it feels awful.

Breathing becomes hard, the muscles ache.

That’s when my mind starts racing too. It starts to bombard me with reasons to stop. It starts to generate thought after thought about why it is a stupid idea to run around like this and that I should just chill.

And that’s when I access the white dot in the black space. That’s when I can access the inner calmness I trained having access to when I was meditating and in deep relaxation.

When I can access this inner calmness in the very moment of high-intensity effort, that’s when everything functions optimally. I can then keep engaging my body in the fast run and with that train the heart.

That’s why deep relaxation with intent and presence matters. Not because it feels good, but because it enables the very intensity you need to achieve the things you want to achieve.

It enables you to push without pushing. To stay longer with intensity and stress without having to force yourself through it.

It enables you to surrender to the feelings of stress, without having to create more stress.

That’s how you turn every effort into a psycho-spiritual game.

And that’s what life is.

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Always intense fails

Intensity and effort do not create success.

They are part of what creates success.

All great achievements require sustainable effort.

Intensity alone can not do the job, for a very simple reason: It’s not how your body is built, and it’s not how the world is built.

The world rewards smart, sustainable approaches. It’s in the symbol, and that’s why it is so popular.

This is true for every ambition you have!

Work, parenting, creative endeavors, personal growth.

Anyone can sprint, push, hold it together. But for how long?

If you crash, numb, procrastinate, you know you pushed too hard.

You didn’t work in alignment with your body and your deeper self. You tried to force an outcome with tools you don’t even have.

You always have to work with the body. In full alignment with the tools you have been given.

That’s when the fallouts disappear. That’s how you become the type of person that stays true to their values and commitments again and again and again, without falling back into old behavior patterns.

But the opposite side matters just as much...

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How to actually chill

Relaxation without presence is not recovery.

Scrolling, consuming, numbing. You can call it rest, but the truth is that the body never receives the message.

Your mind may switch off, and that may relieve you, but the body never experiences a true deep parasympathetic state.

The black dot in the white side was never honored.

Rest needs a form of intensity too. Presence-intensity.

The willingness to actually be there while not much happens. Watching trees, watching a river, listening to the birds.

Can you just be in the moment and feel the body and receive the quiet?

If you can’t rest with presence, your effort will eventually always fail.

## Working from the calm core

Deep relaxation with intention enables deep work.

Here’s an example from my world:

I can write this real quickly. Not because I found the perfect productivity skill, and not because I let AI do it.

Because deep creative work is a nervous-system skill.

I used to second-guess every sentence and try to force clarity into my mind. That’s how it took me forever to finish and publish something.

But now I can stay connected to my inner calm core that I have discovered and cultivated over the years through deep inner work and relaxation.

I can just access it at will. Not only when writing, but in any “high-stakes” situation in life. When in a challenging call with a client or when family life gets crazy intense.

It enables me to let intensity run through me. Things flow.

It’s the same principle as in sport. You can apply it to anything.

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Built-In Biohacking

Take this wisdom deep into your lived experience, and you learn how to use the system you already have.

That will make you independent of supplements and stimuli. They still can have their place in your life, but the base-level practice and discipline remain living in alignment with your body.

Your body has the modes needed built-in. It’s all about learning how to access them at will. So that the switch between the nervous system states becomes conscious instead of automatic.

Next time you run, work, train, write, parent, or face a hard conversation, notice which side of the symbol you are in.

If you are in intensity, find the white dot:

Where is calm available right now?

If you are in rest, find the black dot:

Come into presence.

Balance is learning to be fully alive without losing your center.

Ready to find your calm center and operate from it? Know that I offer a limited number of free Clarity Calls each month.

People keep telling me they never got to clarity so fast.

If you want one, send me “CORE” via DM: https://substack.com/@freepaullouis

Or answer this email.

I reply to every message.

I recently joined a football club.

That’s soccer for the American readers.

And if the people in the club read this piece, they would probably kick me out.

Why?

Because I am about to say my truth about what I saw in their unintegrated psyches.

And most men do not want to hear that from anyone.

Especially not from the new guy.

But this is not about them.

This is about what happens when you expose yourself to people completely outside your bubble and why you should do it regularly.

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The bubble

It’s beautiful to be with people who feel you.

We all want that.

We want to be around people who share our values and understand us. People who speak our language.

If you’re like me, you want to be around people who can talk about depth.

People who understand inner work and know how to talk about the ego.

It is easier to be integrated around them.

But it can also stagnate your growth.

Because who will trigger you when everyone understands you?

Growth needs some danger. Not harm. It needs the kind of danger that triggers you to grow. That’s also why “safe spaces” are such a joke. They are a synonym for coward spaces.

Let’s wrap ourselves in cotton and pretend that we are fine.

When you leave the bubble and expose yourself to more ordinary behavior, you get tested in the best way.

And by ordinary, I do not mean worse.

I mean people who do not share your vocabulary or your passion for inner growth.

People who do not care that you understand projection.

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The club

That first day on the pitch at the football club, I was confronted with something I had not been around for years:

Male status games.

And I wasn’t prepared for it at all.

I was on the pitch with these men and just wanted to give everything I had for the team and enjoy the game.

But they were constantly projecting their inner state onto others.

They made offensive remarks that were supposed to be funny.

But often they weren’t.

The remarks mostly served one purpose:

Make others feel inferior so they could feel superior.

Classic pattern when you are not in love with yourself.

They hardly ever passed me the ball, although I had a 90% pass rate.

Meaning, when I had the ball, I hardly lost it to the other team.

Almost everyone had their own expression of their inferiority complex.

Their behavior tried to signal:

“I’m the best player.” Or: “I’m the smartest here.” Or: “I’m the funniest here.”

But really it was saying:

“I feel inferior, and that’s why I have to make this show.”

Here’s another example of how this played out

I made some attempts at scoring. At shooting the ball in the net.

But there was a rule I didn’t know of:

You may only attempt to score with the first touch.

If you already touched the ball before, you must not attempt to score.

Ok.

But nobody took the 15 seconds it takes to explain the rule!

Instead, one guy only shouted cryptically and aggressively: “NO DIRECT GOAL ATTEMPT!”

I didn’t get it.

And the guy was gone before I could ask.

So I kept breaking the rule.

The next time, the guy shouted again.

Then he escalated:

“I told you 3 times that this is not allowed according to the rules!”

Reminded me of Walter in “The Big Lebowski”, when he pulls out the gun to explain the bowling rules.

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Why I share this with you:

This immature behavior did to me exactly what I needed.

It triggered me.

For a split second, I wanted to defend myself.

I felt the anger rise up in my chest.

Then my inner training paid off.

I caught myself quickly and saw that I do not need to interpret this as judgement. I can stay calm and smile.

And I saw that this would be the most loving thing to do.

Sure, it is true that most of them lacked the curiosity and inner strength to just play the game and have fun.

But that does not matter in life.

What matters is your response.

Your response-ability.

My reaction was superiority. But my response was love.

I watched them perform, and some part of me said:

I am the mature person here. I am above this. I see what they cannot see.

What a beautiful way to be triggered.

My own inferiority complex, as small as it has become over the years, can still be triggered.

My ego loves to turn spiritual development into a status game.

It loves the story of me being the integrated and them being the unintegrated. And to then conclude from that: I am better.

If you only ever spend time with people who speak your language and share your values, you can easily fall into that ego trap.

You never get challenged.

You never get triggered.

And that’s the end of growth.

It’s like a muscle.

When it is not being engaged anymore, it stops growing and starts shrinking.

Of course you are peaceful when nobody triggers the part in you that still needs to be seen as above other people.

Normie environments reveal what is integrated and what is theoretical.

Your behavior in these environments brutally and precisely reveals where you still have work to do.

In these environments, you may be ignored. You may be lied to. And you may have to deal with cynicism.

People may try to dominate you and make you feel inferior.

Now what?

Will you allow that? Or can you stay centered and grounded in your love without having to take part in the immature behavior?

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The real test

None of this means that your perception is wrong.

You are probably pretty good at spotting emotionally immature behavior in others.

Their projections and their revealed wounds are probably real.

Some groups run on status, not connection.

You do not have to pretend you do not see it.

Spiritual maturity is not playing dumb.

The problem is not that you see patterns.

The problem is when you allow your ego to use it.

Your recognition only becomes a problem when you allow it to turn into superiority.

Because in the very moment that you allow that, you are invalidating your perception, and all that matters is that you are now acting immaturely.

If you see someone else’s wound and use that to place yourself above them, you have just joined the same status game in a more spiritual costume.

When they tried to signal “I am the best player”, my ego would have loved to signal “I am the most integrated person here.”

It’s basically the same, it just has a different form of expression.

When they communicated so badly, the path of least resistance would have been judgement.

“These men are ridiculous. They cannot even explain a simple rule. I am above this crap.”

I spotted that pattern emerging and chose to respond with grace.

Because true integration means being able to see your worth and their worth at the same time.

You don’t have to tolerate behavior that crosses your boundaries.

You don’t have to force yourself to like everyone.

You don’t have to pretend the energy around you is mature when it is clearly not.

It simply means you can stay in your truth and power and not throw your values overboard just because someone else is acting from a lower level of consciousness.

You keep playing fair and true no matter what.

That is embodied faith. That is true embodiment of values.

Allowing yourself to be triggered in the place where you can still grow is exactly what accelerates your growth.

It is an act of surrender.

You allow life to show you exactly what you need to see.

It shows you where your love and compassion have conditions, and you are being invited to remove them a bit.

It shows you where the ego wants to protect its identity story.

It shows you where your maturity depends on being around mature people.

That last one matters.

And if your peace only exists around conscious people, it is not fully embodied yet.

If you can see yourself in what I shared here, it’s time to move towards the next level of embodiment.

I offer a limited number of free Clarity Calls each month.

If you want one, send me “INTEGRATION” via DM: https://substack.com/@freepaullouis

Or answer this email.

I reply to every message.

Are you also often not going to bed in time?

You know you should hit the pillow already, but you stay up, doing “one more thing”.

You are not alone.

I’m in this group of ambitious, high achievers.

It’s a group of men trying to become their highest selves.

We all have different backgrounds, different goals.

Yet, we’re all serious about inner work.

But here’s something funny I noticed: Something that comes up again and again is our inability to go to bed on time.

It’s funny because in theory we all know how important it is to get sleep. But then, beliefs creep in, thoughts creep in. And we are somehow able to discuss it away, and we don’t go to bed on time.

But whatever ideas we have that get in the way, they are all made of bullshit. Because the truth remains that we need that sleep to become true to our ambition.

So what does it actually mean when a capable, self-aware, ambitious person cannot go to bed on time?

On the surface, it looks like a habit issue. But if we look really closely, we can find it reveals something much deeper.

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You Cannot Become Your Highest Self on Low Sleep

I noticed this pattern in myself again recently.

It’s obvious when I zoom out that sleep hygiene is one of the biggest leverage points. My life is crazy demanding.

So sleep is not just a nice-to-have wellness bonus on top.

It’s the absolute prerequisite to being able to live that lifestyle and to live up to the standards that I have for myself.

When I prioritize my sleep, everything has a foundation. Everything becomes so much easier.

It enables discipline and commitment in every other area of my life.

And when I let it slide, things become unstable.

I used to believe that I was born with this massive amount of energy and that I could just handle more than other people.

And there might be some truth to it. But it’s still true that I need that sleep.

I need that rigorous sleep discipline and sleep hygiene.

It happened often enough, and recently it happened again, that not sleeping enough hijacked my quality of life. If you have an ambitious lifestyle, sleep is non-negotiable.

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Your Bedtime Is Revealing Your Deepest Beliefs

Usually, when I sacrifice my sleep, I don’t sacrifice it for fun friends or a great night out.

Usually, I sacrifice it for work. And definitely not because the work needs to happen that night.

The deeper truth is that usually when I sacrifice my sleep, I do it because unconsciously, deep down, I believe some version of “I did not do enough.”

“If I stop now, things will fall apart.” Or that I need to keep grinding to earn the right to rest.

And in the moment, I can convince myself that it’s a form of productivity. But the truth is that it’s a form of the very common “I am not enough” belief.

It must not play out exactly like that for you.

Maybe you are the guy who is always partying. Or the guy having FOMO, feeling that you’re missing out on a nice event

Whatever it is, it’s the same mechanism: Deep down, you believe it’s not enough to just go to sleep right now. That there is something you have to experience, something you have to create, something you have to do.

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Interesting People Have Strict Bedtimes

Going to bed early does not make you boring.

That’s a trap that has been created through our culture.

It says that interesting people always have wild experiences, live on the edge, say yes to everything, and refuse ordinary structures.

It’s all around in pop culture. It’s in the advertisements. It’s everywhere. It screams: “You better not have a boring life, or you are a failure.”

But if you look close enough, you can see it’s not the truth. That hype is not living in alignment with truth.

It’s a form of insecurity dressed up as aliveness and excitement.

That doesn’t mean you can never make exceptions.

If it’s a Friday night and you know that you can recover over the weekend...

...of course, go ahead and enjoy your life.

If life presents a rare exceptional moment that you really can feel you want to enjoy, and you know that you can afford it, that you can truly afford the exception, because you can consciously recover. Fine, go ahead.

That’s not the issue. The issue is whether you are unable to follow through on your commitment.

When you cannot follow your commitment to regular, ordinary healthy sleep, on ordinary days.

And yes, you can be a deeply interesting person with a consistent bedtime. You can even be a more interesting person because it’s quite exceptional these days, since people use every opportunity to run from depth and truth.

You can be disciplined and spontaneous and alive.

You can build the life around commitments and rhythms and still make room for wild shit.

And you don’t need elaborate routines to be your highest self consistently.

Some people turn sleep hygiene into another sophisticated performance. The perfect wind down, the perfect morning, the supplements, the light setup, the protocols.

There might be phases where structure helps you become more disciplined. But you don’t need that forever.

A simple one is usually better because it’s easier to stay true to.

Find the one, two, or three things that actually change your state. Do those and adjust consciously when you need to.

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The Most Powerful Thing You Can Do Tonight Is Stop

Believe me, you are not the exception.

You think sleep matters generally. You know the research. The CDC data. The sleep debt math. But you think you’re the exception to it.

You are not!

You’re not a machine. You’re human. You’re an organism.

You might be able to override that for a few bad nights. But eventually, your buddy will compound on those bad effects.

Just one more thing.

I’m almost done.

This needs to be done today so I can chill.

Those are the common lies we have in our heads in these very moments. And they are a protection strategy of our egos.

Because if you stop working or if you stop numbing and just face the silence that exists before you fall asleep, you might have to face that very feeling of not being enough.

And that feels unbearable.

So you crunch in another task. Mindlessly click on more buttons or do whatever the fuck distracts you enough, not have tt have to face that feeling.

This gets even more complicated and harder to spot when you do it in socially acceptable ways.

Work is especially dangerous in that regard because, from the outside, late-night work can look very responsible.

But if you’re really honest with yourself, you can see what’s going on underneath it.

And if you’ve already stated in your men’s group, or in your accountability partner chat, that you want to go to sleep on time, then that’s probably the truth.

So why the fuck can’t you just do it?

Are you working from clarity or from fear? Are you serving tomorrow — or trying to control it? Are you staying up because it’s the most aligned choice — or because your ego needs it?

Usually, the most responsible thing is to stop and do nothing.

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Surrender

The question never is:

Did I do enough today?

The question always is:

Can I still be true to myself if work is not finished?

Can I still love myself fully and be present with myself — even if I missed that one event?

It’s beautiful to be competent. To be useful. To be the one who holds it all together. To be responsible.

But you must not allow it to become your identity. Because, paradoxically, that would be the very thing that makes you incompetent and useless.

Somewhere along the line, your nervous system learned that safety comes from being useful.

And that’s just not the truth.

On the deepest level, sleep is a trust practice.

Going to bed on time signals to yourself that you trust the work you did today. That even if tomorrow is not alright — you will be.

Do you trust that your worth does not disappear when you stop producing?

Do you trust life enough to let go of control?

Do you trust life enough to just commit to the sleep schedule?

Going to bed is not about performance. It’s about surrender.

A form of active surrender. And that’s the highest practice available.

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Body first

That is my invitation to you. Let the body lead.

Body first means you stop letting your grinder identity — the one that needs to be useful — decide your body’s health.

Let consistency lead you where you want to be.

Let sleep become a spiritual practice.

Because it forces you to stop pretending that you’re above your biology.

Admit that you’re not the exception.

Pick the one, two, or three sleep habits that actually change your state. Don’t build a routine around them to impress anyone.

Decide on exceptions consciously and make sure they are grounded in truth. And after exceptions, give yourself the space to recover, even if that means taking whole days off.

Always ask: Is this in service and in alignment with my highest self? Or am I reinforcing a false identity?

Go to bed no matter what.

And when you’re in that moment again, don’t ask whether you’re done and what still needs to be done. Ask whether staying out would actually come from trust and depth or if it would come from your ego.

And if it’s ego - shut down that goddamn computer.

Because the reality almost always is that the goddamn work can wait.

But your truth cannot. It needs to be embodied.

Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for the next misery, and you know it.

You don’t go to bed because you want to be able to perform perfectly the next day. You go to bed because you know it will enable you to be present and to actually live the life you want to live.

During sleep is where the future you want is being built. Your body is being repaired, your mind is being optimized.

That’s why sleeping matters at the deepest level. Not just the habit level.

If you could see yourself in what I shared here and you are ready to let the grinder inside make some room, know that I offer a limited number of free Clarity Calls each month.

If you want one, send me “GO TO BED” via DM: https://substack.com/@freepaullouis

Or answer this email.

I reply to every message.

It is respectable to build external wealth.

Depending on where you started, it might be very fucking hard.

But there is a brutal truth that keeps being mentioned but is hardly ever examined in its full depth:

Success can hide the fact that you are not free.

You can have the house, the career, the luxury holidays, but if you still need cocaine to feel alive, hookers to feel wanted, or even if you just can’t speak your truth to your wife - all of that stuff isn’t worth much.

It’s ephemeral matter.

At best, collected in a nice way.

But if your deeper restlessness is not addressed, all that it does is numb you. Until the numbing effect has worn off.

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The trader

During the COVID madness, I was unemployed and receiving relief money from the state.

I hated the dependency.

I wanted to get out of it quickly.

So I believed making it as a crypto trader would be the perfect solution.

Basically:

Print money.

Become totally self-reliant.

Never depend on anyone again.

The dream I fell for was the classic passive income fantasy.

I thought that if I could solve this riddle, if I could find the holy grail, then I would have a well of wealth that never ran out.

Then my problems would be solved.

My day-to-day looked horrible. All day in front of the screen, staring at charts and watching trading courses that never really taught anything, but kept me in a constant loop of feeling productive, while in reality, with every minute spent chasing the dream, I dug myself deeper into the sunk-cost-fallacy hell.

Months of daily effort.

I did not lack discipline. I was just disciplined in totally the wrong areas.

And it led to extreme emotional highs and lows.

When trades worked out, it felt like I had finally cracked the puzzle.

It felt like all the effort had paid off, and from now on, it would only be ease, fun, and profit for me.

But then, only a couple of days or even just hours later, it all fell apart again.

Shame, anxiety, and the worst: compounding self-doubt.

Because I believed the online stories from people who claimed they had made it, I started doubting myself.

It had to be me, right?

This stupid rabbit hole cost me so much: Energy, focus, confidence, time, peace, presence, and money.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not the crypto industry’s fault or the fault of some influencer.

It was my fault that I believed I could use this “opportunity” as my external savior.

It could have been anything. It could have just as well been chasing a certain business idea, or having the idea to have to make it in another place, or obsessing about fitness, or any other status marker, really.

Luckily for me, the COVID relief payments stopped, and my second daughter came into the world.

That situation made me finally realize:

I can’t afford this shit.

I can’t afford to be like that as a father.

And it finally made me see that the external solution I was chasing was costing me the very internal state I actually needed.

So I had the humility to get a stable, unglamorous job.

Just enough to pay the bills.

And in the phase of my life that followed, I finally focused on what really mattered:

Inner growth.

The job itself did not save me.

But the act of humility woke me up.

I finally saw that chasing an idea with force was robbing me of the most valuable thing I had:

Internal coherence.

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Internal coherence

Internal coherence is when the life you are living, the truth you are avoiding, the body you live in, and the person you claim to be are no longer at war with each other.

It’s achieved when the question about what you have built doesn’t matter anymore.

It’s achieved when you can actually live inside what you have built with peace of mind.

It’s not that external stability does not matter. Of course, you have to pay your bills. Of course, it is wonderful to excel at business, to be able to afford the beautiful, nice enjoyments that life has to offer.

Money matters. A beautiful home matters. Matter matters.

But they are not primary. They are secondary.

There are phases in your life when focusing on changing external conditions makes sense, and there are phases in your life when it is useless to focus on that, and you need to focus on your inner world instead.

Knowing the difference and when you need what is a huge piece of the puzzle of moving towards internal coherence.

Externalities can create space to do the work that truly matters, but they cannot do the work for you.

Fixing circumstances can reduce pressure, it can give you room, and help you create conditions for growth, but it does not make you free.

True freedom is inner freedom.

Your nervous system does not upgrade because the numbers on your bank account are bigger.

Your fear of speaking your truth does not vanish when your house is bigger.

Your relationship with your kids does not repair itself because you upgrade your lifestyle.

External changes fix nothing by themselves.

They can provide better conditions for healing, but they don’t heal shit by themselves.

They cannot heal the pattern that keeps recreating the problems.

True freedom is inner freedom.

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The trap

Ancient cultures knew that consciousness and being are primary, and matter is secondary.

Our modern culture has things the wrong way around.

We believe matter is primary and consciousness secondary.

All our systems are built around that idea.

It made us amazing at organizing matter. But it also made us terrible at living good lives.

Lives that feel meaningful and beautiful.

If you grow up in that culture, you find yourself believing that if only you are disciplined enough, if only you are smart and hard-working enough, you will finally create that perfect state of externalities that will make all of the inner turmoil and restlessness sort itself out.

But that is simply not true and in direct opposition to the core of what every one of the great ancient traditions teaches.

That’s why it is hard to be vulnerable. That’s why it is hard to consistently do inner work.

Because by doing so, you go directly against everything you have learned is supposed to be important.

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It won’t make you soft

There is this common fear that doing the inner work will make you soft.

Believe me, it’s bullshit.

It might make you more sensitive, and it will very likely confront you with feelings you’d rather not have, but that will only make you stronger and more powerful.

That very sensitivity actually is what will enable you to be more disciplined, or even to be more confrontational if that is what is being asked of you by your higher self.

Doing the inner work will give you the ability to act in alignment with your highest self. And your highest self is diverse.

It might request you to be confrontational or tender depending on the situation.

It might request you to be hard or soft depending on the situation.

It might request you to leave, or it might request you to stay, but there will be no more doubt about what the right choice is.

The inner work makes you more and more conscious, and that enables you to make decisions from truth rather than from fear.

Depending on how you have neglected your deeper self, your truth might be that you have to be softer at times. But it is not a general result of doing the inner work.

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Seasons

Life is cyclical, like everything else in this universe.

There are seasons that demand practical worldly changes, and there are seasons that demand inward focus.

If you cannot pay rent or buy food, you sure have to make changing that ASAP a priority.

But if your life is stable enough and you keep telling yourself you will do the inner work after one more milestone, one more income goal, one more project, you should probably focus on developing your internal infrastructure.

Because that is what determines how you experience life and ultimately also what opportunities you attract.

It’s easy to postpone the inner focus.

One more. One more...

Until there is a new mess that looks very similar to the old mess.

What a coincidence. Could it be that an unresolved inner pattern has manifested the same outside mess without me noticing?

Just some food for thought...

Truth is: Life never fully calms down.

And the only way to live well in the storm is to become the eye of the storm through deep, relentless commitment to a conscious way of living.

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What about you?

What in your life has the function that my crypto trading mess had?

What are you using as a desperate attempt to force the world to comply to your effort?

What external “holy grail” are you secretly hoping will save you from having to sit with yourself?

And what could you gain from letting it go?

Because if your success requires you to abandon your truth, numb your body, avoid your wife, miss your kids, or keep chasing the next holy grail just to feel okay, then it is not freedom yet. Is it?

Deep down, you already know whether the next move is another external fix or the inner work you keep postponing.

If that’s the case, know that I offer a limited number of free Clarity Calls each month.

If you want one, reply to this email with “COHERENCE” and tell me what your external holy grail has been.

You know exactly what you need to do.

Make the call. Have the conversation. Send the message. Stop numbing. Tell the truth.

And still, something in you refuses to do it.

Why is that? Why do so many people suffer from that inertia, even when they know exactly what needs to happen?

When you know you want to do something, but you just cannot motivate the body you inhabit to make the act.

It’s such a real experience. And so fucking maddening.

The problem is not lack of information.

Because if it were that easy, reading enough books would solve the problem.

And it’s also not lack of discipline.

Because then, if you just wanted it more, you could just do it.

It has to be something deeper.

The reason why you cannot do what you know you need to do, have to do, want to do is not that you’re broken.

That’s just the internal narrative feeding on itself, the infamous shame loop that is being triggered.

If you’re having that experience again and again, it’s a wrong interpretation of the situation.

You can feel the gap between what you know and what you do, and you turn it into identity.

You start labeling yourself.

You might say you’re lazy or weak, inconsistent, broken — but that’s all just useless labeling.

These are just the symptoms that show that a part of you is still protecting you from something that it still believes is dangerous.

And your nervous system acts in alignment with that part because it hasn’t been upgraded yet.

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A huge threat

What you know you have to do might be a very small thing like calling someone, but your nervous system perceives it as a huge threat, as if you were standing right face to face with a saber-tooth tiger, and you’re going to be in a fight for life and death.

So that tells us: The action itself is not the problem. The action is simple.

The meaning you attach to the action on a deeper level is the problem.

You are not really avoiding the task.

You are avoiding the feeling the task may provoke.

That is why this is ultimately about self-distrust.

Self-distrust is your body saying, “If I follow what I know, I might lose safety, approval, love, or control.”

And allowing yourself to keep living that lie is silently destroying your life and crushing your soul.

On the deepest level, the reason you do not do what you know you need to do is that you do not trust yourself.

If you’ve trusted your intuition, you would move — because you already know what you need to do.

You would stop negotiating with it.

You would stop trying to gain more certainty through listening to another podcast, through writing another journal entry or whatever else it is you’re doing to try to create certainty.

At some point in your journey, probably early in your life, you learned that when you trust your intuition, you get hurt.

Or when you show what you want, you get rejected.

Or when you expose yourself, you’re unsafe.

And that probably was true in that very moment of time.

But it’s not anymore.

Still, your whole system is acting as if it were still true.

And that system runs deep in your body, in your whole being.

It’s not just the mind.

You’ve embodied these fears.

And that’s why arguing with them isn’t working.

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A dangerous green button

When I was still working as an actor, I knew I needed to call people.

It was the only way that I would be able to have opportunities in the industry.

I knew that I would have to call agents, casters, and other people from the industry to build a network, to be seen, to be noticed.

And what would happen is this:

I would have the number ready to be dialed on my smartphone screen.

The contact would have already been selected.

All that would have been left to start the conversation is touching that screen on the green button.

But I wouldn’t do it.

I would sit in front of that phone for hours.

Ready to press the button.

And unable to press it.

So instead — distraction.

Upgrading my website. Researching photographers for my next photo shoot. Anything “productive” to avoid the shame.

And if distraction wasn’t enough — entertainment. Video games. Porn. Parties. Anything to numb the feeling of not being able to push a button.

Getting high and drunk made it easier to forget.

You know, it was easy for me back then to call it introversion, telling myself that I’m just an introvert and that explains why I can’t do it.

Society gives you that option.

“Hey, you’re just an introvert.”

It was easy to say, maybe I’m just not made for this.

But that wasn’t true because I was very aware of my potential.

And I’ve proven myself through getting over this that I had that potential all the while.

So all the stories I told myself — too introverted, not made for this, blablabla — were just not true.

Simply not true.

What was true is that I had learned that vulnerability is dangerous.

I had learned that as a child in relation to my father and in many other situations and relationships as well.

And with every experience that confirmed it, the belief got deeper.

Rejection, even if it wasn’t objective but just perceived, felt like an existential threat to me.

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It’s not enough to just talk about this

Talking about what blocks you helps.

Clarity is a vital step.

Gaining clarity in and of itself is hard.

And it deserves a lot of respect when you manage to create it.

But clarity is not the transformation itself.

It’s just one step towards transformation.

There was a phase on my healing journey where I understood everything I’m writing about here.

And still, it didn’t give me the ability to make these phone calls.

There was a stage in my healing where I was able to explain the patterns that I’m writing about here.

And still would repeat them.

You can get stuck in that phase for a long time.

Especially if you’re the self-aware type.

You mistake articulation for integration.

You think because you can talk about it, you can change it.

This is where intelligent, self-aware people get trapped.

You can explain your childhood.

You can name your attachment pattern.

You can describe the exact wound that gets activated.

And still you fall back into the same loop.

Because analysis is a vital step. No doubt about that. But it has its place.

Analysis can show you the door. But then you need to walk through it.

So: What actually creates the transformation then?

What does it actually mean to walk through the door?

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Embodied experience

You rewire that self-distrust that is ingrained in your whole being through targeted, precise exposure.

Not random action.

Not brute force.

Targeted, precise exposure.

If you’ve discovered that you’re actually deeply afraid of being rejected because that’s what you have learned early in your life to be rightfully afraid of, then the work is finding safe enough repeated experiences of being rejected and relearning that it actually isn’t hurting you.

That, actually, the very act of the exposure itself is moving you towards becoming who you actually want to be.

If it’s about that you have learned that you cannot trust your intuition or that trusting your intuition is unsafe, then it’s about practicing to trust your intuition in small steps where the stakes are not too high - but high enough to be interesting.

If you have learned that standing up for yourself and taking care of yourself is selfish, then it’s about being bolder in asking for what you want and in allowing yourself to receive what you want. Practice disappointing someone.

The nervous system needs evidence in the form of experiences.

It cannot be upgraded through the mind.

It can only be upgraded through experience.

Starting to meditate made the difference for me.

Because in meditation, I could clearly see that pressing the green button on the smartphone is objectively not dangerous.

Meditation didn’t take away the threat response and the immense fear in my body when it came to actually calling people.

But it helped me to finally do it.

And those phone calls led to rejection. Which is wonderful.

Because it was exactly what I needed to experience.

I needed to experience that being rejected does not hurt me.

It does not destroy me.

It doesn’t take anything away from me.

And so every phone call I managed to initiate made the fear before the next one smaller.

Every rejection taught me it was not dangerous.

Not something to avoid at all costs.

And eventually it got me to a place where I cannot even be rejected anymore.

Because not only objectively do I know that someone’s no brings me closer to the right persons yes, but my nervous system and my body also do know.

That doesn’t mean that rejection has become the most pleasant thing and the most enjoyable thing for me.

But it got me to the point where I can just fully accept it as a necessary part of my life’s evolution.

If you still believe that you’re not made for whatever you know you need to do and want to do, let me tell you it’s bullshit.

You are capable of what human consciousness in a human body is capable of.

You can be as powerful as Jesus and Buddha were. You can create, enjoy, and shape way above the limitations you currently perceive as given.

It’s just that your nervous system has been wired differently through the experiences you had early in your life.

So whether it’s procrastination, avoidance, numbing yourself, or needing more time to think.

All of these are forms of protection.

You must not be in resistance to that protection.

You must understand what that part of you is protecting and then give your whole being a new experience.

The deeper the limiting belief has been ingrained into your being, the deeper you will have to dig to get to the place where it lives.

So that you can steer your whole being to live in alignment with the deeper truth that you are a talented, capable human consciousness.

If transformation for you feels impossible, it only feels that way because you’re trying to transform through thought instead of targeted experience.

I offer a limited number of Clarity Calls every month to help you change that.

If you want one, send me “TRUST” via DM: https://substack.com/@freepaullouis

Or answer this email.

I reply to every message.

People love to say “Trust your gut.”

As if it’s something you can just do.

As if it were something easy to do.

As if it does not threaten your identity.

People keep saying it because it is such a romantic idea.

But on a deeper level, it is so much more than that.

But the moment your gut points toward something that could actually change your life, the mind gets very reasonable.

“I need more time.”

“I can’t just blow everything up.”

“I need to be responsible.”

“What if this costs me everything?”

That is where the real work starts.

Because following your gut is not a romantic idea anymore when it threatens your comfort, your image, your routines, or your money.

If you can truly learn to follow it there, you become a master of your life.

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Your calling

So the question is: What are you really afraid of?

What is the fear behind the fear?

Chances are, you are not afraid of rejection, not afraid of failing, not afraid of public speaking, not afraid of the feeling in your body when you feel like your work doesn’t land.

Chances are, you are really afraid of losing something your ego values.

You fear answering your calling because you know it will take something from you.

Before I answered my calling of working as a coach, I told myself I was afraid of being rejected, that I would be afraid of losing the ability to comfortably provide for my family.

But in hindsight, I know I was really afraid of something deeper:

Deep down, I knew that answering that calling would demand the highest version of me. Deep down, I knew there was no way I would make it as a coach if I still allowed myself to negotiate around my vices.

I had already quit the worst ones: gaming and porn.

But I knew I had to ditch the subtle ones as well. No more alcohol sometimes. No more overeating, just sometimes.

I could feel that this would become the greatest challenge of my lifetime and that I would only be ready for it if I allowed myself to be called into my highest and most aligned form.

And I feared that allowing that would rob me of the ability to chill and relax. Rob me of the ability to hide from being a leader.

The fear was not that I would fail. I didn’t care, honestly.

The true fear was that it would work and put me in a leadership position, load me up with responsibility, and require me to become the man I always pretended to want to be, but was actually afraid to be.

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If I follow my gut, I’ll lose my peace

A cunning lie of the ego.

Desperately trying to keep you safe because it was programmed to do so, it comes up with the most cunning, inventive, and crazy ways to keep you small.

Comfort is not peace!

No matter how often your fear mind tries to convince you of this bullsh*t.

The luxury of watching football on your couch is NOT what gives you inner peace.

The leather seats in your car are NOT what gives you inner peace.

The money in your bank account is NOT what gives you inner peace.

All of these examples and the 1000s of others you could add to the list are really nice things I invite you to enjoy as ephemeral experiences of pleasure, but they are NOT what gives you inner peace.

The only thing that ever gives you inner peace is alignment with your calling.

Every decision you ever make either creates alignment or disalignment with your calling.

Moves you closer to your higher self’s true desires, or further away from them.

And your body possesses the intelligence to feel that in every single moment of your bodily existence.

When you betray yourself on that level, your body can not help but show it.

Your ego tries to keep you in comfort: No risks, no confrontations, no challenges.

It wants safe routines and insurance.

Not because it is your enemy, or because it hates you.

No. It is just the part of you that is programmed for self-preservation and has knowledge about the deeper truth that your goal in life is not self-preservation, but self-actualization.

If none of that pleasure creates peace, then what does?

Living in alignment with your deeper truth.

That is the highest form of embodied self-respect and the most sacred act.

I thought following my calling would cost me my peace (which wasn’t peace, but comfort), but what was really stealing my peace was ignoring my calling.

Because when I ignored my calling, it got louder and louder.

And my body was responding accordingly: Living in disalignment creates stress in the system.

Your perceived stability is in reality a form of self-betrayal. And when you are honest enough, you know it.

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I’ll do it when I’m ready

You think you can just wait for the right timing and then follow your calling?

You'd better be careful with that assumption.

Because with every breath that you live in disalignment, you are enlarging the deprecating effect it has on your system.

Acting against what your deeper self knows creates mental, emotional, and physical suffering.

And while you may be good at numbing that away or hiding it from your perception, when you track it closely, you can see that you are slowly but surely destroying yourself.

If you can not seem to stop numbing yourself, even though you can watch yourself do it and feel ashamed afterwards, the problem is not your choice of substance or activity.

The numbing is only the messenger.

If you have these unexplainable low-grade stress feelings in seemingly random moments of your day-to-day life, the problem is not your circumstances.

It’s probably the truth you keep avoiding.

You keep eroding your self-respect without noticing, until one day you wake up feeling like shit and totally estranged from your surroundings.

Who are these people I live with? Why do I still go to that office? What the f*ck am I really doing here?

You want to course correct before that experience. Because the deeper you dig yourself into the hole of self-betrayal, the harder it is to climb out.

You can delay following your calling. But not without clear costs.

You either obey now or you pay later. And later is more expensive.

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Sacrifices

When you are not fully living in embodied alignment yet, you believe you will have to make sacrifices.

And that scares the sh*t out of you.

I thought I would have to sacrifice so much that it felt undoable.

I thought I would have to sacrifice my security and comfort. I thought I would have to sacrifice all my pleasures: Gaming, alcohol, workaholism, half-commitment, the fantasy of “wanting more” without becoming more.

But here is the surprising realization I can send you from the other side:

Yes, I had to give all of it up. But it was no sacrifice! It felt like one because I falsely believed that these things would make me happy, but in reality, they never did. They just numbed me so effectively that I confused things.

Giving up things of no value is not a sacrifice.

Your calling is terrifying because it threatens your coping mechanisms.

You think you are afraid of change, but in reality, you are afraid of losing the permission for self-betrayal.

As long as you have “good” reasons to delay following your calling, you have good reasons to numb yourself out.

But once you follow your calling, all of these bullsh*t narratives fall apart.

Once I followed my calling and offered my services, things started falling into place, and miracles and synchronicities showed up in inexplicable abundance.

Now I do the deepest and most fulfilling work of my life with my clients.

Now I experience more abundance, more presence, and more enjoyment also outside of work.

I never needed any ot the things and habits I believed I needed.

All I ever needed was truly following my gut.

Don’t confuse this: Following your gut doesn’t make everything easy.

On the contrary, it constantly gives you greater and greater challenges.

But that is also what gives you meaning.

It makes suffering meaningful instead of pointless and painful.

And paradoxically, it gives you the peace you thought you would lose.

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Patience

None of this is about becoming a coach. This is about becoming who you feel called to become in the depths of your being.

When you are deeply honest and present, you already know where your gut is pointing.

The problem is not confusion or missing information. The problem is that you do not like the price you believe you have to pay. Until you can see that it is not a price at all, but a burning of deadweight you never needed.

You may call it “being responsible”, or “waiting for the right time”, or “thinking it through”.

But that is all just fancy language covering up unaddressed fear.

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Fear must not rule

Don’t ignore your fears. You can not override them with force.

You need to know them. You need to feel them. You need to have awareness of them. Sometimes even understand them.

But none of that will transform them.

There is no way around having experiences that upgrade your nervous system.

Experiences that teach your whole being that fear is not needed and of service anymore.

You will have to surrender to what you already know deep inside and act in alignment with it despite fear.

That is the act of alchemy that transforms the hidden energy stored in fear into energy of power.

You already know. Your body knows. Your excuses are just trying to buy time. But time is not for sale.

p.s.:

If this speaks to you and you are ready to make that change, know that I offer a limited number of Clarity Calls every month.

If you want one, send me “GUT” via DM: https://substack.com/@freepaullouis

Or answer this email.

I reply to every message.

If you do not create something meaningful, you are missing life.

Literally missing it while you are in a human body.

Oxygen still enters your lungs, blood still gets pumped through your veins, but that is all just physical theater.

It’s just a highly developed organism doing what it must do. Doing what the autonomous nervous system takes care of without the actual you having any agency.

If you want a life that feels meaningful, you have to become the creator of it.

You have to take life into your own hands. You have to become the director not only of the limbs of your body but of the whole direction your life journey moves towards.

It’s the only way to feel alive. It’s the only way to experience meaning and love.

It can look wildly different for everyone. It can take a thousand shapes, and the outside look at it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter what car you drive while feeling alive, and it doesn’t matter what your body looks like.

What matters is that you feel it!

It has to feel real, or it isn’t.

That’s the rule.

Here’s where most people get stuck:

They get trapped in one of two delusions.

Delusion one says: grind harder. They believe they need to have something particular to be allowed to feel alive.

The other delusion says: Just live in the moment.

As if living in the moment was a choice you could just make, without any prerequisites.

If you want to “make it”, that means to actually love your life, you have to see both traps for what they are first.

So: What actually works if you want real results without burning out or disappearing into fantasy?

Let’s bust the delusions first.

Then explore what actually works.

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The lie of hustle and grind

Work harder. Discipline. Willpower.

Yeah, sure, force can create results in the short term.

But if the energy underneath it is lack, no result will ever feel like enough.

Believe me, when you hit a revenue goal from that place, the effect wears off fast.

7 days after the promotion, the feeling will be no different than before.

Because while the external circumstance may have changed, the felt experience of being in abundance was never touched.

The delusion of hustle culture mistakes force for power.

It overloads your system and robs you of the very feeling you chase.

You want to feel deeply relaxed and content with your life and yourself, but you’re actually always forcing yourself into more work, more effort, and more grind.

Hustle for long enough, and in the best case, you gain some external wealth and pay for it with your health.

And if hustle is not the answer, most people swing hard in the other direction.

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Passive manifestation

This is the other delusion to avoid:

The “right frequency” school.

There is truth in it. Yes, everything is “just frequency.”

But that doesn’t mean you can just tune into it and become God.

Creating deep, aligned momentum takes more than just “hypnotizing yourself” and affirmations.

It takes relentless deep inner work and actual worldly aligned action.

Don’t let all good-sounding spiritual language lure you into becoming a passive manifester that is basically just sitting around waiting for things to fall into place.

The “right frequency” school allows people to pretend they were aligned while totally avoiding the discomfort of facing their deeper truths and self-betrayal mechanisms, and the discomfort of worldly action.

You won’t get fit by thinking about Yoga and running. Not going to happen.

Plus, it also comes from a lack: if reality does not change, they assume they need more energetic perfection. Where in truth they need to finally look at what they have been avoiding to look at their whole lives.

Spirituality becomes another strategy to feel in control, while in reality, one feels deeply vulnerable, self-conscious, and insecure.

Being at ease is not the same as doing nothing.

Trust is not passivity.

Stillness is meant to sharpen action.

So if both force and passivity fail, what is left?

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Your body knows what season you are in

The real skill is learning when your system has the resources for challenge and when it is asking for recovery.

It’s that simple.

Your body holds all the intelligence you need. It’s just that there was no culture that allowed you to feel and access that.

On the contrary, if you grew up in the West, you have been conditioned to look outside of your body for wisdom all the time:

Look into the books, look into the movies, even worse, try to fix your feelings with possessions. As if driving a BMW would make you happier than driving a Toyota. What a brutal lie.

Cultivate listening to your body’s signals as much as you can!

Its signals come early. And the earlier you can catch them, the more you can adjust.

Don’t take the break when it is too late and your system has already broken down, when the entropy inside your body is already close to inflammatory damage.

Take a break earlier. And really let it be a break.

Not a “I just spend some time with my smartphone on the couch” type of break.

A real “I’m not doing anything now” type of break.

The middle ground between effort and flow is embodied discernment.

Your ability in any given moment of your existence to tell exactly what you are being called to: Deep rest, or focused and bold action.

That sounds simple. And it is. But it can be hard: Because fear scrambles your signal.

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Don’t allow fear to rule you

This part is personal for me because I lived inside both delusions.

I know the hustle one from the inside.

That deep-rooted feeling of never being enough made it almost impossible for me to rest without guilt.

And it wasn’t obvious to me at all that this is the core of it. I felt the symptoms, but not the root.

I treated recovery as if it were a weakness.

I was deeply afraid of silence.

Because when I was silent, the internal chaos surfaced.

And that felt unbearable.

Neuroscience finally confirmed what mystics have been saying for centuries, and it explains exactly why you’re terrified of silence:

There is a collection of brain parts called the Default Mode Network that gets activated when you become silent. It gets activated when you stop being engaged in any actual task.

And the Default Mode Network is the part of your brain that is responsible for all the stories, all the chatter, and all the self-referential noise that is playing out in your mind.

I was so afraid of that chatter. Because I lacked the strategies and the power to face it without becoming its victim. Or at least so I thought, not knowing that I have that power inside me already.

So I numbed myself with porn and gaming and anything available really, just to escape the deeper pain that emerged in real silence.

And I was always in fear.

Fear that the money would not be enough, that the effort would not be enough, that I would fall behind.

So I choose the delusion of the hustle. It was the perfect fit. But it wasn’t sustainable.

Things changed when I discovered that I have the power to face the truth.

It took courage to rest before I learned to give myself permission to rest.

It took courage to stop escaping myself.

And then I started to practice actual self-love.

I started to sit in the sun and do nothing.

I started to play with my kids without the phone in reach and without distractions.

I started to prepare meals consciously instead of listening to a podcast while cooking.

Sounds small, but it took immense courage.

Because it forced me to be present.

To be with the internal chaos.

To stay with what is, even when it felt like sh*t.

That is when “living in the moment” stopped being an idea and became a practice.

And that changed everything.

The results are real.

No, I haven’t manifested my dream life.

I do not live in the house I believe I want to live in, and my next car will be a Toyota. And I genuinely like Toyotas.

But there is more joy in everyday life.

There is no more falling into weeks of depression and confusion because I believe I have to feel a certain way or achieve something particular.

There is more consistency and more alignment in my actions because I can actually act efficiently.

I can write this piece without second-guessing every sentence.

Because I am genuinely OK with my writing not being perfect.

Actual results, and inner peace, with almost no force.

Apart, maybe, from forcing myself out of bed some mornings because our stupid industrial age type of school system demands it.

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Real manifestation is being in the right inner state while doing hard things

Greatness is built through disciplined action, trust, and the ability to regulate yourself instead of abandoning yourself.

Flow is the result of effort that feels right. Effort that feels aligned and is not coming from an energy of fear and self-betrayal.

You have to discover your pattern of self-betrayal, and then dissolve it through relentless awareness and dedication to the process.

Real manifestation is neither grind nor fantasy.

It’s practice.

Practicing to act from truth rather than fear again and again until it feels natural.

Force won’t make it.

Passivity won’t make it.

Discernment will.

If you go through phases of high motivation, then phases of laziness, that shows that you miss the signals of your body.

That phase in which you feel like you lack motivation is the crash after the brutal self-abandonment you allowed to happen.

Rest is not always weakness, and pushing harder is not always strength. The truth is more nuanced, and your body knows the answer.

Ignoring your body’s truth is what stands between you and the feeling and results you want.

That is the middle path.

Not force.

Not fantasy.

Discernment.

p.s.:

If you’re tired of the grind/fantasy cycle and ready to actually build, without destroying yourself in the process, know that I offer a limited number of Clarity Calls every month.

If you want one, send me “DISCERNMENT” via DM: https://substack.com/@freepaullouis

Or answer this email.

I reply to every message.

You could leave.

It’s the truth.

You could just pack your things and go wherever you want.

And depending on your situation, it doesn’t even have to be that dramatic.

Maybe for you, “leaving” doesn’t even have to be going to another continent.

Maybe it just means quitting your job. Or ending a relationship.

But how do you know whether it is right to stay or to go?

If you are waiting for a definite answer and total clarity, you can wait forever.

The key will be to get in touch with your depth so well that the answers come naturally.

And then you just have to decide and trust.

But before any of this even becomes possible, you have to understand what is keeping you stuck:

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Stockholm Syndrome

Stockholm syndrome only happens when the prisoner believes they have no choice.

The prisoner doesn’t just endure the captor’s reality. They adopt it.

They stop asking if there’s another option and start defending the one they’re in.

They collaborate in their own imprisonment. Not because they’re weak, but because accepting the captor’s frame means they don’t have to face the terror of truly being free.

The cage becomes the whole world. And leaving the cage means leaving everything familiar. So the prisoner makes a trade: safety inside the story, for freedom outside it.

But on the deepest level, you always have a choice. And the safety is a lie.

The choice to make is to develop the willingness to be the one responsible for what happens next. No matter what.

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It’s not true

Most people never take the time to realize the freedom they actually have.

There is no law that forbids you from living life your way.

It doesn’t exist.

What is holding you back are unwritten and unspoken laws that exist as ideas in your head.

“This is how you do things.”

Yes, but who created that?

Most of the chains are ideas created generations ago and passed along through conditioning.

But have you ever questioned their expectations?

And why would you have to comply with their expectations?

Will you really be lost, unsafe, and incapable of living a good life without their support and approval?

What is the unspoken threat that is hanging over your head?

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Why you stay

It’s easier to stay the victim - at least then someone else is to blame.

And even more importantly, it is such a good way not to have to face the unknown.

When the roles are clearly defined, when it is clear who is the perpetrator and who is the victim, nothing stays undefined.

And where nothing is undefined their is no uncertainty.

Could it be that what you are really afraid of is the uncertainty?

That you can not tell with full certainty what is going to happen once you are relying on yourself?

Because if you leave, or change, or whatever it is that you feel you want to do, and you “fail”, that will be on you.

But if you stay and fail, you were just doing “what you had to do.”

What a comforting story. But it remains a lie.

Most people would rather be a victim in a story they know than a free person in a story they don’t.

But none of the rewards you deeply desire can be achieved if you don’t face that uncertainty.

All the growth and confidence you seek are behind facing this uncertainty.

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Frankl

Ever heard of Viktor Frankl?

He’s a psychologist who survived the concentration camps of the Nazis.

Then he wrote a book. “Man’s search for meaning”

In it, he wrote about how he watched people give up in situations of real imprisonment.

For them, there really wasn’t a way out. They were actual victims. Not imagined ones.

And yet some managed to escape internally. And those were the ones who ended up surviving.

The ones who managed to choose what the suffering means were the ones who managed to survive.

Not because the circumstances changed. Not because they had hope or rescue coming. Not because they were special or chosen. But because they refused to let the criminals have the final word on who they were.

But please note:

If you’re in an actually abusive situation - physically, financially, genuinely trapped - this is a different conversation entirely.

I’m talking about the rest of us: the jobs we hate, the relationships we’ve outgrown, the lives we’ve settled into because facing the unknown feels more terrifying than staying small.

What story are you using to justify staying?

Are the circumstances actually limiting? Or are you using them to avoid the risk of having to face who you are without an excuse?

You’re waiting for permission to leave. It will never come. You have to be the one who gives it to yourself.

Most people are terrified of that. They are more afraid of their own freedom than they are of the cage.

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You are not the story

On the deepest level, you are not the story.

Not the roles, not the failures, not the narrative you’ve inherited.

You are the awareness underneath.

There is a part of you watching your thoughts right now. Reading these words. Noticing the story.

That’s you. That’s the observer. The awareness underneath the noise.

When you identify with the story, you suffer.

When you identify with the awareness — the part that can observe — circumstances become bearable.

Not because they change. Because you stop equating yourself with the content of your mind.

Because then the meaning isn’t being generated unconsciously depending on the situation.

It is then consciously chosen and generated by you.

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The two gates

This is where the practice begins. Two questions to find out where you stand:

Could you actually leave?

If yes, and you stay, you’re not trapped.

You’re choosing.

Can you watch your own story?

Sit with it. Let the thoughts run. “I’m stuck.” “They don’t get it.” “It’s not fair.” And notice: there is a part of you watching all of this. That’s not the story. That’s you.

These two questions cut through everything. They tell you where you are.

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What would you do?

What would you do if you had permission?

Not if it were safe. Not if you were sure. Just if you had permission.

Let the answer surface.

The fear will come too. Let it come.

It means you’re standing at the edge. And that’s the only place where you can grow.

Not in comfort. And not in total overwhelm.

Only in this sweetspot in between. Where the fear is present, but the expanding you can carry it.

You might leave, and it might be hard. You might regret it.

But that’s the cost of being a free person instead of a comfortable prisoner.

You can walk away from everything and still be a prisoner — because the prison isn’t out there. It’s in what you’ve identified as.

p.s.:

If you could see yourself in this trap while reading, and you finally want to break out, know that I offer a limited number of Clarity Calls every month.

If you want one, send me “CLARITY” via DM: https://substack.com/@freepaullouis

Or answer this email.

I reply to every message.

I was 26, and believe me, I was not doing well.

I had this constant low-energy feeling.

And not only that. At some point, there was real physical pain.

Not just low energy, my body felt like it was breaking down.

At 26!

Especially, there was this mystical stomach pain.

After visiting some doctors and not hearing anything concrete or even useful, I committed myself to the local hospital.

It was a move of desperation.

I was sure something physical must be wrong with me. Some weird illnesses or something. Maybe caused genetically or through some wrong diet or something.

But the root cause turned out to be something much less graspable and much more perplexing.

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A harsh realization

The first surprising experience was this:

I was put into a room with someone so goddamn broken it made me immediately become grateful for my health.

Yes, this was crazy ironic. I was sick and confused and depressed, lying in a hospital bed with pain no one understood, but I started to be more grateful than I had ever been before.

My roommate was waiting for his 4th (!) liver. He was such a hopeless alcoholic that he had his liver transplanted 2 times already.

And now he had to wait for his 4th liver to be ready. He looked as close as a human can look compared to this yellow monster from Sin City.

And compared to that condition, I was the healthiest person in the world.

Living in a hospital room with this broken human changed my life forever. I am so fucking grateful for the experience.

It was like life hit me in the face with what I needed to see:

You have so much potential, Paul. You are just 26. You are not broken yet. Look how bad things can get if you don’t take care of yourself.

My stay in the hospital started with this surreal experience, and it got so surreal and mystical in the coming days that it’s safe to say that it was the most profound and life-changing experience I’ve had so far.

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Flying through the halls

After a few days of checking me and my condition and analysing my blood, the nurses and doctors concluded that nothing was wrong with me.

Lol. There I was lying in this ugly hospital bed, vulnerable as fuck, in actual pain and worry, and what they were telling me was: You’re fine.

WTF? Does that mean I am just imagining this? Why the fuck is this so painful then?

They suggested one last way to find out if something is wrong inside my stomach: gastroscopy.

They said it’s not a big deal, they do it all the time with patients, and it’s the only thing that they can think of that may result in a concrete diagnosis.

OK. So I agreed, not having the slightest idea about what the fuck I had signed up for.

The day the gastroscopy should happen, I first had to wait very long time.

They had brought me down to the room where it would happen hours before the actual procedure. So for hours I was lying in my bed in the hospital hallway.

And with every minute passing, I felt more and more shame. More and more despair. Less and less worthy.

A young man, physically broken by something non-existent.

I felt meaningless, empty, and wrong.

At some point, they rolled me into my bed in the room.

Then they explained what they would do. They said they would give me sedation, so I would fall asleep and “notice nothing.”

That is exactly what they said. That I would “notice nothing.”

They gave me a hit of their something through the veins.

BAM. Heat rushing from the needle through my whole body.

I never felt anything like that ever before. WOW.

But I didn’t fall asleep.

They waited some time that felt like a minute or two. Then they checked on me?

“We will give you a bit of a higher dosage because some patients need that.”

OK.

BAM, they gave me another hit. That same feeling of heat rushing through all my veins.

And this time, things started to feel different.

It’s hard to explain, but everything became lighter. I started to smile. And the voice of the people in the room became more distant.

I heard them say things like, “He’s an actor.” (which was weird), “I think we have to give him more.”

At that point, I couldn’t take part in the conversation anymore, but I also didn’t care.

I trusted. All of a sudden, it was so easy to trust.

I was suddenly OK with whatever would happen or be done.

I surrendered totally and didn’t feel vulnerable at all.

Then they gave me another hit. And they expected me to fall asleep. But I stayed fully awake. Fully conscious. I noticed everything.

They ran out of time, and so they decided to go ahead despite me being conscious.

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The metal snake

I noticed it all. I wasn’t sedated. There was no pain, but I also didn’t sleep.

They put something in my mouth so that I couldn’t bite anymore.

And then I saw it right in front of my face.

A metal snake. It wasn’t really a snake, but it looked like one.

It was some tool that doctors use to look into people’s stomachs.

It is really long, enters your body through your mouth, and ends up in your stomach.

I had to vomit, and I loved the warmth of my own vomit running down my cheeks.

I was face fucked by a metal snake, and for some weird reason, whatever they had pumped into my veins made me enjoy it.

It should have felt unbearable.

Instead, I met it with a kind of total, drug-induced surrender.

Then the procedure was over, and the metal snake was gone.

But the strangest part had not even begun yet.

While I was being pushed out of the room in my hospital bed, I felt like I was hovering over it.

I was so incredibly light. I never felt that kind of lightness and love and connectedness ever before.

In that moment. For the very first time in my adult life, I could feel God.

I literally believed I was Jesus in that moment and that I would be OK for the rest of my life.

This is especially strange because I had not grown up religiously, and I had nothing to do with Christianity at all.

But looking back at that moment, it doesn’t even matter.

Because one thing is undeniable for me: I experienced an unmistakable sense of power and grace.

And I have never been the same again. This one experience started to make me wonder: What is really going on?

And no matter how hard I tried after this experience to deny the existence of God, the feeling would get back to me and remind me that there is something greater that I can not deny.

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Fentanyl

By now, I have found out with very high certainty that I had been given Fentanyl that day.

It felt really crazy realizing this. They just gave me Fentanyl without telling me before?

Isn’t it crazy that you are being given these opioids in the hospital, while you are always being told how bad and dangerous they and all other drugs are?

Of course, I know of the horrible epidemic that these kinds of opioids have caused.

And I can very clearly see how, in another set and setting, this very experience could have made me become addicted.

Because it is true: Ever since that moment, I want to recreate that intensity of connectedness.

But thankfully, I could see that the way to the ongoing embodiment of that feeling is not through drugs. But through integration.

In that moment, while I was floating through the hospital hallways, it felt like I was given a mission.

It felt like I was given the mission of integrating all the shadows and all the trauma that I had ignored up until then.

And reflecting on it in the following weeks and months made me realize:

My body was speaking a language my worldview could not translate.

I had thought I had a physical problem to solve. But in truth, I had a reality problem.

And this is not only about hospital beds, stomach pain, or near-mystical drug experiences.

Most people never get a moment this dramatic.

But many live with some recurring signal they keep trying to silence:

exhaustion, anxiety, numbness, compulsive habits, a relationship pattern, a quiet sense that something is off.

Different symptoms. Same message.

Something in life is asking to be faced.

Then, I was looking for something to fix.

Now, I look for something to face.

Then, I wanted a diagnosis that would explain everything and spare me from deeper truth.

Now, I understand that pain is not always just physical or just psychological - it is life forcing honesty through the body because the mind is still too defended to listen.

I was not just in pain. I was disconnected from meaning.

My glimpse at God’s power helped me believe in a deeper purpose of it all. And recalling that very experience of connectedness has helped me through a lot of dark moments ever since.

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Pain is a signal

The doctors found nothing.

But the pain was gone.

Not because something in my body was fixed. Because I was shown the truth and was ready to face it.

My body had no need to create pain anymore to make me see what I refused to notice.

And that was just the beginning.

The real work of integration is happening after the mystical experience. It looks like facing what you had avoided. Telling yourself the truth when it’s easier to lie. Examining the shadows that come up when you are being emotionally triggered.

If a mystical experience does not change how you live sober, it becomes just another fantasy.

Altered states can reveal. But they cannot substitute for true, deep, honest practice.

Insight without embodiment is just another form of self-deception.

Face your shadows now. Or life will do it for you — and it won’t be gentle.

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How about you?

What is your version of my stomach pain?

It mustn’t even be a physical sensation, pain, or illness.

It might just be this feeling that keeps haunting you that you avoid.

Or this pattern that keeps manifesting in your life.

If you read this far, you probably know exactly what it is.

What in your life keeps forcefully demanding your attention?

What discomfort have you been trying to silence instead of understanding?

What if your suffering is not random noise, but a signal asking for honesty?

p.s.:

If this hits something real in you, and you are ready to stop circling your pain and start working with it, know that I offer a limited number of Clarity Calls every month.

If you want one, send me “INTEGRATION” via DM: https://substack.com/@freepaullouis

Or answer this email.

I reply to every message.

I recently sat through a coaching call that made my skin crawl. The topic was trust, but the advice was dangerous.

It wasn’t only about trust in business, but about the actual foundation of trust.

What is it? How is it being built? What destroys it?

And about how people distrust because they have been scammed or betrayed in some ways.

The advice that made me back off was this:

“Erase the word ‘scammer’ from your dictionary. If you only see the good, only good will come to you.”

It stunned me a bit. The energy with which this was carried seemed genuine and true. But it also triggered me.

I was scammed before. And more importantly than that, I have studied human history.

I know the atrocities that humans are capable of.

At that moment, I didn’t find the words to describe this form of advice. But weeks later on a walk it hit me: It’s toxic positivity.

It’s a form of spiritual bypassing.

It asks you to blind yourself to reality in exchange for a false sense of safety.

Spiritual maturity isn't about ignoring the darkness.

It’s about being incorruptible by it.

And to become that, you have to name things for what they are. Not erase words from your dictionary.

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Juicy Fields

Good marketing and a vibe of ease and chill.

That’s how they got me.

“Juicy Fields.” They posted as a startup that would democratize access to the booming marijuana market.

The allure of passive income and easy wealth got the better of me, and got me to invest some savings into their scam.

Not having the word “scammer” in my dictionary wouldn’t have protected me from it.

I wouldn’t have been protected by trusting them even more.

I would have been protected if I hadn’t been operating from an energy of lack.

If I hadn’t believed that I needed to make a lot of money fast, and if I hadn’t believed that I could make money without providing real value.

In other words, I was greedy. And that’s what made me vulnerable.

And I could have only come to this realization through the experience of being betrayed.

Without the failure and the overwhelming emotion that hit me when I realized that I was really scammed, and that the money is gone forever, I would have never been able to gain these deep insights into what was going on inside of me.

I was able to go from victim to power through this experience.

And the breakthrough that enabled this was not forgiving the scammers or focusing on the fact that they are good people in pain. (Even though that is true.)

The breakthrough was refusing to create a self-deprecatory narrative around the experience.

Instead of saying: “I was scammed, that means all the world is bad, and I am a helpless victim for the rest of my life", I said “thank you for this wake-up call. This was exactly the kind of experience I needed. It hurts, but nothing happens without a reason. What does this teach me?”

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Holodomor and Holocaust

Let me be honest with you: This scam was the most evil thing that ever happened to me. I am blessed beyond words.

It is ridiculous compared to the evil that exists in this world.

You can not find a century in the history of humanity that is not full of horrible stories of pure evil.

Studying the history of the 20th century shaped me the most. Because it is so recent.

Stalinism, the gulags, the Holodomor (starvation of Ukrainians), the Holocaust.

The evil is ideologically neutral. It will wear any political mask to get what it wants.

It’s not that some people are evil and others are not. Everyone has the full capacity to be evil and to be good.

If you haven’t looked into the grim nature of these events yet, I recommend you do. It has completely changed the level of gratitude that I bring to my day-to-day life.

The crimes against humanity committed throughout the history of humanity, and also the ones being committed today, are not misunderstandings.

Yes, true, Hitler and Stalin just needed more love. But what good is that knowledge if you are facing a possessed monster? Not calling it a monster won’t make it run away, and trying to stop hurting you.

These atrocities were and are manifestations of evil. And to erase the word evil from our vocabulary is to dishonor the millions who suffered under it.

History teaches us that when we stop naming evil, we decrease the ability to resist it.

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Protection vs. Corruption

Choosing love does not mean being naive.

Choosing love is an act of duty.

What if life is a battlefield between good and evil, and your only job is to choose love over fear every time?

Then you have to be able to name the evil. You have to be able to name the fear.

Otherwise, you have no discernment. Otherwise, you can not navigate around evil when it is making you offers.

And naming the evil for what it is doesn’t mean you can’t forgive.

Forgiveness is an extremely important part of healing from betrayal. But it is not what will ultimately free you.

Just like God does not exist as a bearded wise man in the sky, the devil does not exist as a red guy with horns on his head.

Nonetheless, the devil makes you offers. He wants to buy your soul.

And he offers you material gains.

Drugs. Cars. Prostitutes. All the “good “ stuff that you do not need, but are being told you need, until you believe it.

But when you manage to say no to all the offers, something special happens.

Embodiment. Alignment.

When you have it, you can feel it.

It is more than a fancy spiritual term you read in texts like this.

It is a visceral irreplaceable feeling.

It emerges from inside you when you live from the energy of your higher self.

And it makes you incorruptible.

None of the offers stick anymore.

Give me your soul, and I'll give you this amazing pussy. All you have to do is lie to your wife sometimes.

No thanks. I’m good.

Give me your soul, and I will give you this amazing salary. Think of all the good stuff you can buy with it! And all you have to do is work for this company that ruthlessly exploits people.

No thanks. I’m good.

I’m good.

Not “there is no evil, there are no scammers, I erase the words from my dictionary.”

No. I’m good.

When you live in alignment, you become protected.

Not because all the evil is gone from the world, but because you have let go of the material attachments, the hooks that evil uses to grab you.

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The Practical Application

How do you do this practically in your life starting today?

You audit your responses.

You practice awareness so often and with such high intensity that you are able to see through everything that happens.

Everything that happens asks for a response from you.

Will you react from an energy of lack and buy into the seduction, or will you see through it from your vantage point of awareness and say, “No thanks”?

You can have the material promise of the scammer or the divine protection. You cannot have both.

You can still have a lot of wealth and abundance. But that will only come from the real value you provide.

Because if you gained it through a way that you know is evil, you will not be able to enjoy it. Everything that you will spend it on will have this bitter taste of guilt. And you will not be able to run from this.

Evil exists. It is real, it is active, and it is looking for an opening.

Are you "erasing words" from your dictionary to feel safe, or are you sharpening your discernment so you can actually be of service?

If building this type of unshakeable inner resilience is what you want to do, but you don’t know how and where to start:

I offer a limited number of Clarity Calls each month. If you want one, send me “ALIGNMENT” via DM: https://substack.com/@freepaullouis

Or answer this email.

I reply to every message.

You won’t get around facing a mirror.

You will enter a bathroom again. You will enter an elevator again.

You will want to wash your hands and brush your teeth.

And you will be confronted with the fact that it is hard to look yourself in the eyes.

What the fuck.

Why should it be hard to look into your own eyes?

Below the physical act, what is happening when you look yourself in the eyes?

What is that glitch moment?

Is it the artifact of something deeper?

And if yes, what the fuck is it?

Why can’t I look myself in the eyes without squirming, without wanting to hide, without weird “body English”?

I’ve been there, and I didn’t want to accept it as something I would have to live with.

This felt heavier and deeper than just short moments in front of the mirror. It felt like these moments were symptomatic of my whole life.

If I can’t look myself in the eyes, what else am I not willing and able to face?

So I went as deep into my subconscious as my ability would allow me to. What I have discovered is deeper than can be explained with words. But I will try my best…

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The body keeps the score

The book with the same name by Bessel van der Kolk describes how psychological trauma is stored in the nervous system, rather than just in the mind.

Forget the clinical definitions of trauma. Your ego uses those to convince you that you’re “fine” because you weren’t physically abused.

Trauma is any form of experience that severely shapes the way we perceive reality.

This does not necessarly has to be a heavily traumatic event like abuse. This can also be milder forms of traumatization. Emotional neglect, rough handling by parents, that wouldn’t count as violence, etc.

When we are children, we still lack the ability to process overwhelming experiences. So, we store them in the basement of the subconscious. And we hire a bodyguard—the mind—to make sure we never go down there again.

That bodyguard is still on the clock. He’s over-motivated, loud, and using tactics you never agreed to.

He’s telling you stories that are not true.

He’s protecting you from ghosts that can no longer hurt you.

That way, we don’t have to feel.

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Doing nothing

Whatever “core wound” you are suffering from.

Whatever your story. You will not get past it through intellectual discourse.

You can not think your way out of trauma. And remember: Even subtle trauma can shape your life in deeper ways than you would assume.

You can read all the self-help books in the world, but if your nervous system is wired to believe you are not safe, the mind will keep screaming.

And it will successfully “protect” you from overcoming your trauma.

Those physical symptoms—the tight chest, the restless legs, the inability to hold your own gaze—are invitations.

They are the body’s way of saying: Something here needs to be felt.

So. What is the memory you are running from?

What story has your mind manufactured around that memory to keep you “safe”?

That is how you go…

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…from Victim to Alchemist

The goal is not to fix the original perpetrator. Often, it is even impossible to clearly identify one.

It’s never about fixing the past or getting apologies.

The goal is to reclaim your power.

To reach a state of graceful indifference.

This isn't the indifference of "not caring." This form of indifference makes you care so deeply about the presence that you can not allow yourself to be anchored by what happened in the past.

But you won’t get there through being encouraged to “get over it” by a quote on Instagram.

You only get there through doing the actual work of sitting with your memories, uncovering the false beliefs you have created around them, and finally, courageously and boldly living from a new reality that is ideally as close to your intuitive truth as possible.

Next time you’re at the mirror, don’t look away. Stay.

The discomfort is the amnesia breaking.

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Power

How can your history stop being a burden and start being a source of power?

Because from a spiritual viewpoint, you can see that there must be a deeper reason for why you had to experience what you have experienced.

So when you can not look into your eyes in the mirror calmly, this is the reason.

It is the manifestation of a soul that has forgotten what it is.

The eyes are the door to the soul, not only in a poetic sense.

The moment your soul meets itself through the gaze through its own eyes, a remembering is triggered.

And when you, the infinite soul you truly are, are in deep amnesia, you are not ready for that remembering. And so you run.

If you're tired of squirming in front of your own reflection, let's do the work together.

I offer a limited number of Clarity Calls each month. If you want one, send me “MIRROR” via DM: https://substack.com/@freepaullouis

Or answer this email.

I reply to every message.

Jordan B. Peterson probably saved my life.

I was so f*cking lost before I was introduced to his ideas.

I was constantly in my own way.

Not everything about my liberal upbringing was bad, but it surely did some major harm.

It had resulted in me feeling guilty for being. Every impulse to create, lead, or act was immediately suppressed by this guilt.

Ideas died before they were born because I had already judged them.

Being a man felt wrong. All I could see in the history of humanity was cruelty, extortion, and malice.

Paralysis, passivity, inertia, self-rejection.

And to run from that, I was hiding by playing video games and watching porn until my body couldn’t keep up.

I didn’t see any reason to live. I couldn’t find any meaning, and I needed a father figure to show me a different way of interpreting what was and is going on.

JBP did that for me.

He gave me structure when my life was pure chaos.

He gave me the language I lacked for responsibility, discipline, and meaning.

He helped me restore my dignity as a man.

And no matter how much I disagree with any particular political statements he made or will make, I will be forever grateful for his influence and inspiration.

With that being said, I recently discovered how I evolved beyond what he taught me.

I discovered that he was my teacher for a season of my life. But not for the whole of my life.

And without that evolution, I might have just ended up building a much better prison for myself.

The perfectly ordered man has a clean room, a 5 am wake-up call, a high-paying job, or a profitable business, but he is brittle.

I might take only one tiny thing that goes off-script, and that man snaps.

For someone drowning in chaos, “clean your room” is not trivial. It’s existential rescue.

Yet when you are past that phase, you know you are ready to look at an even bigger void.

The void that opens up when you realize that you don’t know anything.

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Order in Chaos?

JBP introduced me to the idea that life’s meaning may be to bring order into chaos.

And while that is exactly what I needed at the time, later I started to overdo it.

I started trying to order everything.

While finally getting my house, my family, my finances, my health, and my psychology in order was the best thing I have ever done, I quietly became attached to everything being in order.

I finally had the energy and tools to create stability, but I still lacked resilience.

Resilience is the ability to be with chaos. The ability not to have to bring order into it.

The ability to discern between what chaos I can and should bring order into and what chaos I should let be.

Without noticing, I had traded an obvious addiction for a more subtle one that is also being accepted by society.

I traded my addiction to comfort and numbing for perfectionism.

And all the while, the pain of not being able to bring perfect order into the world made me relapse into porn and gaming addiction again.

I went from avoiding life to trying to control life.

Order isn’t the cure for addiction. It is a prerequisite to trust.

Which is the cure.

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What If Chaos Isn’t Chaos?

What if there is no chaos to bring order to?

What if much of what we call chaos is simply an order we do not yet understand?

Human perception is very limited.

We do not see the world for what it is. If we were, our brains would be in constant overload.

Instead, we are simulating the past and the future to find out how to act.

That’s the reason why you can cross the street without being run over. You simulate the event of being hit by a car, and because of that simulation, you can navigate the traffic environment safely.

We do the same with the past. Whenever we receive new information, we compare it with our internal arc of memory and run simulations about what this means for our safety and the future that we envision.

Anxiety is simply a simulation that has lost its connection to the present moment. (Neuroscience proves this, btw)

That got me thinking:

Is that the reason why we call nature chaotic?

Do we call it chaos because we lack the ability to see nature for what it really is?

Nature looks chaotic until you study ecosystems.

Forests, rivers, fungal networks, seasons, weather systems, regeneration cycles.

None of these are random. They are dynamic, adaptive, intelligent forms of perfect order.

There is a divine design in nature.

All of humanity’s inventions are forks of an already present, perfect blueprint from nature.

The internet mimics mycelium.

In computer science, you always have a variety of protocols that compete against each other for adoption. And in the end, the one that is the closest to the divine intelligent design of nature wins the competition.

And whenever human design ignores the principles of the higher design, it creates problems.

Monoculture destroys biodiversity and destroys its own purpose.

Plantations are “ordered” but ecologically dead and fragile. A forest looks chaotic to us, but it is resilient and alive because of its complexity.

Concrete city grids and rigid architecture create societal tension.

When we fork nature but remove the feedback loops of the ecosystem, the system crashes.

You cannot fork a super-intelligent design, leave out a core part, and expect it to work.

You cannot fork Bitcoin, remove the consensus mechanism, and expect it to work.

Human "order" is often a hard fork that loses the security of the original chain (Nature).

Traditional and indigenous societies understood this more deeply.

Instead of trying to tame it without respecting it. They lived with nature.

They recognized intelligence in cycles, land, seasonality, and interdependence.

This isn't a call to go live in a teepee and eat berries. It’s a call to stop acting like a colonial governor.

Indigenous societies sure had and have their issues! Human sacrifice is one of them, just as an example.

But we can also learn a lot from integrating what they have done (and still do) better than we do, without having to let go of all the amazing progress we have created.

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What Peterson Got Wrong

JBP framed life heavily as a struggle to impose order on chaos.

It is an amazingly helpful and powerful frame at a certain stage of development.

But it subtly trains people to mistrust uncertainty, spontaneity, and the intelligence of life itself.

It can make the individual relate to reality as an adversary rather than a partner.

Growth does not always mean imposing control.

Some control might be necessary, given the circumstances, but the deepest growth happens when you let go.

And the old scriptures have all been telling that tale.

Peace does not come from eliminating unpredictability.

It comes from deep inner alignment. True embodied resilience, so that unpredictability becomes embraceable.

Human order is not superior to natural order.

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From Control to Cooperation

Peterson was right about responsibility.

He was wrong if responsibility means hyper-control.

True responsibility includes humility before a larger intelligence.

The mature man does not just impose order.

He learns to discern the order already present.

Real peace begins when you stop trying to force reality into your preferred timeline and instead act from trust and alignment. You still take responsibility and cultivate discipline. But without gripping too hard.

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Masculinity is not evil

The liberal viewpoint that played a role in destroying my life sees masculine power as inherently destructive.

I am forever grateful for JBP freeing me of that useless guilt.

From what I’ve gleaned, he sees masculine power as necessarily constructive.

That helped.

But could it be even more? Not only constructive but participatory.

Instead of ordering everything, can we be part of nature’s own self-ordering?

Peterson teaches you to be a plantation. That’s much better than being nothing! But what if you could be a forest?

Mature masculine energy can protect, lead, build, and hold structure.

But it should also know when not to interfere.

It should be able to trust life enough to move with it, not just against it.

Strength is not only the ability to impose form. It’s more importantly the capacity to remain grounded in uncertainty.

If this inspired you, it might be time to go deeper. I offer a small number of free coaching sessions each month to help you achieve freedom and lasting good energy, so that you are free to create the life that you want.

If you want one, send me “FREEDOM” via DM: https://substack.com/@freepaullouis

Or answer this email.

I reply to every message.

Listening to Bryan Johnson talking about the science of longevity has deeply inspired me.

What an incredible effort and what a radical form of surrender.

The man decided to surrender all of his lifestyle decisions to scientific insights.

But here is where he lost me: “Don’t die.”

I get it. It’s a marketing slogan.

But there is more to it. Bryan seems to really believe it.

He truly seems to believe that you could not ever die. And looking at the technology that is available today, I don’t think that the idea is too crazy.

But what I do think is crazy is believing that you would want to never die.

Nonduality teaches this simplicity:

There is the never-changing source.

And then there is time and space.

We are “lost” in time and space.

But I believe there is a deeper reason for that, and there is value in being “trapped” here.

“Don’t die” promises one thing: You can take time out of time and space.

Wait a second. You think you can take time out of the divine design of the universe and get away with it?

I think that’s a crazy idea.

Everything positive that has manifested in my life has manifested through surrendering to the greater divine design of things.

Every meaningful and positive transformation I have observed in others has come because of a form of embodied surrender to the greater divine design of reality.

That observation makes it impossible for me to believe that eliminating time from the design will lead to anything good.

On the contrary. I wonder:

If you knew you’d never die, would you still value your life?

If you truly believed you were endless, would you call your parents today?

Would you forgive faster?

Would you take more risks or fewer?

Would you waste less time arguing or more?

Longevity is a multiplier.

But if you multiply emptiness, you just get more emptiness.

We need to stop confusing duration with meaning.

Quality > quantity

I’d rather have a long, healthy life full of meaning than an endless, meaningless one.

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From Biohacker to Human

A couple of years back, when I discovered Bryan Johnson and his teachings and products, it so happened that my health became a full-time management project.

Even though I was already very healthy by anyone’s standards.

Nontheless I started tracking every metric, started to try to find the perfect combination of supplements, and dial my exercise routine in perfectly.

But then I realized I spent so much time preparing to live that it ate away the time I was able to spend actually living.

I had 100 new things to manage—and less joy to show for it.

So I decided to simplify this and create a sane protocol.

Not an optimized Blueprint that only works for someone who has all the time in the world.

But a protocol tailored to my life full of responsibilities.

The 80/20 rule saved me once again.

20% of the effort make 80% of the results.

20% in this case meant taking care that thefundamentals are dialed in:

Healthy sleep, healthy diet, regular exercise.

Dropping the almost neurotic micromanagement of all the other stuff that really only makes a difference if you want to be a pro athlete or extend your life time beyond any reasonable expectation.

Dropping the obsession with supplements.

Dropping the need to have performance metrics.

The relief of the cognitive load was so worth it.

I gladly trade a few years of this life for having the bandwidth to do what matters to me and gives me meaning and fulfillment now.

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Is Your Optimization a Mask?

If you read that far, you might have fallen into the optimization trap yourself.

Ask yourself: Is your obsession with "perfect health" actually just a fear of facing your own mortality?

Perfectionism in any context is a way to avoid the messy and unpredictable reality of being alive.

It’s no different when you are hunting for the perfect health routine.

The goal isn’t to win against death. It’s to participate fully before it arrives.

You can have a perfect resting heart rate and still be a ghost in your own life.

In contrast: Accepting mortality creates clarity.

When you are at peace with the finitude of life, you focus on meaning over metrics.

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The 4,000 Weeks Reality

~4,000 weeks is how much time you have in this lifetime.

And you know that. Whether you think about it or not.

Someone died when you were a child, and at the latest, this was when you finally understood. This will end.

And because you know that it will end, you see meaning in being alive.

Without an end, there is no story, no urgency, no love that deepens.

Death is the boundary that creates intensity.

I’m not against optimizing health. I’m against confusing duration with meaning.

I invite you to treat your health as infrastructure.

It’s the basics that count. Sleep, real food, strength, walking, sunlight.

It gives you the energy to do the real work.

Instead of asking “How do I live longer?”, ask “How do I show up more fully for the time I have?”

You aren't going to win the game against death. No one does.

The goal is to participate fully in the game while the clock is running.

Accept your mortality. It won't lead to despair.

It will lead to the most intense clarity you’ve ever experienced.

If you enjoyed this and want to explore how I can help you achieve freedom and lasting good energy—know that I offer a small number of free coaching sessions each month to help you with exactly that.

If you want one, send me “ENERGY” via DM: https://substack.com/@freepaullouis

Or answer this email.

I reply to every message.

I went to a fine arts high school.

Sounds amazing, and it was not all bad.

But in reality, it was a regular state-financed high school that just had some more focus on fine arts classes.

In practicality, that meant we had to perform our instrument on stage twice a year and get graded for it.

What a horrible idea to grade young students for their artistic expression!

I vividly remember one of those performances when I was around 14 years.

I wanted to play pop music because that’s what I had a passion for.

But my teacher was obsessed with the classical “canon.”

He had the power to grade artistic expressions at his own will. No oversight at all.

He always claimed to have made his choices based on technique. But in reality, he made it based on sympathy and taste.

I was the only student in the whole class who chose a pop piece.

And that’s why he wanted to break me.

He wanted to punish me for not validating his taste.

In his world, he was the one with superior taste, and anyone who would dare to question that was a lesser worthy individual.

I was so angry. I had practiced. I had shown initiative. And I was punished for it.

To how many young people do we do this?

This shameful experience, along with other similar experiences, clouded the way that I related to my creativity for years to come!

It blocked me.

But years later, I discovered what was wrong with him. And I found the power to forgive.

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A shadow artist

Julia Cameron made me see it.

In her book “The Artist’s Way,” she described my teacher.

She described the concept of a shadow artist. And it was the perfect match for him.

He wanted to be a composer, a performing artist, or a conductor. But he didn’t make it.

He “only” made it as a high-school teacher.

And that would be fine. If he hadn’t settled for it.

He allowed his unfulfilled dreams to turn into rot.

When you are drawn to a creative path — that is not just an idea or hobby.

It’s a goddamn spiritual calling.

It’s your soul’s desire.

And if you deny that. And block that expression from happening, you are effectively going against your higher purpose.

Out of fear — the writer who becomes an editor.

Out of fear — the visionary who becomes a cynical critic.

Out of fear — the healer stays in a corporate job and “manages” people’s problems instead of solving them.

Out of fear!

And that, my friends, is how you create resentment and make sure to turn yourself into a bitter person.

And then you walk around with envy. You see someone else doing what you wish you had the courage to do, and it makes you mad.

It could inspire you. But you already went down the path of neglect for too long.

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The Shift

I was well on that path of neglect my self.

Because I didn’t know better, I had allowed my music teacher shadow artist, to create my belief system.

He instilled the belief in me that I am not talented or worthy of a career as an artist, and I allowed that to happen.

So I started to hate him for that.

When I didn’t create like I said I would. I blamed my past.

When I didn’t apply for a scholarship, like I said I would. I blamed my past.

When I didn’t learn my lines. I blamed my past.

All the time, not seeing that through an act of understanding and forgiveness, I could rewrite that belief instantly.

Through working through The Artist Way by Julia Cameron, I discovered that I can be grateful for the experience.

My teacher showed me exactly what I do not want to become.

And gave me some extra motivation to prove that I am worthy of creating whatever the f*ck I want to create.

Seeing the possibility of that change was the first (and easier) step.

The second (harder) step was to embody that new perspective.

I had to start acting as if I were free and as if I believed in my talents.

I had to live daily with forgiveness and gratitude.

That required attention, dedication, and practice.

And it worked.

I now publish without any fear.

I create without any shame.

And I build out my dream life without asking for permission.

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The inner censor

That little critic inside that is trying to destroy your dreams and is trying to be correct and safe all the time doesn’t know better.

He just pretends to.

The ego pretends to be "knowledgeable" or "above it all" to avoid the vulnerability of being a beginner.

And this has a high cost.

When we live as Shadow Artists, we don't just hurt ourselves — we become the "monsters" in other people’s stories.

We project our lack of fulfillment onto those who are actually trying.

When your inner censor is still powerful and is still deciding what you need permission for, start looking at whose limiting beliefs you adopted and who you need to forgive and be grateful for.

Identify your “monsters.”

Who are you still creating stories about?

Who are you still cursing for what they have done to you?

What do you need to start forgiving them?

Are you going to keep being a shadow, or are you ready to step into the light of your own potential?

If this moved you, and you want to go deeper on that path and discover how you can make full use of your potential, know that I offer a small number of free coaching sessions each month to help you with exactly that.

If you want one, send me “SHADOW” via DM: https://substack.com/@freepaullouis

Or answer this email.

I reply to every message.

I felt guilty for wanting more constantly.

I wanted more abundance.

More love.

More freedom.

More impact.

And I felt guilty for it.

Because there was a hidden limiting belief inside my subconscious that said:

“I should not crave anything but what is now. Because desire is the root of all suffering.”

Turns out that was confusion.

I failed at interpreting Eastern spirituality in a useful and truthful way.

Then I noticed a pattern through which this limiting belief sneaks into Western spirituality.

Pop-Buddhism soundbites and quotes on social media.

But they are just superficial interpretations, not truly reflecting what the original teachings say.

They do more harm than good, because they paralyze people and bring them into confusion with their natural ambitions.

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My Arjuna Moment

So I procrastinated hard.

I felt I wanted to build a coaching career.

But I judged my own desire for abundance and impact as unspiritual.

I used the idea of detachment as a shield to avoid taking risks.

I told myself I was being mindful. But in reality, I was afraid.

Good for me, I took the time to read original texts (in their translations) and wasn’t relying on superficial, useless interpretations.

It was the Bhagavad Gita that punched me in the face in the best way possible.

Because here’s what it actually teaches: (Please read the book yourself, it’s short)

It tells the story of a warrior on the battlefield.

And he is just as paralyzed as many of us are. And as I was before I read the book.

He thinks a lot. And he acts little.

His dharma calls him to go into battle. A righteous battle of defense.

But he’s pulling back.

Then God talks to him:

“You have a right to action, but not to the fruits of action.”

It sounds like a simple line, but it made all the difference for me.

To me, this means not all desire is wrong.

It means that living in alignment with your soul requires engagement in the world.

Because think about it: Why else would you have a human body if not to take action with it?

Your soul came here to make experiences and manifest through the vehicle that is your human body.

You are supposed to go after your deepest desires.

You are just not supposed to be attached to the outcomes.

Can you act as if everything were possible, without needing the possibility to become true?

In other words: Desire is fire. Attachment is gripping the flame.

Everything in nature has a desire to grow.

A desire to reproduce.

So do you. As a human, in a very sophisticated and special way.

And as a human, you have special pitfalls to avoid:

Clinging to outcomes. Identity confusion. Fear of loss.

The Gita does not neglect the core teaching of Buddha.

Craving causes suffering.

But intention, vitality, and engagement do not.

So your want for more is not wrong or unspiritual and definitely not the root of suffering.

Your inability to be at ease with that want is.

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Culture of Passivity

Parts of Western culture started romantizising eastern asceticism.

They cherry-picked quotes stripped from context and reinforced the idea that a spiritual person is soft and totally free of any worldly pursuits and desires.

But the reality is this: The classical traditions were written by warriors, householders, and kings. Not monks on Instagram.

They were designed for deep study and rigorous practice over a lifetime.

For people actually living in a world of instability and real challenges.

For a demanding, transformative discipline and not a performative consummation.

Superficially interpreting these classical and powerful texts as if the goal of life were just to chill in the moment leads to passive living that pretends to be wisdom.

It leads to a decline in health because its followers and believers lack the purpose and discipline to take care of their bodies.

Over a long enough time, this lifestyle breeds resentment.

Live out of alignment with your dharma for too long, and you will start hating the world.

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We all want peace

If you still believe that being passive is the right thing to do, please know that those taking massive actions want the same as you do.

They want peace, love, a meaningful life, and freedom from suffering.

And psychology confirms that the right interpretation of the old texts is the one that allows oneself to act in the world:

Psychology has proven that suppressing desire increases obsession.

Think of the pink elephant. Or rather, try not to think of it.

It’s called ironic process theory.

The harder you try to force yourself to fall asleep, the more awake and anxious you tend to feel.

Attempting to strictly forbid yourself from thinking about a specific "junk" food leads to obsessive cravings for that exact item.

Telling someone to "just relax" during a high-stress moment makes them feel more tense.

Too much of that suppression leads to anxiety and even depression.

The opposite is pursuing goals that are aligned with your intrinsic values. No matter how hard it is to keep pursuing them.

When you suppress desire, you shrink. When you align it, you rise.

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Calm was meant to guide ambition

The useful interpretation I missed was that the stillness, calm, and detachment are not the goal of life.

They are the preparation of the necessary and powerful action your soul demands you to take.

If your wisdom makes you weaker, smaller, safer: It’s not wisdom.

It’s paralysis dressed as spirituality.

Desire was never the problem.

Attachment to outcomes was.

Ambition is life force and with that the most pure, natural, and spiritual energy that exists.

Spirituality does not mean to withdraw like a monk.

It means full presence in action.

Arjuna was asked not to retreat from battle. But to step into it with full presence and trust.

He was asked not to abandon his power but to wield it consciously.

Not to suppress desire, but to stop gripping the outcome.

This is the path of the peaceful warrior. And it is more needed in the world than ever before.

Step on it.

If this moved you, and you want to go deeper on that path, and discover how you can make full use of your potential, know that I offer a small number of free coaching sessions each month to help you with exactly that.

If you want one, send me “ACTION” via DM: https://substack.com/@freepaullouis

Or answer this email.

I reply to every message.