I’m not going to write here about my hobbies, my favorite foods or where I like to go traveling. I don’t think that’s that interesting enough to go tell the world. If you want to know about that, just ask me. What I do want to share are a couple of insights in life that I got in the last couple of years.

These days I live with the philosophy that I don’t have to do anything and I can do everything and this is because people always have a choice. As I read in a book ‘The Mind Gym’ once: ‘Can’t is a 4 letter word’. And really, that’s all it is. No matter what happens, we always have a choice. Be it whether we choose to hate the alarm clock that wakes us up to go to work or look forward to be home early because of getting up early or whether we keep a certain job or not or where we live or who we stay in a relationship with. Of-course, each choice has its consequences and then it’s up to us to choose whether or not we want to deal with those consequences. But by shifting control of our lives from external factors such as mortgages, children, work, ... to ourselves we gain enormous power in our lives. With this power also comes more responsibility because we are always responsible for our own actions. How many people are stuck in their lives because they think they don’t have a choice? It’s all in our head and is often caused by fear of change. We are so good at thinking out disaster scenarios for when we move away from the known into the unknown but forget to see all the positive outcomes that may lie on our path. We are so afraid of change while change is the only constant in our lives. When we cling desperately to what we have and fight change we usually end up by making life miserable for ourselves.

I don’t want to make this page into a book but there is one more thing I’d like to share and it has to do with change. When we do decide to make changes we usually want everything planned out (well, that counts for a lot of people anyway :) Instead of being on the path we already want to be at the destination. This mindset makes us pretty rigid. In my life I’ve learned that being on the path is more important than reaching the destination. That doesn’t mean that having direction is bad but if we live in the moment on the path we are on then we become aware of all the opportunities that lie on that path and very often our initial destination will change and the outcomes exceed our expectations. If we only have our eye on the destination then we miss all those those forks in the road that may lead to even more beautiful places.

I’m not saying that everyone should lead his/her life this way. With this I just want to make people aware that we do have choices in life. That choice may to be to explore what I’ve written here further or it could be to discard it and move on. For those who want to explore it further I’ll admit it’s not always the easiest way but for me it’s the most rewarding.

And one last thing: have fun in live, pursue your passions, love yourself and be compassionate to others.