No U-turn allowed

This blog is analyzing the origins of specific points of which I am walking the consequences right now in my day to day life. A U-turn to go back in time to correct or change my decisions is no option, so I will have to investigate specific moments in my past to be able to understand and correct myself here and now. Only so I will be able to stop ever returning patterns.

Today a new fact popped up that is adding to the list of consequences that have manifested since we as a family are back in society so to say. Already for a certain time I am seeing that since we moved to Italy, or maybe better, since we decided to move to Italy we started to plant a series of ‘things’ (I can’t figure out right now what should be a proper name) that grew over the years and which we are harvesting now, without having kept track of everything we have planted. I speak in we to indicate me and my partner as we are partners in crime in this, both having thought/created and accepted and allowed.

If I look back at the motivations we had for wanting to move to Italy I see now clearly it was a wish to escape. But to escape from what? Over the years, starting somewhere in my youth, I developed a view of the world that at first was very naive since I was raised in a family that had enough wealth to live a comfortable life. Later in life I experienced more and more how the real world was working. Where at first I was frustrated by the fact I was not able to grasp how things worked because they did not seem to work as I imagined, I slowly started to see that a lot of things were fucked up and started slowly but surely to distantiate myself from the ‘real’ world, at least I tried to do so. I was not willing to accept the world I was living in and started to make plans to escape the sick society in order to create my own micro world somewhere far away from everything.

If I look back at the period that preceded our ‘escape’ to a life on the edge of society I see a series of things that have not been managed properly. Most of these things are money related, and since life is money that shouldn’t be too surprising. There are several factors playing a role here. I will try to find a beginning here in my relation to money working backwards in time.

- Still paying the consequences of the loans I had to take a few years ago

- Issues with bank accounts that have not been properly closed down resulting in bank not willing to give us a mortgage for a new house

- No income due to work opportunities that dried up and forcing me to stop being self employed and to look for a new job

- Forced to get a loan to be able to pay my taxes

- Sold our house for less money than expected

- No money from the fine the first buyer of our house had to pay after he signed but could not pay for the house

- Extra expenses for lawyers and cleaning after a non successful sale and rent of our house

- Irregular income as self-employed consultant leading to a not so clear picture of what my financial situation was

- Lost job after not having a contract renewed due to lack of money within that company

- Changed job because I was looking for new challenges (From HP to a small company)

- Changed job because I felt I was doing work below my capabilities (From Ikea to HP)

So, where did it go wrong? Maybe my motivations or starting points. Why did I decide to swap job? When I decided to leave Ikea I did not have a new job. I decided to dive into a multi level marketing business where I was supposed to sell water filters. It did take a few months and some money to understand that this was not something for me. I was not a sales person and I was not prepared to sell to my friends and family trying to convince them to get into the business too. It was in the period right after this that I met my partner. In the first months of our relationship I settled and managed to get a job at HP.

Looking back the only motivation to leave a secure job was the fact I wanted a more challenging job and did not see any opportunities. Looking deeper, and this is a pattern that will come back more often, I see that I was looking for inspiration in order to do my day to day job. In other words, based on the feeling that my job was no fun anymore and did not give me the challenges I was looking for I decided to look for something else. The fact I looked for another job is not the point here, it is the motivation that lead to the fact of leaving my job. I have not been honest with myself (and to others) about this point and the fact I left one job without having another one. Why did I lie to myself? What was so important to achieve that I decided to lie and be blind for the real facts? Was it the hope to get rich? Was it the urge to get out of a boring day to day routine? Was it the idea to be free and do whatever I liked?

At last I managed to get back to earth and stopped participating in this idea of making money with a promising story overlooking all kind of important points. And finally I popped back into my place in the matrix and started working for a new employer. Not surprisingly this whole pattern popped up again. It took a little bit more than the previous time since I was settling more and more in the matrix of life, I got married, had children and all this was ok with a day to day routine of gong to the office doing slave work, every day again the same thing.

Also here I started to feel the burden of this much too static working environment. As soon as I saw the opportunity to leave for a more challenging job I left. I choose for a small company that was still tied (read entangled) to the corporate I was working for before. The only thing I did not foresee was that the crisis already started in these years (2002) and that Corporate HP was already taking measures. This trend of reducing costs, canceling training programs (I was working as a trainer) led to the fact that a couple of years later I ran out of business (by that time I was self-employed). I could have seen that, but I was blinded by the pictures of living in a remote area in the countryside somewhere in Italy.

And here I am touching another point. Italy! Ever since I finished school and moved from Italy, where I lived most of my youth, to the Netherlands I wanted to go back to Italy. The first year in my supposed country of origin had been a hell, at least that was the way I experienced it. I had a hard time in fitting in into the Dutch society. Not because people did not allow me, I was not allowing myself to fit in. I cherished the idea of being special, I was different, the ‘Italian’ and so giving myself a identity, something I apparently thought not to have.

I carried this identity with me for a long time, actually for the whole period I was living in the Netherlands, 22 years long. When I moved to Italy in 2006 with my family I had the idea I was back in my mother country. I son discovered a lot had changed in all these years. I also discovered that it was not the same life I had back then. I had to make my own money and that was quite difficult since plan A was to work as a trainer for HP in Italy, I only overlooked the fact that due to cost reduction HP canceled more and more trainings until almost nothing. Not willing to leave the Italian Dream and see that I chose the wrong horse to bet on I adapted and managed to get part time jobs. Together with other small projects I managed to earn a modest living, but not for long.

A factor that plays an important role in my motivation to go ‘back’ to Italy, besides the idea of leaving a rotten society to live on my own in a self (almost) supporting house with veggie garden, wood for the stove and so on, was the fact I could maintain my feeling special character. For 22 years I had been the Italian guy in the Netherlands, now I was the Dutch guy in Italy! That was feeding my specialty character with a lot of energy. I topped living this character when I was getting in more and more trouble and needed to change the situation I was living in since it was not acceptable anymore.

Having been confronted with the situation of having barely to no money to live I experienced a kind of resetting of myself. When we decided I had to go to the Netherlands to look for a job I kind of started as a new born child. This was the first time I actually did live in a country with no mask on of a special character. If ever I am recalling the old times in Italy is when talking to a colleague and old classmate of mine about the good old times (lol).

Having said this I can do a step further back. The being special character started somewhere of course. It might have started at the age of 5 when, while living in Italy as a very bond child among all other children with dark hair, I was seen as special. When strolling in the city with my mother and brother we had regularly people stopping to have a look at the blonde twins and had to touch that curious fair colored hair. My mother recalls that she had to wash our hair after each visit to the city.

Although the first years on the primary school seemed quite normal and being fully integrated into the community there were still a couple of ‘anomalies’. First the fact I am a twin and that my brother and I sat in the same class for the first three years until my parents decided it was better to split us (after having changed school from a small village school to a larger suburb school).

Later we moved as a family to another place and I and my brother were together again at the European School together with Dutch classmates on a school with lots of different nationalities. A nice feeding ground for feeling special. So, having looked back this way I see that during most of my life I have been living in my special character. Not to mention I have been always proud of the fact I never smoked of felt attracted to trends without seeing I was living a character myself with the real me hiding behind this mask.

The following self forgiveness sentences are focussing on the ‘being special’ character.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel special because of having a different background compared to the people I was living/dealing with.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself not to see that all those years I allowed myself to hide behind a mask of feeling special instead of not trusting that my true self was good ‘enough’ to stand in my day to day life.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that I needed to be seen as special in order to achieve something in live/work.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel proud when people recognized the fact I was special by acknowledging I was as an Italian with wooden shoes (typical Dutch) using the best of both cultures.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to abuse the fact of not being a real Italian or Dutch person using this point as an excuse for (not) having to do specific things, thus not willing to take full responsibility for my role within society.

I commit myself to stop participating in the feeling special character as I see it is leading to deception and a false impression of comfort and safety within a non existing identity instead of just being myself in Self Honesty all the time, breath by breath.

The following self forgiveness sentences are about the fact I did not want to see the situation I maneuvered myself and my family in by moving to Italy.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to have ignored all kind of signals while pursuing my dream without realizing that my goal was not real but just an idea in my mind.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not having taken full responsibility for the consequences of my choices related to my desire to go back to Italy and the desire to live on the edge of society.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to have delayed the decision of making a change in my life until I really had to deal with the harsh consequences instead of having seen and accepted I needed to change the way I was making a living in order to avoid nasty consequences for myself and my family.

I commit myself to stop in participating in pursuing a dream and to take full responsibility for everything I do in every moment, breath after breath.

Today a new fact popped up that is adding to the list of consequences that have manifested since we as a family are back in society so to say. Already for a certain time I am seeing that since we moved to Italy, or maybe better, since we decided to move to Italy we started to plant a series of ‘things’ (I can’t figure out right now what should be a proper name) that grew over the years and which we are harvesting now, without having kept track of everything we have planted. I speak in we to indicate me and my partner as we are partners in crime in this, both having thought/created and accepted and allowed.

If I look back at the motivations we had for wanting to move to Italy I see now clearly it was a wish to escape. But to escape from what? Over the years, starting somewhere in my youth, I developed a view of the world that at first was very naive since I was raised in a family that had enough wealth to live a comfortable life. Later in life I experienced more and more how the real world was working. Where at first I was frustrated by the fact I was not able to grasp how things worked because they did not seem to work as I imagined, I slowly started to see that a lot of things were fucked up and started slowly but surely to distantiate myself from the ‘real’ world, at least I tried to do so. I was not willing to accept the world I was living in and started to make plans to escape the sick society in order to create my own micro world somewhere far away from everything.

If I look back at the period that preceded our ‘escape’ to a life on the edge of society I see a series of things that have not been managed properly. Most of these things are money related, and since life is money that shouldn’t be too surprising. There are several factors playing a role here. I will try to find a beginning here in my relation to money working backwards in time.

- Still paying the consequences of the loans I had to take a few years ago
- Issues with bank accounts that have not been properly closed down resulting in bank not willing to give us a mortgage for a new house
- No income due to work opportunities that dried up and forcing me to stop being self employed and to look for a new job
- Forced to get a loan to be able to pay my taxes
- Sold our house for less money than expected
- No money from the fine the first buyer of our house had to pay after he signed but could not pay for the house
- Extra expenses for lawyers and cleaning after a non successful sale and rent of our house
- Irregular income as self-employed consultant leading to a not so clear picture of what my financial situation was
- Lost job after not having a contract renewed due to lack of money within that company
- Changed job because I was looking for new challenges (From HP to a small company)
- Changed job because I felt I was doing work below my capabilities (From Ikea to HP)

So, where did it go wrong? Maybe my motivations or starting points. Why did I decide to swap job? When I decided to leave Ikea I did not have a new job. I decided to dive into a multi level marketing business where I was supposed to sell water filters. It did take a few months and some money to understand that this was not something for me. I was not a sales person and I was not prepared to sell to my friends and family trying to convince them to get into the business too. It was in the period right after this that I met my partner. In the first months of our relationship I settled and managed to get a job at HP.

Looking back the only motivation to leave a secure job was the fact I wanted a more challenging job and did not see any opportunities. Looking deeper, and this is a pattern that will come back more often, I see that I was looking for inspiration in order to do my day to day job. In other words, based on the feeling that my job was no fun anymore and did not give me the challenges I was looking for I decided to look for something else. The fact I looked for another job is not the point here, it is the motivation that lead to the fact of leaving my job. I have not been honest with myself (and to others) about this point and the fact I left one job without having another one. Why did I lie to myself? What was so important to achieve that I decided to lie and be blind for the real facts? Was it the hope to get rich? Was it the urge to get out of a boring day to day routine? Was it the idea to be free and do whatever I liked?

At last I managed to get back to earth and stopped participating in this idea of making money with a promising story overlooking all kind of important points. And finally I popped back into my place in the matrix and started working for a new employer. Not surprisingly this whole pattern popped up again. It took a little bit more than the previous time since I was settling more and more in the matrix of life, I got married, had children and all this was ok with a day to day routine of gong to the office doing slave work, every day again the same thing.

Also here I started to feel the burden of this much too static working environment. As soon as I saw the opportunity to leave for a more challenging job I left. I choose for a small company that was still tied (read entangled) to the corporate I was working for before. The only thing I did not foresee was that the crisis already started in these years (2002) and that Corporate HP was already taking measures. This trend of reducing costs, canceling training programs (I was working as a trainer) led to the fact that a couple of years later I ran out of business (by that time I was self-employed). I could have seen that, but I was blinded by the pictures of living in a remote area in the countryside somewhere in Italy.

And here I am touching another point. Italy! Ever since I finished school and moved from Italy, where I lived most of my youth, to the Netherlands I wanted to go back to Italy. The first year in my supposed country of origin had been a hell, at least that was the way I experienced it. I had a hard time in fitting in into the Dutch society. Not because people did not allow me, I was not allowing myself to fit in. I cherished the idea of being special, I was different, the ‘Italian’ and so giving myself a identity, something I apparently thought not to have.

I carried this identity with me for a long time, actually for the whole period I was living in the Netherlands, 22 years long. When I moved to Italy in 2006 with my family I had the idea I was back in my mother country. I son discovered a lot had changed in all these years. I also discovered that it was not the same life I had back then. I had to make my own money and that was quite difficult since plan A was to work as a trainer for HP in Italy, I only overlooked the fact that due to cost reduction HP canceled more and more trainings until almost nothing. Not willing to leave the Italian Dream and see that I chose the wrong horse to bet on I adapted and managed to get part time jobs. Together with other small projects I managed to earn a modest living, but not for long.

A factor that plays an important role in my motivation to go ‘back’ to Italy, besides the idea of leaving a rotten society to live on my own in a self (almost) supporting house with veggie garden, wood for the stove and so on, was the fact I could maintain my feeling special character. For 22 years I had been the Italian guy in the Netherlands, now I was the Dutch guy in Italy! That was feeding my specialty character with a lot of energy. I topped living this character when I was getting in more and more trouble and needed to change the situation I was living in since it was not acceptable anymore.

Having been confronted with the situation of having barely to no money to live I experienced a kind of resetting of myself. When we decided I had to go to the Netherlands to look for a job I kind of started as a new born child. This was the first time I actually did live in a country with no mask on of a special character. If ever I am recalling the old times in Italy is when talking to a colleague and old classmate of mine about the good old times (lol).

Having said this I can do a step further back. The being special character started somewhere of course. It might have started at the age of 5 when, while living in Italy as a very bond child among all other children with dark hair, I was seen as special. When strolling in the city with my mother and brother we had regularly people stopping to have a look at the blonde twins and had to touch that curious fair colored hair. My mother recalls that she had to wash our hair after each visit to the city.

Although the first years on the primary school seemed quite normal and being fully integrated into the community there were still a couple of ‘anomalies’. First the fact I am a twin and that my brother and I sat in the same class for the first three years until my parents decided it was better to split us (after having changed school from a small village school to a larger suburb school).

Later we moved as a family to another place and I and my brother were together again at the European School together with Dutch classmates on a school with lots of different nationalities. A nice feeding ground for feeling special. So, having looked back this way I see that during most of my life I have been living in my special character. Not to mention I have been always proud of the fact I never smoked of felt attracted to trends without seeing I was living a character myself with the real me hiding behind this mask.

The following self forgiveness sentences are focussing on the ‘being special’ character.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel special because of having a different background compared to the people I was living/dealing with.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself not to see that all those years I allowed myself to hide behind a mask of feeling special instead of not trusting that my true self was good ‘enough’ to stand in my day to day life.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that I needed to be seen as special in order to achieve something in live/work.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel proud when people recognized the fact I was special by acknowledging I was as an Italian with wooden shoes (typical Dutch) using the best of both cultures.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to abuse the fact of not being a real Italian or Dutch person using this point as an excuse for (not) having to do specific things, thus not willing to take full responsibility for my role within society.

I commit myself to stop participating in the feeling special character as I see it is leading to deception and a false impression of comfort and safety within a non existing identity instead of just being myself in Self Honesty all the time, breath by breath.

The following self forgiveness sentences are about the fact I did not want to see the situation I maneuvered myself and my family in by moving to Italy.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to have ignored all kind of signals while pursuing my dream without realizing that my goal was not real but just an idea in my mind.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not having taken full responsibility for the consequences of my choices related to my desire to go back to Italy and the desire to live on the edge of society.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to have delayed the decision of making a change in my life until I really had to deal with the harsh consequences instead of having seen and accepted I needed to change the way I was making a living in order to avoid nasty consequences for myself and my family.

I commit myself to stop in participating in pursuing a dream and to take full responsibility for everything I do in every moment, breath after breath.

Motivated by survival

During my working day I decided that tonight I will do some work that I want to be finished by tomorrow. It is one of those days where a lot of unforeseen (unwanted?) things happened and caused my planning not to fit anymore into the available hours. Making this decision I was surprised by the fact it was so easy to make and to assume that I will indeed do it. If i them compare my behavior when it is blog writing or working on my DIP assignments I see a big difference. I am much less motivated.

Let’s have a look at my motivation. What is really motivating me? The fact I want to have things done within the timeframe I agreed on with others? Or does it go deeper? What is it that keeps me running faster for my boss than for myself? Yes, that is it! Writing my blogs and doing my DIP assignments is all stuff I do for mySelf. Making long days in the office and even continuing the work at home is… Fear, Enslavement! Fear to be seen as less competent by my superiors/boss, enslavement by the money system that tells me to work more and more so I can save holidays for extra days off or to be paid as extra salary.

So, enslavement/money/fear are more important than Self. That is not a good balance. But how to find this balance? How to establish the energy/time to dedicate to work and to Self development?

Self-honesty!

Within Self-honesty it is not possible to decide that work is more important than working on my self development. It is equally important. The first to properly function in the system/matrix with no need to exaggerate, the second to become more stable and aware of Life so I can stand as one as breath to the benefit of all and everything.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see my job to be more important than my self development through blogging and doing my DIP assignments.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see my self development through blogging and dong my DIP assignment as less important than my job.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to allow fear of survival to decide what is the best to be done instead of allowing myself in a specific moment to stop and breath and in that moment decide what is best for all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be motivated by false arguments drive by fear of survival and enslavement to money instead of get things done because what I do is simply in the best interest of all.

Disappointment as an excuse to delay/postpone

For more than six months I am stuck on a specific lesson in my DIP course. There are many reasons to it. In this period I’ve been going through a rough period of looking for a new job, finding it, living in another country, moving my family, finding a house, living in several places in a short period of time, etc. Many practical reasons not to focus on my DIP course.

I’ve ran out of practical limitations now and still I see there are resistances that prevent me going on. Looking at it rationally I do not see any reason why I shouldn’t be able to find half an hour a day to dedicate to the DIP. I still hear the excuse voice in my head telling me that I had health issues making it hard to find enough energy to dedicate on DIP after a day of work where on the other hand I easily tend to work extra hours for my boss (and to finish the work that from my point of view needed to be done anyway).

When I finally started again to work on my assignments a couple of times I was confronted with the consequences of the long delay. The assignment had been updated and at the end I had to start the whole lesson from scratch. Not an issue since the work I did before was done a long time ago and it had its purpose anyway. At a certain point I thought to be ready and handed in my assignment only to find out I only did half the work and not even that, The second half of the assignment was not properly understood and needs to be redone.

Time to really focus on what needs to be done. I still have been not self-honest and did not want to thoroughly redo the assignment as described in the materials just because I thought that I still new what I read some time before. To me now it is very clear how one can fool him/herself with just assuming and thinking. Assumptions always ted to serve self interest and that is not helping to get a stable and well founded situation.

This simple experience is a clear point to me that I still need to address this point of being more accurate in the way I deal with assignments/tasks. I will have to stop assumptions and thoughts that have as a starting point not willing to face the real thing and deal with it in its full extent. Therefore I commit myself to pick up this point and systematically address it by performing the following actions:

- I will dedicate every day a specific amount of time to the DIP course
- I will go through all the necessary materials (even if I might think it is overdone or unnecessary)
- I will check if what I have done is according to the requirements

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to delay working on my DIP assignment because I felt disappointed and therefore trying to find reasons to blame outside myself to justify my delay instead of taking my responsibility and asses the situation in this very moment, decide on the action to take and perform these actions.

Facing the challenges of my life

For the first time since I left home to look for a job I had the chance to be re-united with my wife and children for a couple of days. While in the first few hours I was in a kind of guest modus I quickly kind of ‘clicked’ back into the old routines. Although there was a backlog of things to be done I never had a second of stress and when looking back it is amazing how many things we managed to squeeze into these few days and still managed to enjoy ourselves.

It is really great to live an event like this without all kind of ‘suggested’ feeling and emotions that might be triggered by this small family reunion after three months of separation. If you start thinking about it you might start to feel how shitty our situation still is. No home for us all in The Netherlands yet within a foreseeable period of time, still keeping up with a backlog on payments causing my salary to disappear very quickly, my daughter diagnosed presumably with hyper-mobility and unable to go to school for already three weeks. Enough shit to cry for hours.

By taking all these points as fact I have to deal with instead of mesmerizing about it and loosing myself into self pity, I can effectively discuss these and other points and work out the paths to effectively walk the process. Where in the past I tended to seek for a solution on my own for the problems I encountered, now I share the problems and effectively discuss the best way to walk, step by step, to a solution.

While traveling I listened to one of the Reptilians interviews. Really fascinating and scary at the same time. A real wake up call that motivates me to skip the bullshit and focus on my real life, taking care, step by step, of everything I need to do. Both this and also other interviews and my experience of a fully charged but awesome weekend with my family are at one end a call for life and at the other a real time experience of how you can live effectively, breath by breath.

Back chat about strangers

Today, while travelling home, I sat on a bench in the subway and just before I sat down I figured out that the two seats were squeezed into a relatively narrow space. Not much later a person sat next to me and started playing with his mobile phone. Not considering the space was too tight for the two of us I moved forward just avoiding to be squeezed between the man and the window.

I never appreciated to touch someone while travelling, especially when this person is an unknown person. Today I saw what I was experiencing and started looking at this event asking myself why I am reacting this way when having to have physical contact with another being. Immediately I saw backchat suggesting the man was not aware or did not care about me sitting there in that narrow space, he just took his space not considering mine. Mmmm, this smells like a feeling of inferiority. Useless, both the backchat and the feeling. I did SF on both.

Not much later the man left and a young person took his place. Now the situation was the opposite. I could remain seated upright and the person next to me leaned a bit forwards. “Is he now feeling less then me because of my age?”, was the question that popped into my mind. This could only be the case if I was considering myself more than him and that was not the case. Looking at the situation as it was, without any thought, backchat or feeling/emotion I was left with the fact that two persons shared a narrow space taking into consideration the presence of the other person.

A little earlier I walked in a shopping mall searching for a specific shop where I wanted to buy something. I almost bumped into a lady and when I looked down to see where to put my feet I was surprised by my own reaction when I saw the huge butt of this lady. “Gee. that is HUGE!” “So what” I thought a second later and again caught myself having back chat about someone else. It is shocking and also quite funny when you see the massive amount of back chat you are producing during the day. And it is also great if you can see in the moment that you are having this backchat and correct it accordingly. It definitely leads to a more here and now way of living without having to suffer (or ‘enjoy’ as a polarity to suffering) from situations your mind is creating for you based on tiny facts of your daily life.

Thinking back I already started this morning by making a joke based on an image a colleague was picturing while talking about the sport scar of another colleague he will buy as soon as he has enough money to afford it. We were picturing him and a well proportioned lady next to him and I couldn’t help myself by emphasizing the image by suggesting that due to the size of the lady it would be recommendable to de-activate the passengers seat airbag. This resulted into a laughter of the two colleagues that lasted several minutes. Later I realized that also making jokes about non existing pictures of persons is a kind of back chat. The fact the colleagues had to laugh was because of the ‘naughtiness’ in their minds suggested by the image created by my comment. Absolutely interesting to see events of a day in this perspective.

If you are interested in un-cluttering your thoughts and back chats, join us at Desteni.

Time is money, money is time

It is now more than a month ago that I left my home in Italy to go to the Netherlands to look for a job. It is over a month now that I am working hard to get work, not only by doing many job applications but also working on myself since being without a job, living in someone else’s house without being able to tell for how long implies also that you have to face yourself.

Reality can hit hard and I need all my energy to keep myself standing and go through everyday’s life. Life in my conditions is at the same time boring and nerve wrecking. Since you have no job you tend to feel useless and even a burden to those that offer you help. The odd part of all this is that it can change suddenly into another situation. At least that is what the mind suggests. The mind keeps saying that as soon as I have a job everything will be ok. This is only partially true since life will go on with or without job. That what gets different is the way you can organize yourself with or without money.

Nevertheless, getting a job will be an important step in the process of getting back into the system. I am very well aware that becoming an employee will limit my freedom, but what freedom is it when you have the time to do anything you like without having the money to do so. There is no freedom in our society. We are all enslaved to money and if we do not have it we simply will die (or in developed countries live a very limited life without many opportunities to change that situation).

In a movie I watched today there was a sentence that says: “If you are with the system you will be rewarded, if you oppose it you will be punished”. That is exactly what I see when looking back to my own life. I refused to adapt to the system and was therefore expelled from it in a slow process that ended into the situation I am in now, left with no money and fighting to get back into the system just to be able to survive.

It took quite some time to try to get loose from the system and now I see that getting back into it is not an immediate process either. I have to be patient and it is quite challenging to patiently walk the path back since the lack of money (= time) is a high pressure factor. I need to buy time (ask for money) directly or indirectly for every day that goes by. This adds up to the debt I am so trying to avoid but which is so nicely fitting into the monetary system of our planet.

This brings me to the next point, is resisting the fact to have debt not again me fighting the system? Am I supposed to go along with it and accept I have debts I will never be able to pay back? Does it make sense to try to pay back your debt when you know the actual money system is designed to make it impossible to pay it back? Governments are trying to get rid of debt by moving it to the people and very few are aware of the fact this is narrowing more and more our possibilities and making us more dependent and controllable by these governments.

Having said this, it is with an uneasy feeling that I am getting my position back into society. Life will not get easier for anyone with the difference I have already walked through experiences that allow me to see things for what they are and to act accordingly as much as I can in the moment, breath by breath. Therefore I see my whole experience I lived over the last couple of years as something very useful and in no way a waste of time (or money).

Tomorrow is a milestone day since I will know if the day after tomorrow will be one of still searching for a job or making a next step forward and while having a new job taking care of finding a place to live with my family and organize everything so I can move my family from Italy to the Netherlands and live again as a united family.

PS. Many friends and family members are crossing their fingers for tomorrow… I am sure it will help (lol). And the fun part is, do they really know why they are crossing their fingers? What is their real starting point?

Trying to be invisible

Ever since I am staying at my brother in law’s place I am feeling welcome but not always at ease. I started to investigate why. There are many factors playing a role here. I’ve been offered a place to stay in the center of a city giving me more opportunities while searching for a new job. It is now already the 26th day of my staying here and I have no job yet. There is one serious job opportunity and I just had a job interview, soon to be followed by athe next round. I applied for several jobs and got just a few replies back. Though times to get a job and in my case extra challenging due to my age (45) and the effects of the economic recession. So, it is hard working and trying to spot the right opportunities.

The fact I still do not have a job and the fact time is racing makes me feel uneasy once in a while. Until when am I welcome in this house? Are they already fed up by my presence? Oh, I wished it was all over and I could live again with my family. Not that I really miss them since I speak to them every day over Skype, it is the uneasy feeling of not being able to tell how log this situation is going to last. Everybody around me ‘hopes’ I will find a job soon and tell me they will cross their fingers (hoping they would not face the same situation themselves some time in future?).

This feeling of uneasiness is mainly generated by myself because I have an ideal picture and I see I am not fitting into it. I am sometimes trying to convince myself that I am in a bad situation and that I should be ashamed of it. But it is nothing more than a consequential outflow of what I have created myself and there is no other way out of it than walking this process step by step. So I stop blaming myself and will focus on getting the most out of the situation I am actually living in, step by step, breath by breath.

Today, while traveling back from my brother’s place, I was thinking how I could delay my arrival at my brother in law’s house as much as possible in order not to be a nuisance during the weekend. This was confirming my feeling of not wanting to be there, thus not wanting to face a consequential outflow of my own actions. The solution is very simple and straight forward. I will have to discuss the length of my stay and the conditions so everybody can agree on it and no false expectations or back chats are created. I tend to postpone this point of discussion until I know the outcome of the interview, and it certainly makes sense to do so. What scares me is the idea I am not getting the job. This will mean that there is again no clarity in the length of my stay. Every day that passes is making the equation more critical since we are running out of money and it is already money that was given to us to help us in our situation.

So it is very important to keep my feet on the ground, stay focussed and direct all I can in finding any kind of job that will generate some income and help us out of this situation. Interestingly enough it is still difficult when there is a job opportunity. Am I going to accept a low wage job that just generates some money but not enough to support my family or do I wait until I have a decent job that will give me a decent income? Needless to think out scenario’s here but I am tempted to do it. If a situation like this manifests I will have to deal with it in the best way possible using my common sense.

The mind is always trying to plan ahead or better to work out all kind of possible scenario’s so it can fuck me up with my fears. It is strange not to be tempted into these scenario thinking since it feels so empty. But that is just a feeling. Better focus on being here in the moment and act as one as self in every breath. I am regularly tempted not to allow me to focus on my process and convince myself that I should put every single second in efforts that might lead to a job. Happily enough, working on my process is going to make my search for a job more effective and this blog is part of that process.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to feel less than my brother in law just because of my situation and my incapability of being clear about the length of my stay in his house.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to let my mind convince me into all kind of scenario’s instead of focussing myself in being here and now, breath by breath.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to be distracted by thoughts about my possible future without considering real facts and so building up energies that are of any use in improving my actual situation.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself that I accept to become scared of the consequential outflow of my own actions instead of keeping the mind clear and walk the point effectively.

Self esteem

The main focus I have right now in my life is to find a job as quickly as possible. That is quite a task, especially if you are already 45 years old and people around you tell you there is very little interest for people my age. A couple of days ago I met someone that was able to provide me with some contacts and give me an update of how things are going in the specific business I am focussing at. He told me that in the many companies he’s seen he noticed that there is a strong reluctance in hiring people of a certain age because managers are afraid these ‘older’ people are not so influenceable and flexible as their younger counterparts. He even said companies prefer to hire younger, unexperienced people than more experienced, older people just for the sake of avoiding resistance or strong influence in case of decision making processes.

Although I know I am not very young anymore, I tend to see my age as an added value, and this story was not very nice to hear but certainly reflecting the truth. The result of this is that the normal way of applying for a job will probably not lead to success very rapidly, what I need is to be recommended by someone who trusts me to be a right candidate for a specific job. Although age discrimination is forbidden by law, the reality is just showing that if you when you apply for a job when are over 40 you will hardly even get an answer or not even a confirmation they received your message.

I experienced that these reality checks tend to shake me, to swing me between being confident in finding a decent jog again and not being able to earn a living. On top of this there is some pressure caused by the fact I have practically no income while I am working full time on finding a job, a situation that is causing me and my family to depend on others financially until I can take care of myself again. So, on one side I try to as less of a burden as possible for those that are facilitating my searching activities and on the other hand I need to express as a self confident person when contacting possible recruiters.

I am am getting a lot of help from old friends and family, which is very reassuring and comforting but at the end I will be the one that need to do it and take the opportunities that are given to me. I see that on this point I have changed compared to the past. I was much more picky on what people tended to offer me as nice opportunities. Now I am able to evaluate in common sense the offer and give immediate feedback in order to avoid false hope for the me and the others involved.

Another experience I had recently was while editing my resumé. I decided to insert the recommendations on the resumé I am sending around to people helping me in making connections. While inserting these recommendations I started reading them and was almost overwhelmed by a feeling of happiness, as if I was longing for these positive comments about me in a working context with others. Although I know very well what my skills are, I clearly longed for confirmation. As if I needed to boost my self esteem in order to feel good about myself and get energy from it to go on.

Thanks to the fact I am in my Desteni I Process I know this is a swing between polarities and I am definitely aware of this mechanism and managing to avoid these swings since they are not real but only happening in my mind. It seems very boring but there is no need to feed my self esteem positively in order to feel better and be able to do things I might not have done while being in a state of low self esteem and feeling powerless. Although very tempting it is in my own interest to remain stable in all ways. In being stable I will be able to be productive and ready for any situation all the time.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take energy from the positive feeling I got when reading the recommendations of former colleagues and employers.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to look at others that have a job wondering why it is possible they have a job and I do not. This is self pity and jealousy that is not helping me, therefore I stop this and bring myself back to self, here and now.

 

Depression

Yesterday, while drinking a cup of tea, my mother in law told me a story of a friend of hers who has a daughter diagnosed with a serious form of depression. The woman is apparently very pretty looking and, while in her early thirties, is already in her third relationship. As a teenager she already showed symptoms of depression and among other therapies she was sent as au pair to Switzerland where she had a great time.

Typical of her behavior while being depressed were periods of intense fear wherein she always claimed her mother to come over to help her, resulting in the fact the mother had to travel for a couple of hours to co go her daughter’s house to find a scared daughter not willing to do anything. She also showed periods with a complete opposite behavior where she was very active, almost over active and almost uncontrollable, capable of doing very weird things.

At a certain point she had a relationship with an older man who already had children. He cared very much about her and helped her going to doctors and psychiatrists which resulted in nothing else than prescribing medication to suppress the symptoms of her behavior. This relation did not last for obvious reasons and because the two sons of this man where difficult to manage and because the woman wanted her own child.

Not long after she was into another relation, this time with a man from india who was aiming at having a child and only three months after they met she was already pregnant. Because of the woman’s behavior and the man’s attitude the relationship already became difficult during pregnancy and after the child was born the man started claiming the child and is doing whatever he can to have the woman locked away in a mental institute. Not being able to cope with the situation the man is known to have beaten the woman regularly.

While all this was going on the woman had her regular periods of fear wherein she always claimed her mother to help her and to take care of her child. Since she was living at some distance from her parents they decided to look for a home in the same town, making it easier to help her when necessary. At the moment she is in her third relationship with a nice man who obviously fell for her very good look.

While my mother in law was telling this story I talked about the fact that the woman’s behavior was quite abusive for the people around her and my mother in law had to agree on that point. She told me that after all these years both the woman and her parents accepted the idea there was nothing they could do about this situation and that it will remain this way for ever.

It is interesting to see that if there is no cure for a specific illness, and more specifically a mental illness, people tend to accept the situation and try to control it with medication. If our medical system is not able to provide a cure we simply accept there is no cure. Doing so we accept being abused by people who are stuck in the mind and are not even willing to change that situation because they are addicted to their behavior wherein they tend to claim and control the persons they live with and their family.

With proper coaching and assistance to work on self responsibility within life situation like these could be improved and even avoided. While now the whole situation is fed by fears and reluctance to changes on one side and accepting abuse just because you are dealing with your daughter or partner the whole situation could be changed if everybody started to look at themselves in self honesty and really started to take each their own responsibilities. This process is made easier using the tools and information found at Desteni. For who is specifically interested in the subject follow this link to a series of video’ son Youtube.

The end of a dream

One of the houses we dreamt of buying

Almost six years ago I managed to fulfill my biggest dream: a life in Italy, far from cluttered society, safely hiding somewhere in the middle of nowhere. We planned to buy an old property and rebuild it in an ecological and sustainable way. But that did not happen. We lost a lot of money with the sale of our house in the Netherlands that went wrong. Work was not as expected in the first place for both myself and my partner. Slowly but surely we found ourselves in more and more challenging situations.

Six years after our move to Italy I am starting to see the reality I created and also the fact it is not exactly as I had in mind to say the least. What I do see now is that since the beginning of all the steps I and my family had to take to make the move to Italy possible there were many signals I ignored that could have told me how deceptive the motivations were I had to do what I believed was the best I could do.

My point of view has changed dramatically and I can see now I’ve manouvered myself and my family into a nasty position by taking decisions based on desires, ignoring the reality. I remember I had moments in which realizations came up that showed me the possible outcome of the action I was going to take. I quickly stowed these things away as unnecessary fear creating thoughts. The result? Almost all thinkable worst case scenario’s became reality, but even that was not enough to let me understand I had to stop what I was doing and start taking real responsibility for my actions.

Now I have reached the point that I must take the step of directing myself in self responsibility. My financial situation is critical and there is little security for the fact if we will have money to buy food the next day. This is the situation I allowed myself in. This is the reality I moved to I’ve blindly accepted because I was not prepared to see what was really going on.

The big challenge is now to change the course of my life effectively. I’ve already started the process of change being more and more aware of the reality I am living in. It is fascinating to see how differently I look at certain scenario’s I rejected until not so long ago just because of my beliefs. From the idea I could only live happily in Italy, somewhere far from the big cities I now kind of long to a situation where I can actively participate in a working process and that I do not really care so much about where. I only evaluate eventual new living locations based on parameters that are best for all members in my family. From accepting the fact we have to leave the idyllic area we live in now but in poverty I am moving to accepting to live in an area where I have better job opportunities. With my partner I discussed this point extensively and we both saw how we were responsible for what we created. We were driven by different motivations that apparently fitted together since they were aiming at the same illusional goals, at least, that was what we thought from each other.

Now that more and more of the real motivations and deceptions is revealed we are able to, each for our own, and in the interest of all, redirect ourselves step by step and correct ourselves effectively. The tools of Desteni are definitely very effective and helpful and although I have to work through major resistances I am going on since it is the only thing I can do in order to become more effective and to contribute to a better life for myself and the world I live in.

What I also see is that it is not possible to have a quick fix on a process that has been going on for a decade or even more. It is something that has to be dismantled piece by piece in order to be done effectively and definitively. If this is not done thoroughly the risk of falling back is huge and more deception is just around the corner.

I’ve put myself in this shit and I will have to work to get me out of it. It sounds difficult and it is, but it is also fascinating. It is fascinating to learn to understand how you as a human system are functioning and it is even more fascinating to  be able to get rid of specific points that caused you to be limited and blinded.