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.

Me jealous? Nooooo!

When I moved to the Netherlands I lived in the city of The Hague. Besides being the political capital of the country, or maybe just because it is the political capital a lot of wealth is concentrated in and around the city. This is mainly expressed in the type of cars you see on the streets and the houses in the residential area’s. Besides the popular city quarters mainly concentrated on one side of the city you see a clear trend. Near to the city center you have buildings that are centuries old and many of these houses are offices and embassies.

A selected group of people live in these houses and in the first three months of my stay in the Netherlands I was living in one of these huge houses. The amount of living space I shared with my brother in law and his wife was to my opinion quite out of proportion, almost to the point it made me feel uneasy living in that house. On a few occasions I had walks in the neighborhoods and every time I crossed residential area’s with series of villa’s scattered in the woods at the edge of town I wondered who was living in these houses and how it was possible that people could afford to live in such places.

This wondering is an old thing that pops up when I see wealth, or even better, I see people living in a ‘better’ situation than my own. And here is the tricky part. In the past I always told people I was not jealous of anyone. My reactions to other people’s wealth, however, tell the opposite. When I start wondering how it comes that people can afford something, an expensive car, a huge house, I am actually comparing my own situation to someone else’s. This comparison triggers a competition where I see myself as a looser and eventually I start feeding the idea I need to achieve the same level of wealth in order to win this competition.

The question is if it makes sense to compete in this way. My trigger point is jealousy, a feeling of being less than others and a need to compensate this feeling of inferiority. If I accept this competition I most probably will get more and more frustrated since I will have hard times if not experiencing the impossibility to achieve that idealistic goal. And, in the event I might succeed, will I be happy and satisfied? Most probably not. I will compare myself in my situation again to others and see other reasons to go on competing and fighting to achieve a goal that never can be achieved.

Why is this competition like a dead end lane? Because it is a polarity mechanism. You win or you loose. There is no stable situation. Once you win you go on trying to achieve new goals and over and over again you might win or loose. If I look at this mechanism in self honesty I see that it is a waste of time and energy, it is distracting me from the real things of life. It is only taking care of what I want or think I need to have in life without taking into consideration what is around me, people, animals, environment, everything.

Today I had again the same experience while biking along hundreds of huge villa’s with huge gardens and huge cars parked in front. I wondered again how it could be possible that there is people that can afford to live in these houses. I felt even a little satisfaction when a couple of these houses (not the largest ones of course) were for sale. With this fresh experience I decided that it is time to end this jealousy.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to become jealous when I see properties of other people I judge to be too big for them only because I am not in their same situation. I also forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to feel satisfaction/relief when I see people in a situation worse than mine.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to compare myself to other for the sole purpose to trigger the need for competition that is based on the feeling of unfairness: “Why do ‘they’ have something I don’t”.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to see big houses and villa’s as a representation of other people’s wealth instead of seeing it for what they are, big houses and villa’s.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to be tricked into this feeling of jealousy and unfairness again and again and that I have not taken my self-responsibility to stop this allowing it to distract me and preventing me of being there in the moment, breathing instead of being in the mind, preoccupied with being jealous.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to see myself as less then others just because I see ‘others’ as different than me, superior to me, instead of seeing that we are all equal and there is not such a thing as being more or less than others.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to get distracted by unreal preoccupations instead of focussing myself to take care of things in life that really matter, focussing on actions that are in the best interest of all and therefore also in the best interest of myself.

When and as I see myself participating within this pattern of becoming jealous of someone else’s property/wealth I stop and I breathe. Within this I realize that the energy of this experience is directing me and I am not the directive force here. Thus I stop this participation in this energy as living in my mind and escaping reality and myself  and do not participate, but breathe myself here in and as the physical.

Fear of losing my job

It is a crazy thought but I realized already a couple of occasions that I feared to loose the job I just started with! There are very subtile triggers that I can pinpoint as a couse of the thoughts leading eventually to this fear.

The first occasion I can remember is a discussion about my brand new job with my brother in law. He said that having a job is really nice but with a contract for 6 months the security is limited. He advised me to continue working on my network of business relations just in case. Although this is very common sense and I already came to the same conclusion myself it planted  a seed of fear in myself. My mind started to work out all kind of scenario’s that eventually could lead to loosing my job after these six months. Within the same context Other people gave me all kind of advices like having to make myself absolutely indispensable by planning ahead of these six months. I always did the opposite since I never believed in the effectiveness of people being indispensable for a company/organisation. In order to achieve this you need to keep things for yourself compromising effective communication and collaboration thus productivity of a team within a company.

Nevertheless the fears come in and I had a hell of a job dealing with these fears by doing SF on them each time they popped up in my mind. These fears were all fed by a much bigger underlaying fear, the fear of not being able to earn (enough) money for myself and my family. The fact that having a job should be enough to get rid of this fear you would say. But as long as the trigger or source of the specific fear is not taken away, the fear will come back, even if conditions are changed and there is apparently no reason anymore for that fear to exist.

Besides the fact fears are influencing one’s life and one’s decisions dramatically we tend to push away the fears we have. Not so long ago I was convinced not to have that many fears in my life until I started to dig into the pool of my memories and experiences to discover I had been a master in stowing away many fears. I also tried to get rid of fears by changing the situation and taking away the condition of the fear to exist. No success! The mind always manages to create new conditions for the fear to exist. The only effective way to get rid of my fears is to face them, work on the underlaying triggers and stop all related thoughts and patterns using the tools of 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?

Everything seems new to me

it is now more than two weeks ago that I arrived in the Netherlands to dedicate 100% of my time in finding a new job, and ever since I am here I experience many things as if I never lived in this country before.

Yes, there are things that changed over time like the chip card used for public transportation. But many things did not change over the last 6 years and nevertheless I experience them as new. Actually it is a kind of awkward experience that I need to ask how the most elementary things work. Today I helped my brother in law to dispose of paper and glass bottles. We had to drive to a nearby collection point and I was surprised and at the same time I vaguely remembered that glass here is separated by color.

In many ways my living again in this country is showing me how 6 years can wipe out a lot of things. Actually, wipe out is not the proper way to describe it, it is more suppressing. I have been suppressing typical Dutch ways of doing and systems in order to accept the systems in the country I wanted so badly to be as good or even better that the country I left. Now, bit by bit I am returning into a civilization that is a lot more effective in many ways.

I had to come to the conclusion that some things I am experiencing these day I never had seen or recognized or lived before. it is as if I have been incapable of living fully my life in this country during the 22 years that precede my emigration to Italy. It all started with a painful integration in 1985 and I apparently never got over the shock. I stayed in my mind and kept saying to myself that one day I will return to the country where I have been able to live in a pleasant way. What I did not consider was that in that same year I left my home to live on my own in a country I only knew from my summer holidays.

So, it is actually fascinating to really live now in this country and see all the things around me as if I am a baby and need to learn everything from scratch. It is for me a great opportunity to make a new start and not bring with me any burden that is generated by my mind in the form of memories or experiences. I really enjoy the way I can be when interacting with people. I see that my attitude open and without any expectation or opinion is producing very nice and valuable moments. This is a great plus when in a position of searching for a job and having to properly explain my skills and added values.

Even though I am separated from my family I am really enjoying this period and although it is a stressful situation where I have limited time to make an income I am, day by day, deciding in the moment, with the tools and information I have at disposal, what I can do best to get the most out of situation.

Stuck in the loop

This morning I was watching to a religious TV program in which the program presenter was introducing his visit to a woman, K., that, after having been into spiritualism found God as her savior. Already this introduction was causing some reactions in me. I saw the happiness of this man when making this introduction as if he actually was saying: “I am so happy we have added another sheep to our herd”. I saw also that is was a perfect item to use for a religious TV program where those who watch are fed with examples that should consolidate their belief or faith in their religion.

During the interview K. was telling about her youth. She was the second born and already at a young age understood that her father hoped for a son and not a second daughter. This caused her to feel unwanted and less because of not being the wanted son of her father. This thought will follow her until today without her noticing it but made clear by the stories she told about her life. She married very young and had two sons (at least her father had two grandsons, but that did not help to solve K’s inferiority complex). The relation did not last very long and not very soon after she stepped into a second relationship that ended suddenly the day her partner did not return home after a skiing holiday. He met a nice young girl and went to live with her.

K. was very disappointed since she adored the man and did everything for him, making it very harsh to be rejected not seeing she was manifesting her inferiority complex. She was not seeing that she was stuck in a loop. In the process of looking for answers in life she met a couple that was doing Reiki. She dived into it and became a Reiki Master and opened a Reiki Practice and started to earn money with this business. One day she met a woman who told her about the curch and how she found God as being her savior, freeing her from all her sorrows and problems. K. started to go to church. At first just a couple of times, than started to read the bible and went to church more often.

At a certain point she decided to be baptized so she could free herself from her sorrows and become happy again in life. After a service where her friend was baptized they asked who wanted to be baptized the next occasion and she decided to opt for it. She ad to talk with a commission of the church that had to decide if she could be baptized. Everything was fine until she told she ran a Reiki practice that was her only source of income. She lived again the feeling of being rejected, thus manifesting again this point, looping again in a phase of her life. Again she had an opportunity to deal with it but she choose to be the victim and stopped her business in order to be baptized, the white light was too strong to resist.. Curiously enough her story did not mention what she was doing since then in order to make a living.

I see here a peson that believes that thinks that she found the ultimate happiness but actually did not change anything in her life. Still in the same loop and still with the same mindfucks. Until she is not finding a way to take her own responsibilities for what she is manifesting in her own life she will again look for another ‘solutionn’ when she will find out that reading the bible and going to church will only satisfy her need for energy but not give her any answers to her real problems.

I see also how a producer of a religious TV program abuses this story to show people how they can find the ultimate happiness in the faith to God pushed by their own belief it is really the key to ultimate happiness. I see how faithful people will see this as a confirmation that their religion is the best thing and that this same religion helped another person.

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.

 

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.

The fear of facing my fears

Until not long ago I was convinced that I had very few fears if not any fear at all. Well. I had to redefine the word fear for myself to find out I have fears. Interesting about this part of my process is that I found out there are many things I suppress very successfully probably all along my life. The consequences of this general suppression of emotions, feelings and memories is that I think to have lived a youth without big issues since I have not many vivid memories about it, especially negative ones. Now that I think of it, it is an inherited ‘feature’ I have. I remember that also my father tended to forget negative experiences.

By walking my process of freeing myself from the Mind this is a very important step. It took me almost half a year to continue with my assignment about fears just because I always had something more important to do. Bullshit of course, but I managed to delay it for many months until I recently stopped it and found out that is was not difficult at all to face my fears if done in self honesty.

Now I’ve managed to come over this point, that apparently was not only linked to my assignment but to many other issues, I start to see a lot of things more clearly. One of those is my frustration about the fact others always seem to have so many memories about the past. The same applied to the fact they were feeling strong emotions in many cases were I in comparable cases did not recall any emotion or feeling worth to remember. As if a physical obstruction has been taken away full memories of events and the connected emotions and feelings are coming back. It is fascinating to see how everything interconnects. The fact I was blocked on the assignment had to do with a much larger point I had to face and it took me several months to come to the point of seeing it. I’ve made a new step in cleaning up the mess I made in my life until now.

Coming back to fears, my main fear is related to money, a lack of money that every time comes to a climax and settles again for a while but never seems to get away. It is all a consequence of decisions made in the past that were not made in  a self honest way. Not being honest with myself caused me to accept and allow situations with a specific consequential outflow, the consequences I am living through now. The nice thing is that I have been the one accepting and allowing al of this and I am also the one that can stop it.

Facing my fears is facing myself, learning to know myself and forgiving myself for what I have accepted and allowed in my life. I feared facing my fears but I had to come to the conclusion that there is nothing scary about it. It is part of the process I am walking and it is giving me several topics I can use to write about in a process of writing it out in order to get insight and take my responsibilities on that point.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself not to face my fears preventing myself of doing a necessary step in my process of freeing myself.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to find excuses and motivations in order not to go on with my assignment and therefore delaying the process of taking self responsibility.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to ignore my memories, my feelings and my emotions and therefore convincing myself that I did not have memories which enabled me to live without the burden of these memories.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to suppress my feelings and emotions just by considering them as unnecessary and a nuisance and threatening the apparent harmony of the situation/moment.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to suppress my memories by convincing myself I had none so I was free from having to take responsibility for my actions in the past and my created experiences in the future, sabotaging the process of taking self responsibility.

 

Did I reach my goals in my life?

A friend of mine suggested me to write my blog about the question if I managed to reach the goals I had when I was age 18. My first reaction was that it did not sound as an interesting topic. But looking better at it I decided to have a try.

To be honest I do not recall very specific idea’ s I might have had at that age. I was actually in a kind of crisis. I just doubled the last year of my high school and was supposed to move from Italy to Holland to start a study at a Professional School.

The general idea I had was to study until I had a diploma and then look for a job that might give me a decent income, just like my father. I never had a real clue of what actually the work of my father consisted in. He was in management and at the time I had very little fantasies about being a manager. I wanted to do practical stuff and technical stuff.

The first years after high school in Holland were a nightmare. I started with the Horticultural School where I found out that the students were to my opinion very narrow minded on almost anything. They considered me as a “Mafioso” since I came from Italy. After two years I decided to stop. I started working and to finish my missing High School year doing a evening school. After one year I decided to use my own money to go to a private school for Hospitality Business. I managed to do two years in just one with very nice grades.

The ‘black years’ had a huge impact on me. I developed the “Colitis Ulcerosa” Illness that lasted for several of years. Funny enough the illness started within the first year I moved to the Netherlands and stopped in the year after I found a good job at IKEA. Stability in my life cased me to have a healthier body.

My inherited restlessness caused me to quit my job at IKEA since I started to get bored, at least that was what I gave myself as an excuse to quit and change, seeking for a more challenging job. I tasted the world of MLM for a while (see my  previous blog) and finally I found a nice job at a Hewlett Packard Call center. I was happy with the fact I could use my technical skills combined with my knowledge of several languages.

No surprise that after a while (it took seven years this time) I decided to work for a small company specializing in what I was already doing a lot for HP, Training people on printers, sales and technical. Here my career stopped because the small company could not afford me any longer and did not renew my contract. Since then I am self employed.

In all these years I was trying to picture a perfect career that would allow me to use my skills and allow me to earn a nice salary. I pretty soon found out that knowing several languages is not necessarily something that allows you to make a nice living. There is a bigger chance you can make money by knowing two languages and you did your studies on University as a translator than knowing at least 5 of them on a high level and doing a support agent job in a call center. I remember that I felt abused quite regularly because people not knowing languages very easily asked you for your services never understanding how intense and difficult translating can be, resulting in low rewards for the work you were doing.

I actually never stopped defining and redefining what my ideal job should be. Even if I have a clear idea about my skills it is still difficult to translate that into an ideal job. OK, there is no perfect job. Even after becoming self employed, a step that should have allowed me to pick the jobs that suited my skills best, I learned that making money was the first and the last criteria when accepting a job. Nothing else. Until today, every minute I am working on a project for a customer, the main drive is to satisfy the customer in order to get paid. I can put a lot of sills and creativity in my work, but always limited by money in some way (e.g. the customers budget limiting me to focus on basics with no added value that might benefit the whole).

Back to the question of my friend. She added if I was satisfied with what I managed to make of my goals. The question kind of embarrassed me. I am not very often asking myself if I am satisfied. Not on that level. I am still trying to make a living in a society I almost tried to escape from. I have still a hard time fitting in in the way many others do, performing their tasks within their jobs without asking themselves if the work they do (or try not to do or as little as possible) is contributing to something other than their monthly salary.

In a certain way I am satisfied if I look to what I have learned. I have become very flexible and able to quickly fit in in many different types of jobs, both technical, management, commercial, and even handcrafts. Although I tend to say that I am not drive by satisfaction, I must admit that it is not true. Looking back, at the completion of a job/task I am always trying to find the point of satisfaction for the work I did. But what is being satisfied doing with me? Nothing more than satisfying my EGO! There is nothing practical in being satisfied! It does not serve any other purpose than feeding your EGO.

So, lets’s skip this whole satisfaction thing and do our tasks, work, job with one simple goal: The best interest of all. So everybody benefits from it, you and me included.