I have just completed a trekking in Himalayas and am spending a couple of weeks in Leh, an ancient Buddhist town of India. 

There was something about my Himalayan experience that corresponded to the samurai training I did in Japan half a year ago.

Both - the samurai training and the Himalayas trekking - have challenged my body and mind in ways that I hadn’t experienced before.

'You must understand that there is more than one path to the top of the mountain,' writes one of the most revered samurai, Miyamoto Musashi, in the Book of 5 Rings.

When climbing a Himalayan peak or hours on end practising foundational sword moves in Japanese mountains, my mind had given up on trying to rationalise the unfamiliar experience and ceased its tireless stream of thinking.

And in that moment of no thought, there was a space for 'nothingness' to arise, or as Musashi calls it, the Void - the 5th element in the Book of 5 Rings.

That very state had become an opportunity to rise above...

In the world of multiple voices speaking at you through social media, apps, and ads, it’s hard to truly be authentic.

And if you somehow managed to switch off from all of the noise, there would still be colleagues, friends, and family…

So, how do you stay in touch with your authenticity?

It requires creating a space within and listening to it (and not the voices of others.)

It requires taking time out to continuously revisit what authenticity means to you and so that the voices of the environment would have less power over you.

It requires looking in the mirror every day and embracing who you are so that the need to emulate others is no longer there.

This is what we are going to work on in samurai-themed retreats in Tokyo and Lithuania:

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>> Tokyo boot camp: https://bit.ly/2JovrUN

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‘Just be who you are and don’t care a bit about the world. Then you will feel a tremendous relaxation and a deep peace within your heart. This is what Zen people call your ‘original face’ - relaxed, without tensions, without pretensions, without hypocrisies, without the so-called disciplines of how you should behave,’  Osho writes.

Scroll down your Instagram or Facebook feedback: who wears their ‘Original Face’?

Look around at your office: who wears their ‘Original Face’?

Look in the mirror: do you wear your ‘Original Face’ or are you reflecting what your followers want to see, what schools and colleges trained you to be and what your mind contrived your image to be?

What if you drop it now?

The facade.

The representation.

The image.

What would happen?

Take 5 minutes. Pick up a pen. Try and jot down the answer.

This is what my samurai teachers and I will challenge you to do at

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>> A...

What creates stress is resistance.

Resistance immediately constricts your natural flow.

Perpetuated resistance takes you further out of the flow.

It blocks you.

It causes panic attacks and depression.

It cuts you off from the center of yourself.

Resistance to what is happening, is what ruins your day, your job, your relationship.

Resistance is defined by denial and negativity.

Resistance is anti-life.

So, how do you deal with resistance?

How do you outwit it?

By dancing with it.

Resistance will arise - always.

However, what it fears the most is acceptance.

You only have to accept WHAT IS right now, at this very moment: a task you have to accomplish, a certain thing your partner did or said or the fact your job is, in your opinion, the worst on the planet.

Acceptance doesn’t mean defeat.

Accepting whatever is much like becoming a willow in a snowstorm: it goes with the wind, it bends, it dances, it obeys, it doesn’t resist.

The burden of snow glides off...

So many people ‘don’t know’, ‘are lost’, ‘confused’.

They can’t decide: to stay in a relationship or leave it; change their profession or continue; start a project or not; express what they truly think or hold back.

Indecision is a decision.

By not making a decision, you’ve already made your decision.

Every (in)decision is producing directing consequences - good or bad - in your life.
So whenever you can’t decide, remember that you’ve already decided…

On that note, isn’t it the best time to decide what's your 2018 going to be like?

Join - totally for free - Plan Your Best Year Training here: https://www.dariuslukas.academy/p/plan-your-best-year-2018

At the end of the year I always sit down to plan my new year. This is how I do it: https://www.dariuslukas.academy/p/plan-your-best-year-2018

I recorded this last year in Hong Kong. My hair is too long. I speak too fast. But that's not the point. The point is that it works.

I've done it 5 years in a row now, and so did 10000 people who were reading my previous blog, Let's Sandbox.

This Plan Your Best Year training is FREE, simply:
1. Create your account
3. Download workbook.
4. Watch videos.
5. Review 2017.
6. Plan 2018.

And you're fired up for the year to come! It's completely free, no charge, no nothing.

The only 'payment' I ask is: share it with 5 friends, who you think would benefit from creating their future vision and send me a message after you've completed it. That's it.

Post Scriptum.

90% of what I included in my own future vision last year came true.

Seriously - 90% and in the first 6 months of the year!

So, this is not another spiritual-psychological blah-blah-get-inspired...

 What kind of child were you?

What and whom did you love?

What hurt you the most?

What brought you joy?

What did you want to do and be when you grew up?

Travel to your childhood.

Meet yourself as a child.

You might be surprised to find that the very history of you as a child conceals a lot of the answers to the questions you have now.

Most anxieties will be unlocked by travelling back.

Depressions will fade when you meet yourself, truly.

Meeting yourself as a child will mean quitting the safety of your adult armour.

Meeting yourself as a child will mean opening up your heart so fully that it might actually hurt.

Meeting yourself as a child will mean assessing whether you are living up to your fullest potential or just wasting your days.

Meeting yourself as a child will mean forgiving your father, forgiving your mother, forgiving yourself.

Meeting yourself as a child will mean healing and maturing into a complete version of yourself.

Meeting yourself as a child will mean an end...

Your own death. The end. Inexistence.  

I do. Daily.

I am so aware of every day bringing me forward to the inevitable vanishing, that every day becomes a celebration.

Even if I am hurting or I am hurt or I have hurt; I know that the clock is ticking

Not in my favour.

And then, I know that to speak my truth is more important than to please; that to love my parents is more important than recall the past hurts; that there is no time to do what dulls my soul; that there is no time to lie to myself; the only option is to live out the given moment to its fullest.

My death scares me as much as it helps me.

Pain melts in its presence.

Daily anxieties and complaints pale in its mighty shadow.

And only in the antithesis of life does life thrive.

There is no fixed point in the future to arrive at.

You won’t be happier if you find a partner, get a promotion, go travelling, achieve this or that.

To say that you will be happier in the future is the same as to say there is not...

When someone gives me a hard time - be it a colleague, an employee, a partner, a friend or a stranger, before reacting, I ask myself one question: ‘Is it any of my business?’

I usually don’t react.

What that question does is show you whether this person’s problem or drama has got anything to do with you.

95% of the time it has nothing to do with you and it is just them having a bad day or, if it is a closer relationship, it is often the other party living out their childhood and past traumas.

It’s very rare that it is really about you.

And, if it is, then you take appropriate action. Having paused and assessed how much of your business it is.

But, when it isn’t about you, and you consciously realise this, you are able to step away from it and have some  distance.

A reaction vacuum.

The only way to get to bed calm is to not engage with the other people’s drama, and then, of course, your own.

See your life as a script that you are writing and creating every day.

In film, most scripts fail because of two reasons:

1. The protagonist isn’t active.

That is, if the protagonist isn’t pursuing a clear goal and his story doesn’t have a linear overall arc.

2. The protagonist doesn’t change.

That is, if the protagonist remains the same throughout the film and, at the end of the film, he is left unchanged.

Life’s script doesn’t fail when you have many failures or setbacks along the way, pursuing your life’s goal - in fact, it’s often the opposite.

It starts failing when there’s a lack of mission, purpose or a greater goal in your story, which usually translates as the driving force that moves your life forward.

It also fails, however, if you go through life with little changing in you or your environment, in your worldview or your thinking.

There are many variables, of course, but at the core lie the following questions:...