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:...

I fly a lot.

Almost every month.

But there’s a problem.

I became ‘a nervous flyer’.

I freak out when turbulence strikes.

In fact, while  writing these words, I am on the plane going from Bali to Doha.

I have ordered my third whisky to tame my nerves.

I have done a bunch of meditations and visualisations already.

I have ended up listening to yoga as my last resort of peace.

(Seriously? … I know right)

1. QUESTIONING

In the past year, flying has become a contemplation of life… and well… death…

Besides giving mecramps in my stomach, trembling hands and a pumping heart, these moments of turbulence really get me thinking about the way I lead my life:

Am I living it to the fullest?

Whom do I love the most?

Have I wasted much time on meaningless activities?

Have I come to express my talents and skills to their maximum potential?

Have I allowed myself to LIVE: be crazy, love, work, create, travel…?

Have I allowed myself to...

Recently, I spoke at an investing conference.

I'm not an investor and know very little about it.

I was asked to speak about something I believe in.

I couldn't speak about investing in Boeing in China or the geopolitical situation in Ukraine and how that affects investment.

I couldn't speak about investing in art,nor could I say anything about designing and planning urban spaces.

So, by the time my turn came to speak, I had realised that I was invited to the conference, for much the same reason that one adds spices to soup.

I wasn't the soup, but  an exotic ingredient.

And there were two choices.

Well, really, only one.

Just to pull myself together and speak about what I wanted to speak about.

‘How to cultivate excellence in your emotional life’.

But this wasn't the real topic.

It was a coded topic.

The real topic behind the code was:

How to live from the space of the heart and not the mind. (I sat in the rice fields and made a video on this as well).  

I won't...

Everyone wants to buy things: an iPhone, a car, a house, a something.

People, who are mastering their life and can buy an iPhone, a car, a house and a something, don’t prioritise buying any of these things.

Their priority is to buy more time.

How do you buy more time?

In business, it’s straightforward: it usually means hiring and delegating (or automating - but this isn’t a post about business, so I’m not going to go into detail).

A year ago I bought more time by hiring a virtual assistant to help me out with a number of ventures.  

I bought at least 60 hours’ worth of time and it made my life much easier.

But: how do you buy more time in your personal life?

For some, it could be a case of  hiring a cleaner, so they can spend more time with their children.

For example, I never cook. I choose to outsource my cooking by going out. I’m not lazy, I just know how to put those  two or three hours to use in a way that means either I enjoy...

Movement is the basis of everything.

Every film, every book, every play is driven by movement, taking the hero through a variety of situations.

Challenging him.

Testing him.

Awarding him.

Changing him.

If there were no movement, we wouldn't watch the film or read the book. It'd be dull.

Look around in nature.

There's movement - constantly.

Rivers flow.

Leaves either fall or grow.

Clouds drift.

It's never still. It’s always in process.

Your life, too, is driven by movement.

The greater the movement, the more significant the change.

The lesser the movement, the more meagre the change.

You wouldn't watch a film without much movement.

Why would you live a life without much movement?

Movement is the basis of transformation.

Transformation equals growth.

Become aware of the movement in your life, and its intensity.

Where is the movement taking you to?

What sort of changes is the movement guiding you towards?

Are you resisting the movement or going with it?

P.S. You can't control...

What if you looked at travelling as a way of expanding your mind and thinking, a tool to help you become aware of your system of beliefs, your judgments and your ideas, and to call these all into question?

In this episode from Melbourne, I share how you can do it.

Watch more videos: http://goo.gl/Lm7CRa

 What’s your intention for today?

Our every action, every word, every decision have an intention behind them. It is either conscious or subconscious.

If you are not aware of your intentions and don’t set them consciously, the subconscious takes over and rules your day, your year, your life.

From a rooftop in Singapore, I share how you can work out what your intentions are.

Watch more videos: http://goo.gl/Lm7CRa