Why Starting is the Most Important Thing

Photo by Maor Attias on Pexels.

Note: I wrote this article in March 2022. A lot has changed for me since then. I decided to leave this article as it is because it marks a starting point for me. I wrote it when I realized that I am not in my full power (any more), and set out on a quest to regain it. And it is now, in February 2023 that I can say, I am in my full power, again.

As a result, I opened the I AM CREATOR School, to share what I’ve learned and help you to reclaim your power, and become the masterful being you truly are.

You deserve to live the rest of your life as your best self. And I love you.

As an eight-year-old, when I woke up in the morning, I knew exactly what the most important thing was for me to do.

My friends and I would meet outside our school building to discuss everything that had happened in the 18 hours since we last saw each other. I couldn’t wait to catch up.

After school, we did our homework (or not), went to after school activities (or not), hung out with friends (or not), but we knew, undoubtedly, what we had to do.

The wonders of the world and the pure joy of existence were enough to get us out of bed and exited for a new day.

When did that stop? When did things become so much more complicated?

Take a second and think about this moment in your life! Do you remember the last time you felt that the world was just waiting for you to do something?

Knowing what the most important thing is, for me, also goes hand in hand with: knowing that I am powerful.

When did I stop to feel powerful? Was that the same time, I was told I had to make something out of my life?

Photo by Muhammadtaha Ibrahim Ma’aji

To come up with new and healthy and joyful ways to live, work and love, I find it quite helpful to look back and remember ourselves in moments when we did feel healthy, joyful, powerful and free.

The separation that happened to most of us at some point  – from our natural inherent self, connected to the universal consciousness, and the one formed by the circumstances in which we grew up, shaped by what we’ve learned and the protections we put up, the masks we put on – is the root cause for the desperation and loneliness we often feel now.

Growing up in a society where the majority of all people are traumatized – from wars, exploitation natural catastrophes – whether they’ve experienced the cause for the trauma themselves, or inherited it from past generations, we learn to cut off and hide our feelings, we harden ourselves, we lose the intuitions, we outsource the control over our bodies and our lives and we suffer from it.

The most important thing is…

As long as I can remember, I had dreams and aspirations. I found living as a nun quite attractive, Mother Theresa seemed cool.

But my surrounding told me that I couldn’t be a nun because I would miss out on life. I think I’m glad about that now.

When I was in High School, I had this dream to achieve big things and no question that I could.

However, I didn’t know what that would be, as many of the things I wanted, my surroundings told me, were not the right thing for me.

Where I was, I felt blocked in all directions. Whenever I turned one way, people told me that’s not what I could do. I know now, that they were just projecting their own fears, but at the time, I just felt like I wasn’t allowed to be me. And I had already been broken enough, that I didn’t feel like I could assert myself.

So, I tried to get away. I had this longing to find people and a place where I could be me and my dreams and aspirations weren’t considered improper or impossible. I thought that my surrounding needed to change for me to be me.

And the wandering began.

I went to the US for half a year during High School, but recognized that just when I had overcome homesickness and learned enough to actually experience myself there, I had to go back.

Which is why I set my mind to going abroad for a longer period of time, to get to know the world and myself in it a bit more fully.

I researched what I had to do for that, applied to many organizations, and finally went to live and work in Ukraine for a year after graduating from High School.

And to go and live there did change my life forever.

I met people who could love and be present fully, something I missed so much in my upbringing, and who would actually live in community and experience everything from birth to death together.

I also learned what it meant to live in poverty, to struggle every day to survive, so much about racism, as well as how to grow your own food, how to survive without the security of living in a welfare state, and so much more.

And I learned my fourth language there, Hungarian, something that opened a whole new way of thinking too.

But it also seemed obvious that this was not how I wanted to live either.

While I was welcomed with open arms and hearts, it was also clear to me that I was a visitor, a guest, a friend, even called in to become family, but while I found many things there, I thought were missing in my life before, like unconditional love and support, It did not seem smart to give up my financial security, different economic opportunities and to learn more, for that.

So, I went back to Germany to got to University. I moved to Göttingen, a college town close to where I live now, and quickly felt like I found a place where I belonged, with all the other lost kids.

I started working at a record shop, I started djing, we set up the first queer parties in Göttingen, I found people who liked what I liked.

But while I was happy that I finally found belonging, I also found hopelessness. As I learned more about the state of the world, about feminism, or the patriarchy, about politics, corruption, capitalism, I started to get gloomy.

This continued after University. Going back to Ukraine for another year, this time to live in the city, I also experienced a much harsher reality than in the village before.

Death, starvation, much more racism, suffering, rape, desperation. Much love too, but the feeling of doom became even stronger.

Coming back to Germany after that year, I was full of anger. I was angry that nobody did something about the suffering in the world.

I was angry that people in Ukraine thought I could do something about it. All I felt was lost, sad and overwhelmed, still helpless and now even more hopeless.

I was not centred, I felt like there was nothing in the world to hold or guide me and did not know that I would have to become my own centre.

So, I got depressed and started drinking way more than was good for me, thinking it would help me cope or at least distract me from all the bad things I saw, but it didn’t.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.

…To Start!

My first job back in Germany was at an NGO. We were trying to get as many projects as possible, just to cover the running costs for the organization, but didn’t have the people or time to actually follow through on the ambitions.

The ideas were great and the people who worked there were great too, but I just couldn’t see how we could implement the change that was needed. I and everybody else had a lot of responsibility for bad pay, we were overworked and colleagues were quarrelling.

Again, instead of trying to change the situation, I went to find myself elsewhere. I turned back to academia, and dealt with a similar situation there. Job insecurity, bad pay, overwork, overwhelm, quarrels among colleagues.

Then, I turned to self-employment, no fighting colleagues, but overworked partners and my mental health did not recover because I still did not feel that anything I did was actually meaningful.

During all these times, from early childhood to right about now, I never once felt like I had the power to change things, I felt like this was just how the world was and that we were all victims of our circumstances.

Can you relate?

Photo by Artem Malushenko on Pexels.

In this state, we are dealing with our circumstances, reacting to them, instead of creating them.

But once we become aware of that, we can also change it.

Take a moment to think about this, please. Do you feel like you are reacting to your circumstances, or do you feel like you are creating them? Because that makes all the difference.

You can learn to create your life, and if you would like to do that, then I invite you to join the I AM CREATOR School.

Because once you start to empower yourself, once you begin to become aware that you can change your reality, you can live a life that allows for peace of mind, for quiet, for love, for creativity. You can enter into the flow of life.

What changed? For me, there was a moment in which I realized that I did not want to stay in this cycle that I knew so well: Working and worrying, distracting myself with friends and alcohol, feeling ashamed that I did, working hard to make up for it until I needed a release and started the cycle again.

I quit drinking and late nights and started to learn more about healthy nutrition, and things fell into place from there.

This is why the most important part is to start.

If you have enough of the same old, the struggles, the shame, feeling powerless in a world that seems to be working against you, just start by changing one thing.

Once you remove or change one, any part of the puzzle, the whole configuration rearranges itself and bit by bit you can break out of the deficiency mode and come into the being mode and start to live as your true and free and authentic self.

But I also struggled. A lot. I remember a day, where I had relationship/emotional trouble and realized that the only way I knew to deal with that, was to call one or more friends, meet at a bar and vent about it.

I walked up and down the bathroom floor, like a tiger in a cage, and had no idea what to do. And felt so angry about that. Mad at myself for not allowing myself to get the release I needed, unable to see how else to get out of it. But I stayed. I just accepted that I felt what I felt and that it will be OK.

And from there even more change unfolded. Because I saw first hand that I could continue to exist without my former coping mechanisms.

I wasn’t physically addicted to alcohol, but I was mentally. The same way we use foods or shopping or TV to distract ourselves from what is going on and cope.

But I realized the next day, after I had survived without my former coping mechanism and in the freedom that I met and the feeling of “I can do this!” that came with it, that actually feeling the feelings and working through them, instead of getting approval and validation from friends, was a much better way to deal with the situation and the only way out.

I share this because you might have to make that move as well.

The good thing is, that it’s completely risk-free, as you can always return to your old ways, but it does require willpower and bravery.

That night was no joyride. Emotions and struggles and all the demons came out. I was pacing, yelling (silently), fighting, tossing and turning.

No one is just struggle-free and simply has any easy time to enjoy life.

We have to actually look at all the things that we have pushed away all our lives to get there, and then take full responsibility for our lives as well.

This is only such a small part of my story of how I started to break out of allowing others to define me to deciding things for myself and then to actually make them happen.

I had to fight many more demons and break many more habits to get out and I’m still doing it.

For me, it took around six years or so to free myself in so far as that I am now able to look at all that has happened and my life with compassion.

The memories of my feelings and the situations I was in, do feel like I was a different person. It feels warming to know that I do not have to go back, that I couldn’t if I tried.

We can go from the egoless child to finding our ego to overcoming it slowly and layer by layer.

A friend recently gave me a picture of us from two years ago. You could definitely look at it and say: cute picture. All I can see is me, smiling, not from my heart, but as a ritual, not in my body, so uncomfortable, but making sure that no one knows.

I feel compassion. I did not know what would be possible.

But change is possible, even when everybody around you seems to be caught in the same cycles you find yourself in.

Start to free yourself and reach hands out to your friends and invite them on the journey. Start to explore new things.

Read new books, listen to different podcasts, whatever triggers your interest. Go where your heart takes you. Your intuition and well-being are there, they’ve just been suppressed and will be so happy when you invite them back out.

(I’ve written more about how to do that here.)

There is no reason for us to hurt, to fight, to suffer so much. Life can actually be good and full of love and new discoveries and a new sense of freedom every day.

Where are you going to start?

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.” – Plato

The I AM CREATOR School invites you to join, to start becoming present and enjoying every aspect of your life.

It is open to join at the beginning of each month because I really believe that it does not matter where you start changing your life, it does not matter where you are right now, what you do or how you feel

All that matters is that you think something else and something better is possible for you, and that you would like to explore what that could be. And then do it.

Are you ready to explore what else is possible for you?

You deserve to live the rest of your life as your best self. And I love you.

Join us now and become the creator of your life.