Simplicity means:

You don’t have generalized anxiety disorder. You are scared, and you don’t admit that to yourself.

I believe in simplicity. That many things have a simple origin.

When I was young, I sometimes didn’t feel comfortable at home. Because of that, I taught myself to “turn off” my feelings. Of course, I eventually forgot that I was doing it.

In the beginning, I was still happy, but over the years, things gradually started to go wrong — diagnoses like ADHD, autism, depression, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and psychosis.

The strange thing is that, in the beginning, it actually worked. But over long periods of time, things eventually go wrong anyway, because you have been pushing things down for too long.

It took me a while to unlearn it, and now I feel normal again.

More than anything, I had to learn that I need to build a relationship with my body based on trust and feeling. As if you are learning to know yourself from a different perspective. I hope this journey is finally coming to an end, because I’m tired of it.

It is very strange. When you have become so disconnected from your own feelings, you are constantly on guard, as if your body is going to do something to you. Even when you are alone. You become paranoid even when you are by yourself.

When you read it like this, it almost sounds like a circus trick: learning to stop turning off your feelings. That’s not what I mean by it. It has been a deep spiritual journey in which, for example, you learn the value of good parenting. You learn that not everything is about being “the best” and constantly achieving. Things like that can drive entire generations crazy.

When I was younger, I earned pride from my achievements. It was “normal” for me to be the best at everything. I did not realize that I was building a very unhealthy relationship with my body that way. I was exalting myself and pushing myself afterward. For what? Later in my life, this became “always having to do something.”

Like constantly having to work out or move fast. Sitting down meant not doing anything. Ridiculous.

How do you call somebody who wins in every game he plays, but is unhappy? A loser.

We live in a time now that is “achievement-based.” I mean, it’s fun. Trying to push each other, working out every day. But wisdom sometimes means not doing that thing and staying close to yourself.

And just being sad sometimes. That’s not weakness. That’s strength.

The grail means that you alter the way you look at the world and change what you do — until you have faith in the way you look at the world. This is a relationship built on trust, and a very spiritual process. It’s seeing the holiness in things. For me, it’s also the process of becoming a man.

Bodies Want to Explain Things

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Bodies are very smart. You are your whole body at once.

Bodies don’t forget. They come back and explain things to you when you sit down and the time is right. Trust that very scary process. It’s how you learn.

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Today, I want you to look at yourself from a different angle. I want you to truly see how beautiful the human body is. It’s perfect. Literally perfect. When I look at my body, it almost hurts my own eyes, and I’m not joking.

I want a six-pack, and I don’t have one. It’s easy to look in the mirror and, every time, say, “I don’t have a six-pack,” without actually seeing how beautiful my own belly is.

In this time, you can die without ever having taken one adequate look at your own body. It’s about the uniqueness of things: the uniqueness of your body, the uniqueness of how your brain works. It’s not about making every body, or every brain, the same.

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Nobody is ever going to experience the world exactly as you do right now.

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Simplicity. I also often forget that things are simple in essence. Simplicity means understanding that the goal is to focus on the uniqueness of things, not to make everything the same or force it into one box.

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Does that mean you can’t change things? You can, and you do all the time. But you don’t have to change everything. You can also learn to see the beauty first. If you see every feeling and every thought as something that is exactly how it should be, then to me, that is paradise.

Step 1: Identify the emotion. For example, anxiety.

Step 2: Try to feel it as much as possible throughout your own body. As if your life goal is to be anxious all day today.

Step 3: Now that you have unblocked that emotion within yourself, other emotions will flow through you again too.

A body explains itself to you through unidentification and identification. It’s supposed to work like that.

When you are small, you and your thoughts are one. Then you learn to unidentify, so that you can choose your own path and the person you would like to be. And then, afterwards, you re-identify with the things you want to carry with you.

The same goes for emotions: which emotions are yours, and which are from others?

This spiritual journey you call consciousness. It sounds easy, but it’s incredibly hard in practice, with a lot of difficult levels.

The most important thing is that you learn to verbalize your own opinion within yourself, and versus others. If you don’t like a certain thought or feeling, you declare war. If you don’t label things within yourself, it’s harder to fix things.

Also, if you feel something, it can help to feel that thing 100% unconditionally. Love yourself 100% unconditionally. Or be afraid unconditionally.

The moment you have found the tears within yourself again, and your voice, is the moment you have found yourself again. Then the healing has already begun.

Don’t worry: we all get lost in this world. We have to lose ourselves first.

Shall we make a little board? Let's write down two minutes of internal conversation.

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Frustration

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Work — should I do it or not?

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Not wanting to tell people at work, having a hard time saying goodbye.

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But it is time to move on — or am I just convincing myself of that?

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Emotional intelligence is what you are doing right now: you see the layers of things.

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Learn to trust your own emotional intelligence.

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That takes time.

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Religious experience.

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Have faith.

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You keep ending up at that same point, but in the meantime, you have changed. You don't see that very well yourself. But everything is so different compared to a few years ago. More emotional intelligence.

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Advantages of staying

It is socially good for me.

Kind people around me — but the uncertainty is unpleasant, financially speaking.

Advantages of leaving

It is good to do something new, even if it is scary.

Maybe there is a lot of writing work to do there.

M (Tuesday), V and P, M and M are still there. And N. For example, you could keep working in Utrecht twice a week.

Making decisions gives you peace. If you say, "I'm going to do it," and start moving forward.

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Am I just convincing myself that this is a good idea? I am definitely steering myself in a certain direction. I don't like the idea of letting fear govern my entire life — not doing things because of possible unpleasant consequences, such as loneliness.

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Can I also work in other tax offices?

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You also deserve to be more proud of yourself. You have come a long way, and look where you are now. It would be such a shame if you don't see that yourself and throw it all away again. If you think that all of this would have happened if you weren't capable of anything, you are seriously missing the point. Be proud of yourself.

Think about a body or something that has a + and a -.

So it’s all about balance.

Understanding why balance is the most important thing there is takes years. The point is to mess this up when you are young.

So you actually have to go through the levels of imbalance (overthinking), the OCD levels, where you learn to find your own body’s rhythm, find out what your relationship with thinking is, what thinking is, and what it means to become paralyzed by it.

When you go through all the levels, you get the output you want. So it has to be that hard. Otherwise, you would make it to the other side without doing the work, and then it would be worthless.

So you have to go through the imbalances first, until you find balance, until you find your own voice, your own emotion.

It’s one hundred percent about the journey. You don’t realize it, but you change so much, so fast.

People who are good with consciousness can operate their brain manually.

You can literally switch gears. I can look at something purely rational and purely emotional. This is like the clutch in a car. This is an extremely important skill, especially if you are a rule-based person.

Let’s say you do this: “Today I am going to eat 2,000 calories.”

This is a very rule-based way to look at reality. You don’t know what’s going to happen one second from now, but you have already decided what you are going to eat for the whole day.

You can switch gears by looking at yourself with compassion, like: “I am somebody who makes mistakes. I can be too strict with myself.”

So you look at the same situation with completely different eyes, with soft eyes. You look at it from the other side of yourself.

Now, you have switched gears manually.

There are thousands of these levels in looking at something, and they cross over thousands of dimensions.

Reality is very interesting in that sense.

 

Another gear

Feel your emotion right now. Is it fear? Then feel 100% of the fear, as much as possible, throughout your body.

You have found another clutch.

Emotional people

It is important to understand that you are a very emotional person, and that your emotions can fluctuate a lot. You are sensitive. That is not a bad thing, even though sensitivity often has a bad reputation.

It means that you do not make all your decisions clinically, like a robot.