I am starting a new experiment; I think not for the first time. When I set up this blog, it was my intention to post everyday. But I did not. Well, I did, for a few days, and then I didn’t. I had my own shame of that, my story around it how I always quit things that I started and I never get anything accomplished really but that had to end. If I was that way, it was time for me to quit the self-shaming, blaming, torturing game and come back to what I thought important, start over or just start new. And here I am doing it.
We all know that life is finite but forget somehow. We forget many things that we know. This experiment is to remember. That’s why the title is composed of numbers. I calculated how many days I have on this earth from now on. it is Nineteen thousand five hundred ninety eight days. I was very generous and maybe greedy because I hoped to live till 90. Well it was 95 actually but I gave myself the freedom not to write everyday in the last 5 years of my life. If I do, we can change the number to 0 and add every day I write as +1. That would be a fun experiment: to see how many days I still would live.
We all know that life is finite but forget somehow. We forget many things that we know. This experiment is to remember. That’s why the title is composed of numbers. I calculated how many days I have on this earth from now on. it is Nineteen thousand five hundred ninety eight days. I was very generous and maybe greedy because I hoped to live till 90. Well it was 95 actually but I gave myself the freedom not to write everyday in the last 5 years of my life. If I do, we can change the number to 0 and add every day I write as +1. That would be a fun experiment: to see how many days I still would live.
My plan is to write everyday a retrospective of the day before and set an intention for the current day. And I want everything to be as is. I want to be honest with myself , with you, with the world. That will take some practice guys. I have practiced so much to control myself, to show only my sides that would be accepted, letting go will be a process. But I want to do it. Why? Because I see it as a way of trusting myself, trusting you and trusting the world. I know if I open myself I am making the first step and then I can expect you and the world to come one step or take a step to where we go together. I know if I am honest with myself and you and the world, we can connect better. We touch each other in the heart. I know if I open myself you see that we are the same. That it is not you and me but it is we. The separations start to evaporate. I start seeing you as part of me because you are. I start to see everything in the world as part of me because they are. I see myself part of everything because I am.
I just updated the title from “Day 1 of the Experiment, and Day 1 of the 19598 Days Left” to “Day 1 of the 21 Day Experiment, and Day 1 of the 19598 Days Left” – I added the 21 days. I decided to commit at first to the 21 days as it is common knowledge that when you do something for 21 days you can establish the habit of doing it. So that is also what I am going to do, yeah! I will not share these posts on any social media for the first 21 days because … I don’t know… I like the idea of doing it and feeling how it feels to write and how it develops in the next 21 days. So let’s see.
The picture above shows my state of mind for the 3 quarters of the time I spent awake. I woke up feeling sad. The sadness grew as I went through the day. We went out for a walk and grocery shopping in the morning, I got hungry and Fabio bought me breakfast at the coffee shop of our supermarket. While speaking about how I feel I burst into tears. It was a mix of different feelings. The day before I answered some questions about my mother in the 21 days abundance challenge of Deepak Chopra and in my dream I had a fight with my mother. My mother was complaining about my behaviour, she was wanting me to be and act in certain ways that were not me and I could not take it. I remember a scene from my dream very clearly: I was at the kitchen counter, chopping tomatoes and my mother was yelling and spitting out malicious words, I could not deal with it anymore and I collapsed to the floor, I fainted, I passed out. I woke up really bad as you can imagine and felt bad about this dream, this feeling I had and I felt ashamed. I know shame is a very powerful emotion that takes your power away. And it did.
We talked with Fabio about it. I know that my mother is who she is and does her best. I appreciate all the things she had done, she loved me greatly, she showed me how to be happy, crazy, how to be considerate of other people, how to be generous. She inflicted on me the love of reading and writing. I look a lot like her physically. And probably also act in similar ways emotionally. I know these but somehow my attention goes to this space that blocks me to feel closer to her. And I feel bad about creating this space. I know it is me who creates it. Oh well, I decided to allow myself to feel whatever I feel but don’t believe in the stories my mind creates. So be it, so be this feeling there. That means this space needs my attention. May I care about this space, myself and my mother with love and kindness.
I came back from holidays on Thursday but somehow I now need holidays from the holiday. I felt tired and catching up with the unattended e-mails overwhelmed me. And I felt stressed about The Podcasting Fellowship that I had registered for before my holidays, it had started on Monday, 5 days ago and I missed a lot of work and conversations. (Hello my FOMO). I wanted to dive into it and first thing I saw was a lovely message from one of the fellow students about how she liked my short bio and how she was curious about my “existing in the world authentically”. I wrote her back and followed her on LinkedIn and Instagram, because we should connect with each other!
More and more I realize the value of the community. I think The Podcasting Fellowship will be my community. Amanda Fucking Palmer and the patrons are my community (I will talk about her today more), Toastmasters (Especially my clubs Isar-Speak Munich and Prostmasters) is my community, BeCoach Academy (my coaching academy) is my community, Susan Piver’s sangha is my community, listeners of Seth Godin’s Akimbo podcast is my community, the coaching school I graduated from (Sola Unitas) is my community, International Coach Federation is my community, -for turkish readers- Radyo Karavan audience is my community. While writing this I realize that I still have places which should have been my community but yet needs my love and attention: my newsletter group in Younich, my friends circle – I love many people and I have many friends but I don’t keep in touch with them, I would love to include them in my prayers, I would love to reach out to them when I want help, when I want to ask to pass the message, I want to ask them for a tip, suggestion, prayer or just for hearing me out. That place needs also more attention from me.
Coming back to The Podcasting Fellowship (TPF)… I listened to the recording of the kick off call. Seth Godin and the co-creator of the course Alexandra DiPalma joined the call in the beginning, which was great. Seth Godin again reminded us it is learning by doing and every time we do we get better. We do good by doing a lot of bad. He himself writes 5 posts every day and publishes 1. It was a great message to re-hear. The call continued with the questions of other participants and the answers and guidance of coaches. I could hear some insecurity of not knowing what to expect from the participants and also a bit of not knowing how to proceed. The coaches shared their own experience and I could feel they were okay with not knowing and okay at being where they are, they knew it will change and they knew it is not where they ultimately want to be but they are willing to walk on the journey and connect with everyone on the way. This was great!
I was especially impressed by Maria, one of the coaches. The message I took from her was to start simple, build momentum, keep doing, keep it simple. Two areas of development for me: keeping it simple and keep doing till momentum is built. But I know this challenge here will also serve me for that.
I checked the first exercise of the day, it was about finding your podcast title and writing a little description, wow hard start! I felt tired and wanted to take a rest so I switched to check my e-mails and saw that Amanda Palmer uploaded a new music video.
In my mind
In a future five years from now
I’m one hundred and twenty pounds
And I never get hung over
Because I will be the picture of discipline
Never minding what state I’m in
And I will be someone I admire
And it’s funny how I imagined
That I would be that person now
But it does not seem to have happened
Maybe I’ve just forgotten how
to see
That I am not exactly the person
that I thought I’d be
And in my mind
In the faraway here and now
I’ve become in control somehow
And I never lose my wallet
Because I will be the picture of discipline
Never fucking up anything
And I’ll be a good defensive driver
And it’s funny how I imagined
That I would be that person now
But it does not seem to have happened
Maybe I’ve just forgotten how
to see
That I’ll never be the person
that I thought I’d be
And in my mind
When I’m old I am beautiful
Planting tulips and vegetables
Which I will mindfully watch over
Not like me now
I’m so busy with everything
That I don’t look at anything
But I’m sure I’ll look when I am older
And it’s funny how I imagined
That I could be that person now
But that’s not what I want
But that’s what I wanted
And I’d be giving up somehow
How strange to see
That I don’t wanna be the person
that I want to be
And in my mind
I imagine so many things
Things that aren’t really happening
And when they put me in the ground
I’ll start pounding the lid
Saying I haven’t finished yet
I still have a tattoo to get
That says I’m living in the moment
And it’s funny how I imagined
That I could win this, win this fight
But maybe it isn’t all that funny
That I’ve been fighting all my life
But maybe I have to think it’s funny
If I wanna live before I die
And maybe it’s funniest of all
To think I’ll die before I actually see
That I am exactly the person that I want to be
Fuck yes
I am exactly the person that I want to be.
How I love these lyrics. Especially the end: Fuck yes, I am exactly the person that I want to be. FUCK YES!
I then remembered the interview Amanda did a week ago or so that had to be now somewhere on YouTube and I went on to watch it. Here its is:
I could just watch the first hour but during the time I googled people she was mentioning and read/ watched their stories. I spent the most time about Anthony Martignetti. He was Amanda’s mentor and best friend, who died some years ago just days before her son was born. I googled him and first found the beautiful video of Amanda moderating a Q & A session for his book launch.
How much love there was (is) between these two people. How open, honest, generous is Anthony to share himself and how he feels. I noticed how he said “I can only talk about my experience”. I love it when someone says that. This is the generosity of offering your experience but not pushing it to the other person. I also loved the quote he shared about offending other people. I don’t exactly remember but it was something like this: If you are worried people will be offended when you share your experiences with them, then they should have treated you better. That quote gave me a bit of relief but I could’t totally wear it, it will take practice for me to open up. Anyway, I was then curious about the actual story they were mentioning in this Q and A and I watched it.
What a beautiful soul! How he touched me! I notice I also judge people, I compare. I am aware of it, I want to let it go. I do sometimes. But sometimes not, sometimes I want to feel right, superior, my time is worthy and I don’t want to give it to people who are not worth. I vs them. Deep in my heart I know this is not who I am. But sometimes it is all automatic. I want to bring more awareness to it. thank you Anthony Martignetti. I can’t wait to read your books! And I am going to the concert of Amanda 100%! She will be in Munich on September 11th, don’t miss it if you are here. She is in Europe tour, maybe she will be somewhere near you. I can’t wait!
All that I watched yesterday has motivated me to be more courageous to accept myself, to share what I think, to connect more, to be more open, be more generous. We have an upcoming webinar at BeCoach Academy and I missed to post regular updates to our social media channels recently. So I decided instead of writing something I just go on camera and invite people to join us, which I did.
In the video my voice is a bit low and I am very calm – too calm maybe? – it might be because i cried all day but that’s okay. I showed up, I as I am invited people to join me if it is something useful for them. And that is what I signed up to do. So congratulations me!
After this day, I fell asleep quite early. I did not do the work of The Podcasting Fellowship. That is okay. I will do it today. I am here.
And that brings me to my intention for today. Overarching goal of today is to set a vision for myself and set goals, goals that will bring me closer to my vision of being this person who is open, connected, generous, who has the discipline to come back to work that matters. And today I am going to work through the first 7 days of The Podcasting Fellowship. Let’s see what is going to happen there. I can foresee already that it will be tough. That I will feel I don’t have the answers – here I will remind myself I might now have the perfect answers or good answers but I will keep on going with some bad ones, because I know they will be good on the way. I will give myself permission to act with not knowing and not being perfect. At the end of the day I will take notes to document what matters tomorrow. Let’s go!