(XXL) Live a fulfilling life.

KIMZO

Feb 27, 2023 • 13 min read

Hello friends,

I have announced it last week, and here it is: The most important blog post I've ever written. An XXL blog post, just for you.

Today, I will be breaking down the way of living a fulfilling life. A life worth living. A life you will be happy about. And most importantly: A life that you will love. I will be taking you to the three stages that I went through and that turned me (and are still turning me) into the person I am today. And even tho I'm far away from my peak, I feel that I have an unfair advantage towards other people because of my understanding of character development and how I am living my life.

I want to share with you how I am currently setting my life up so that I can find and follow my purpose and what stages I went through to get to the point where I am today.

Let me challenge all of your beliefs.

It all starts with you

If you are someone who read my older blogs as well, you should by now be familiar how often I use the argument of time to show you how important it is to do the right things.

The thing that I didn't realize back then yet was, that I always thought that I was using my time right by fixing my problems with external things.

Feeling not good enough? --> Going to the gym to get a good physique --> Feeling "good enough".

Feeling lonely --> Going outside and meeting people (but not allowing myself to feel lonely)

Feeling sad? –> Coping with food, porn, video games and so on --> "Not feeling sad anymore"

Ladies and gentlemen: How you use your time matters (duh). But many people out there have learned to spend their time on things, that instead of help you to learn things about yourself, feel alive or enrich your life in some kind of way, steal your focus and energy, help you avoid your emotions and feelings and eat your precious lifetime away.

And the worst part: We get the feeling that we are doing something that is "good for us" while wasting time. Time that we will never ever get back again.

The stage of avoidance

Hands holding the game controllers — Photo by JESHOOTS.COM / Unsplash

Before I will show you everything, let me tell you that what we will be doing here isn't something that can be compared and can even come close to actual therapy. If you feel like that what you are reading is to overwhelming or that you might have something more serious going on, be brave enough to call a therapist. They are here to help you.

With that out of the way, let's begin.

I had for a very long time the feeling that I wasn't good enough.

I felt like shit about myself. And honestly, back then it was understandable: I felt like having no purpose in life, my days were filled with school stuff that I hated, with people that didn't treat me well, and I coped with playing video games all day. I thought I was worthless. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw a pathetic loser.

Instead of doing something to change that situation, I avoided it by coping with video games, watching YouTube, porn and scrolling on social media. I tried to run away from the pain.

But by avoiding this pain, I bottled it up. My mental health got way worse. There were days that I cried myself to bed. And I said to myself that this is normal. "This is life."

And after a while, when I started to cry myself DAILY to bed, I told myself that other's have it worse. "People were dying in wars. So what am I crying about. Man up, bitch!"

I avoided my emotions and told myself excuses to avoid facing them. Those are things that people in the stage of avoidance do.

Not to say that I had it worse than people in wars: But I used this statement to not work on my own problems.

Those thoughts kept me trapped in not taking action. And back then I even thought that it made sense.

Let me tell you this.

Your emotions are the most real feedback you can get. Every emotion has a cause. Listen to your emotions.

If you don't, they will become stronger and stronger. You are literally bottling up. Until you snap.

And this is now the point where I won't go deeper yet. But if you feel highly triggered by reading this, chances are, you are in this stage. If you want to find out if you are avoiding something, try to spend 15 minutes alone in a room doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. No music, no phone, no moving. Just sitting on a chair and waiting.

This exercise is highly triggering.

If you can't do it, the chances are high you are running away from something.

Try to find out what. And if this feels way too overwhelming/triggering to you, in all honesty (and without bad intentions), it's time to consider professional help. There may be a trauma behind it that you need to work on with a therapist. And by running away from it, nothing will change.

If something comes up that triggers you in any way, you are doing it right. But it shouldn't absolutely obliterate you.

Whatever it is, you are getting aware of it. And then, you can work on it.

The best things to become more aware are journaling, meditating and spending time alone (without distractions).

And if you can accept that there are things (and you don't really need to have identified them clearly by know) that are running you, you are now ready for your journey.

External work

Let's say that you realize, that you have the fear of not being good enough. You finally accept that this feeling is there. You are already on a very good path. But then, most people don't know what to do. Most people start to google and then start working on the external:

They go to the gym
They work on getting more stylish
They start to work harder in their job
They try to get more xy

All of those things are amazing first steps and long-term goals that will help you out in life. Especially when starting your journey of self discovery, you will not have sky-high confidence. And that's okay. You are good enough as you are.

And I want you all to start out by doing things in the external at first for a while. Because like that, you don't feel like shit anymore. It works. But there is a catch.

By working on the external, you are alleviating your symptoms, but you'll never get to the cause.

What do I mean by that?

Instead of facing your problems and feeling through emotions, you are trying to "become" good enough. To "become" someone who feels better. To "become" the best version of yourself.

By working on yourself externally, you will temporarily feel better, but you will never feel truly complete.

If you chose the gym as your way to "become" better, the second you stop going to the gym, your emotions will come back. You will feel like trash again.

You can never become good enough. You can only realize that you are good enough to begin with.

This is what inner works will do. We will get to that later.

The person you are defined by your actions. Your actions decide what person you become. That's why your actions are the most effective thing to change yourself as a person (going to the gym will make you look and feel better --> You feel more confident). But actions that change something temporally (if you stop going to the gym, you will be less --> You feel less confident) will only help you as long as you do them.

That's why external work, in the long run, is a trap (considering that you wanat to become someone else).

And a very important side note: I don't want you now stop going to the gym or stop looking after your looks or whatever, after what you just read. Doing all these things will improve your life in more than one way. Especially going to the gym or working out in general is an amazing habit to have. But: Just know that by going to the gym and working out will never heal your trauma and inner wars you are fighting. You will feel better about yourself and this affects your vibe that people sense when talking to you, but if you are spending time alone long enough, your demons will still be there.

Work on the external for results in your life, but not to heal your traumas.

And avoid the trap of doing too much in the external, so that you avoid working on the internal.

The only way to become who you want to be, and therefore live the best life you possibly can, is to do inner work.

Internal work

A morning yoga session peering into the jungle in Ubud, Bali. — Photo by Jared Rice / Unsplash

“The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I'm not going to let myself pull me down anymore.” ― C. JoyBell C.

Before I will show you everything, let me tell you once again that what we are doing here isn't something that can be compared to actual therapy. If you feel like that this is to overwhelming or that you might have something more serious going on, be brave enough to call a therapist. They are here to help you.

From now on, this blog post can be very triggering.

The person that you spend the most time with in your lifetime is you. That's why your life needs to be your number one priority. And to truly be able to live an amazing life, you need to work through all of your emotional trauma.

Everybody has traumas, and especially people who tell themselves that they have "no trauma at all" or that "this isn't possible" are usually those who have a big bomb hiding in their subconscious. I'm not saying this to scare you, but to open yourself up to trying out the things we are going to discuss.

We all deserve an amazing life. But for that, we need to become free of the burdens of our past. And this is no easy process at all, but it's one that I want to motivate you to commit to.

But it will be life changing. What I'm telling you here is what helped me personally get out of a state of feeling like shit, and how I learned to love myself.

For that, I'm going to show you a process that is very triggering. For that, we will be using something that is called a "Shadow question".

I want you to ask yourself the following question, and I want you to stick with it for at least a minute. Do it properly, and if you want, you can write down what comes up in a journal.

The Question:

Do you remember a moment in life where you have been hurt?

For most people, a question like that will trigger a memory that they want to forget. Even I got triggered just by writing this. It doesn't "feel good" when you do it for the first time. You want to avoid this feeling because you have labeled this feeling as bad.

What came up? Anger? Grief? Fear? Sadness?

What we just did is getting triggered.

We got triggered by a traumatic experience that hurt us in some way. And it doesn't matter if it's something "small" or "big" that came up: The fact that something came up shows, that you just got triggered.

And maybe there wasn't even a conscious thought that came to your mind, and you just felt a sensation in your body.

What I just did is ask you a shadow question. A question that is purposefully aimed to trigger you in a way.

With that, thoughts, emotions and sensations come up that are giving you some kind of feedback.

What do I mean with that?

Every emotion has its purpose, and can't be labeled as good or bad. Emotions give you feedback in form of sensations in your body as a result of being triggered.

Try to feel into it. If it's challenging for you to feel an emotion, that's okay, try to feel a sensation in your body. This can be things like: Tingling in your belly, your muscles getting stiff, breathing getting heavier or shaky, your chest tightening, your belly tightening and much more. However small or big, feel into it.

Those sensations and emotions are stored in your body from past events that happened to you through your life. And many of those are still from your childhood.

So now, what do we do with that?

Those sensations in your body need to leave. They have been here, bothering you unconsciously, long enough.

We need to let go of them.

There are a few methods that work, but one that works amazingly well is breathing into those sensations. This is quite simple, but not easy to do.

Breath in for 6 seconds through your nose. Focus on all of your sensations in your body as good as you can.
Hold for 3 seconds. Still focus on the sensations.
Breath out for 6 seconds through your mouth. Feel as if you were sinking into your sensations and accept them fully.
Hold another 3 seconds. Then breathe normally.
Repeat 4 more times.

Sounds way to simple, right? Then try it out. Maybe with this next shadow question:

Why am I not good enough?

I want you to feel into that question for about one minute again. See if anything comes up (sensations and emotions, not necesarly thoughts!). Then do those breathing cycles. Accept everything that comes up.

When you are done, hug yourself.

With that technique you can learn to work through your emotions.

And this is an important side note: When asking a shadow question, your number one priority should be feeling sensations. If no thought comes up, but you still feel your chest getting heavy for example, then you are doing it right. If a thought comes up and your chest gets heavy, you are doing it right. If a thought comes up and you stick with that thought instead of trying to feel someting, you are doing it wrong.

What comes now, is a list of shadow questions you can copy. You can skip those for now and continue reading.

What am I running away from?
Why am I not good enough?
Why do I deserve to die alone?
Why does nobody love me?
Why don’t I deserve success?
What am I hiding from myself?
What am I hiding from others?
Why don’t I like myself?
Why will people abandon me?
Why do I hate myself?
Why are other people better then me?
What’s so bad about being you right here right now?
What has convinced me I’m not good enough?

And with that out of the way, you can combine that with journaling: You can write down thougths that come up with that questions. And on top of that, I found something for you one Youtube. There is a guided meditation that is amazing and that includes triggering questions. It's literally a meditation designed around this concept. I recommend doing it once a week.

If you want to read more about Letting go, there is a book about it

And even better: The method I just showed you is something that you can use in your day to day life as well.

For that, I want you to remember something: An action leads to being triggerd. When you are triggered, you need to work through your emotions.

Let's say an "action" happens (Shadow Question, seeing your bully, speaking in front of a crowd, approaching a girl) and you get triggered. You feel sensations and emotions in your body (chest tightening, breathing gets harder, you may realize fear or grief). Depending on how triggered you are, you can either push through and do what you have/want to do. Then do the breathing cycles later. Or find a place where you can be relaxed and do the breathing cycles there.

Also, get used to being triggered. Sometimes you need to put your foot down and just do what you have to do, despite not feeling well.

With that, you can work on traumas and over time become more free, confident, self loving and the person you want to be.

The less traumatized you are, the more purpose and love can kick in.

This is the secret of living your best life. And now, it's time to get what you deserve.

My challenge for you

This week, I want you to plan out the habit of doing inner work. I want you (if you haven't one yet) to get a journal. Then, from every saturday or sunday from now on, you will ask yourself three shadow questions.

Write it down in your journal. Then write about what comes up. Write as much as you like, but you need to plan at least 10 minutes just for the writing part.

Then release with the breathing cycles. Like that, you will slowly and steadily let go of the things that are running you.

And as a bonus one for those who are very commited: Try to do the meditation above once per week as well. You will change over time. Insane what something like that does to you. How it works is described in the video itself..

My Song of the week

Skillet is coming to Zurich. I need go. I'm fucking hyped.

Genre: Rock