Chapter III

Recap of past years

Looking back on my last few years, even I feel a little surprised how much happened to me. I went through so many experiences and my life changed so often that most people don’t experience this much change in an entire lifetime. While I was in the middle of the process of each situation that was shaping the path of my life, I didn’t realise just how transformational these events were. We need to stop every once in a while to evaluate what we went through and how we improved or what we achieved.

I used to have a tendency to not recognise my own success, to not pat myself on the back occasionally. It didn’t feel right for me to do that. I didn’t want to put myself on the pedestal as I was constantly fighting against my ego and I was consciously trying to dissociate from it, to shatter it into pieces. Once I understood that our ego needs to be understood and managed, not completely destroyed, I realised that I didn’t give myself enough credit. I didn’t know my real worth, I repeatedly ‘undersold’ myself. Knowing your worth and the value you can bring is vital in every area of your life. Be it a job, a relationship or a social commitment, you need to understand where you can position yourself. Not from a superficial point of view as in how others see you and what you portray yourself as but to fully understand where you are standing along your journey. How much knowledge you have, how much value you can add and how you can serve best.

At the end of the day, if you live your life to the full then it’s all about service. That doesn’t mean you need to be in a subordinate role, no not at all. Serving others, serving a community, serving a cause and most importantly serving to fulfil your own desires. These are the things that matter. Either from a business point of view or a personal inspiration, prioritising the service aspect of the process, you will achieve long-lasting results. For example, a business that truly puts customer satisfaction first will thrive within its competition as it will have happy customers who will not only return for more business but will also recommend the service or product happily to others. But hold on for a second, I got a bit side tracked with my story. I wanted to share with you how much happened to me in these past few years, that triggered my need for becoming ‘homeless’ for a while. To have no fixed address and just to go with the flow of life for a while. How I went from having the perfect life (on paper) to living out of a backpack because of that one thought on 4th April 2018. I was a CEO of a start company, I was living in a beautiful 2-bedroom apartment on my own, driving a BMW, ate in restaurants pretty much every day or had my food prepared and delivered to me, had some really good friends yet one day I said I’m not happy and threw my lifestyle away to seek some kind of meaning.

I was looking for some sort of revelation, a lesson, the ultimate purpose.

I was not happy with the ‘successful’ life that so many people only dream about. I had it all laid out in front of me yet it was not enough for some reason. It was lacking a mission, a purpose: what do I leave behind? What do I contribute? How do I inspire? How am I making this world a little bit better? My mind and soul were seeking answers, searching for something. Even I wasn’t sure what it was I was seeking. I just knew I had to change. I wanted to go into the opposite direction and start looking for something that I didn’t know what it was.