Day 174: Sneaky little thoughts creeping in

When it comes to the mind it is like weed suffocating your garden plants. Very slowly the weed is growing among the edible plants and you have to weed it out constantly before it is too late. It is a challenge to decide when the weed is still small enough not to endanger other plants and when it has grown so big that it is about time to get rid of it. The mind is in a similar way tempting us with constant small thoughts that looks very innocent and we can not measure and categorized them by their harmful impact because since are not physical. Often time it is only by the pain and illness that manifest as the consequence that we can see how damaging they actually are. And as has been explained, the existential process of amalgamation of the mind with the physical body is increasingly shortening the time between the accepted and allowed thoughts and the physical consequence.

Lately, I am being challenged especially by the consequence of the pain in my right knee and the pain in my lower back. The pain in the knee manifests very quickly, almost suddenly when and as my mind is producing specific unconscious thoughts. And the pain in my lower back has been a recurring manifestation after I take a quick nap in my bed during the day and I think about things that are worrying me while napping. Besides that, I am also experiencing like a sort of pressure or inflammation of some internal organ right below the right half of my rib cage. I am not sure if it the intestine or liver or something else. Occasionally I also feel slight pinching pain and some kind of liquid or gas movement there. I remember to have the same sort of feeling during middle school and doctors checked me with the ultrasound and found nothing unusual. So I am not sure if it is worth to spend time for the doctor's appointment and if they would again find nothing. Anyway, what I can at least do at this moment is to check my thoughts and face them and then I will see if any of these symptoms will change.

So what I am currently dealing with is the decision to restart my photography business after 10 years of not offering professional photography services anymore. I started my own graphic and web design business in 2000 and then completely focused only on photography from the year 2004 to 2008. After that, I sold all of my photography equipment and changed my photo studio into a counseling office. In the following years, I have also shot a lot of events however only for my personal use, with my mobile phone camera and for free. However, I did invest many hours into photos of each event to process them professionally with photo editing software composition and color-wise. That proves that photography has remained my passion but I did not earn anything by it. So I have spent a lot of my time for free instead of shooting photos for some clients and earning my living with it. Well, that was my decision since I worked on projects where I planned to earn a lot more by doing other things but sadly the promises of my financial compensation were not fulfilled by others.

Now, when I am returning to photography after a decade, I started to buy the basic gear so that I can start executing photo jobs. I managed to purchase a camera body, two zoom lenses, a flash, a stand, and some accessories which enable me to shoot many things. I had to refresh my photography knowledge and learn all the functions of the DSLR camera body. What I started to experience is the heaviness and bulkiness of the camera and lenses comparing to shooting with a smartphone. It is also a strain to look through a small optical viewfinder with just one eye. Although the professional camera body and lenses enable much more technical options for photography they are a much more demanding experience to work with. And if I add also the stand with the studio umbrella and external flash, combined with different backgrounds and data cable for tethered shooting via the notebook computer, it takes a lot more physical work to just prepare all the equipment for the shoot compared to taking snapshots with a smartphone.

Then there is a business aspect of photography. It takes around 2 to 3 years before others start to recognize your services and the orders are becoming more frequent. So I will have to spend a lot of time and money just to share the word about myself to the surrounding inhabitants. I already made the first move by designing and sending to print 3.000 pieces of business cards and have ordered 50 clear plastic business card stands that I plant to distribute among hairdressers, florists, sweet shops, makeup artists, restaurants, hotels and wedding planners in my local area. And I started to redesign my website with the sample photos of my previous projects. What I found is that I am looking with different eyes on the photos than when I shot them a decade ago so it is hard for me to decide which photos to include. Because I now have an improved artistic taste and plan to create much better photographs than before. Of course, I will, in the beginning, be limited with a lower quality of the gear compared to what I already had before, so I plan to invest most of my initial earnings into better lenses.

15 years ago when I had the need to enhance my photography skills there were very little options to acquire additional knowledge. In our country, I was able to find a secondary school for design and photography which would mean me having to physically attend classes in our capital city for 3 years. However, I was lucky to then discover a distant class of professional photography at the New York Institute of Photography. It offered me more flexibility so I picked it and was able to finish it within one year with great success. But now I am being offered new photography courses via Facebook ads on a daily basis by many online learning platforms, famous professional photographers and also there have many new physical photography schools emerged in our country. And there are so much free YouTube tutorials available where photographers are sharing their biggest professional secrets. It looks like now some photographers are earning more from sharing and teaching that from selling their photography services.

Sharing videos from behind the scenes of photoshoots is something that a lot of photographers do now. This has become a new way of advertising in order to increase the number of followers and potential clients. It is cool that we are entering an era of transparency where more and more things are being exposed. And the new type of a profession that is emerging is actually called the influencer. So many clients are not looking for someone that is the best professional at a certain job but how large their group of followers is and how great exposure they would get if hiring this influencer to do a job for them. Basically, it is the attention that has become a very sought-after product. In this era of social media with a constantly increasing quantity of information and shortened attention span, people are craving for attention. So within all these new trends of how marketing is being done lately, I am now facing a challenge of how to position myself and my professional services. And especially in what way to be different from others in order to create a competitive advantage that would result in me getting hired and being paid for my services.

In photography, we are seeing great technological changes. The biggest one is, of course, smartphone cameras becoming more and more powerful and capable. Almost everyone is on a daily basis producing photos and sharing them via their social networks. And also there are online photo banks where professionals are uploading their work for sale. The number of snapshots and photography artworks is growing exponentially and the generation of millennials is entering the workforce market with new approaches. Whoever wants to stay in business has to adapt and reinvent themselves in order not to become outdated. I have seen even the artificial intelligence software that creates photos from scratch in a matter of seconds by only giving it the input of what the elements the photo needs to be composed of. In all fields of profession, technology is taking over more and more jobs so society will have to change the support and distribution system in order to provide for the people who are not capable to adapt to effects of technological progress effectively. Regarding all these observations I will now align myself in order to remain grounded and stable enough for me to exist in this fast-changing global situation:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to compare myself to a new generation of millennials and feeling old and outdated. I realize that while younger generations are contributing with their new ways of communication older generations will always be able to contribute with their accumulated experiences and wisdom. I commit myself to when and as my mind is producing thought like: “You are like a dinosaur and there is no use for you anymore in this world.” to stop and breathe. I commit myself to look at my strengths and find out the best ways of how I can be a useful part of this society within all the challenges that humanity is currently facing. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to give up on myself and losing motivation to basically do anything and believing that there is no point in doing something. I realize that such an attitude is based on my previous desires of wanting to be more than others and then dropping this motivation which places me into a position where I need to redefine myself and discover what I would like to do in my life as pure self-expression without any kind of need and desire to be recognized and accepted by others. Within this, I commit myself to look deeper into myself in order to discover what I would like to express and than use this as the base for my self-movement and professional activities. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel inadequate due to past experiences with my very demanding father that constantly criticized my work no matter how hard I tried. I realize that his criticism has been a projection of his own feeling of inadequacy due to his past experiences and that I need to break the chain of transferring this pattern from generation to generation. I commit myself to when and as my mind produces thoughts like: “Why even bother to try since what you will do will be no good to anyone.” to stop and breathe. I then do the job the best I can by my own inner measure of quality and understand that whatever others will say about it that will be mostly a reflection of their own mindset and their own relationship towards themselve. 

Supportive free online course and audios in regards to this post:

DIP Lite Course
Using Criticism to Your Advantage
Taking Feedback Personally
You Define Me
Bringing Creation into Reality

Day 150: The origin of excessive self-criticism

Initially this blog post was to be about how I experience myself towards men because in my previous blog I walked how I experience myself towards women. However after my Desteni I Process course buddy reviewed my previous post, she indicated that I only brushed some of the related points and suggested me to expand on those points in the following posts. So this writing will be expansion of the pattern of excessive self-criticism that is becoming more and more prevalent with increasing responsibility within my professional work. I have been in position of leading Slovenian promoter of Spurt alternative currency for almost one year now and since some predictions about when the currency will become convertible did not fulfil yet, people are pressing on me and some even accusing me of lying and walking away due to disappointment. And I definitely do not want to be labeled as a liar and loose my integrity.

I perceive myself as a good person with a sensitive heart and I experience minor hart arrhythmia several times during a day. However I am successfully able to stop it by focusing on my breath and in case when I feel that my hearth is being weakened too much due to stress and worry, I take a brake, do exercise, go out in the nature and recuperate. However I currently live a quite stressless life style and spend most of the time alone in my room where I can rest and have a peaceful retreat whenever I want. Most of the communication that I do with other people is via Facebook and if someone tents to bully me too much, I am able to simply block them and the situation is solved. I am having hard time to imagine how to handle strong personal attacks face to face. And this is especially because I know that some people are in low state of awareness and can get so emotionally possessed that they are incapable of hearing and understanding what is being said to them. So in liv events people can even physically attack and even kill you.

Cool examples of people that are masters in handling live personal attacks are politicians, especially presidents. I admired previous US president Barack Obama how he was able to handle people with directing his words and keeping his cool and the new president Donald Trump is even greater example of immunity to deepest public mocking. He even participates in TV comedy shows that targets his strange hair, orange tan, the way he speaks, his small hand and every single mistake that anyone can find in order to target him. And despite all of that, he remains centred, relaxed and focused on achieving his goals. This is definitely a level of self-confidence that also I want to achieve since I want to improve the current world system which means that I plan to become a public personality and in limelight of all sorts of media that will question everything that I do.

Now if I look what made me to become so sensitive to criticism and why I am also criticising myself a lot, let me start with my early age. One of the factors was that I was the the oldest child and they are generally expected to become a responsible example for the rest of the younger brothers and sisters. Then there is a public education system that systematically suppresses self-expression, individuality and forces you to become obedient part of society that respects authority. However what created excessive self-criticism was the projected low self-esteem of my father that escalated especially after I finished the middle school and became employee of his family graphic business.

So the first problem was that my father did not treated me as unique being with own self-expression and did consider me mostly as the product that was shaped by his own image. This is a common mistake that parent make since they ofter consider their children as a better version of themselves and want them to experience what they lacked to experience and prevent them to experience all the bad thing that they experienced when they were a child. This then creates tyranny and suppression towards their children that can be in the same way transferred from generation to generation. My father wanted me to excel in order to show my achievements to others. An when others would praise me he would feel like they are praising him personally. So in his eyes there was no difference between me and him and whatever I have done it was like he did it. Consequently also every criticism that I received was felt by him like he himself is being criticised. Thus he wanted to make sure that I never do any mistake and criticised every mistake that I made violently.

Consequences of my mistakes got especially significant weight when I started to do design and pre-press work in our family graphic company. I was the one who did the typesetting, colour separation of logos and created films for the screen-printing department that was managed by my brother. He then collected the graphic films, prepared the screen for each colour and printed any object that was necessary to print in the screen-printing technique. The objects that he printed on were sometime very cheap like transfer paper or self-adhesive foil, however some times he printed directly to T-shirts, bags, umbrellas, lighters and other promotional products. Some of those objects were very expensive and if they were be printed with a mistake in the content of the print, it resulted in a quite high cost of damaged goods that our company was responsible for. Not only that the high valuable products were ruined but it also resulted in a lot of wasted time and anger by my brother since he had to do all the time-consuming process of preparing the screens and printing machines again.

Since I was the only employee who did the pre-press in our company among also other jobs like creating signs from self-adhesive foil, I was under a lot of pressure and was pressed to work as fast as possible. I had to type on the computer fast and it is hard to be accurate and not to do any mistake under such pressure. When I would do some typing mistake, my brother went to my father to file a complaint and my father would then come to me with anger and instructing me to type slow, pressing only one key at a time order to be sure not to make any typing mistake again. That confused me quite a lot since he somehow expected me to type slow and perform fast at the same time. Obviously when my brother came to him to criticise me, he felt like himself is being criticised and then he criticised me in order for he as me not to be criticised again.

So the problem in every business process is how to handle errors and mistakes that also result in high cost of created damage. When someone writes a book, there is usually someone that was responsible for proofreading and editing of the text before printing so that there would be no mistakes in the final printed book. I wanted to implement a similar protocol in our company but the problem was selecting or providing a person that would take such responsibility. Most of the time it was me that sent the final design to the clients in order for them to check the validity of design content. However it was discovered that clients in most cases did not notice the error because their eyes saw what their mind expected to see and not what was actually there. Our company never hired any professional proofreader so it was mostly I that made the effort to check if any error existed and from time to time I did miss some and the game of blame repeated over and over again.

The reason why relationships and working conditions in our company did not improve was because my father was not honestly interested in quality. All he wanted was to be praised and his most powerful tool was a surprise tactic. He wanted to feel good by making others feel good when he would present a product that others would be excited by. So when someone would place an order he wanted to deliver the product as fast as possible and with as less complications as possible for his own sake of immediate emotional gratification. That is why he did not supported my initiative to communicate with a client during the production process and was especially not fun of clients taking the responsibility to proofread the content before the printing. What my father basically wanted is just to take the order and as soon as possible to visit the client, ring the door bell and make clients extremely excited about the finished product so he could feel good.

Eventually my father even started with his own spin-off project of original Gutenberg wooden printing press reconstruction where he would be able to be in the eyes of the public even more often and receive live compliments at cultural and historical events. Lack of his focus to management of our company business eventually lead to my decision to leave the job and establish my own business. And even now, many years after that event, I am still occasionally doing some long-distance work form my father where he is showing that he still did not learn the lesson. He still rather keeps communication with clients to minimum with hopes to surprise them as much as possible. However many times clients are far from being satisfied with him since many expect close collaboration and being asked if something about their order information is not clear enough. My father rather risks creating a big disappointment of his clients instead of making sure that none of the mistakes are made due to misunderstanding and wrong expectations.

Soon after I left our family company my brother convinced my father to take over the business which he did. Now he is also in the position of doing the pre-press job so he has the opportunity to experience the taste of his own medicine. Now he has no one to complain to for any design mistakes that he makes however we do not communicate much and I did not ask him what process he has implemented to prevent the mistakes and creation of costly damage. And I also after becoming freelance designer had to pay attention that the final product is correct. I made sure that clients reviewed the final drafts and that by signing they took full responsibility for any material cost that could manifest in the process of design reproduction. Eventually I transitioned to focus only on professional photography where there is no danger of creating a mistake in the content. I simply captured the picture of the reality as it manifested in the moment. However when I decided to do also the wedding photography, I was again challenged a lot because there were important moments in the ceremony that I was not allowed to miss and also the processing of the photos had to be very different that in documentary photography.

The question here is how much I was responsible for the mistakes that I made in my life. Because as I already became aware of in my previous posts, I played an energetic emotional polarity game with my father, similar like my father and my mother did. I wonder how many times I subconsciously made a deliberate typing mistake in order to retaliate for emotional abuse of my father and how in such cases have equally gave priority to experience emotional energy of self-pity instead of removing all energy addictions and actually creating a sustainable solution for the production problems in our company. And how much I enjoyed to be the only one who did the design and pre-press work in our company in order for only our family members to be in the key production positions instead of expanding and allowing also for other people to become employees and support the production for the mutual benefit of all workers and clients equally.

So one thing that I see as important is to remove all energy addictions and to actually perform based on the principles of what is best for all. And then to also understand that mistakes will happen from time to time since one is able in every moment to have control only about limited things in this existence. So forgiveness and especially self-forgiveness are necessary to be applied as often as possible. A fine example of such forgiveness has been demonstrated in the short Public Statement video by Dave Schmidt where he apologised for his assumptions and stepping over the limit. And I also want to develop more humility and ability to repent and to feel real shame for all actions where I acted based on self-interest and was directed by energy of the mind instead of principle of what is best for all. Because I also in quite large extend copied the pattern of my father where I wanted the attention from other people. The difference is only that I did not use physical products in oder to impress others but used high and very advanced knowledge and information to achieve the same result.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame my father for being addicted to good feelings of being praised. I realised that I also developed similar pattern and thus I have no right to judge him. I commit myself to when and as I think about my father with thoughts like: “He is such an emotional manipulator and I am so much better than him!” to stop and breathe. I then rather focus on my own weaknesses and make sure that I remove them as many as possible.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try to punish my father by playing the game of self-victimisation, self-pity and giving up on myself. I realise that staying in such polarity role is only sabotaging myself since it limits my potentials and prevents my self-expression. I commit myself to when and as I interact with my father and my thought go like: “You are welcome to demand from me anything that you want but I will show you how much you have hurt me and how much I still suffer!“ to stop and breathe. I then communicate with him without any resentment, create mutual agreement and work for him equally as for any other being. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame my father for not providing a system of proofreading while I was working for him. I realise that even when I have worked as a freelancer I did not collaborate with any professional proofreader and have made my clients responsible for any costs that might occur by reproduction of design with error. I commit myself to when and as I look at how my father managed our business and my mind goes: “He was so irresponsible for not providing a professional proofreading system!“ to stop and breathe. I then rather focus on my current work and make sure to provide a better system for my clients in order to prevent as many mistakes as possible. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allow myself to fear presenting myself in the public due to danger of being criticised. I realise that this fear does not originate in others behaving irresponsible but is result of my addiction to self-victimisation and projecting blame towards others. I commit myself to when and as someone criticises me and my mind goes: “Oh now, this world is so unjust and I am such a poor innocent victim!“ to stop and breathe. I then listen to words of criticism and admit that I was wrong if some mistake that I make has been exposed or I stand my ground and defend my integrity if I recognise the criticism as nothing but lies. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear admitting that I made a mistake and to fear apologising myself. I realise that we all constantly learn by trial end error and that making mistakes is part of being alive. I commit myself that to when and as I make a mistake and my mind produces thoughts like: “Quickly hide what you have done and save face in order for your track record not to have any black spots!” to stop and breathe. I rather apologise for my mistakes, learn from them and not allow others to continue bullying me by repeatedly reminding me about all the mistakes that I made in the past.

In relation to this blog post, I invite you to assist also yourself with awesome self-perfecting tools within free online DIP Lite course and to listen to educational audio titled Respect, Integrity, Trust and Honour from The Metaphysical Secrets of Imagination series at Eqafe web store with hundreds of extremely supportive educational items that hold answers to any imaginable question about life and this existence.

Day 144: Ashamed in front of the whole primary school class

This is continuation of my previous 7 blog posts in order to analyse all the memory impressions from my past that contributed to my cold legs syndrome. I am changing the titles to from now on be aligned with the point that I am walking and not with the syndrome itself. So while I thought that I have finished with all the relevant points regarding this condition, my Desteni I Process buddy checked the situation and saw that there are still 4 more relevant points left for me to walk. Thus I have checked my memory and did find additional ones that could play a significant role.

It happened to me in last years of the primary school where after the end of a class one of my classmates suggested to have a singing performance. Maybe his parents were part of some music band or were music teachers or member of his family simply enjoyed singing. Obviously he assumed that such is the case in every family and that anyone would be able to sing at least one song by hearth. So it was decided to place one of the class desks in front of the blackboard and each of the classmates will step on the desk and sing one song in front of the whole class. And so they did until it was my turn. However in our family none of members ever sung any song and I never tried to remember the lyrics of any popular songs. I objected and wanted to be skipped but my classmates persisted. They simply could not believe that I would not be able to sing even one song. They encouraged me to go on the 'stage' until I gave in and stepped on top of the desk in from of the blackboard. I tried to remember lyrics and melody of at least one of the songs but I was not able to. I stood there in front of the whole class and started to feel more and more ashamed and as someone who does not fit in. Eventually I stepped down with great embarrassment and I wondered if my classmates would now think of me that I am a total looser. And I never wanted to experience such embarrassment again. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to be ashamed if I do not know how to sing and know any song by hearth. I realise that some sing a lot and know many lyrics and can not imagine that others have different talents and pastimes. I commit myself to when and as someone asks me to sing a song and my mind produces thoughts like: “Oh shit, I am in deep trouble since if I do not sing at least time, they will think that I am a looser!” to stop and bring myself back here by focusing on my breath. I then explain them in a calm way as many times as needed so that they are able to understand the fact that I have not been yet developing my singing skills. If they react with spite or do not want to understand this, I keep calm within since their emotional reactions are their own responsibility.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to think that I will not be accepted by my classmates if I do not do the same things as the rest of them do. I realise that we are all unique individual beings and that public educational system does not allow us to express as such but shapes us to be similar to each other and rewards us for doing exactly the same as other do. I commit myself to when and as I am in a group situation where I am to do exactly the same thing as others do and my mind goes: “Oh no, what will others think about me if I do not comply? I fear that they will label me as a geek and make my life hard!” to stop and breathe. I stand my ground and do not allow others to manipulate me into doing something that I do not want to or I do not know how to do it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to feel bad if others in the group that surround me laugh at me due to me not performing as they would like me to. I realise that one can never satisfy all desires and expectations of others and that it is impossible to excel in all fields of expression that exist. Especially in a group environment a special relationship dynamics develops where individuals loose empathy very quickly. I commit myself to when and as I am in a group while they do not treat me as one and equal and my mind start to think: “Better to do something to make them feel good or else they might attack and hurt me!” to stop and breathe. I rather communicate with them directly and clearly and support them with realising how they are acting from the point of separation and that it is best to treat others as one and equal.

In relation to this blog post, I invite you to assist also yourself with awesome self-assisting tools within free online DIP Lite course and to listen to educational audio titled Losing our Voice from the Reptilians series at Eqafe web store with hundreds of extremely supportive educational items that hold answers to any imaginable question about life and this existence.

Day 141: Cold Feet Symptoms, Causes and Treatments

This is my 5th consecutive blog post about cold feed or cold legs symptom that I have been experiencing for about last 10 years. I will be here showing you a way of treatment that addresses the root psychological or spiritual cause as the accumulated traumatic memories from the past. For you to understand the full context of this process, I invite you to firstly read my four related blog posts titled (1) The cause for cold legs, (2) Home remedy for cold feet, (3) Solution for perpetually cold feet and (4) Why are my legs always freezing cold. In this blog post I will be walking the next major memory imprint that attributed for me to lose my footing and grounding which manifested my cold feed. The event is me not being accepted to the graphic design middle school that I applied for and thus decided to rather attend machine engineer middle school where I experienced many traumatic experiences as described in my previous blog post. So instead of walking the next event in the timeline I am here taking one step back since I feel that this event is also very much related to me becoming disappointed about my life and creating a personality of suppression.

When I had to decide what middle school to enrol in, my primary option was the Design & Photography Middle School in Ljubljana city. Soon after I applied, I received a notice from that school that they received much more applications than there were available seats. I had to take qualification test which I to my great disappointment failed to pass. I was faced with decision if I am to wait for one year and try applying again at the same school or to immediately start studying at any other middle school where they had enough seats and I would be thus accepted without having to take any qualification tests. I think it was my parents to finally convinced me that enrolling into Mechanical Engineer class at Jesenice Middle School would be the best option since it is also a kind of design process which includes a lot of drawing. It seems to also be a good decision since my father couple of years ago started with our family business where we started to produce metal constructions for industrial air purification systems and other small products from metal for the Jesenice Steel Factory where most of the people who lived in the city were employed from.

Being turned down at design school was very depressing for me since I considered it as an escape from my parents who started to suppress me more and more. I was not allowed to go out in the evenings or at weekends and I was constantly needed to assist others in our metal shop. I did not like the smell and feel of the metal since there was a lot of dust and paint vapours that were created in the manufacturing process and the materials were very cold. I had no opportunity to express myself creatively during the production process and there were constantly short deadlines so I had a very little free time. Consequently I was not able to develop my drawing and design skills so that I would have a chance when competing with other kids who also applied for design school. Many had much better background since at least one of the parents was professional painter, designer, architect or photographer and my parents were none of such kind. I had to teach myself how to draw and paint without and family assistance and support. Deeply inside me I felt that this was the correct profession for me.

Several years after my father stated with metal related family business, he once visited innovation fair in United States as representative of Jesenice Steel Factory and decided to import computer controlled self-adhesive foil sign-making machine. I was very excited about that and during my middle school I started to experiment with this revolutionary technology that almost totally replaced manual sign-writing profession. This was a kind of graphic design process however instead of drawing with hands, I used computer, software and the mouse that very limited my creative expression and also influenced my mind in becoming very restless and stressed. Due to international recession in metal industry that soon followed, my parents decided to completely transform our family business and we completely switched to sign-making and screen-printing services. Since my parents knew nothing about computers and graphics, my brother and I became the main producers and my parents managed the business from perspective of providing clients, materials and performing accounting. However even here I was not able to express myself creatively since my father did not understand design and cherished only the speed of sign-making and screen-printing.

Such environment created big frustration within me, I started to loose my mind and had to visit psychologist for the first time in my life. When I met my first girlfriend we decided to move together to an apartment quite far away from our family business in order to escape from the tyranny of my father. But he continued to press on me that resulted in breakup of my girlfriend and me couple of years later. I then decided to completely stop working for my father and work only as graphic design and photography freelancer. That finally enabled me freedom of creative expression and I enjoyed it very much. However I still used only computer tools for creative process and was not comfortable with hand-drawing. Internally I felt restless, my mind pressed me and also due to incredible shock when my girlfriend decided to break up with me, my passion switched from creating designs to discovering how human mind works and what is the meaning of life. Even though I still enjoy graphic design to this very day, I feel that I am lacking the basics of colour and design theory and core drawing skills that prevent me from excelling as a graphic designer. Thus I am thinking about how completely different my life would be if I would be accepted into design school in distant Ljubljana city where I would be safe from oppression of my father, probably also prevented from being bullied from classmates and definitely immensely supported in developing my deep design passion. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to compromise myself by taking the easy way and decided to study machine engineering instead of persisting and making sure that I study what I actually want. I realise that there are always the quick and the right options in life. Our minds tend to prefer shortcuts that create undesired consequences and time-loops while if we listen to ourselves/being the path might be longer and more challenging but also more fulfilling and satisfying. I commit myself whenever I find myself at the juncture where there are two or more option and my mind produces thoughts like: “Take the easy and fast way since why waste time and suffer!” to stop and breathe. At such moments I rather look within myself and see what I truly want and move towards that that goal no matter how long it will take and what obstacles I will have to face.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to blame my parent for influencing my decision about what middle school to attend instead of realising that at the end it was me and no one else who made the final decision about that. I realise that my parents tried to be responsible and did consider all the options that they saw however since I was not passionate enough about attending design school, they directed me towards decision that they considered to be best for me and at the same time also best for the future projected family business. I commit myself to when and as I am in conversation with someone about what direction to move myself considering the mutual plans and my mind produces thoughts like: “Your personal desires do not really matter since it is more important to fit in and do what others want from you.” to stop and breathe. I then communicate clearly and directly about what I feel is my life vision and mission with others and stand firmly on my principles.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel regret about me not immediately deciding to study at design school, believing that it would save me many years of troubles and assisting me in developing myself into much better and satisfied graphic designer. I realise that my imagination about how my life path would be and what experiences I would have if I would take middle school for design might be very different from what they would actually be. While design school should be supportive to develop design skills, I might still be experiencing there influences from authoritative teachers and bullies since no school is perfect and all in a way limit self in regards to full self-expression. When and as I look back to my options that I decided not to take in the past and my mind produces imagination about how my life would look like if I would take those paths, I stop and breathe. I then rather consider my current options and learn from actual past experiences to make better decisions that would compromise me as little as possible, where I would be able to express myself fully and where I would at the same time also be able to support all life as one and equal.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that he best way to lear something is to enrol in some public school instead of realising that most public schools are based on the military way of disciplining and shaping of individual into obedient follower. I realise that best way to excel in something is to learn from the masters as apprentice and from their books and courses where they have shared their knowledge and realisations. When and as I want to learn something and my mind is telling me: “Look for the closest public school or university and apply there since you will get a certificate of completion that will enable you to get a good paying job very fast.” I stop and breathe. Within realisation that quality of public schooling is very low, diplomas do these days not mean much, permanent employments are thing of the past, I rather decide to be self-taught and study from many better and easier available sources of knowledge that would enable me to excel in my profession and thus enable me to take care for myself much more effectively.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that my core passion is becoming a designer and that this is what I absolutely must focus to develop myself towards in my current life. I realise that definition of a designer is very limiting and that I as a living being have many more potentials to express myself and to perform much more tasks that to only do graphic designs. I must consider that my desire to become a designer could not actually be my life mission but only a preprogrammed idea based on how I have been influenced by my parents and environment that they have created for me where creating with Lego bricks was for example one of things that I was given the opportunity to play with. When and as someone asks me what my life passion is and my mind would serve me a thought like: “Tell them that you are a graphic designer!” to stop and breathe. I then rather expand and explain what are all the things that I am interested in and how actually I am not limiting myself to any specific profession since I want to express myself in a myriad of different ways.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to resent public schooling system and teachers for influencing me in a way where I feel that I have been abused, limited and suppressed. I realise that also the public schooling system has many historical influences from governments to ideologies and individuals. People who become teachers have different starting points and abilities and combining all together, each class, school and national education system is a bit different and provides different experience to an individual pupil. When and as I think about my educational experiences and my mind produces thoughts like: “Those nasty teachers have abused and harmed me thus I have the right to hate them!” to stop and breathe. I then put myself in the shoes of every teacher that I have met and see that I would probably act no different that they had. So instead of wasting time by thinking about the past and feeling sorry for what I have become, I rather bring myself back here into reality and see how I can invest time into perfecting myself since this is where I have the power of making any real change.

In relation to this blog post, I invite you to assist also yourself with awesome self-assisting tools within DIP Lite course and to listen to educational audio titled The Natural Learning Ability from the Life Review series at Eqafe web store with hundreds of extremely supportive educational items that hold answer to any imaginable question about life and this existence.

Day 140: Why are my legs always freezing cold

Are you always having freezing cold legs? Well so do I and if you want to discover true root cause for cold feet symptom, you have came to the right place. However I will be not talking about temporary solutions to cold legs like warm baths, but psychological cause that resulted in physical energy flow in the leg meridians to become blocked. So we are talking here about cutting edge holistic medicine approach. I will be in this blog post walking the first step of the second traumatic experience that contributed to my cold legs syndrome. For you to understand the full context of this process, I invite you to firstly read my first three related blog posts titled (1) The cause for cold legs, (2) Home remedy for cold feet and (3) Solution for perpetually cold feet. While in the previous posts I have walked the point of being painfully punished by my father in my early childhood, I will be focusing here on the second consecutive memory of past event in my life which is being bullied by classmates during the first year of middle school.

During kindergarten and 8 years of primary school I do not recall any traumatic experiences of me being bullied. My however case is special in terms of me changing primary school every 2 years due to capacity, logistics and practical reason that resulted in me not being able to create deep relationships with my classmates. The only bad thing that I remember about primary school is that there were regular physical fighting among pupils that sometimes resulted even in broken arm or leg. But when I started to attend Jesenice middle school where I enrolled for the 4 year Mechanical Engineer study programme, I decided to sit in the first row in order to see and hear better, also due to loosing my hearing ability on my left ear. First annoyance that I remember is that some of my classmates from the rows behind me were constantly throwing balls of paper and also gum into my hair. Some even came to my desk and stole calculator or a pen and teacher did nothing to solve this problem. We were simply too big class of over 30 restless pupils with one teacher who did not know hot to handle it. I also had a classmate that was sitting at the same table with me on my right side who constantly teased me and sought my attention until one day he deliberately smashed my pen and I decided that this is enough. We agreed to meet after class in the park in order to have a fight. It was my first fist fight ever and in spite him claiming that he was skilled in boxing, I managed to win the fight and after that we strangely became best friends. Also at gym class I was pushed and pressed by some classmates who were in the hockey team and had need to prove that they were better than others. Such disturbance created big stress in my life and my grades were at the end of school year so bad that I had to take the same year again.

All described events however did not attack any specific detail of my physical body, only my personality as a whole. But there were also two of my classmates who started to pick on my lips. I never had any thought that there is something unusual about how I look until they started to make fun of me due to my lips that supposedly were bigger than normal. I felt embarrassed and did not know how to respond. I did then decided to pick one of the bullies back and started to make fun of his protruding ears which was effective self-defence since he then stopped bullying me. I did to some level felt that bullies are picking others due to their low self-esteem and and simply picked some detail about others that they were able to target. But there was one event in the public bus for my daily commute where one little girl accompanied by her mother asked me: “Why are your lips so big?“. That created a backchat in my mind like: “Kids are pure and if they notice something than it must be true that my lips definitely are too big! So also my classmates were right! Oh no, my lips are too big! What should I do now?”. From that moment on I wrapped myself with even deeper feeling of shame and I just wanted to hide myself somewhere so that no one else would ever notice that my lips are too big. I was even wondering that if me being a caucasian race had some African ancestor since they have especially big lips.

Later in life I had a girlfriend who was madly in love with me and she even admired my lips. To that moment I never imagined that big lips could be even an advantage. And I also was attracted to some movie actress who had full sensual lips. Well if one looks at it with practical perspective, fuller lips can be even more sexy than slim lips since they have more soft flesh and kissing someone with big lips should be more enjoyable. They act as a buffer when kissing in order for couple not to smash agains hard teeth of each other. There was also some lady who observed me from a distance when I was outside enjoying the sun and she complemented how beautiful my smile is. In the past years I improved my self-esteem significantly and from initially being extremely camera shy, I am now able to give a speech to big crowds without any much problem. I do like how my head looks like from the front, but I do not like my profile very much. Instead of the chiselled features, by head has more soft features, especially under my chin. I remember my mother explaining that I developed some struma or goitre due to some nutrient deficiency in my childhood. Thus when I see pictures or video recording of me form some public event that someone took from the side, I criticise my looks and feel unpleasant.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself not to understand that if someone judges the way I look, it is not about me but about their accepted and allowed ideals about how humans should look like. I realise that people, including me, are under deep influence of the media and entertainment industry where in the fashion magazines and movies, models and actors have been selected with a very specific looks and then even photoshopped afterwards in order to create ideals of perfection that can never be achieved in reality. I commit myself to when and as my looks are judged by others, and my mind goes: “Oh no, something is wrong with me since how others see me must be correct.” to stop an breathe. I keep my awareness that whatever others think that I should look like is their projected ideal that they personally have created in their minds so they are the ones who have the responsibility to take such projection back to self and to accept everyone else as the way they are.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that if a young child is saying something to me than it must be true since children are pure and innocent and can not lie. I realise that children in fact do ask due to ignorance and can find some parts of someone's body unusual, but they do not say it from the starting point of spite but due to pure curiosity. I commit myself to when and as some child is asking me about certain aspect of my looks and I get thoughts like: “They are judging me and not accepting me the way I look, thus I must be ashamed about my looks.” to stop such thoughts by focusing on my breath. I simply explain to them that people look different and that our physical bodies are results of genetics without allowing any thought to create assumption that they are being biased.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that a specific design of the body is necessary in order for one to fully accepts itself and achieve highest self-esteem. I realise that many others who have even been born without legs or feet or have a specific facial feature have achieved complete self-confidence and that it is not about how one looks like but about accepting your looks regardless of your body design. I commit myself to when and I observe myself in the mirror or on the photos and videos and my mind produces thoughts like: “Look how your head looks different comparing to the movie start and models. You will never be accepted by other looking like that!” to stop such comparison by returning focus back on my breath. I observe images of my physical body by fully accepting the way I look without allowing any movement in my mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to only observe and compare my looks to looks of certain celebrities and not seeing how people in my close surrounding have different shapes and sizes of their bodies. I realise that I might have been incarnated in any of the body of humans that exist on this planet which look very different and many of them have big disabilities that I have never even imagined of having them. I commit myself to when and as I walk down the street and my mind goes: “Look at that perfect guy on that billboard advertising men's fashion and how his body looks different to me.” to stop such thoughts by breathing. I then rather observe other real people around me, how their bodies, heads and faces look different from each other and realising that variety and diversity of looks is actually what makes humans interesting to observe and enables us to visually distinguish and recognise each other.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself not to realise that people get bullied not because of how they look but because they emanate low self-esteem and thus are attracting bullies that target individuals with low self-esteem in order to mask their own self-esteem. I realise that regardless of how someone looks, they will always be attacked and bullied by those who do not accept themselves and project envy and hate towards others. I commit myself to when and as I meet someone who points out something about my looks and I start to think: “What about if what they think is true and I must change myself in order for others to accept me fully.” to stop and breathe. I assist that guy by reflecting his projection back to him and assisting him in understanding why they developed such ideals and releasing them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to believe that people who very much fit current media ideals of beauty are never bullied and criticised, are always accepted by others and have no relationship problems in their lives. I realise that such people also have their specific challenges like thinking that people like them only because how they look and that others consider them only stupid puppets. And that there is also a big competition in beauty and fashion industry that creates bullies and rivalry that can develop in massive obsession like very nicely portrayed in the movie The Neon Demon. When and as I see someone who fits ideals of beauty and I start to think like: “Good for them, they have a perfect life thanks to their looks.” to stop such thinking by breathing. I accept them as one and equal with understanding that many of them may struggle with fears of loosing good looks and suffer from bulimia and anorexia.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to give a very important meaning to a single opinion expressed by others, regardless if I received praise or criticism. I realise that automatically attaching weight to perspective of others is allowing others to influence my perception of how I see myself and thus compromising myself. I commit myself to when and as someone says something about me and I think: “What they say about me is what I truly am.” to stop and breathe. I listen to opinions of other and understand that most of what others say is projection of their own mind patterns where they do not consider others as one en equal and just want to say something to fit in and survive in the best way they are able to.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to develop a shameful character after some people have criticised the way I look. I realise that whenever I act emotionally to what others say about me, I harm myself. I commit myself to when and as someone criticises me, and I go like: “I am being attacked and must hide and protect myself by lots of emotional energy that would separate me from current reality.” to stop and breathe. Within realisation that emotional energy can always be only temporary escape since it diminishes sooner or later, I rather face with the one who is criticising me with full awareness that I am a physical being and can not be harmed by any word.

In relation to this blog post, I invite you to assist also yourself with awesome self-assisting tools within DIP Lite course and to listen to educational audio titled A Victim of Bullies from the Life Review series at Eqafe web store with hundreds of extremely supportive educational items that hold answer to any imaginable question about life and this existence.