Imagine this: your best friend comes to visit you. You've been friends since school. Your friend works as a mechanic in a garage for high-end cars. His salary is more than enough. He is financially secure. He and his family are doing very well. Over dinner, he tells you how things really are: "This job bores me." Of course, this is surprising at first. He continues: The training was already a mistake. The work is too easy for him. He would rather be an engineer and be involved in the design process than just repair what others have designed. He already has most of the knowledge he needs from his job. His parents wanted him to learn a respectable trade. At the time, he just wanted to stand on his own two feet quickly. Now it's too late. "If circumstances were better, then...".
It's easy to see other people's excuses, but very difficult to see our own. You may be familiar with this: it's easier to accept circumstances as they are – as unchangeable. Instead of standing up and saying, "I'm going to change this now!" In doing so, we run the risk of putting ourselves in the role of victim. There are even people who like to define themselves by their victimhood. This gives them a kind of marginal power, and they then wield the moral cudgel. As a severely disabled person, I notice this time and again in the disability scene. I remember very clearly when I stood at the inner door, about to enter the room of victimhood as a severely disabled person – but I made a conscious decision not to.
[Opt-in box excuses]
Sometimes circumstances are what they are.
On December 3, 1990, my life changed in a matter of seconds after my accident. Nothing was the same anymore. I hit the water like a wet sack. The water felt as hard as a concrete garage floor. My impact on the water of the Mexican lagoon was a blow that broke my body and soul. I was a broken human being. The first eight-thousander was there. It was a matter of sheer survival!
I found myself somewhere in the water, swallowing water. I had no sense of direction. Pure panic. I didn't know which way was up and which way was down. Then I saw light. I set out to swim to the surface with powerful strokes—but nothing happened. I commanded my legs, but instead of moving upwards, I sank further and further towards the bottom of the lake. And I realized: so this is what it's like to die. My mind was as clear as the view of the horizon. And I knew: my last minute had come. Then suddenly: hands reached for me, pulled me to the surface of the water, and laid me down on the hot sand at the edge of the lake. Things became increasingly hectic. When my rescuer tried to lift me up uncontrollably, I shouted, "No! Bring a door!" It was as if I had sensed that an unstable transport would have been my death sentence. That "no" is the reason why I can live the way I do today. Finally, they brought a door to transport me safely.
Later, still in Mexico, came the first emergency surgery and the question of how I was going to finance it. My mother was already planning to sell the house. Thanks to international health insurance, this was fortunately not necessary, but here I quickly sensed what was in store for me: setbacks and fears. The medical transport back to Germany was hell. After the initial shock, I started thinking normally again. Without my ability to meditate, I would probably have had a mental breakdown.
Transform your mindset
I had to learn to put things on hold in my mind. To wait until the time was right. Not to try to grasp things with my existing way of thinking when they were beyond my horizons. To do this, I had to be aware of my horizons. To wait and let things sink in. Eventually, the time was right and clarity emerged.
That's what it's all about: knowing that we are always limited mentally, each at a different level. That's why we shouldn't react too quickly when issues from outside demand our attention. Parking issues means enduring them – not pushing them away or suppressing them. This applies to such a big issue just as much as it does to small issues every day. It creates inner space and is supported by a confidence that we will one day understand it more deeply and then transform it. Perhaps our horizons are not yet broad enough for this at the moment, but this approach makes step-by-step development possible.
In the past, it was about putting on a sock; today, it's about the million-dollar budget for transforming leadership teams. The principle is the same, but the content is not. So: you can do it! The question is: are you ready to take small steps? To climb one rung of the ladder every day, again and again? Again and again, climbing one step of the ladder every day—and always looking up the ladder, not down. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach described it this way: "Consider what still needs to be done, and forget what you have already accomplished." My idea on the way there is: shut up, suffer, grow.
Because circumstances are what they are. Those who wish for better circumstances are essentially rejecting their share of responsibility those circumstances. It is fear of reality, and this makes you weak. What a cleverly packaged excuse: I can't change anything anyway. Are the circumstances bad? It's up to you to change what you can change.
That's why you're not really happy.
Why success and fulfillment have nothing to do with each other.
