I would like to tell you a short story I read years ago by Eckhart Tolle:

“A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. “Spare some change?” mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap. “I have nothing to give you,” said the stranger. Then he asked: “What’s that you are sitting on?” “Nothing,” replied the beggar. “Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember.” “Ever looked inside?” asked the stranger. “No,” said the beggar. “What’s the point? There’s nothing in there.” “Have a look inside,” insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold. I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer: inside yourself.”

I have always been good at sports.

Moving my body comes naturally to me and it effortlessly brings me into a state of focus and deep presence. Because of how natural and normal it felt to me, it took me a long time to recognise and embrace the immense value I was sitting on (aka the old box).

 I also grew up in a family where sports and movement were seen as something you do occasionally. For fun in your free time. But definitely not for work.

What was valued and set as a standard to achieve by my dad were jobs like becoming a doctor, a lawyer (like my dad did back in his country) or a manager in a big company.

Nothing I wanted to become. But everything I desperately was trying to make myself be.

Social conditioning – the only way to survive

As humans there is one need that can make us sacrifice everything we are for the world around us : the need to belong.

When you were a baby you came into this world completely dependent on your environment. Your parents, caretaker, your family, your school, your church, etc.

You needed them in order to survive.

Very early on, you learn that certain things you do, certain parts of you, certain emotions you express are welcomed and cared for, whereas other aspects of you are severely judged and rejected.

Maybe you grew up in a household where emotions like anger or sadness weren’t allowed. But you easily got rewarded when you brought home the best grade in your class or did your homework perfectly.

Today you are always seeking perfection, constantly negatively criticizing yourself. You can’t allow yourself to slow down, or rest without feeling unworthy or unproductive. And you completely repress or deny your negative emotions because you never learned how to feel them in a healthy way.

Maybe you grew up with parents who were always busy working and weren’t able to give you the time, presence and attention you desperately craved and needed.

So you learned to rely on yourself only making you an independent person who thinks that she or he doesn’t need anyone.

Maybe your parents gave you a lot of responsibilities very early on and you became the person everyone could come to in case of difficulties or problems.

Now you feel responsible for helping everyone. You struggle to set clear boundaries; you can’t say NO to people without feeling guilty or selfish. You sacrifice your needs, dreams and time for everyone and everything around you.

Maybe your parents had financial difficulties and had to sacrifice late nights and weekends working difficult jobs. So you learned that money was the cause of a lot of stress, upset and arguments between your mom and your dad.

It’s only now that you realise that you too, have a limited relationship with money. It has become one of the biggest sources of worry in your life. You are stuck in a lose-lose situation where you think that the only way to earn more money is to sacrifice more of your time for a job you don’t even really like.

The rules of the social game

The message you received from the outside world was :

This, this and this about myself is good and I should do more of that because it makes me feel like I belong and I am loved.

This, this and this is bad about me and I should push it away and hide it because it makes me feel unworthy and unloved.

This mechanism has allowed you to fit in. To belong and build connections and relationships with the people you had around you growing up.

It has allowed you to survive and grow so you can sit here today to read these exact lines.

Who you are today is a construct of the parts of you that were accepted and recognised in your childhood and by the society you grew up in.

But it is not the totality of who you are. It is also not an accurate reflection of who you are.

The conditioning and stories we are all going through creates a character that allows us the game of society :

• You go to school to learn the knowledge and skills of the system
• You get a job with a capped income
• You program yourself to a life full of repetitions and routines.
• You get a limited amount of days off and holidays per year to add a bit of novelty and excitement to your monotone life
• You retire
• The end

People conform to this way of living because it’s the only path society has presented to us.

All your friends and family live the exact same life you do.

They do what you do. And you do what they do.

For most of my life, I thought that this path was the only game that existed.

Until something changed in my life and I started to notice that a couple of people were playing a different game:

A way better one.

I leave the story here for today. 

In the meantime, I invite you to reflect on one first question until next week's newsletter :

What is in the old box you are currently sitting on?

I’ll see you next Friday for part two.

Take care,

Oli