This week, I kept returning to attention: where it goes, what it misses, and what becomes clearer when I slow down.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. Unexpected Beauty

2. The Spotlight Effect

3. Time Alone

4. The Procrastination Loop

5. Stuck Is Not Lost

6. What Are You Willing to Adapt To?

7. Problems and Hard Reality

1. Unexpected Beauty

How can life be so unexpectedly beautiful?

I often write about things like having hard conversations, our relationship with money, life challenges, career changes, or procrastination. And that advice may not always be so easy to apply in life.

Even when it is mostly straightforward, it can take time for those changes to land.

I have also been thinking about how life can be unexpectedly beautiful.

In the last three months, three of my very close friends have told me they are going to have kids.

I can’t think of more unexpectedly beautiful news.

Life can often seem a little dark and filled with challenges to overcome every day.

But as the saying goes: “No matter how long the storm lasts, the sun always shines behind the clouds.”

It is all about perspective.

I am going to borrow one principle from Tony Robbins here: “Where focus goes, energy flows.”

He explains it this way: “Your attention and thoughts dictate your reality, emotional state, and the results you achieve. What you consistently concentrate on expands and grows in your life.”

No matter how hard things might be, the sun is always there. You can focus on finding it.

I believe that life brings unexpected joy every day.

Sometimes it is in the smallest things or moments, the ones you can barely notice.

Sometimes it is big news like a pregnancy, an engagement, or a business achievement.

If you do not give these moments your attention and look out for them, it does not matter how big or small they are. You are not going to notice them.

You can try to turn your attention toward the good things and notice more of the unexpected beauty happening around us every day.

What was the last unexpected moment that brought real joy into your life?

2. The Spotlight Effect

I think we can all be honest with ourselves here. Everyone cares in some way about what certain people think of them.

I think it sits somewhere deep in our minds.

But you can work on this part of your psyche and build stronger mental resilience.

It takes time.

More than time, it takes an understanding of reality.

We might feel that people are thinking about us or even watching us all the time.

That is the infamous spotlight effect.

The truth is, no one is thinking about you as much as you think about yourself.

You might feel paralyzed in certain situations just by the thought of what others are going to think about you.

What would your classmates from high school think if you posted this on social media?

What would your colleagues say if you pursued a new career opportunity?

Guess what? They do not care.

Everyone has an opinion, but that does not mean they are going to think about you all the time.

You can let go of this limiting belief that is holding you back from doing what you want in life.

Who cares if you make a mistake? No one.

You do not have to let a mistake stop you either.

You can go and do what you want.

You can sign up for that dance class.

You can start your business.

You can talk to that cute colleague.

You can be yourself.

Do you care what others think about you?

3. Time Alone

What is the importance of spending time alone, on your own, with yourself?

I have always been kind of a big fan of spending time alone.

I think that when we are truly alone, we find ways to listen to ourselves differently.

We have the time and space to discover what is really underneath.

The problems or happiness, the plans or changes. Basically, anything going through our minds during daily life.

But how do we spend time alone when we are in romantic relationships?

It is a juggling act between wanting to spend time with your partner, doing activities together, and building the relationship further.

But at the same time, you also need time alone.

Well, there are a couple of things you can do.

You can do a sport on your own, go for walks, go to the cinema, or do pretty much anything alone.

I think it is important to have a person next to you who does not see this time alone as distancing yourself or as something you do to avoid being with your partner.

You do it for your own sanity, if you know what I mean.

And then it is really something we can do routinely.

I genuinely believe it can become part of our routine or habits, not just something we do once in a while.

You might even schedule it in your calendar if you are the type of person who needs that.

Time alone is something we all need because it is a way to understand ourselves much better. Without understanding ourselves and our current situation, it is really hard to move forward.

I genuinely believe that time alone is as important as social time with others.

It is not about excess in either of them.

It is about having enough of each.

How do you find this time outside work and your relationship?

4. The Procrastination Loop

The paradox of this question is that I am staring at the screen and do not know how to continue.

I think procrastination has become quite a big theme in recent years, especially because people seem to struggle more often with continuing and finishing tasks.

Part of it might come from newly formed habits of constantly checking our phones.

At one point, I even felt that telling others you were “just procrastinating” had become a trend.

Quite a strange trend, in my opinion.

Anyway, here we are today, with AI influencing the lives of many, if not all of us.

We still procrastinate on using tools that are supposed to skyrocket our productivity.

The thing is, there are different types of procrastination and different ways it affects people.

My form of procrastination is perfecting things that do not need to be perfected. My problem is not starting the task. It is knowing when it is time to move to the next one and when it is enough.

To get out of this procrastination loop, I need a hard deadline or an outcome metric that signals a clear end once I reach it.

If you struggle with starting a task, one thing you can do is take the smallest first step possible.

If it is cleaning the apartment, just take the broom in your hands or get the vacuum cleaner out.

This single, smallest step is what starts the domino effect.

But honestly, I think it is also part of self-discovery and discipline to learn what works for you.

One way or another, things need to get done.

So you can find a way that makes it more pleasant for you.

How do you overcome procrastination?

5. Stuck Is Not Lost

How do we manage the moments in life when we feel stuck?

Just to be clear, there is no universal rule saying that you have to feel stuck in life, so maybe you have not experienced it yet.

But I think it is one of those feelings and moments that each of us experiences at some point.

So how would you describe being stuck in life?

My version would be that you are doing, or feel like you are doing, everything you can. But at the same time, you feel that you are not moving anywhere or in the direction you want to go.

You are basically stuck in one place.

It can be work, a relationship, or almost anything in life.

Feeling stuck is really discouraging. It brings worry and stress because it feels a little like hopelessness.

You are doing what you can and still feel like this is not going anywhere.

It is really demotivating, and for many people, it is a tough place to be because you just do not know what to do next.

I have been in this situation a couple of times, where whatever I did, did not feel like enough because I felt stuck.

The work situation did not get better. Sometimes, it even got worse.

Does it directly correlate with being lost?

That is actually an interesting way to look at it.

Does being stuck equal being lost?

I do not think so.

If you are lost, you have no idea what to do next. But if you are stuck, you might know what you want to do and already be doing it. Nothing is happening, and it might require a different approach.

Writing these things for you is something that helps me understand life and myself better.

I think that is the most beautiful part of this writing. On one hand, I genuinely hope to bring value to others. On the other, it is a self-discovery journey of its own, a way to get all these things out of me and write them down.

How does it look on your side?

Leave a comment

6. What Are You Willing to Adapt To?

I think our ability to adapt is part of what makes us so strong as human beings.

The same still applies today.

When we change careers, move countries, or start relationships, most life experiences require some level of adaptation.

It is not only about how well you can adapt. It is also about what you are willing to adapt to.

Just because we can, does not mean we must.

I think that, especially as you get older, you understand that certain relationships are not worth adapting to. They are not worth getting used to, and neither is poor treatment from others.

I think that is the wrong kind of adaptation.

Getting treated badly is not something anyone can be expected to tolerate or adapt to.

And this applies to relationships from family to work.

Sometimes it requires telling the other person what is on your mind.

It means showing your boundaries and where you are not willing to go to accommodate someone.

How well can you adapt?

7. Problems and Hard Reality

I think this is something we face daily in our lives.

We encounter situations that are either problems we can solve or hard realities we can only accept.

It comes down to how we see these situations.

Let’s say you need to deal with the unemployment office.

It will probably depend on which country you are in, but there will almost certainly be some bureaucracy involved in the process.

This comes down to differentiating between a problem and reality.

If you misinterpret this bureaucracy as a problem, you are going to spend so much time complaining about it and making a fuss about the whole thing.

You might think you can solve it, get around it, or screw the system.

Understanding that this is simply a reality, not only for you but for everyone, can help you calm down a little.

I am not saying there are no problems in bureaucracy.

There are absolutely many problems in bureaucracy and across wider public systems.

What I want to say is that taking an extra step to understand and see daily situations as they are is one of the things that can make life easier.

You might not want to spend your time trying to find solutions to problems that are not yours to solve in the first place.

Sooner or later, you will hit the hard reality.

How do you differentiate between a problem and a hard reality?

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade.

As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

Lukáš

Some of it comes from the work in front of me. Some of it has been with me for much longer.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. I Am Actually Tired

2. Too Many Things at Once

3. Four Things I Am Learning

4. Your Progress Still Counts

5. The Only Way Out Is Through

6. When Pleasing Others Becomes a Reflex

7. What We Carry From Home

1. I Am Actually Tired

I'm actually tired, friends.

I don't have any big wisdom to drop in this one.

I just want to be honest with you and with myself.

I'm tired of sitting behind the computer all day. I'm tired of the same cycle repeating. I'm tired of the fact that I have no idea how my life is going to turn out over the next few weeks, and I'm tired of the fact that I have a lot on my shoulders right now.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to complain.

I just don't know what I should do.

I don't want to choose between money and friends.

I want to afford both. I want to be with my friends when I want to, without overthinking whether my budget allows me to visit them.

I'm sure I can do it.

I'm not doing what I'm doing just for fun.

I'm doing all of this to live a better life.

I'm going to make it there. Maybe not next month, maybe not even in six months, but I'll make it there.

Beginnings are always tough. Things are going to get better afterward.

I just need to endure this.

It doesn't matter if all the disadvantages are stacked against me. I'm not going to give up.

I'll finish what I started.

One step at a time.

Don’t give up neither.

2. Too Many Things at Once

Are you juggling too many things at once?

This is not only a question I'm asking you. I ask myself this all the time.

Unfortunately, I have a tendency to take on too many projects at once.

It all feels exciting at first, but once the initial fire slows down, it starts to feel like a burden.

For a very simple reason: I'm just juggling too many things at once.

At the time of writing this, I have at least three projects going on in my life.

All of them are equally exciting, and all of them are long-term projects.

So how do I juggle this situation?

Well, the worst thing I can do is try to invest the same amount of time and energy into all of them at once.

My strategy is to define one key project that needs the most attention and make sure it is growing.

The other two are lower priorities, but I still care about them just as much.

My business idea is project number one. It needs my attention and energy first.

This newsletter, my aspirations as a writer, and the personal brand connected to them make up my second long-term project, which I really care about and want to grow.

The third project is my marathon training, which is going kind of slowly right now because I'm still dealing with a knee issue that has been bothering me for almost a year.

Race day is in October, so I still have some time. But putting together the entire training plan, going through physio sessions and doctor checkups, and sorting out supplements and my diet takes time and effort if I don't want to half-ass this.

Each project is different and needs a different level of attention and effort.

I'm not going to lie. It is challenging, especially because ideas about the newsletter or marathon preparation sometimes start to flow while I'm working on the business, and I suddenly find myself caught in a triangle between all three.

But I'm learning how to manage this without going insane or burning out.

If you have any advice for me this time, please let me know. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

3. Four Things I Am Learning

Here is something I realized during the last two weeks.

1. Rushing things is probably never a good idea.

2. For me to succeed, I need to balance my time across different parts of my life. Even when I am working on my own business, working from morning until evening is not satisfying enough to ignore everything else.

3. I don't want to exchange short-term pleasures for long-term happiness. I will be thankful that I didn't turn my mind or body into a mess.

4. Despite all the optimism, good things take time and are usually harder to get or build than you initially thought.

We all want to be successful in a certain way, but we often overlook what it takes to get there.

Back to work now.

4. Your Progress Still Counts

Do you tap yourself on the shoulder?

It seems like almost everyone is running marathons, running businesses, traveling, or living their best life these days.

Or maybe the opposite is true.

Social media plays tricks on us every day with highly curated content shaped around our interests.

What's left for people who might be going through tough times, changing careers, going through a breakup, recovering from an injury, or dealing with something else?

They start thinking they should be like everyone else.

They ask themselves why their lives suck when the outside world is all vanilla and rainbows.

I don't want you to forget that outside motivation to change your life is not always bad, but you might not want to get addicted to it.

It is about the slow progress you make every day.

You might not want to get drawn into the rat race and compete with everyone else to have the most picturesque life.

Just because it seems like everyone is running marathons does not mean your 5K runs are dismissible.

You can hold your course and pace to get where you want to go.

You can tap yourself on the shoulder for everything you are doing because none of it is small.

If you read my newsletter regularly, you already know that going after something meaningful is what we are trying to do here.

5. The Only Way Out Is Through

Are you okay with failure?

I often try to emphasize that life is full of roadblocks.

But not in a pessimistic way that focuses only on the bad things. I mean it in a way that shows you it is simply part of the process.

I have a recent example from my life that gave me the idea for this.

I was building a website for my new business.

It was roadblock after roadblock.

I was staring at the screen at 11 p.m., thinking, "How the f*ck am I going to launch my business when I have already been stuck on this website for so long?"

Fear, disappointment, and frustration all started creeping in.

As I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, two things became clear to me.

First, no one ever promised me it was going to be easy.

Second, I decided to take this path fully aware that things might often not go as planned.

Now I need to go through this phase so the next one can begin afterward.

It does not matter whether these are small failures that are more like frustrations and roadblocks or something bigger.

The only way out is through.

6. When Pleasing Others Becomes a Reflex

How often do you make everyone else happy except yourself?

I was often guilty of this myself.

Pleasing other people has been my defense mechanism since I was a kid.

The reason I'm saying this is that you don't start pleasing others out of nowhere.

At some point in the past, you learned that the only way to survive in certain kinds of environments was to kneel and please others.

Unconsciously and unwillingly, this shaped your behavior.

It taught your brain to surrender to others and put them before yourself.

School might have been a tough period, and maybe your first work experiences were too.

Eventually, you understood what you were carrying on your shoulders and started working on letting it go.

From my own experience, I can say that it is not an easy burden to let go of.

Learning to let this guard down and openly express yourself and your opinion, without needing approval or wanting to please or agree with others, is not easy.

As much as I try to control this and get better for my own sake, it is still very deeply coded in me.

When I think about it, this is probably something I could work through in therapy, but this newsletter is not about that.

I just wanted to tell anyone out there who might be dealing with the same struggle that you are not alone.

Reach out to me at any point if you would like to talk.

Leave a comment

7. What We Carry From Home

How is your relationship with your family?

I think many people avoid this topic on purpose.

We could not decide where we were born.

Some of us were luckier than others, and I don't mean only financially.

Imagine you were born in a part of Somalia affected by conflict.

Your circumstances could put your life at risk from the moment you were born.

But that is just one part of the equation.

The other part is your parents.

We could not choose them either.

Each of us had a slightly different upbringing with different challenges.

We dealt with whatever we needed to survive and make it through.

Now, when you look back on your childhood, you might notice certain patterns, remember certain situations, or find out truths you didn't know before.

Your own life shifts a little because you understand more than you did before.

In these moments, you might realize that your behavior was heavily influenced by your caretakers.

That can lead to the discovery that the parts you don't like about yourself were not built by you, and they are not simply bad habits. They were passed on to you by someone else.

You might find this frustrating and unfair.

You might want to hear an apology from someone because they made you this way or because you feel hurt.

Let me tell you this.

I had a lot of anger in me as well. There was so much I wanted to yell at someone.

I didn’t do that.

I took the time to understand the situation and tried to look at it from the other person's perspective.

It helped me understand my anger and fear.

Maybe it did not solve everything, but at least it eased the urge to take my anger out on someone.

It is not a universal rule.

It might not apply to you.

You might already know what your situation requires.

Relationships are tough, especially with family.

Have you uncovered truths from your past that you didn't know before?

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade.

As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

Lukáš

This week, I kept returning to the space between ambition and exhaustion, between moving forward and knowing when to step back.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. The Moment It Became Real

2. Too Many Options

3. Focus Without Perfect Conditions

4. I Want to Build, but I Am Tired

5. Accepting Your Timeline

6. Making Room for Play

7. The Plan Is Not the Point

1. The Moment It Became Real

How hard can it be to start a business?

This is a question I have been asking myself for a very long time.

Until now, I had always relied on employment as my source of income.

Every time I thought about starting a business on my own, I got stuck among the hundred ideas I had in my head.

Recently, I finished my last job because my girlfriend and I decided to move to a different city and try our luck there.

With that decision, I felt as if fresh wind was filling my sails.

The change in environment mattered, but I also felt that this was the perfect time to finally start a business.

It was a busy period: finishing my previous job, temporarily moving our stuff to my girlfriend's parents' place, and taking a holiday to reset before normal life began again.

Business ideas were all I could think about during the holiday.

And all I wanted to do was sit behind my computer for a whole day and grind my ass off to build something.

I am glad I did not. I really needed the holiday, and even though my mind usually has a hard time relaxing, I enjoyed my time there.

After we came back from holiday, I finally had the chance to sit down and lay out some kind of checkpoints for myself and the business.

I went through all the ideas I had gathered.

Picked one.

And I got paralyzed the moment I picked the idea.

I did not understand why this was happening.

For four weeks, all I had wanted was to sit behind that computer and start this process.

Why did I feel frozen and paralyzed now?

I guess that moment was the realization that this was actually happening.

Walking away from the security and peace of mind of regular employment and a monthly salary can be frightening.

But at the same time, I believe that what feels like fear can also be excitement and the beginning of something greater than I ever imagined I could build.

Let us see how it goes. I will keep you updated.

I am sharing this with you not only to document this process, but also to show you that things are sometimes difficult at first.

That difficulty does not have to stop me from pursuing this, and it does not have to stop you either.

Do you run your own business right now, or have you been thinking about starting one?

Shoot me a message. I would love to hear about your process.

Leave a comment

2. Too Many Options

What is worse, too many options or one?

Something I get caught in quite often is decision paralysis, especially since AI entered our daily lives and gave us almost unlimited power to research things.

In general, I prefer to have fewer options to choose from, even with ice cream, because I already know myself and what happens when there are too many.

I get stuck.

I go down the mental spiral of comparison, trying to find and choose the single best option there is.

The longer you spend thinking, the harder and more overwhelming the decision becomes.

For a simple reason: you have gathered more data than your mind can process in that moment.

The same principle applies to almost any other area of life.

If you had too many partners to choose from, you would probably end up alone.

It is simple.

Our brains do not like chaos and unlimited options.

They like the most straightforward path to the outcome we want, with the least amount of resistance along the way.

This feature is a double-edged sword. Sometimes it is very useful, and sometimes it is quite limiting.

You probably do not want to spend too much time choosing your shoes or overthink your breakfast every day.

So how do you overcome this paralysis when you genuinely do not want to make a bad decision?

The simplest thing is to ask yourself which option feels closest to hell yeah.

Because at the end of the day, it is either hell yeah or no.

This approach comes from Derek Siver, and his book Hell Yeah or No: What's Worth Doing.

His states: If you feel anything less than 'Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!' — then say no.

Funnily enough, choosing a partner and choosing shoes might not be so different.

It is either hell yeah or no. Either you are excited or you are not.

You can choose wisely without spending your life in decision mode.

What is worse, too many options or one?

3. Focus Without Perfect Conditions

How can you use the least amount of time to build something great in life?

Why am I asking this?

Because as we get older, the time we have available shrinks.

Outside of work, we have personal admin, responsibilities, meetings, and other tasks.

And on top of that, we want to stay on top of our relationships with friends and family, have hobbies, and enjoy free time.

So how can you build something great, like your own business or personal brand, in the shortest possible time?

Not everyone can quit their job and go into full monk mode for six months to reinvent themselves.

You probably do not want to ignore everyone and everything in your life just so you can build something and end up completely alone afterward.

These are some of the things that have been going through my mind lately.

As I am trying to work on my business, I am facing different challenges.

One is how to handle these tasks and responsibilities while trying to create something on my own.

There is one thing I would like to get better at in this whole process: being able to start focused work at any time.

Currently, if I do not start my deep work in the morning, I get distracted by my phone or other people in the house, and it is incredibly hard to get into tunnel focus later in the day.

No form of caffeine would help me overcome that, so I guess it is just a mind thing.

Distractions will eventually appear in one form or another.

The key is to find a way to reset yourself and avoid depending on perfect conditions.

It is obviously easier to focus on your to-dos alone in a mountain cabin than in an apartment with three other people.

But life is not always perfect.

Not every season of hard work is going to come with a perfect setting that supports you.

That is why I believe it is so important to learn how to focus when you choose, not only when your surroundings allow it.

Do you have any tricks for dealing with this?

I would love to hear your take on it.

4. I Want to Build, but I Am Tired

I have been juggling this for a while, standing at a crossroads between wanting to build and not wanting to burn out.

I end up doing too much.

There is a difference between burnout fatigue and the fatigue that comes from a bad night's sleep.

There is this drive to build, but I do not know how people keep going when their eyes will not stay open and they are still supposed to work.

It is part of hustle culture.

People talk about grinding as if you can work twelve to sixteen hours a day as long as it is for something you really want to achieve.

I want to achieve these things and build a better life, but how can I do it when I am tired?

The question comes down to this: when do I decide what to do?

How do I spread my work out and time-block it?

I do not know what else.

For a long time, we have been fed the idea that becoming an entrepreneur and building a business are normal.

It seems that way on Instagram, TikTok, and everywhere else you look.

It feels as if everyone is building a business now, and if you are like me, that can make you feel kind of behind.

I do not want to stay stuck working for someone else for a crappy salary while worrying about every dollar I spend.

I want the freedom I have talked about.

I want to live the lifestyle I dream of and the life I wish for myself.

At the same time, this can be really frustrating for me too.

Filtering these things is already a skill that I think is very underrated, to be honest.

What do you do when you are tired but still want to build something in life?

5. Accepting Your Timeline

Have you accepted the time it might take before you commit?

You might ask how anyone can accept time.

Well, before you commit to a new project, challenge, or career, you should accept that your timeline might look different from that of anyone else in the room.

It does not have to discourage you or make you feel that something is wrong with you or that you are less capable than others.

It works both ways.

You might achieve things in six months that took others two years.

Or it might take you five years to do what others did in their first year.

The key is acceptance.

Because this idea can be perceived in many ways, I want to clarify something.

Taking five times longer does not mean putting in less effort.

Expectations play a big role in this as well.

You might expect things to happen faster because you are working your ass off.

They might, and you might speed things up, but not always.

You might achieve certain things earlier, but betting everything on hustle culture just to burn out halfway is probably not your dream destination.

I believe that there are three fundamental things to understand in life. Well, there are more, but...

1. Everyone has a different timeline in life.

   Just because a 19-year-old kid in the US made millions on YouTube does not mean the same timeline applies to everyone else at 19.

   You might achieve things later or earlier than your peers, and that is okay.

2. Life is not fair.

   As much as we want it to be fair, it is not.

   Things happen in life, sometimes without any particular reason.

   Bad things can happen to good people just as they happen to bad people.

   It sucks, but life is life.

3. No one promised you it would be easy.

   There is no vanilla sugar coating here.

   Life will throw a bunch of bullshit at you, regardless of where you come from or whose name you carry.

So, have you accepted the time it might take before you commit?

6. Making Room for Play

How much play do you have in your life right now?

I see that as we get older, we unconsciously, or maybe even consciously, tend to have less fun in our lives.

We all focus on careers and achievements, which can leave play behind.

How often do you do things purely for fun, without expectations, a goal to reach, or any stakes?

I discovered in my own life that I had not put time and effort into finding more play in my daily life for some time.

One of the things I love to do just for fun is dance.

I have loved moving my body to the rhythm of a song since I was a small kid.

And it has stayed with me to this day.

Finding these small moments when I can dance in the shower for a couple of minutes while getting ready in the morning is energizing.

These moments, when there are no stakes and you can simply dissolve into them, create a true feeling of play.

It is not about perfection or achievements. It is about connecting with your inner self and letting the inner child out.

What is your favorite way to play?

7. The Plan Is Not the Point

Is it about achieving, or about finding the right balance?

That has been on my mind for some time, and I have mentioned it often in my writing.

On one hand, I am really trying to push back against hustle culture.

I do not think hustle culture is healthy for most people, but hard work itself seems inevitable in life.

It also comes down to how each person defines hard work.

For me, hard work can mean working from morning until evening on something I care about while still taking small breaks, going for a walk or a run, going to the gym, and actually eating.

For someone else, hard work might be a four-hour block of deep work each day.

For a third person, hard work could mean not eating at all, sitting behind a computer from five in the morning until nine in the evening, and not moving from that spot.

It can also be misleading when you see someone on social media promoting hard work, the grind, and hustle culture.

You might think, "Oh my god, if I want to achieve something, I have to be like this person," without seeing the sequence of steps and, of course, the sprinkle of luck behind what they achieved.

Nothing happens in isolation in life, and your path might look very different because you are not starting from the same place as someone else.

You might have a normal job you do not hate but do not love.

You can invest the hours before or after work, or perhaps only the weekends, into something else instead of quitting right now.

Nothing in the world is universal.

There is no universal truth saying this is the only path to take if you want to achieve something.

Yes, there are certain universal things.

If you want to be a lawyer, law school is probably part of the path.

If you want to be a doctor, studying medicine is probably part of it too.

But how this timeline unfolds and which steps you take are not set in stone.

You might finish school and feel like traveling for a couple of months before starting work.

You might want to take more time off or go straight into work.

Maybe no one will hire you because there are suddenly no open positions.

Maybe your path takes you to a different town or country.

There are unlimited possibilities for what can happen in your life.

You might not want to fixate on one outcome or plan because, to be honest, plans often do not unfold as we intended.

Let me give you an example.

I am starting a business right now, or at least I want to take the first step toward starting one.

It is very unfamiliar territory for me.

I have never been an entrepreneur, and honestly, I have never had entrepreneurial aspirations.

It all started a couple of years ago when I began reading different books.

I changed as a person. My mindset, values, and view of the world changed quite a bit.

Now, as I work on this and try to figure it out, I see that it is nothing like being employed.

Productivity, focus, and discipline mean something completely different here because no one is giving me tasks.

No one is checking on me.

No one is there to tell me, "This is the right way to do it. This is the wrong way to do it."

All I have are YouTube tutorials, online courses, and posts on X and Instagram.

I am juggling a lot, and I am not even getting into all the bureaucracy, reaching out, finding potential clients, and other things I will eventually need to handle.

What I want to say is that if I were fixated on just one outcome, I would miss out on all the other opportunities that might come with this.

My idea of the business can change significantly in six or twelve months, depending on the industry, my potential clients, and how the business runs.

Just because you have a plan right now does not mean it has to unfold step by step as you imagined it would.

I think the most important part of this process is something I have written about before: having a clear why.

Why are you doing what you are doing?

Without a strong why, you are setting yourself up for a hard time before you even start.

If you fixate on the steps and the first thing does not work out, the whole thing can fall apart like a house of cards.

If you have your why, the reason and final destination behind this, then how you get there can adjust.

It is not going to be linear or a straight path.

It will probably go up and down, left and right, horizontally and vertically.

One day you are on the moon, and the next day you are somewhere in a hole.

I think it is hard for our minds to understand this because our brains like things to feel clean.

They do not like uncertainty or fog.

The brain likes to know point A, point B, the steps in between, and how we are going to get there.

That is not how it works in life.

I think being flexible and able to adjust your course, with a clear why at the end, is going to get you much further than being fixated on just one outcome.

This all comes down to finding the right balance between achieving and taking a step back to digest things and correct the course when needed.

Would love to hear your take on this.

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade.

As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

—Lukáš

This week is about old wounds, survival mode, choosing yourself, and finding a gentler way forward.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. The Fight With Yourself

2. The Wound You Reopen

3. Choosing Yourself

4. When Life Becomes Too Comfortable

5. Keeping Your Word When Exhausted

6. Survival Mode

7. Forgiving Yourself

1. The Fight With Yourself

Why would you fight with yourself?

I am not talking about physical fighting. This is a purely psychological fight that many people face every day.

Maybe the better question is not why, but how.

There are plenty of reasons you might fight yourself, but in the end, there is no point.

There is no point in fighting with yourself because it leads nowhere.

Understanding and acceptance are the keys to solving internal problems.

Someone might disagree with this because sometimes it feels like fighting part of yourself is necessary to get things done or create some kind of behavior change.

But my question is whether you are really fighting, or whether you are forgiving yourself and finding the understanding that then powers the change.

Let’s say someone is overweight and wants to start working out to become healthier and feel better about how they look.

If you fight with yourself and use negative self-talk to power the change, it can also have the opposite effect.

But if you accept the truth that you are overweight and want to do something to change it, you can understand the situation.

Change is born from that understanding and acceptance.

It does not happen so clearly that you can identify all these phases while they are happening.

But the process is there.

To be clear, just thinking about change is not going to change anything.

The work and a little sweat are still part of it.

2. The Wound You Reopen

Have you ever noticed that we tend to reopen our old wounds ourselves?

I was wondering why it is like that.

Why can certain thoughts cause so much pain in such a short period of time?

Or why do certain people trigger things inside me so quickly and intensely?

But then I ask myself whether it is really the outside world or my internal interpretation that causes all of it.

Sometimes it feels like these moments come from nowhere at the speed of light.

Boom. Suddenly, you are swimming in this overwhelming field of negative energy.

How do you cope with situations like this?

3. Choosing Yourself

How would you describe a moment when you chose yourself?

Sometimes it is really hard because you do not want to disappoint others, but at the same time, you also do not want to please everyone.

If you tend to choose yourself all the time, people might call you selfish.

But my question is: How can you grow in life and build something meaningful without looking after yourself?

A big part of this in my case is that I tend to please others.

I am actively working on getting better at saying no and really thinking about when I want to say yes.

It is not only about saying yes to everything.

It is also about agreeing to things you disagree with.

It is like having this habit or reflex during a conversation.

Someone says something, and your brain agrees almost without thinking.

Only a couple of seconds later, you realize that it is not something you agree with.

All these moments, and many others, show the importance of choosing yourself.

Leave a comment

4. When Life Becomes Too Comfortable

Sometimes I forget how comfortable life is.

We live in a world where upgrading our lives has become a trend.

All of us upgrade our lives with gadgets, supplements, AI, and much more.

Each of us has different reasons, but the effect can make us too comfortable in daily life.

Not all of us have a lot of money, but food is available almost everywhere, or it can be delivered to our doorsteps.

There are Chinese websites that make it feel like you can buy almost anything for a few cents.

Here is a simple exercise.

When you look around, which things are inseparable from your life, and which are just nice to have?

You might be surprised by how many things are not necessary for your life at all. You are simply used to them.

5. Keeping Your Word When Exhausted

Pain is inevitable.

Pain takes many forms, but everyone experiences it.

One of the biggest pains in human life is the pain of regret.

It is the regret of leaving potential on the table instead of pursuing the unknown.

Part of this is keeping your word to yourself.

If I say I am going to do something, I better do it.

While writing this, I am exhausted from the last couple of days, so my energy is almost nonexistent.

Still, I need to show up for myself and do what I said I would do: write my 100 words.

6. Survival Mode

Have you ever been stuck in survival mode?

Maybe you are asking what survival mode is in the first place.

Everyone can describe it differently.

My description sounds like this:

Survival mode is a prolonged period in life when money is usually tight.

Monthly spending is focused almost entirely on essentials such as rent, food, and other bills, with very little or almost no money left for anything else.

It is a grind without return. It is having three jobs and still being in survival mode. It is tough.

The transition from surviving to actually living can happen in two stages.

First, you learn how to manage your money so well that you can put some aside even in survival mode and spend some on fun too.

Your understanding of life and your values change. You live more peacefully and enjoy more of the simple things.

Second, you survive this mode and manage to build yourself up enough to change your life to the point where money is no longer a problem.

You also understand that money does not define happiness in life.

Just because you were in survival mode once and got out does not necessarily mean you cannot go back to that state.

Sometimes you go through it again and learn another lesson.

By no means do I wish for anyone to go through this.

I have gone through a couple of survival periods myself.

Each taught me something different.

It is not that I would like to be in those situations, but I have always managed to get out as well.

Life is almost like a sinusoid. One moment you are up, and a second later, you can be down.

What I learned from this is that you cannot count on life always staying the same.

Being able to adjust to a situation and stay hopeful through your days is key to surviving any period of life.

7. Forgiving Yourself

Have you forgiven yourself?

In each of our lives, there is something holding us back, something that still holds power over us.

It can stay there until you forgive yourself.

Maybe it is something you did when you were young, forgot about, and then found haunting you again later in adult life.

Maybe it is a relationship you ended in a way that was not fair.

Maybe it is a failure at work that you have not processed.

There are countless situations in a person’s life that need understanding and genuine care before they can be resolved.

It might not be something at the forefront of your mind.

Our minds are great at playing tricks on us, and sometimes they hide things from us too.

Just as our deepest fears can be buried in our minds, so can all the things we have not forgiven ourselves for.

I am no exception.

I have needed to go through the process of forgiving myself a couple of times in my life.

It is not always as simple as finding something that bothers you, telling yourself it is okay, and watching it go away.

Sometimes I need to come back to the same thing again and again and have a deep conversation with myself.

You return to it, understand it again, and slowly forgive yourself one more time.

It is like sitting down with a friend and telling him, “It is okay. You can let go now.”

You can be patient with yourself throughout this process.

Working through something hurtful takes time.

Is there something you would like to forgive yourself for?

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade.

As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

Lukáš

Somewhere between languages, airports, relationships, and the person I became, belonging stopped being a place and started becoming a feeling.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. Arriving Somewhere New

2. Between Three Languages

3. When Home Moves With You

4. Being at Ease

5. Who Am I?

6. Fighting Reality

7. When I Feel Like I Am Not Enough

1. Arriving Somewhere New

I have mentioned a couple of times in my writing that I have moved between a few countries in my life.

In retrospect, it might all seem like an adventure, and in many ways, it is.

But what many people might miss is that going through this process can be challenging as well.

And most of the time, at the beginning, it is.

You land in a new country.

Then comes the immigration office registration, a photo for your ID, forms to fill out, opening a bank account, and many other tasks.

If you have ever experienced that, you know it is an overwhelming process.

Often, it is even discouraging.

When you add the stress and demands of work on top, it becomes a bitter cocktail to swallow.

But most of the starts in life are like this.

Going to the gym for the first time is anything but easy, and it doesn't go away after the first day.

It is intimidating to many.

What helped me with this process was to carry on with the routine from a previous place.

If you used to go to coffee shop to read a book on Sundays, do the same the moment you move in.

It helps you to establish a similar routine, and life might feel less stressful during this change.

What are your experiences with moving between countries?

2. Between Three Languages

How many languages do you speak?

I am not asking you to brag about it, and I do not want to brag about it either.

I am asking because I have noticed that I think differently in different languages and sometimes even feel like a slightly different version of myself.

Have you ever thought about the difference between the language you think in, the language you work in, and the language you use when you are scared or in love?

From my own experience, it can get messy sometimes.

I have days when my thinking language combines three languages.

When I talk to myself out loud, I sometimes mix all of them within a couple of sentences.

I just laugh at myself during these moments because my creations sound alien.

It is also very useful when you travel and meet new people from countries where they speak the languages you know, because you can easily switch between languages and adapt to the people around you.

This is all on the fun side of knowing more languages.

On the other hand, it is sometimes hard to remember certain words across all the languages.

You might mix languages at the wrong moment, or know a word in one language but have no idea what it is in another.

As advantageous as it is to know more than one language, it can also be challenging to articulate yourself in all of them.

The problem I often encounter is that my ability to express myself and my thoughts in English is far more flexible and rich than in German.

Sometimes I even struggle to find the right words in my native Slovak because I do not use it daily.

When I come home to visit and have conversations with people, I occasionally throw English words into them.

Not because I want to sound interesting or show others that I can speak English, but because I cannot remember the Slovak word or explanation anymore.

It is a blessing and a curse at the same time.

The same goes for romantic conversations in relationships.

The words in these situations matter a lot.

When you cannot describe what you want to say, it can create misunderstandings very quickly and push the conversation in the wrong direction.

In those moments, you and your partner can be patient and take the time to find the right words.

There is no shame in looking up words.

One good word can be more effective than one hundred wrong ones.

Similar situations happen at work, especially in business.

Juggling multiple languages is an extra layer of complexity for any job.

Investing time in learning a few extra words and phrases can create a world of difference for you and your potential growth.

There are many more examples and stories about this topic, but I would love to know about you.

What is your experience with talking and thinking in different languages across different situations in life?

3. When Home Moves With You

What does home mean to you?

Is it the location, the people, the smell, the feeling, or something else that is hard to describe?

I think home means something different to everyone.

For a very long time, home for me meant a physical location: my hometown.

After some time living abroad, this idea or feeling of home started to blur a little.

On one hand, coming home felt familiar, safe, filled with memories, and connected to meeting friends and family.

On the other hand, it also felt kind of distant because it felt like the home of a younger version of me, not the current version.

The current version had built a life abroad, met new people, started new hobbies, created new routines, and generally become a different person.

Suddenly, going to Slovakia felt like going for a visit, not like going home.

Home was where real life was happening.

Today, I understand that home is not permanently located and locked in one place.

Home is where you build it, with the people you spend your time with.

The feeling of home moves with you when you decide to take it with you.

How would you describe your home, not as a place, but as a feeling?

4. Being at Ease

Where do you actually belong?

Not where you live. Not where you are from. Not where you are supposed to want to be.

I mean the place, community, or condition under which you feel most fully yourself.

I would not describe it as a place for one simple reason: the place can change, even constantly, but the feeling stays.

I would describe the feeling of belonging as being at ease.

Being at ease with daily life, the local community and its mindset, and most importantly, with yourself.

I believe that feeling like you belong somewhere is one of the most underrated precursors to a happy and fulfilling life.

No amount of money can create true belonging.

For me, belonging is not only about surviving somewhere. It is about being able to thrive there.

How would you describe the feeling of belonging somewhere?

5. Who Am I?

Have you ever asked yourself who you are?

At first, it might seem like an odd question to ask.

But this is one of the most revealing questions you can ask in your life.

It is therapeutic in a way because it lets you rediscover your inner self.

By no means is it easy, though.

For some, going into these waters of self-discovery is completely outside their comfort zone, perhaps not even on their radar.

I am personally really interested in this topic, as you have probably already noticed if you have read my newsletter.

I came across a company called The School of Life after hearing someone talk about it on a podcast.

They create all kinds of journals, books, and notebooks built around psychology and self-understanding.

There is one journal called Who Am I?, and boy, some of the questions inside are tough to swallow or even think about.

Let us be honest. How many times have you asked yourself this question?

There is depth in it.

It let’s you go discover levels within yourself that would have been maybe never touched.

Try it yourself.

Find a time when you can be alone, lit a candle and incense if you like, or just make yourself a hot tea or cocoa.

Sit down away from distractions and notifications with this question, piece of paper and pen, and keep your mind doing it’s thing.

Have you ever tried something similar?

Leave a comment

6. Fighting Reality

Have you noticed that sometimes you make things harder for yourself without any particular reason?

It is often because we try to bend reality instead of accepting it as it is.

You know the feeling when, after a long fight with yourself, things suddenly become much easier to solve once you accept reality and adjust to it.

It is like the gravity problem: complaining about being a slow cyclist just because the Earth's gravity is pulling you.

You cannot change it.

You can only accept reality and either move on or find a way to work with what you have.

I experienced this couple of months ago while traveling.

I went to Fuerteventura with my girlfriend for a vacation.

The island was beautiful, and everything went smoothly until two days before the end of the holiday.

She realized that she had forgotten her passport at home.

The problem was our layover in London, where we had to recheck our luggage and pass through UK border control.

Without her passport, we could not do that.

At that point, I had two options for how to react.

The first was to fight with reality and my girlfriend, blaming her for such a stupid and now also expensive mistake.

The second was to accept reality, which was impossible to change, and focus on finding a solution.

Instead of going stargazing, we spent the evening searching for last-minute flights and adjusting our plans.

Fighting reality is much harder than accepting it and adjusting yourself accordingly.

You can save time, energy, and in many cases, money too.

It’s not always ideal or fair, but honestly what in life is?

Have you noticed something similar in your own life?

7. When I Feel Like I Am Not Enough

How do you overcome the fear of not being good enough?

This might be a tough way to start a conversation.

It is not a question you would ask someone randomly.

If you are anything like me, you have been struggling with this question for some time.

If you tend to please other people, one of the reasons might be the fear of not being good enough.

It feels like carrying an unwanted burden on your shoulders all the time.

You do not want to please everyone, but somewhere in the past, you learned this coping mechanism to get through life.

Now, as an adult, you might undermine yourself with this fear in various situations.

It is not an easy path to be on, trust me.

After three years of monthly sessions with a coach, this thing is still present in my life too.

Here are a few things that have helped me deal with it:

1. I remind myself that no one is thinking about me as much as I think about myself.

This applies especially when it feels like everyone is watching me and I cannot make a mistake in public or show that I do not know something.

Most people do not even notice if I make a mistake.

And if they do, they will forget about it very quickly because, again, they are thinking about themselves, not me.

2. I remind myself that I am enough.

The fact is that you are valuable from the moment you are born.

No one in the outside world can decide whether you are enough or not.

Perfection is an illusion, and chasing that distant version of yourself you believe will finally be worthy and enough is pointless tyranny.

The most important step is the one you take in the present, showing yourself that you are enough and worthy every day.

3. I remind myself that criticism, failure, and problems do not define my worth.

Just because they exist does not mean they determine my value.

They are not bugs.

They are features of life, not just for me but for everyone.

4. I remind myself that not knowing something does not make me less of a person.

Everyone has a different timeline.

Certain things might take longer for you to learn than for others, and vice versa.

Maybe you just have not had enough opportunity to master that skill.

The best example is that my girlfriend is a better driver than I am, and I have told her that a couple of times.

Yes, me, a man, being a worse driver than a woman. What a cliché.

Absolutely not.

Just because society created this picture does not mean it always matches reality.

I never needed a car in my life because I moved between countries often.

It was easier to pack my life into a suitcase, take a plane or train, and be at the next destination in a couple of hours without ever worrying about parking.

So I never spent enough time driving to master my skills properly.

It bothered me at first because, again, I had this fear of not being enough for her just because I had less driving experience.

But it is not a problem at all for either of us.

I can drive, and in my eyes, I am not a bad driver at all.

I am just a bit rusty with some things when I don't drive for long time.

These are just some of the things you can remind yourself of when the fear starts creeping in or uncertainty kicks in.

So, how do you overcome the fear of not being enough?

Well, maybe you do not.

Or maybe you just find a way to cope with it when it comes.

I am on this journey myself, and I am learning how to be better at this too.

What is your way of coping with the fear of not being enough?

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade.

As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

Lukáš

This week made me ask a harder question: What does enough look like when I define it for myself?

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. The Money Wasn't Enough

2. What Money Meant at Home

3. The Price of Stability

4. Twelve Months of Freedom

5. When Ambition Meets Worth

6. The Career I Kept Changing

7. What Enough Looks Like

1. The Money Wasn't Enough

When you look back on your life, can you remember a moment when you had the money, success, or an external marker you had been chasing, but it still wasn't enough?

Those moments are like a mirror reflecting what is really happening inside you and what you are really looking for.

I had a similar experience quite early in my twenties.

For my age, and compared with the average income in my country, I was making great money.

I was already working in Switzerland, and coming home to Slovakia with that salary made me feel like I could afford anything.

That was the mistake.

Thinking I could afford anything caused me to buy stuff I didn't need.

I slipped into buying designer clothes, jewelry, shoes, and similar stuff because I thought it made me look cool and rich.

Now, when I look back on that time, I laugh at what an absolutely irresponsible dummy I was.

Well, that's a lesson I needed to learn.

Designer clothes were useless to me because it's mostly just very good marketing, fomo, and half the time, the quality doesn't actually match the price tag.

But having that money wasn't making me much happier either.

Or, an even better way to say it: looking cool and rich, and showing off money, is definitely not what I'm after in life.

I think we go through phases like this more than once in our lives.

Not only with money, but with many other things.

Our beliefs, values, and points of view are constantly changing and adjusting.

Have you experienced a similar phase in your life?

2. What Money Meant at Home

What does money mean to you?

We all grew up in different households, with different habits and mindsets around money.

When we were kids, we might have seen money as something that appeared from nowhere, or didn't appear at all.

In a store, we would hear from our parents that we could either buy something or not.

Sometimes they would include an explanation, like it was too expensive, it wasn't our birthday yet, or it was simply not the right time.

Some of us were motivated and pushed to start earning money early by helping neighbors or trying something on our own.

Others were kept in the comfort of childhood without worrying about money.

All of this shaped our relationship with money in the back of our minds.

The decisions you make today about money are heavily influenced by your childhood and how the people around you taught you to handle it.

3. The Price of Stability

What have you needed to sacrifice for financial stability or career success?

Was it relationships, time, health, creative work, or the place where you live?

There are times in our lives when we all make sacrifices in return for something greater.

Or at least we tend to think we do.

I have needed to make these sacrifices a couple of times in my life.

Most of the time, I sacrificed the location of my life for financial stability, but other things were always attached to it as well.

Since I was 16, I have traveled to foreign countries to earn money so my life could be a little easier and nicer than the options available in my home country.

Was it always easy to leave home?

Obviously not.

I have always loved exploring the world, but leaving my family and friends behind wasn't always the easiest thing to do.

I spent my first Christmas alone when I was 18, and that feeling wasn't worth any amount of money.

But life is never just black and white.

All of these experiences gave me so much in life.

They taught me how to take care of myself, no matter where I am.

And that is extremely valuable to me today.

Would I recommend that you do the same?

Probably not. It depends on the context.

I would definitely recommend experiencing life abroad, even if only for a year.

Being out there in the world taught me much more about life and people than any university ever could.

Do you have to make these sacrifices all the time?

Absolutely not.

It all comes back to your why.

Why are you doing this?

And is there another way to achieve it?

Maybe you're chasing the wrong thing.

If relationships with your family and friends are everything to you, leaving home might not be the best idea just because of money.

If there is nothing holding you back at home, and you want to explore the world and earn some money, you can pack today.

One way or another, I can't tell you what the right sacrifice is for what you want in life.

That is something only you can know for yourself.

So, what have you needed to sacrifice in your life? And was it worth it?

Leave a comment

4. Twelve Months of Freedom

What would you do with twelve months of genuine financial security?

Give me the irresponsible answer.

The real answer, the one that reveals what you actually care about when survival is not the primary concern.

I'll go first.

Besides wanting to build the life and business I want for myself, the answer is pretty straightforward.

I would travel.

There aren't many things in life that bring me so much joy.

Since I was a kid, I have loved exploring the world.

And I guess that is also why I have lived most of my adult life in foreign countries instead of at home in Slovakia.

The possibilities that traveling brings are truly unique.

It's about learning from other cultures, trying local food and drinks, trying new things, and meeting new people.

It just feels so natural and human to me that it's almost like an inner calling.

When you travel, you have the opportunity to be truly yourself without needing to please anyone just because of old habits from home.

And that is liberating and encouraging.

We all carry experiences from childhood and school.

For some of us, it was easier than for others.

Bullying, mocking, or emotional abuse from others are all things a young person can go through during that time.

And I was one of them.

I'm not looking for pity here. I found my peace.

It didn't stop me from going after the things I want in life.

All I want to say is that you can choose not to let others stop you from doing what you want in life.

Other people cannot decide what you can and cannot do.

You are stronger than you think, and you can endure more than you might imagine in life.

I love it when someone tells me that what I want to achieve is impossible or that I can't do it.

You know why?

Because it's like telling a bird it can't fly.

Well, watch me fly.

What would that kind of freedom mean to you?

5. When Ambition Meets Worth

What is the relationship between ambition and worth?

Many of you have ambitions, and that is a good thing.

You can have ambitions because without them, you are aiming kind of nowhere.

And if you don't know where you are going in life, things can get messy.

But what if you really don't know?

That is where struggles with self-worth can start creeping in.

Our brains don't like uncertainty.

They like to know the road and the surroundings.

When you are questioning your life, your brain can feed you all sorts of things just to get back to the safety of knowing what comes next.

But that might kill your potential and ambition.

That is the complicated relationship between ambition and worth that we are trying to handle.

6. The Career I Kept Changing

Have you ever taken a career path just because it felt safe instead of taking the one you actually wanted?

As I have already mentioned a couple of times in my writing, I tend to jump quickly onto the next shiny thing, and that includes my career path.

For a decade, I worked in the hospitality industry.

I worked in hotels, restaurants, and bars across a couple of countries.

I went from working as a barback, washing glasses and polishing cutlery, all the way to managing a Michelin recognized restaurant.

I went through a lot during my hospitality career, but when I started reconsidering my future, I started trying new things.

I tried UX design.

I tried selling digital posters online.

Then I was convinced for 100% that I wanted to be a personal trainer, so I went down that road for almost two years, completing all the certifications, just to do what I wanted to do.

When I had passed all the exams, all that was left was to find a gym where I could work and get started.

But the opportunity I was offered was absolutely nothing like what I wanted to do.

After basically saying no to them, I went down the rabbit hole and started asking myself why I wanted this as a career in the first place.

I discovered something I hadn't really considered before: this path was also something I didn't want to pursue.

This led me to take a digital marketing course and spend the next six months specializing in digital marketing.

And here we are now, with my interest turning toward starting an AI business.

I don't know if I can really speak about taking a career path just because it felt safe, because honestly, none of this felt safe.

Everything was outside my previous skill set, background, and knowledge.

To some people, it may seem like I'm jumping from one thing to another.

On one hand, yes. Definitely.

On the other hand, how exactly am I going to find out which of these paths I really want to pursue if I don't try them?

Reminder to you, and to myself: You can do anything, but not everything.

I don't want to go against my own writing because I once wrote that if you don't stick with anything, how can you find out whether you're actually good at it?

That still counts, but at the same time, I think there is space and time to decide otherwise.

If you try something for four or six months and don't see yourself doing it every day as your future career, then I think it's a good thing to let it go instead of continuing to pursue it.

If something might be harder to start in the short term but could show you what it would be like in the long term, then I guess that's a different story.

I mean, look, I'm on this journey of discovering life, just as you are.

I'm learning as I go through life and trying to make my life better.

I'm trying to make myself better, and I'm writing because I hope I can help you along the way too.

I would love to hear about your perspective on this topic. Have you ever done something similar?

7. What Enough Looks Like

How would you redefine success in your own words?

Not the version you had five years ago.

Not the version your family would recognize.

What criteria would you use today to evaluate whether your life is going well?

I find this question quite challenging.

Especially because we grew up in a society that has told us since we were young what success looks like.

It is different for everyone, of course.

Different parts of the world have different criteria and aspirations for success.

The image of success has many different faces.

In the end, it doesn't matter where you come from.

It's about what you decide is your north star for defining success.

Let's return to the question from the beginning.

If I were to redefine success in my own words, it would sound something like this today:

Success is not only about material things that make your life more comfortable.

Bigger, more modern houses, new cars, nice clothes, and similar things are only temporary upgrades. The excitement evaporates pretty quickly.

They are nice, and I think everyone can create a life with things that make them happy, but not to the point where life becomes constant shopping and spending.

Success is the inner feeling of being satisfied from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep.

That doesn't mean perfection, where there are no problems in life and everything is a rainbow.

Being satisfied means that you have enough.

Enough of everything that means a lot to you and makes your life enjoyable.

Having enough in life means you have people to share it with, functional health, meaningful things to do, and time to spend as you wish.

This definition of success doesn't lock you into anything.

It gives you the option to define and redefine success, and to decide what is enough for yourself, not for anyone else.

How would you define success for yourself?

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade.

As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

Lukáš

This week made me look at what we inherit, what we expect, and what we may need to let go of.

Not only in our relationships with others, but in the one we have with ourselves.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. The Manager I Became

2. The Men Who Built the Roots

3. The Amount You Have Today

4. We Play by the Rules

5. The Wins I Don't Celebrate

6. The Brutal Question

7. What Forgiveness Frees

1. The Manager I Became

Can you think of any negative relationship habits?

Something that might have come from your parents, maybe.

A habit that you are actively trying to break now.

The other day, I was walking around the apartment for ten minutes, trying to think of any negative habit that I might have inherited.

It is kind of hard to find something specific, to be honest.

It may be the difficulty of the question, or it might be the fact that spotting these kinds of habits is difficult to do on your own.

As I tried to dig deeper into it the other morning, I found one habit.

On one hand, it is not a negative one when I have it under control.

On the other hand, it can be a really tough one to control.

This habit I have in relationships is expecting the same amount of effort and perfection from others as I expect from myself.

As I said, there are moments when it can yield results, especially in professional settings.

But there are many moments when it is unrealistic and inappropriate to do so.

I have one strong example from my life.

This is a very personal story of mine because it taught me a lot in life.

It goes back to the time when I lived in Copenhagen.

I was working as a restaurant manager in a Michelin-recognized restaurant at the time.

It was the peak of my hospitality career.

I wanted things to be perfect, and I was pouring my whole heart and energy into it.

That habit I described earlier reached the point where I was sometimes too harsh on my staff.

But I did not know that back then.

I was completely unaware that I might be like that.

My expectations of them were always rising.

At first, it really worked.

During the first six months, we really stepped up as a team.

Booked-out evenings were smooth, and we could move in synchronization instead of running around.

The moment reality hit me was when one of my waiters announced that she was leaving because she never felt appreciated enough.

Things clicked in my mind instantly.

I realized that I had become the kind of manager I had always hated.

A manager for whom nothing was ever enough, despite the fact that all my intentions were good.

All I wanted was to get better, personally and together as a team, to push the limits just a little above the bar again and make the restaurant better.

But what I did not see was that some people were already doing their best, and I did not acknowledge that.

This was and still is a very strong experience for me.

Lessons from this time are still coming to me even today.

In retrospect, I tend to look back on that time and examine it deeply to find anything valuable I can learn from and make sure I can be better in the future.

What about you?

Can you think of any negative relationship habits?

Where did they come from, what do they look like when they show up, and what does it cost you to interrupt them in the moment?

2. The Men Who Built the Roots

Do you know which part of life many people are most afraid of?

Death.

I am not going to be somber here, I promise.

I think that for many of us, it is very hard to process the loss of someone close.

Everyone deals with it in their own way.

It is complicated because no one really taught us how to process these emotions.

Despite the fact that it is a natural part of life, the same as birth, we tend to fight with death during our entire lives.

In the last decade or so, I have been to three funerals.

All of them were men.

My great-grandfather and both of my grandfathers.

Men who built the roots of my family.

One thing that I have not understood yet about these departures from my life is that I did not cry during any of them.

I always thought, mostly because of movies, that people should cry at funerals.

For some reason, the way I felt was different.

Without getting too much into any woo-woo, I felt that it was not the final goodbye.

I felt that I should be strong in those moments instead, hold my family high, and support them.

Looking back on the lives of my ancestors evokes multiple emotions in me.

But mostly, it is gratitude, respect, and motivation.

I am where I am thanks to them and my parents, who laid the foundation for me to chase my dreams and build my own legacy.

No one in my family was ever wealthy.

But everyone I remember and know about was a hard worker.

From working in the fields and taking care of animals, through serving in the police, all the way to working for the town services.

That is my heritage, and I am proud of it.

Now it is my time to take over the steering wheel and make sure the next in line will be proud as well.

What legacy are you trying to build?

3. The Amount You Have Today

Some days are just tough.

There are moments when it does not matter what you do.

They are just going to be tough.

Sometimes we do not want them to be tough, but life presents them in a way that leaves no way around them.

I was moving out of my previous apartment a couple of months ago, and that day was one of those days for me.

I finished my previous job and needed to clean the apartment so I could move out.

There was just so much stuff to do.

Even writing these hundred words afterwards felt like something extreme.

Despite knowing the date and knowing it was going to be tough, I still tried to prepare myself mentally and physically so that I would be ready when the day came.

Sometimes, even when we try to prepare for a day like this, it is still going to hit us with demanding tasks and things we did not expect, and the timing is completely off.

I thought I was going to be done by midnight, but it was already one in the morning.

I had not even put everything in the car, and I still needed to clean the bathroom.

It was a lot, but luckily, after every storm, there is always sun again.

As hard as these days are on your mind and body, there are going to be days and moments when things feel much better.

On days like these, you can give yourself a break.

You are not a robot. You are still human, and there is only so much you can do in one day.

You can give yourself a pass not to be perfect.

Your ceiling might be today only 60% instead of 100%, and that’s okay.

It is still fine as long as you show up.

4. We Play by the Rules

Continuing from above.

This part is all about being completely honest for a moment.

I had zero motivation and energy to write on the next day.

The night before, I slept for five hours, cleaned the apartment the whole morning, and moved all my stuff to another country.

I was exhausted, both mentally and physically.

All I wanted to do that evening was eat pizza and watch a movie.

Yet here I was, making sure the part of me that set this challenge for myself will not be disappointed.

The cursor was blinking as the word count says 92 words.

We play by the rules. When I say I will write 100 words every day, I do not mean 92.

On days like these, it is tough to keep up with your promises because your body and brain are fighting against you.

My will determines whether I win or lose.

This is where personal integrity gets shaped.

It is something I try to pay attention to.

One thing I would not recommend is sleeping for five hours on any occasion.

It sucks.

What keeps you accountable on the hard days?

5. The Wins I Don't Celebrate

How would you describe the relationship with yourself?

Or an even better question: What do you give to others that you withhold from yourself?

Very often, we focus on managing other relationships in our lives but forget about the one we have with ourselves.

When you reflect on this question, you might find a certain pattern in your behavior or simply see more clearly how you have treated yourself lately.

Something I have discovered through this reflection is that I tend to celebrate the wins of others much more than I do my own.

Why is it like that? I do not know.

I am genuinely happy to see my friends and family win and celebrate their successes.

The most recent example from my life is one of my friends who started a new Instagram profile 4 months ago.

With his skills and knowledge of AI, he was able to build a system that allowed him to reach 1,000 followers in matter of days.

Now, he can already make a living from what came afterwards.

All I can say is that I am excited for him and really want him to win.

When I flip the cards and it is time to celebrate my small wins, it is somewhat harder.

I wrote about this before.

My own expectations are sometimes the roadblock itself.

Learning how to celebrate even the small things in life is an underestimated skill.

It lets you build much greater confidence and momentum on your journey.

What about you and your relationship with yourself?

6. The Brutal Question

Let us talk about love today for a bit.

Our romantic relationships often seem complicated to many of us.

I would not say they are complicated by nature.

We just make them complicated in our heads, on our own.

It is because our emotions toward this person make it much more difficult to see reality.

I would sometimes describe it as being blind and paralyzed when making certain decisions.

I have a question for you.

Actually, two questions:

What are you still learning about love?

What is the actual ongoing confusion?

The things about love that keep surprising you despite everything you think you understand.

Let me go first here.

I am still learning how to recognize real love versus short-term love, and whether there is any difference between them.

The question I am asking myself is whether there is a difference between loving someone for a short period of time and loving someone for an unlimited amount of time.

If there is, do you feel this difference? Can you recognize it inside you?

The actual confusion is this: How do you know if this is really the person you want to spend your life with?

How do you decide?

I think it is a brutal question.

There is nothing easy about going this deep inside yourself and asking these questions while you are in a relationship with someone you love.

Because if you do not feel anything toward this person anymore, the reality and decision may be clear.

But what if you still love this person and, at the same time, you are unsure?

How do you navigate this?

No one is perfect, and I guess no one ever will be.

That is not a bad thing.

It is part of life and the beauty of it.

I think relationships are one of the hardest things to navigate in life.

They are complex, yet not complicated.

One simple rule that can help you decide on many things in life, including relationships, is to ask yourself one question.

It can be about making a decision before you buy something, deciding whether to take the job, or deciding whether you want to keep this person in your life.

You can ask yourself: Is it hell yeah, or no?

I think it is clear what the outcome looks like here.

It is either hell yeah, or it is no. That is it.

No more overthinking.

It is a sharp blade to use for decision-making.

But as with everything, it does not work for every situation.

Yet it can still be used as the last stage of the decision-making process to seal the deal.

So tell me, what are you still learning about love?

Leave a comment

7. What Forgiveness Frees

How hard is it to forgive someone?

We have all experienced situations where someone said something that felt unforgivable at the time.

They touched a nerve that was really painful for you.

Or they did something that felt like betrayal.

You feel furious and hurt.

You do not want to have anything to do with this person anymore because of the way they made you feel.

It does not matter if it was a friend, family member, or colleague.

Some time has passed.

How do you feel now?

Are you still mad at this person, or did you make your peace with what happened back then?

Forgiving someone can be hard.

Especially because of the initial strong emotion it caused inside you.

Your brain connected the dots in a way that now makes this person equal pain.

And your brain wants to protect you from encountering this again.

What do you do then?

Well, I do not think there is a universal way to forgive someone.

Each situation is different and special because each of us experiences things differently in our minds.

What helped me forgive one of my family members was trying to see the situations from his perspective.

I tried to live through his lens.

Because we might feel hurt, misunderstood, betrayed, or even manipulated, we cannot always see reality from both sides.

Especially not in the heat of the moment.

But when time passes, we have the opportunity to give it a chance.

We get the chance to find a way to forgive this person.

When I did this, it opened a different angle for me.

I was able to see that what the person did was not meant to be bad or painful.

It was his inability to communicate things and express his emotions in a way that I would understand.

It took some time and a lot of effort to come to the point where I was okay.

Sometimes, in this whole process, we find that the goal is to let go.

Not because of the other person, or even because of forgiveness, but because it frees you and your mind from something that was causing pain somewhere inside.

Are you carrying a burden, or have you made your peace already?

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade.

As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

Lukáš

Sometimes it is standing in a full room with no idea where to sit.

This week is about friendship, community, being seen, and what it takes to open the door between us.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. A Room Full of People

2. Alone Is Not Lonely

3. Being Seen

4. The People Compass

5. Building Community

6. The Downward Arrow

7. Opening the Door

1. A Room Full of People

We all feel lonely sometimes.

Even those of us who are extroverts.

It is those moments when you feel lonely even in a room full of people.

The World Health Organization reports that between 17% and 21% of people aged 13 to 29 feel lonely.

We have never been closer to people from all around the world, yet some of us can still feel deeply lonely.

When feelings like these appear, you might ask yourself what you are doing wrong.

Let me give you an example from my life.

A couple of months ago, I went home to Slovakia to visit my family and friends.

I also attended the final classes of a digital marketing course I was taking.

There was a networking event after the lectures, and it was one of the main reasons I went to Slovakia.

I wanted to meet my classmates from the course at least once, since I had completed the entire six-month program online.

I walked into the hall where the networking event was taking place.

Everyone seemed to know at least someone.

People were forming groups and sitting at the tables together.

It felt really nice to be surrounded by all those people, but it also felt quite lonely, and I had no idea where I should sit.

What was going through my mind as I stood there?

I saw an empty table in the corner and wanted to sit there.

That way, I would not be forced to talk to strangers.

In the end, I convinced myself to be braver, go out there, and find an empty seat at another table.

Fast-forward to when I started talking to people, exchanging ideas, and sharing LinkedIn connections. I felt amazing.

I did not even want to leave.

The point is that we are used to having conversations and interactions with others through screens.

We have fallen out of the natural rhythm of communicating with people outside our bubble.

And because communication is the glue for connection, we can feel lonely without it.

When was the last time you spoke to a group of people you don't know?

And how often do you leave your comfort zone?

2. Alone Is Not Lonely

Do you know the difference between being alone and being lonely?

Many people tend to think they are the same thing.

Well, they are not.

When you are alone, you are simply with yourself, whether in a restaurant or at the cinema.

It is more about your physical presence, doing something purely on your own, than your emotional state.

On the other hand, loneliness is directly connected to your emotions and feelings.

After a conversation with a friend a couple of years ago, I discovered that being alone with yourself and doing activities alone feels unnatural to some people.

She was amazed by how I could go to the cinema on my own or travel somewhere solo.

She could not imagine doing that.

She told me that even watching movies or going for coffee alone felt strange to her.

I realized that, unknowingly, I had learned a skill with so much value, one that allows me to explore the world more freely than I thought.

Since then, I have done so much on my own, and it still feels great.

Of course, on the other hand, there are certain activities which are just more enjoyable in two rather than alone.

What is your favorite activity to do on your own?

3. Being Seen

When was the last time you felt seen?

You know that feeling when someone really sees you as you are and is genuinely interested in getting to know you better.

It makes the conversation feel very different.

For me personally, being seen is very important.

I do not need you to be impressed by anything I do, because I do not need to be admired or praised.

Being seen means so much to me, especially because of my tendency to please other people.

Being seen and being praised for hard work are fundamentally different.

I remember a conversation with my roommate a couple of years ago, when I lived in Copenhagen.

It was still quite early after I had moved into the apartment.

She asked me a question I was not expecting: “You are quite hard on yourself, right?”

It might not seem like a way to feel seen by another person, but her question back then made me feel that she saw me.

Because I was hard on myself, indeed.

Hearing that from someone who did not know me well back then felt like an internal signal that my hard work was visible.

Do you remember the last time you felt genuinely seen by another person?

What made it different from an ordinary conversation?

Leave a comment

4. The People Compass

Have you noticed that as you get older, it becomes harder to make new friends?

When we were kids and later teenagers, it was so much easier.

It was part of the natural flow of life.

As we get older, it feels like we pick up new standards for friends.

We filter people out much more quickly and become uninterested if even the slightest thing feels off.

If you have moved abroad, chances are you have experienced one of two scenarios.

First, it is a new city and a new country.

You do not know anyone, and it feels really lonely until you get along with some people and eventually make friends.

Second, it is a new city and a new country, but for some reason, things click with many people really quickly because you are all expats living outside your home countries and trying new things in life.

It is interesting how we sometimes build connections really fast.

At other times, it might feel like there is no one to talk to.

It is also a great opportunity to set up your people compass.

We can all use one because it tells us what we have learned about what real friendships require, and which people we do not want to be part of our lives.

How is your experience with making friends in adult life?

5. Building Community

What is the importance of community in your life?

The internet, and especially social media, allows us to be connected with almost anyone, anywhere in the world.

So, how can you connect with a community of like-minded people around you?

First, you can go to places where people do the same activities you enjoy.

You can join a local chess community, go to pottery classes, or become a member of the running club organized by your local coffee shop.

Second, you can engage in conversations with people you do not know.

You can learn how to network and find more ease in communicating with others who might share the same interests as you.

Because if you do not talk to people, you do not get to know them.

If you do not know them, you cannot build relationships.

And if you cannot build relationships, you cannot join or build a community.

With one exception for communities built around sitting in a quiet room without talking, if you are into that.

Third, keep nurturing the relationships you already have.

Relationships are there to be taken care of, not found and forgotten.

It is like flowers.

They need care so they can grow.

Each of us has had a flower we bought for our apartment and then forgot about.

The outcome was unsurprisingly not that great.

The flower died.

I hope you get the point.

The importance of community in our lives is significant.

We are built to connect with others.

We are wired to explore the world around us with other people, share experiences with them, laugh together, cry together, and go through the ups and downs of life.

It might be uncomfortable.

It might even be scary.

But you can go out there and build your community.

You can bring in people who can grow and evolve to become stronger and better together.

People who will make the world a better place with you.

I hope this serves as a reminder for you in the same way it does for me.

Everything I wrote here was a direct conversation with myself as well.

Let us build a community where we can all grow together.

6. The Downward Arrow

What do you need in your life right now?

At first, answering this question might feel pretty straightforward and impulsive.

Health, money, love, free time, and that is about it.

But is the answer really this straightforward?

If you take more time and let the question soak in a bit, a couple of other layers underneath the surface might come up.

I did a similar exercise with a friend of mine a couple of years ago.

I was going through one of the low periods in life when you fight something really hard but do not really know what you are fighting.

She offered to do this exercise with me as part of our friendly talk.

She asked me two questions that helped me uncover a huge piece of the struggle back then.

And I think it might help you today too.

The first question is directly about the specific problem, fear, or need you have in your life right now.

For example: What do you need in your life right now?

After answering the first question, you continue with something called the “Downward Arrow Technique.”

The second question repeats itself up to five times until you reach the bottom.

You ask yourself, “What does that mean to me?” or “What happens then?”

It always connects to your previous answer and guides you one step further.

Once you uncover the last answer, you might find that the surface-level problem or fear was not even close to the real cause of what you are going through.

After going through this process, you might find yourself answering differently.

Here is your chance to try it right now.

When was the last time you stopped and asked yourself what you need in your life?

7. Opening the Door

How can we embrace taking risks?

Every one of us has experienced the fear of the unknown in life, whether it was between jobs, moving, partners, or other life choices.

Often, we tend to inflict irrational fears on ourselves when we face certain decisions.

It is the brain trying to protect us by spoon-feeding us all these potential scenarios in our thoughts.

The brain is our greatest power, but at the same time, our greatest liability.

You know the situation.

You are making a big decision in life, and for three months, you overthink and feel stressed because there are so many things that could go wrong.

All of this just to find out in the final week that you managed everything.

The things you worried about got sorted out, or you accepted reality as it was at the time, even if it was not perfect.

You suddenly feel things fall from your shoulders because you realize there was no reason to be so stressed the whole time.

Despite the fact that we have all experienced similar situations with similar outcomes, we still tend to be afraid of the unknown and often postpone taking risks.

Why? Because of loss aversion.

It describes how potential losses often weigh more heavily in our decisions than equivalent gains.

So, how do we embrace taking risks?

The answer might sound primitive, but we embrace taking risks by taking them.

There is no other or better answer to this.

How else are you going to find out what is on the other side of the door if you never open it?

How are you going to know if that girl is interested in you if you never talk to her?

How are you going to find out if you like that career if you never try it?

How are you going to grow in life if you never take risks?

Look, I know it is sometimes easier said than done.

But if we stay in our comfort zones, waiting for the world to make our lives better, we will be waiting in line for a very long time.

Each of us carries some responsibility for making life better.

I am not talking about achieving more.

I am talking about living the life you want.

That life asks you to take control and responsibility, which includes taking risks.

What is the biggest risk you have ever taken that worked out well?

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade.

As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

Lukáš

Sometimes it is the quiet decision to stop hiding from the life we actually want.

This week is about fear, failure, staying small, and the kind of courage that keeps showing up even when no one claps.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. The Dark Room

2. Where the Fear Lives

3. Failing Out Loud

4. The First Hundred Days

5. The Practical Fear

6. Staying Small

7. Quiet Courage

1. The Dark Room

What is the most embarrassing fear you still carry with you?

When we think about fear, it can bring up many different things in each of us.

That is for a very simple reason. We all fear different things.

The most embarrassing fear of mine is that I am still a little bit afraid of darkness.

But I think I would frame it differently now than when we were kids.

The fear is not really about darkness itself. It is the fear of the unknown.

When a place or a situation feels out of control, the fear kicks in.

In the modern world, there are lights almost everywhere we go.

And if there are not, we have a phone or a watch that can turn on a flashlight.

But what about the moments when we have no control over the light?

Those moments when you do not know where you are going, where to step next, or what to touch to get through the space can feel quite uncomfortable.

And maybe this is not only about a dark room.

Maybe it is also about life.

Maybe it is about those moments when we are moving forward, but we cannot see the next step clearly yet.

We are not sure where the floor is.

We are not sure what will happen if we reach out and touch what is in front of us.

That kind of fear can be embarrassing to admit, because from the outside it might look small.

But inside, it can still cost us something.

What is the fear you would feel almost embarrassed to admit out loud?

2. Where the Fear Lives

What would you do if you were certain you would not fail?

I would build a business that gives me the lifestyle and opportunities I want.

So simple.

But if I tried and failed anyway?

That is where the real answer sits.

I would do it anyway, because if building a business is what it takes to get me closer to the life I want, then so be it.

Any failure on the way would not only be part of the risk and the hustle.

It would also bring knowledge that would be hard to get otherwise.

There is no such thing as certainty in life.

The chance that you will fail at something sooner or later is probably close to 100%.

But I do not want to take that as something negative.

We all fail at some point in our lives.

The real lessons are often hiding behind those failures.

It is the moment when you hit the bottom, put yourself back together, and decide to go ride again.

There is no such thing as certainty in life.

I have been asking myself if I am waiting for some perfect condition that will never arrive.

The perfect amount of money.

The perfect timing.

The perfect confidence.

The perfect plan that somehow removes the possibility of looking stupid, losing time, or having to start again.

But maybe that gap is exactly where the fear lives.

Not in the dream itself.

In what I think it would mean about me if I tried and failed anyway.

Maybe that gap is exactly where the fear lives.

So maybe the question is not only what I would do if I knew I could not fail.

Maybe the better question is what I would still do if failure was part of the price.

What would you still try if failure was not a verdict on who you are?

3. Failing Out Loud

What scares you more, failing in public or succeeding in private?

Let me go first.

For me personally, it is hard to answer, because I do not really mind failing in public and I would not mind succeeding in private either.

When I look at it through this lens, neither of them feels that terrifying.

Failing in public might sound scary because we imagine ourselves in all sorts of public settings where we get humiliated for some mistake of ours.

But even if we fail in public, people usually forget in a matter of days or weeks and move on.

No one is thinking about us as much as we think about ourselves.

So why be terrified?

I repeat this often in my writing, mostly as a reminder to myself.

Failure is just a lesson that can help us be better next time.

Not an opportunity to give up on life straight away.

The same principle applies to succeeding in private.

You might think that if you succeed and no one knows about it, it somehow counts less. But why is that?

Maybe because you wanted fame with that success.

Maybe because you wanted external appreciation from others.

Maybe because you wanted recognition for what you built.

And the answer is almost the same as with failure.

No one is thinking about you as much as you think about yourself.

People do not care about your success in the way you imagine they do.

Most of the time, they just picture themselves in your shoes and wonder how it would feel for them.

It comes down to one simple outcome for me.

Being terrified is already a kind of failure.

Betting on yourself, trying your best, and not giving up, that might be the real success story.

I mean, what else are we going to do with our time anyway?

What if it takes months or years to achieve?

What if nobody claps for it?

What if it happens quietly, slowly, privately, without the dramatic moment we imagined?

Maybe that still counts.

Maybe it counts even more.

Which one would scare you more, failing in public or succeeding in private?

4. The First Hundred Days

What does it mean to cross the first real milestone of a promise you made to yourself?

This week, I officially crossed the line of 10% of my 1000-day challenge.

Day 100.

It would be cool to write about something special, because it is a big milestone.

So I want to use this opportunity to look back on the last 100 days.

I wrote about many things.

Personal stories, wins, losses, breakthroughs, important life lessons, fear, and more.

I believe that what I shared will be valuable for someone else on their journey through life, while they are figuring things out too.

During the past 100 days, I missed one day of writing during a busy period of traveling.

At first, I felt bad. I felt like I betrayed myself, like I failed.

But then I remembered what I wrote to myself on Day 0.

It is going to be difficult. It is going to contain struggles, lack of motivation, questions about why I even started and put more pressure on my shoulders again.

I will be tired. I will be on the road. I will lack sleep. I will lack ideas, and my thoughts are going to be hard to put in order.

All of this might and probably will happen at one point of this journey. But this is the last 1000 days of my twenties, so let's make it count.

Here I am.

Still pushing forward.

Maybe that is what these challenges teach us.

Not how to be perfect, but how to come back without making the mistake mean too much.

That one missed day did not erase the promise. It became part of it.

I hope you enjoyed what I shared so far.

I will continue to do my best to share the most valuable lessons from my life, and I hope they can help you climb the mountain together with me.

What promise to yourself have you kept for longer than you expected?

5. The Practical Fear

What is the fear that disguises itself as practicality, maturity, or realism?

What is the one thing you are consciously or unconsciously terrified of trying?

The thing your voice turns into, "That is not realistic."

Maybe it is the business idea you have had for a while.

Maybe it is the trip you have wanted to take since your teenage years.

Or maybe it is the person you have always wanted to talk to.

Many of us are held back in life by all sorts of self-created blocks.

Some of them are irrational.

Some of them are taken from other people.

I am a victim of this myself.

Trapped in the comfort of an ordinary middle-class life, dependent on salary, working for others, and daydreaming about how my life is going to be different one day.

A life designed by me, for my needs and desires.

I have been asking myself for some time now how we overcome this roadblock.

You hear a lot of advice online.

You read books about how to change your life in the direction you want.

You hear success stories from people who started at rock bottom, homeless, defeated, or betrayed, and somehow used those situations to change their lives into something many people would only dream of.

And I have been asking myself if that is what it takes.

Do I really have to get to my lowest point to turn my life in the direction I want?

Am I just too comfortable where I am right now, and because of that, I do not have what it takes to make the steps that would change things?

I do not know.

Maybe.

I guess the only way to find out is to get out of my comfort zone and finally try things out.

Go and try entrepreneurship.

There is this line from Denzel Washington's 2011 University of Pennsylvania commencement speech: "If you don't fail, you're not even trying."

It struck me the first time I heard it, and it still strikes me today, three years later, as one of those simple reminders for life.

Failure in life is not a bug.

It is a feature.

It is just another stepping stone on the climb up to the mountaintop.

What is one thing you might be calling realistic, when deep down it is just fear wearing a clean shirt?

6. Staying Small

What are you protecting yourself from by staying small?

This might be one of the hardest questions I have asked myself so far.

Not what we tell people.

What staying small actually protects us from.

Is it rejection? Exposure? The risk of wanting something we might not get?

To be honest, asking this question myself was everything but easy, especially because I am currently at a point where I am making an important decision in my life.

Or at least I tend to think I am.

I am deciding whether to continue working for someone else while trying to build my personal brand here, or choose the unknown and risky path of entrepreneurship alongside this whole brand-building journey.

It is interesting to observe these moments in my head.

On some days, I am extremely confident and dedicated to the path of entrepreneurship.

I want to dive completely in and just figure things out as I go.

On other days, I ask myself how the f*ck I am going to pay my bills if things do not work out.

And here we are, facing the question from the beginning.

What are you protecting yourself from by staying small?

What I am asking myself right now is this: when is it going to be a better time to bet on myself and take the risk?

What is the worst-case scenario that can happen?

If I fail, will I stand back up on my feet, tall, with my shoulders back, eyes on the horizon, and try again?

Staying small is not going to bring me any further in life.

It is not going to magically transform my dreams into reality.

Because there is one hard truth to understand.

No one is coming to save me.

It might sound harsh at first.

But I have to let it sink in and let it show me that I am responsible for my life.

I write often about how failure, mistakes, and hard times can be the best lessons.

Not because I am trying to motivate you, but because everything I write here is a continuous reminder to myself to keep pushing forward.

For the same reason I mentioned just now.

No one is going to create the life I want for me. I have to do it for myself.

Everything I share in my writing here with you has only one mission.

To help you climb the mountain you chose in your life.

We are all here together on this journey, and all I desire is to help you become better for yourself.

So, what are you protecting yourself from by staying small?

Not the answer you give to other people. The real answer inside you.

Leave a comment

7. Quiet Courage

What is the version of courage you have never given yourself credit for?

The ongoing, undramatic kind.

The courage that does not look like courage from the outside, but costs you something real every day.

How many times did you think you were going to give up, but you did not?

How many times did you want to half-ass something, but you finished it anyway?

How many times was there no one to support you, but you still did it?

You might see these things as ordinary.

Because that is just what you do, right?

But just because something does not seem impressive to others around you does not mean it does not take courage to do it all.

The courage that does not look like courage from the outside can still cost you something real every day.

You might have never given yourself credit for it, but you are doing your best out there.

This is just a short reminder to you.

As well as to myself, as I sit behind the computer at 23:42 on Sunday, making sure I wrote my 100 words today.

No one is here to tap me on the back and tell me I did a good job.

Our hard work is not always visible to others. Or they might see it as ordinary.

But that does not wipe your effort away.

You know how hard you work.

You know what it takes for you to keep putting the reps in and not give up.

Me, you, we got this.

What is the version of courage you have never given yourself credit for?

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade.

As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

Lukáš

1. To Be Continued

2. For Myself

3. Two Kinds of Fuel

4. The Roller Coaster

5. The Habit I Keep Breaking

6. Actual Rest

7. Say It Out Loud

1. To Be Continued

What does it feel like to keep faith in work that nobody can see yet?

For a while, I was struggling to keep up with this project, and I want to be honest about why.

There are several reasons I could blame, or use as an excuse.

I was working a job I had zero interest in.

It was draining me, and the only short escape I found was mindlessly scrolling on my phone.

Not exactly the fertile ground for creative work.

At the same time, I was hunting for a new job and a new apartment, planning a move with my girlfriend, and squeezing in a digital marketing certificate on weekends.

Six months of running on four fronts at once.

Things have since shifted.

I left that job.

The certificate is done.

The move happened (partly).

CLEFSOR, my AI consultancy, is now what I spend my days building.

The slate isn’t clean, but it is different.

But that is not why any of us are here.

My situation might have not be ideal, but no one ever got anywhere by making excuses for not working on what they are supposed to work on.

I would love to hear how you handle these kinds of situations yourself.

2. For Myself

What kept you moving when you had no motivation, no audience, and no obvious reward for continuing?

I hope we all know times when we kept going without any external promise of reward.

Why does that matter? Because I believe it is important for each of us to experience something like that.

And why again? Because it helps you uncover parts of yourself you did not know existed.

It helps you learn what you can endure and what you are capable of.

And that carries over into many other parts of your life.

The most recent example from my own life is my daily writing practice of 100 words.

There are days when there is no motivation, there is still almost no audience, and I am not even going to talk about any obvious reward for continuing.

But I am not doing this for outside recognition or praise.

I am doing this for myself.

No one is looking over my shoulder, checking whether I really write every day.

I write because it matters to me to share a few lessons with the world, lessons I believe are helpful and might bring value to someone else.

I am not going to lie, it is sometimes hard to keep going, especially when you do not feel well or are exhausted.

But I gave myself this challenge of writing 100 words a day for 1000 days, and I am going to make it.

What was the last thing you committed to consistently, simply for the sake of showing up, with no guarantee of a reward at the end?

3. Two Kinds of Fuel

Which kind of discipline is actually driving you right now?

There are two types of discipline.

The first is the discipline that comes from fear of failure or judgment.

The second is the discipline that comes from genuine care for what you are building.

Being able to tell these two apart, and to truly realize which one is behind your actions, is harder than it might seem.

I had to stop and look deep inside myself to actually confirm which discipline is driving me right now.

Honestly, right now it might be a little bit of both. Something like 80% genuine care and 20% fear of failure.

Why is that, and how does it really show up in your life?

Being driven by fear of failure can have its time and place.

It can be used as a powerful fuel.

It is the kind of fuel that burns really strong, but if it burns for too long, it starts burning you along with it.

So which discipline is driving you right now?

4. The Roller Coaster

When you look back on the past year, what is the one thing you actually did consistently?

Consistency over everything.

This is a big one for me.

I am still learning how to stay consistent and work on something until it is done.

I have mentioned before that I struggled, and still struggle sometimes, with shiny object syndrome.

I get excited about something and want to jump straight into it, leaving everything else behind.

On one hand, it is a great source of energy, because it pumps you full of ideas and adrenaline that are hard to resist.

On the other hand, it is very unproductive, because it leaves you with a lot of half-finished projects.

When you look back on the past year, what is the thing you did consistently the whole time?

I had a real struggle answering this question myself.

I like to think of myself as an active person who works on his health and fitness consistently over the years.

When faced with this question, I realized that even though I am an active person, last year was more of a roller coaster when it came to my health and fitness.

It is easy to feel consistent simply because nothing in your daily life seems to be changing.

But that stillness can also mean you are not actually working on something greater, something that would move you to the next level.

I think it is a really interesting way to reflect on your life, because being consistent with something, or not, has a huge impact on how your life looks now and how it will look one or five years from now.

What is one thing you could start doing consistently today to build a better version of yourself?

5. The Habit I Keep Breaking

What actually happens in the moment you break the habit you keep starting and stopping?

I think the one habit I keep breaking is my journal writing.

At the beginning of this year I gave myself a rule that I would never skip two days in a row.

It lasted for almost two months.

Then a week of travelling came along, and somehow all of it got forgotten.

The most surprising thing to me is how a habit you have been trying to build for years can fade away just like that.

It is not like I started journaling for the first time. I have been writing in my journal for over five years now.

Yet it took just one busy week, and my mind already “forgot” to remind me in the evening to write my daily reflections.

What happened the moment I realized I had broken the practice?

I felt angry and disappointed with myself.

Especially because writing is such a huge part of me, and I genuinely care about this practice.

But do I really care about it when I let that happen?

That is what I am asking myself again today, after missing another two days in a row and realizing it the moment I sat down at this table to write.

I think the simplest solution for this kind of habit is to set a reminder to do it every day.

I should probably take my own recommendation seriously first, but you get the point.

I believe we all find ourselves in moments when life gets really busy and heavy on our shoulders.

But that does not have to get in the way of becoming a better version of ourselves.

Think about habits like going to the gym, eating healthy, reading books, and so much more of the genuinely good stuff out there, the kind that makes us 1% better every time we do it.

Why would we let go of that?

Maybe we do not have to.

Not for the sake of a busy and demanding world.

Life can feel too short to spend it pleasing everyone else and chasing dreams that belong to someone else.

So I want to stick to what I decided to do, in the name of becoming better for myself first.

What happens to you the moment you break the habit, practice, or commitment you keep starting and stopping?

Not the justification. The real thing that happens inside you.

Leave a comment

6. Actual Rest

How does actual rest feel?

Not productivity disguised as rest. Actual recovery.

Working hard on yourself and on your goals, building the future you want to live in, is one thing.

Knowing how to rest, reset, and take care of your mental health along the way is another.

I have to admit that knowing how to rest was always a problem for me.

I would always feel guilty if I just lay around and did nothing.

Rest on my day off from work usually turned into a day filled with to-dos from my personal life.

There was always a project or a hobby to get to, or a friend to meet, or a place to go.

Always something.

Rarely is there a day when I would just stay home, lie on the sofa, and watch Netflix.

At a certain point in my life, self-growth became so addictive that I did not want to do anything other than grow.

Soon enough, life reminded me that life never moves in one direction only. It is never going only up, and never only down.

I would love to hear your recommendation on how to rest properly.

7. Say It Out Loud

Should you say your emotions out loud?

Sometimes we just wish the other person would understand us more.

Sometimes we even struggle to understand ourselves on our own.

So it is not realistic to expect others to understand our emotions for us.

If something is bothering you, tell the other person directly instead of waiting.

That is the best thing to do.

Communicate with each other.

Assuming that someone already knows how I feel about a situation is just foolish.

The things I said still count.

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade.

As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

Lukáš

Most of what shaped you got in quietly, long before you ever agreed to it.

This week is about noticing which of those influences are actually yours, and which ones you can hand back.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. What Shaped You

2. Before You Performed

3. To Fit In

4. Five Years Ago

5. When the Body Stops You

6. Not Your Thoughts

7. Old Lessons

1. What Shaped You

Which country, city, language, or culture shaped you most?

I don’t think I have one clear answer to this myself.

There are a few different levels to it.

In my personal experience, the country that shaped me the most is my home country, Slovakia.

Even though I have spent most of my adult life abroad, it shaped me the most through my connection to the people and the culture.

The city that shaped me the most is Copenhagen.

During my time living there, I learned more about myself and about life than I ever expected.

It is still the most impactful experience I have had of living somewhere.

As a language, English shaped me the most.

I used to hate English in school.

I was always more focused on German, and I was good at it, so English never caught my interest.

Until one experience changed everything.

It happened at work in Switzerland.

A few colleagues and I were having a conversation in German.

Then another colleague joined, who spoke only English.

Everyone switched to English, and when I tried to join in, it came out as a half-baked sentence.

My colleagues just giggled at me.

That was my turning point.

I never wanted to feel that embarrassment again, the feeling that I could not speak to others and have a real conversation.

In one year, I caught up with most of my classmates.

I basically made up for all the years in school I had spent hating and ignoring English.

And here we are.

I am writing daily essays in a foreign language so I can reach more than just a handful of people from my small country.

Last but not least, the culture.

I already said the culture that shaped me most was my own country's.

But as I traveled and lived in different places, I fell in love with many other cultures, too.

I was able to make friends with people from all around the world.

It always fascinated me to watch how other cultures live and what they value.

How they celebrate, how they grieve, how they see life and its meaning.

I will forever be an explorer of this world, because few things bring me as much joy as meeting other people, discovering their cultures, and learning how differently life can be lived.

From the problems to the joys of daily living, all the way to the pursuit of happiness and the understanding of death.

So what about you?

Which of these shaped you the most?

Not the one you say shaped you.

The one that actually did.

2. Before You Performed

Do you remember a time when you lived your life without needing to perform?

It feels like over the last couple of years the whole world picked up speed.

It is almost as if we have less time now, even though time itself hasn’t changed.

Social media gave us the feeling that everyone around us is either achieving something great or traveling the world, sharing beautiful sunsets.

I think this is one of the reasons many of us started to feel, without even noticing, a need to perform more in our lives.

Hearing it like this, you might ask what is wrong with performing more.

You are getting better and eventually achieving more in life, right?

But what many of us don’t ask is whether we really need to push the gas pedal even harder.

Each one of us is in a different life situation.

Some of us might be overweight, a bit lazy, and drowning in life, so what we really need is to get up off the couch and go do hard things to get our life back together.

Some of us, on the other hand, might have a high-paying job and work 100 hours a week, and the last thing we need is to push even more and burn out.

There is never one piece of advice that fits everyone.

What do you feel like needing to perform all the time?

3. To Fit In

How much influence do your surroundings have on you?

You know that feeling when you meet a new colleague at work and the two of you instantly click?

You become buddies fast and start hanging out all the time.

Before you even notice, you start liking different things, because your new friend has a strong influence on you.

Three months later you find yourself in some bar, in the men’s bathroom, sniffing cocaine with your buddy.

Then you get in a cab with a hooker to have a blast back at your place.

You changed yourself completely, just to fit in with your friend.

What did it cost you?

Despite the fact that this story isn’t my own, it carries a very clear message.

Sometimes we change just because we feel sense of belonging, but not because we want.

This applies to romantic partners as well.

Just because we feel loved and save we change to fit the other, while forgetting who we really are.

It’s probably easier said than done, but don’t change for others unless it’s you who really wants to change.

Did you ever changed unconsciously just to fit in or to keep the feeling of belonging somewhere?

4. Five Years Ago

What would you say to the version of yourself from five years ago?

Like many of you, five years ago I was a very different person than I am today, in a lot of ways.

For context, five years ago I was working as a bartender in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.

It was a lot of long days and even longer nights.

Because of the nature of job, I was drinking almost every day.

On my days off I would drink again, because that was the culture of the work and part of the community around bartending and hospitality.

Going out after work was completely normal, since the clubs were still open when we closed.

I had wanted to be a world-class bartender since high school.

And I can honestly say I was really good at it back then.

I went to a few competitions during my career.

I made it as far as the national top five of the prestigious World Class competition.

Pretty damn good, when I think about it now.

Anyway, it’s not about bragging here.

It’s about the fact that 5 years ago most of were different people, chasing different things.

Did you accomplished what you have set yourself up for back then?

Did you finished everything that you started?

I guess most of would answer no.

We changed our trajectories.

And that’s okay.

You don't need to have life figure out.

You adjust along the way.

So, what would you say to the version of yourself from five years ago?

Leave a comment

5. When the Body Stops You

What happens when you don’t stop yourself?

Sometimes, if you don’t stop yourself, the body will stop you instead.

Even the smallest disturbance to your immune system can leave you sick overnight.

This isn’t a science talk.

This is the reality of what happens when you push too hard for too long.

I was recently sick, with a stomach flu, or whatever this sh*t is.

It looked like it happened overnight, and suddenly I was on painkillers.

The truth is, this never really happens overnight.

If you constantly try to do more and more, and you combine it with poor sleep and too much coffee during the day, you have bought yourself a fast-track ticket to getting sick.

Take care of your health and your workload.

I will try to do the same.

6. Not Your Thoughts

How much does social comparison affect you?

It is interesting to watch how we can change our opinion of ourselves just because of someone else.

It doesn’t even need to be a direct opinion from another person.

It is enough to watch some Instagram video that touches a certain nerve, and the cascade starts.

You start questioning your decisions and why you live the way you do.

Sometimes it can do something good.

Maybe it was the reminder you needed to hear, or a piece of advice that really resonated with you.

But there are all the other times when seeing something on social media does the opposite.

It stirs up guilt, or a shame that you should be better, do more, that you are not enough.

All because of some artificial comparison your brain created on its own.

No one attacked you directly.

No one looked you in the eyes and told you that you are not doing enough with your life, or that you are a wreck.

Just thirty seconds of a random person talking ruined your evening and your sleep.

And the worst part?

You don’t even realize that those thoughts are not yours.

So go easy on the comparison.

To the world, to your colleagues, to your neighbours, to your family and friends.

You have your own timeline for the things you want to achieve.

You don’t have to chase what social media tells you to want.

Do you feel effects of social media on you?

7. Old Lessons

What do you write about when it is almost midnight and your eyes are closing in front of the screen?

That is the question I was asking myself yesterday.

I read some good articles today about the life lessons of different people, from all kinds of backgrounds, learned along their journeys.

It is fascinating to see how we all, sooner or later, arrive at almost identical conclusions.

Some find them early. Some much later.

What is even more fascinating is that across all these years of human existence, across all those generations and all the intelligent, powerful people who lived among us.

We still haven’t learned the lessons Marcus Aurelius was already writing about almost two thousand years ago.

Funny enough, a lot of people act as if they are about to discover the meaning of life and the universe.

While their neighbour had that eureka moment last month already.

The lessons are not new. They are the same ones, already known to all of us.

So why don’t we learn from each other?

Why do we keep waiting to discover them on our own before we truly believe and understand them?

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade.

As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

- Lukáš

Some of it still serves you. A lot of it doesn’t.

This week is about where those patterns come from and how you start choosing your own from here.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. Woman in our life

2. Intertwined

3. Money affection

4. Job applications

5. Real friends

6. Clarity comes from a place

7. Making peace

1. Woman in our Life

What role do women play in your life?

Without a woman, none of us would exist.

So we go all the way back to the beginning. To our moms.

I would say she is one of the most important people you will ever know.

I know some of you might have mixed feelings about your mom, or a difficult relationship, or some of you might not even know her.

Despite all of this, she is still someone who influenced your life for a very long time, and probably still does today.

Directly or not.

This kind of connection never goes away.

There is something deep about birth, about the fact that you came into this world.

Because nothing in life is a coincidence.

How is your connection with your mom?

2. Intertwined

What do these three things have in common: money, concerns about the future, and distraction as escape?

One of the biggest challenges young people face is the constant concern about the future.

A lot of questions pop out of these concerns.

How am I going to afford to buy a house?

What career should I pursue?

Where do I meet my potential partner?

When do I start a family?

And much more, passing through our thoughts constantly, every day.

So I’m asking: what is the solution to this?

And can we even solve something like people’s concerns?

I think concerns are a natural by-product of our thinking.

We want to know what the future will look like, because humans don’t like the unknown.

The difference lies in what you are concerned about, and whether there is any real reason for it.

So what do those three things have in common?

They are intertwined.

Money causes concerns about the future, so we look for distractions to escape the reality we live in and forget about everything for a moment.

Do you often feel occupied by concerns about the future?

3. Money Affection

How does money affect us?

Here we are, talking about it.

It’s one of the greatest powers in the world, touching almost everyone on this planet.

Yet most people have very low financial literacy and little understanding of how to manage their money.

It comes back, once again, to our childhood.

To how our parents managed money, and how they taught us to do the same.

We all have different relationships with money because we come from different backgrounds.

Which of these descriptions fits you?

1. You just received your salary.
   
   Filled with excitement, you treat yourself to a nice dinner at the restaurant you’d been eyeing all month.
   
   Tomorrow you order the sneakers and the jacket you saw your colleague wearing and liked a lot too.
   
   In the evening, you go out to try the new pizza place on the corner because it looks really cool.
   
   On the due date for your bill, you find yourself quickly transferring the money, hoping not to be late, again.
   
   And just like that it goes on all month, until you hit the bottom one week before your next salary.

2. You just received your salary.
   
   Filled with excitement, you put a huge chunk of it straight into your savings account and pay your bills right away.
   
   For the rest of the month, you live low-key on a budget, shopping mostly for discounted items and skipping eating out to make sure nothing disrupts your plan.

3. You just received your salary.
   
   Filled with excitement, the first thing you do is move money into your savings and investments.
   
   After that, you pay the monthly bills.
   
   The rest, you split into a budget for your needs and wants, making sure you give yourself the little treat the budget allows while still living the month with enough ease.

4. You just received your salary.
   
   Filled with excitement, you just go with the flow.
   
   You might save something at the end of the month, if there’s anything left.
   
   But you might also end up in the red.
   
   You don’t stress about the future because you feel too young to care about such things.
   
   Worst case, you borrow money from friends or the bank to get through the period.

I believe there are many more models of how people behave and what they do with money on a regular basis.

I treat money very differently now than I did 10 years ago.

I come from a regular middle-class family that never had much money, but I never missed anything as a kid either.

There were small trips within my country, but nothing crazy.

Looking back now, the way I was taught to treat money wasn’t really the smartest.

Maybe they weren’t directly taught lessons, but as a kid or a teenager you copy the patterns and behaviour you see your loved ones live out.

I started working from a very young age.

I was 16 when I got my first job, and I’ve been working ever since.

Back then I spent money without much thinking.

I expected money would always come, somehow.

I was lucky enough to go through very different experiences with money during this period, and they taught me a lot.

I went through periods where I had more money than I should have, and I spent it mindlessly on expensive shit.

Designer clothes, fancy restaurants with big tips, things I genuinely didn’t need.

I thought spending money on these shiny things that make you feel seen would make me happy.

That it would make me feel special. And it did, for a short while.

Then I realised that even if I kept earning that kind of money but kept behaving the same way, I wouldn’t get far in life.

It took some time to change my mindset about money and spending.

I read some books, but what taught me even more was the opposite side of the spectrum.

On that side I went through periods where my weekly budget was 20€, and I had to cook meals big enough to feed me for the entire week.

Let me tell you, when you eat the same thing for the fifth day in a row, it’s not that enjoyable.

The biggest lessons came in between these periods, because they kept switching back and forth.

I went from not having enough money to pay one month’s rent and food, to buying designer clothes and eating in high-end restaurants, and back to cooking on 20€ for the entire week.

Thanks to these lessons I learned a lot and made better decisions later in life.

I’ve more or less stabilised my finances by now.

It’s definitely not perfect, but now I at least know where to add and where to take from, to keep moving steadily forward.

If I had to choose from the options above, the closest would be option c.

It makes the most sense to me right now, and I believe it’s the right way to manage money.

Life happens, and from time to time you’ll be forced to take money from your savings because of some unexpected situation.

That’s okay, as long as you get back on your feet.

Don’t stay down and pity yourself.

Some people end up living on the streets, so be thankful if you have anything more than that.

We all have different financial goals.

And yes, money does make you happier in some way, because it gives you options and freedom of choice.

But it’s far from being THE THING that’s going to change your life and make you the happiest person in the world.

I once spent over a month traveling solo in India.

One of the things I noticed there was that people with very little money and few resources were genuinely happier than many high-income people in the Western world.

I would love to know about your relationship with money and what your monthly routine looks like.

Leave a comment

4. Job Applications

What about applying for a job?

I don’t know about you, but the job application process was always a pain in the ass for me.

I don’t know why, but it just feels overcomplicated and drawn out for almost no real reason.

I would always prefer to get a straight answer as fast as possible.

If it’s no, fine, just tell me why and I’m happy to move on.

If it’s yes, cool, let’s discuss the contract details.

All that fluff. Using the right words, writing essay-long cover letters, pouring my heart out about why I want to work for someone.

It just feels useless to me.

The same goes for all those descriptions of past experience in your CV, where you are supposed to include the percentages, the data, and other things no one really reads.

Let’s be honest.

What does a company usually want from its employees?

They want you to be useful, hard-working, and to not be a dick to your colleagues.

That’s what you do on a daily basis anyway.

Obviously, you’d want the skills the position needs.

If you’re an IT person applying for a job as a nurse, it might not be in your skillset.

Is it complicated for a reason?

What do you think?

5. Real Friends

How important is friendships in life.

It’s nothing new to say that having real friends is one of the most valuable things a person can have.

Friends surround us from childhood and play an important role in our lives from then on.

As we hit high school and adolescence, the feeling of being surrounded by friends usually peaks.

We’re in daily contact with our peers and basically hanging out all the time.

Once we hit adult life and start working, our time with friends begins to shrink.

Something I heard recently in a podcast was that no one really teaches us how to build and nurture our friendships.

It struck me, because it’s so true.

We go through life meeting people, making friends, but sooner or later we hit a turning point where we start to realise that something has changed.

Year after year, we notice fewer people writing to us on our birthdays, fewer people we still have things in common with, and fewer people we keep in touch with regularly.

Our friend group naturally shrinks, and that’s the point where this whole thing comes into play.

If we don’t know how to properly take care of our friendships, we’ll lose them.

And I once read that loneliness is one of the strongest predictors of an early death.

Yet we still hesitate to tell our friends how much we love them.

We still put work first and keep postponing that coffee with a friend.

We’re way too busy to find the time to answer their texts.

Don’t let life occupy you so much that you forget about your friends.

Your friends will be there for you when you’re going through a tough time. Your work won’t.

Tell your friends how much you love them and how happy you are to have them in your life.

There is nothing more beautiful in this world than having real friends to share your life with.

Be the kind of friend to others that you’d want to have yourself.

Have you told your friend you love them?

6. Clarity Comes From a Place

What do you do on days when you basically don’t know what to do?

If you’re asking yourself, “wtf is he talking about?”, that’s alright. It’ll become clear soon.

You know those days when everything falls on your shoulders at once?

You feel like nothing is working in your favour. You feel behind in life, and on top of that, constantly tired.

You just don’t know what to do to change it.

Days like these suck, right?

What I’ve found helpful is to do the opposite of what many would expect.

Instead of pushing even harder and over-revving the engine, take a step back.

Preferably, get some rest.

Clarity comes from a place where you allow your mind to think.

It’s a place of calm, with no distractions.

It’s like the feeling you get from shower thoughts.

They feel different from the rest of your day.

This is the state you want to be in. Not for 5 minutes, but for 5 hours, or even 5 days.

Your mind, body, and soul are asking for that “me time”.

So, what do you do on days when you basically don’t know what to do?

You take a step back, so you can come back stronger and with clearer thoughts.

What’s your recipe for days like that?

7. Making Peace

How do you make peace with your childhood?

For a start, I just want to say that not everyone needs to have childhood trauma.

It’s not a trend, so don’t be disappointed if you didn’t get one.

By now you probably already know that your childhood shaped you, in many ways, into who you are as an adult.

When you look back, you can see how certain moments shaped you.

As you go through adult life, you run into situations where it’s crystal clear why you react a certain way.

From stressful ones to joyous ones.

You learned how to react from your parents.

In romantic relationships, you discover patterns that might feel odd.

It’s like they aren’t even yours, but you do it anyway.

How come?

You learned that from your parents too.

Childhood is a beautiful time, full of lessons about how the world around us works.

At the same time, it’s the period when the outside world has the deepest, most unfiltered influence on our future.

As an adult, you choose what to believe in, and which habits and patterns of behaviour to adopt.

You make conscious decisions, because you have some outcome in mind you want to reach.

As a kid, you don’t choose any of this.

Because of this, we’re left with whatever our parents and our surroundings believe in.

At certain points in life, we come to understand what baggage we carry, and how deeply it’s rooted in us.

I think it’s a powerful moment when things click and the realisation lands.

It’s like you were living blind, and now you can see.

You can see all those moments that didn’t make sense before, and now you know why you behaved one way or reacted another.

It’s not about using your childhood to blame everything on it.

And it’s not about using it as an excuse.

Now you know the cause, so you can consciously decide, like the intelligent person you are, how you’re going to live your life from here.

Are you going to do the work to become a better version of yourself?

Or are you going to keep using excuses for being a dick to others?

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade.

As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

- Lukáš

You drag through it, you miss something you promised yourself, and you start questioning the whole thing.

This week is about those days, and why getting through them counts as a win.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. Simple pleasures

2. The missed day

3. The task

4. Framing the situation

5. Time alone

1. Simple Pleasures

What are your simple pleasures?

I spent 12 hours on the train recently traveling.

I barely slept during the night, so I was horribly tired the entire day.

My eyes were swollen and dry.

Even reading was tough.

Nothing could keep me properly alive that day.

The only thing I wanted was a shower, and the feeling after, when the day is finally over.

I believe you know days like these too.

They are draining.

On days like these, it’s normal that your 100% looks completely different from someone else’s.

I think it’s important to find simple pleasures that help you wind down and relax.

My simple pleasure that day was the moment I turned on my PlayStation to watch a movie.

Instead of a movie, I quickly scanned the game store and found out that a game I’d wanted for a long time was on sale.

That simple thing made my day. It gave me the last piece of energy to finish a draining day on a high note.

Which brings me to my point.

We are often driven, and sometimes even overwhelmed, by achieving more, without acknowledging the simple pleasures that give us the energy to continue on our journey.

It takes active effort and attention to focus on these things daily, not just once in a while.

For me, this was a little reminder that I should look for these simple pleasures more often, to celebrate my progress every day.

You don’t hit a big milestone every day.

To be honest, big milestones are rare.

If you celebrate only the big things, you miss the joy that can be created every day.

It’s not about being satisfied with less. It’s the exact opposite.

Life can change fast, so why not celebrate each day as a victory and find those simple pleasures more often to make this journey more enjoyable for yourself and those around you?

What are the simple pleasures that help you bring joy into daily life?

Leave a comment

2. The Missed Day

How do you recover from failure?

Yesterday was the first, and hopefully the last, day I missed my 100 words.

It struck me today, in the middle of everything, that with the speed of the last few days, the traveling, the running around, I was so occupied yesterday that I forgot to write.

For a moment, it felt like failure.

I had promised myself that no matter what, I’d never miss a day of writing.

The feeling was overwhelming. Even hard to process.

What helped me overcome that momentary paralysis was reminding myself that I’m still just human. If it happens only once, and never twice in a row, it’s still acceptable.

It would be much worse to sacrifice the whole journey just because of one missed day.

This too is a lesson for the future.

It’s not about avoiding failure at all costs. It is about learning how to process these moments and still move forward.

Because you know what?

These moments are inevitable in life.

3. The Task

How hard is it to focus when there’s noise everywhere?

Imagine you want to write an essay but there’s a loud TV going on in front of you.

You’re trying to take notes but the professor keeps talking and switching slides.

You can’t expect to do focused work when you keep switching tasks and changing your Spotify playlist.

To finish what you started, you need to cut off all the distractions in your way.

It can be harder than you think.

Phone notifications are the biggest killer.

The only way to be productive is to keep one thing in the room. The task.

4. Framing the Situation

How do you push a little further on the days you feel ready for bed?

On days like these, discipline is who sits behind the steering wheel.

While I write this, my eyes are already closing.

All I want to do right now is fall into my bed.

But I still have 100 words to write.

My mind tried to turn this into something I “need” to do.

But that’s not true.

I want to do this, because I gave myself this challenge.

Don’t ever let your mind turn things upside down.

Framing makes all the difference.

When you tell yourself you need to, or that you have to do something, it creates this negative energy in your body. It creates the feeling of something you’re not looking forward to.

Instead, frame it as something you want to do.

When you choose something you want, it creates positive energy that drives the action.

Be careful how you frame situations to yourself.

5. Time Alone

Find the time to be alone.

This is one of the most important things for me, one I keep coming back to and keep emphasizing to many.

Undisturbed time with yourself is priceless.

I’d say it’s the key to understanding yourself better, and to becoming a better version of yourself.

By time with yourself, I don’t mean being on your phone or watching a movie.

I mean really dedicated time to check on your life, and on the direction you’re heading.

It’s about finding peace with yourself and your mind, so you can make calmer decisions, aligned with who you want to be and where you want to go.

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade. As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

- Lukáš

This week is about what happens when the list never ends.

About family, living abroad, money, and the quiet question underneath all of it.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. Overachieving

2. Devil’s loop of perfection

3. Paying visit to a family

4. Living abroad

5. Money, money, money

6. Values

1. Overachieving

What is the upside and downside of overachieving in life?

The best analogy I have for the downside of overachieving is a to-do list with no end.

That’s how I feel more often than I’d like to admit. It doesn’t mean I’m always 100% productive every day.

It’s more like you always have something on your mind.

There is very little or no time to rest because there is always something else to do which is more “important”.

And even if I choose rest, there are these thoughts haunting me that I could have used that time to work on something.

Don’t burn yourself out like this.

Nothing is more important than your health, and rest is part of taking care of your health too.

It is important to be able to recognize these patterns and find a way to control them.

Something that helps me is to go for a walk.

It helps especially when you are feeling overwhelmed by everything happening around you and the amount of work you have put on yourself.

The questioning will come:

Maybe I should be using this time differently.

Maybe I could have finished that task already.

Maybe I could go for a walk later.

Lean into your surroundings right now and let things go as much as you can.

You will return with clear thoughts, ready to finish whatever is left for that day.

What is the upside of overachieving then?

The answer is simple. Achieving more than you would imagine.

How does it look for you?

2. Devil’s loop of perfection

How do you improve yourself without getting stuck perfecting it?

I think it is an art to know when to improve yourself and in which area of your life to do so.

Self-improvement is a wonderful skill that helps you create the version of yourself you want to build.

There are countless ways to improve.

We can improve by reading books, by learning new skills, by challenging ourselves physically and mentally, or by facing our fears.

We all know and understand that if we want we can be better than we were yesterday. But it requires the willingness to do so.

As with everything in life, even self-improvement has two sides.

The positive side we all know.

It’s making us better in whatever we choose to improve ourselves.

The negative side of self-improvement is something less known.

Because there are infinite ways to improve, there is no end to this process either.

You can get stuck improving yourself all the time, which leads to feeling even less capable than before.

That’s the devil’s loop of self-improvement.

You keep perfecting things with endless improvements that lead you to the opposite.

You can do anything but not everything.

This counts especially for self-improvement.

Choosing in which area of your life you want to improve, and most importantly why, is the key to success before you even start with your self-improvement journey.

Without a clear reason and outcome, you can very easily end up in the loop.

Choose your path of improvement wisely.

In which area of your life are you currently trying to improve?

3. Paying visit to a family

How to deal with parents and not go crazy?

If you’ve ever moved out of your parent’s house and lived somewhere else long enough, you know how tough it can be to come back and deal with parents again.

I love my family and I’m forever thankful for all their support in my life. But boy, it’s hard sometimes.

You live your own life now at your own pace and by your own standards.

Once you come back home it’s like an instant flashback to childhood.

It feels a bit strange. It feels like there is this clash of realities.

One is your current reality and the way you live.

The other is the reality in which your parents live and all the memories, habits, and routines of the household.

Once these two mix, it can be really challenging.

Despite all of this, I believe keeping in touch with family and paying them a visit is very important.

Doesn’t matter how they might be sometimes. It’s still your family. They deserve it.

So how do we manage these visits or holidays without going crazy?

4. Living abroad

Why is moving abroad a life-changing experience?

Living abroad has been my goal since an early age.

The vision was heavily influenced by my dad, who was working in Austria back then.

Because he was doing it, it felt more natural to me as a path to follow.

I went to work abroad with my dad for the first time when I was 16, in 2014, during Christmas break.

Then the following summer again.

And then I never stopped exploring.

I worked and lived in different places with my entire life packed into one suitcase and a backpack.

During those years I spent most of my time in Switzerland and Copenhagen, with my early stops in Austria.

I spent the least amount of my adulthood in my own country. If the pandemic hadn’t happened, I probably wouldn’t spend any time there.

Today, I speak three languages: English, German, and my native Slovak.

Plus Czech, which just happened to be my fourth language because of the similarity with Slovak and the fact that I watched a lot of cartoons as a kid in Czech.

It’s been a journey, and it has been a life-changing experience because it opened doors I never imagined.

Especially because I come from a small town in the valley between mountains in Slovakia which has barely 20 000 residents. A place people rarely leave.

You can probably imagine the mentality of people living in such small towns.

Anything new or out of the ordinary feels like a threat to people.

It takes a huge amount of self-determination and courage to go against the crowd and think differently. But if I could do it, you can too.

I want to encourage you to take the risk and leave your home town.

Doesn’t need to be forever, but go and explore the world first.

It will open your mind and your thinking in a way that your home town never could.

And it doesn’t matter if you are from a big city or a village.

Living abroad is one of the best ways to test yourself in life.

It will teach you how to take care of yourself in the toughest moments because they will definitely come.

But once you pass these challenges you will be so much stronger and confident in yourself because you managed to do something that your classmates didn’t even think of.

It’s the best school for life because it teaches you exactly the lessons you need in life.

That is a value which no money or school can outweigh.

Have you ever lived abroad?

I would love to hear about your experience and what it taught you in life.

5. Money, money, money

What is your relationship with money?

There are very few things in the world that have as much power as money does.

Money influences almost every single part of our lives.

It is one of the most significant relationships in our life because it determines how much power money is going to have over us.

But, this relationship is not purely on us to build. It comes from our parents first.

We are taught what our parents believe.

I see a lot of different groups of young people and their relationship with money.

Someone grew up with a clear understanding of what money is, what it can get you, and how to make money outside of regular work.

Someone sees money as something evil, something that does only wrong in the world.

Someone else was taught that money is made only by getting a stable job, and that rich people are just lucky and most of the time selfish and bad.

There are people who don’t believe in investing and don’t trust the banks, so they would rather save all their money under the bed.

And there are also people who grew up without any money and see in it the only thing that could turn their lives into a better place.

We all come from different backgrounds with different stories and different upbringings.

For each one of us money means something different.

For some time, I used to believe that money was the only solution to a better life.

Especially when I was younger.

I think once you start getting your first salary, what you want to do is experience the power of money.

You want to see for yourself how much you can enjoy this money you just earned, how many things you can buy, where you can go, and that can get pretty addictive, very fast.

This then brings you into a kind of rat race where the only thing you want is to earn more money so you can spend more money.

I was holding on to this belief for some time until I hit some financial struggles which were the best lesson.

Not only did those financial struggles teach me how to manage money better, but they also taught me that when you don’t have the money to spend on fun activities, you kind of need to find meaning and enjoyment in different things.

And since then... I started looking at money very differently.

I think it’s also an ongoing process where you learn more and more as you get older.

You get access to different kinds of money based on your job and your salary.

You start investing, you save up more, and you start diversifying your assets.

One of the best skills I learned about money is how to enjoy life fully without needing to expand your lifestyle and monthly spending.

What is your relationship with money?

6. Values

What core values guide your life decisions?

This is one of the questions we should be asking ourselves often, and not only on rare occasions.

But before I dive into that, I have another question for you.

How do we build our values in the first place? And how exactly do we define these values?

These are questions I’m asking myself right now.

Because so much of your life is influenced and built on top of your values, it is important to know what your values actually are.

And it doesn’t mean that you need to have a lot of them.

Values come from different places.

You have values which are purely yours and you have values which were instilled in you by your family, culture, or religion.

Your values change over a lifetime.

The values you had in your early 20s are very different from the ones you’re gonna have before your 40s.

That’s why it’s so important to find time to reflect on your values which are guiding your life.

What is irritating you, what are you envious of, what is the thing you wouldn’t trade for any kind of pleasure and always protect?

These kinds of things can reveal what is underneath.

What are the values which are guiding your decisions?

They’re not goals, they’re not about achieving.

Values are the compass guiding you on your journey.

What is your strongest value in life?

Leave a comment

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade. As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

- Lukáš

We chase money we wouldn’t actually earn.

We polish work no one will notice.

We forget what brought us joy in the first place.

This week is about coming back to yourself. And building the life your future self will actually thank you for.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. Joy

2. Perfectionism

3. The one on money

4. The work begins within

5. There are days

6. Reminders for life

7. Your future self deserves it

1. Joy

When was the last time you did something purely because it brought you joy?

Do what brings you joy.

Our minds and souls are trying to navigate us every day toward the right decisions.

But because we became numbed by constant dopamine and attention-stealing surroundings, we almost can’t hear our daily intuition anymore.

We often become trapped in cycles of daily life, without much thinking and without joy.

Wake up, go to work, come back, go to sleep, repeat.

Most of us live like that. It’s nothing unusual.

But let me ask you this: when was the last time you did something purely because it brought you joy?

No transaction or exchange for something else. Just pure joy that filled your heart and soul.

Do you even remember what makes you joyous?

In a career- and success-driven world, we often put our inner child behind us.

We forget how it feels to play.

I believe that one of the most impactful things in your life is joy and play.

We connect to others, but also to ourselves, through these moments.

These moments make us feel complete.

I guarantee you that if you start looking for these moments, you will rediscover a part of yourself that you didn’t know still exists.

Isn’t it what we all want in life? To be more joyous?

I believe it is.

Go and have fun again.

Life is short, and none of us knows when it ends.

2. Perfectionism

Are you aiming for perfection or for getting things done?

If there were one thing I have struggled with the most so far, it would be perfectionism.

I believed for a very long time that this part of me, which is always trying to bring things to the best possible outcome, was my advantage.

I just had a different touch for things. I would always find small details that could be different to make the final output better.

But was it really better? Was it really necessary to spend all that extra time perfecting something that only I would notice?

Maybe, sometimes.

But when you have an important task to finish, one that other steps in the process depend on, it can be quite unproductive to try to endlessly perfect things.

I would get stuck in the process so many times. Endlessly iterating over one document.

What happened when AI came into our daily lives?

My perfectionism kicked in even more.

Now I didn’t need to rely only on my thoughts because I had this machine that could iterate on my best work even more.

It’s a devil’s loop.

It keeps you stuck on things that need half the time you give them.

So how do you deal with perfectionism?

How do you stop being a slave to the process and deliver actual outputs?

One way is to set the bar of expectations lower.

Not every piece of work you produce needs to be perfect.

Unless you are a doctor or someone responsible for other people’s lives, or your own life depends on it.

In that case, please be as close to perfect as possible every time.

In other cases, understand the priority of the project or task you are working on.

If something just needs to go out, then don’t sweat too much on it.

It is about understanding the priority that helps you navigate perfectionism.

It’s easier said than done.

It requires conscious thinking and training of your mind to detect these moments, and to actively adjust your course and attention, so you are not spending hours on something that needs 20 minutes of your time.

As much as I’m trying to get better at this myself, it’s still hard sometimes.

Especially to differentiate between what needs that extra touch and what not, and when.

Are you getting things done?

3. The one on money

Stress tied to money, and how to live more at ease.

One of the biggest themes for almost anyone is money.

We all start thinking about money very early in our lives because we see everything money can get you.

As kids, we see that money can buy you basically everything you want, from ice cream, toys, and video games to vacations, cars, and much more.

We grow into teenagers and adults with big hopes and expectations of what money is going to allow us to do, and we can’t wait.

How you manage your first income depends heavily on your parents’ relationship with money, and on how they taught you to handle it.

Some people feel an internal rush when the first paycheck arrives and are urged to go buy everything this money will allow.

On the other hand, some spend a part but also save, to make sure they have something for later.

Basics. We all know how this works.

Why then do we have so much stress tied to money?

Is it because of the lack of power?

Is it because we just simply want to buy more than we can earn?

Is it because we are in debt?

Is it because we are in need of it?

The answers might include everything and much more.

Every one of us is in a different situation.

I might be under financial stress because I can’t fill my emergency account and just keep taking from it for other things that are appearing unexpectedly.

It always feels like a one step forward, two steps back situation, with no end in sight.

You might be limited in how much you can work, so your income is lower than it could be, and that causes you a lot of stress.

You might be feeling trapped because of it.

The scenarios are endless. Because everyone handles money differently, with different expectations and different habits.

Today’s social media is also not helping us want less in life.

We are constantly presented with shiny objects, luxury holidays, sports cars, beauty, villas, and endless other things.

How do we live more at ease with all of this happening in our lives?

I think it comes down to our own expectations. Which are often unrealistic.

You want to be a billionaire driving a Bugatti, living on top of a skyscraper, and drinking champagne for breakfast. But you are a lazy person who likes to sleep in, and working hard really never interests you.

How the f*ck do you want to be a billionaire then?

Or maybe you want to be a successful hedge fund manager, spending your summers in Italy and winters in the snowy wonderland of Switzerland.

But numbers and money confuse you, and you can’t really think strategically.

Why do you even want to be a hedge fund manager then?

The problem with our expectations is that we see all these people and we look only at their results.

We just picture ourselves driving these cars, living this lifestyle, and we think to ourselves how amazing it would be to do the same.

It might be an amazing life.

But are you willing to invest the time, the energy, and go through everything they had to go through to get there?

Most of the time not.

When you hear that the person works 100+ hours a week, suddenly the money doesn’t sound so good, because it’s too much of a sacrifice.

The solution to this problem is to look inside of you and listen to what you, your soul, and your inner instinct are telling you.

Just because there are billionaires driving Bugattis doesn’t mean you have to be one too.

Maybe what you really want is the respect they get when they walk into a room.

And that you can get another way too, by doing something meaningful, something aligned with you.

This is not a simple question to answer or a simple decision to make.

It requires constantly checking with yourself if the steps you are taking are bringing you closer to the life you want.

And maybe it is the life of a hedge fund manager.

But you need to be honest with yourself about whether that is what you really want, and whether you are willing to go on that journey and sacrifice what is needed.

If yes, great. There is your path to walk.

If not, then you just want the lifestyle but not that career.

So go and find something else that is going to be worth the sacrifice and will get you the lifestyle you want.

The key message here is:

Don’t try to compete with the world and portray yourself in others' lives without considering how much sacrifice it took to get there.

Choose a life that you are willing to work hard for.

The amount of money in the bank account doesn’t play any role if you are living a life of misery and stress.

4. The work begins within

What is love?

How do you describe love?

How do you feel when you fall in love?

What makes you feel loved?

How do you express love?

What role does love play in your life?

Have you ever lost your mind thanks to love?

Is love happy or sad?

Where does love come from?

Why is there love?

How do you create love?

Is love painful?

How much love can you give?

How much love can you receive?

Have you ever lost hope for love?

When did you feel loved the most?

When did you miss being loved?

The most important love is the love for ourselves.

Without our own self-love, we can’t love others truly.

Spend time learning how to love yourself.

And not only today.

Love yourself every day.

Because the work begins within.

5. There are days

There are days when things go as we planned, and days when everything is the opposite of what we wanted.

It’s normal.

What you do during those other days is what makes the difference.

Are you leaning in? Or fighting against it?

There is no correct answer on what you should do.

But when you planned something important to do, you should find the time, even during those hard days, and finish what you started.

You will be thankful and proud of yourself at the end that you didn’t give up.

Sometimes you need to go outside of your routine to finish what you started on that day.

That means going to sleep later, waking up later, or doing something else that affects your daily routine.

Why?

Because sometimes you just need to do it.

6. Reminders for life

Things get hard in life, and sometimes more often than we would like.

Some of us are by nature more resilient to the outside world.

Some, on the other hand, are much less.

What I have found useful is this set of reminders that can help you navigate daily life:

1. Don’t share negativity or hatred.

2. Be a positive-thinking person.

3. Radiate good energy around you.

4. Try to help people every day.

5. Work very hard to create the life you want for yourself and your family.

6. Money doesn’t define happiness for you.

7. Your friends and family are the most valuable things you have in life.

8. Work on yourself to create a better and healthier lifestyle.

9. You have done so many hard things already. You can do this.

10. You are not your body, you are not your mind. You are stronger than you think.

11. Never give up. You always find a way to solve the problems.

There is not much else to say.

Hope it gave you something.

Which one of these hits you the hardest right now? I’d love to know.

Leave a comment

7. Your future self deserves it

Self-integrity in today’s world is rare and underappreciated.

Why?

For a simple reason. People are turning bitter and negative more and more often, because of politics, money, household problems, addictions, and so on.

You are always presented with two options.

You can choose the easy path and be demoralized, or the harder path and live with peace of mind.

What do I mean by these two options and those two paths?

When we were kids, our parents told us not to steal anything, right?

You can always go behind the system’s guardrails to make your life easier this way.

Stealing, cheating, and manipulating are all behaviours that will get you things faster, but with other kinds of price tags.

That’s the easy path.

You pay with your integrity, with trust from other people, and with your peace of mind.

You might feel short-term adrenaline and dopamine rushing through your system because of this quick gain.

But the aftertaste is bitter and lasts for a long time, especially in the dark corners of your mind.

Why might we be tempted by this path?

Well, it’s increasingly hard for young people today to stay out of debt, buy a house and a car, or even start a family.

People are desperately looking for a quick way to get rich.

Because most of the time the money is needed. And social media is feeding us overnight success like it’s a product on sale.

In moments of hopelessness, people lose patience to wait until things get better in life for them.

They stop believing in the dreams they had about their career or business because they can’t wait another 5 or 10 years for things to get better.

The world is cruel and unfair to many of us on this planet.

All I want to say to you is this: don’t go down that path.

One single thought about going to jail for stealing should be enough to keep you away from these behaviours.

Even if it seems that self-integrity is overlooked or underappreciated in our society, don’t get pulled down with it.

You can achieve great things if you persist and work on yourself.

Build the version of yourself that you will be proud of in the future.

A version of yourself which faced all the challenges life brought and still made it.

A version of yourself that, despite all the doubts and uncertainty, still made it.

A version of yourself that will be a great example to your kids and spouse.

Be better for yourself, because your future self deserves it.

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade. As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

- Lukáš

Some friendships quietly fade.

Sleep gets ignored.

Rest starts to feel like laziness.

This week is about all of it. And why pulling back might be exactly the point.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. Excess or enough

2. A reason, a season, or a lifetime

3. More coffee, or more sleep?

4. There is always something more to do

5. Slingshot

6. Cheer for yourself

7. Be better for yourself

1. Excess or enough

What does freedom look like for you?

We all have different dreams and goals in life.

From business, to family, to cars, to adventures, all the way over to peace of mind.

But there is one common dream that we all want. Freedom.

Since we were kids and had to do chores at home instead of playing outside with friends, we were dreaming about it.

The space and time where the only rules that apply are our own, where we decide what comes next, where there is no limit to our potential.

People have always wanted to feel free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, with whoever they want and wherever they want.

It is in our nature.

How does one achieve such freedom?

Do you build it, or do you achieve it, or maybe you earn it?

These are some of the questions I’ve been asking myself.

Because as for many of you, this kind of freedom is also a dream of mine.

Especially the way they connect together.

Financial freedom opens doors for other things to come into your life.

It doesn’t mean you need to be a billionaire. You just need enough money to make all those other decisions completely free.

And look, this might be just my point of view.

There is a very thin line here between chasing money and building something with purpose.

I think people are often split into two camps.

The first sees money, and rich people of course, as something evil.

Something that is causing only problems in life.

It is also usually those people who are in financial need and, to defend themselves, they turn against money.

Then there is the second camp.

The opposite end of the spectrum. People who have put money on a pedestal as the only thing that matters in life.

These are the chasers who believe more money equals more happiness. The universal equation in life.

But there is a middle ground which people tend to overlook.

I think I understand why.

It’s not attractive to have just enough money.

Today’s society is obsessed with excess in everything.

That’s why so many people are fighting obesity. They consume food in excess because there is no shortage of it.

People think about money the same way.

There is either starvation or excess. Not just enough.

How does this connect to the freedom I was talking about?

It’s how I define freedom for myself.

It’s not about having excess money that would buy me a house in San Francisco, a yacht, and a private jet.

It’s about having enough money to afford the lifestyle I want to live.

I want to spend my life doing things I want to do, including work.

I don’t dream about a life where I don’t do anything and just lie around sipping mojitos.

So many people dream about a life where they never need to work. It’s because they hate the work they’re doing right now.

I can’t imagine a purposeless life like that.

We all need purpose and meaning in life.

What does freedom look like for you?

2. A reason, a season, or a lifetime

Something that money will never buy is true friendships.

You can’t force people to be your friends, and even if you could, those people wouldn’t be true friends.

From the beginning of our lives we connect with everything around us. We start forming relationships with family, but also with our first friends.

The first stages of our upbringing are usually full of friends from kindergarten, the neighborhood, or school. We feel constantly surrounded by people of the same age and most of the time with the same kind of interest. And that’s play.

We don’t even think about it because we play.

Things start to get different when we enter our teenage years.

We’ve gathered a lot from the world around us, our parents, ideas from movies.

We start experimenting with our own behaviour to see what happens when we treat others differently.

First tries of manipulation, negotiation, and persuasion teach us that things in life can be achieved in very different ways.

Relationships start to be transactional.

From this point onwards we know when our friendships are genuine versus when they exist because of some kind of barter. And we all value the genuine ones more.

As we enter adult life, start a job, move cities or countries, we realize how important it is to have friends.

True friends are there when we need them.

We went from tons of friends in childhood to a few in adulthood.

First, I wasn’t sure if that’s good or not. I was confused, as many of you probably are too.

I realised that even on Facebook you receive less and less birthday wishes than the year before, and the year before that.

Maybe you’ve even asked yourself: “Have I done something wrong?”

The answer is no. You haven’t done anything wrong, unless you actually did hurt someone.

But in most cases, it’s just natural selection.

We grow and mature, and other people do too. Our priorities and values change.

We stop being friends with some people because we’re heading in very different directions, or are in very different life stages, and suddenly there’s not much of a connection anymore.

There is this line from a poem that I particularly like:

“People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.”

It is a beautiful explanation of how to look at certain relationships when they end.

People who come into our lives for a reason are usually there to teach us something.

People who come for a season are there to be with us through a period of time. To make it through together, enjoy it fully, or learn something as well.

The last group, people who come into our lives for a lifetime, are the true gems.

They are there for all reasons and all seasons. For all the good times and bad times.

There is nothing more beautiful than a friend calling you out of nowhere, without any reason, just to ask how you’re doing.

The hard truth about friendships, which many of us forget sometimes, is that they need to be fostered and cared for.

Just because we are friends today doesn’t mean it will last forever, especially if neither of us puts any effort into this relationship.

I hope that serves as a reminder to call your friend today.

So go and do it, now.

3. More coffee, or more sleep?

This is one of those themes we talk about so often, from so many different angles, that a person would think everyone already knows everything about it.

Yet people are still ignoring the importance of it.

In the busy world, everything gets more priority than sleep.

Sleep is something that needs to happen, unfortunately.

Or there are people on the other side who are overdoing it. Sleeping 12-14 hours for no reason besides that they like to sleep.

When do they do stuff then?

How is your relationship with sleep?

Are you an early bird or a night owl?

Do you track your sleep or do you go with the feeling?

There is no correct answer because we are all different.

But the only correct way is to take sleep seriously.

I can feel sleep deprivation massively.

Not just as an energy dip, but in my mental resilience and performance.

If I have poor sleep for two or three nights, my mind turns into a negative thought-feeding machine that will not stop talking shit to me.

What a daymare.

I’m not even surprised that people so often get bitter and annoyed in the trams, or at waiters, or at the person at the bank.

If they ignore their sleep and try to fight it every day with just more coffee, it’s a downward spiral into daily hell.

And guess what. It’s not an excuse. At all.

Nothing excuses you being a dick to others.

It’s your fckn problem and responsibility to behave like a person should and not blame everything else for it.

Now imagine people doing this every single day.

Driving themselves into exhaustion because what is more important than work, right?

They do this for a couple of years, and then what.

Then the health problems start to creep up on them.

Until they hit a hard stop because they can’t anymore.

If they’re lucky, the hard stop leads to much less work and much more focus on health.

In the worst cases the hard stop is the last stop. They are not coming back.

All just because they couldn’t realize that sleep is not to be ignored, but rather nurtured and protected.

After COVID, a lot of people turned to healthier lifestyles. Probably the best lifestyle shift in society in a very long time.

Yet there are still individuals who believe that ignoring health is okay.

Don’t be one of them.

Take these things seriously and do your best to stay healthy and strong for decades to come.

4. There is always something more to do

Are you resting or being lazy?

This is a question I ask myself very often.

Most of the time it feels like I could do more.

My to-do list is a never-ending quest because there is always something more I can add to it.

But am I actually doing something more?

The hardest judge of you is always you.

Even when I’m sick and tired, I have an internal dialogue about whether I can play PlayStation for a bit, or watch a movie, or whether I should do laundry, clean my email inbox, work on stuff for my brand, and so on.

It is a real skill to know when to rest because you genuinely need it. And when rest is actually going to help your work in the end.

It is equally important to know when you are just slacking and being lazy, because that is not helping you get anywhere in the long run.

So how do you tell the difference?

What does rest look like for you right now? I’d love to know.

Leave a comment

5. Slingshot

Have you ever felt that despite the effort you put in, you are not really moving forward?

It’s like one step forward and two steps back.

This describes how we all feel sometimes.

We are doing what we can to make progress and then something happens. Two steps back.

It feels like a rat race where you are only running but not moving forward.

What should we do when feelings like this show up? When everything feels heavier and the progress feels stagnant?

Slow down a bit.

Rushing and pushing even more is not going to get you anywhere.

Trust me. I’ve been there.

I was pushing on the gas pedal more and more trying to make things work.

But what I didn’t realise back then was that I was pushing so hard that my engine started to burn.

Why? Because I was trying to push a car that had no gas and was heading in the wrong direction.

Moments like these are extremely hard. But they are never for nothing.

This was an experience. A lesson you had a chance to learn.

Despite the fact that it might have been painful, or discouraging, that pain becomes your advantage in the future.

When you start a new project, you can always look back on these moments and take all the lessons with you.

Now you possess something you were missing the first time. And now you can do so much better.

Not all fallbacks are bad.

Think about it like a slingshot.

You need to pull it back first, and pull it hard, to be able to catapult the rock really far.

Let the experience be the slingshot and you the rock flying far right now because of all the previous lessons, and all the fallbacks.

Are you pushing on the pedal too much as well?

6. Cheer for yourself

Have you ever thought of yourself as the main character in a movie?

We all have goals and dreams for ourselves.

We wake up thinking about them.

We go through the day visualising ourselves there.

Then comes evening and we look back on our day asking ourselves how we contributed to that dream today.

Often we find we didn’t contribute as much as we thought. And that sends us down the spiral of thoughts and questions.

Suddenly we are standing in the shower staring at nothing, doubting ourselves, questioning the direction we chose, thinking we don’t like where we are right now.

It’s not easy.

But no one ever promised it was going to be easy to build the life you want for yourself.

Social media is pouring overnight success stories on us from every direction.

All we feel is that we are behind on something in our lives.

We don’t know why or what it is. We just feel we’re supposed to have more of something that everyone else keeps showing us on the internet.

In those moments, remember that this is not a sprint. It’s a marathon.

I really like the analogy of imagining yourself as the main character, the hero in the movie.

What would you want the hero to do when things get hard? When he gets beaten down, betrayed, when he loses everything?

You would understand him.

You would cheer for him.

You would wait with excitement for the great comeback. The fireworks, the explosions, the trophy, the reunion. Whatever you want your hero to achieve.

Do the same for yourself when things get hard. Cheer for yourself.

Remember that even when life is challenging, you are not alone.

Reach out to your family, friends, or even to me if you need support on your journey.

We are all in this together.

The path towards success happens one step at a time.

Take the first step today and let me know how it’s going.

7. Be better for yourself

How can you do more without burning out?

I’ve been asking myself this question for the past couple of months.

It feels like being constantly at the crossroads between wanting to achieve more and not wanting to burn myself to the point where I can’t do anything anymore.

I don’t have an answer to this question yet. I’m still trying to figure it out on my own too.

But here is my hypothesis on how I think it can be achieved.

It always starts with WHY.

If you don’t know why you are doing what you are doing, or why you want to achieve what you want to achieve, it’s extremely hard to move even one step forward at a time.

Once we have our why, we can focus on our WHAT.

What is the outcome we want to achieve? What is the destination where we want to arrive?

This makes it more real, something our mind can more easily grasp.

The next step is the PLAN.

We tend to create our plans chronologically from today’s standpoint. But in this case, we want to reverse engineer it.

Here is where your imagination comes into play, connecting your WHY and your WHAT into something that exists in 10 years’ time.

From there we break it down to 5 years, 3 years, 1 year, 6 months, 3 months, 4 weeks, this week, and today.

Now we are facing the last question.

What can I do today to get myself closer to where I want to be in 10 years’ time?

Think small. Think 1% better every day.

Put the bar of expectations lower than you originally wanted. Why? Because you are starting from zero.

Don’t compare yourself to others on the internet, in your work, or in your town.

Your journey is unique to you because only you know your WHY, your WHAT, and your PLAN.

Don’t try to compete with the world or impress anyone.

Compete only with yesterday’s version of yourself.

Be better for yourself.

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade. As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

— Lukáš

They break because they never learned what they can actually handle.

This week, I wrote about pain, fun, health, and the uncomfortable truth that comfort might be the thing holding you back the most.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. Endure

2. Wisdom tooth

3. Health is everything

4. Having fun

5. Give yourself a break

6. Opening up

7. Dive deeper

1. Endure

How much can you endure?

Life is constantly testing us one way or another.

And what do we do?

We run away from our problems, trying to reach a destination where there are no problems in our lives.

We are missing a key thing.

The problems in life are not bugs; they are features.

There will never be a place or time in your life when everything will be perfect.

Perfection is an illusion that we believed for far too long.

The only certainty is that at one point, things in your life will be shit, you will mess up, make mistakes, and it’s going to hurt and be humiliating.

But that’s not why I write this.

I’m not writing this to be negative, or pessimistic, or trying to bring you down.

This is about how much you can endure.

I used to believe for way too long that the life I live and, in general, the world we live in is pretty, prosperous, and kind.

The opposite is true. And always was, to be honest.

You can read some books on evolution, politics, and history. You will clearly see that we were always cruel, we always wished for power and control, one way or another.

But that’s not the main theme either. I’m not a specialist on these topics.

What I’m trying to bring across the table for you is that you shouldn't get too comfortable.

We are facing a comfort crisis.

People are lazy and default to comfort and binge-watching social media instead of pushing themselves into daily uncomfortable situations and places.

How much can you really endure?

In a physical and psychological manner.

There was no better time and space in your life to build yourself up.

Go and start working out, read books, have challenging conversations, and learn new skills.

Don’t default to basics because you never know what is awaiting you in the future, and the skills you might need to survive.

Be better for yourself, your loved ones, the ones in need, your community, strangers, and the world.

So, how much can you endure?

2. Wisdom tooth

How do you deal with pain?

The biggest enemy of us all is pain.

Everything in our lives can go according to plan.

It can even seem perfect when suddenly tooth pain hits, knee issues appear, or your back feels so stiff that you can barely rotate.

What do we do in these situations?

When our body is in pain, our mind often weakens.

The same voice of willpower you had to go to the gym every morning is suddenly telling you to stay in bed and take another painkiller because you couldn’t even sleep because of the pain.

Everyone has a different pain threshold, and each of us experiences pain differently.

Yet we all know the feeling when we can’t even focus on doing everyday things because the pain is so persistent and annoying.

I know this feeling well. Not long ago, my wisdom tooth decided to make my life miserable.

Everything in me wanted to get more sleep.

The day before, my tooth was already making sure that I suffered.

The painkillers barely did anything, and I was questioning my life at work.

Why me again?

Guess what, it didn’t help to question my life.

I had a run on my schedule that day, which was going to be everything but fun.

If you know the feeling, with every bounce of the stride, the pain hits the nerve, making it even more present.

But I went anyway.

Our minds will always try to play with us and convince us that we don’t need to do the hard things.

It is for a simple reason. Our minds are programmed from evolution to keep us safe.

Which doesn’t always mean that we should listen to these instincts.

This, too, is a way to build a stronger mind.

Pushing through the pain is teaching us a lot.

It shows us that we can do more than we thought we could.

On the other hand, keep in mind that despite this, we are all mortals.

Pursue big and hard things. Just don’t get killed in the process of achieving them.

Face death often, but don’t let it take you before your time comes.

What is your pain threshold for life situations?

3. Health is everything

Do we actually care about our health?

Looking at today’s world, we see two opposite camps.

On one hand, there are people turning into athletes, tracking everything that they eat and drink, and raising the bar for everyone around them since COVID.

On the other hand, we have people who believe they can eat whatever they want, as much as they want, without raising any awareness.

And it’s not only about food.

It is about everything we do.

Our lives were never built on perfection of one thing.

Our lives are built on all the things connected.

From daily movement, nutritious food, maintenance of our mental health, strong bonds with loved ones and connections with peers, to financial prosperity.

Health is everything above and much more.

At the same time it all boils down to one single thing.

When we are healthy and fit, no one stops to think about what it would be like if we weren’t.

One thing happens and we become suddenly limited. It’s like everything stops.

Our motivation and willpower drift to places we have never seen.

Be thankful for the health you have before it diminishes.

You will meet a version of yourself you never thought you had inside of you.

Go and do something for your health today.

4. Having fun

How do you have fun in life?

How can a person even answer such a question, when everyone perceives fun differently?

What is fun for me doesn’t need to be fun for you, and vice versa.

What can most people agree on is that fun is more fun when people have a drink or two, right?

I was definitely one of them.

Big promoter of alcohol and fun connected with it.

After a certain age, and after certain experiences, things started to change.

It was still fun to go outside but it was less and less fun the next day.

Especially when I started doing sports and working out regularly.

Missing a workout started to feel like a big tradeoff for that one night of fun before.

My priorities and perception of fun started to shift.

I would prefer daytime activities over nights out.

For a very simple reason.

Energy.

My energy and willingness to do things increased extremely when I went to bed early and woke up early.

Suddenly, I felt I could do so much more with my time and with my options.

It was an instant boost in confidence and self-belief.

So I decided to take on a challenge.

No alcohol for 1000 days.

It was my first 1000-day challenge I ever gave myself.

The reason was simple:

I wanted to re-learn how to have fun in life without needing a drink.

It was strange and odd for the first couple of months.

As young teenagers, we started drinking at the age of 15. It was the age when you start going out with friends and exploring the world and options around you.

When all of this time is connected with alcohol your brain makes the connection.

Fun = Alcohol.

A couple of years later you go out and you need to drive, let’s say.

You find yourself being uncomfortable in your own skin, being out and not drinking because you don’t know how to behave.

Something that was always automatic for you is suddenly a whole thinking process full of questions.

How should I stand here so I don’t look too serious or boring?

What should I say to these strangers?

I don’t get this joke, why should I laugh?

Was going out always so boring?

Do I even know these people?

Am I friends with these people just because of the shared history, or do I actually like these people?

It can be frightening to some because it feels like a completely new, undiscovered world.

We tend to think we already know how the world works, that we've figured out the basics, and that this should be something we've already mastered.

Or at least that’s how I felt thinking about all the parties and events I went to between being 15 and 25.

What came after a couple of months of doing this challenge was unexpected.

I not only started having fun going out, but I also started really enjoying being sober all the time.

I went to concerts, parties, solo trips, and weddings, and it all felt so good without even a drop of alcohol.

So, how do you have fun in life?

By your own terms.

The path I chose was life-changing for me.

But it doesn’t mean it’s for everyone.

How do you have fun in your life?

5. Give yourself a break

How and when to give yourself a break?

If you are anything like me there is no break in our schedule.

There is only work and questions on how to achieve more.

But have you ever thought about the fact that you might be chasing the wrong thing?

That all this work you are putting in is pointless because instead of pulling something closer to you, you are actually pushing it further away?

One thing, which is hard, even though I still learn how to execute this properly, is to take a break.

The story which society was feeding us with is that you need to have everything figured out by 30 and be successful because otherwise you are a loser, and behind, and I don’t know what else. It’s a lie.

Six years ago I thought that by this age I need to have a house, car, and kid on the way.

Today I know myself better and also understand life much better.

My priorities, values, and principles have changed and I look at life very differently than I did back then.

If I wouldn’t have changed my perspective on life and rushed myself into everything I mentioned, my life would look very different today.

By that said, I don’t mean to depreciate people who start families early, or say that there is something bad about it, as long as you really want it.

What I’m trying to say you here is don't feel pressured by society and others telling you what you should achieve by what time.

We might have different timelines in life, but the same time I have, you have too.

Sometimes to see the bigger picture where you are heading you need to step back and look at your life from above, from a different perspective.

Sometimes the best way to move forward is actually to take a break.

As I mentioned before, it’s hard to take a break in today’s world because everything around us is telling us to go even faster, to aim for even bigger things, to achieve more than beyond what is achievable.

And I’m not surprised.

Look at social media.

All you see is successful people living great lives, traveling, buying expensive things, eating at great restaurants, having the best time all the time.

And the algorithm is serving this to you on a silver platter every day and quietly feeding your brain with doubts.

No wonder then questions about what you have done wrong in your life and why you also don’t live a life like that start creeping on you.

Here comes an important lesson, or two.

First, don’t trust everything you see on the internet. It sounds cliché but it’s more true than ever before.

Second, don’t compare yourself and your life to anyone else.

As I said, you have time.

Figure out for yourself what you want your life to look like.

What taking a break doesn’t mean:

• It doesn’t mean turning into a lazy couch potato.

• It doesn’t mean staying home all the time and not socializing.

• It doesn’t mean drinking and taking drugs.

• It doesn’t mean being unemployed.

• It doesn’t mean to stop trying.

• And it doesn’t mean to stop wanting a better life for yourself and your family.

And much more.

Taking a break means that you give yourself the time you need to understand yourself better to make better choices on your journey.

Taking a break can mean to dedicate time every week to relax and do something you purely enjoy and have fun with.

Or plan a vacation with your partner, or even alone, and go explore something new.

It’s not about doing less. It’s about doing more of what you truly enjoy and what is recharging you.

Go and achieve great things in life, you deserve it.

Aim big, because the sky is only the starting line, not a limit.

Just stay true to yourself, your values, and your principles.

There is no universal metric for a successful and meaningful life.

You are the one who is giving your life meaning, not anyone else.

Make it count.

6. Opening up

Do you talk about your emotions?

Talking about emotions and being open about what’s happening inside has gone many ways in the last couple of years in society.

Women usually never have a problem with expressing emotions on the surface and showing others on the outside if they are sad, happy, or angry.

They just know how to do it and are better at this than men ever will be.

Men on the other hand historically almost always had a tougher time knowing how to express their emotions, or how to show them on the surface in a public setting.

In the last couple of years men have been facing a lot of criticism.

One side is criticising men about their toxic masculinity and the other is criticising them for being way too emotional.

Sometimes it is hard to know what to do.

Just to be clear here. I didn’t mean to offend anyone.

It is obviously your decision.

But being able to talk about your emotions can be really helpful.

Not only for communication with others but also for communication with yourself.

What is your stand on this?

7. Dive deeper

How do you build the life you want?

This is the million dollar question everyone is asking themselves.

It’s not about money, status, or power.

It is about the different individual needs and dreams which each one of us has.

You want to be a rich rockstar singer flying around the world in private jets.

Your friend wants to be a fireman in the neighbourhood and dreams about owning a lot of cats.

Your cousin is dreaming about her own café with a little bakery and hoping to meet her future husband during volunteer work.

The combinations of these realities are endless and the possible outcomes too.

That would probably mean that there can’t be one universal formula for building the life you want, right?

Today’s internet gurus would argue with me because they want to sell you some unique course or retreat in Bali for a couple of thousands so you can buy something that is not possible to buy.

No one else in this world knows what, where, how, and why you want it.

It’s a lonely journey first as you need to dive deeper inside of you to discover what is there for you to be uncovered.

Once you know yourself from within, you will have a clear understanding which path is for you to take and what is awaiting you there at the end.

The easier part comes after this.

Once you have your vision, you need to put the work in.

That’s where discipline comes into place and often sacrifices.

Don’t look at the sacrifices you will need to make during this journey as something bad. The world will try to get you off course and offer a lot of shiny objects to distract you.

Remember your why, and continue to build the life you want.

What does your life design look like?

Leave a comment

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade. As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

- Lukáš

That doesn’t make them wrong.

But the one no one has walked yet?

That one is yours.

This week, I wrote about choosing, enduring, and discovering what’s been waiting inside of you all along.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. Crossroad of decisions

2. Ego

3. Perfectionism is not going to serve you

4. Role models

5. Pivot

6. You are a valuable person

7. Beyond the gold standard

1. Crossroad of decisions

The power of the unknown.

As we grow up and become adults, we often face crossroads in our decisions.

The different paths to choose from.

One is heading into the unknown, leaving us uncertain about the final destination without promise.

The second is leading us somewhere safe, somewhere where the outcome can be foreseen.

Neither of these two paths is good or bad.

Our consciousness will give them the label afterwards anyway.

What these moments present to us is a choice.

A choice which can, and will, radically change our life. That’s inevitable.

So how do you choose?

Choose the path of the unknown if you are willing to discover hidden parts of yourself and experience both highs and lows.

Remember, there is no certainty, and no promise of reward on this path.

The only thing that is promised is that there is growth, and there might be untouched potential to be reached with unimaginable return at the end.

Be aware of the risk. Be aware of the fact that it can be the best or the worst decision you will make.

Choose the safe path if you want to put your laser focus on the destination from the start.

People did it before. The roadblocks were already discovered and can be therefore avoided, or at least dealt with with more resources.

You know what you can expect from the outcome.

But be aware of the fact that just because others made it there and the road seems to be already uncovered, that you can’t assume you won’t fail.

As I said at the beginning, neither of these two paths is better than the other.

Ask yourself which path appeals to you more and go for it. Don’t waste time choosing the perfect one because there is none.

I think you already know which one to choose.

Just look inside of you.

Where are you heading right now?

2. Ego

Is the ego really an enemy?

Many of you have probably read the book from Ryan Holiday called Ego is the Enemy.

Our ego is something that is always with us, in every situation.

It takes a lot of skills to learn how to tame it and control it, especially when situations escalate to certain heights.

We often hear about ego in bad lighting.

We see world politicians making decisions purely out of their narcissistic and egoistic nature and the only thing left for us to think is, how the f*ck can this person be the head of the country.

But there are times when ego can also have a positive effect on you and on the situation you are in.

Maybe you have a public speaking event coming up. Maybe you need to deal with a hard conversation at work.

These situations require you to trust yourself and be confident so you can deliver what matters to you.

What you do is tap into your ego to gain that extra self-trust and confidence, so you can manage those situations.

What you don’t want to do is think that you are the smartest person in the room, or that nothing can surprise you.

Be strong and confident, but don’t be a fool, thinking you've made it and that no one is smarter or better than you.

That will bring you down.

What is your perception of ego in your life?

3. Perfectionism is not going to serve you

How to prepare for something important to you?

Since we were kids, we have known the feeling of preparing for something important to us, something exciting.

First, it was a kindergarten show for parents where we demonstrated our strengths.

Then it was maybe our first school sports match or singing show.

Most of the time, our thoughts and feelings were connected with excitement and joy.

We couldn’t even sleep the night before because we wanted it to happen so badly.

Now my question. Do you feel like this in your adult life when something important is about to happen?

When you need to prepare for a presentation or perhaps a meeting.

Most people would say no.

The excitement and joy we used to feel back then have now turned into too much coffee, stress, anxiety, and sleepless nights.

The core of it didn’t change.

There is some performance awaited from us, there are going to be people looking at us, and once it is over we can go home again as we did before.

So why do we behave like this?

How do we prepare for something important?

The key lies in the expectations. Not from others, but from our own expectations we put on ourselves.

Often, we want to be perfect.

We want to land every line, change the slides at the perfect moment, get smiles from specific people, and receive a pat on the shoulder and a firm handshake afterward.

Perfectionism is not going to serve you for a long period.

So lower your expectations, give yourself a pat on the shoulder the day before, relax a bit, and have a good night’s sleep.

It doesn’t matter what others think. You can’t go in their minds and change things.

Each of us is a special individual, and in the work context, even more so.

Try to find that excitement and joy you used to feel as a kid before your sports match or singing show.

Be you, not just the boring and overstressed adult.

We are going to die one day anyway, so why make our days here miserable?

4. Role models

What is inspiration, and how does it affect us?

Throughout our lives, we find inspiration in many different places and people.

We place these people on a pedestal like our heroes and role models.

We firmly agree with what they say, think, and preach.

But sometimes it can go too far, and we end up just blindly following these role models, like sheep.

We promote them in front of our family and friends, we share them on social media, and we even end up thinking of them as friends and that they are loyal to us, just as we are to them.

Well, that’s usually not the case.

There was a time when I was blindly following some close friends, but also social media world figures.

Here's what this costs.

I used to have a friend whom I would blindly follow and do whatever he would do.

Back then, that meant trying weed for the first time, drinking on weekends. Then I started smoking weed more often, eventually even trying different drugs.

In my eyes, he was the cool guy.

He had girls, was always up for fun, and made me feel cool, too.

After some time, things with him started getting a bit more shady.

He would start selling drugs and meet with people from these circles more often because of the easier access to different drugs and opportunities.

He would also become extremely unreliable.

We would agree to meet to go out, and he wouldn’t show up.

He wouldn’t answer the phone, always had excuses, and would cancel meetups when I would already be on my way.

When things with someone get to the point that you feel that it’s just effort from your side and the other person doesn’t care and respect you anymore, it’s time to reconsider your friends.

I did the same.

After all these situations, I realized what kind of influence this guy had on me during those years.

I cut him off from my life, and things changed for the better.

Another example would be more recent.

I liked this podcaster very much.

His words and insights resonated with me so much, and to be honest, they still do, but that’s another topic.

At the beginning, when I discovered him, I was, again, just blindly following whatever he said, including the advertisement spots in his show.

I started looking at the products he was suggesting, as they would be the best way to go.

And so I ended up using supplements that I didn’t need and that weren’t really doing anything for over 6 months, and spending so much money on them.

Because of what? Just because some dude on the internet said that it’s best?

Don’t trust everything your favorite creators say on the internet.

They are being paid for those words a lot of the time, if not all the time.

Do your research, think about it yourself, and ask hard questions before you start buying things you either don’t need or that are not useful for you.

To finalize this.

What I meant by all of this is that you should choose your inspiration and role models carefully.

You never know how much impact they can have on you, and whether that impact will be positive or negative for your life.

Who is your role model right now, and why?

5. Pivot

Pivot or endure?

We face these two questions all the time.

With whatever we start in our life, it might be a new project, a new skill we want to acquire, a new relationship, or a new job.

Sooner or later, we are going to hit a point where we’ll face the decision if we should pivot to do and focus on something else because this thing, this path we thought was going to bring us somewhere, is not working anymore.

Or, no matter the roadblock and hard times, I’m going to continue and bring this thing to the finish.

For a very long time, even at the time of writing this, I was enslaved to the idea of always pivoting and trying different things.

I believed that if I tried a lot of things it would help me find my passion, my calling, my thing. Call it however you want.

What I didn’t understand until now is that this is costing you time, the most valuable asset you have.

On one hand it is important to try things out in your 20s, absolutely.

On the other hand, by never finishing anything and just always jumping on the next shiny object, you can never really learn to do the one thing properly and never taste the potential success and mastery of doing that and bringing it to the finish line.

There is a place and time for a pivot.

But that decision should come from a complete understanding of the reason behind it.

Are you pivoting because this project is really nothing you want to do?

It’s sh*t, it’s sinking, causing stress, your life is misery, and you can’t even think about another day of continuing?

Or is progress just too slow and you want money and success now instead of in 5 years?

You already know the answer.

6. You are a valuable person

The power of your origin story.

I recently heard a very interesting point of view on personal branding.

This guy on a podcast said, “If anyone in the world can say something about you, you have a personal brand.”

I really liked it for two reasons.

First, it shows us that everyone has value.

We often think that we are not enough despite the fact that we are doing the best we can in the given moment. And I’m guilty of this myself.

The standard and perfection I’m setting for myself are often so high that anything else than success is a failure.

And even the victory, it’s just okay.

It comes down to our own perceived value and self-love.

Maybe it was someone in school when you were young, or someone at home who taught you that it doesn’t matter how much you tried, you could have always done better.

For me it’s a lifelong journey from discovering to understanding what it is today.

I’m not trying to only understand it but also work on to be less cruel with myself and allow myself to celebrate the small and big wins in life.

That brings me back to that quote.

Hearing that everyone has basically a personal brand also means for me, in translation, that basically everyone is a valuable person.

Not only from now on, or from yesterday, but from the moment you are born.

You are born as a valuable person, and you will die as a valuable person.

Your only task with this in your life is to understand that fact, to be aware of it, and keep reminding yourself often that you are indeed a valuable person.

Second, you can be whoever you want, doing whatever brings joy to you, and you will still matter.

It’s not meant in a way that you need to build something extraordinary now.

It’s meant to show you to not be afraid to chase your dreams and goals, because it doesn’t matter what path you choose to go with, you mean something.

Do you struggle with self-worth and self-love?

7. Beyond the gold standard

Never ignore your physical capabilities.

Working on your physical strength and endurance of your body is one of the most important tasks in your life.

Not only is it the direct precursor of your longevity, but it is also a source of energy, motivation, and confidence.

Seeing your body slowly transforming into better shape and getting stronger is one of the most satisfying moments in life.

It is a direct mirror of the hard work you have put into it.

It doesn’t matter if you are a man or woman.

You need to do some form of physical exercise.

You might not think about this when you are 20.

You feel like life just started, you want to go out and have fun with friends, and the last thing you think about is your health because everything is working smoothly.

I get it. I have been there.

But I was also on the other side of the spectrum.

Where my body was exceeding my expectations of physical strength and endurance.

Distances which would never cross my mind I would be able to run were suddenly my regular training, and it felt amazing.

Weights I never thought I would be able to lift were regular training.

It is your responsibility to uncover what is waiting inside of you.

Don’t spend life being average and thinking that sitting in front of the TV with beer and chips is the gold standard. It’s not.

You can be better than you think.

You can be better for yourself, not for anyone else out there.

Will you?

Leave a comment

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade. As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

- Lukáš

You've known for a while now.

This week, I wrote about why we keep avoiding it, and what it costs us when we do.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. Most valuable currency

2. Don’t listen to that voice

3. Motivated, or not

4. Be prepared to sacrifice

5. The conversation you keep replaying

6. You know what to do…

7. You know the answer

1. Most valuable currency

You need to trust yourself first.

Don’t expect others to trust you before you trust yourself.

Self-trust is earned by life experiences.

You are earning that trust by doing what you said you are going to do.

If you said to yourself you are going to do 100 push-ups a day and then you hit day 3 and you skip it, you can’t trust yourself.

If you said you are going to eat healthier and you hit the second week and you went full on pizza again, you can’t trust yourself.

It’s hard, and our mind is often telling us that it’s fine to not do it, it’s fine to skip it, it’s fine.

But it’s not.

You need to do the hard things you said you are going to do because if you can’t trust your own words why the hell would anyone else trust you.

When we are young, we don’t really pay that much attention to this because things tend to pass quite easily.

But what happens if you decide to start a business or a project?

What then?

You can’t build a business, your body, or your mind without trusting yourself and your words first.

Self-trust is the most valuable currency you can own because it’s very hard to earn and very easy to lose if you are not careful with how you make decisions and navigate life.

Is there something you said you are going to do but drifted off?

2. Don’t listen to that voice

There are days in our lives when we made plans but forgot to do some important things and we realize literally before going to bed that it needs to be done.

There are going to be questions on those days, questions and an inner voice telling you things like:

Do I really need to do it today?

What if I just skip today and catch up tomorrow?

It’s okay today, I will do it another time.

I’m tired, it’s late.

Don’t listen to that voice.

You know very well that if you push and finish today it will be easier tomorrow and there are going to be no regrets.

You do the opposite, it will probably haunt you somewhere in the back of your mind.

Because you knew that you could have done better and you had the opportunity to do so.

So do what’s necessary to achieve the things you set yourself up to do.

Is your mind trying to convince you “that it is okay” as well?

3. Motivated, or not

Are you motivated to go after your goals today?

Because motivation comes and goes.

It can come from inside or outside.

Sometimes it lasts for a long time, sometimes for one hour.

When a person puts the whole strategy on achieving something into the hands of motivation it is almost predetermined that it will not lead to any success.

Why?

Because without the discipline you are not going to do a shit.

Discipline doesn’t care if you are motivated or not. Discipline is about doing what is necessary to achieve the desired outcome, every day.

Not only on days or moments when you feel motivated or feel like doing it.

Discipline is not forgiving, does not promise you anything, it will test you, your hard work, and your power of mind without a clear promise at the end of the journey.

But if you sustain that discipline, if you endure the moments of sickness, tiredness, unmotivation, and unwillingness to do anything, you will be rewarded.

By all means, this is not about the hustle culture. It is not about burning yourself to the point from which there is no way back.

The perfect example is working out.

If you never went to the gym and suddenly today you want to lift 100kg on a deadlift you are going to hurt yourself big time because your body, and neither your mind, is prepared to endure that.

But if you go to the gym 4 or 5 times a week, start eating continuously better food, and work on yourself to build muscles and your mind.

Sooner or later you are going to hit that 100kg on a deadlift without any problem.

It might take a couple of tries and errors before actually landing it properly but you will hit that.

The same goes in life.

If you discipline yourself to work on something without excuses you’ll build yourself up to the point where the goal you were aiming for is much closer.

With some tries and errors you will eventually hit that goal you are aiming for.

The truth is that you can be motivated as much as you want but without the actual work and discipline you wouldn’t land far.

How do you approach your goals?

4. Be prepared to sacrifice

Doing hard things in life is necessary.

Most of what you want to achieve lies on the other side of hard things you are avoiding to do.

Maybe it’s the hard conversation, maybe it’s quitting your job, maybe it’s getting in shape, or maybe it’s reconnecting with your family.

I believe that we are often, especially in today’s world, drawn to the easy things, the shiny objects.

It’s easier than ever to see everyone succeeding on social media which causes us to think that if they have it we can too.

But what we often forget is that social media is only a showcase of someone’s life, not necessarily the complete truth.

We then get attached to the outcome of others.

We think that they just got where they are overnight so we can too.

We over-romanticize the journey and final destination while underestimating the effort it takes to get there.

That, my friend, is the recipe for burnout and disappointment in your life.

Sooner or later you would hit roadblocks you never thought about, things start getting hard, and you are suddenly doubting your choice because the outcome doesn’t seem to be that sweet anymore when the journey is so hard.

Choose your own journey based on yourself.

Be prepared to sacrifice in order to achieve something greater because nothing in life comes blindly after you all alone without any effort.

Yes, there are cases and occasions when some achievements happen easier than others but betting your life on getting lucky like your high school friend is a match you lost before it even started.

What is the hard thing you were avoiding lately?

5. The conversation you keep replaying

You know that thing you keep going back to in your head.

That conversation you haven’t had yet but you’ve already rehearsed a hundred times.

You play it out in your mind. You imagine what they will say. You imagine how it could go wrong. You imagine the silence after.

And then you don’t do it.

So it stays there. Sitting in your chest. Coming back every night right before you fall asleep.

You might be asking yourself, why is it so hard?

Why can’t I just say what I have on my mind and on my heart?

Am I going to hurt this person, or even worse, am I going to lose this person?

What if that really happens?

What will my life be like afterwards?

Where are my next steps going to go?

Am I just being too picky, or is this really bothering me?

How do I find out what is behind these thoughts?

Am I going to wish that I haven’t done it, or am I going to be happy that it is finally off my shoulders?

There are countless questions like these wandering through our minds daily, sometimes even hourly.

They can’t let us sleep or think about something else, yet we still don’t do anything about them.

We believe that if we endure long enough this is going to go away on its own.

That somehow we are going to get it off our minds, that we forget somehow, that we put it under the carpet and continue to live happily.

These thoughts and feelings you are holding inside of you and trying to avoid, they are going to keep creeping on you.

I get it, sometimes it is really hard to tell something very deep to someone you love.

You know inside of you that you are going to hurt someone you don’t want to hurt.

But at the same time you also know that keeping this to brew inside of you is hurting you in the end, and you don’t want to hurt yourself either.

You know how it feels, you remember that bitter feeling from last time, how hard it was, and you are trying to avoid this now at all costs.

But by avoiding this you are actually causing yourself even greater harm.

So do yourself a favor.

Give yourself a final deadline, take a deep breath, and go do it.

Life is not fair, nor always nice, but one thing is certain.

Hard times create easier times in the future.

These hard lessons need to be learned because without them, how do we know who we really are and what we really want?

6. You know what to do…

What is fear?

Fear can have many faces.

There are universal fears that are scary for almost all of us except some special or trained individuals.

Most of us fear death.

It is the unknown about which we have only questions. We ask ourselves what is after we die and no one really knows the answer.

There are religions which are talking about places like heaven or hell where we are supposed to end up once this life is over.

But there is no certainty that it is like that.

So we are left in this life to choose our beliefs.

Most of us follow some kind of religion because it provides hope and certainty to their people.

On the other hand, some of us don’t have a strict religion.

We believe in different things, like cosmos, energy, higher consciousness, and other things that make sense to people.

In the essence, we are all believing in something.

It doesn’t matter what, even if it’s not believing anything, that is belief in its core too.

What does it have to do with fear?

As for death, there are many other situations that scare us.

They are different from one person to another.

Some of us fear heights, some of us fear tight places, some of us fear the dark, and some of us fear being home alone.

There can be countless amounts of fears a person can have, some irrational, some rational.

But one thing which all of them have in common is the hope that the person has deep inside that it’s going to be okay.

It is also an understanding of reality.

We don’t live in fear every second of our lives because our lives became easy, predictable, and safe for most people around the world.

When we encounter fear in our daily life we hope that it’s going to be alright again.

We don’t hope for the fear or the situation causing it to stay there forever.

Hope is something that is telling us that doing more in our life is going to bring us something good.

We hope that we can be successful at our job, we hope that we meet our future spouse, we hope that we made good decisions, we hope.

But just hope is not enough, the same as motivation is not enough.

It takes the courage and discipline to keep going to achieve what we dreamed of and hope for.

Do yourself the favor and go outside your comfort zone.

We are all going to die one day so why not use the time in between to do epic shit.

You know what to do…

7. You know the answer

Don’t be afraid to look deep inside of you and learn more about yourself.

There are plenty of people in this world who go through life without properly knowing themselves.

I believe it’s one of the biggest misfortunes of life to not have a proper understanding of who we really are deep down.

It is often a painful path at first to understand all of this and be willing to go even deeper.

But the question I have for you is: what is more painful?

To go deep inside of you and face your traumas and fears but come out more at peace and with a clearer direction for your life.

Or go blindly through life ignoring ourselves from inside to end up on the death bed realizing we never knew and understood who we really are.

You already know what the answer to this question is and I’ll leave you to sit with it.

Leave a comment

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade. As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

- Lukáš

This week, I wrote about the difference, and about what happens when you stop carrying things that were never yours to hold.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. The choice is yours

2. Within your control

3. Winning, or losing, support your friends

4. Negative visualization

5. Excitement of a new project

6. Feeling proud

7. The Jersey lesson

1. The choice is yours

How do you distinguish between “pain” (inevitable) and “suffering” (optional)?

We are ultimately choosing our own suffering.

The fact that every person on this planet has experienced pain is obvious. The pain is inevitable.

We all have experienced all sorts of pain from childhood to adulthood.

Either physical or emotional pain, both of them are parts of life. They are not nice but they are not going to disappear.

But what about suffering? How do we distinguish between these two?

Let’s look at the breakup.

When you break up with your boyfriend or girlfriend you feel heartbroken.

If you really loved this person and cared for them you are going to feel strong emotional pain. Some people say they feel even physical pain after such an experience.

This is pain. It’s inevitable. We all feel some kind of it.

But what happens after the breakup?

We have two routes a person can take.

The first is the path of learning from this experience and taking the good with you forward.

Sooner or later you are going to understand that there is more than one relationship you are going to have in your life.

It’s painful, sometimes for weeks or months, but eventually you understand the lesson and you are more than happy to move on.

The second path is the path of suffering.

This is the unnatural part which is chosen by you to follow.

It is never-ending trying to get the person back.

Listening to sad songs to feel even more sad.

Harming yourself.

Feeding yourself the dreams that you two are going to be back together.

You are dragging yourself behind willingly without any reason.

If the person would like to be with you then you would either never break up in the first place or would come back immediately.

The lesson from this is usually even stronger because it’s much more heavy.

Eventually, and hopefully, you move on. You learn the lesson that self-imposed suffering is not leading anywhere, in this case.

I think there is a special place for pain and suffering in the mindset of people who use these two as fuel to achieve something extraordinary.

Especially those who use it to fuel physical performance.

It’s almost alien how a person can turn something so strong and painful into power.

But this path is not for everyone.

The choice is yours.

2. Within your control

What does it mean to focus only on what is “within your control” when everything feels chaotic?

Things in life tend to get chaotic from time to time.

Sometimes it’s just one week, other times it’s months.

When everything feels chaotic, it is hard to focus on things which are in our control because nothing feels like it would be in control or even close to it.

This period of life is often very overwhelming. You can feel like there is no way out.

I often describe this feeling like drowning.

During this time, it feels like even breathing takes more effort than ever before.

What do you do when something like this happens?

Try to slow down. Find time to step back and reflect on past days, weeks, or months.

What is the thing that has been stealing energy from you?

Sit down with your own thoughts, write a journal, or meditate. The only way out is in.

Things might feel like they are only external and that the world is suddenly against you, but this is rarely the root of the problem.

Yes, sometimes life is not fair, and it happens that many external things occur at once. But it is the self-representation of these things which gives them the power.

If you carefully examine what is happening inside of you, you might discover the underlying cause of your chaotic life period.

Maybe it is the relationship which is making everything look harder.

Maybe your boss is sitting on you for no reason and it’s subconsciously making your life miserable.

Or maybe it’s your habits which you said to yourself 6 months ago you were going to change, and nothing happened, so it feels like you are going against yourself every day and can’t escape.

Once you take these steps to see what’s happening inside of you, you will find what is within your control.

This realization and finding of the root cause will allow you to decrease the amount of chaos that is happening in your life right now, at least to the most controllable level.

Outside things are always going to be there. It might just be a chaotic year in your job or family because of a lot of changes.

You can keep at least a way more down-to-earth perspective once you discover the inner catalyst or problem which is multiplying everything from the outside so much.

How do you feel lately? Are things within your control, or are they chaotic?

3. Winning, or losing, support your friends

How do you support a friend who is winning when you feel like you are losing?

I believe that it is important to support friends under any circumstances.

It doesn’t matter if I’m losing right now, this person is still my friend and deserves the support.

Would it mean that just because my friend is winning and I’m losing right now, it is my friend’s fault? I don’t think so.

During our life all of us go through periods of ups and downs.

It just doesn’t make sense to support others only when I’m winning.

I want my friends to succeed all the time, and I believe that they want the same for me.

There are many ways to support your friend.

Small talk, pep talk, deep talk, short voice message, long text, FaceTime call, or even a greeting card with your words.

These are all the spoken and written ways to support a friend, and all of them count.

You can support a friend by showing up for them at their football match, or being there at their public presentation, or by standing in the crowd and shouting for them when they pass you while they run their first marathon.

There are countless ways to support a friend.

Do what you can at the moment. There is no right or wrong.

Friendships are not about a scoreboard of who supported the other more or less.

Friendships are about being true to yourself and showing up in your best possible way for your friends.

Friendships are for the long run, so choose your company wisely.

What is your way to support your friends?

4. Negative visualization

What is the value of “negative visualization” in a world that is obsessed with toxic positivity?

Negative visualization sounds to many people like something really negative.

The phrase itself carries this feeling like it would be something bad.

When we look aside from how it sounds, we come to the fact that it’s a beneficial and realistic practice to do.

It’s not about not trusting yourself, or diminishing your dreams even before you started working on them.

No. It is understanding of how life works sometimes.

We can make all the plans but the next day everything can be turned around because of something unexpected which we didn’t count on before.

We aim to achieve big things, and we should, because human potential and capabilities are tremendously huge.

But at the same time, using negative visualization helps us be prepared for the worst.

It’s like calculated risk. I’m not going to jump off the cliff to the sea without checking the landing area, rocks, and depth of the water, or without other people’s tips on whether I’m going to kill myself with this jump.

In business you do business plans, competition analyses, and the rest.

You don’t go into a business which might be oversaturated in your region unless you have some competitive advantage.

It’s thinking about the worst which allows us to see the best possible outcome too.

There is no only black or only white.

There is black and white and other hundreds of colours, and life has them all prepared for you.

Have you ever tried to use negative visualization to prepare yourself for something good?

5. Excitement of a new project

How do you keep going when the initial excitement of a new project fades away?

I will remind myself why I started with it in the first place.

For me it’s especially hard to resist new “shiny objects.” They call it the shiny object syndrome.

Obviously I just gave myself this diagnosis on my own, but in recent years I noticed that I get extremely excited about new projects and opportunities.

What I want to do at that moment is to put everything else on the side and pour my entire being into this new thing.

I’m talking sitting on it for entire days, going to bed late because it’s almost impossible to stop myself from not doing it or working on it.

I’m basically obsessed the moment something excites me.

On one hand it is advantageous in many ways because it gives you this unlimited energy to pour there.

On the other hand it’s a devil’s loop.

It happened so many times that I didn’t finish what I started.

Sometimes because of work and other responsibilities.

Other times I actually had no time for it and didn’t even start at the end. Just invested money, prepared everything, but didn’t manage to start.

I’m trying to get much better at this, making more conscious decisions, and thinking more strategically before jumping into new projects. But at the same time I’m definitely still not the best.

That brings me to the question.

How do you keep going when the initial excitement of a new project fades away?

There are two options in my opinion.

First, you don’t. You pass the project to someone else, or you abandon it completely and move on to do something else.

This path is not always bad because there are most certainly projects which are not serving us and not bringing us anywhere.

But be careful to not just jump from one to another ending up not finishing anything.

Second, you remind yourself why you started in the first place.

Like me with this project of writing 100 words for 1000 days, hoping to build the writing habit that will lead to me being the author of a book one day.

There are going to be days when you want to quit, when you feel lazy, when everything else seems to be more important, when you travel, when you are tired, when you are sick.

Before I started this project I tried to remind myself of this fact many times.

I was trying to prepare myself that not every day is going to be filled with endless motivation of sitting behind a computer and pouring my heart into this keyboard.

But I know why I’m doing this and that single thought is the one which keeps me going.

Remind yourself why you started.

What was the fire inside of you that felt so exciting that you couldn’t stop thinking about this project and then finally started? What is the achievement at the end of this quest?

This is your gasoline which you pour into your tank when you think you are running on empty.

Keep going. You got this.

How do you feel with those moments when the excitement fades away?

6. Feeling proud

What was the time you felt proud of yourself for a reason no one else saw?

Let me answer first here.

I felt proud of myself many times.

It is definitely an important skill and technique to practice.

Times when I felt proud of myself for reasons no one else saw are the minor ones.

After a tough day, being proud of myself that I managed to get through.

After a hard workout when I wasn’t sure if I would make it, and I did it.

After tough conversations which I was nervous about but managed to do it.

I believe that there are more moments to be proud of ourselves than we think.

It’s not only about the big milestones. It is about the small every day wins which keep us going forward.

I’m especially guilty of being one of those overachievers who, when achieving something, basically just move on to another thing without proper acknowledgement.

It’s like saying: Well cool, I achieved it, what was the next thing on the list?

I’m trying to get better at noticing the smaller things more often and giving myself credit for achieving something.

Because as I said, it’s not always about the big milestones. It’s about the small every day wins that keep us going.

And don’t forget to be proud of yourself during the journey, not only at the end of it.

I would love to hear about a recent moment when you felt really proud of yourself.

7. The Jersey lesson

What is one failure you experienced that actually set you up for later success?

Let me tell you one vulnerable story of mine.

Early in my 20s, right after graduating high school, I had an experience that influenced me greatly.

Back then, my dream was to become the best bartender in the world.

Not a small dream for a 20-year-old guy that just finished high school.

Me and my friend with the same dream found a job in the UK.

All we could think of was London and the epic cocktail culture there. It was a dream to land there one day and make my way to the top.

But back then we were not staying in London. We were heading south, to the small island called Jersey.

They have famous cows there, but that’s pretty much it.

We found a job in a bar where we wanted to get better at speaking English and kickstart our bartender careers.

I had this huge vision for me, this master plan of how my life is going to go in the next 5 years. Step by step, everything was set.

Not that fast forward, it took less than a week to fly back home from there.

The job was nothing like promised over the interview. The apartment was kind of shit. And the owner tried to steal our passports and offer us work at his painting company to earn some money.

In one word, a terrible experience back then for young men trying to enter the world of adults.

Looking back on this experience, it ended up being a really great one because I learned a lot from it and very early on.

My dreams were not completely crushed, but reality hit hard.

My master plan had suddenly dissolved in the clouds of Jersey as the plane took off.

I found myself back at my parents’ house, questioning my life and what I’m supposed to do right now.

This experience taught me that life will almost never go as we planned.

There are always going to be some bumps on the road, missed turns, blind streets, and other things making the ride through life not as smooth as you thought.

But that’s the beauty of the journey. If it wouldn’t be like this, you wouldn’t have stories to tell, you wouldn’t have experiences to learn from.

This experience was one of those that set me up for later success.

Not only in bartending but in life in general.

I didn’t become the best bartender in the world, nor the best bartender in my country, but I managed to compete against some of the best ones and ended up being in the top 5 during one of the World Class competitions in Slovakia.

It was and still is a big achievement for that part of me and my younger self which wanted to be the best at that craft.

To learn such a valuable lesson early on was life-changing for the rest of my 20s.

I learned how the real world out there really is sometimes. It is cruel and unforgiving, but at the same time it is beautiful and full of things and places to experience, and lessons to be learned so you can become the better version of yourself.

What is your failure that set you up for later success?

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I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade. As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

- Lukáš