At 38 I have to say that the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my life come from the past 12 years.
In this time I’ve lived through the following:
- Got married to my beautiful wife Lydia.
- Moved to the USA and back to Sweden again.
- Co-founded an institution for higher education in Sweden
- Got a PhD in Religious Studies where I studied the role of rituals in human life
- Became a DAD. I have two girls and they are the GREATEST blessings of my life.
- I’ve taught and guided students and clients in different modalities and different domains.
Those are surface level (but important) accomplishments. That’s what you would read on my resumé.
But there’s always more to the story.
When I look back, I notice that there’s a tendency within me to long for self-transcendence and community.
At the same time, when I look back I notice that I’ve struggled with:
- Lack of clarity
- Self-confidence and self-worth
- Suppressed trauma
- People pleasing
- Dissociation (read trauma)
- And more
On the one side, I’ve noticed the longing for self-transcendence and community and on the other side I’ve noticed hindrances such as the ones described above.
For a long time I thought I had to get rid of the hindrances. I had to reject them.
This changed when I wrote my dissertation and started reading psychologists such as Scott Barry Kaufman, Abraham Maslow, Aaron Antonovsky, Viktor Frankl and Edit Eger and thinkers such as Soren Kierkegaard and Paolo Freire and many more.
What I discovered when I studied medieval texts and rituals was that the human condition was described as a duality. There was a longing to be good, a longing for community, a longing for love and expressions of the same. But in no text, in no ritual was this the only aspect of the human condition that was present.
No, the shadow was ever present. In contrast to the self-transcending expressions in the texts were the description of the brokenness of humanity. They were recognized and never rejected. They were recognized and fully embraced.
Self-transcendence was never about moving away from who you are, to some kind of imaginary world or utopia where you would stop being broken (read, human).
No, self-transcendence was about becoming yourself, truly yourself and in that process learning to treat yourself and others with utter compassion.
In fact, the process was much more about approaching life as a poet, with openness, curiosity and faith. Faith in the self-transcending tendencies you have within, faith in the community and faith in the relationships you’ve got in your communities.
I was awe-stricken when I started reading humanistic psychologists only to realize they were saying the same thing but with a slightly different language.
Accepting all of yourself, while working towards your higher self and self-transcending was crucial.
So here I am, realizing that we have an innate longing to self-transcend and recognizing that there are struggles and hindrances that keep us from our potential.
Self-transcendence is never about reaching an end point. Rather, it is a way of living based on our innate tendencies.
Today I recognize that’s what I’ve been doing my entire life. The truth of my own tendencies to live this way has unfolded over a long period of time. Meanwhile I also recognize that guiding others moving in this direction has been my life’s work.
This is what I do when I guide business owners:
- I help them reconnect with this tendency to grow beyond measure while accepting their humanity. To stay connected with their gut, intuition. To help them listen through the noise to that innate driving force and core of compassion and love so that their life of entrepreneurship and their personal life are aligned.
This is what I do when I guide parents:
- I help them connect with their innate ability to be a mother or a father to their children. I help them reconnect with their innate ability to help their kids trust their own guts. I help them become the safe base and haven from where their kids can explore themselves and the world.
This is what I do when I guide individuals who feel withdrawn from life:
- I help them re-engage with life and themselves by guiding them out of the stories that keep them stuck. By exploring their stories we often discover painful experiences, often traumatic, and through listening to their bodies’ sensations I guide them out and help them feel everything they need. Once that’s done they can re-emerge in life and live it fully and explore what they truly long for and find the courage and clarity to go for it.
All this to say that my task is to help you live a life of self-transcendence which is characterized by:
- Curiosity
- Creativity
- Safety
- Community
- Purpose
- Clarity
- Flow
The above is what a good life is about to me. The above is what entrepreneurship is about to me.