Taking Things to the Grave...

Taking things to the grave

I had a few secrets I wanted to take to the grave.

A very big one was that I stole at work. 

At age 18, I did my social service. That summer, I worked as a guardian in a full-time school. One day, I walked down the hallway. I saw a black Playstation Portable sticking out of a backpack. I grabbed it and stuffed it into my jeans. Then I walked to my car and put it in the trunk.

My heart pounded and in my mind I justified this to be a right action somehow.

As you can probably guess, I had some really serious issues in my teenage years.  

I went back to the school and walked into a turmoil.

“Kevin’s playstation is missing,” said the head teacher. 

“Really?” I asked.

“We need to find it. Will you take charge of that?”

“Sure,” I said. 

The culprit was never found.

To shorten this story, I sold the playstation on eBay to buy myself new Nike shoes. And I lied to my parents about the whole thing. At that time I had a collection of 35 pairs. I did not wear most of them.

They gave me some sense of self-worth and boosted my “gangster ego.”

The weight of keeping secrets

Years went by and I was committed to taking this situation to the grave at all cost. 

Taking things to the grave seemed to be a good option.

I had buried this memory deep down and kept myself busy. 

I now worked in auditing for investment banks in New York City.

How ironic.

Somehow, I never trusted myself. I also never had money. The shadows of my past kept haunting me.
Like boogeyman, they were there but never in plain sight. I tried all sorts of self-help. I donated money. I watched a lot of Tony Robbins. I woke up at 5AM. I talked to women on the streets. I tried to reprogram my mind. And did forgiveness meditations.

Nothing really helped in the long run.

One day in New York, I was severely depressed and saw no way out.

That night, I lay awake in some sort of half dream-state. Suddenly, I remembered all the situations in my life where I had stolen, cheated on girlfriends, lied, etc. I was not looking for them on purpose. These memories just came to my conscious attention. 

That was before I had ever been to any Radical Honesty workshop.

If you ever wanted to know why I got into this work, this is the reason. 

I jumped up and grabbed a notepad. I wrote these memories down. That was seven years after I had stolen the Playstation at work. I knew that I had to confront this situation and tell the truth about the theft. I did not yet know how. But one thing was clear to me right there:

Energetically, I was already half in the grave due to the weight of my secrets.

And if I wanted to be happy, I had some serious cleaning up to do. 

Fast Forward

Roughly a year later, after my first Radical Honesty workshop with Brad Blanton, I found myself sitting in the car in front of the school. I was so scared, I could not move for minutes. On my first attempt, I just drove to the school and circled around, feeling all my feelings. Heavy stuff.

This time, I was committed to coming clean. I knew that this fear pointed towards the path.

I counted down from 10, got out the car, and walked towards the entrance of the school. 

That was the most scared I had ever been in my life up to that point. 

I went to the principal’s office. She remembered me. I told her the whole story. The words just came out of my mouth somehow. My senses got shaper. To my shock, she actually was encouraging and nice. I cried.

That was the last thing I expected. 

In my mind, I thought I would be expelled from society, or worse. 

She said: “Of course what you did is shitty, and I am happy you are telling me.”

That night I slept like a baby. 

Later on I talked to the mother of the child whose playstation I had stolen. The principal gave her my number and she was kind enough to actually call me. I’m getting sad writing this now. She said that I can forgive myself and stop carrying that load around. Something shifted for good in my system.

Those two talks transformed my life and especially my relationship to money.

I had dug myself out of the grave I had been in for years, one truth at a time.

The Power of Completion Work

The Power of Radical Honesty Completion Work

This story illustrates the Radical Honesty Completion process. It’s the work of revisiting situations from the past and completing them by having honest, vulnerable conversations with the people involved. For me, having these difficult conversations was crucial for reclaiming my creative power and joy.

Enter Marvin:

I was around 3 years old.

We lived in a shared house in Oer-Erkenschwick, a small town in Western Germany as a family of four: me, my parents, and my brother. I just started to form my first memories at that time. For instance, I remember my brother and me chasing each other around the house while my mother was cleaning.

One day, my mother and I went on a small hike in the nearby forest.

We did that almost daily.

When we came back, my brother was gone. That means we found his room completely emptied out.

My mother was shocked. She did not know what was happening. I don’t have clear memories, but I can still feel tightness around my heart and shoulder as I think back. When my father came home, he was stunned and agitated. I remember my parents chain-smoking and arguing. It was unpleasant.

I was alone in my room, feeling sad. That became a theme for me.

Where is my brother?

I kept asking my parents.

They did not tell me. They did not know, I belief.

I do recall my mother's face – I’d describe it as sad. Pitiful. Hurt.

My father was more angry. He smoked a lot. My mom did too. She tried to be present with me. I could tell something was troubling her. Something was in the air: an unspoken tension; very thick air.

My brother never returned.

In fact, the next time I saw him was in a courthouse. He sued my parents. I was not allowed to greet him. My mom held me back. I feel pain in my shoulders as I write this. It must have been a terrible experience.

And then, I did not see him for 11 years.

I sometimes wondered what happened to him.

My parents would not tell me. At least I did not feel like they were telling me the truth.

And so, a person I loved and who was there for me was no longer there – for no apparent reason.

I continued living a brother-less life… Until I was fifteen years old.

He returned…

One afternoon, the phone rang.

I do remember this call, it was a very important one.

It was the first time my brother called; I haven’t seen him since the day in court.

My mom was euphoric and wanted me to do the same.

I was cold and indifferent. Honestly, I could not care less. So I thought.

Days later, he stood in our hallway. He carried a baby in his arm.

My parents pretended as if nothing ever happened, as if he was not gone for eleven years.

From that day, he was part of our family again.

He came to visit us more often. He brought the baby: my nephew.

I felt no connection to him.

Some years passed. I was in university. My brother had two more kids. I skipped most family meetings. I said I needed to study. Or meet friends. Which were all excuses in retrospect.

I felt guilty for that, and I kept doing it. I had no way out.

The Weight of Unfinished Business

I was not aware of how much this situation affected me for over twenty years.

I had build a thick character armour around this open wound to not see my pain.

In reality, brother leaving like he did weighted heavily of my being. I did not trust other humans, especially men. I never got too close to anyone, for they might abandon me. And sometimes, I unconsciously recreated situations of betrayal or abandonment to proof to myself that I’m better off alone. I also did not allow myself to fully love someone, for they might just split overnight and leave me broken hearted.

I did not know any of that consciously, until I actually learned about Radical Honesty.

Sadly, our unfinished emotional business holds us back more than we can be conscious of.

Most people’s lives are perfectly orchestrated to distract themselves from their pain.

We need to talk…

Some weeks after my first Radical Honesty workshop it dawned on me:

“I have to go and talk to my brother.”

I hesitated for a few days.

My mind came up with great excuses for not having the talk:

“Is this really necessary? I mean, he does not call you. You don’t need him in your life. He hurt you. He abandoned you. Why would you be vulnerable with someone like that?”

Luckily, I recognised these thoughts as mental manifestations of fear. And I knew that was a sign I really needed to have that conversation. Good for us, fear points the way towards blocked love in these cases.

After avoiding the call for a few more days, I had enough and could not fool anyone anymore.

I picked up the phone…

“I want to talk to you alone about something.” I said.

“I was waiting for the day you would say that,” he answered.

We agreed on a time and place to meet and talk.

Seeing a human being beyond my story

On the way, I was not sure how this would go.

My mind produced a thousand different scenarios of what might happen, including

• me being arrested by the police for being crazy.

• him just walking away.

• us getting into a fight.

• bla bla bla bla more fear bla bla

Nevertheless, I felt a sense of clarity and power in my body.

We met in a quiet cafe outside.

After some idle chit-chat, I took a deep breath and looked at him:

“I resent you for leaving home when I was three. I resent you for your absence.”

He looked at me. He did not speak. I said the same thing again. This time, with more anger in the expression. My vision went blurry. My body trembled. I said it a few more times with different words and also things like:

“I am sad that you left. I felt so alone without you.”

I kept feeling my body, trying to find the words that fit how I really felt inside.

After 7 minutes, I relaxed and sank back in my chair. My vision of him changed. For the first time, I saw him as a present-tense human being and not as the story I made of him. I appreciated him for a bunch of things. We talked for some more time, but the core body of the work happened for me within 5-10 minutes.

20 years of stories partly collapsed!

On my way home, I smelled new smells. I felt happy. And free.

A huge weight began to shift and partly fall off my shoulders, making space for new connections.

That story I had held on to for years gobbled up large parts of my creative potential. Once I went back in to experience the underlying feelings fully, I had more room for new creative acts. I started writing and publishing. I started my first business. I knew the value of Radical Honesty Completion Work.

Unmute Yourself!

Unmute yourself

For a long period of my life I felt muted. 

I seemed unable to reach-out and say what I really wanted, or what was really true for me. 

My actual experience was entirely different from what I communicated.

The second time I lived in New York City, I worked for a large media company on Broadway, again. What seemed golden on the outside was a prison on the inside. I dreaded my life, felt out of place and without meaningful connections or purpose. To myself, I was a robot: my voice lacked depth. I smiled perpetually. My communication was automated:

“Hey Donnie. Almost Friday. Will you go watch The Game?”

My inner voice seemed muted – my actual self buried.

Somehow, I could not bring my truth to the surface and kept hiding in roleplay.

The times I lost my voice

But why was I muted? And how come I hid my inner voice?

For me, this was largely connected to a bunch of unresolved stuff from the past.

One evening I came home to my shared apartment in Harlem.

I took a nap and fell into a half-dream. In that dream, I was held by some dark human-like shadow. My chest and mouth covered by its hands. I was unable to break-free and scream. 

When I woke up, I felt strange.

In the dream, I seemed to be both: the one holding and the one held back. 

I took my journal and scribbled “where did I lose my voice?”

I had written down the same question a year ago in South Africa, but at that time it was too depressing to go through with it. That evening in New York, I had enough leverage: I knew I would lose my intuition and integrity if I wouldn't face myself honestly. I would slowly lose my soul, I thought. Plus, life did not seem to get any better despite winning in the status game. 

And so I opened the floodgates of my mind...

I remembered:

How I cheated on my partners and lied about it
How angry I was at my parents
How I stole a few things at work… and from my parents 
How I suppressed my actual feelings towards one friend for years
How I lied to former bosses about why I quit my work
How badly I treated one friend 
How I disciplined my ex girlfriends dog when I was actually angry at her
How I was hurt and punched in school

And a lot more.

These were some of the times I fell mute and lost parts of my power and integrity. Or at least the big things I really avoided looking at. And, of course, there were many more situations from my past that I did not have conscious access to as I wrote my list. 

And even more that pre-dated my memory and language. 

But these were some of the big things I left incomplete in my life, and remembered in that moment. And with every moment that I hid, where I showed-up incomplete, I muted myself further and gave more power to pretending and roleplay. 

Let’s take a moment to reflect.

What are your incompletions? Where did you lose your voice? 

Or where did you express a phony voice?

If you can, allow yourself to have a deep and honest look at your past.

This does not always have to be big stuff. Oftentimes, a combination of small pretenses over time, or habitual role-playing, can have a lasting effect on our self expression. Developing awareness of the times we have lost our voice is the first step towards reclaiming it.

Okay, so what can we do from here?

Reclaiming what has been lost along the way

Let’s look at what that means. 

To me, all the above memories seemed incomplete. That means that the memory was not accompanied by the actual, true feeling. A sense of dread and powerlessness accompanied them, mixed with negative self-talk and judgments. There was a lot of shame behind each of them, and with that shame, I kept myself muted. I thought I didn't deserve a good life. 

Now, this was a vicious circle: it led me to more of the same behaviour. 

I knew I had to resolve those situations at the source and free myself from the weight of my emotions around those memories.

I am aware that we are only communicating one-way via this article. That’s why I will just briefly share what I did to get complete on those incomplete moments without too many details for now. Then I will show you three low-risk starting points you can act on right now towards reclaiming parts of your voice. 

I decided to have face-2-face conversations with the actual people involved. 

In those conversations I told the truth about the past situation and revealed what I actually did or how I actually felt. I brought the situation back by honestly speaking about it. 

This way, I integrated the memories and reclaimed parts of my voice and power to act. After each conversation, my emotional charge/shame/anger lowered. I felt clearer after every one. Those memories were now complete. 

I would not recommend doing this without some preparational work and ongoing support (mainly in getting access to your bodily sensations and developing skills in noticing).

I prepared myself by participating in a 7-Day Radical Honesty workshop. 

However, there are three things you can do, right now, without a workshop: 

1. Sit with memories and feelings

2. Share with trusted friends 

3. Cultivate the pause 

Sit with memories and feelings

A big part of unmuting myself was to simply allow the repressed memories and feelings to come to the surface. In the past, I would have distracted myself by drinking, partying, or gaming. In the process of getting complete, I sat on my sofa and brought the memories back to my mind.

You can try this out for yourself: schedule some time for yourself and block all communication. Then close your eyes and go into the memory. Really welcome it. Allow more details to come back. Feel the feelings in your body. Invite even more details in, and feel the feelings. If you want to cry, cry. If you want to scream, scream. Really go with what comes up. Don’t try to figure anything out or fix it. Just be there.

Staying with the unlocked bodily sensations here is key. It is normal that strong sensations will sometimes come up. They will pass again. Try to stay with whatever comes up, if you can. They are just sensations.

Share with trusted friends 

If you are lucky enough to have trusted friends, ask them to sit with you and support you by listening to you for a while. To the degree that you can, share with them how you lost your voice. Reveal some of the details you would keep hidden. 

This is similar to what you did above, but this time, you share with others. 

Shame can only survive in secrecy. 

This sharing will likely increase your physical sensations in your body. Again, just let them be there and allow yourself to sit with the discomfort as much as you can. 

Cultivate the Pause

To interrupt my auto-pilot communication, I learned to cultivate a pause. This means I practiced letting things land before I responded. Now, this does not mean an uncomfortably long break and a stare, but just enough time to collect my resources and “feel into it”.

Taking a short pause before talking helps me become aware of more things. This way, my communication includes more aspects than just the obvious surface level thoughts.

Transmuting your communication 

Transmuting your communication is a process, not a magic trick.

For me, this process consists of two continuous practices:

One is completing unfinished business in my life to free-up space. The other is to tell my truth on a moment-to-moment basis to get grounded and worry less. Both are vital.

If you want to learn how to tell your truth in a direct, vulnerable way and experience yourself in an exciting way, I recommend coming to one of my workshops in Radical Honesty. These are dedicated spaces where you can just be yourself and say whatever comes up for you whilst being guided to be direct. 

We will work on developing awareness on how you are keeping yourself muted. And we will develop stretches for you to try out and regain access to your lost potentials. 

For now, I will leave you with this:

Try to be a little bit more honest in the next few days. Watch some of my videos for more support. Even saying “no” where you would usually say “maybe” is a good first stretch. Let me know how you are getting on with this practice in the comments below or by emailing me at...

Unleash your Creative Potential

Unblock your Creative Potential

There are two truths hidden in the headline of this article.
First, you have creative potential. Creativity is nothing you need to gain or learn, but is your very human nature. Second, at least a part of your creative potential is currently bound and not actively available to you. 

This article is dedicated to freeing up space inside of you for creation. 

To begin with, I will share some of my background so you know how my life was before I arrived at the underlying realisation that helped me create 2 books, write 60-70 songs, build nourishing relationships all over the world, create happiness, and design workshops within 7 years. 

I've written this so you can see what is possible for you.

...even if you are stuck neck-deep right now!

Cold and filled with terrors...

I remember a grey and cold winter about a decade ago. I worked for KPMG, the auditing giant. I rented a small studio in Frankfurt, had an assortment of tailored black suits, and a spot in an underground car park for my polished car. I remember barely sleeping, feeling lonely and scared. I had no friends in town. I watched porn a lot. My eyes twitched in the dark. 

I dreaded waking up. I felt lifeless, zombified. Empty.

Driving to work – a depressingly dark building in a suburb – everything was linked to bleak outcomes. My mind was filled with terrors, compulsively obsessing: “next time you drive past this street sign, you will think about your parents dying”. At work, I smiled and then went and hid in the toilet to cry, masturbate, or both. And then continued smiling and following orders. 

To summarise this depressing time of my life, I was quite fu**ed up. 

I dreamt about doing something more creative. Something with people.

But I continued living a shadow-existence for the next 4 years, pretending and lying, not getting any closer to my vague dream of being more creative and with people. One day in yet another corporate job, I doodled logos for my imaginary author alter-ego into my journal. 

Yet I was not creating anything. Or… was I ...?

You. A creative genius?

That question slowly paved the way for a game-changing realisation. 

I would love to tell you my turning point as a dramatic, satori-like twist. Yet, this would not be true here. Arriving at the realisation I am about to share was a slow and steady process, fuelled by meditation, journaling, traveling, workshops, psychedelics, and telling the truth…

...and a whole lot of philosophising about creativity!

Here is what I believe is true about you, right now. 

You are always creating. 

Right now, your life is a genius creative act. At any given second, you are the creative powerhouse of your life. Literally, you can never not create your reality.

You create all your joys. And you create your downs. And your last failed relationship. And your dissatisfaction at work. The truth is that all these situations take effort, energy, and ability to create. And you are the creator behind them, making them real for you.

Even scarcity is a rich creation.

Being dissatisfied for days on end might be a more difficult creation than writing a book.

You might not view any of the above as pleasant creations, yet they are creative acts.

Let’s go a bit more in-depth here.

Reactive vs. Active Creation

What do you reading this article and Michaelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel have in common? You are both human. And as such, you are both creative geniuses in your own regard. Sure, the content of what you create might be different, yet you are both creative masters at the same time, fueled by the same breath and heartbeat, living the same moment. 

There has never been a moment in your life where you were not creative. 

Even if you tell yourself that you are not creative, this is, in fact, quite a creative story to create. And it’s genius to hold this idea in your head for days on end, and make yourself believe it. 

Now I can imagine you might be wondering...

But why would I create all this stuff that I don’t like? Why do I feel so bad?

I get it. This was the same question I had. And even today when I don’t want to take responsibility for my life, I take refuge in the idea of being a passive receiver. 

So let’s look at the Michelangelo example again. 

What’s the difference between you two?

Likely, you are more or less reactively creating your life, driven by the past and other’s expectations. You might not even think that you are creative (which, as we now know, takes creativity to create). He is more in charge of his creative faculties, stirred forward by vision. 

Yet, you are both equal in your ability to create. Only the content varies. 

What sets you and your favorite artist apart is not that they are more creative, as we will see in the next chapter. What sets you apart is reactive versus active creation.

Creativity as your Nature

Let’s play a quick game.

Pick a random object in your proximity and point your finger at it.

Good. That’s where the object is, right now. And now, point to where you create this object. Where is the source of the object being the way it is? Inevitably, your finger has to point at your own head. This is where you create the object now and all your world, always.

At any given moment, you are the creative center of your world. 

You create your whole world inside of your own brain, fuelled by your senses. And you are the only person who sees the world the way you do. On this level, there is not a thing you can do to enhance or diminish your creativity. When you die, your world ends. Before that, you constantly create. You are the playwright, lead character, and spectator of your life, all at once.

And you might write a sad and depressing, or an uplifting story. It does not matter. The mechanics of creation stay the same. The only difference is if you are aware of your creative role, or not. 

Even now your brain creates this article, supported by your eyes and language-skills.

Where is the center of an infinite universe? Answer: In the brain, trying to answer the question. 

Shifting towards conscious creation

Okay, let’s take a breath here. 

Likely, you have not given yourself credit for the creations of your life, have you? If you are like me, your go-to strategy is seeing yourself on the receiving end of life. Life just happens and there is nothing I can do! But where do you create life happening to you?

Looking back at my story, I was unconsciously creating my life.

That means I was driven by my past bullshit and, without questioning, replaying the same loops. I had no perspective on my creative nature, no space between impulse and reaction. My mind was filled with negative self-talk and I made myself believe my self-defeating stories.

And despite this being unpleasant, it’s nevertheless quite creative. Isn’t it? 

My friend Brad Blanton once told me:

“You seem to think of yourself as a shit-sandwich. Yet when I look at you, I see you as a creative genius. So we have a pretty different idea about you. And I recommend you to try out my view for change and see how that feels.”

So what if you would see yourself as the creator of your world?

At this point, we have to quickly talk about control. Of course, being the creator of your world does not mean you are in control. You have no control over the outside world and what people tell you and how you feel and which thoughts come to you. Yet, you are creating your own experience. You are always the source of your experience. 

You are the creator of your world. And you are out of control. 

How does that make you feel?

Sit with that for a while and allow yourself to notice all your feelings and thoughts. 

In Part II, we will look at concrete ways to free-up space inside of you that are currently bound in your unconscious, creating, and re-creating based on your past. We will see how you can reclaim authority over your life and create more actively. And then it does not matter whether you set out to write the next great opera, start a family, or build your entrepreneurial dream business, if you chose to do so.