Who is the richest person you have ever met?

A while ago I was asked this question by someone. I didn't just have an answer. It became a deep thought. Actually, by the way, a very nice process.

The nicest thing about this question was it automatically started quickly to show me the movie of my life so far. All kinds of things suddenly came up and showed themselves again. Amazing to discover how much you still can remember if you take the time to watch that running movie.

My thoughts lingered for a while at the age of around fifteen. My father had his physiotherapy practice at home and he had several patients (clients) who lived far away from us and regularly came to visit him. Most of the time they had to wait for a while. And yes, his practice offered a waiting room as well but my mother always felt a bit pity on the people waiting and always offered coffee, tea and cookies in our living room for them. So, our private living room became more and more the waiting room. And her hospitality was not only there for the patients of my dad. Also, our milkman and baker, who at that time came to your house, nearly on a daily base were our visitors in mom’s ‘coffee shop’.

My father had a number of patients from a family. Father, mother and their son always came together every other week.

The son’s hobby was karting and always scored high in the national top ranking. He worked at their family business. They owned a garage and also ran an ambulance, coach and taxi services business. I was always amazed about the astonishing stories they told and especially about the wealth of jewelry that they wore around their fingers and wrists. Abundancy of money because business was running more than well and they had a lot of solid big customers including large hotel chains and Schiphol Amsterdam Airport. The wealth almost “sparkled" toward me.

And yet, when they were gone again, my mother often told me about the pity she had with them. I didn't understand that first that time. Often my mother, with her background as an actress, ‘replayed’ the stories to my sisters and me afterwards and we had to laugh a lot about it.

At some point I started to understand my mother's pity, despite the fun we sometimes had about the wonderful stories she made of it. Their life was not happy at all. Visit after visit to us was filled with a list of all sorts of problems and suffering because of their private and business life.

Now that I am writing this, I am sure they also saw (and used) the visit and therapy of my dad (and mom) as a kind of relief. Sharing their stories safely with someone who listened, did not immediately have an opinion or unsolicited advice, and who was outside their close "circuit".

Where I first saw them as super-rich, it turned out to be a great poverty with a lot of misery.

And in relation to that question from a few weeks ago, this memory shows me again that wealth is not at all in possessions and outward show. This insight began to come alive for me already at a young age through these stories from my father's customers and personal experiences.

Further on in the movie of my life, several "richest" people emerge. People I know from politics, government, the uniformed world, service clubs and so much more. The strange thing is that when I touched the situations in which I remembered them as ‘rich’ again, those thoughts immediately evaporate. This was and is no richness at all. Often simply laughable impressions and unreal life shows. I will not go into it any further.

The photo on this blog is from April this year when I was in India with my girlfriend. This poor boy, he begged in the streets, touched me deeply with his spontaneity. We only met and talked shortly. He was more than thankful after our chat and showed me his real inner richness and especially his pleasure in this photograph.

Where I am stuck for the answer to the question so far in my life, is with a person I met at the Padma Center in Middelburg-NL more than 12 years ago as my philosophy and meditation teacher. For years I attended evening classes every Thursday and also regularly weekend meetings. They were the fuel for the huge life(style) change that I was allowed to make in my life.

This man was far from rich in a financial sense and even struggled with a developmental disorder as he sometimes told. And perhaps precisely because of the latter, he was an expert in his specific interests and activities in relation to philosophy.

He possessed and possesses the wealth to encourage you to discover the richness in yourself through his stories, history, Bhagavad-Gita, personal experiences and inner wisdom.

Someone who shares his rich set of talents in a fantastic way to let others discover their personal treasures and added value.

Voila ... the answer. The richest person I have met in my life so far.


Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)
email: captijninsight@gmail.com 

Foto blog: http://franscaptijnhisworld.blogspot.com

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.

Have you experienced that second most important day in your life yet?

A few weeks ago, I heard the statement by Mark Twain (American writer and humorist November 30, 1835 - April 21, 1910) as shown at the picture added to my this week blog.

Oh well, in general I do not always like quotes and not at all this I call it ‘tile wisdom’. And yet this statement came back to me several times after I heard it. Of course, mainly about the discovery of that  second most important day that he mentions.

Nowadays we can hardly get lost with all our digital devices. Where would we still be without Google Maps or Google Earth? I think that about 95% of people with an I-Phone do use that app and the pizza courier for example cannot do without it. And although I live without an I-Phone, I have to admit that I have a GPS system in my car.

Not that long ago it was different and certainly at the time that Mark Twain (his name by the way is a pseudonym for Samuel Langhome Clemens) was alive and wrote his stories and books. It is a great progress and help.

Whether with all these tools we have also made that progress in the discovery journey in relation to find the reason we are born? In my opinion not.

Although the newest generations are certainly more focused on meaningful living and working, I think that perhaps 95% of us have not yet experienced the second most important day that Twain mentions. We run around aimlessly in the "we need more" system, which is shouted to us all day long by marketing. Maybe good for the economy.

And when you are young, it is almost naturally not a theme yet to discover why you were born. Around the so-called midlife crisis, you start to think and discover a big part of your lifetime is gone already and you start asking other and deeper personal questions. And a GPS or an app., does not help you find the answers to those questions. You have to visit yourself. Go deep inside. Looking for your core, your (latent) talents in order to ultimately be able to find that important answer. Discover your life mission.

When I look at myself, I have felt deep inside for a very long time that there was more and that I was only in the practice phase of my life. Incidentally, a fantastic period in which I could and was allowed to play fully with most of my talents. I also felt a long time ago that for that deeper development and search, and actually that experience of that second most important day, Asia for me was a must. When I was still working in jobs before I started my last job in The Netherlands as a CEO, I already was open about it and talked about it with a number of people. At the time I thought I had to wait until I was 65 years old. All of a sudden that changed, which allowed it to experience Asia already eleven years earlier.

That discovery of the answer, or to me rather the answers, why I was born, makes that second most important day a new birth. A restart of your life that encourages putting things into perspective. You will see what is really important to you and gives you energy to continue your life course in flow. A course that generates energy instead of consumes energy. Almost no disturbances from the outside world anymore because I connected for the most part only with that what for me really still was important. It makes your life, at least that is my experience, much richer. No more goals to achieve just your mission to live.

And the great thing is that if you surrender to that, the nicest things will suddenly come your way. And when you look back on it after a while you also notice that, in a material way, you actually needed almost nothing. Just because it is your destination.

That Twain may be a humorist and yet ... not a bad idea to spend time on the discovery of that second most beautiful day of your life.

Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)
email: captijninsight@gmail.com 

Foto blog: http://franscaptijnhisworld.blogspot.com

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.

Don't drown in details. Look and read the signs and create a greater picture. It makes your live lighter.

It seems, lately, that I meet more and more people who have their day spoiled by something specific, a detail. And yes, details are important.

One time the reason is a message in the (social) media. The other time the disturbance is by something someone has said to them. Another time for something that went wrong. Plenty of examples.

The focus is on details and things are literally magnified. I often have the feeling that it is a big waste of energy. Everything you give attention grows and you not only influence yourself but also your environment with the irritation that you have called upon yourself. You can even disturb your night rest with it.

It seems to be no more than human that details have a disruptive influence on how "wide" we live our lives.

As a member of a group of photographers here in Chiang Mai (Thailand), one of the things that I deal with in that photo hobby is a different, deeper and wider way of looking. And indeed, that is paying attention to detail. However, that is only possible if you first consider the whole. No detail without a big picture.

And when you look at that large whole again, you find that that too is a detail from an even larger, infinite whole. Just like we ourselves are only that very small pin, or perhaps even less, of that infinitely large whole.

By continuing to focus on details, you miss the whole picture. A whole that always has much more to offer than just that detail.

Once during a lesson at the Buddhist university, the class got a question about a similar photo as I post in this blog. The question was to take some time to discover what you could discover in the drawing.

Some saw, by connecting the black dots, an animal or an object. Still others, like me, just got stuck in the remark of some black dots.

We learned that this is our natural response. Attention to the very limited surface of some black dots. We may have seen the large sheet of white paper, but the attention was not there at all.

And so, it is with all our news that we, in a constant stream, are absorbing. It is "only" the focus of something small within something much bigger. You may wonder whether you should constantly be distracted or disrupted by these details.

Seeing the bigger picture gives distance. Literally and figuratively, to keep an overview and to keep you more stable and in balance.

Look and read the signs and create a greater picture. It keeps you more balanced and makes your life lighter for yourself and the world around you.

Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)
email: captijninsight@gmail.com 

Foto blog: http://franscaptijnhisworld.blogspot.com

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.

Back in time. Picked up my former profession again. Inspiring and super fun to do.

In my youth I have had many opportunities and many I picked up. One of them was my study as a constructional engineer. I passed for the degrees of constructor as well as architect. Until 1982 I worked for a company building a huge housing project in Noordwijkerhout (The Netherlands) and for Ballast Nedam in Saudi Arabia. After that I went to the Fire Service College and I worked for over 30 years in the (inter) national world of safety, crisis and disasters.

After more than 7 years in Thailand it started to ‘itch’ again. Fortunately, I have two right hands. I am grateful that I am still strong and healthy to this day.

I just wanted to build something again here in Thailand. A small private project that is certainly not common for Thailand. My two children reacted spontaneously and my girlfriend no less. So… I started.

It is actually very inspiring to see your mind suddenly starts to think in a different, former, direction again. And the experience that everything, really everything, is still stored in that mind and that it is not even a matter of blowing off the dust, surprised me the most. Structures, construction types, details, possibilities and impossibilities. They all come back in detail. The experiences from Saudi Arabia, especially in relation to the climate, are doing well here.

It actually all works a little bit addicting. Your mind keeps thinking and looking for, sometimes even very creative, solutions. By the way, absolutely not under any pressure. It is now a professional hobby and for my/our own use. Really super fun to do.

I still remember how during my studies my father sometimes in the middle of the night came to my room after he visited the bathroom. Light in my room was still on and he asked me if I still did not sleep. No, I was drawing.

Sometimes I suddenly got inspiration or an idea in relation to my graduation project and with the large drawing table in my room I worked that out that night. It gave me energy and after I finished, I could sleep. I now have those experiences and that feeling again.

And yes, that is the only thing I have encountered so far. Drawing with the Rotring pen on a so-called "Chalk” nowadays is almost impossible. And with more than 37 years out of this profession, I have to refresh my former drawing skills. Making drawings now on the computer with a so-called CAD program.

YouTube, where would we be without YouTube, offered and offers advice. And that too is a super fun experience. To learn by doing. And old-fashioned scratching a wrong line of your paper with a razor blade now is a piece of cake.

Sitting still? No, not for me. It is great to fresh up my old profession and to do something with it again in practice. This former study pays back double.

The prospect of start building myself and with my own hands in a while, and all the preparations for this right now, give a blissful energy and keep my mind creative and young.

Do you want to follow this process?

Feel free, now and then, to visit: https://pyramidhousethailand.blogspot.com

Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)
email: captijninsight@gmail.com 

Foto blog: http://franscaptijnhisworld.blogspot.com

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.

The growth of individualization

A few weeks ago, my girlfriend sent me a photo (see opposite) how she was waiting on the subway in Bangkok after her work. She travels by public transport (train, boat, metro and scooter taxi) and be sure you are not the only user in this metropolis.

During our evening chat she shared seeing this all around made her a bit sad. No face-to-face communication anymore and everybody running for him- or herself.

You need to stay connected with the (always already old) news. Don’t miss marketing promotions. Buy, buy, buy, and get more to become and stay happy. Show the outside world how happy you are and what type of life (many times with lots of invisible debts) you can afford to live. Showing You are part of the group, the system and at least try to be the best. It is me, me, me. In fashion, in health, in behavior, in relationship, and what so ever. Not even knowing and understanding you lost management of your life and are totally depending on outside impulses and move forward and respond to the untrue show of your environment.  

Visiting the pet shop now and then, I am always intrigued by the wrappers on a cans of pet food. I have to confess that on many of those cans the food looks absolutely terrific if not delicious. And then, when you open up the can… most of the times it is not exactly appealing on the inside. Even my dog does not like and so does not eat it. The outside of the can is certainly not what the reality is on the inside of the can. That’s for sure.

The picture my girlfriend sent me, more and more helps me to believe people are addicted and willing to be indulged by systems to become to be most wonderful individual wrappers sharing the most fantastic outside shows of their lives on the internet. Knowledge and experience of any self-reliance gone.

Sharing of the inside? Even if it still is appealing there, many are not available anymore to support others unless it brings some profit for themselves.

In a part of The Netherlands we have a word called; ‘Naoberschap’. The meaning is to have the responsibility to be available for the community you live in to share or give advice. Actually, to keep the group running together in a smooth way if troubles occur. No selfishness but being strong by caring together. Also, a great thing in situations of crises and disasters where creativity in cooperation, without internet, helps (no is necessary) to succeed in surviving.  

Don’t forget to invest in ‘Naobershap’. You may need it sometime and it is really living in a more connected way.

Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)

email: captijninsight@gmail.com 
Foto blog: http://franscaptijnhisworld.blogspot.com

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.

Jobs with a golden future because of the "Smart Phone Neck"

Last week I heard a story that in Singapore, by the time many students get to secondary school, they have lost one to two inches in height. All this because their neck is rounded and they cannot hold their reads up straight anymore. And I think this is not only in Singapore but more an more a kind of worldwide 'evolution.

During my training to become a yoga teacher and before that during the Mentastic lessons (from Satsavya Mertens with the Träger approach) that I once followed in The Netherlands, I learned that the average weight of our head is between six and six and a half kilos (13 – 14,5 Pounds). If that head is in balance (if we look almost straight forward and let the head rest on the Atlas vertebra) we hardly or never stretches the neck muscles. The balanced weight then is directly transported by the spine to the feet and the earth. Something that costs no energy. “How light can it be?” Was the sentence that was often asked during the practical lessons. We almost all know the images of, for example, African women carrying heavy loads on their head. Apparently without any difficulty.

Once, during a lesson, as a comparison, we were asked how it would feel if you were walking around for sixteen hours a day with a bag of potatoes or rice of six kilos in your hand. After ten minutes you would put that bag away. As if there is nothing wrong and totally used to the feeling you do that on a daily base with your head. If you were to get about eight hours of sleep a day, there would still be about sixteen hours a day on which you keep your head balanced with your muscles and tendons.

My father, who was a physiotherapist and yoga teacher up to the age of ninety-three, had a lot of experiences with neck problems and how to solve them. “Sit (or stand) straight son!” I was told quite a bit when I was sitting (better to say hanging) on the couch reading a book or watching TV. Compared to now, those were only short periods of time. People nowadays continuously train their neck muscles in stretching and tensing up with that ‘dumb-bell’ (called head) hanging without even realizing it. It seems you can get used to neck pain and headaches.

Are you looking for a golden profession with future?

Jobs as Chiropractor, Posture Alignment Therapist, or for instance Orthopedic surgeon are jobs that can only be seen as (and remain) a gold mine.

Remain? Yes, at least for the time being. Who knows, maybe the technology comes with new toys, it is almost impossible that they have not already been invented, so that you can walk upright again still dealing with your smart phone.

If these toys will be launched, what a new world of possibilities and experiences will open up for many people. I am sure it will take time to get used to that world and experiences.

People are getting longer again. They look at each other again. An invitation to communicate and to see the existing world around them. And also a relief. After all, breathing is much easier with a head that just stands upright.

It will probably take a while till these new toys are there so if you still have doubts ... Chiropractor is not a bad choice, as long as you are not addicted to your mobile devices yourself of course. After all, you have to set a good example.

Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)

email: captijninsight@gmail.com 
Foto blog: http://franscaptijnhisworld.blogspot.com

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.

Change your perspective and basic attitude of thinking and there is so much more that you can achieve.

I am sure at least it is ingrained in Eastern culture!

I am convinced that the majority of people assume that changes are not possible or at least hard to do and too risky. Their basic attitude of thinking is that changes cannot be made or that things or solutions are not available. It sometimes seems to me a kind of laziness.

For example, if you go to a hardware store here, it is really teeming with staff and if you ask if they have something you're looking for, the answer is almost invariably; "My mee" (No we don't have). Two shelves further in the same store you suddenly come across the article you are looking for yourself. Or you get an answer; "My dy" (No, that is not possible).

No, it is not something typically Eastern culture. For the vast majority of people, thinking from potential threats is much more deeply built in, call it rooted, than thinking from possibilities and especially opportunities. No, of course, it is not always possible to achieve everything you want. Many underlying issues are to blame for this. But still…

Even in photography you already learn that if you take a photo from a different angle or change your own point of view, you put things in a completely different light. Sometimes a true discovery of a different picture that makes photography even an art.

My dog ​​often helps me with this because there is a 130 cm height difference in how he and I look at the same world in a different way. And now and then going down on your knees, regularly produces surprising pictures.

Sometimes you just have to dare to look beyond borders, especially your personal borders. Yes, indeed, that might need some guts. Jumping into the so-called "deep" invites you to become creative and to look for ways to at least float, doesn't it? And from time to time that requires a considerable effort. It is also a personal journey of discovery.

And now say yourself and from your own experience. In retrospect, can you not usually be proud of yourself because you have taken that leap? No regrets. It opens up new possibilities and ... change is growth (although at first glance you may not see it that way).

'It's not possible!'? Stop that saying for a moment. At least do not start with it. Take a step back and start thinking from a different angle such as: "That could be a nice adventure and ... who knows!".

And I am not referring to a form of reckless behavior. Do show courage to take steps in your further development and growth or, as in the example above, to better understand your profession and to show and feel an attitude of genuine customer loyalty and support.

And with regard to the latter, after all, aren’t it your customers who bring your monthly salary. Something, for me, that does not say you have to treat of call your customers King. Just a normal customer relation is sufficient.

What creative people who act from a basic attitude of “Yes, I can” show in practice (I recently received this photo as an example from my daughter from Australia) is that, from a different perspective and a little creativity, much and much more can be done and achieved than you ever thought possible.

And it also even brings you many times some money.

Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)

email: captijninsight@gmail.com 
Foto blog: http://franscaptijnhisworld.blogspot.com

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.

For your right (new) living environment, if you want to move or emigrate, you have to feel at home three times.

A guest from Singapore with whom about 1½ year ago I worked with about discovering his talents, gifts & life mission, visited me here again. He had already taken some solid steps in his discovered purpose of life.

In "the hero’s journey - as I always express it - he had now come to the point of devoting more attention to the for him right living environment. Born in Taiwan, he had lived, studied, and worked in many places in the world. Maybe it's time to settle down now he explained to me.

In the dialogue that arose about his right living environment, we discovered that you should actually be able ‘to come home’ three times. It is very easy to make a list in which you will put pluses and minuses in relation to various places where you could or would like to live. And yet in practice it appears that that doesn't work at all. Usually that list includes rational matters and sometimes emotional matters. And although you could add a + or a - factor to that and calculate the outcome, it still doesn't work. Surprisingly, for example, you will discover that culture is not comparable. With work offerings exactly the same. And what about starting to live further away from your family if you are family oriented? Really also every different matter has a kind of quality factor and those quality factors are different for everyone. The surprise lies in the fact that if you were to look at the results of that rational list, you would start to laugh. The outcome, most times, does not at all feel good. Do you read? FEEL good?

Not surprising because the right environment for you, the older you get, increasingly has to do with feeling and not with reason. With your connection and interaction. With the energy that you experience in a new place.

The more you avoid the influence of that feeling, actually give less attention to feeling then to ratio, the sicker you make yourself. And when you are young you are often much more flexible in accepting (or how you can deal with this) than when you get older. And here too the statement gets for that everything you give attention grows. So, if you consciously want less of a specific disruption or energy draining, then those disruptions stand out much more and more often. They increasingly grow making you step by step less comfortable.

The right environment for you is all about "feeling at home". And so, that’s a feeling and not a reasoning or rational approach to what you think is best for you.

We discovered that if you really want the most optimal and fitting living environment for yourself, you have to be able to come home three times. And you can make all these three steps simple or sometimes less simple. A lot depends on yourself. Your own alignment and attitude. I will come back to this a little later.

1. Feel at home in yourself

2. Feel at home in your house or room

3. Feel at home in your living and working environment

Feel at home in yourself

Feeling at home in yourself has a lot to do with knowing who you really are and knowing yourself both inside and out. Taking time for yourself, how you feel, where that feeling comes from, standing still for a moment, taking sufficient rest, keeping yourself in mental and physical balance are important parts in this.  And you can easily work on it yourself. A matter of making choices. For example, meditation can be helpful in this.

Feel at home in your house or room

Feeling at home in your house or room has to do with your private place (at least I hope you have this privacy somewhere). How is it arranged, what kind of things in that space make you feel at home there? What gives you energy in that space, what peace or maybe even the unrest if you need it. What keeps you in balance. Is it cleaned up or just a mess (it's just what you feel most comfortable in)? And believe it or not. Your house or room and how it looks, especially from the inside, offers the mirror of who you really are. It is very easy to enrich the energy inside a house or room. You can do that with the help of light & darkness, with color, decorations, plants, furniture, even crystals, etc. It doesn't have to cost a lot and it doesn't have to be all new. Maybe, so far, you are not even aware what a tremendous influence the space in which you live has on how you feel and your wellbeing. Again, it is all about feeling, energy. Often within a few weeks you really can feel a total change...

Feel at home in your living and working environment

Feeling at home in your living and working environment is often more difficult to change. Indeed, you could change jobs or move. These are often somewhat rigorous measures. And yes, they work great. By the way, know that in a different job or residential location you will eventually find something new that may bother you and still... change on regular times does not have to be a bad thing...

You can also make better use of your living and working environment. For example, if you feel good in nature, why not go along or through that park in your town or village or go jogging in the forest instead of through the streets when you go to work?

Your own alignment and attitude towards moving and your new environment

A different living environment brings many new influences. Certainly, if you were to emigrate. Cultural competencies ‘walk in’ as well.

Cultural Competence means understanding, adapting, accepting, and appreciating the new area or maybe even country and its people.

If you resist, complain, compare, and avoid, you’ll miss your former country because you are gone, and you will miss the joy, discovery and adventure of the new place/country because you are not really there either. 

I have been able to live and work in many places. Just discovered I already six times bought a new house in my life and I am in the mood of change again. Where I live now in Thailand gives me the feeling of being at home three times. And that brings a feeling of happiness (peace of mind). I sleep well, I live and do my activities with great pleasure, I enjoy everything around me intensely and I feel especially healthy. And the latter, I know, is and always will be only a kind of snapshot. In a split-second, things can change.

And that is why I always go to sleep with a thank you and gratefulness of getting again another day. A day with again a great LIVE experience in the for me great LIVING environment here.

Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)

email: captijninsight@gmail.com 
Foto blog: http://franscaptijnhisworld.blogspot.com

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.

No agenda, no watch, no smart phone, no social media and still alive

Yes, it was a tough change. My life once was ruled by my agenda, filled with appointments by my secretaries, and the clock. No, the "social media" did not really rule my life the last years in The Netherlands, and yet without being aware it consumed more and more time every day. You could often only make appointments with me six weeks ahead and thinking back of this I wonder if I really had some free time.

My neighbor came to catch up last week and we both had a coffee. He had a construction company in America. He casually remarked that he could no longer imagine how he ever could cram all his activities he had to do successfully in the time frame of one day. When I thought about that, the same feeling occurred to me. It was more than ridiculous. My agenda determined my life and step by step the 'free' and private moments were even filled in with breakfast-, lunch- and dinner meetings. Just madness I accepted!

For over seven years I don't have an agenda and do not wear a watch anymore. No "social" media for about two years now. No more so-called ‘network contacts’ that can address me directly. It created rest and peace of mind. I also no longer needed an agenda. My head is enough ‘empty’  that I can just remember myself the few appointments that I have or make. And if they are very, very far ahead ... then I have an (almost empty) calendar on which I can post something.

How could I ever live a life like I did? Being able to do so much in one day, as my neighbor commented, as I once did? 
They call it busyness here. And whether it was all really effective and efficient, solved something and served higher goals? I wonder more and more. And yes, you were known, or at least you thought so. Perhaps in your very limited environment in which you lived and worked. You fool yourself a lot only thinking how important you are.

For me it is great to have no agenda, no watch, no i-phone, no goals that should be achieved, across "social" networks. Dependence gone. Space to breathe and live life. And every day (fortunately) still goes by.

Thinking about this huge change in my life and lifestyle, maybe I fit more now in the nearly timeless culture of rural Thailand. Many people there choose not to own watches or clocks. The actions of the sun and moon dictate life much more over here, not the tick-tocking of a clock. People get up in the morning when dawn breaks, have lunch mid day when the sun is at its highest, prepare the evening meal as the sun goes down, and turn in for bed once the sun has set and darkness descended. Even in our urban areas, time keeping by the minute is not part of the culture. Maybe hard to believe and, yes, it took some time for me to get used to it. As a result of all this, there is non of hurrying around or stress of the Western way of life to get things don 'on time'.

The great thing is that in the evening, just before going to sleep, taking a moment to look back on the day ... then every time again I discover my day was simply full. I can remember what I all did. I had (or took) time for the things I did. No rush and ... those people who for whatever reason really want or wanted to connect me... they still know how to easily find me and how to connect with me.

In retrospect, it can be so free and simple when you step out of the system. In my experience it offers you more quality of living life.

Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)

email: captijninsight@gmail.com 
Foto blog: http://franscaptijnhisworld.blogspot.com

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.

A world deadly sick of sugar. Rehab from my addiction.

Four weeks ago, my girlfriend sent me an already dated video of a live interview with the Medical Doctor Raymond Francis from Florida, USA. In 2002 he published his book "Never be sick again".

To be honest I am not a person who like all this kind of ‘how to get a better health’ movies, most of the time actually promoting a product or supplement. But it was short, I got it from my girlfriend so I watched and listened to it.

Clearly a man with a mission this Mr. Francis. A person who inspires and knows what he is talking about. Someone who for me shows many similarities with the passion, engagement and optimism my father always had and showed. Personalities with the gift to appeal to people out of their best intentions and from their own experiences to encourage others to live healthy or even more healthy and support them to enjoy that healthy lifestyle.

Yes, sure, Raymond Francis is kicking a kind of open door for many people, including me. I had heard something before but never really thought about how I, unconsciously and unintentionally, risked and played a game with my health. And he published this book already in 2002…? Well, better late than never so to say. Happy now I heard from it and being aware now, take things seriously.

I just did not pay attention and thought to myself that it was not so bad with my health. After all, I never took sugar in my coffee or tea, for example, and drank a lot of fruit juice with no added sugars, etc .. Enough rest and no stress anymore for about seven years already. Well done, at least I thought so.

And yes, due to my accident in 2010, I radically changed my lifestyle. On a daily basis I practice meditation, I exercise a lot by walking firmly with my dog for a few hours and doing yoga for about one hour. Up to now, never really sick. Still…

Francis' story woke me up more than I thought. I found some of his statements astonishing. For example, how only one teaspoon of sugar within two hours for a period of six to eight hours completely destroys the human body’s natural immune balance. Reduces it by 50% as he explains. Or that sugar has a much more harmful influence on your body than alcohol, drugs or smoking. Then the connections he makes with the influence, just say wide open the door, to a wide range of sicknesses and their symptoms.

After hearing his short story, I thought to myself that it was time to really start to pay attention to this. And starting my regular six-week alcohol-free fast again last July 1, I thought that was a good time to acutely stop with regard to sugar too. Something, at the moment, I can say I want to continue.

Indeed, maybe a simple decision but not yet done so easily. I really never thought to discover that I was more than super addicted to sugar. It was not just easy stopping as I without much problems regularly do with alcohol but worked out more to be a rehab. So yes maybe Francis also in this for me is right, to stop consuming sugar for me is much harder and more difficult than to stop drinking alcohol.

It’s easy to tell yourself I am the boss of my body but my body was just trying for a long time to trick me and get what it wanted (so far without success).

I have often written in my blogs that everything you give attention grows. To be honest I don't think it is even possible altogether to stop with sugar (on a zero percent level). It is really everywhere, yes nearly in every product you buy to consume, and not in the least quantities. My experience now is that the world simply is deadly sick with sugar. It is a more than bad poison.

Why it was an addiction to me (I can say now) became clear from the following personal experiences.

For a period of almost two weeks I felt more than tired. My desire for something with sugar (my children often call me a cookie monster) increased and I almost turned my house around to find something that contained sugar. A kind of playing tricky games between body and mind. Fortunately the games were unsuccessful and I stayed on track. But not so easily. Looking for sugar substitutes too. Well, I left that behind me very quickly. That literally "junk" is much more harmful and ... it doesn't solve anything to get rid of that sugar addiction.

Good that my girlfriend could not come to me for two weeks because of her work. My mood, normally always stable and good, changed drastically and I was a bit bad tempered on Skype and short in words and expressions. Happy for me my girlfriend saw and understood all of what happened to me. After all, she too had stepped into the sugar fast only a little less abruptly than me.

Nagging headaches, looked like the same I had during my burn-out period. And sometimes even chills. Extremely strange in the very warm climate here. Still, apparently my body had to get used to how to turn on the internal heater in a different way.

These phenomena are now almost over. Never thought that it would take so long for only ‘some’ sugar. I just gave away my stock, yes, I really had a lot of different juices, of packed fruit juices. The kind that show on the package to distract ‘no sugar added’ but who actually are full of this harmful stuff.

I have bought a blender and am now making my own juices from the very large and affordable range of fruit and vegetables that we find here on the local markets. It takes some time to get used to the new, actually real, taste again. Whoow, what a great difference. You literally taste nature again.

I feel good, even better, and have enough energy again.

And yes, I am not totally used yet. Sugar keeps ogling and saying 'NO' to that longing feeling is not always easy although it has been successful so far. And whether I will (still) never get sick? I'll just wait and see. That is actually not the main reason for me to skip sugar in my food. Also, not to lose weight.

It is more an ode to my temporary temple, my body, to be able to make optimal use of it for as long as possible. And for me, being sick once in a while is no more than a signal from my body that it still can compete with what made me unhealthy to become healthy again on its own. But if that fight isn't even necessary because of getting rid of this addiction... then I think you enjoy living life maybe even so much more.

Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)

email: captijninsight@gmail.com 
Foto blog: http://franscaptijnhisworld.blogspot.com

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.