Fear less, hope more: look at the bright side. Eat less, chew more: take your time to really enjoy what you eat. Whine less, breathe more: live in the moment. Talk less, say more: express yourself wisely. Love more, and all good things will be yours: love can transform anything into something good.

It’s amazing what a little space can do. For instance, going from ‘nowhere’ to ‘now here’ is just a matter of pressing the spacebar 1 time, yet a whole new reality arises as you go from ‘nowhere’ to ‘now here’. Let’s zoom in on that. ‘Nowhere’ is defined as: Not anywhere. To no place or result. As in: “This road leads to nowhere”, what sounds kind of negative? ‘Now here’ on the other hand can be defined as: At this moment, in this place. It’s not judging in any way, it simply states that at this moment, you are in this place. That’s much more positive since being in a place means you are somewhere, instead of nowhere. Also, nowhere seems externally orientated: you’re looking around finding yourself nowhere. Whereas ‘now here’ is more internally orientated: you turn to yourself as the starting point of everything with all options open. So in life, whenever you find yourself in a situation you’d rather not be in, see if you can find a spacebar. Press it and a new reality is created.

Golf is a fascinating game: you have no opponent except yourself and only the perfect alignment between body and mind results in the perfect swing. Also, the difference between a great shot on the green and a whoosher off target, is often only a matter of millimeters. That’s because the angle from where you hit the ball, has a major effect on where it will land given the distance the ball is going. A millimeter more to the right or to the left, up or down results in a difference of many meters. Think about that in the context of daily life. A small change may have little effect on today or tomorrow, but over the course of many years it may be the difference between life and death. Starting or quitting smoking is such a change. You can also use this line of thought in reverse: when you completely messed up something (you hit the ball way out of the golf course) it’s likely that by changing only a small detail in your approach, you will get a much better result next time. So whenever you fail, don’t burn yourself down – see what small changes you can make.

William Shakespeare once said: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”. Our thoughts can make and break anything in a split second. They can make the impossible possible. They can make something good, seem bad and something small, larger than life and vice versa. And yet, we are not our thoughts, we only have them. They’re ours, without a doubt and we are free to play with them any way we want. Like with the ‘Lego’ in the photograph above: by rearranging the Lego (our thoughts), we can create anything we want. This photo, by the way is made by Kevin Poulton. After he and I had contact, I discovered more of his creative photography. It’s definitely worth some of your time, especially when you are into Star Wars and up for a big smile: click here!

Imagine you’re searching for a key, but you don’t know what a key looks like or even what it is. How will this affect your search? Where will you begin? What do you look for? And what will you think when you see the key or even hold it in your hands? You probably wonder what it is… and continue searching. My point is, in life we’re searching for all kinds of things of which we often don’t really know what it is or what it looks like. I mean: true love, passion, happiness, the perfect job etc.. We want all that, but we don’t always have a clear visual of what that looks like. And so we become restless, constantly questioning ourselves and the things we do or don’t do to find it. Therefore, try to picture what it is that you want, for it will help you searching. Imagining things can be confronting, for it may show you a life that you are far from. It may show you an emptiness, that needs to be filled in. But even then, it is without a doubt the start of getting to where you want to be. So feel free and rest assured, if you picture life how you want it to be, bit by bit, one day you’ll find yourself living that life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “Every wall, is a door”. I can relate to that from an experience I had yesterday when I ran the Amsterdam Marathon. It was my 3rd marathon, the weather was perfect and until the point of 38 kilometers, everything went really well. But then – out of the blue – a huge wall of intense muscle fatigue blocked the way between me and the finish line, just 4 kilometers ahead. Afraid that cramp would knock me out, I started slowing down, almost walking. As if someone was pointing a gun against the back of my head. This was my focus and Where focus goes, energy flows: I suffered 2 kilometers. Fortunately, the Emerson quote popped up in my mind: “Every wall, is a door” 0r in my own words: “Every obstacle is an opportunity. This changed my focus drastically. I started thinking about what I wanted, instead of what I didn’t want. What I wanted, was to start running again. And so I did. I took the chance, switched from small steps to big steps. It hurt, at first, but it gave me confidence. I was running again! I was not going to be stopped, this wall of fatigue was actually a door! This obstacle was actually an opportunity, to proof I am not my thoughts, that I could beat my fatigue. Ultimately I was able to sprint the last 500 meters to finish in 03 hrs. 49 min. 32 sec. Not my best time ever, but still 2 minutes and 36 seconds faster than last year. I felt euphoric!