Closing the Gap Between My Inner and Outer World

Cut just a little bit. No, no, all. All? Yeah. 3? 3mm. Really?

Yeah.

This is me lah.

Let's do it.

When I was 30, I was at my entrepreneurial peak. I built a 7-figure company. Led a team of more than 30 people. This was 2020, but as the year progressed, I started to question more and more what I'm doing here. What's like the whole point of it? What's the point of all that hustle? Like, what am I even doing? And these questions led me to Bali, led me to step into a completely different chapter, led me to the end of my entrepreneurial chapter, and I flew to Bali. I became a father, I walked barefoot most of the time, and yeah, I spent the majority of my days parenting. But now I feel this chapter is coming to an end as well. But before it can, we have to do a symbolic sacrifice. We have to leave an artifact behind. Let's do it. Hello. Hi, I'm good. How are you? Are you available right now? Yeah, perfect. Really? Yeah, yeah, really. It's not a joke. For the first time in 5 years. 5 years? Yeah, I grew the hair for 5 years. Long time. What do you think about that? 3mm, yeah?

Let's do it!

Oh wow, oh wow, look at that! Maybe I leave it like that. What do you think about that? Please no. Wow, the last time I cut my hair you were not even born. Can you believe that? No, you cannot, huh? Wow, I found it so interesting how our internal world, our values, our beliefs, like what, yeah, what we value in life is always represented by our outer world. Like we always try to bring the two of them come into balance by our clothes, by how we express ourselves, by how we look in the world. And I feel that this— that over the past months of this green chapter slowly coming to a close, there was a gap, there was a discrepancy between the internal world and the external world. And right now this feels like a moment of coherence, like bringing the two of them into alignment again. While at the same time, yeah, being very grateful for everything that I experienced over the past 5 years of all the— yeah, as a contrast to my entrepreneurial journey of before where it was about like building and working and executing and ambition and discipline and all of that, the past 5 years 5 and a half years and a little over 4 I shared with this wonderful little human being. We're characterized by emotions, by truth, by sensitivity, by a lot of feminine qualities, and I'm very, very grateful for that. And I feel that it made me a more whole, a more Yeah, a more integrated human being. These two energies, these two big chapters of my life, the orange entrepreneurial builder, founder, executor, and then the green The green hippie, they want to be transcended and want to be merged into something beyond. And for that, I have to get ready.

Wow!

Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness. Oh my God, this is so cool. This is so cool. I love it. Really good. Good work. Good work. Good work. I feel like new.

Yeah.

Sure. Yes.

Bye-bye.

Oh, now I have to get some sun on the head. Good. Good.

Oh yeah, Misa has cream. So good!

My internal world of the past 5 years and external world too in terms of spiral dynamics, a model that describes the evolution of human consciousness. Did you close it? Nice. Good. Would be depicted with the color green. And green, and that's really one of my weaknesses in this past chapter. Green is very idealistic. Green has strong values. And these values are to care for nature, to care for the planet, to live in community, to be friendly to each other, to just create a paradise and just live that. And it's beautiful. Like, I still want that. But in the pursuit of that, green is very idealistic. So green tries to do everything right. And this is what I tried to do over the past 5 years. Like, my son was on the way and we held a positive pregnancy test in our hands and my deepest desire was for him to be born into a community. So I had around 6 months to manifest the community that I want my son to be born into, because children need to grow up in community. And in this strong drive for equality and for community and for giving everybody a chance and seeing the beauty in everything and everyone, I— my discernment was not good enough, and I didn't realize that A lot of people are not ready for this kind of life. It requires a lot from us to make community work and to thrive in community. It needs a high level of maturity, it needs a high level of ability to care both emotionally as well as like financially. You have to have a stable income in order to fully immerse yourself into the community. And these things were not the case for many of the people that we invited into the community, and in the end the community failed. Let's go out. Yes. Okay, okay, let's go. There are so many more examples of things that I did that—

Papa, look!

—are well-intended and at the same time not fully grounded in reality. For example, toying with the gift economy, like offering all my products and services for just as a gift, and people could gift in return whatever they want. And I believe in that. I see a future where all of us like interact in that way because we're all living in abundance. But this is not where the world is right now. Like, the majority of us is living in scarcity and As a result, my gift economy efforts were exploited by people who thought they could make a bargain or who just were not able to contribute in the way that worked and that could sustain myself. Da da da da da da da. Okay, you go first. Go first. Yeah, you can. Oh, that's so slow. That's so slow. And that's really the crux with green, that it sees the more beautiful world and it feels it so deeply through the heart-opening processes that take place in green. There's a deep desire of, can we just live all together in abundance and peace and love and harmony and all of that? But The reality that we have to face is no, we cannot right now because that's not where the world is and that's not where the majority of the people are. So in a certain sense, we have to go off a little bit of our idealism. Look. Yeah. Are you up? Yeah. Nice. Of course, still preserve it as the North Star while at the same time dealing with what is right now. There he's coming. Nice.

Papa, can you also go in here? Hmm, I'm not sure.

I can try. Hello Leo! Hello? Can you hear me? Okay. Who's there? Is it Leo? Yeah. Is it— is it Leo? Yeah. Okay nice, how are you today? Yes, that's like squats training. So through this over, um, like perfectionism, wanting to do everything right— green cannot take a flight because airplanes are bad, green cannot buy anything with plastic because that's bad, green cannot go somewhere because it could step on an ant.

Papa, can we go there? Yeah. Okay.

And of course, behind all of that is a good intention moving forward. Focus on what is truly important instead of trying to make everything right and as a result not achieving so much.

Oh, this is so nice. It's super hot.

Come in. Slowly. Fits much better with the next chapter moving forward as an entrepreneur again, as a custodian entrepreneur, as somebody who puts entrepreneurship in service to the green values, to love, beauty, and goodness. And yeah, works to bring meaningful change into the world.

Baby, please. Yeah, come in.

I feel that the next chapter that's opening right now will be characterized by exactly that, by bringing my past two selves, the entrepreneurial Robert and the heart-open hippie Robert, together. And this is what in Spiral Dynamics is depicted with the color yellow. It's integration. It's integration of everything that came before. And this is how I truly feel right now, as if All parts of myself, all chapters in my becoming are sitting on one table together, invited to the same table and are now like, okay, now that we have all of us, yeah, what do we want to do with it? It's the invitation right now to put everything that I am and that I became over my past 35 years in service to thriving life, a thriving Earth. And that requires the green values, and that at the same time requires the orange entrepreneurship, getting things done, building, building better alternatives. And they are coming together right now. And as a result, yellow is deeply embedded in green values but doesn't feel green, doesn't look green, but is still deeply a hippie but doesn't look like it and makes different decisions and has the capacity for powerful execution and for, for, yeah, for building, for building better alternatives, for actually bringing these green values into the world at scale. And this is what this new chapter asks of me. In this amazing book, The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist describes how Homo sapiens has basically two different, very different ways of knowing rooted in the two hemispheres of our brains. The left hemisphere is narrow, analytical, focused on details. It breaks things down, it categorizes them, It manipulates them and it builds with them. This is what Iain McGilchrist calls intelligence. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, is broad, intuitive, relational. It sees the bigger picture, it sees the living whole, it sees relationships, depth and meaning and ethics. And this is what Iain McGilchrist calls wisdom. So you could say that intelligence is very good at achieving goals, at solving problems, but wisdom asks which problems are actually worth solving. My spiral orange entrepreneurship cell from age 23 to age 30 was definitely playing the game of intelligence. It was about increasing revenue, hiring more people, growing as fast as possible. And that's on different scales the game that the majority of people on our planet are playing. It's about higher, faster, stronger, richer, quicker. And the result is the fucked up planet that we currently have. That is held tightly in the grips of the metacrisis. And this is what Iain McGilchrist describes beautifully with this metaphor of the master and the emissary, how the left hemisphere— intelligence, power, problem-solving— should be an obedient emissary, a servant to wisdom as the master that says what we will do and what we will not do. But Yeah, we collectively kicked out the master and the emissary is reigning and knows no boundaries. My ensuing hippie chapter from 30 to 35 was fueled by those realizations, um, so I swung to the other side and cultivated my right hemisphere. I played the game of wisdom. I deeply connected with the intricacies of the metacrisis. I became a father, I opened my heart, and I explored the question: in which world do I want my son and his children to grow up in? And yeah, I even wrote a book about the fucked up planet that we have right now and how we might create a more beautiful one. It's called Gaia's Custodians. It's deeply inspired by those reflections and tries to come up with, with answers. The new chapter that is opening right now asks me to bring the two hemispheres together, to develop the power necessary to bring my custodial values into the world big time. Yeah, I feel this new chapter is about reconnecting with intelligence, reconnecting with power, reconnecting with money, reconnecting with influence, reconnecting with being seen and admired, reconnecting with playing the game of entrepreneurship at the highest level. And these are all things that, that I know But I just haven't cultivated my relationship with them for the past couple of years because, yeah, another chapter was necessary. And I want to close it. I want to close, close that while knowing that it will stay with me forever.