The Hero & the Hard Hard

I've spent much of my life praying for miracles.

Until I gave up and started creating them for myself.

Miracles don't just happen.

They are created.

If you asked me long ago what a hero was, I would probably tell you that a hero is someone akin to those who run into burning buildings to save people;

...someone who can muster the courage to overcome fear and unfortunate odds.

Today, I believe differently.

I believe the hero is someone who can conquer their own mind.

The one who can lay down their ego, their beliefs, their identity, and open up to something new.

That's when miracles happen.

That's when change finally occurs.

That's when healing finally occurs.

Most people listen to the voice in their heads that says "this is what is true", "this is what you are", "it can't be done."

The hero listens to that voice, embraces it even, but doesn't let it embrace him or her.

Most people never question their own thoughts.

The hero doesn't believe their own mind.

This makes them unstoppable.

The hero, when in a difficult situation, is the one who finds the

strength within him or her to break the mold of their own egoic conditioning, and align with a higher truth.

This isn’t easy.

The higher truth isn’t always palpable, it isn't always immediately rectifying, it isn't always immediately supported, seen or acknowledged, the evidence for it doesn't immediately arrive.

Because it often means the end of a certain story.

Feathers will be ruffled, people will be upset, and your own mind may rebel against you, but the sweetness of the truth will usher you forward like a light piercing the darkness in impossible times.

The truth will set you free.

But first it might piss you off.

It's not fun to see that you've literally been creating your own prison, but if you want to be the hero of your own reality, you must face it.

This is what a hero does: the hero holds space for a new possibility without having the full picture or the plan, just the vague feeling, a “touch in” with a new reality on the other side of the status-quo.

The hero doesn't have all the answers.

They only know how to ask the right questions.

If you look through history, you’ll see that no rebellion or war has ever led to true freedom or lasting peace, but the greatest monumental shifts in our reality have always been led by a single man or woman asking one simple question: “What if something else is possible?”

Ask that question long enough and you will receive a vision.

After you receive a vision, the most haunting question that most people never ask, is this:

“What if it’s real? What if this is really possible for me?”

Ask that question long enough, deep enough, and a fire will birth within you that will be unstoppable.

People follow heroes because they hold the key to something new, beyond the known.

Before you can be such a hero for others, you must first be capable of being a hero for oneself, and this is the greatest challenge and initiation of life.

A hero must be able to navigate what I call the "hard hard"

What is the "hard hard"?

There are times when things are easy...

There are times when things are hard.

And there are times when things are extremely hard, I call that the "hard hard."

1. When things are easy...


When you have a deep connection to your vision, you're in the most amazing state you can be, you see where you want to go, you feel where you want to go, you feel positive and the next step is clear, the support is there, the resources are there, that's when things are easy.

2. When things are hard...


When the resources and support aren't there, and the next step isn't clear, but you still have a deep connection to your vision, things are hard.

3. When things are HARD HARD.



When all things seemingly disappear, when the clouds of doubt and shame seem to completely overcome you and obstruct the view. 



When you know you want to go beyond your current limitations but have no clue where to start and are overcome by doubt and unclarity.


When your own trauma is activated and your own body works against you.



When every ounce of you says "I've had enough, it's time to throw in the towel", "you're not meant for this, this isn't for you,", "this is too hard, you'll never make it."



When the entire known world seems to be melting down around you and all reference points are lost.

That's the hard hard.

Heroes aren't born.

They are made, during the hard hard times.

In today's times, we are all collectively facing the hard hard.

As you face the hard hard, in whatever way it appears for you, you have a choice to stand by passively, or step into the hero.

Here's how I do it:

First, and this is huge don't skip it, I embrace what I feel, fully.

What you resists persists, what you embrace dissolves.

The light cannot be the light unless it penetrates the darkness, you must be willing to feel fully, even if it's abominable.

As I feel fully, then I apply what I've learned over the years...

I've learned that during the darkest moments you can't rely on conviction, confidence, or prowess.

Instead, the key is to connect deeper to your True self, with a capital T.

I can only rely on the memory that one time, when I was in a heightened elevated visionary state I could feel what I was moving towards.

In those moments I take deep breaths and connect to what I remember deep inside, and I remind myself that it is truer than the temporary doubt and fuzziness I feel in this moment.

In those moments, I remind myself that the doubt, scarcity, or fear I feel is only there because the only thing that can be missing is more of me in this moment, more of my presence, more of my love, more of my willingness to trust...

I then ask myself "What else is possible?"

It's about sending energy to what you truly believe.

...and I trust, and I move forward, just one step forward.

And then all of a sudden, the hard hard, that immovable wall in-front of me...

It starts to crumble, it starts to move, and light starts pouring in through the cracks.

And I get excited.

That's when I feel unstoppable.

These hard hard moments are required for you to become the person you need to become in order to embody the thing you've been calling in.

If you envision a life of courage.

Your courage will be tested.

If you envision a life of love.

Your love will be tested.

You will find the limits of your courage and your love.

And when you embrace but don't accept those limits as the ultimate truth, and keep asking "what else is possible?"

You become the person you were meant to be.

As the events of our time unfold globally, many are looking for others to blame or others to lead them.

I say, do neither.

Become the hero you were meant to be, step into your power, lead yourself, lead your family, your community, and create the new world from within.

Kacper

My 5-Year Surrender Experiment

Some days I wish I never read this damn book.

There are some things that once you see, you can't un-see.

This book f***ed me up. (in a good way!)

...it propelled me into a way of life that has been both thrilling and terrifying and has taken me through the highest highs and to the lowest lows.

If you haven't read the book, it's the extraordinary account of one man's radical "surrender experiment."

Michael Singer realized at one point that life had a lot more to offer him than he had to take for himself and decided to surrender to life.

I'm sure you've heard of spiritual "surrender", but Michael took it to the extreme...

...As an example, at one point someone started building a house on his property without his consent...

...instead of calling the cops he simply grabbed his toolset and his work apron, went over to the job site, and said "Hey, I noticed you're building a house on my land, how can I help?"

That house ended up being part of an ashram which led to many beautiful things.

Without even intending it, as he adopted this lifestyle and ended up becoming a billionaire through falling in love with life.

It's one of the greatest stories of all time.

I read this book at the tail-end of 2019... and had one giant meltdown of a realization.

That realization was: I had no clue how to really live.

With all my adventuring, wild leaps of faith, and incredible feats of entrepreneurial courage I thought I knew how to live....

...Up until then, I was telling myself stories in my head where I saw myself as someone on the cutting edge of existence.

...but after reading this story, I realized I was fooling myself.

I thought I trusted life and myself, but as I looked inside all I found was a scared little boy clutching onto the last of dollars in his bank account thinking they provided him some imaginary safety and security.

I never fully let go... not until I read that book.

I remember the very moment it happened.

I was sitting at my desk contemplating my plans as the world appeared to be burning down before me.

I looked behind me and saw all my history and every piece of identity I was clutching onto, all my successes and failures, and how they had shaped who I thought I was.

I looked ahead of me and I saw the future that my mind was weaving for me... all the things I thought I "had" to do.

I noticed how this future had a lot to do with the feeling in my belly attached to the numbers in my bank account which dictated what was possible or not possible for me.

I started to rebel against that feeling

And the funny thing was...

...For the first time, I saw that that future had everything to do with perpetuating the guy who I thought I was.

...all my future plans and ideations were just iterations on the same old things I always did... and they were getting old.

It had very little to do with discovering who I really was and what I was really capable of.

The principles I interpreted from Michael's book were simple...

1. Whatever is happening is meant to be happening, go with it.

2. SURRENDER, do what your heart tells you, even if your mind tells you you're going to die, and trust.

It was nothing new to me... but his story made it go deeper into my bones.

So in one sweeping moment, I took a deep breath, and I JUST. F***NG. LET. GO.

It was cathartic and terrifying.

I took the last of my money and started a retreat company in the middle of 2020 when every airport was closed and no one was traveling.

Insane, but my heart said it was the right move, and it worked.

(It included building a make-shift retreat center almost from scratch in Mexico on a whim.)

That path took me traveling and flying all over doing some pretty wild things in the heart of the most difficult time on the planet and showed me a side of humanity I'll never forget.

When that chapter ended, I moved back home and did the next hardest thing I ever did: nothing.

I didn't want to do anything unless it was authentic and genuine.

I meditated for 2-3 hours every day sitting at home for months.

I cried the depths of my sorrows out night after night... because that's what was happening...

With every tear that rolled down my face, space inside of me opened up for something new.

Eventually the idea for "Sail the Stars" came into my field, and I initiated the project... a sailing voyage to inspire people to move past their blockages and turn wild visions into reality.

The project took some wild successful turns, money poured out of the sky, I ended up in Spain, and met a girl.

The project then took some unsuspected bad turns, I plunged into a full-on depression and chronic fatigue the likes of which I didn't experience before.

That led me to my mentor Dr. Kim D'Eramo, who healed my chronic fatigue, and depression and gave me the skills and abilities to do the transformational magic I do with people these days. (I now assist people in moving fear and depression in moments)

I flew back to Ecuador and rebuilt my life and business based on my new experience.

The girl and I broke up.

I met an incredible business mentor who completely revolutionized how I look at life and business.

That was one challenging and amazing year that came to an end as I decided to hike a mountain in the middle of a lightning-hail storm...

...coming home soaked, nearly avoiding a landslide I jumped into a cab and instead of going home grabbed a Pizza with a friend who came across my path...

...sitting soaked, smiling ear to ear with gratitude for life, the conversation over that pizza was life-changing and led me to pick up my sailing project again with an entirely more grounded plan.

I decided to leave Ecuador the following week and would have left except life had other plans.

I somehow tripped and fell in love with someone I shouldn't have, it was complicated, and it hurt a lot, but it opened my heart up to an entirely new level of love and possibilities.

Now I'm back in Spain, I've got my daughter nearby, I'm living in a wooden yurt taking care of three cats.

My life mission and message are clearer than ever, the first boat and voyage is waiting in Greece, and in 40 days I'll be a fulltime sailboat captain for a month making inspirational videos while adventuring with awesome people as we hop from one majestic island in Greece to another to connect with deep life vision and transmute our collective blocks.

The point in sharing all this?

Five years ago I was crying alone on a mountain-top without a clue of what to do with my life.

This week I'm buying some fins and a snorkel and practicing free-diving off the coast as much as possible by the Ocean so I can do some spear-fishing.

I didn't really plan for any of this.

Yet somehow I am exactly where I always wanted to be: alive, in my best shape and health ever, pushing my boundaries, living in nature, doing my best work, and discovering what's possible.

Sure, I had visions and goals, but I found the more I clutched onto "how" I thought they would transpire the more life ripped that "how" out of my hands and sent me curveballs.

The more I went with the curve-balls, the more they took me down the path I was meant to go, which ended up the more direct and scenic route anyway to exactly where I needed to be.

What I've learned from living this way for four and a half years is exactly this....

...Life truly has more to offer you than you can take for yourself, it's full to the brim.

You just have to let go, embrace the unknown, and surrender, and the path will be revealed.

Yes, some days I wish I had never read the book...

... but those are usually the days when the guy inside me who just wants to sit on a rocking chair and grow tomatoes takes over for a little bit.

Living a life of divine surrender isn't always easy.

Sometimes it means hiking up a mountain into a hail-filled lightning storm.

Sometimes it means getting your heart broken., and then using every ounce of your courage to love again.

It takes guts, grit, devotion, and the skills to be able to navigate

your own neurology to regulate your nervous system as you make massive upgrades and shifts in your life - it's not for the faint of heart.

However, in the end, it's worth it.

Kacper

Miracle In the Goulag: read this if you're overwhelmed.

Sometimes, even if you are doing everything right in life, things will blow up on you and you will be faced with unimaginable difficulty.

Having lived through WWII as a child and the communist era in Poland as an adult, my late grandfather Stan saw a lot of things and heard a lot of stories.

One powerful story he told me has stuck with me to this day, and I lean on it when I'm faced with overwhelming situations... it always gets me back on course.

He once befriended a woman who survived the Gulag (the Gulag was Stalin's version of forced labour camps in the arctic north of the Soviet Union for political prisoners and "undesirables".)

Having been separated from her family as a political prisoner and sent to the work camps, she arrived crammed like a sardine with others in a train car to the most inhospitable conditions imaginable.

Freezing cold temperatures, hunger, illness, brutal living and working conditions, and the worst atrocities that one might imagine taking in this place.

Like everyone else, she was given a choice, to work or die.

The trouble was that many of those who chose to work died anyway due to the conditions.

She was put on a production line for assembling lumber piles onto trains bound for the capitol.

Each day her task was to collect, process, and assemble 12 massive crates of lumber.

If she finished her task, she would receive a loaf of bread.

This was an almost impossible task for healthy individuals.

Now imagine having to do it while freezing cold, starving, ill and weak.

Each day she tried, each day she failed.

Even though others around her were somehow getting the job done, to her the task seemed simply unsurmountable, she began to give up hope and decided to resign herself to her fate.

Then one day, she met a man on the line who saved her life.

During a moment of courage and compassion, when the guards weren't looking, he quickly motioned the frail woman to come over to his line.

"Not like that poor child, if you do it like that you're going to die here!", he told her.

He then brought her over to one of the completed lumber piles he had created on his line.

He lifted the top layers of lumber off this pile and had her look inside..

Inside she saw only branches and twigs.

"That's how you do it! That's how you survive!"

The man was creating what appeared like completed lumber piles, but the insides were just filler. He knew the guards weren't even inspecting the loads, they just cared that 12 of them were completed as those were the requirements from up top.

Suddenly, she had hope, and she had a plan.

Recounting the story to my grandfather, the woman said "Stan, before that day, I was resigned to die... but that day I came alive."

She started making the 12-crate payload done day by day, she started receiving bread.

With the bread she was able to get her strength back, then trade for other goods, upgrade her situation, and eventually live to return home, mother children, and live a full life.

A grim story, I know... but one with many lessons.

What this story reminds me of is the simple and powerful wisdom of "one bite at a time" and the leverage of focusing only on what is essential.

When you're overwhelmed, when the situation is dire when it feels like the world is melting down all around you...

...9 times out of 10, it's because you're putting insurmountable expectations on yourself(and others) and trying to do it ALL, all at once...

...and you're likely not even taking care of yourself in the first place.

I'm not saying don't have goals or aspirations or try to do impossible things...

...but what I'm saying is that you're likely setting the bar way higher than you need to to begin with and expecting way too much from yourself all at once.

Very often we think we have to get those twelve crates of lumber filled...

...overwhelmed, we end up doing nothing and fall into despair.

...and we forget it's just about that one loaf of bread, and that there is something simple and obvious right in front of you that will make the biggest difference in your life and others.

We forget that those arbitrary "twelve crates of lumber in freezing inhospitable conditions" are the insane demands we put on ourselves(and others), ideas completely founded in delusion imprisoning ourselves and our dreams.

For example, do you know how long I have tried to write a weekly newsletter consistently?

It's been a decade.

I have sat on this newsletter and my writing for ten years and chose not to write and publish weekly because in my mind I built "12 crates of lumber" around the whole idea.

Do you want to know what my excuse was?

• I don't have a logo for it.

• I don't have a name for it.

• I don't know what to write about.

• I don't have the perfect topics.

• I don't know which day of the week to publish.

• I would have to copy/paste the newsletter to my blog, and that's too much work.

• I have to update my blog so I can do it, I need to find time for that.

• My audience is not in touch with the topics I want to write about now, I would turn off too many people

• Nobody cares about my message anyway.

I can go on.

I was trapped in the overwhelm of all the things I wanted it all to look like when it was perfect, and I did nothing.

Do you want to know what finally got me?

"Kacper, just shut up and write the first sentence of the next newsletter."

Those are my twigs and branches.

That's my loaf of bread.

Each week I write one sentence and it turns into gold, I ship it out, and each newsletter turns into more ideas for videos and content that helps people.

I've got enough material now to fill a book and have been writing for months.

* A special thank you to all those who have written in lately with words of gratitude and support for this newsletter, thank you!)

Another example has been with my sailing project "Sail the Stars", I started with the idea to take people sailing and bring their genius out of them through adventure.

That was 4 bloody years ago!

My "twelve crates" there were insane, even though I didn't see it at the time

• I need a $1,500,000 boat to do it.

• I need to raise the money all at once.

• We can't do it in an ordinary boat, it has to be an expedition-ready arctic-ready beast.

• We have to own the boat.

Four years went by as I fumbled with a vision because I saw where it would be 10 years ahead and wanted that vision to be right here and now... instead of just starting with the small bite.

In the end, it boiled down to the simple act of...

• Rent a boat somewhere beautiful, bring people together, and just go.

The particular pattern I'm speaking to is not just the fact that we overcomplicate things.

We deny our success by making up ridiculous demands of ourselves and others for things that are more available to us than air.

It's like telling yourself you can't get up at 6 am and start your day because you don't have a Rolex to tell the time.

Because to simplify things would mean that you might actually succeed... and that's scary.

You don't need the Rolex, you don't need to write all 300 newsletters all at once, and you don't need the Arctic expedition boat...

...you just need to do the next simple thing that will enable you to feel the momentum of getting going and staying true to the vision.

And just like being taken from your home and shipped off to Siberia as a political prisoner in the middle of the night...

... Sometimes, even if you are doing everything right, life will be unfair, and you will face what seems like impossible expectations.

That's when it's always time to take things one bite at a time and focus on the loaf of bread, not the twelve crates.

Where are you imprisoning yourself in the idea that your vision, dream or situation is a twelve crate deal?

How could you lower the barrier of entry to get the line going?

What seemingly simple repetitive task could you do that would totally simplify that enormous laundry list in your head?

Thanks for reading,

If you enjoyed reading this and would love assistance to unshackle your mind, free your vision, and build an awesome life, book a call with me here.

All the best,

Kacper