Not the one we have now, the feed, the algorithm, the carefully curated self, but the earlier one. The one that felt like showing up somewhere. You’d dial in, find a forum or a chat room or a weird little website, and discover that some stranger on the other side of the world was into the exact same obscure thing you were. Not because an algorithm matched you. Because you both wandered there.

The Internet was a place to meet people. It had texture, accidents, and it had the specific electricity of genuine human surprise.

There was a term I came across recently that stopped me: psychic distance.

The idea is that physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. Two people can share a wall and feel miles apart. A stranger on the other side of the world can feel like home. What separates us isn’t geography; it’s something interior. A way of seeing each other. Whether we’re willing actually to show up, or whether we keep each other at arm’s length by treating everything, and everyone, as an object to be optimized, measured, consumed.

The Internet didn’t create psychic distance, but it got very good at scaling it.

Somewhere along the way, we traded that in. Connection became constant but thinner. The platforms got bigger, the feeds got faster, and somewhere in all that optimization, the humans got a little smaller.

That feeling, the loss of it, is actually what Eleven Dunbar is about.

Three months ago, Justin and I put up the bat signal. We wanted to know: are there people out there who, like us, dream of a pocket on the Internet that is human-only? Genuine, playful, creative, and a little wicked.

Not another productivity community, nor a network to grow your brand. Something closer to a treehouse, where you have to know the right knock to get in, and once you’re inside, nobody’s performing.

The response blew us away.

We exceeded our founding member target within the first month. And the two months since have been some of the most energizing of this whole journey, refining the mission and values with those early members, building out the programming and experiences, watching genuinely great people find genuine comfort with each other fast.

That last part still surprises me every time. When curious, weird, real people are in the right space together, trust doesn’t take years. It takes a few good conversations.

Today, we’re opening 20 spots for the first wave of non-founding members.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe: the things that made you weird as a kid are the things that can make you great as an adult.

Not the curated, LinkedIn-optimized version of you. The actual you, the one who got way too into something for no good reason, who asked questions that made adults uncomfortable, who made stuff just because making it felt good.

Most of us spent years sanding that down. Learning to be legible, productive, and to appropriate.

11D is partly a reminder that you don’t have to stay sanded down.

The founding members who’ve grown the most in these three months aren’t the ones who came in with the best pitch or the most impressive background. They’re the ones who let themselves be a little weird again. Who followed a thread of curiosity without knowing where it led, who played.

Play is a superpower. Creativity is a superpower. Real human connection is a superpower.

And, we forget this constantly, they’re all the same superpower.

If any of this resonates, come check us out. We’re deliberate about who we bring in, not because we’re exclusive for exclusivity’s sake, but because a human-scale community only works if the people in it actually want to be in it.

Twenty spots, first wave.

👾 Apply here: elevendunbar.com

We’d love to meet you.

Love,
Gerhard & Justin

You can listen to this episode on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for audio only.

We’re recording from a treehouse in Asheville, where the spiders are bold, the ceilings are enormous, and one shoe may already be lost forever. Between bear sightings, exploding bird-window mysteries, Bojangles fried chicken, and suspiciously meaningful house numbers, things get strange quickly. We also share what’s really happening inside Eleven Dunbar as the next wave of members prepares to join. Somehow this episode is chaos, comfort, and optimism all at once.

Join Eleven Dunbar as an Early Bird

We closed the founding member round and opened *drumroll* the early bird waitlist!

You can sign up here:

https://elevendunbar.com/

You can listen to this episode on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for audio only.

Hey everyone!

Tomorrow I fly to the USA for 2 months. I also accidentally learned far, far too much about funerals, discovered a new passion for artistic expression, and crowned a new dark chocolate champion.

Enjoy <3

Join Eleven Dunbar as an Early Bird

We closed the founding member round and opened *drumroll* the early bird waitlist!

You can sign up here:

https://elevendunbar.com/

You can listen to this episode on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for audio only.

From Eleven Dunbar's one-month survey results to dangerous staircases, barking dogs, and the quiet weirdness of life in the woods, this one drifts between building a community and questioning every sound outside your window.

Somewhere in between, “anything could happen” starts to feel less like a promise and more like a perfectly reasonable warning, especially once you realize that knowing how to behave around black, brown, grizzly, and even polar bears might actually come in handy.

Join Eleven Dunbar as an Early Bird

We closed the founding member round and opened *drumroll* the early bird waitlist!

You can sign up here:

https://elevendunbar.com/

You can listen to this episode on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for audio only.

Justin moves to bear country, Gerhard counts wrong, and Eleven Dunbar's first month delivers more learnings, surprises, and reasons to be excited than they could have planned for.

Join Eleven Dunbar as an Early Bird

We closed the founding member round and opened *drumroll* the early bird waitlist!

You can sign up here:

https://elevendunbar.com/

You can listen to this episode on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for audio only.

The struggle phase in any creative process was never the problem; it was always the point. Also, running shoes are insane now.

Podcast ramble ratio: 60/40 (it was almost too little ramble).

Join Eleven Dunbar as an Early Bird

We closed the founding member round and opened *drumroll* the early bird waitlist! You can sign up here: https://elevendunbar.com/

Somewhere in there: a reworked version of the lumii method for the Eleven Dunbar community, noticing what feels expansive vs. contracting, and a question I keep coming back to that’s quietly reshaping how I move through life.

Join Eleven Dunbar as an Early Bird

We closed the founding member round and opened *drumroll* the early bird waitlist!

You can sign up here:

https://elevendunbar.com/

A solo ramble on jet lag, an unreasonable airline dream, and the discovery that changed how I understand my creativity, vision, and the way I move through life.

Join Eleven Dunbar as an Early Bird

We closed the founding member round and opened *drumroll* the early bird waitlist!

You can sign up here: https://elevendunbar.com/

You can listen to this episode on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for audio only.

Or watch this episode on YouTube if you wanna see our faces, enjoy!

We went live! We put up a bat signal, not entirely sure anyone would follow, and somehow ended up with a room full of beautiful people who were exactly who we were looking for.

Join Eleven Dunbar as an Early Bird

We closed the founding member round and opened *drumroll* the early bird waitlist!

You can sign up here:

https://elevendunbar.com/

You can listen to this episode on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for audio only.

Or watch this episode on YouTube if you wanna see our faces, enjoy!

We closed the founding member round, ran a bunch of “digital crayons” hackathons, and somehow discovered the secret to creativity is sitting on the floor eating dark chocolate pretzels. Also, we debate gates that do not exist and invent handshakes so awkward that they might qualify as a minor global security risk.

Join Eleven Dunbar as an Early Bird

We closed the founding member round and opened *drumroll* the early bird waitlist!

You can sign up here: https://elevendunbar.com/

You can listen to this episode on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for audio only.

Or watch this episode on YouTube if you wanna see our faces, enjoy!

One of the questions we ask applicants is to share an unreasonable dream they secretly hold.

We find this question powerful because it activates the inner voice that often gets silenced/neglected, the part that knows what it really wants to do. Some people call it intuition, the heart, or an inner knowing.

We call them “unreasonable dreams.” They are the things you would try if nobody was judging. And often those “unreasonable” dreams are not as unreasonable as we might believe.

In today’s episode, “The One About Unreasonable Dreams,” Justin and I talk about our own unreasonable dreams, reflect on the past week of building Eleven Dunbar, share who Eleven Dunbar is for, and take a slightly ridiculous detour into a question: what might the first inner dialogue of early humans have sounded like?

You can watch the episode on YouTube:

What’s a small, unreasonable dream you secretly hold?

“The reasonable person adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable person” - George Bernard Shaw

Join Eleven Dunbar as a Founding Member

We are closing the round for founding members this week. We still have a few spots left if you feel a pull to explore an unreasonable dream of yours in a vibrant community. Apply here: https://elevendunbar.com/

Or watch this episode on YouTube if you wanna see our faces, enjoy!

Join us for our honest “build in public” reflections from week two of launching Eleven Dunbar: the emotional highs and lows, Stripe notification drama, Schrödinger’s cat, and the key difference between building a community and building a software product.

We also kick off our new AI Creative Jam series, starting with the basics of getting started with vibe coding tools and building something delightfully impractical: an astrology weather app, which we want to make the number #1 website in the world.

Got a weird/strange/impractical idea we should try live? Drop a comment :)

Join Eleven Dunbar as a Founding Member

We’re looking for the engineer who secretly writes poetry. The CEO who wants to learn how to play again. The artist who is curious about how AI can expand their soul’s expression.

We only have a few spots left available for founding members. Apply here: https://elevendunbar.com/

You can listen to this episode on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for audio only.

Or watch this episode on YouTube if you wanna see our faces, enjoy!

Justin and I unpack the emotional rollercoaster of launching Eleven Dunbar, and why we’re now building weird, impractical things with AI just for the joy of it.

We also announced a new type of "show" we're producing that will cover me teaching Justin various AI tools, where we build things that have been submitted by the community. We will then open-source each project.

Got a weird/strange/impractical idea we should try live? Submit it here

Come and join Eleven Dunbar

We are opening the gates for Founding Members.

We’re looking for the engineer who secretly writes poetry. The CEO who wants to learn how to play again. The artist who is curious about how AI can expand their soul’s expression.

You can apply here: elevendunbar.com

Over the next few weeks, we’ll share more about our journey and about Eleven Dunbar.

If something in this resonates, reach out. I’d love to hear your story, how you bring play into your life, or simply have a chat.

Why We Started Eleven Dunbar

My last chapter didn’t unfold the way I imagined. But I’m long past trying to predict how life should go.

With everything in this life, there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. What matters is to keep moving forward with an unbending belief in life, and a sense of joy in being here at all.

This past phase came with its share of wins, losses, reinvention, laughter, play, long walks, deep talks, and a lot of honest reflection. And one of the biggest learnings was simple:

The magic doesn’t start with vision decks, titles, or ambitious goals. It starts with people.

If I look back at the peak moments of the last 15+ years, they were always the same: community, storytelling, imagination, and that strange kind of shared aliveness that happens when people feel safe enough to be real and bond through play and laughter.

That is what I care about. And that is what I want to build around.

Out of that realization, and through reconnecting with my close friend and now co-founder Justin Davis, something new emerged: Eleven Dunbar.

But to explain what it is, I first have to explain why.

Why Eleven Dunbar

Eleven Dunbar feels like an accumulation of my past 15+ years.

At one point, I went deep into game design. That question led me into years of exploring play, learning, and human systems. I studied game design, not because I wanted to make games forever, but because I wanted to understand something deeper: what makes people willingly engage, learn, and grow for hours? What creates momentum, belonging, and the desire to come back?

Out of that exploration, I created a creative storytelling card game that used play to unlock creativity and imagination in educational and real-world settings. It was an attempt to build containers where playful learning felt natural again.

Later, my focus moved toward the emotional layer. I worked on ways to help people understand and navigate their inner world, so they could build deeper relationships with themselves and others, and move through life with greater clarity and confidence. Different domain, same root: humans want connection, and they want tools and spaces that help them become more whole.

When I connect those dots now, it feels obvious.

Around the same time, Justin had been walking his own path through technology, creativity, and years of building in fast-moving environments. We both reached a similar realization from different directions: achievement without depth feels empty, and creation without connection doesn’t nourish. When we reconnected, it felt less like starting something new, and more like recognizing that our paths had been circling the same questions all along.

People don’t just want information. They want experiences that change them.
They don’t just want productivity. They want meaning.
They don’t just want “connection.” They want belonging.

And one of the fastest paths into belonging is play.

Not play as entertainment.

Play as a vehicle for bonding, learning, and expression.
Play as a way to lower the mask.
Play as a way to reconnect to curiosity, creativity, and each other.

Eleven Dunbar is what happens when everything I’ve learned about play, learning, emotion, and community finally converges into one container.

What the name means

The name Eleven Dunbar brings together three intentions.

First, the Dunbar number (150). It’s the idea that humans can only maintain a limited number of meaningful relationships. Not thousands. Not “followers.” Real relationships. People you know, trust, and grow with. We wanted the name to carry this sense of human scale and intentional community.

Second, we wanted it to sound like a place. Not a product. Not a platform. A destination. Like a hidden address. A door you step through into a different kind of atmosphere. Something that feels almost physical, even though it is built around people, not walls, like a gateway into another layer of experience. A bit like the moment in Harry Potter when you discover Platform 9¾ and realize there’s an entire world existing just beyond what you normally see.

A place of magic, wonder, curiosity, and connection. Something that feels familiar, and that you leave more nourished than when you entered.

Third, eleven reflects the unique energy of the two founders. When we looked into the numerology of Justin Davis and Gerhard Molin, both names resolve to the master number 11. In many spiritual traditions, 11 represents intuition, awakening, and higher awareness. In physics, M-theory speaks of an eleventh dimension, a layer of reality beyond the immediately visible.

For us, eleven points to that extra dimension of human experience. The part of life that isn’t purely transactional or practical, but meaningful, relational, and human. The layer where identity softens, people become real, and something larger can form.

Put together, Eleven Dunbar becomes a place you go to experience community at a human scale, with depth. A kind of gateway, not to escape the world, but to enter it more fully.

And that matters, because this is not an app. It is not an AI company.

It is a membership-based community built intentionally at a human scale, where relationships can actually deepen.

Why Now

We are living in a strange moment.

We are more connected than ever, yet many people feel more alone than before. We have tools, platforms, and networks, but often lack belonging, shared purpose, and real presence.

At the same time, artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how we work, create, and build. Many traditional skills are being automated. Specialization alone is no longer enough.

As AI expands, the uniquely human parts of life become more important, not less:

• The ability to form deep relationships

• Emotional maturity

• Creativity and taste

• The capacity to hold nuance

• The ability to collaborate across differences

Yet these are exactly the areas where many people feel underdeveloped or unsupported.

We also lost something over the last few decades: the third space. Places outside of work and home where people gather regularly, build trust, and grow together.

Eleven Dunbar exists in response to this moment.

Not as nostalgia, or as escape. But as a conscious attempt to rebuild human-scale community in the age of AI.

What Eleven Dunbar Actually Looks Like

Eleven Dunbar is the modern third space for immersive, community experiences.

It is intentionally limited to 150 members, the Dunbar number, the scale at which trust, coherence, and meaningful human connection naturally emerge.

Not a mass network. A living ecosystem.

A space where creative expression meets authenticity, and where relationships deepen into long-term transformation.

As a member of Eleven Dunbar you will gain access to three spaces: The Relation Space, The Eleventh Space, and The Integration Space.

The Relational Space - How we connect

Small, hand-selected circles of high-agency humans who challenge, support, and expand one another.

This is where real relationships form, and where conversations go beyond updates and into what actually matters.

Ideas, collaborations, and opportunities don’t need to be forced. They emerge naturally when trust exists.

Over time, these circles become your people.

The Eleventh Space - How we play

Connection alone isn’t enough. People bond through shared experience.

This is our playground.

A space to experiment, create, and explore, often using AI as a tool for expression, not productivity. We call them digital crayons.

People build small things, stories, games, ideas, experiments, not because they must, but because they can.

Play lowers defenses. Curiosity returns. Creativity unlocks parts of us that ambition alone cannot reach.

The Integration Space - How we transform

This is where growth happens as an interdependent journey through sharing, reflection, support, and presence.

This is where insight turns into action. Where we support each other through transitions, challenges, habits, and change.

We practice interdependence, not independence, not codependence, but the ability to grow as individuals while being supported by a network.

We share what actually works: rituals, habits, practices, and tools that help us live what we learn.

Play, AI, and Digital Crayons

One thing we discovered during this process is how healing it is to create without a practical goal. To laugh. To be silly. To allow the inner child to reappear and be expressed.

To build something silly, without the pressure of outcome. To follow curiosity. To explore an idea just because it feels alive.

AI makes this more accessible than ever. You no longer need ten years of coding, filmmaking, or design to express an idea. But tools alone are not enough. People need environments where experimentation is safe and encouraged.

That is part of what Eleven Dunbar offers: a playground for adults. A place where creativity is not performance, but expression.

The Kind of People Who Thrive Here

We believe a new kind of human skillset is becoming essential.

Not the narrow specialist, but the adaptive generalist. Someone who:

• Has breadth across domains

• Develops depth in at least one human dimension

• Cultivates taste

• Has agency

• Can connect dots others don’t see

These people can integrate technology, creativity, relationships, and meaning. They can move across roles, learn continuously, and collaborate effectively.

We call this archetype the adaptive generalist.

Eleven Dunbar is designed as an environment where adaptive generalists can find each other and grow together.

If you want to hear the energy behind this, the story, the laughter, the why, Justin and I talk about Eleven Dunbar in depth in Episode #83 of the podcast. Listen here.

An Invitation

This is an invitation to Founding Members.

We’re looking for the engineer who secretly writes poetry. The CEO who wants to learn how to play again. The artist who is curious about how AI can expand their soul’s expression.

You can apply here: elevendunbar.com

Over the next weeks, we’ll share more about our journey and about Eleven Dunbar.

If something in this resonates, reach out. I’d love to hear your story, how you bring play into your life, or simply have a chat.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Love,
Gerhard

ps. In episode #83, Justin and I talk about Eleven Dunbar in depth

AI has been used to refine structure, grammar, and flow, but every idea, sentence, and story originates from human experience and intuition.

You can listen to this episode on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Today is the day when I will share with you what I have been working on behind closed doors with my dear friend, brother, and co-founder, Justin: Eleven Dunbar.

We’ve been building this for the last ~6 months, but honestly… it feels like the culmination of decades of lived experience: wins, losses, startups, burnout, reinvention, laughter, play, storytelling, creativity, and the weird magic of finding your people.

It’s a membership-based community where creative expression meets authenticity, and where relationships deepen into long-term transformation.

This is our invitation to the founding members, and also just an invitation to anyone who feels that “something is missing,” even if life looks good on paper.

Apply here: elevendunbar.com

Even if you don’t want to become a member, the application itself is a piece of art - a small experience, full of love and hidden easter eggs, worth taking.

If you’re curious or want to share your journey with us, reach out:

• justin@elevendunbar.com

• gerhard@elevendunbar.com

We’d genuinely love to hear what you’re building, what you’re healing, what you’re chasing, and what you’re becoming.

Love,
Gerhard

AI is about to unleash a wave of creativity we haven’t seen before, not in art, but in software. People will build tools the same way they make videos or write posts: for themselves, first.

Sadly, no dark chocolate review today. Vienna fail. Miami redemption incoming.

Helsinki reflections, building something new, thoughts on AI, creativity, community, and why I’m doubling down on the things that still feel human.

Plus: mustache ASMR and a dark chocolate review (Läderach 80%), obviously. No script. Just thinking out loud.

Enjoy <3

I’m back!

Hope you had a good transition into 2026 - I surely did : )

Have you ever looked back at a year and felt… nothing? Everything was fine on paper: work, health, stability…but somehow the year feels like a blur.

In this episode, I explore a concept I couldn’t quite name until now: being trapped in honey. Life is comfortable, sweet, and safe, yet strangely numbing. There’s no real friction, no urgency, no aliveness - you walk through life without putting much thought into it.

Also, we have the FIRST 100% dark chocolate review. I have also updated the rating system, and we now have four leaderboards: 70%, 80%, 90%, and 100%.

Unfortunately, Substack doesn’t allow tables, so a screenshot has to do it.

Thanks for listening! If this resonated or inspired you, leave a comment or share it to support my work <3

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At the beginning of my spiritual journey, many years ago, I stumbled upon the concept of surrender.

I had just read “The Untethered Soul” and later “The Surrender Experiment” by Michael Singer. Like many people at that stage, I was deeply drawn to the idea of letting go; of trusting life, of surrendering control, of allowing the universe to lead.

Perhaps because I had hit rock bottom and was looking for answers on how to get out of the valley.

Michael Singer’s life story made it sound almost irresistible. When he moved away from wanting from life and towards surrendering to it, life seemed to become more effortless.

More fulfilling and less forced. He described a shift from suppression to surrender, from trying to control life to simply letting it unfold.

At that time, this message landed deeply with me, because I had been living the opposite. I was living a life shaped almost entirely by control.

I lived in my mind, constantly projecting a future I believed would fulfill me. A version of life that would make me feel good, successful, secure, and, if I’m honest, better in comparison to others.

I tried to shape reality toward a “perfect state,” or at least toward something I thought I wanted.

I genuinely didn’t know myself, and I had lost faith in myself to trust that deep inside of me, I already carried what I was looking for.

Instead, I was focused on the external world; on external things and on external people giving me the answers I thought I needed.

Only later did I realize that many of these projections were not coming from clarity, but from wounds. From insecurities, fear, and from false desires rooted in not trusting life, and not trusting myself.

In that sense, Singer’s work helped me immensely as it softened something in me that allowed me to loosen my grip on life.

But it also left me confused, and I don’t think I was alone in that confusion.

Two Ways of Losing Yourself

Destructive control

It’s entirely possible to try to control life completely, as many people do. And by most external standards, many of them succeed. They hold onto power, manage as many variables as they can reach, and shape the world in ways that preserve certainty and predictability.

And for a time, this works.

Control can be an effective force. It can move systems, build companies, even change the course of history. But over time, it demands more and more energy. And more often than not, it isn’t driven by a deep love for life, nature, or the universe, but by something more fragile underneath.

Fear. Anger. Shame. Old wounds that haven’t been looked at. A need to protect a carefully constructed image of how things should be.

Over time, these overlooked wounds get buried under denial, neglect, and ignorance. And with that, you become more and more disconnected from yourself, and gradually, from everyone around you.

You can see it in people who try to control everything and everyone. What begins as decisiveness hardens into rigidity. Certainty that is threatened turns into suspicion. Complexity collapses into zero-sum thinking, where people become obstacles rather than collaborators.

These forces can still produce results. They can still drive change. But rarely the kind that feels genuinely constructive. More often than not, someone else ends up paying the price for that ambition.

At some point, control stops being creative.

It becomes destructive and begins to move against nature rather than with it.

Chaotic surrender

For me, surrender became the reaction to that kind of control.

Somewhere along the way, my understanding of it began to distort. I started to believe that the act of ‘wanting’ itself was the problem, that any desire was simply the ego interfering with life, trying to shape it according to fear and expectation.

In that frame, surrender slowly turned into something else. Into saying yes by default. Into stepping out of the way without really knowing why.

And so that’s what I did.

I stopped checking in with myself. I stopped asking whether something actually felt right, or whether I was quietly betraying something important in the process.

I mistook surrender for compliance.

Nothing collapsed, but something drifted.

Because surrender, practiced without a deep connection to yourself, doesn’t bring clarity, nor truth, but chaos.

Without grounding, without values, principles, or self-trust, surrender turns into self-erasure.

You turn into a rudderless ship in the middle of the ocean, at the mercy of winds and currents.

You say yes without listening, and neglect your own signals. Slowly, you begin serving other people’s wishes, needs, and desires while calling it trust.

This is where the trap appears.

If surrender means abandoning discernment, you have to assume the world is always honest, that people always act from clarity, love, or integrity, which is simply not true.

Many people, often unconsciously, project their own unmet needs, fears, and ambitions onto others. Some manipulate, some push, and some don’t know what they’re doing - but their confusion still has consequences.

Without self-trust, surrender doesn’t free you.

It dissolves you.

In spiritual language, words like trust, flow, and letting go can unintentionally reinforce that pattern when they’re not grounded in something deeper.

Prepared participation

For surrender to be healthy, it has to start somewhere else entirely.

It has to start with a relationship with yourself; with exploring who you are beneath conditioning, remembering your values, and clarifying the principles you’re willing to live by - not as rigid rules, but as an internal compass.

Surrender, in this sense, doesn’t mean becoming passive - it means becoming aligned.

You can’t control outcomes, but you can control:

• the work you do to understand yourself

• the intentions you set

• the decisions you make

• the boundaries you hold

• the courage to say no, so that your yes actually means something

This kind of surrender isn’t about forcing life to behave a certain way; it’s about meeting life without dragging false desires along with you.

I keep coming back to the Serenity Prayer I’ve heard many times before, not as a belief, but as a reminder for when things feel unclear:

“Dear [Universe/Nature/God/Spaghetti Monster], grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

Surrender requires prepared participation.

Preparation: the active half of surrender

One of the biggest misunderstandings about surrender, and one I carried for a long time, is the belief that surrender means the universe will somehow do the work for you.

I used to think that letting go meant stepping out of responsibility, that trust would make effort unnecessary, that life would simply unfold on my behalf if I got out of the way.

Over time, I realized how misleading that idea was.

Surrender doesn’t mean the universe clears the path ahead of you. It doesn’t remove obstacles or spare you from difficult choices.

What it does, at least this is how I’ve come to understand it, is create conditions - and those conditions still require you to meet them.

That meeting takes work, awareness, discipline, and courage.

It takes preparation.

Over time, I’ve come to see surrender less as passivity and more as participation, an active relationship with whatever life is offering in that moment.

The image that keeps returning for me is sailing.

You still have to decide to leave the harbor. You still have to read the water and the sky. You still have to open the sails and keep adjusting them, again and again, so the wind can carry you.

None of this is easy.

Sometimes the wind takes you somewhere very different from where you had imagined. Sometimes the waters are calm and generous. And sometimes they are chaotic and unforgiving.

That, too, is part of the practice.

Preparation, in this sense, doesn’t mean trying to control the direction. It means staying responsive without hardening. It means constant readjustment, while not losing the joy in the movement itself.

It means trusting yourself.

Because surrender doesn’t promise a life of constant ease or happiness.

It asks whether you are willing to prepare yourself for whatever the universe has in store, and to meet it, as honestly as you can, with grace, with joy when possible, and with gratitude even when it’s difficult.

And yes, sometimes surrender also means suffering.

It means going through difficult seasons and facing failure. Staying present when things don’t make sense and when clarity doesn’t arrive on time.

That doesn’t mean something went wrong, but it usually means something real is happening.

When 'wanting' changes its nature

Something subtle begins to shift once you start trusting yourself again.

Wanting no longer feels like projection, no longer like a mental image of how life should look, or a future you need to arrive at to feel whole.

Instead, it takes on a different quality; quieter and less demanding.

It starts to feel more like remembering than desiring.

Not a detailed plan, and not a fixed destination either, but a sense of direction. A willingness to listen. A readiness to move when something feels true, without needing to know exactly where it will lead.

A readiness to be seen as unreasonable, irrational, chaotic, and hard to understand.

There is less grasping in it, and less expectation, yet more curiosity and more responsiveness.

You begin to pay attention to subtler signals; to how your body reacts in certain situations, to what feels expansive or contracting, to what gives energy rather than drains it.

Decisions become less about optimization and more about resonance.

Life, at that point, stops feeling like something to control and starts to feel more like a conversation, and more like a dance than a conquest. Not because you know where it leads, but because staying still would mean not being honest anymore.

The music has been playing all along, and surrender, in this sense, is learning to listen. And desire, when it’s real, is choosing to move.

Alan Watts & David Lindberg - Why Your Life Is Not A Journey

What surrender makes possible

The beauty of surrendering, when it’s grounded, when it’s paired with responsibility, is not that you stop wanting or give up direction.

It’s when you begin to understand what is actually yours to control.

Your preparation.
Your inner alignment.
Your willingness to act when the moment calls for it.

And when that preparation meets the conditions life presents, something begins to shift.

Aliveness unlocks.

Not because you forced an outcome, but because you were ready when the invitation arrived.

What begins to change, I’ve noticed, isn’t just what you do, but the place you act from.

When action comes from trust & love rather than fear, from openness rather than defense, something in life starts to feel different.

Not necessarily easier, but more alive, more spacious, and more surprising. And over time, you begin to sense that you’re not acting for yourself alone, that you’re participating in something larger, something that only works because we depend on one another.

You are in communion, not just with the universe in some abstract sense, but with other people, with circumstances, with timing itself.

And sometimes, life takes you to places you could never have planned for. Not as a reward for control, but as a response to presence.

To end this year in reflection

One year ago, I was the founder and CEO of a small startup, and I could never have imagined how the next twelve months would unfold.

We had to close the company. We had to kill the product. And with it, a dream we once shared.

At the time, it felt like failure, but looking back now, I see it differently.

That startup was a beautiful head fake.

It was never meant to succeed in the way I thought success looked; in reach, in scale, or in money. It existed for something else entirely, as it forced me to grow, to mature, and to wake up in areas that were still drowned in illusion.

It confronted me with the ways I avoided difficult decisions, with places where I wasn’t fully honest with myself, and with responsibilities I hadn’t yet learned how to carry.

As painful as that ending was, it prepared me for what came next.

Because sometimes things are not what we think they are, and their ending is not a failure but a redirection.

Like a pause before a new song begins.

By November 2025, I found myself founding a new startup, something I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams a year earlier. And who knows what 2026 has in store.

But what I do know is this: I will continue to do my part.

I will take responsibility for the things I can control: my decisions, my behavior, my integrity. I will keep working with my shadows instead of pretending they aren’t there.

I will become more aware of my flaws, not as something to fix, but as something to hold honestly. I will stay present for the people I love, and I will keep moving forward even when the path isn’t clear.

And above all, I will keep trying to help others remember why they are here: to create purpose, connection, and a sense of belonging in a world that desperately needs more humanity than ever before.

This, for now, is the work - to a new dance, with a new rhythm, and a willingness to meet whatever comes next with presence, courage, and care.

Happy New Year, everybody. <3

A year-end reflection on surrender, control, and what it means to want something from life without trying to force it.

In this Christmas special, I reflect on 2025; what I’m leaving behind, what I’m taking with me, and what I hope to grow into next year. We talk spirituality without bypassing responsibility, the tension between surrender and agency, and why preparation matters more than manifestation.

Also included:

• My product of the year: Kindle

• My two books of the year:

  • Fiction: Tuf Voyaging — George R. R. Martin
    A surprisingly hilarious and thoughtful sci-fi novel. Witty, strange, and one of those books you slow down on because you don’t want it to end.

  • Non-Fiction: Creativity, Inc. — Ed Catmull
    Still my favorite non-fiction book. An honest, human look at leadership, creative culture, and building something that outlives you. Worth rereading — multiple times.

• And, of course, a very serious dark chocolate review with an updated ranking system

Thank you for listening, co-creating, and being part of this strange, honest experiment. See you next year.

Thanks for listening! If this resonated or inspired you, leave a comment or share it to support my work <3

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