João M. Fernandes's Blog

Sit in with loneliness and let it sink in
Sit in with boredom and let it cover you
Sit in with jealousy and let it be with you
Sit in with uncontrollable desire
Sit in…

As long as you sit in and don’t oppose it, you don’t run away from it… you will stop being lonely, bored, jealous or controlled by your own thoughts. As long as you sit and stay with it you will soon realize that all of those pains are nothing more than thoughts in your head. They don’t mean anything.

The thoughts are part of the mind and you are living inside the mind. Coming out of it is simply to being able to understand and acknowledging it. The solution has been shown. There’s nothing more.

If you sit with any of those feelings and let them sink in, they will vanish. Because the essence of your mind is pure and when you sit, do nothing, stop telling stories to yourself in a real inception of yourself… these will disappear.

You will stand up, move on with your life and realize that you are not bored, lonely or jealous. You will acknowledge that those were just stupid thoughts and after all, you had other things to do.

Feelings are like clouds, they appear and they go away.
Don’t mistaken the fleeting and ever-changing existence of a cloud for the image that you saw.

Did you ever saw a stone cloud floating in the sky? Of course not…

We spend our entire lives avoiding ourselves.
We avoid the obvious consequences of our actions.
We avoid the opportunities given by the gODS.
We avoid the obvious, because we might get hurt in the process.
Being a mature human being is about facing yourself.

Being a full grown up man, or woman, is about taking by the horns those things that make you so fearful.

Being an integrate person means to face what is right in front of you, even if it hurts, even if you don’t want.

Of course that none of us want to face ourselves, our reality, our circumstances. But only with that intense realism is that we can change, move forward and create beauty.

Keep reading this article on Joao's website at: Adventurous Artist

This article is a personal story and also a review of Ryan Holiday, latest book Ego Is the Enemy

When you say something to hurt another person on purpose, who is talking: you or your ego? When you are offered a position to a under-qualified job and you throw a tantrum who is reacting to it? Yes, perhaps it’s your ego.

So many times we act not from your center of being but from a sense of entitlement, pride or frustration, in other words, from the ego center.

If you have read my book “How To Find Your Purpose and Live a Good Life" then you are familiar with my Fight Club moment, back from December 2012. If you aren’t, I will re-tell it here:

<< I was at the middle of a promising academic career. I had a job as a life coach and was on the verge of becoming one of the head coaches for the company. I had a great girlfriend and we were planning to go on long term trip to Southeast Asia. I had plenty of money, I had food at expensive restaurants and was used to buy whatever clothes I wanted without thinking twice.

I was basically living THE DREAM at the young age of 22. I felt not only superior to other people but I also felt better than everybody around me.

And the most spectacular part of it all is that… it all collapsed in 1 week.

Everything!!

And no, I am not joking, I wish I was. Every short term dream, goal and project for the near future got destroyed in seven days. What a great week that was, you have no idea…

Keep reading the full storie, on João's website >>

... And Also GoodReads Author: Zan Perrion

What can you say about a man who left everything behind to be a modern day pirate? About a man who dedicates his entire life to beauty, women and being the world greatest seducer? A man who is the inspiration for such big names in the dating industry as Neil Strauss, author of The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships? A man who decided that he wanted to travel the world and live great adventures? A man who created a community with over 30 thousand fans on Facebook?

His name is Zan Perrion and I came in touch with his work around 2009. Since then we became friends and I ended up working for his company, Ars Amorata, in a series of projects. What always surprised me about Zan was that despite being the man that I know that better gets women, when you meet him there’s nothing pretentious or playboyish about him. He is just a guy cracking jokes and having fun, but underneath the surface there’s real magic happening and a way of communicating that speaks to the heart of women.

I interviewed Zan a couple of years ago, when we were launching a new product for the Portuguese speaking market and I thought that you could learn a lot with his message. So here it is Zan Perrion speaking about seduction, life and how to move among true beauty.

Keep Reading Zan's Interview on the Adventurous Artist website >>

This week, after I came back from a few days in London, I began to meditate after a long absence. The reason why I started doing it once again, after almost 1 year and a half of not sitting and doing nothing, is because I missed it… Really. I mean I didn’t start to do it because I felt that I was in need to solve something or fix myself, – you already know my opinion on that subject.

After the first few minutes of sitting in a not-so-proper lotus position I entered a state of serenity and two very important questions came to me. At the same time I started to ritualize more my days, to be more aware of what I do and how I see others.

With this I felt love, I felt gratitude and bliss for my life.

And so I just had the idea, while I was scratching my head thinking about what I should write about, to share with you some of those underrated things, those little pleasures that you probably have in your life but you don’t even notice.

Here is what I came up with:

* Sleeping in a proper bed and snuggle in your duvet. I never realized how incredible a bed can be after I spent over a month sleeping on floors.
* Smelling the pages of a book.
* Petting a dog and smiling like a moron while you play with him.
* The smell of rain on asphalt.

If You Want to Discover the other 26 Life Greatest Pleasures, keep reading here >>

For a long time I made sure to check in with myself to only post, share and provide relevant content. This in a business sense is the logical thing to do. After all if my readers, you, are interested in superficial themes then there are way better blogs for that.

Still, I kept having shallow conversations, small talking and making sure that everybody was comfortable talking about something that would make everybody comfortable. Two weeks ago, when I was reading “Cloud Hidden: Whereabouts Unknown” while waiting for my flight at Stanstead Airport I shook hands with myself and I came to terms with what I want more in my life.

I would not have more shallow, superficial conversations. I was done with it for good. It either has meaning, I am learning something or sharing something true or I don’t want to be part of it.

When my friend Hans Comyn was here in Portugal, he told me how important it is for him to create a community, a community of people committed to share and speak their truth, a community of real people having real deep conversations. While we were talking about it I said something that had a big impact on me:

“We pretend that we are friends, but we are not really friends, we are people who kinda know each other and we keep referring to it as friendship, brotherhood, but it isn’t… we do it, just because we like the idea of it.“

Keep Reading this Article on João's Website >>

For a long time I’ve been immersed in the self-development world. I attended conferences, seminars and workshops, after some years I would be on the other side: I organized workshops, I lead weekend programs a bit through all the Western World and I spoke in conferences.

Nowadays I like to see myself as away from that universe. Now I am just a person living his life and having the best time that he can. That’s it. I don’t want to be saved, to be fixed or to change who I am or the world around me.

I believe that deep change, real, everlasting change only comes trough acceptance. Total acceptance of who you are, what happened to you and of your fate. Put in simpler terms acceptance of the past, present and future.

You might say that it is not as easy as that, that there is a lot more to it… And you might be right, I don’t want to enter in an never ending discussion about what works better. I am only narrating my experience and what has worked for me.

If you want to read the entire article, keep reading it on João's Website >>

It all starts inside you. It is all starts in you.

As long as you go around searching, running after, trying to find it in hidden places you will always be an hostage of your desire to love and to be loved.

The beauty of love is that it is an all encompassing feeling, you can’t love yourself and hate everything around and in the same way your love won’t be true if you love somebody else but you hate who you are.

Love, in its most genuine form is a transversal feeling. When you really love yourself you won’t be able not to love everything else that is not considered yourself.

Love is an expanding feeling, it reveals itself in many ways and it lies in it the power of creation.

If you want to read the entire article, keep reading it on João's Website >>

Moscow… What a fucking city.

For a Contemporary History bachelor this is somewhat of an orgasm, the senses explode, it is too much to take it all in, mostly when you are straight awake for 30 hours. That adds up to the confusion and awe of being in one of the most world famous cities. But still what an incredible place!!

It is easy to forget that Moscow is the capital of Russia, of the East, it is the place of Tsars and Red Stars, never fully European, never fully Oriental, it is the samewhat middle ground that breeds a fascinating amalgama of a society.

My first reaction when I got on the train was very simple: what a bunch of pricks. I mean Russians don’t really like to do you favors and the less you disturb them, the better they are. They don’t care about you, actually they don’t care about anyone else besides themselves. People don’t hold the door for the one behind them, they never say “spassiva” when the waiter hands them the order, they drive like maniacs and I never saw one Russian eager to help another. But of course, this is also a generalization.

If you want to keep reading this article, check it here at João's Website >>

The 6th of April is a really cool day for me. Last Wednesday I celebrated my 26th birthday and what a ride it has been. For a long time that I’ve been thinking about writing a list of some of the things that I learned in my life and my most recent birthday proved to be an excellent opportunity to share with you 26 things I learned in 26 years of being a semi-successful person on this planet.

I sure don’t know everything about life, but I believe in sharing, I believe in creating space to be inspired and to inspire others. This is my gift to you.

*****



(*) Let yourself go and stop trying to control everything. People are the way they are, it is not your job to change them, other people have free will and you should learn to accept it. It always surprised me the amount of people who are neurotic about controlling everything around them. Relax, let go.

(*) Get a dog, not a cat. A cat is something that lives in your house, a dog is going to be your best friend, your brother and your kid, all at the same time. Speaking of which…

(*) Take responsibility for what you do. Take responsibility for the way you feel. Take responsibility for your life.

Continue Reading on The Adventurous Artist website >>