I Love The Island Of The Gods, Bali!

So HARD To Enjoy Life Enlightened In Paradise

Preface

“Wow, are you on vacation?”
“No, I work here!”

In this expat travel guide, the author 4ster describes how a “workation”, a mixture of work and vacation, changed his life and gives valuable tips on how employees, startups or self-employed people can achieve this. A laptop and a reliable, fast internet connection are the only tools many entrepreneurs need today. They can work as so-called “digital nomads” and live wherever they want.

To make the most of this independence and succeed as an entrepreneur, you must learn to let go. Such a mindset prevents one from mistakenly believing that only one's own efforts will sustain a business.

By optimizing and digitizing processes, the author 4ster describes how he lives in harmony with his work and is committed to the life philosophy of a digital nomad. This expat travel guide is a tribute to Bali and an invitation to travel with him to the island of the gods. Let his experiences inspire you to enjoy your own life of freedom and happiness.

So hard to enjoy life enlightened in paradise

Your task for today

Which place can be your paradise?

Think about the places you've always wanted to visit.
Write them down and make a list.
Do it in written form because written form is so powerful.
Find out why you want to live in abundance.
And write down your three most important reasons why.
What is the next step you need to take in this direction?
So write down the next task you need to complete to move in that direction.

Do it now!

About the author 4ster

The idea of taking a few days off seems impossible to many self-employed people, freelancers, startups and entrepreneurs. Without constant work in their business, they fear that everything will collapse. Author 4ster experienced this painfully in the self-created hamster wheel of his independence.

The turning point in author 4ster's life began with a twist of fate: after the death of his brother-in-law Marc, the self-employed man dropped everything to support his sister. He describes how he mastered a digitalized world and automated business processes and found a happy and harmonious work-life balance.

He took part in a workation in Bali and moved his office to the Island of the Gods to network with other remote workers. This joint working holiday initiated the separation from banal everyday tasks.

In his expat travel guide, he gives valuable tips and encourages employees, self-employed people, freelancers, startups and entrepreneurs to be inspired by his story.

More information about the author 4ster can be found at Vitality4Happiness.com

Winter refugee

Winter in Germany has always been hard for me because there isn't much light and the nights are so long. In November and December the sky in Germany is usually gray, it rains a lot and sometimes it snows. In winter the streets are frozen over. I don't like that it gets very slippery at night and in the morning. When I lived in Germany, it was a time of year when I was often depressed. Plus, I still don't like Christmas. I think it's too commercialized and it makes me sick.

However, for my own sanity I felt that I needed to leave Germany in the winter and spend time in the southern hemisphere. The first time I escaped the winter in Germany was after graduating in 1988. I took some time off before getting a job and traveled to Australia, where I spent four months.

I booked a six week bus trip to travel around and explore different places. It ran from Sydney along the east coast towards Queensland. Then up to Cairns, across the island to the center, to Tennant Creek, a tiny village known because it lies at the intersection of two major highways. From there I drove on to Darwin, then traveled back to Alice Springs and visited Ayers Rock. From there I took the train to Adelaide. So this bus trip gave me a taste of everything Australia has to offer.

As a musician who practices daily, I missed my guitar after just a week in Australia. One of my first stops on the bus trip was a place called Byron Bay on the east coast. There was a music store there called Byron Music. They had a 12-string acoustic guitar, so I bought it and took it with me on my bus ride.

After Byron Bay the bus went to Queensland and stayed overnight in Rockhampton, which was a very good vibe for me. It was fun to swim in the sea and surfers

liked the big waves. Rockhampton seemed like the best place because I like guitar and rock music.

I remember having a dream. It was about lying in a hammock under palm trees and making money online while I relaxed. Since I first had this dream I've always thought about Queensland and Rockhampton. I wanted to live in a simple wooden house and make money with a computer in my hammock. My father gave me the idea: to lie in a hammock and earn money

I also wanted to be very relaxed and live very cheaply. I didn't even need a car in my dream because everything I wanted to go to was just a short bike ride from where I lived. I could exercise on the way to the store or while meeting friends. Yes, that was my dream, but it took me a long time to realize it.

After four months in Australia, I returned to Germany and got my first job. Every year I saved up my vacation days and traveled to tropical regions or to Australia to escape the German winter. I visited Central America: Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and Belize. Some Caribbean islands, e.g. Dominican Republic, Jamaica and French Antilles.

And then I found beautiful places in the Indian Ocean, like the Seychelles, Martinique and the Maldives. Even though the Maldives are more popular, I like the Seychelles the best. I fled Germany almost every winter. Most of these countries were pleasant and I had a good time there. Still, nothing spoke to me as strongly as the image I had in my head of living in Queensland.

If you “never” go, you will “never” know

Australians have a saying: “If you never go, you will never know” in “If you Never-Never go, you will Never-Never know.” twisted. Northern Territory and the Australian Outback is called “Never-Never Land”. This gives it a funny double meaning: if you go to the outback, you will get to know the outback.

After traveling to “Never-Never Land”, something happened on the way back to Germany. I stopped in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for three days. In Australia people didn't recognize me as a tourist. Well, that is not the case in Malaysia. Western visitors are easily recognized. Kuala Lumpur is full of street vendors trying to sell kitschy items. Everyone wanted to sell me something, and the sudden interruptions for useless jewelry and fake roses were annoying.

The atmosphere there quickly made me angry and annoyed, and I couldn't stand it. But to be honest, I wasn't ready at all. No attempt was made to learn or read about Malaysia. I thought the pre-booked hotel would be fine, but I didn't feel comfortable there.

I finally came to the conclusion that Asia was not the right place for me. Asia was the first and biggest culture shock for me. For this reason, I didn't go to Asia for a long time. When I went to Australia or New Zealand, I sometimes had layovers in Asia, but I kept them to a minimum and usually didn't leave the airport.

After the experience of this stopover, I realized that I was so relieved to be able to walk around freely in Australia. Because as long as you keep your mouth shut, Australians won't recognize you as a tourist. Australia is a diverse mix of nationalities, mainly from many European countries. So if a European shows up and the Australians don't recognize you because of your accent, they assume you're Australian too.

Almost every year since 1988 I have tried to escape the German winter and held on to my dream of living in Queensland. I was looking for a place that corresponded to my dreams. But everything changed for me in 2016 when I received this message from my friend Kerstin that I had previously talked about.

Kersten told me about a workstation in Bali and suggested that I travel there.

Even though I was busy and the deadline was only two weeks from the day I received her message, this idea hit me. I had to do it because I knew I would regret it if I didn't. While I was in Bali, I almost forgot about my dream of living in Australia. It was three weeks, and when the workation was over, I had to go home. At that moment I realized how much I loved it. I did not want to go. The atmosphere, mood and surroundings were exactly like my dream.

It matched every part of my dream, or at least had the potential to, from living in a wooden house to making money in a hammock between two palm trees. In the end, Bali was my dream and fulfilled my emotional needs. And that's why I remembered that dream when I was there. After 27 years and 27 winters, I finally found my dream place!

The funniest thing about this story is: the place we stayed in Bali was called “Villa Mimpi Manis”. Mimpi Manis means “Sweet Dream”. So thank you, Bali, for giving me this special sign. Thank you for guiding me to my destiny and fulfilling my dream.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

What are you running from?
What place, action, or activity do you avoid?

This is where you can learn and grow the most.

Let go

For most people, it is difficult to imagine leaving their job, self-employment or entrepreneurship behind and staying in a foreign country or working from home. For me, fate had to intervene before I learned that not everything goes wrong when I'm gone for a while. And this experience gave me the courage to take a trip to Bali and take part in a workation.

A “workation” is a combination of work and vacation. So it's a working holiday. Here I learned to optimize my business. Inserting processes that run by themselves. Delegating the work to others who can do it even better than me. And you can learn that too, and this expat travel guide will show you how.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Do the “Letting Go Meditation” on the website https://i-love-bali.com/

The password is the VOUCHER CODE on the keyboard.

Dedication: For my children

Writing I Love Bali was another life lesson. I could remember many ups and downs that I have experienced over the years. I know some of my family and friends are nervous about what I might say. But I'm really grateful for those who let me talk.

I dedicate this expat travel guide to one

widow

This widow is a wonderful soul, a year and a half younger than me. There is no doubt that she has tremendous mental strength, but she really needed it in this story!

She is a small person and a bit petite looking who lived in her parents' house most of her time because she didn't want to travel or live anywhere else. She raised three children. She loves gardening so much that she turned her parents' property into a park. After attending a few Jürgen Höller seminars, she turned her life into an adventure. After her husband's death she accompanied me on a trip to South Africa. As a result, she has lived primarily in Cape Town, traveled the world, started her own business and worked remotely during this time.

Secondly, I dedicate this expat travel guide to her husband:

Marc

He was physically strong. He inspired me to write this expat travel guide. Thank you, Marc, for your motivation, even if the price you paid for it is far too high!

I also dedicate this expat travel guide to my former employee:

DJ Qris

Qris worked in my shop. And he started as a volunteer. But his development over the time we've worked together is just incredible. It didn't matter if he broke his knee; he set off anyway.

Today he plays with a very successful band in Germany that fills the biggest stadiums with fans. Chris, I admire what you've done and how you've grown. My biggest congratulations go out to you. That's why I dedicate this travel guide to you!

Then there was

Becky

She spiced up my life and was the trigger for me to leave Germany.

And finally my new and second wife:

Sinta

She is a wonderful soul. With her incredible emotional intelligence. And she is the warmest person I have ever met. Thank you for your love!

I finally realized that I was writing this expat travel guide for my wonderful children. Even though I lost touch with them after living in Bali for five years, which hurt my soul. I carry you both in my heart wherever I go. I have been hurt badly, but through this pain I have realized how much I need your love and recognition.

My kids

In particular, write this expat travel guide for you. Louis is rather introverted, he is quiet and he is very sensitive. But on the other hand, he is technically very, very gifted. For example, one thing we did together was that he ordered components for a computer while I was traveling in New Caledonia. He had the parts for the computer at home, and one of his friends promised him, "I'll help you put the pieces together and get your computer running."

When the parts arrived, his friend was out of town and couldn't help my son. Louis waited patiently for his return. Then I had a video call with Louis halfway across the globe. Louis proudly showed me the boxes with all the components, the microprocessor, the power supply and the memory.

I said, “How about we put this together in a video call?” And in a two-hour video call on WhatsApp, 11,000 miles away, we assembled the computer remotely. Can you imagine that by this point he already had the parts at home and was patiently waiting for his friend to return? That would never have happened to me!

Okay, my beloved children, I want you to know that I love you unconditionally. And from afar I wanted to tell you:

I love you.
I'm sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you very much!

I love you.
I'm sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you very much!

I love you.
I'm sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you very much!

I am grateful to my children for giving me a reason to do what I do, knowing that I am creating a better world for their future. I know with confidence that one day we will meet again and reunite peacefully in harmony.

Your challenge for today

Please forgive me, thank you!

The Island of the Gods

I want to take you on an unforgettable journey; I will tell you the story of how I came to Bali, which all started in October 2016.

My sister called me in the morning and when I answered I heard her sobbing on the other end of the line. She was on her way home from Croatia, where she had been on vacation with her husband. While he was driving the car, he turned around abruptly and said to her:

"I do not feel comfortable. I have to take a break. He stopped the car and jumped out.” As he sank to the ground, he begged her: “Please help me, Petra. Lift me up. I’m having trouble breathing!”

But because he was significantly taller than her, Petra wasn't strong enough to support him. She panicked and said to him, “How can I help you? You're way too big. Please sit in the passenger seat and relax.”

With difficulty, Petra was able to help her husband into the passenger seat, but as soon as he sat down, his face began to turn blue and he soon lost consciousness. Petra panicked and called for medical help. When paramedics arrived, they helped support Petra and immediately began administering chest compressions and electric shocks to revive her husband. This went on for about an hour.

Unfortunately, the electric shocks were unsuccessful. Despite his best efforts, he did not regain consciousness, although he occasionally opened his eyes and returned for a few seconds. In the end, the paramedics declared him dead. My sister lost her beloved husband.

When Petra told me what had happened, I was at a loss for words. In such a situation you are ready to do anything, but you also know that you can do nothing. I wanted to know them

let her have all my support. I told her, “I will leave everything behind and join you, and I will be there for you as long as you need me.”

I expected to stay with her for three or five days. It took two weeks to arrange her husband's repatriation from Croatia to Germany and I stayed with her until the funeral took place. As she made every difficult decision during this time, I was impressed by how strong she was.

sadness and gratitude

At some point I realized that her strength lay in being grateful for the time she spent with her husband. I admired and envied her strength because I lacked that quality. I was impressed.

The depth of her strength was a revelation to me. I was deeply affected by what happened and it soon motivated me to do something completely outside my comfort zone.

Mimpi Manis - Sweet Dream

Around the time of the funeral, a message arrived from my friend Kerstin: “Look at this: A workation in Bali!” It was a gathering of 12 digital nomads who spent three weeks in Bali sharing experiences while living in a beautiful Villa called "Mimpi Manis" lived and worked. The meaning of this name is "sweet dream". Every time I think of it, my heart warms.

I looked at my calendar and saw that there were only two weeks until this workation began; After some thought, I decided to go. It was a huge leap of faith, but I figured if I couldn't leave my life and business in Germany behind and visit Bali now, when would I ever have the courage to do something so crazy again? After seeing my sister take bold action without hesitation or thought.

That was the push I needed to leave Germany, work from Bali, leave my business behind and make a life-changing decision. I handed over complete control of my business to Chris, my employee, who was already running and managing the company while I helped my sister. While I was in Bali, he was assigned to handle all operational details in Germany. From Bali I focused exclusively on online marketing and controlling.

Suddenly I remembered that I had always dreamed of working in a hammock while connected to the Internet via a modem. In my dream the hammock was between two palm trees. A cable connected my laptop to a modem that was connected to a phone line. If you're reading this, you can probably imagine how far back this fantasy of mine goes.

Wi-Fi wasn't even known back then.

My idea of where this dream took place was always in Queensland, specifically the Rockhampton area. I imagined myself in a very simple wooden house

Living close to the water, close to the beach and all amenities within cycling distance. I associated this idea and dream with freedom, a frugal lifestyle, and a life that met my basic physical and emotional needs.

I finally had the chance to make this dream a reality. While I am aware that I am not in Queensland, Australia as I had hoped, I can confidently say that I am living my dream in Bali and the vibrancy of Bali as a place has completely convinced me to call it home.

Head over heels in love with Bali

I totally fell in love with Bali. To be honest, I didn't really realize how much I had fallen in love until the day it was time for me to leave Bali after work. Until then, I had no idea how much I would miss the island. When it was time to leave Bali, I debated whether I should go to the airport or stay a few more days.

Ultimately I came to the conclusion that it would be best to take the booked flight back to Germany since I had an appointment there. It was a meeting with Kerstin and some heads from an entrepreneur's mastermind group. The entrepreneur mastermind met for a three-day intensive positioning workshop, and since I had already organized it, I felt obligated to attend. This time I didn't go with my heart, but with my head and got on the plane back to Germany.

Realizing how much I would miss Bali, I burst into tears as the plane taxied from the gate to the runway. And at that moment it was clear to me: I wanted to spend most of the rest of my life in Bali. At least until I discover a new place that meets my dreams, desires and needs even better than Bali.

My experiences are documented in the expat travel guide “I Love Bali”. It tells the whole story in great detail and I invite you to watch it and enjoy the story. I hope it will inspire you to make some big decisions, make some significant changes, and grow and utilize all the strengths that already lie within you. Don't wait for an event like the death or funeral of a friend or relative to realize what you're capable of. Everything is possible.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Find out what “I Love Bali” means to you.

introduction

Imagine: It's November 29, 2022 and it's 4 p.m. I meet three musicians from the Udara Mantra Orchestra. We sit together in the Shiva Chalet to practice and go over the chords and harmonies for tonight's performance. Two weeks earlier I bought a Gibson bass guitar and asked Adi, Udara Bali's manager:

“Would it be okay to accompany you to a session because the band doesn't have a bass player?” He agreed and I was more than happy.

Our first gig started just two hours later, at 6 p.m. Some guests came in and we started playing mantras. There was a cacao ceremony and a kirtan. Kirtan is a call-and-response chant or musical dialogue, a genre of religious performance that developed during the Indian Bhakti devotional tradition.

We played all evening until 9 p.m. I sat next to the mixer. While I played the bass guitar, I also took care of the sound engineering and adjusted the microphone and instrument levels. This helped improve the sound by giving the singers more bass and reverb when singing and less when speaking, which gave me the idea of finer monitoring. At the end of the night I was so grateful for the experience. Since I haven't played in a band like this for years, I enjoyed the experience of playing bass guitar.

More than 40 years ago

So let's think back to how this all started. I was 15 years old and it was 1980. My father asked me: “Klaus, are you ready to play at a golden wedding anniversary in three weeks?” He continued: “A woman from the neighborhood asked me: Johann, can Do you want to play music at our golden wedding anniversary?'” My father asked her, “Would it be okay with you if my son accompanied me on guitar?”

He continued: “She agreed… and I agreed too. Now it’s up to you…” And yes, I felt confident enough because I had already been making music for a few years. Starting with learning the accordion and organ, which were forced upon me by my parents. Until I decided on my first instrument: a guitar.

But I had only been practicing guitar for a year at that point, so... I was far from flawless. However, with a certain understanding of music, I was confident in agreeing. So we had three weeks to prepare. My uncle Jakob gave us folders with lyrics to German folk songs, drinking songs and “evergreens” that he used to play as a musician. He even gave us one of his Guyatone amplifiers. This tube amplifier was a fairly exclusive brand at the time, with the fine tube sound of a Mesa Boogie.

Three weeks later we practiced together and packed all the equipment into my dad's car. Both of us, my father and I, were very, very nervous. I'll never forget this because after we loaded the car and got in, my dad accidentally put the car in first gear instead of reverse. The car lurched forward and slammed into the wall of the garage. It's gotten a little shorter! But it wasn't dramatic. We were still able to go to our first gig.

We played all night long, singing German folk songs, drinking songs and some evergreens. It was my first paid gig! And little did I know back then that hundreds would follow. I also realized that I enjoy music

close. But I was even more fascinated by sound devices such as amplifiers, speakers and mixing consoles.

With all the colorful buttons you can change the sound by adding effects, making the bass and treble louder or quieter and changing the volume. I loved playing around with it. But the equipment was so expensive back then that I always thought: “How can I build something like that myself?”

Another 15 years ago

Let's go back to the fall of 1966, when I was one and a half years old. A little princess came into my life: my sister Petra. She was cute, and when she was born, everyone in the family paid her a lot of attention. I was no longer the prince of the family, or at least being the prince wasn't as important as it used to be! Now the princess gets all the attention in the family. I became so jealous and wanted more attention that I started peeing my pants again!

My sister had a small body. She was petite. But on the other hand, she soon became quite competitive and strong-willed. My mother told the story again and again: “When Petra was a little child, and when Klaus played with his caterpillar, Petra wanted to have her too. She pulled his hair until he opened his hands and dropped the toy. And then she played with it.”

I was so desperate about it, but on the other hand, of course, I also learned something from it: how to compete. But that wasn't my character. My family always laughed at this story: One of my Christmas wishes was: “Please, dear Santa Claus, bring my sister a caterpillar for Christmas so that I can finally play with my caterpillar myself!”

Another story about my sister that my mother kept telling everyone is: “When Petra was ready to go to school, she had to take a bus there. We both had to take the same bus. But before her first bus ride, Petra said, “On the bus, I reserve the seat next to me for my brother.” Even though she had never been on the school bus before, she already knew that she would be on the school bus before me!

A few years later I continued performing in a band. It was a cover band and we played in the beer tents at the fair, which is what Thanksgiving is called here. I played almost every weekend, often several nights in a row, and I loved playing guitar in this cover band. Once again we had quite a few

Top 40 songs, but most of the music was evergreens, folk music and drinking songs. My sister always followed me when I played with the band. She met friends there and enjoyed dancing while I played music on stage.

Recognition for passion

I felt her recognition. She was proud to have a brother who was a musician in a band. I really appreciated this recognition because it gave me a lot more confidence. See, the stories about her pulling my hair to release a toy or her confidence that she'd be on the bus earlier than me don't exactly tell the story of strong self-confidence. But that's why I appreciated their recognition so much.

We went out partying on other nights when I wasn't performing. We went to a disco or a live music event. And once again Petra met up with friends and danced. Meanwhile I watched the band and talked to the musicians during the breaks. I included information from the musicians, but not about the music!

Most of what I learned was about the equipment they use. My interest in sound engineering led me to study electronics. So I became a telecommunications engineer, driven by my passion for loudspeaker systems, amplifiers, mixing consoles and audio technology.

Then I got a call from another band and they said, “We’re looking for a bass player.” I said yes! Because I always thought: I can play the guitar reasonably well, but I'm not making any progress in developing my guitar at the moment.

When I first started playing in bands, I was always fascinated by the bass guitar. It only has four strings that need to be tuned. The frets are wider so it's easier to find them. The tone is deeper, so it sounds more masculine. The strings are thick and won't hurt your fingers as much as the thin, sharp strings on a guitar. These were some logical reasons to switch to the bass guitar.

Basically, playing bass is pretty much the same as playing guitar. So I got my first Fender Jazz Bass and started jamming with the new band. Because

As this band was more modern, my sister followed me even more often. We played less drinking songs and more Top 40 and rock music.

I enjoyed playing this music much more because it was more passionate. Because after years of performing the German evergreens, especially the drinking and folk songs, I was so sick of it! I couldn't listen to it or play it anymore! The first thing I did was stop playing with my dad. About two years later, after I graduated and got my first job, I also stopped playing in the cover band.

Well, it wasn't long before I wanted to make music again. But this time I ended up in a soul and blues band. We played our own songs and covers of old blues and rock'n'roll numbers. You know, with drinking songs and Top 40 hits, it was easy to get money to perform. However, as an unknown band playing their own songs, you have a long way to go before you become a musician known enough for people to pay for your music.

But this time I didn't care at all because I did it with passion. I enjoyed playing the music and hearing the sounds that I loved. My idols were Bruce Springsteen and Bryan Adams. I even tried to sing like them and imitate their voices. To be honest, I never made it... At the time, I didn't realize I had a unique voice. Everyone has one. To sound authentic, you need to make the most of it. But I didn't realize that at the time.

Regardless, our band embodied the feeling of The Blues Brothers or The Commitments. you've probably seen the films and know the feelings their soul music evokes. Yes, the Blues Brothers are a soul band. “Blues” is Jake and Elwood’s last name. That was great and I didn't care that I wasn't making any money from it. I had a well-paying job as an engineer.

My sister Petra's life was completely different. At the age of 20 she married, started a family and had three children. She worked in an administrative office, like a civil servant. Her passion was raising children. With the birth of her first

She stopped working because of her son. In addition to raising her children, she took care of the house, family and garden and made everything look beautiful.

My approach to life turned out to be different: I looked for other countries and regions, especially in the southern hemisphere or tropical regions, the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, Central America and New Zealand.

I spent my winter vacation escaping Germany and realized there were even more things I was passionate about. Yes, I went on a different trip almost every winter. I explored my new passions: travel and freedom. But I will tell you more about that in future chapters.

And now it's time for you to find your passion and follow it.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

What is your passion?

Shock in the morning

It was September 17, 2016. My sister called in the middle of the night and I answered the phone while still half asleep. “You’re calling early,” I mumbled groggily. She said, "Yes, I'm sorry." I heard a heartbreaking sob on the other end of the line and I sat bolt upright in bed to ask her, “What’s wrong?” Why are you crying?"

She replied: “We are on the way back from our vacation in Croatia. And Marc just died." I was stunned, shaken to the core and speechless. I didn't know what to say. "Marc said he didn't feel well while driving. Then he stopped the car at the rest stop and got out.”

I could hear the pain and sadness in her voice when she told me that. I could tell she was in pain because she spoke slowly and took deep breaths. After stumbling over her words for a while, she regained her composure and continued. “He told me he was feeling unwell and needed a break. He jumped out of the car, fell to the ground and asked me to pick him up because he was having trouble breathing.”

Marc was much taller than her and Petra wasn't strong enough to support him. She was afraid and asked him, “How can I help you?” You're way too big. Please take a break and sit in the passenger seat.”

Petra said she helped her husband get into the passenger seat, but it was difficult. But as soon as he sat down, his face turned blue and he fainted. Petra screamed for help. Someone from the next car ran over and got him out of the car. They did mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and heart massage and of course they called an ambulance.

It took some time for the ambulance to come. While they waited for the ambulance, the kind people who had stopped to help fought hard

about helping my brother-in-law breathe. When the ambulance finally arrived, they gave him electric shocks and tried desperately to revive him. Sometimes he opened his eyes again, if only for a few seconds, and then closed them again. They tried for almost an hour, but finally they had to give up. That day my sister lost her husband.

When I realized what had happened, I said to Petra: “I will be there for you as long as you need me. I'll stay with you and help you prepare everything. Let me know when you get home. I’m coming over to help you.”

I ran my business, Rooms4Music, as a self-employed person, so you always have to be available. But luckily I already had some systems and processes in place. I also had an employee, and all I had to do was give him a piece of paper that said:

Please take care of everything.

You can call me.

But I won't be there for a few days.

Luckily, I was able to leave my business behind and help my sister. I had planned to stay with her for three or five days. It took almost two weeks to transport her husband's body from Croatia to Germany, and I stayed with her until all funeral arrangements were made.

Thanks to the automated processes I set up and the help of my co-worker, I was able to fully focus on helping my sister. I didn't have to think about and worry about my business, Rooms4Music. I sometimes used the internet to make phone calls or do other things, but it only lasted a few minutes.

Then I got this message from my friend Kerstin who told me: “There is a workation in Bali and it is very similar to an idea you had. Look at this

Come on and try it out." That's exactly what I did. Even though it was only two weeks after the funeral and I wouldn't be working on site again for another three weeks, I was still able to take part because I already had processes in my company had set up.

Now let's talk about what I learned from this sad event:

Important changes and decisions can result from emotional experiences. As an example, I decided to help my sister immediately. I wouldn't hesitate to help, and I'm sure I wouldn't, right? But when I said I was going to Bali for another three weeks and leaving my business behind, it was because I learned a few things that helped me make that decision.

First, I was about two and a half years older than my brother-in-law. This realization taught me that death can happen to me, you or anyone else at any time.

Nobody knows how long they will live. Well, if you're very sick, your life expectancy is probably shorter than if you're healthy. But we never know when it will happen, no matter what. Marc was a strong man in good health who surprised everyone. When something like this happens, it gives us the chance to rethink our lives and make decisions that we normally wouldn't be able to make.

Secondly, after my brother-in-law died, I thought about a lot of things and had a lot of questions.

Did Marc take advantage of every opportunity?
Was Marc having a good time with his life?
Did he achieve the goals he set for himself?
What was his greatest interest?
Did he experience it?

I asked myself all these questions. I thought about what I would think as I lay on my deathbed and looked back on my life.

What regrets do I have?
What decisions would I have liked to have made in my life?

There is a meditation on making decisions that answer these very questions. So imagine you're on your deathbed and you still have an hour to live. During this hour, think about your life and the decisions you have made, even the big ones.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Do the “Last Hour” meditation on the website https://i-love-bali.com/

The password is the VOUCHER CODE,

the one on the keyboard.

Imagine you are lying on your deathbed and looking back on your life. To get started, think briefly about the questions:

Did you take advantage of every opportunity?
Did you have a good time in your life?
Did you achieve the goals you set for yourself?
What was your greatest interest?
Have you followed it?
What regrets do you have?
What decisions would you have liked to have made in your life?

Use the meditation from the last hour to find the answers. Make friends with death. Make death your advisor, your very best advisor!

Write down in detail what you experienced during meditation. Be sure to write it down!

Grief: The most valuable time in life

On September 15th my sister went to Germany after her husband Marc died. She went to her home in a small village 150 kilometers north of Frankfurt, where she and Marc lived peacefully. They had only been married for about a year and a half, so they were still like newlyweds. Despite this, they had a very strong, loving relationship.

I gathered my toothbrush and other essentials and rushed to her house when she told me she had arrived so I could be there for her and comfort her as she went through this difficult time. When I got there I saw the pain she was in. I hugged her and cuddled with her for a long time. She kept repeating to me the details of how Marc died.

After word spread in the village that Marc had died, many friends came to visit her and offer their condolences. Many of them were crying, and so was my sister. After that everyone started talking about her husband. Surprisingly, my sister often recovered quickly from her grief and was able to share her own stories about her husband.

Route 66 on a “rubber cow”

For example, when some of his motorcycle friends came to condole, she told them about Marc's love of motorcycles and his dream of riding Route 66. The funny thing is, there's a stereotype that if you want to go to the southern United States and if you're a biker you want to ride down Route 66, you do it on a Harley Davidson. You might think that this is the typical American dream, don't you?

Well, Marc had other plans. He didn't want to ride a Harley-Davidson on Route 66. No! He wanted to do it on a BMW motorcycle, which has a funny name in Germany. We call it “rubber cow”! Through the cardan shaft

When the rear wheel accelerates, the driving dynamics of BMW motorcycles are different than those of motorcycles with chains. When accelerating she lifts her butt like a horny cow.

For most people, riding down Route 66 on a Harley-Davidson might seem normal, but for Marc it would always be a "rubber cow." My sister smiled as she thought about the sweet memory and how grateful she was to be able to share this story, to know her husband and to have had such a great time with him.

Also, Marc's son came to see my sister. He mountain bikes, which reminded my sister of her husband's accident while mountain biking with his son. He fell off his bike, hit his head and broke many teeth. He then had to have many of his teeth replaced. To be honest, Marc's teeth were already quite crooked before the accident. Marc's new teeth were so straight and looked beautiful. Marc kept telling what happened after the accident: "Nothing better could have happened to me than this accident because I never thought I would have such good-looking teeth." After Petra told this story, everyone laughed again! We were really grateful for how she remembered this story and how he made us laugh!

I expected to be with my sister for three or four days before we carried him to the cemetery, but it ended up being two weeks. A lot of paperwork had to be completed to transport his body from Croatia to Germany. He arrived there after about ten days. In the meantime we have organized everything. For example, an ad in the local newspaper.

Marc also took care of many things that no one else did, such as online banking, key organization, bank access and money management. When Petra came home, she had no idea where her husband kept the stuff. It was also about his will. Petra knew he had written one, but she didn't know where he kept it. So she called her lawyer, but the lawyer didn't know anything about it. We kept looking for it but we couldn't find it.

In the meantime, we all made funeral preparations and I drove them around to get groceries and other necessities. One day when we came home from shopping and were putting the food in the fridge, my sister saw a plastic bag in the fridge.

Curious, she looked into the plastic bag and found all the access codes, keys and other things that a burglar trying to break into the house shouldn't find. Marc put it in the fridge! So he made plans for everything and made sure his wife had everything she needed if something like this happened. That was a smart move on his part, wasn't it?

My sister felt another wave of gratitude. Marc was an official at Deutsche Post. So we went there and asked, "Could he keep his will here?" They let us sit at his desk. Under the observation of a postal worker, Petra searched his desk and went through folders and files. Finally she found an envelope marked “Last Will.” Even here he had organized everything so well and my sister was very grateful for her husband's forward thinking.

Later that week we met with Marc's son and ex-wife to read the will as a group. Now, as other people came to comfort my sister, she could have told two more stories about what Marc had done for her, but she kept telling the same story: how he died.

During this time, I began to see how gratitude can help overcome sadness. Gratitude is the opposite of fear, but it also helps when you're sad. Fear and gratitude are two sides of the same coin: If you are afraid, you cannot be grateful at the same time.

When you are grateful, you can't be afraid

Meanwhile, what I see here in Bali proves this to be true. The good news is that you can practice being grateful. Do you want to learn how to do it?

Then let me tell you a story about the Hindus in Bali. The Balinese have a small temple in each of their houses and on every street. And they have temples in every house. Well, they have so many temples that you can't keep track of them all! Balinese Hindus light incense, pray, meditate, show gratitude and share some offerings as part of a small ceremony they perform three times a day. They place the offerings in their temple and burn incense to make it smell good. The most amazing thing for me is how the Balinese people feel after this ceremony.

The first ceremony takes place in the morning and if you stroll through the streets or visit a market you will see all the Balinese people smiling. They have just returned from the ceremony and are making eye contact. This is in stark contrast to the Germans! In Germany, when someone comes in the opposite direction and I want to say good morning, they always look away as soon as they notice I'm looking at them and act as if they didn't see me!

After you see how the Balinese people in Bali try to make eye contact, they will give you the biggest smile you can imagine. And it is the same as love shared; It's like happiness therapy! I like how the Balinese do it. I've already said that you can teach yourself to be grateful and have gratitude as one of your main emotions. Let me explain how:

Writing down five things you are grateful for every morning is the easiest way to learn this. “The Gratitude Challenge” by Deepak Chopra is a great way to get in the habit of being grateful. There are 30 days in which

you practice gratitude meditations every morning, which builds a habit of gratitude practice in your mind and subconsciously embodies it...

So, I want you to join this challenge. It will strengthen your mind and reduce your fears, worries and even sadness.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

for the gratitude meditations.

The password is the VOUCHER CODE on the keyboard.

What is a workation?

As we have already said, it is a mix of “work” and “vacation”. The term

“Working on vacation” or “working while traveling” is commonly used to refer to a “workation.” “Digital nomads” are people who do this all the time.

What are digital nomads?

A digital nomad is someone who can run their business from any location because they have digitized it. So you can work while traveling or in another country. This way of running your business is a very liberating and easy way to work and live. Most employers don't like you working remotely because they like to keep an eye on you. They want you to sit on their lap for the rest of your life.

During your work hours, your employer wants to see what you're doing, get immediate results, and contact you if something goes wrong. But recently things have changed and situations have evolved.

Due to the pandemic, many people started working online. Many people used the time when everyone was in lockdown to learn how to make money from home. People are much more open to the idea of working from home these days. So, if you are an employee, today you can tell your boss, “I want to travel and do my work remotely.”

However, most employers are not yet keen on allowing this. Most employers don't like you working from home because they can't track how many hours you work. By pressing your fingerprint on the clock machine or scanning your employee ID card when clocking in and out, your employer can see how many hours you work. Employers aren't keen on you working from home because they know it will be harder to keep you engaged if you work remotely.

So, instead of getting paid by the hour, you should talk to your boss about how much you will be paid for your work based on your work results... In the long run, this is a better choice for you. When you get paid by the hour, your employer only benefits from you being more productive and efficient. This is because you get more results, which gives you a feeling of job satisfaction, but your employer is the only one who benefits financially.

you and your boss share the benefits of getting paid for results. I think that's a fairer arrangement than being paid by the hour, agree? Digital nomads work as freelancers, self-employed people, employees, entrepreneurs or investors to earn a living. But most of them still have a long way to go before they can truly call themselves “digital nomads” and travel the world while working from their laptops.

Activities at the workation in Bali

Just after sunrise, many of us played sports or surfed on the nearby beach. After our morning exercise, we all got together for breakfast. Then almost everyone took out their laptops and started working.

Surprisingly, all digital nomads used Apple Macbooks. At that time, Microsoft Edge became the default browser for the Windows operating system, which could not be uninstalled or even completely deactivated. It behaved like a water corpse and kept resurfacing. Especially when you least need it. That was a reason for me to stop working with Windows.

I also bought a used MacBook before I went to work. But the pain I experienced from migrating to the almost upside down behavior, different keyboard and desktop layouts. Also, the keyboard shortcuts that stopped working were so annoying that I soon regretted what I did. I felt like my work speed slowed down by 80%. Which is an almost unbearable pain for someone like me. I think I've already mentioned that patience is not one of my strengths!

Now I understand why the bitten apple is the symbol of expulsion from paradise. Funnily enough, I later learned that the Buddhists claim that Steve was considering becoming a Buddhist. Probably because of his insight into the pain he caused through these incorrect constructions: there was no longer any room for him in paradise.

There were 12 people in the workation, all of whom worked in different areas. For example, one of them used a service called Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon). If you want to use this service, you can buy products from other countries like China and have them shipped directly to an Amazon warehouse anywhere in the world. Most of the time you don't even get to see what you're selling. It goes directly from China to where you want to sell it.

They simply select the location where you can expect your product to sell well. Then Amazon's FBA service takes care of everything else, like order processing, shipping, packaging, returns and refunds. FBA is a business model where all you have to do is market it and make sure your Amazon store ranks well and gets a lot of traffic.

Another person at the workation was a specialist in optimizing

Amazon listings. He helped people who already had products on Amazon. So those who did FBA. His main focus was ensuring that products ranked well in Amazon search results. To generate sales and get reviews, he helped set it up. He continued to support others throughout the work.

One participant wrote blogs and added Google AdWords links. Her website has affiliate links and she receives a small commission if someone clicks on the ads. People who place affiliate links on their websites are paid by the link page owner for each click on the ad.

A blog author must know how to do search engine optimization for his website. But to make money with this business model, you need to get a lot of people to visit the website and click on the affiliate link because the pay-per-click commission is low. To make a lot of money, you need a lot of clicks!

Mastermind

A workation is like being in a mastermind group, or what some people call a brain trust. It consists of people who support each other, share the same values and want to achieve the same goals. When I worked, everyone's goal was to improve their business skills. We also wanted to learn how to make the most of the freedom that comes with being a digital nomad.

We talked about travel tips, where to go, possible visa issues and other things. But we were all mainly there to exchange business ideas and tips. We talked about how we ran our businesses and developed ways to improve, implement and make them work better. We also gave each other many suggestions for seminars, which I will discuss in another chapter.

In a workation, everyone benefits from learning from each other. You may be wondering: If we copy each other, wouldn't that eventually lead to the same business model and put us in competition? The short answer to that is:

"Generally...yes." But if you want to learn from someone else, you'll probably make a lot of copying mistakes that aren't mistakes at all. But these are more like ways to show your personality. your business will never be the same as someone else's. your personality will always shine through, and that's a good thing.

Let's say you copy the idea and business model of a real estate agent, but you don't even like that business model. Realistically, your real estate business won't work like his because you'll just see it as a soulless money-making machine. This will not fulfill you in the long term because you are not doing what you are passionate about and working against your values.

Since this business works in a way that you don't want to appreciate, sooner or later it will cause you burnout. My health status

got worse when I burned out shortly after starting Rooms4Music. Remember, when you start a business, you have to put in a lot of work first. you will always lose energy unless your company reflects your passion or your values.

However, you have the opportunity to work more or less permanently if you know your passion, know your values and align your company with them. In my experience, when you are passionate about your business, you are in flow about 80% of the time; When you're in flow, it doesn't cost you energy, it gives you more energy!

How do digital nomads work?

One of the digital nomads sold his services on freelancer.com, a site for people who work for themselves and get hired by others. People who buy his services give him their work. In addition to freelancer.com, there are other places where people can order services.

Fiverr.com is another example. On Fiverr you can purchase services from a large number of different experts. With Fiverr you can order a wide range of services such as: B. Search engine optimization, graphic design, image editing, advertising, translation, website creation and automation services.

Most of the people offering services on these websites come from low-income countries in Asia. This means that their services are usually pretty cheap. If you order services from Asia and your business is located in a high-cost Western country, you will receive a good margin on the work done for your business.

Now listen to me carefully: I have to warn you: many of the services on Fiverr are of very low quality! If you want to give work to Fiverr sellers, I suggest you order about 5 test gigs with the same requirements. Choose the ones with lots of good reviews, even though they are often very busy and don't pay full attention to your order.

Or give new sellers a chance! If you select new sellers without many reviews, you may find highly motivated people with good availability. However, if they have a few reviews, read them, and if they are unrealistically positive, you might want to take a closer look. However, if you think the reviews are wrong, don't order from them! If you trust your intuition, you will find out who works well for you.

Your feelings can help you learn about good services and the results you want. This way, you can hire the right people for your business and use their services as needed. I would recommend the same if you are still an employee. You should agree with your boss that you will be paid for the results you achieve, not hourly.

But Western employees typically expect to be paid hourly. If you pay them by the hour and can't keep them busy, they'll just sit around and do nothing for you while still getting paid. So paying only for results and using freelance websites is a smart way to reduce employee costs and keep labor costs low by only incurring costs when work is needed...

Findings from the workation

My main experience is that sharing knowledge is a great way to improve your business and personal skills. See, it was a good way to broaden my travel horizons. While exchanging travel tips and experiences as a digital nomad, we learned which countries to visit and where the best spots are.

Copying is not prohibited during a workation. I strongly recommend that you copy other people's ideas because you have proof that the concept works. you don't have to worry that your company will develop in the same way as the company you're learning from. That's because you will always make mistakes, and those mistakes reflect your personality.

In addition, you always strive to improve the ideas presented. This way, you bring more of your personality into your company. I'm sure you understand by now that the more personality you bring into your business, the better it will be, right? Make sure you copy the idea in a way that aligns with your values and passions.

If you want to try to get your business where it needs to be, outsource any tasks or duties you don't like to Fiverr, a specialist, or even a supplier. For example, if you run a business with your warehouse and ship your products to customers yourself, but hate packaging, shipping, and invoicing, you should consider Amazon's fulfillment service.

You can send your products to their warehouses and they can take care of anything you don't like. Your only worry will be finding products. If your passion is sourcing high-quality, in-demand products with high margins, I highly recommend using this business model.

However, my advice here would be to only source what is in demand. You will always be able to meet your customers' needs as long as you love your customers more than your product. It is common for self-employed people or entrepreneurs to only purchase products that they are passionate about.

Can you see how this makes them love their products more than their customers? Yes! You end up chasing customers all the time! If you constantly chase money and work against your values and passion, sooner or later you will burn out.

Burnout is a terrible experience. It drains a lot of energy from your body. I went through it and it was a pretty horrible feeling. I will explain how I got sick, how I realized what was wrong and who helped me overcome it, and later I will reveal in detail how I turned my passion into my career.

Reduce living costs and taxes

As a digital nomad, you have the choice to live abroad in a cheap country. The most important advantage is that you can achieve financial protection, financial security and financial freedom much faster if you continue to sell your service in a high-cost country. It is a very unique and relaxing feeling to be able to achieve this. Later I will go into more detail about what financial protection, security and financial freedom mean. It is more or less the material side of abundance.

If you live abroad in a low-tax country, you may also be able to receive some tax breaks and tax advantages. Moving to a country with low tax rates can be a big step, and there are several ways to do it. The first way is to go through the immigration process, which is usually difficult and takes a long time.

The other option is that some countries have programs that allow you to get a passport if you invest there. With this passport you can apply for local residency, register your business or first place of residence there and end your residency in your home country. This is how you avoid taxes in your home country.

It is also possible to have no residence at all. Then no state can levy taxes on your income. But this is a tricky process with many pitfalls that needs to be carefully thought out. And of course, your company will be taxed in the country where it is registered. Anyway, find your “Bali”!

Intellectual property is a mistake

Of course, what I'm telling you today isn't all my ideas. And whatever I tell you, if I only told you about my ideas, this guide would be very, very short! Yes, 90% or even more of what I tell you and what I share here is the knowledge I learned from other people. And these other people also shared 90% or even more of what they had learned from other people. And these other people...

Well, can you imagine how the story continues? Yes! Most of the wisdom we see in the world today is from the Stone Age! To be honest... actually everything, because all the knowledge we have today has been there forever! It is stored in the universe in the infinite information field.

Nowadays people think, “If I have an idea and I publish it, it’s my idea.” It is my intellectual property. The state should help me protect them. And I have to protect her! And I don't want to share it publicly!” At least if I share it publicly, other people aren't allowed to use it or resell it.

I think that's nonsense. This is complete nonsense because it slows down the speed of development. It reduces other people's consciousness. Intellectual property is a barrier to further development. And that's why I don't like the idea. Actually, I think intellectual property is like two fleas living on a dog, and they're haggling over who owns the dog. The dog is there for both of them, even if there are probably more fleas on him!

So there is no growth in available information. She was always there, and always will be there. The only thing that grows is our awareness of it. Our awareness and perception of new information. But the information itself has always been there and always will be there. But unfortunately, in my opinion, the growth of consciousness is progressing far too slowly!

And discussions about intellectual property cause this problem. You see, increasing consciousness is an E-function. Many people today complain that the pace of change is so fast. I think it's because it's an E function. The percentage it grows on average each year is pretty much the same. People have always been stressed by it. Since the Stone Age, I suspect.

You see, the son said to his father in the Stone Age, "Do you remember when grandpa caught a hare? He had to peel the skin off with his hands because he didn't have any tools! And then you found this sharp-edged flint, and you You were able to use it to cut open the rabbit's skin very easily! And besides, you figured out how to make fire with it! Wasn't that a revolution? Today I have this metal knife and I can easily cut open the rabbit we caught. And thanks to the flint can we light a fire and grill.

My God, I’m so stressed about the speed of change.”

Do you get the point? Yes, it's still the same. The rate at which consciousness grows is probably still the same as in the Stone Age. We are just starting at a higher level. We know more information, we know more facts and physical laws, and some of us even know something about quantum or metaphysics. Yes, but all knowledge has always existed and always will exist. So there is no proliferation and, above all, no need for intellectual property.

Modeling Excellence

Reusing what already exists and combining it into a new combination is called “Modeling of Excellence”. I would like to encourage you to do this. So if you can learn from someone who has a good strategy, a good method, or a good idea, copy them. Put some of your new ideas on it and give it your character. That's just a quantum leap. And there is a very common and huge misunderstanding about the quantum jump. Many consider it a big step, a revolutionary invention. But that's not it. A quantum jump is the smallest possible increase in energy level, that's all!

I think the owner of an intellectual property should not have an exclusive right to sell it. But everyone should be allowed to use and share this information. Whoever creates the best products and services based on this and thus offers their customers the greatest benefit should benefit from it and earn the most! So keep modeling, copying and personalizing. Create the best possible service, product or information for your customers.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

What are your main takeaways from this chapter?
How will you integrate them into your life?

Self and constantly work

In German we say “self-employed = working yourself and constantly”. This translates to “working independently and permanently”.

My brother-in-law Marc used this phrase quite a bit. Well, he was a safety engineer at Deutsche Post and taught employees how to avoid accidents. He had to apply rules and regulations. In addition, he had to follow other rules and regulations.

But at heart he was a creative mind looking for adventure. He continued to ride motorcycles and dreamed of riding Route 66. And he wanted to be an individual: he didn't want to ride a Harley Davidson; he dreamed of riding a rubber cow! A rubber cow, as we call it in Germany, is the nickname for a German BMW motorcycle.

He must have suffered internally from the rules and regulations that he had to teach others and adhere to during his work. His soul sought adventure, freedom and individualism. At work, he had to unite people and make them follow all the rules and regulations to avoid accidents.

Once he almost had an accident with a deer while riding his motorcycle at night. So he thought passionately: “How can we avoid accidents with deer when driving a vehicle at night?” And he had an idea. He has heard that many animals can hear ultrasonic sounds. He thought of an ultrasound device that would warn deer or other animals such as dogs. They hear the car coming from a distance and run away from the road.

He kept telling me about this idea and researching it. But he wasn't looking for a technical solution. He researched to see if something similar had been patented. So he researched the rules and regulations as he did from work

was used to. Unfortunately, he never started. Then the thought occurred to him,

Being “self-employed” meant working for yourself on a permanent basis, which prevented him from even starting.

“Working independently and constantly” is often the truth for the self-employed. But you always have a choice about how you organize your work and your entrepreneurship. Either you grow and develop and turn your self-employment into a business, or you get stuck and continue to do everything yourself. I want to encourage you to take the step from self-employment to becoming an entrepreneur who owns a business. A business owner has people who are passionate about doing tasks for him as he develops the business into a learning enterprise. This path is well described in the following chapters. So go ahead, read on how you can transform your business.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

What are your main takeaways from this chapter?
How will you integrate them into your life?

The darkest point of my life

I want to tell you the story of the darkest point in my life caused by overregulation. I will also tell you what I learned from it. We all struggle with the ups and downs of life. you can probably remember the darkest time of your life. Can you think about it? Well, you probably can. Maybe it makes you a little sad too. Yes, at least it makes me sad when I think about mine.

The year was 1998. I was in love with a woman and we decided to get married. A year later our first child was born. Sure, my ex-wife and I had a lot of love for each other in the beginning. However, I realized that I couldn't afford the living expenses that a marriage and a child would entail. As a result, I felt like I was living in a state of deprivation.

I also realized that she wasn't the right one for me. Because of the marriage vows and responsibility for the child, divorce was out of the question for me. That's why I avoided thinking about it at all. As a result, I remained in a scarcity mindset.

We met and lived in a small town called Marburg, a student town. About a third of the population are students. It's a nice city and the prices are reasonable, so we can live quite comfortably on our income there.

Munich instead of California

At this point, I had a work visa ready to move to Irvine, Orange County, south of Los Angeles. I wanted to move from Germany to California for my job. However, the visa was only valid for me, not for my wife. So we couldn't move to the US together. Instead, the company I worked for transferred me to Munich. So we moved to Munich. Yes, we swapped our modest cost of living in Marburg, a small student town, for one of the most expensive cities in Germany! At that time, Munich was the third most expensive city in Germany after Düsseldorf and Hamburg!

As a result, I sank deeper and deeper into scarcity thinking. And things got worse from there! My wife got sick and lost her job, and I became the sole provider. I had to bring in money. But I felt like she just kept burning it. As a result, I became even more shaken by scarcity thinking.

This was at a time when I was so worried about taking care of my child and wife. I knew back then that she wasn't the right one for me. But the thought of divorce terrified me. Due to the legal situation in Germany, a divorce is very expensive for the person who earns the money for the family!

So I worked harder to make more money and tried to keep it together. Well, after a year and a half we had enough of Munich. It's so important there to appear sexy and act like you're more than you are. So we left Munich and moved together to a small town called Ludwigsburg near Stuttgart and lived there.

Our son Louis was born in 2005. Now we had two children. Although we were able to manage fairly financially, I was unhappily married. I knew my wife wasn't the right one for me.

German overregulation

When we moved to Ludwigsburg, I also changed jobs and joined a Bosch subsidiary, ETAS. It was a private company. But the employees there behave like officials, like dogs who follow every rule without thinking about it. So I didn't enjoy working there,

In Germany we have some very funny words for them. We call them “currant poopers.” Another word, which is the Swabian version of this, is "Dipfeleschisser". Well, they are “bean counters.” “Bean counter” refers to tax advisors, also known as “bean counters”. Therefore, they take everything very seriously and don't question the rules; they obey them regardless of whether they make sense or not.

“We’ve always done it that way!”

This attitude drives me crazy! It is more important to follow rules than to think about and understand why the rules are there. Well, I have no problem accepting and following rules and regulations if they have a good reason. But using a procedure just because that's how it's traditionally done, just because it's a tradition, even if it no longer makes sense, is nonsense. Then it's time to change the procedure!

Most Germans are unwilling to change rules, regulations and procedures; rather, they like to stick to traditions. At ETAS, I was stuck in a company working for a company that continued to use traditional practices.

All the old rules keep highwaymen active. A funny German word for this is “Wegelagerer”. An example of highwaymen is the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. This is an organization that takes money from corporations without benefiting the community. Another is called “Fee Collection Center,” which means central money collector

means. It requires any person or company with a computer, cell phone, television or radio to pay state radio and television broadcasters.

Today there are thousands of private television channels. The private companies work with small budgets. However, you have to pay for state TV and radio channels, even if you don't watch or appreciate them. These channels burn a very high budget. But in general, what they broadcast is no better than what is broadcast on private channels. So essentially you're paying the government to spread its propaganda.

Privately owned broadcasters rely on the advertising they get. In the meantime, the state-owned companies are making money from payments from the fee collection center and advertising. Their programs are not even ad-free. Yes, they get their income from both sides! But the news on state channels is just as far from the truth as on independent channels.

A traditional bank is also a kind of “currant pooper”. They stick to old rules and regulations. With insane over-regulation, the state makes it difficult for them to provide effective services. Therefore, they charge high fees. However, fintechs are changing the game. The technology is evolving moving quickly and traditional banks haven't caught up. I don't think they understand what's going on. Another example of such an organization is the Land Registry. The Land Registry is an administrative agency owned by the government that is extremely slow and outdated. It is the process of registering where you own the property. They still do everything with paperwork!

Fortunately, we are witnessing some developments in the world today that will make all highwaymen obsolete. So let's think about it a little more. Highwaymen and organizations based on old rules and traditions manifest old rules. I do not like that at all! Because it stops development, it stops progress, and all I can think about them is this:

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Jesus

Those who are conservative and dogmatic prevent society from developing. The good news is that blockchain will make many of these people obsolete. I can't wait to see how this will happen. For example, traditional banks face strong competition from new ones

Fintech companies will be exposed. For example, those who trade cryptocurrencies or offer international money transfer services that are much cheaper and faster than theirs. Some examples are the fintech companies

“WISE” and “Revolut”. “PayPal” used to be one too. But they also became one

“Highwaymen”, with incredibly complicated procedures and high fees.

The traditional banks will have to change their business model or they will probably go out of business. This will of course have some negative consequences for the people who have parked their money with them. However, we may not have a better choice to get rid of the old “highwayman.” What I see today is that old traditional banks still don't understand what's going on out there in the world. They don't understand how blockchain technology will change everything.

All of this is similar to what happened at Kodak. They invented the digital camera, but they had no idea what impact it would have. They decided to continue marketing and selling traditional cameras and camera films instead. They decided to put the digital camera aside. Kodak did not advance the technology it developed itself! Companies like Canon and Fuji have taken up the new technology and made it successful. As a result, Kodak went bankrupt!

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

What are your main takeaways from this chapter?
How will you integrate them into your life?

Transform your company

Let's go back to 2009. I was unemployed and thinking, "What am I doing with my life?" On the one hand, I was applying for jobs; On the other hand, I was thinking about buying an apartment building and renting out the apartments individually.

But I also had another idea. I was the bass player for the band Pleasure Pigs at the time, and our rehearsal room wasn't very spacious, but very expensive.

I realized that there was a significant lack of spaces for bands and musicians to record their music and do band rehearsals. I found a building where I could rent space and sublet it to other musicians. Due to its concrete construction, it was relatively soundproof. In principle, this type of business is the same as an apartment building, but I had very noisy tenants! Due to the shortage of rehearsal rooms, my company grew rapidly in 2010. Südwestfunk, the local television station, picked up on this and reported on it in a news report!

It took me a year of planning to build the business, which I did while I was unemployed. I was living on unemployment benefits, but the government payments ran out after a year. However, if you start your own business full-time, the German state will support you and pay it as a start-up grant for another year! I thought that even if I didn't make much money to begin with, I could still live the same lifestyle as before.

A few months before I started my own business, one of my applications was answered and I was offered a job. I decided to work for this company four days a week while building my business on the fifth. As a result, I lost my start-up grant, but the salary was significantly higher. And I had been on the state's radar for long enough.

So I started my own business part-time, and I would recommend that to you too. Don't become self-employed full-time! It is better if you reduce your working hours at your current job. Build your own

Start your business slowly and reduce your working hours with your employer step by step.

So in the second year I reduced the number of working days as an employee from four to three and gained a little more time for my own business. Another year passed and I saw that my business was profitable enough to support me. As a result, I decided to quit my job and focus solely on my business. Since there was decent growth, I was confident it would succeed.

For the first two years I worked three to four days a week for my employer. On the other two days of the week and on weekends, I was able to focus on my business. But at this point, I was now at the point where I could quit my job and have the entire week to focus on my business. However, I was still working 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, with no day off.

Even when I was on a day trip with my kids, I was still on the phone. I read, studied, planned, checked lists, and did many other things to improve my business. That was three years of intense work.

Entrepreneur seminar

I also started attending seminars and reading books about entrepreneurship. A book that helped me a lot was “The Path to Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur.”

First I read the book and then attended the seminar of the same name. Because of this seminar, I examined my business in detail.

Initially, I looked at all of my daily tasks and realized that everything I do are employee tasks. And then suddenly it hit me. You're not working on your business, Klaus. You are an employee. Your company keeps you busy. You work in and not on your company.

I examined each of my daily tasks. I filled the fridge with drinks. I cleaned the rehearsal rooms. Among other things, I set up the amplifiers and replaced defective devices. I also had managerial responsibilities, such as drafting contracts with clients, collecting funds, and doing accounting.

From this seminar I learned that I needed to start automating processes to free up time. I have implemented systems such as automatically withholding rent payments from my clients. I later delegated this task to my tax advisor because they needed the numbers anyway and because they are much better at dealing with banks and accounts and have all the fancy software you need.

In Germany there is a software called DATEV that looks like a mess, but that's another story! The tax advisors can handle it, but for me it was far too complicated! This was a big step towards being more effective and efficient and getting rid of a task that I really didn't like. The tasks you need to do in your business that you don't like are the ones you want to look at first! Because they rob you of a lot of energy.

The rehearsal rooms were another example of what I didn't like doing. First I got a cleaning service and then I realized that this cleaning service cost me €250 a month. Then I came across these automatic robot vacuum cleaners that cost €250 each. I put a vacuum cleaner in every rehearsal room and told the band to run it themselves after they used the studio. I got rid of the cleaning work and the robot vacuum cleaners paid for themselves after three months because I no longer had to pay for the cleaning service.

You need to look at things that have high effectiveness and replace work that you don't like doing. Another thing that always bothered me was all the paper that comes in the mail. I don't want to deal with it all the time! I found a service that scans my mail and emails it to me. If it's a tax bill, I just forward the email to my tax advisor, that's it and I don't have to do anything with the mail anymore.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

What are your main takeaways from this chapter?
How will you integrate them into your life?

Make you obsolete in your company

Another game changer was updating my website to list all of my services. I've implemented a lot of things through web forms so people only need to provide their name, address and bank account details. After receiving the email confirmation, they can read the contract and then come to the rehearsal studio and we will simply sign the contract and the deal is done!

I never got to the point of fully switching to electronic contracts. At least not for long-term rental contracts. But for those who were only booked daily, we just did it online. I made this possible simply by implementing Google Calendar on the website. This gave me an overview of my customers on the website and was able to synchronize them with my cell phone. On my phone I could see which room was booked by which band at what time and which customer would be using it. And that was another considerable efficiency and effectiveness booster!

So how do people get their keys to get into the studio? Well, for recurring bookings I gave them a key that they keep permanently. But for individual bookings, I simply installed a key safe with a PIN code on the building. With the online booking confirmation, tenants receive the numerical code, which is the key to entering the building. When you're done, just put the key back in the safe and everything's done! I didn't have to wait for them to arrive, and I didn't have to wait for them to finish rehearsals.

To choose the tasks and systems you want to implement, you need to do a simple calculation: First, you need to estimate how much time this specific task will cost you each month. Secondly, there is usually an implementation or ongoing cost involved and you will need to invest some money in the process.

With a safe with a numerical code, the safe itself costs money. It takes some time to mount, and then you need additional time to set up the calendar and booking system on the web. Therefore, you will initially need to spend more time on the process than just doing it manually. Now you can estimate how long it will take to implement your chosen process.

And once you have an idea of the process, calculate how much it will cost you to maintain the system. For example, online payment services may be subject to credit card fees that range from 1 to 3% of sales, leaving you with permanent additional costs and less profit! 3% doesn't sound like much, but with a 35% sales margin you have 10% less profit!

With a safe with a numerical code I save time permanently because I don't have to go to the rehearsal room to get the keys. Purchasing the safe involves initial costs, but does not cause any additional maintenance costs and does not cause any permanent additional financial burden. And now you can calculate how much time and money you will save and what additional setup and ongoing costs you will incur.

You should consider your salary when determining which processes you want to implement. Using the safe as an example, let's say I save an hour a day because I don't have to go to the studio to get the keys. Suppose I pay myself €30 per hour. By using the key safe I can save 30 hours of working time per month, which corresponds to €900 in labor costs. Since there are no ongoing costs, the key safe pays for itself, which means the company can save significant costs in the long term.

Learning how to manage employees and pay yourself realistically is another valuable skill and can also be a booster for effectiveness and cost reduction.

For example, let's say you pay yourself €30 per hour and your employee gets €20 per hour. If you delegate some of your work to your employees, you save €10 per hour. So the more you can delegate, the more

better! Of course, you have to be able to afford to work less. But by this point, you should be at the point where your business is generating enough revenue and revenue to support it.

In my fourth year, the financial and time-saving harvest of these processes began, and I made it a rule to reduce my work hours by one day each month. I worked in my business for almost three years without taking vacation or even a few days off. So I took a day off the first month. This was followed by two days off in the second month and three days off in the third. After seven months I was able to take a week off. I traveled to Bulgaria for a week and had my first vacation since starting my company. By extending my vacation by one day each month, I was able to run my business remotely two years later.

When my brother-in-law died in 2016, I realized that I could say to my sister, "Okay, sister, I'll be there for you as long as you need me!" During the two weeks I spent with my sister around the To prepare for her husband's funeral, I received a message from a friend; She wrote:

“There is a workation in Bali that might interest you.” There were only two weeks left until the workation and I had already spent two weeks with my sister. I had to make a decision. The workation would last three weeks. Can I stay away from my business for five weeks? I was so confident that my business could run without me that I decided to take the plunge.

Seminar junkie

During this time I became a seminar junkie, also learned a lot about dealing with money from Bodo Schäfer's course “The Path to Financial Freedom” and attended his seminar. Then I attended some Tony Robbins seminars, like this one

“Business Mastery” seminar. I learned how to improve marketing processes through Business Mastery. I also found out about Rich Dad when I was at his

“How to Buy and Sell a Business” seminar. I'll tell you later if you don't know who Rich Dad is.

A year later I got a call from my landlord and my landlord told me, “We want the building back. We have to use it for ourselves because we have hired 800 people and we need office space for them. So you have to move out, but we are ready to compensate you for the early termination of the rental agreement.”

At first I thought: Do I have to throw out all my bands? Or can I find another building and move them there? But the seminars I attended last year prepared me well for the call from my landlord. I simply told them, “I consider the building and the lease I have with you to be the most valuable asset in my company. To buy me out of the lease, you have to compensate me for the entire value of the company." They asked, "How much is it worth?"

The phone went silent as I told them the business value that my accountants had calculated for me. They replied, “Thank you,” and ended the call rather abruptly. Three days later I got another call from them and they said:

“Deal, we’re in. We urgently need the building.”

Now I was in trouble because I was already living in Indonesia. I suddenly had to move all of my musicians to another building. However, I also faced an even bigger problem that I didn't expect.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

What are your main takeaways from this chapter?
How will you integrate them into your life?

Big goals

After my first return from Bali in November 2016, many of my friends, my parents and my sister asked me, “How was it?” And I started telling them what I had experienced. Many of them responded with a statement similar to, "When you talk about Bali, it sounds like you're talking about a woman you've fallen in love with." Yes, that describes the feeling quite well.

When I came back, I felt like this was the place where I wanted to spend most of the rest of my life. At least until I find a place that serves me even better. Actually, even though it was six years ago, I couldn't find one at first! Since then, I have felt homesick for Bali in almost every other country except Thailand. And in Germany it comes up the fastest!

Meanwhile, after visiting the neighboring island of Nusa Penida a few times, I found that the energy and tranquility, due to the low population density, suits me even better. At least Nusa Penida is an option that serves me even better.

Nusa Penida offers more peace and quiet, but an involuntary stay in Dubai also made me rethink things in the meantime, because the best feature of Bali, that women chased me to get me into bed, is no longer necessary since I'm married again.

After I arrived in Germany, it was time to start meeting with my mastermind group and we had this workshop on marketing strategies. We came together to work intensively on our companies' marketing concepts for three days, to exchange ideas and learn from each other. Yes, the workshop was fantastic.

One of the members was Thomas Kowol. He had already planned a trip to Cambodia and Vietnam. I had never visited these countries before, so I asked him:

“Would you mind if I joined you?” He said, “Of course I would like to travel with a friend.”

So there were only three weeks left! And now I've just been to Bali for three weeks for work. And before that I was with my sister for two weeks. Occasionally

I only had a short time to take care of my business on site. And now it only took two weeks. And so I booked the flights.

50-50 mode

So now I was almost in 50-50 mode. I spent 50% of my time traveling and 50% in Germany taking care of my business on site. Three weeks later I arrived in Hanoi with Thomas and we explored the city. Well, Hanoi was another culture shock for me. It was stressful, very dirty, overpopulated and extremely noisy, and to be honest I didn't like Hanoi at all.

So what do you do when you're bored? Well, I spent my time on Tinder and made some connections. One of them was Becky and we arranged to meet at the nearby Hanoi Social Club. And well, we enjoyed a few glasses of red wine together and some good conversation.

Well, we had a few red wines of my favorite type of red wine: Merlot. Wine is usually three to five times more expensive than in Germany. And the local wines are, well, and that gave me the idea of growing wine myself.

Becky had already worked in international schools for several years. First in Africa, Ghana and now in Hanoi.

And I was deeply impressed by this woman's courage. I traveled to countries that I never considered attractive to work and live in. But she earned quite well. And as I said, she impressed me with her courage. And for some reason something took us away. Well, we had a few red wines of my favorite type of red wine: Merlot.

We spent our first hot night together tipsy. Yes, and after that night it was time for me to take the flight to Da Nang that Thomas and I were booked on. And so it was time to say goodbye, but we both felt like we needed to see each other again. So I asked her, “Do you want to come over to see me in Da Nang next weekend?”

And she said, "Yeah, I'd like to see you, but I've already booked a flight for a weekend in Bangkok, Thailand." Well, first of all, it didn't look like we were going to see each other anytime soon. But then I thought and realized that it is rainy season in Vietnam, and the weather forecast for Da Nang predicted that it will rain for the next few days. Da Nang was nicer, quieter and more relaxed than Hanoi, but I couldn't do much there because of the rainy weather.

So I looked at the flight schedules and there were flights to Bangkok. I didn't think twice and booked a flight to Bangkok to see Becky. So we spent the weekend together in Bangkok. And yes, we ended up falling in love. It was a very romantic weekend in Bangkok and we spent the whole time together enjoying our new love.

She then had to fly to Hanoi for work on Monday morning. And I found out that I had to use my flight from Da Nang. Otherwise I will lose all my subsequent flight connections. So I booked a flight to Da Nang and took my flight from Da Nang to Siem Reap in Cambodia where I met Thomas again.

A broken leg is not a broken leg

In Siem Reap we booked a tour to the floating markets. And the tour operator picked us up. And at the travel agency they told us that it's about an hour's drive before we get on the boat: "So if you need to pee or poop again, do it here so we don't have to stop along the road."

So I went to the toilet. It was wet on the floor. When I left the toilet my flip-flops, or thongs as Australians call them, were wet and they slipped and I fell to the floor. And I had terrible pain in my right foot. I didn't understand what had happened yet, but I said, "Guys, I'm not going on tour with you today because this hurts so much it's going to take me out today." I didn't realize how serious it was. And soon I was in a tuk-tuk that took me to a hospital.

At the hospital they x-rayed my leg and said, “It’s a pretty complex fracture. "Either we have to operate immediately, or we have to apply a bandage, and the operation can be done in the next two or three weeks." And so it was time to get in touch with my travel health insurance. They were very cooperative and said : “Okay, we’ll fly you back to Germany and have you operated on there.”

So I informed Becky about the unpleasant surprise and she said, "I will come to Siem Reap next weekend to see you there before you fly to Germany for surgery." And so she arrived in Cambodia a day later. We had another romantic weekend and the broken leg didn't bother me too much; it was immobilized with some painkillers.

And we were even able to visit a temple, for example. Ankara Buddhist Temple and a Buddhist monk blessed my leg for good healing.

And yes, we still enjoyed our love and a wonderful weekend together, and then it was time to board the flight to Germany.

An ambulance picked me up at the airport in Frankfurt and took me straight to a hospital in Stuttgart. A few hours later I was in the operating room. They opened the leg and fixed the bones with nine screws and a plate. Now I was pretty immobilized and had to stay in the hospital for a few days. From there I started working and writing and following up on the learnings from the mastermind workshop.

I started developing my new website and I started developing Vitality4Happiness. And I started publishing all the ideas I had about Vitality4Happiness on my new website.

Working from the hospital was only possible via the hotspot on my cell phone. Because in Germany there are rules and regulations for a hospital to provide WiFi. It's ridiculous how things are over-regulated in Germany due to safety restrictions and considerations.

It's completely different in Asia, where you have free Wi-Fi almost everywhere. There is no security problem there. However, Germans are so concerned about security that they punish themselves with rules and regulations. And I see that Germany is making much less progress compared to Asia.

So apart from working on my website on the phone hotspot, Whatsapp was of course busy communicating with Becky in Hanoi. I told her about the situation and that I would be immobilized for about 4 to 6 weeks. And she had already booked a flight to Bali for Christmas. But she simply decided to rebook her flight to visit me in Germany. And she did. So from Christmas to New Year we spent some time together and visited some friends. For example Thomas, my sister and my parents. And we took a tour of Germany together and enjoyed our new love and our new life.

During this time we have set ourselves a goal: We want to live together in Bali and as quickly as possible. After New Year, it was time for her to return to Hanoi to return to her work. This was because she is bound by an employment contract in Hanoi.

So we decided on our first step: I'm going to move to Hanoi with her. And that was the plan. As it turns out, I moved there in mid-January to live with Becky in Hanoi. Even though I didn't like the city, I enjoyed Becky's love.

What you can learn from it

Now see what I learned about this: If you have a big goal, like living in Bali for the rest of your life, or at least until you find something better. Problems become small. The broken leg couldn't stop me. The fact that my new love was in Hanoi, a city I didn't like, couldn't stop me! This was still acceptable as a first step towards Asia, so I would only recommend finding your big goal here.

Follow your big goal, and problems that arise along the way become quite small. Because you can still see the goal over there on the horizon. And that the challenges don't stop you from pursuing your goal. Find your big goal. Maybe you want to make it even bigger than you can imagine right now. And then go ahead and follow this program. Because it will change your life forever.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

What are your big goals?

Think about your big goal, your vision that you want to achieve in your life
Think about your 2 biggest goals that you want to achieve within 20 years to support your big life goal
Think of 3 goals you need to achieve within 10 years that are needed to reach your 20 year goals
Think of 5 goals you will accomplish within 5 years to reach your 10-year goals

Ready to jump

So now it was time to move and get everything ready. So I put together a to-do list to prepare for my departure to Hanoi. And it was a long list. It contained tasks that I needed to organize for my business. Like handing over management to my employee Chris. We had to make some arrangements together so that he could sign contracts on my behalf. And that he was able to make his own decisions.

The beauty of it is, if you give people more responsibility, you will learn and see their intelligence explode. And that's wonderful to see! Giving other people more responsibility, watching them grow and becoming better versions of themselves. It's a wonderful thing to experience!

Another thing I had to do was make sure my mail got to me. So I had to move my official residence to my sister. She was kind enough to scan or photograph the letters I received. She simply emailed me the scan or image. And everything was organized.

Then I reduced everything I had to a minimum. I gave it away as a donation, I threw it in the trash, and I gave gifts to my friends. For example, my car: I no longer needed it. So I handed it over to my colleague and gave it to him. Well, not really. For some reason we made a contract and I sold it to him for €1 so that he could present a bill of sale for the re-registration. So from now on he could use the car. It was his car now, and it was his, and he was grateful. And I was happy that it made him happy!

And so the rest ended up in the trash. Finally, I had a box of clothes for the winter. And I left all of that with my sister, along with that

necessary paperwork that I thought I needed to keep. It later turned out to be pretty useless! You do not need. In the end I had two backpacks and that was all I needed to move to Hanoi.

All hell broke loose

But something else happened. Of course I had to inform my children and my ex-wife. When she realized this, all hell broke loose! She went crazy. She sent me not-so-funny WhatsApp messages so I felt like I could see her screaming on the other side. She was desperate about it. She kept asking, “Who will look after the children?” You see, I took my kids on the weekends and spent some time with them. From now on that was no longer possible.

“Are you going to pay child support?”
“How will we make decisions that we need to make together?”
"How can I reach you there?"
And: “Who decides…”
... and hurrah!!

She really, really asked some questions that I honestly hadn't thought of, hmm. But then, a day later, she came back with a message that surprised me. She wrote to me: "I can understand it, and I know that it was always your dream to move abroad."

Yes, and actually, before we got married, I had a visa to go to the United States. I stopped the job offer in California and didn't move for family reasons. She remembered it, and it reminded me again. I had already forgotten that because that was almost ten years ago. After she calmed down, I arranged a meeting with her and my children.

We sat together and drank coffee and cake. We talked about how we would resolve the situation. We thought it would be wise to ask a counselor and arranged to meet with a family counselor. We had a good conversation with them. We listened to their recommendations for resolving such a situation. We have a contract between us that they alone make decisions about the children

allowed while I'm away. Of course she was welcome to ask me, but I gave her power of attorney. I allowed her to make decisions about our children over my head.

During the remaining time in Germany I had a few meetings with my children. Surprisingly, the relationship with my children, and also between my ex-wife and me, became much better. So, what a change of situation!

Before that it was always difficult! Since I said, "I will move to Hanoi and later to Bali," the situation has changed. It became more positive! At first I didn't understand why. But it was a good thing. And as Albert Einstein put it so beautifully:

"Always doing the same thing

and expecting different results is a clear sign of insanity."

I did something different and the results changed. Isn't that nice? It was completely unexpected for me.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

What is your Hanoi?

What is the next step you need to take? Hanoi was not the destination. The goal was to go to Bali. But I had to take a detour. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the detour. It was already going in the right direction. We have to understand that you don't travel in a straight line from A to B to get from where you are to your destiny.

Life will take you on a journey, an amazing journey, and you have to accept that it goes up and down. And that it will challenge you and take you through different life experiences. That could be fear. It could be anger. It can even be an illness. It takes you out of your comfort zone, out of balance.

Along the way you will experience times of pleasure, times of pain and sorrow. But anything that throws you off balance will be an impetus for growth. Just make sure you're not constantly out of balance. Because this leads to permanent or chronic illnesses.

But if you get sick every now and then, get injured or have an accident, it doesn't matter as long as your goal and destiny are big enough. And as long as you can still see your goals on the horizon, it's a helpful landmark to guide you!

Now imagine climbing Batu Karu. It's not a straight line. It goes through valleys and it goes over mountains. It goes along the river, it goes through the jungle. Parts of it could be a paved road. But other parts of the track up there can be slippery and muddy. And that's where you get dirty. Accept the challenge, enjoy the journey.

All this is the price you have to pay for your freedom! Or did you think you could get something like that for free? No of course not! You have to go through these experiences, you have to grow every time you experience fear, pain or sadness. You will experience sadness, but it is worth it. I can only encourage you to keep going. Take a step towards your big goal every day and enjoy the journey.

Hanoi, that can't be true!

Did you know that Swabians talk a lot about Hanoi? The Swabians live in the region around Stuttgart. I lived there before I moved to Bali. “Hanoi” is a word in their dialect, and it means “this cannot be true.” So you use the word “Hanoi” to express being surprised by something.

In this chapter I would like to tell you how life developed in Hanoi. So I lived with Becky in her house on Hanoi's West Lake. It was right on the shore, so we had a nice view over the water from the balcony. We found Hanoi very pretty after sunset. Hanoi has many lakes and they all look very green. Hanoi looks pretty dirty during the day. But as soon as it gets dark you can see the lights shining over the lakes. They are reflected from the other side and it becomes a truly enchanting picture.

While in Hanoi, I had the screws and plate removed from my foot and began walking again. And I started riding my bike, usually for my morning workout, a lap around West Lake. And yes, we enjoyed life, love, food and travel. We traveled together to Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam. During this time I also organized my first workation in Bali and kept inviting people.

My sister, her daughter, her son joined her, and a friend of hers.

The workation took place in the villa “Mimpi Manis”, where we spent three weeks together. As a result of work in Bali in the villa "Mimpi Manis". Petra has become a digital nomad. She started her own business and now lives most of the time in Cape Town, South Africa. She travels a lot and organizes her own life as an independent entrepreneur. Something I never thought she could do. Her son used to work as a graphic designer as an employee. He now has one

Yoga teacher certificate. In doing so, he also takes his first steps towards entrepreneurship.

During the time of working in Bali, Becky also came to Bali, but went to Ubud and stayed there. And we both realized during this time that we were good friends, but were no longer a good couple. Well, we gave our love one last chance and met a few times when we were in Bali together.

But since we both realized that our love had disappeared and only a good friendship was developing, we were both ready to give it up. And it was a very harmonious breakup of a relationship, something I had never experienced before. After their booked vacation in Bali was over, we said a nice goodbye. There was almost no pain or worry whatsoever.

Even though that relationship is now over, I am very grateful for the time I had with her. And I'm especially grateful that she paved the way for me to Bali, where I've lived for the most part ever since. I traveled a lot over the next three years. I had to commute back and forth between Germany and Bali to organize a few business things that I felt I needed to be there for.

I also became a seminar junkie. I attended, say, four or five different seminars a year and traveled around the world to do so. To Australia for “A Date with Destiny” and to the USA for “How to Buy and Sell a Business”. And I took part in the entire Tony Robbins Mastery Program, which also took me to Fiji. I calculated that I flew around the world about three times in 2018. So I spent quite a bit of money on seminars and plane tickets, but it was worth it. And my business was doing well and it paid for everything.

And during that time I lived most of the time in Pererenan, near Villa Mimpi Manis. The villa is located about two kilometers north of the well-known town of Canggu. And during the visa runs and when attending the seminars, I repeatedly experienced developments that deeply impressed me. Every time I left Bali I saw a construction site. And four weeks later, when I returned, the building was finished and the shops were open.

And I thought, "How do the Indonesians do this?" When you see the workers during the day, they are sitting in the shade and smoking Sampoerna cigarettes. And four weeks later they are finished. Even if they don't have large machines for the construction work on site. They do everything by hand. I haven't figured out how they do it yet, but I would be more than happy to learn. In Germany at that time they wouldn't even have started the damn paperwork for the new building!

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Which detour do you have to take to remove an obstacle?
What are you doing for it?
Until when?

The best and worst in Bali

What are the best and worst things about Balinese culture? Warning: Reading this chapter can quickly become very addictive! It's possible that after reading this you'll want to travel to Bali and check it out for yourself.

Balinese culture is primarily expressed through the mentality of the Balinese Hindus. There are a few things that make them unique including:

As you think.
How they act.
How they navigate and orient themselves.
And how they perceive yours.

gratitude

They practice gratitude, share offerings, burn incense, pray and meditate during their ceremonies. When they are finished they have a big grin on their face and after the ceremony you will always notice the Balinese trying to make eye contact and smile at you. When you smile back it feels so good; They give so much love when they smile. It's like happiness therapy.

I highly recommend playing this game instead of the Russian game. What is the Russian game? The Russian game is the opposite. The rules are simple: no eye contact, whoever grins first loses. We Germans are also pretty good at this game. But we're having a hard time beating the Russians at home.

The Balinese do exactly the opposite. When they come out of the ceremony, they smile, make eye contact and share their love. And I highly recommend you to join this game. Because it gives you so much energy. Because love is that

only type of energy that becomes stronger when shared. So go ahead: you have nothing to lose!

One of the many great qualities of the Balinese people is their gratitude. In their daily rituals, they take time to practice gratitude. The opposite of fear is gratitude. I feel like people in Bali don't have nearly as much fear in their lives compared to people in the West. Because where there is gratitude, there is no room for fear.

They are also very brave people. Construction workers are often seen climbing barefoot onto scaffolding in a new building. They work without safety equipment and even climb onto the roof in flip-flops or thongs, as the Australians call these shoes. You won't believe it, but their risk tolerance is impressive. It often takes my breath away. They always laugh their heads off when I tell them that people in Germany even take out insurance for their mutts!

The ceremonies take place three times a day in their temples at home. Each street also has a temple where a ceremony is held for full moon and one for new moon. In addition, ceremonies take place in the temple itself twice a year.

Nyepi

Apart from that, there are events like Ogoh-Ogoh or Nyepi. Let's start with Nyepi because it is very, very special. Nyepi is New Year's Day in the Hindu calendar. In the western world, it is the day we cure our hangovers from a New Year's Eve party.

But in Bali it is something very special: it is a day of silence and is therefore also called Balinese Day of Silence. People stay at home. They are not even allowed to go out on the streets. You are not allowed to light a fire. People even turn off the electricity. Since there is supposed to be no light on Nyepi, it gets dark early as the sun sets.

Nyepi's intention is simply to retreat to a quiet place, listen to your inner voice and reflect on your life. The Balinese stick to it. There is no traffic and no cars driving around except for emergencies. The airport is also closed. Hotels are almost completely closed, offering only the most basic services to their guests.

The internet is even shut down; Yes, believe it or not, even the internet providers stop their service for 24 hours. Nyepi offers the best conditions to retreat to a quiet place, listen to your inner voice and reflect on your thoughts. The experience is truly remarkable.

Ogoh-Ogoh

The day before Nyepi is called Ogoh-Ogoh, which is the exact opposite of Nyepi. It looks like carnival. About two or three months before Ogoh-Ogoh, the Balinese begin building large spirit sculptures and moving them through the streets. During a ceremony they bring all these sculptures out into the street where people shout, sing and play traditional Balinese instruments as they watch. It's a really good show.

These sculptures are huge. But because of the way the electricity is laid here, the cables hang over the street, and the sculptures are so big that it's difficult to get them under the cables. I have a video on my YouTube channel.

You can find the video of it at: https://i-love-bali.com/

You can also see what happens during Ogoh-Ogoh and how they get the sculptures under the cables. And that also answers the question: Why is Bali offline on Nyepi on New Year's Day? Because they damage the cables so badly that there is no longer any internet connection!

Furthermore, the Balinese only live in the here and now. They have little understanding of the past and future. This is even represented in the Indonesian language.

Bahasa Indonesia has no grammar to express past or future tense. Verbs are always in the present tense. You can express past and future in Indonesian, but only through phrases like: “in a week” or “yesterday”.

But there is no translation for “will” or “was”; it only exists if you insert a specific time into the sentence. Since the verbs only exist in the present tense, dating a Balinese is difficult! Punctuality is only partially known here. I wouldn't say that none of the Balinese understand the concept of time. But most Balinese people don't take appointments as seriously as we do in the Western world.

ergonomics

Another thing is that there is almost no understanding of technical things or ergonomics. Ergonomics is the study of how to build something so that it is easy to use and fun. Many things in Bali are put together in such a way that you say to yourself: “How could they have designed it like that? It’s terribly inconvenient to use it like that!”

Probably the worst construction you will see here is the plumbing. I suppose only the most hopeless kids get to be plumbers! It's terrible how they build water pipes and drains without traps. This is especially true if you come from Germany, which is a very perfectionistic nation.

I have no idea how the Balinese maintain their orientation or sense of direction. Share a location on Google Maps? Oh dear God! If you want to read the map or ask someone, “Can you please show me where I need to go on Google Maps?” Getting an answer is almost impossible. Even as they navigate around, you'll have a hard time understanding how they ever get where they want to go.

When I first moved to Bali and lent my scooter to my girlfriend, I was worried I wouldn't ever see either of them again. Because I was afraid she wouldn't find her way back to the house! So far it has always turned out that they came back. But the way they navigate makes it hard for me to understand how they do it.

Also, there's this thing with math: If you go to a store and buy two things, one for 15,000 IDR and the other for 20,000 IDR, you already know how much you have to pay, right? Yes, so you have to pay 35,000 IDR. Most Balinese people can't figure this out without a calculator. You enter the whole numbers with all zeros into the calculator! So you don't even abstract to calculate 15 plus 20. They charge 15,000 plus 20,000.

If you pay now and give them 50,000 IDR, you expect 15,000 IDR back, right? But before they give you the change, they use the calculator again to calculate the change. Most of the time they don't have it right! However, there are two places where people who can do mental calculations like this: at the weekly markets and gas stations. They get along quite well even without a calculator. But most other Balinese... It's funny to see, but you have to be patient until they get the result.

Waiting is also a big problem, at least for me, because I find it difficult to be patient. The service is often... well, let's put it this way: very, very relaxed! Sometimes if you give them two orders, they will only fill one. For example, if you order a beer and a hamburger, you only get one of them. The second one was forgotten along the way!

Speed of development

On the other hand, although the pace of work is slow, I am impressed with the speed at which they produce results! You can especially see this on construction sites! Whenever I had to leave Bali to extend my visa. I have visited Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Australia and many other countries in the region. As I was leaving Bali for a trip, I noticed a new construction site and asked myself, "What will this be when it's finished?"

When I returned from my visa run four weeks later, the building was finished and the shops were open! Suppose you look at the construction sites during the day. In this case you will notice the workers sitting in the shade and a

Smoking Sampurna cigarette. I have no idea how they do it, but I'm interested to find out!

Furthermore, Balinese culture is resilient in many ways, particularly to the influence of Western cultures. They tolerate visitors but refer to Westerners as “Bule”. The word “Bule” means Caucasian or “white person.” It is not considered racist to say this. Unlike in the Western world, when dark-skinned people are called “black” or “Negro”. I find it absurd to view this as politically incorrect. In Bali, “Bule” simply means a white man. And they accept us as we are.

Even in tourist areas, they maintain their culture and carry out blessings and ceremonies. Although they would have a lot of work to serve tourists and visitors. They still hold their ceremonies and make time for them three times a day.

Knalpot terror

One aspect of Balinese noise resistance irritates me: their ability to deal with noise. Although the noise can be deafening at times, Asians don't seem to be bothered by it! A subculture in Bali is known as the “knalpot terrorist.” The term “Knalpot” is the Indonesian word for “exhaust pipe”. People ride around on motorcycles with a custom-made poppot that contains nothing. The motorcycles become unbearably loud. Yuck!

There are so many of these loud motorcycles on the road that it's a pain in the ass for me. Since I'm sensitive to noise, I enjoy quiet days like Nyepi. The noise of the motorcycles often made me very angry and I despised the people who made that noise, especially at night. But I recently found a way to deal with it and make peace with them, and I say to them:

“Tuhan, berkati kamu dengan otak dan knalpot baru.”

This means: “May God bless you with a brain and a new exhaust pipe!”

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Do you want to try it too? I invite you to join in this blessing, laugh and feel good when you hear a loud bang.

“Tuhan, berkati kamu dengan otak dan knalpot baru.”

OK? For the third and final time:

“Tuhan, berkati kamu dengan otak dan knalpot baru.”

Father, forgive them

In 1999 I started at the Bosch subsidiary in Stuttgart. I quickly realized that this environment was not right for me. It was a safe job. So it was like working as a civil servant. However, as I said, I don't like the bastards; I rather hate them! I was now one of them!

My hatred of the Bosch bastards was reflected and I hated myself, and that was a kind of dishonesty towards me. As a result of this internal conflict, some psychological and health problems arose. The pain in my joints and muscles led to the diagnosis of rheumatic disease.

Then I got a prescription from the doctor and went to a pharmacy. The owner of the pharmacy, Alois Sterr, served me, looked at my face and glanced at the prescription. He was shocked and asked: "Mr. Forster, can I ask you how old you are?"

“Yes, 46,” I said. He looked at me and said, "Do you really have to eat that shit at your age?" That woke me up!

He lived off his income from selling the pills, and he dared to tell me not to take them. I realized that something was wrong here. I am very grateful for his honesty and for his courage in telling me this. Because it woke me up and I started looking for another solution.

Shortly afterwards I attended a seminar where I met Dr. met Mario Krause. We had some good conversations together during the seminar, and he also looked after me for a while after the seminar. Due to my rheumatic disease, I also asked him, "Can you do a test for me to find out what's going on?" Of course he could do that. So we did the blood test and it found that I had a digestive problem.

Dr. Krause treated this and my symptoms have almost disappeared. Well, at least for a year, then they came back! We have another blood test

done and had similar results. We repeated the same therapy with the same success and it cleared up for another year.

The truth is, I still had this hatred of myself and officials, as well as depression over my unsatisfying marriage and living in a scarcity mindset. I still had all of that in my head. So it kept producing the same symptoms over and over again.

Now you see, when you treat the problem on the surface, it fades away for a while and then resurfaces until you learn from it. Anyway, Mario and I have become good friends and we meet once or twice a year. I appreciate his support and advice. He laid the foundation for me to understand and heal my health condition.

Healing without medication

I am therefore very grateful to Mario, whose therapy was a change in diet, and to the pharmacist Mr. Steer for making me aware that pills for the symptoms are not a solution. This helped me to permanently cure my rheumatic disease. Today I can move freely. My joints no longer hurt and I even started running marathons and finished seven or eight.

Bean counter, Korinthenkacker, Dipfeleschisser and Bosch

Now let me tell you a little more about civil servants and the “currant-cracker.” I will give you some examples of government organizations or industries. One of the organizations that is full of “currant-crackers” is the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. They continue to burden companies without providing a meaningful service. They only exist because the legal situation in Germany forces every company to pay for them. Nothing worthwhile comes out of them.

highwayman

One highwayman is the "fee collection center" GEZ. They collect money for state radio and television stations in Germany. There was a good reason for the founding of this organization when radio came into being. With the new technology it became possible to broadcast news and music , to inform, train and entertain society. Back then, the equipment for this was expensive. The development of the infrastructure had to be financed somehow.

For me the initial idea is to require the public to pay for radio and television stations. But these days it's so cheap to start and run a radio station. It probably won't cost more than $100 to set up a streaming station and stream music over the Internet. There are hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of private radio stations that receive no money from this organization.

Therefore, this organization is very outdated these days. They raise money for the state to run a completely outdated system and spread the state's propaganda. Private radio stations have a very small budget. Their main source of funding is advertising. They send messages and other things based on what advertisers pay for.

The state radio stations are financed through a combination of advertising and GEZ fees. Yes, even though they are paid by the toll collection center, they also sell airtime for commercials. They therefore represent a mix of government and advertiser interest.

I doubt that the government's opinion, news and propaganda are any closer to the truth than the truth influenced by advertising. Nobody is better or worse than the other. There is only one difference: State radio stations are expensive, while private stations have a smaller budget and waste less energy. The GEZ is an outdated organization, a parasite!

Let me give you another example with Nokia. Nokia used to be the world's leading mobile phone provider. When the iPhone came out, Nokia always thought

nor that people want to use a regular cell phone to make calls. Nokia didn't realize how much people would appreciate and how dependent it would become on them to have a toy in their hand and play around with it.

Think about what you do with your phone these days. How many hours a day do you hold it and play with it? How many minutes a day do you spend on the phone? At Nokia they still thought that people just wanted to use a phone to make calls.

Nokia has produced a smartphone. Do you remember the Nokia Communicator? I bought all the Nokia Communicator models they had during the product life cycle and loved them. It was a small computer, more of a work tool than a toy! However, Nokia was not ready for Apple's plan to turn phones into toys.

A few years later, Nokia went bankrupt. And again a few years later, Microsoft bought Nokia. Probably for less than 1% of its peak value. Incredible, is not it?

The limited life cycle of protectionism

Banks and the banking system are a different type of organization that has not caught up with modern development. Overall, banks are following the old rules and trying to make things safer for you. But security is your business, not your bank's. In addition, the government is forcing banks to make the processes more complicated and secure.

I find this ridiculous because it makes everything more complicated and expensive. Fortunately, today there are fintech companies that offer financial services in a more convenient and user-friendly manner.

PayPal, for example, used to be one of them. But PayPal is aging, and it's now nothing but a nuisance. Better examples include Wise or Revolut, which allow you to send money internationally for relatively low fees compared to the cost of a bank or PayPal transfer.

You also get better exchange rates and the transferred money reaches the recipient more quickly. You can also monitor the entire process from your phone as it is transferred, what rate it was exchanged at and when the other person received it.

Fintechs do a much better job than banks with their old-fashioned, outdated systems. The old banks don't realize what's going on! Many fintech companies use blockchain technology. That's the silver lining. My joy is that it will put a lot of curmudgeons and highwaymen out of business by simplifying the processes. We will get rid of parasites in industry and government administration.

Well, my guess is that traditional banks will either have to drastically change their business model to better serve customers or end up going bankrupt. Unfortunately, the latter scenario can have some negative consequences for those who have parked their money with them. But maybe that's the price we have to pay. Or we need to learn to invest, invest or park our money better than keeping it in a bank account.

Traditional banks clearly do not yet understand the implications of blockchain. Just like the print media when the internet came along. The printing industry has not understood what the Internet means to them. They continued to focus on books and newspapers, trying to protect their business and slander electronic media for copyright nonsense.I'm not taking part in this nonsense. Therefore, the author Klaus 4ster waives the copyright for content created and published by the author himself.

Many of them were forced out of business. Today, print media only make a fraction of their income and sales compared to times before the Internet. It's a positive development. In other words, an outdated business model was cleaned up.

The example of German history can also be cited as a political example of unsustainable protectionism. The East German communists tried to protect themselves by building a wall around the country. The wall had a funny nickname: Anti-Fascist Protective Wall. They tried to protect their socialist ideas from capitalism and it worked for 40 years. That was the time of the Cold War. It was a very stable political situation between East and West, although it was not a pleasant situation. I grew up with it. For me it was normal to live in the situation.

But in the end, all the protectionism doesn't help. It only works for a while. But this protectionism destroys the system, it is like cancer. And sooner or later all these systems collapse. This led to German reunification. A revolution in which, unlike other revolutions, no blood was shed. Germany can be pretty proud of that. Because historically speaking, peaceful revolutions like this haven't happened all that often.

Another amusing example of people trying to maintain the status quo was in England when they invented the railways. People started protesting against railways because they feared trains. Doctors said

Back then: “If you move a person faster than 30 km/h, he goes crazy.” Can you believe that? Yes, they just wanted to keep their horses!

I recently had to file my tax return. My tax advisor still sends me paper invoices. He promotes online accounting and stores receipts digitally in the DATEV software. But I hate this software: it looks like shit, is completely confusing and runs unbearably slow. The license for the software is expensive and for me as a customer it is almost useless. To understand how to use them, you have to use them every day. You can't use it if you only use it once a month.

Well, my tax advisor, the bean counter, is also one of these highwaymen. Like I said, he still sends me his paper invoices! I keep writing to him to simply email me a copy of the invoice and deduct the money directly from my account. He says he has to do it for legal reasons. He has zero risk with the debit authorization. And he should show me the paragraph. I keep asking him how many times I have to tell him to take money directly from my account. In his DATEV software, the invoice amount should be able to be debited on the day of payment at the push of a button. Completed!

It's a lie to call yourself a tax advisor because you're just a bean counter! In order to optimize my tax situation, I have to think about it myself! He never came up with an idea! He only talks about the risks if we follow my ideas. When it comes to tax savings, he doesn't advise me on what is legally possible. But there is always room for how you can declare taxes to put yourself in a better position. My tax advisor never came forward with advice for something like this!

When I sold my business, I asked him what the right path was. He came up with a simple calculation that would have fit on the edge of a postage stamp. He charged me around €1,400 for this! Well, that's probably his fee for his expertise, that he knew the formula; fair enough. As an accountant, I would have expected him to think ahead and he would have calculated this before I asked him. But, hey, isn't that the old highwayman mentality?

We talked about the Cold War and the East-West conflicts in Germany after World War II. It reminds me that we are having a similar situation right now. Today, the United States is engaged in a trade war with China. They accuse China of stealing their technology and call on their own companies to stop doing business with the Chinese.

The real reason is that they just want to protect the value of the American dollar. They recognized that growth rates in Asia, particularly China, but also India, Pakistan and Indonesia, are much faster than growth in the West, particularly the USA. I suppose it's essentially about protecting the value of the American dollar.

The Americans have understood what is going on and by starting this trade war they are trying protectionism. As always, it will work for a short time. But like the Cold War, it won't last forever. Economic growth in Asia will exceed that of the Western world over the next 10 to 20 years. This is also something I see a silver lining in.

Have you made these mistakes too?

So let's check together what my most valuable insights are from these insights about the bean counters, currants, Dipfeleschisser and Bosch:

Well, I had to understand that the rheumatoid pain I was experiencing was self-punishment. When I worked for this public service, Bosch, my hatred of myself reflected how much I hated working as a civil servant. My body only reflected my hatred and the pain I felt was me punishing myself. I didn't understand that at the time. It took me 20 years to figure this out.

Another important lesson is the hidden program that should help you better understand such mechanisms. I want to serve you with this because I am so grateful for

what I learned. I want you to do the same. So I would love for you to use some of these insights.

I have to come back to something else. I recently asked my son, "Did they teach you quantum mechanics or quantum physics in school?" He replied, "No, but maybe soon."

The knowledge of quantum mechanics and quantum physics is 100 years old and is still not taught in school. Today we know, and it is scientifically accepted, that it explains 80 to 95% of what we experience that Newtonian physics cannot explain.

Although quantum mechanics and quantum physics have been known for more than 100 years, they are not taught to children in schools. This creates creatures that believe they make decisions logically and are emotionally blind. But our emotions influence more than 80 percent of our decisions, and only a small portion of them are made consciously and logically.

The hidden agenda behind this expat travel guide is to make you aware of how much you rely on your emotions and how to deal with them.

Then there is the third part. So the first was the logical part, the second was the emotional part and the third part was our ego. Sometimes your ego just wants to play. When you give your ego a playground to play with, supporting your emotions and your logical thinking, all three forces come into harmony. And that brings about healing!

When I did my tax return, I thought for a long time about my hatred of the officials, curmudgeons and highwaymen and forgave them. I felt immediate healing. That was a wonderful experience. From the bottom of my heart, I believe this expat travel guide will help you experience the same.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

What playground can you give your ego to support you in playing?
If you want to learn more about how to heal yourself, read the book “Prana Healing” by my wife Komang Sukerni and me.

You can do it on the website https://i-love-bali.com/

buy, and the VOUCHER CODE,

that is on the keyboard.

Freedom

What does freedom mean to you?
Does that mean you can do whatever you want?
Ask yourself how free you feel in your life right now.
Are you living your destiny, your own plan, your schedule and your goals?
Or do you see boundaries everywhere?
Do you follow other people's plans?
How do you define freedom?
What does it mean to not be free?

For me, freedom consists of four parts:

The freedom of the spirit,
The freedom to travel,
Financial freedom and
Sexual freedom.

So let's go through each part in detail.

Freedom of spirit

What does it mean to have no freedom of thought? A common saying goes that the mind is a prison. Phillip Arnold points out:

"You'll never be free,

until you free yourself from the prison of your wrong thoughts."

Most people's minds are like prisons, which is the opposite of freedom. The largest prison in the world is not Alcatraz; it's in your head, in our head and in mine too. I was there too. My mind used to hold me captive. I saw boundaries everywhere. Especially when I was married, a lot of things stopped me from doing what I wanted to do. I took on too many responsibilities and carried too much weight. As the saying goes, the weight of the world was on my shoulders.

Being responsible is the opposite of being free.

Responsibility and freedom are two sides of the same coin. The less responsibility you have, the more freedom you have. The more responsibility you have, the less freedom you have. In my experience, most people take on too much responsibility and have too little freedom in their lives. You depend too much on other people's opinions and follow other people's plans, which leads to scarcity thinking and you take on too much responsibility. These people often suffer from back pain. Back pain is the typical physical symptom of having taken on too much responsibility.

Bringing your mind back into balance between freedom and responsibility is a good way to live your freedom. It makes you sick to take on too much responsibility. All the rules, regulations and boundaries you have in the

Seeing the world will make you feel trapped. And the lack of freedom will always make you feel bad. People often lie to themselves and say things like, “I love the freedom I have,” but when you look at what they do with their lives, you see that they have too much responsibility and too little freedom.

So if you have back pain, you now know that it could be because you are out of balance and have too much responsibility. You will be surprised how it works. It will change the way you think about freedom, you will let go of some of your rules, regulations and responsibilities.

At the end of this chapter I will show you an affirmation from Tony Robbins.

The freedom to travel

I used to want to see all the countries in the world to enjoy the freedom of travel. I've traveled to about 100 different countries, some of which I liked and some of which I didn't. I finally made it to Bali, my true home and paradise. So now I don't feel like I have to travel as much. I'm no longer looking for my true home, but I still love visiting new countries and places.

Now I have a different dream, a different goal and a different place I want to go: I want to go to Mars! Not only that, along the way I want to have sex in zero gravity and have two kids. The first twins born on Mars. This is my new goal and my new purpose when it comes to freedom of travel. So why not? I've achieved my original goal and found my paradise in Bali, so why not conceive twins in space that will be born on Mars?

Now think of a place you would like to visit. What is it and where is it? Make this your destiny!

Financial freedom

How does it feel to be financially free?
What does it mean to you to be rich?
How do you define fullness?

You are financially free if your assets grow faster through interest and dividends than you have to spend on your dream life. In the next chapter I'll tell you more about financial freedom, financial security and financial security.

Achieving at least a basic level of financial security is the foundation to begin growing, because no one has ever been enlightened who didn't know how to pay for their next meal. You might say, "Well, I know a few wise people, and they don't worry too much about money." You see, these people can make wealth, abundance and money out of anything. This gives them the security and confidence that they no longer have to worry too much about money.

If money is too big of a problem in your life, you will still end up with scarcity thinking. But if you can create abundance, wealth and money from any situation, that is a very good foundation for your growth!

Sexual freedom

I think the idea of monogamy goes against human nature. It is against nature because there are no monogamous animals. To be honest, very few people are monogamous, even though religion teaches us so. Well, at least most religions.

I grew up as a Christian in Germany. People who have never done anything sexual are called “innocent.” In German, "innocent" means "not guilty!" So we believe that people who have never had sex are not guilty. This means that you are guilty as soon as you have your first sexual encounter.

The Bible doesn't say this directly, but it does say that when a person loses their virginity, they lose their innocence and one becomes guilty by having sexual intercourse for the first time. This makes sex seem like something dirty and bad. This is complete nonsense.

Sexual illnesses don't come from sex. You are receptive to it depending on how you subconsciously think about it. Feeling guilty and dirty about it increases the likelihood that you will get sexually transmitted diseases or cancer in your genitals because you are afraid of it.

There were good reasons to promote monogamy and say that polygamy and fornicating is bad. For example, when sexual diseases such as gonorrhea, syphilis or AIDS killed thousands or even millions of people, it made sense to propagate something like that. But you only get these diseases if you have a negative attitude towards sex. And the symptoms clearly show what you are subconsciously thinking.

Once you realize that sex is a good and clean way to get endless energy, you will no longer be susceptible to sexual diseases. Even if you have sex with different lovers. But as long as you think sex is dirty, you will

you have any symptom or are susceptible to illness. Enjoy sex as a good, clean way to get energy. Enjoy sex without feeling guilty!

Freedom should be one of your core values. Freedom is more important than responsibility! Especially if you place too much value on responsibility. Back pain is a clear sign that you are out of balance because you have taken on too much responsibility. So use the affirmation, shout it out with Tony Robbins and enjoy freedom. You don't have to worry about what others think about your life. You will reach your destination where you can live freely. Create abundance from every situation. So you no longer have to worry about not having enough money and you don't have to live in a state of scarcity thinking. Have fun with good sex and use it as an endless supply of good, clean energy.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Do the “Freedom Affirmation” on the website https://i-love-bali.com/

The password is the VOUCHER CODE on the keyboard.

Let's end this chapter with a nice exercise. It is an exercise developed by Tony Robbins. He uses this affirmation in his "Date with Destiny" seminars. It's a spell for freedom! There is a video on my YouTube channel and I encourage you to watch it and shout out with Tony.

What is financial freedom?

In this chapter you will learn the concepts of financial protection, financial security, financial freedom and absolute financial freedom. Let's start with financial security.

The idea behind financial protection is that you have enough money to last you six months, hidden somewhere under your pillow, in your bank account, in a safe, or better yet, with a mentor to keep the money away from you. This money should be enough for six months so you can live a very simple, frugal life. How much money do you need for financial security?

Now imagine only being able to pay for your very, very basic needs. Assume your basic needs are covered with €1,000 per month. This is probably enough for a couple who live a very frugal and simple life with all their basic needs covered.

Financial protection

It means you have enough money to cover your basic needs for six months. Either in a bank account, under the pillow, but it's best if your mentor keeps it for you. I have experienced it painfully myself, we have to learn to invest our money better, to invest it or to park money without a mentor: "...than to keep it in a bank account."

An example of financial protection is if you lose all of your income, which is a very unlikely scenario, but it is possible. You lose your job, your wife loses her job, or your spouse loses his job. Then you have no income. But assuming you have the money aside for financial security. In this case, you have six months to recover and find another job, start your own business, or make money in another way.

OK? Finding out how much money is needed is easy. Do you understand the concept? I already said, "Give it to your mentor" because you don't want to give it to a friend. you give it to someone you honor and respect. You give it to someone who isn't afraid to punish you or say no. You are instructing this mentor not to return this money to you unless it is a very, very serious and urgent emergency. This mentor will make sure you never touch that money.

We don't put this money in a bank account to earn interest. We are not interested in making money from it. It's just for protection, and we want it in a rock solid place where we can theoretically access it every day. But we also want to protect it from ourselves. That's why I keep saying, "Give it to your mentor and he'll keep the money safe for you" and he'll only give it to you in the very, very worst case scenario.

Now you understand the concept of financial security. Do you? Excellent! So let's move on to the next level.

Financial security

Financial security is when you have money invested that pays you dividends or interest that covers your basic needs. Consider the example of 1,000 again

€ per month. Now we have to calculate how much we have to invest in order to do so

Earn €1,000 a month to cover basic living expenses.

Financial security is calculated at 25 times the amount of money you have already committed to your financial security. We have €6,000 kept under the pillow or from your mentor, and we have to do the math 25 times €6,000, which turns out to be €150,000. Did you get it? OK!

Where will this €150,000 come from? Once you have saved €6,000, you can continue saving or topping up and investing the same amount. This investment could be, for example, an ETF such as the MSCI World ETF.

The MSCI world index typically grows by around eight percent per year. If you calculate 8% of €150,000, which is €12,000 as long-term average annual growth, then you take the annual growth of €12,000 and divide it by 12 months and you have the €1,000 needed for one month.

The nice thing is that if you only take out the profit, the underlying value of the ETF and your assets remain the same. In other words, the investment remains constant. You only take out interest and dividends. You don't touch base; that can feed you forever!

But the idea here is that you don't take any dividends either. Because then they will

€1,000 per month invested in additional savings, additional growth and compounding. That's another delightful thing. If you don't touch it, it will grow on its own. Plus, you'll keep adding some savings and building your wealth over time.

How long does it take? €150,000 seems like a lot at first. But compounding will get you to that point much quicker than you now expect. This will surprise you! Are you looking forward to this surprise? Don't hesitate, do it. There's only one mistake you can make: you don't get it started. Save for your financial protection today. Once you reach this milestone, you should start investing and saving for financial security.

Every person on earth should reach this point during their lifetime. The earlier in life, the better, because it's so liberating to know that nothing can go wrong financially. Thinking about money is stressful for most people. But this will take that burden away because money will be managed. You put it into a system and the system works for you! Now money works for you and you can stop working for money! It's a very, very liberating feeling. I believe that no one has ever become enlightened until they get past this point. Let's move on to the next step.

Financial freedom

A luxurious dream life is what financial freedom offers: everything. Let's say a luxurious lifestyle would cost you around 6,000 euros a month. That’s six times your financial security. You might think: I need about six times as much money as the financial security for that. To ensure financial security, you invested your money very conservatively. For example, you have invested your money in an MSCI World ETF that is growing very steadily and calmly.

I recommend you do it this way because it doesn't put too much strain on your nerves. The MSCI World is growing steadily, albeit with the volatility of the international economy. But now we can invest with a little more volatility that continues to swing up and down. This means higher volatility. For example: If you now invest in the NASDAQ, the American Tech Index or the German TecDAX, you will earn around 50% more per year. You can expect a return of around 12% per year on average over the long term. Because of the higher return, it is not six times. It's just four times more.

So far we have invested €150,000 in our financial security. And now it's four times as much. So we need €600,000 for financial freedom, which with an expected growth rate of 12% will pay us €6,000 per month. Do you think you can get by and live a relatively luxurious and comfortable life?

If yes, start the process!

And now again, if we don't touch this money, the growth that we have from value growth, interest and dividend growth will be put into compounding. And the miracle of compound interest will serve you. You will reach the point of financial freedom much sooner than you now expect! And you can still save some money and put a little more into it to make it grow even faster!

Absolute financial freedom

The concept of absolute financial freedom is simple: it pays for everything you can dream of. And there's more, in dividends, income and interest...

Let's assume you have around €100,000 a month to live on. You can then spend around €3,333 every day without touching the capital stock! Can you imagine that? Wow, I don't think you can do that!

Well, you can probably spend €3,333 one day, the next, and the next. But then it gets boring. Afterwards you look back and want to live a frugal life again. You will have a hard time spending that much money every day. But this is the point where you have achieved the absolute financial freedom that pays for everything you dream of. Okay, now let's calculate how we achieve this:

We have so far invested €600,000 in our Financial Freedom Fund. Now let's just multiply it by ten. So you have to invest €6,000,000. And with that we can make even more volatile investments. For example, we target our investments toward specific stocks or specific markets. There is a lot of talk about artificial intelligence at the moment. I believe artificial intelligence is a market that will continue to grow. So I'm looking for an ETF that represents companies that are actively developing artificial intelligence. I invest in it and expect a growth rate of around 20% per year, including dividends and interest. But be careful, I also expect it to be a bubble like the .com bubble. So once it drastically exceeds 20% per year, it's time to get out.

There is a lot of talk about artificial intelligence at the moment. I think artificial intelligence is a bubble because it's not intelligent at all... There's a lot of talk about artificial intelligence at the moment. I believe artificial intelligence is a market that will continue to grow. So I'm looking for an ETF that represents companies that are actively developing artificial intelligence. I invest in it and expect a growth rate of around 20% per year, including dividends and interest. But be careful, I also expect it to be a bubble like the .com bubble. So once it drastically exceeds 20% per year, it's time to get out. I invest in it and expect a growth rate of around 20% per year, including dividends and interest. But be careful, I also expect it to be a bubble like the .com bubble. So as soon as it drastically exceeds 20% per year, I'm already out.

If I invested €6,000,000 and the interest is 20%, I will end up with €120,000 a month. I honestly find it hard to imagine spending that. So now the money is working for you, and you can't avoid getting richer. It's a very simple concept. However, it will take some time before it is implemented. But would be a 10 or even 20 year old

Isn't working on it a well-thought-out investment for the results that can be achieved?

Why it doesn't work

Again, the only mistake you can make is not getting the process started. Start saving! Even if you only pay €100 a month, that's 60 months and then you'll have your financial security together. And then from the 7th year it starts working for you because now you can start investing. When you invest, you earn interest on your money and it works for you.

How do you get through the first phase of this process and how do you continue it? Getting something going requires some discipline. And discipline is a wonderful way to get something going. But unfortunately discipline doesn't last long! Instead, you need pain and pleasure. And that's why I ask you to put the money under your mentor's pillow and not under yours! He will make you feel pain if you don't keep saving!

But where does the pleasure come from now? The fun begins when you calculate your net worth, i.e. the total of your assets, every month. You can do this by using a spreadsheet or writing it down in a book. You will have fun and a sense of achievement when you can see how your assets grow. This chart or little book shows your progress. You will be very proud of it and have fun with it. Instead of trying to achieve everything through discipline, just let it happen through pain and pleasure. You can also call this fear and greed. Your mentor can help you with this. Fear is not a pleasant feeling, but it is a very effective motivator.

But your spreadsheet or book that keeps track of how much money you have takes care of your greed. Greed is also another good motivator. But I prefer to call it pain and pleasure. Because that's easier to remember.

This process can still stop along the way. And the reason for that could be:

Feeling guilty about being rich

Many people feel guilty when they have too much money. you feel guilty because other people don't have as much money. And they believe that this is an imbalance and that it is not fair. If you find that your wealth stops growing during this process, there is an easy way around this. You simply express your gratitude for your growth by donating a little money.

You can start with, say, 1% of your income and give it away to other people. If you make other people happy, it makes you happy too. It's like you're buying yourself happiness and a sign to the universe:

I live in abundance!

And the universe will reward you richly for it! Let's get it done and donate something too.

The best thing is to start right away. Donate a small amount at the beginning so it doesn't hurt you. But this will build a habit. Automate it and set up a standing order in your bank account. Every month 1% of the incoming money is donated. And let’s say 10% of that is saved. And then over time, maybe you earn a little more or learn to live more frugally, then you can increase the amount you save and donate. And you will be surprised how quickly it works! Are you ready for this surprise? Do it! The only mistake you can make is not starting! Set up this system now and trade!

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Buy happiness by donating money
Give it to someone who needs it
Experience happiness to see how it makes that person happy
Feel and enjoy gratitude for your ability to give

Additional €16,164 net per year

Expat in Bali, Indonesia

In this chapter I will show you how to reduce your living costs by €16,000 per year. So let's look at the details of where we spend the majority of our money.

A big thing for me has always been my health insurance. And of course an even bigger issue is housing, renting an apartment and paying the rent for it. Another thing is the vehicle. You probably have a car in your home country. In addition, there are the costs for food, drink and internet and telephone connections.

Let's just go through the five things that typically, aside from taxes, but that's another chapter, will be the highest cost of living for you, at least that was the most significant chunk for me. Let's compare what I paid while living in Germany with what I pay now that I live here in Bali.

Health insurance

We start with health insurance. I was self-employed and was insured with statutory health insurance. They charged me almost €700 per month. But we expect €600 per month. I canceled that after I left Germany, and when I started living permanently in Indonesia, I took out private international health insurance. This only costs me €600 for the whole year! You can continue to have German statutory health insurance, but pause it as long as you are not in your home country. That's what I did at the beginning.

They only charged me €50 a month for this service. That means it was €600 a year that I paid for German statutory health insurance during the break. Plus the 600 € for the international one. If I have a health problem, I can use international health insurance. And when I return to Germany, the German statutory health insurance will be activated again for a short time as long as I am visiting Germany.

I used to pay €3,600. Now, at least at the beginning, I only paid €1,200. I have now even given up the €50 for statutory health insurance. Because I don't plan on going there anymore. And if I have to, I simply take out short-term insurance from a private provider and the problem is solved.

Apart from that, if you want to return to Germany and reactivate German statutory health insurance, you can go to the employment office and say: “I'm looking for a job.” Then every German statutory health insurance company has to provide insurance. It's easy to get back into it as an unemployed person. It's just a small administrative expense that you can perhaps save yourself with €50 a month.

But I decided it wasn't worth it anymore. Today I only pay 600

€ for international health insurance, and not a cent more for German statutory health insurance. I'm saving €3,000 on my health insurance today. And even if I were to still pay that €50 a month, it would still be €2,400 a year. That's quite a saving, just in one step!

Subletting the apartment

But let's come to another point: And that is the apartment. What do you pay for rent and utilities for the apartment or house you live in?

Let's assume you pay a total of €700 per month for a rented one-room apartment in Germany. Well, that won't be very exclusive, at least if she's in a big city. If it's in the country, you'll probably get a 3-bedroom apartment for it! But let's assume you pay €700 for your apartment including utilities.

Well, if you want to keep the apartment because it feels safe to you, then you could do that. Let's do the math for this: You keep it and you rent it out on Airbnb for €40 per day. This results in a monthly rent of around €1,200. you might say: “If the apartment only costs me €700 and I sublet it, how am I supposed to get €1,200 a month for it? That’s not realistic!”

Airbnb prices are higher than what you would normally pay for an apartment you see in the newspaper for long-term rental.

Let's say you can only sublet it for 10 out of 12 months per year because your prices are a little higher, but it's worth it. Your tenant does not have to worry about additional costs as these are already included. The tenant doesn't have to worry about the furniture because you leave your furniture there.

And the nice thing about it is that you may have an empty closet and you can just put everything you want to leave behind in your home country in it and lock it up. Then you don't have to pay for storage space. If you can sublet your apartment for 10 out of 12 months per year, you'll end up with a rental income of around €12,000, and you only have to deduct what you have to pay in rent and additional costs. That was €8,400. In the end you will earn 3,600

€ by subletting your apartment.

Now let's look at the cost of renting a space in Indonesia. I keep booking local accommodations and they usually cost me IDR 5,000,000 a month. This is a small furnished room, usually with a shared kitchen and room service. You will be provided with towels. You get your bed linen changed. you get the room cleaned. So it's at a pretty good level of service.

Some of these accommodations even have a shared pool. I'm more than happy about that. You may be asking yourself: “How many euros is 5,000,000 IDR?” 5 million sounds like a lot. That's only €300, which is what I pay here on average per month. So that costs me €3,600 per year. The exact money you make from subletting will pay your rental costs here in Bali. So it's a zero-sum game! Next, you're probably wondering: "How do I rent out my apartment in my home country while I'm in Bali?" There are several options:

Either you ask a friend or neighbor to take care of it. Then you probably want to pay him a little for it.
Maybe you have a family member who is willing to take care of it.
Another option is to use a professional service by handing over the rental to a real estate agent and delegating the rental to a professional service provider. And it's in the real estate agent's best interest to rent it out for as much as possible.

How much does this real estate service cost you? Nothing! Because brokers usually charge the tenant a brokerage commission. You simply hand it over with full responsibility and allow him to complete the contract on your behalf. Then he takes care of everything. So easy, at no extra cost, and you have a professional service that has the best interest of getting it rented as quickly as possible and at the highest price possible. Because brokers usually take two to three months’ rent as commission. The higher the rental price, the better for him.

Let's choose an even better option: you give up your apartment in Germany completely. This is possible even if you live in an area where you may return but where the real estate situation is relaxed. When you come back after a while, you'll probably find something even nicer, and you'll be able to negotiate for even better prices than you're currently paying.

You then save the full €8,400 per year and only have to deduct the €3,600. You can enjoy pleasant savings of €4,800 per year by simply canceling your rental agreement and only paying rent in Indonesia. And you pay the refund of the deposit you paid to your landlord into your financial freedom account. This takes you a good step further along this path!

Vehicle and transport costs

Let's take a look at the vehicle costs and the transportation costs. If you have a car in your home country, you will probably incur monthly costs of €300. This is the loss in value of the vehicle, i.e. depreciation. It includes the insurance for it, the tax for it and its fuel.

You may also have to pay to rent a garage. This all adds up to €300 per month. That means it's €3,600 per year. In Indonesia, the most common and convenient way to get around is a scooter. So you don't need a car here. Driving is a pain due to the traffic density, especially in the south.

If you rent a scooter long-term, you will pay around €3 per day, which is around €90 per month.

You can get a good used Honda Vario scooter from €600, or a new one from €600

Buy for €1,200. I bought a new electric scooter for €800. If you have your own, you then have to pay €120 for registration. And you also have maintenance to worry about, but the workshop service here is pleasantly cheap, for example an oil change costs €4. Buying a scooter is the cheaper option from 9 or 12 months.

Due to the low cost of fuel, which is the only additional cost you have here, you currently pay around 70¢ for a liter. At home it is currently €2 or even more per liter. Look, with your car you're probably using fuel worth €75, €50 or maybe €100 a month.

But I now calculate that the fuel was already included in the €300 per month that we previously calculated. But here it adds up to just €100 a month. At home you paid €300 for your car. Instead of €300, you now only pay €100 for a scooter. Your monthly savings will be €200, which equates to a saving of €2,400 per year.

Depending on the value of your car, you may have achieved the cash for your financial protection in a single step by selling it. Now that was another big chunk. But it's not the end of the equation.

Food and Drink

Now let's move on to food and drinks. Well, in Germany I used to go shopping once a week and buy groceries at discounters. I paid €50, which is not a very large shopping basket. And sometimes I even had to do it twice a week. But let's say you buy groceries and drinks, a case of beer, a case of water, vegetables, fruit and a few small snacks, meat and fish. That adds up to €200 a month over four weeks a month that I spent in the supermarket.

This is where I get by when I go shopping for vegetables and fruit three times a week. I pay around 100,000 IDR every time. That means I pay €6 for every purchase. I go shopping here more often than in Germany because I want it to be fresh. The mild and warm climate means that fruit and vegetables spoil more quickly. Shopping three times makes 20

€ per week. In Germany I spent 200 euros a month on food. Here it's only €80. I save around €120 per month on food and drink.

Then you occasionally go to a restaurant. Let's assume you go to a restaurant of reasonable quality in Germany. There you pay €20 each. Here you can treat yourself to a snack and a drink for 100,000 IDR. If you choose street food, it's just a fraction of that. But let's expect 100,000 IDR per meal if you eat out. That's €6.

Let's say we eat out at a restaurant ten times a month. In Germany that would be €200: 10 times €20. And here it would be €60, because ten times 100,000 IDR is approximately €60. So, in total, we only spend €240 a month instead of €400 a month on food shopping at the grocery store, buying fresh groceries and eating out. The savings are approximately €160 per month. That's, times 12, almost €2,000 a year saved on food and drinks.

Well, alcoholic drinks are a different story: if you're an alcoholic, you won't do well financially here. The beer costs about the same as in Germany. And wine is typically three to five times more expensive. And the local wines are... well, it's not good quality. If you want a really tasty imported wine, you'll pay five times the price you pay at a discounter in Germany!

Communication and internet connection costs

Now let's finally look at the costs of communication, internet connection and telephone. If you have a cheap provider for your mobile phone contract and your landline connection in Germany, you will probably pay 25 each

€ per month. That's €50 per month. So €600 a year. Here in Indonesia, internet connections with free Wi-Fi are available everywhere! Wherever you go to a restaurant and drink a coffee, you don't pay anything for it. That's why you don't need a cable connection. In your accommodation, if you rent one with room service, internet connection is included in the price.

So I don't pay anything extra for that. Still, I would like to have a cell phone internet connection. If I use the best and most expensive providers, I pay IDR 100,000 for the package, i.e. €6 per month. This usually includes around 20 GB of data volume, a telephone and SMS flat rate. So I don't have to worry about it. I usually get by with a data volume of 8 to 12 GB per month.

Free WiFi is available almost everywhere. You can use this for your work and you don't even have to pay for it. Instead of €600, I only have costs of €36 per year. My savings on internet and communication costs are €564 per year. That's a lot of money for that!

Let's talk about connection quality. If you have a cable connection in Germany, the service is usually quite reliable. But you probably have a 20, 30 or 50 MB connection. Here a 50 MB connection is standard. And it's symmetrical! In Germany you usually have an upload rate of only 1/8 of the download rate. But here the upload is just as fast as the download, often even faster than the download rate.

With the UMTS connection, the data connection on your cell phone is also quite fast, but not as reliable as you might be used to in your home country.

Due to the long distances here in Indonesia, there are radio transmissions, and if there is a big cloud or a heavy rain shower, then there is

the connection has a lot of dropouts. These are much more common than in your home country. At least that's how it is during the rainy season. It is more reliable in the dry season.

But if you go to a restaurant and there's a blackout, you always have a fallback option by using your cell phone as a hotspot and continuing to work. I have two SIM cards in my phone from the two providers with the best network coverage: XL and Telkomsel. This means you can switch between providers if one of them has no reception. The two data packages cost

together about 10 € per month.

Calculation of savings

Let's calculate how this could work out for you in the best case scenario:

We had savings of €2,400 per year on health insurance.
If you give up your apartment in your home country and only pay for an apartment with room service here, you can save 4,800 euros a year.
If you sell your car and rent a scooter, you can save €2,400 a year.
You save around €2,000 per year on groceries.
Finally, you can save €564 per year on the costs of communication, internet connection and telephone calls.

This results in a saving of €16,164 per year

Incredible, is not it? Let's do the math for this money saved. This is additional money that you have available net. Money saved is not taxed! Now imagine that you want to earn this €16,000 through additional income, so that your net income is €16,000 more. How much do you have to earn before taxes to

To receive €16,000 net? Let's say you have a tax rate of 30%. To achieve a higher net income of €16,000 per year, you need to earn €24,000 more before taxes!

As an example: your income before taxes is now €50,000 minus 30% tax is €35,000. you have to earn €74,000 gross, minus 30%, which equals €49,000! And in most countries the tax situation is even worse. If you increase your income from €50,000 to €74,000 before taxes, your tax rate also increases!

Most countries do not have a uniform tax rate, but rather a progressive tax rate: higher incomes are taxed more heavily than lower incomes. You will likely see a new tax rate of 35% instead of 30%

experience. So your additional income would have to be not just €24,000, but probably €30,000 more to get the extra €16,000 after tax!

Once again: money saved is net: money without taxes! What do you do with this saved money? I would recommend putting it entirely in your Financial Freedom account! See, if you put it all in, you'll achieve financial protection within five months! This will give you enough money in the bank to live without income for 6 months and a new source of income. And if you keep saving, you'll reach financial security within seven years.

Financial security, as I explained, means that you have so much money invested that you can live off the interest at a very basic level, and it only takes seven years to get there. This is a very, very pleasant situation because you never have to worry or worry about money again!

So start cutting costs. Go through each of these steps and deposit all the money you save into your Financial Freedom Account.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

What are your 5 biggest monthly costs?
Which ones will you eliminate or reduce this month?
Which ones in the next few months?
Plan your savings
Live your plan
Invest the money you save in the account for your financial freedom

Who is Rich Dad?

The name Rich Dad, of course, comes from the book “Poor Dad, Rich Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. Rich Dad had a role model, or so they say! That role model is Keith J. Cunningham, a businessman from Texas. He was born in 1950. At his age, he has already gained a bit of wisdom.

I met him when he taught Tony Robbins' Business Mastery Seminar, which I attended. I was quite impressed by the lectures he gave. He is actually an accountant at heart. But he's a funny accountant. Most accountants are introverted and not very emotional. He's a little emotional, and he's more of an extrovert and performs quite well on stage. Although he's not as extroverted as Tony Robbins.

He's fun to listen to and he made looking at balance sheets interesting. Because as he puts it: “The balance sheet gives you perspective on your business. "That's how you know where you stand financially." He has a very nice way of explaining it and a brilliant sense of humor. It never gets boring, even when you're looking at numbers.

With the knowledge gained from this, your tax advisor will provide you with a management tool for your company and your business decisions. You will learn how to interpret the numbers in the balance sheets and then in the income statements. With this information, you can make smarter decisions about your next steps in growing and developing the business.

He has also written a book called “The Road Less Stupid.” In this book he recommends having some time every day to think. What he calls “thinking time” and how he describes it, he does it in a meditative mood.

Think time

As he sits for an hour, he thinks about his business, letting his hand flow and writing while listening to his inner voice. This is a nice method. In the book he describes many questions that are very valuable for entrepreneurs and business owners. Every day, take one or a handful of these questions and think about them for an hour.

But in this book, the question that puzzled me the most was the following. The question is:

“How can you ruin a competitor’s business?” When I read this, my first thought was, this is strange and very destructive. However, his point of view is: "How could I harm my competitor's business model?" However, he looks at his own company from his competitor's perspective. Suddenly everything turns around. Now you can see your own company’s weak points.

You see, the answers to your questions are usually already written on your forehead. The damn thing is, your eyes look the other way. But with this technique you mentally put yourself in your competitor's position. From the perspective of a competitor, you now look at your own company from the outside and look for weak points.

That's a smart idea! Because now you see all the things that are already written on your forehead. Then of course you can take measures within your own company to prevent a competitor from attacking it. This is just an example of the questions I read in this book. I have already written a blog post about this:

https://vitality4happiness.com/ruin-someones-life-business/

The strange thing is that this destructive question "How can you ruin someone else's life or business?", as I call it on my blog, gets the most visitors. People search for questions like this. And so I learned that this is good for search engine optimization. However, I am not positive because I think the title is far too negative.

How do I buy and sell a business?

Later in 2015, I attended "How to Buy and Sell a Business?" by Keith J. Cunningham in Austin, Texas. I flew to the USA and took part. There I learned how to evaluate the value of a company. You can calculate it on the edge of a postage stamp: add up the profits from the last three years and you're done!

I from pre-tax earnings after everything is paid, including the business owner or entrepreneur's salary. Whatever the profit for the last three years turned out to be on the balance sheet, you simply take the sum of the last 3 years and divide it by 3. This gives you the average annual profit for the last three years.

Depending on the type of company, the capital tied up in the company, and the amount of work that the entrepreneur contributes, you multiply the average annual profit by a factor of, for example, 3. Now you have a very simple formula to estimate the approximate value of your company and what selling price you can achieve for it.

With the typical factor of 3 you can save yourself the two intermediate steps of calculating the average profit of the last 3 years and multiplying by the factor 3. Because the two three can be shortened, just as I simplified it above.

Of course, the more the company needs you to operate, the lower the factor is. If you, as a self-employed person, are the only employee who does everything yourself and all the time, you are 0! The more independent your company is from you and the better it gets along without you, the more valuable it is. Then a factor of 4 or 5 can also be justified. High capital commitment, gloomy industry prospects and low business development reduce the factor, low capital commitment, good industry prospects and good business development increase it.

I learned a lot in the seminar. But it was a lot about numbers and calculations. It was also about how to negotiate the price and how to find a business that was for sale. All of this helped me a lot with something that was to come a year later. But this is another story. I'll tell you about this in one of the next chapters.

When I say he crunched numbers because he is an accountant at heart, we also have to ask ourselves the question: “What is the purpose of a business?” For most, it is to make money. Well, that's not a very good approach. So before you go ahead and watch the next chapter, I want you to write down your thoughts.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

"What is the purpose of a company?"
“What is the purpose of my entrepreneurship?”

vision

In this chapter we discuss the vision of your company. Your company’s vision is built on purpose. I asked you:

What is the purpose of a company?

Did you do your homework?
Have you written down your ideas on paper?

If not, do it now. We need your ideas to keep going. Then let's examine and compare what most people believe.

Most people see running a business as a way to make money. In Germany, the primary goal of a company is to hire and pay people. For some people, the purpose of their business is to boost their ego and make it happy. Some people run a business to ensure they have enough money to pay all of their monthly bills like rent and taxes.

Some say, “The purpose of a business is to provide services and products.” But when you think about all of this, what if you offer a service that no one will buy from you? Or you make a product and if someone doesn't need it, they won't buy it from you.

Where does the money come from if you want to pay people to be your employees? Your customers! This is the key to the only correct answer to the question “What is the purpose of the company?” To serve customers, to provide them with benefits and advantages.

How do you create customer benefit?

The answer is: solve problems for your customers. It's about solving your customers' problems. These are usually not the problems you think your customers have. You best serve your customer by solving a specific problem. In this case, you will become the customer's first choice to purchase this service from you.

By placing the order, the customer basically said: “This is the most suitable service provider for me to solve the problem that I currently have in my life, in my business, in my free time, in my family or for myself, or whatever Whatever he thinks is his biggest problem. You will receive the contract if you are their number one provider who best solves their specific problem. There is no second place in sales!

But all the ideas about making money, having enough money to pay employees, serving your ego, or wanting to get richer are wrong. The purpose comes from just one thing: “To provide customers with the most valuable value to solve their most pressing problems.” Did you get it? Excellent!

Do you love your product?

Let's think about the purpose of your business: you need to analyze the people you want to help. Because they're the ones who make your business fun. It's not your product to love! Because if you love your product more than your customers, you have a problem: you have to chase customers so that they buy your product.

But if you work for clients that you admire and love, you enjoy dealing with them and therefore understand their needs, then you can find out their problems and determine what common problem they have. Once you get to the bottom of it, you can be completely flexible with the service or product you offer them.

This is a much more rewarding situation. Customers will feel like you care about them, that you care about their problems, not that you only care about your product to make money. No customer is interested in making you rich! Well, there are some who are like my wife!

If someone comes along looking poor and has a few avocados to sell, she takes pity on them and buys a few avocados. But these are a very rare breed of people, and you can't rely on getting enough customers like them. Don't think you can fool people by pretending to be poor or telling them, "My kids need new shoes," and then your customers will buy something they don't need.

Now I have an exercise for you: think about your best friends. Make a list of some people you know well and love. Make sure this list doesn't contain general descriptions of their personality, but rather specific people you know well, with a name and picture. Find the 3 to 5 people you love the most and then figure out what common problems they have. Then you need to be sure that your company's product or service will help these people.

In the next step, think again about your vision for your company. your vision is the ideal solution for your customers. This solution may be many years away. It can be far away on the horizon. The most inspiring vision is one you can't achieve in your lifetime!

I came up with a vision for my Business Rooms4Music: “In 2022, the most successful bands in Germany will come from Stuttgart”, the place where I run my rehearsal rooms. You see, most bands want to be successful. Since I mainly look after musicians and bands from the Stuttgart region, I thought this was a fitting vision.

Today I would have more courage and would probably say: “In 2032, the hottest bands in the world will come from Germany!” Then I have more time for a more comprehensive vision and can now break it down into mission and strategy. How do you achieve this? A mission is one level below your vision. The mission always answers the question of how you can best benefit your customers.

Do you love your customers?

Think about this question: What is the basic need that you want to fulfill with your vision and purpose of your business? Just two weeks after I developed my vision: “In 2022, the most successful bands in Germany will come from Stuttgart,” I looked at the charts: and there were already three bands from Stuttgart in the top 10! What a miracle how quickly this can happen!

There is another story I have to tell you about this. It's about my colleague Chris, who started working for me as a volunteer. He came to my rehearsal center and was looking for a recording studio. Luckily, I had a space available that suited his needs very well. He said, “I have little money, but if you give me the room for free, I would be happy to work for you.”

I thought about it. We had equipment in the equipped rehearsal rooms that needed to be maintained and cleaned. The equipment needs to be checked. For bands that rent rooms by the hour, keys must be handed in. If bands come over and want to take a look inside, someone has to be there to show them the rooms. Chris could explain the equipment and give them some time for a test sample. Finally, he could sign a rental agreement with the band or arrange a rehearsal date with them.

Ultimately I decided to accept Chris' offer. I handed over all these tasks to him. He wasn't my first employee; I had already burned three because I gave them a meaningless list of tasks to complete. At first they diligently followed the to-do list, but after a while they all became lazy. I did not understand it. Then I fired them because I couldn't get them to work reliably.

Chris also found himself in this situation after 2 years and I was quite unhappy with the way he was doing his job. Then we had a heated discussion, and I

was ready to throw him out! He sat in front of me and was very, very desperate. He begged me: “Please, please, Klaus, give me another chance.” I replied: “You have to take on more responsibility.”

I think he asked for a second chance because he had already embodied my vision. He may not have even thought about it, but felt that continuing his work would help him become a successful musician. So I learned that I should ask him for results instead of expecting him to work on a to-do list that doesn't make sense to him. I reworded everything we agreed on so that all I had to do was check the results and he is responsible for how it is done!

We also came up with another idea. I asked him: “Are you ready to become an entrepreneur too?” He said: “Yes, I’ve already thought about that”, so I asked: “How about I give you full responsibility for the equipped rehearsal rooms and Do you run it as your own business?” He thought about it for a while and agreed. We have concluded a contract for him to take over this part of the business including the existing rental agreements and all the equipment.

He paid it off within two years. He bought a running business and made it flourish! He has done an excellent job setting up a new website Ready2Jam. And on the Ready2Jam website, his rooms were better represented than my rehearsal rooms. He made it grow and he made it more beautiful.

Chris added an online payment service. Musicians who book a rehearsal space pay online directly upon booking, eliminating the need to manage cash payments. He automated the email responses to send them the key safe access code and all that kind of stuff.

Intelligence explodes with responsibility

Chris did a brilliant job and I was impressed by how people's intelligence explodes when you give them responsibility! He overcame his frustration and I overcame mine too.

Chris' creativity also increased. He noticed that we are now getting more requests from people who produce electronically like him. I couldn't notice them from a distance because I had lost a bit of connection with the musicians. But he saw that our customers' needs were changing. Now they need recording and production studios rather than band rehearsal rooms. So, based on his perception, we decided to change the image of our rehearsal rooms into production studios.

A redesign of the website followed with a focus on electronic producers. This attracted a lot of electronic producing musicians and we were able to rent out higher quality spaces! For the rock'n'roll bands we now have one

25 square meter room continues to be charged €250 per month. For example, there were five people in a band. Each band member had to pay €50 a month. There was always someone in the band who said: “I can’t afford the €50.”

But now we rented 20 square meters and 15 square meters rooms, enough for a single musician, and we were able to charge €300 a month. They didn't complain. They paid without haggling over the price. And we realized that our customers needed recording studios more than rehearsal rooms.

This was a very pleasing success, created by an employee who was gripped by the vision: “In 2022, the most successful musicians in Germany will come from Stuttgart.” We are currently in 2022 as I write this. Let's take a look at what Chris is doing these days: He performs with a band called SDP. His band fills the largest stadiums and halls in Germany!

You can find a video of him on my YouTube channel: https://i-love-bali.com/

Watch it and admire how Chris became a successful musician.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Think about your company's vision.
What is the purpose of your company?
Who are the people you love most and want to serve?
What are your most common and biggest problems?
Choose a product or service that demonstrates your desire to support, serve, and solve their problem as effectively as possible.

OK? Do it now!

Save €3,000 annually

Make a one-time investment of €750

Let me ask you two fascinating questions:

How can you save €3,000 a year with a one-time investment of €750?
What needs to be done so that you get €1,372 in the first year and in the following years

Receive €2,229 in additional income?

But let's first think about why we're looking at it before we do the math. As an entrepreneur, you should look at all the tasks you have to do. You have many tasks in your company. Since “time is money,” there are many ways to free up time and generate more income. Now I'm going to give you a quick step-by-step guide on how to make more money with your business.

Make a complete list of all the tasks you have in your company. Estimate how many hours you will spend on each task.
Decide whether each of these tasks needs to be completed
- Does it make money?
- Does it benefit customers?
- Or is it just something you do because you've always done it?
- Maybe you don't even enjoy some of these things or find them pointless!
Which of these tasks do you enjoy doing? Which one do you like the least?

Evaluate each task. This step is important because you lose energy when you do things you don't enjoy. Your energy is the most valuable thing you are

have; If you continue to do something you don't like, it will permanently waste your energy.

The goal is to only do the tasks that you enjoy doing. Because that gives you more energy. Anything else that doesn't give you energy needs to be eliminated.

Which tasks are necessary?
Which tasks are unnecessary?

Once you've made this list, it's time to evaluate it carefully. Now let's go back to the tasks and look at which ones are necessary and which ones aren't. Any task that is not necessary should be discarded. But most entrepreneurs never think about it because they are stuck in their habits. This list you just made will help you eliminate what you won't do in the future.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

First, you should drop and remove all non-productive tasks. If they're not productive, then there's no point wasting time on them.

Second, you need to spend time carefully reviewing all the necessary tasks. The things you need to think about are:

How much money does the task bring?
How much return do you get for your efforts?

Only if a task is productive is it worth dealing with. And the next thing you need to think through is:

How can I automate it?
What do I need to do to make these tasks leaner, more effective and more efficient?

Only optimize necessary and productive tasks

You can't make it more efficient by optimizing non-productive tasks that aren't needed, don't add value to your customers, don't generate revenue, or don't move your business forward. So only pay attention to necessary and productive tasks! You have to eliminate everyone else.

Automating productive tasks can make them more effective; however, it is not always possible to fully automate them. Then you have to hand over the tasks that cannot be automated. Handing over means you delegate with full responsibility for the outcome.

The power of delegation

Delegate anything that cannot be automated to an employee, a service provider or a supplier. You should be paid for results, not hourly. I know that employees are typically paid hourly and we will even use this metric in our calculations. The goal is to pay suppliers for the results they deliver, rather than the time they spend on the task.

Now let's look at the math and numbers of the robot cleaning example: I used cleaning robots instead of a cleaning service. Surprisingly, the cleaning robots even became one of the things that made my rehearsal rooms unique.

There was even a news program about her! When the TV crew saw them driving around and cleaning the studios, they were so amazed that they included a video clip of it in their TV report. Robot vacuum cleaners are not used in any other rehearsal room.

People were amused by this. They remembered that and kept talking about what helped my company stand out and that people remembered that.

Cleaning robot profitability calculation

I bought the three vacuum robots for €750. The vacuum robots would pay off the initial investment of €750 in three months. Because €750 was saved on room cleaning over three months. It saves €3,000 per year with a one-off investment of €750, which is €1,372 in the first year and €1,372 in subsequent years

brings in an additional €2,229. Note that Microsoft Excel calculates the exact amount. It won't come out exactly that amount. But using this calculation you can get a good idea of the magnitude of the savings.

Investment in the first year

Let's take a look at the first year's investment. I paid €750 for all three vacuum cleaners. Each costs €250. Three times €250 is €750, and that's how much we paid for the vacuum cleaners. There may be additional shipping costs, but the investment is in this range to purchase the cleaners. The next step is to estimate the setup costs that I need to take into account to calculate that.

For starters, I estimated it would cost another €160. Consequently, the total cost of the initial investment is €910. The €160 comes from the following sources. Let's say it takes a total of one day to select a vendor, purchase and order the robots, and then set up and test them.

Let's further assume it takes us 2 hours to find a provider and order it, 4 hours to get it up and running, and 2 hours to test it. In this case, if I had done it myself, I would have paid myself €30 per hour. That would have been €240. But by delegating this task to my employee and paying him only €20 per hour, the eight hours only cost €160. That's what I'm assuming here.

So let’s get back to the savings from my cleaning service. I canceled this cleaning service for which I pay €250 per month. From my savings I have to deduct my initial costs, €910, as previously calculated. Now we need to calculate the ongoing maintenance costs.

Of course, we need to do some maintenance on the vacuum cleaners. The trash can needs to be emptied. Sometimes they can't find their way back to the charging station, so we have to collect them and bring them back manually. We need to make sure there are no bottle caps or guitar strings inside.

Depreciation costs

Finally, we have depreciation costs on the vacuum cleaners, which means we have to replace them every now and then. I expect them to run for 3 years before we replace them. So every year I take into account the depreciation of a third of my initial investment, which is €250. This is the cost of replacing a vacuum cleaner per year. When they need replacing, I have the money in my pocket ready to replace them.

For maintenance costs, I assume there are three robots and maintenance takes three minutes per day. However, we only do this three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. My employee's to-do list now includes vacuum maintenance, which he does 52 weeks a year.

This results in the following: We have three robots that need to be checked, each of which takes three minutes. We only serviced the robots three times a week and it took us 27 minutes. If you multiply 27 minutes by 52 weeks, you get 1,404 minutes. That’s how much time we spend on robot maintenance every year. Since this number is in minutes per year, we need to calculate how many hours that is. This corresponds to 23 hours of maintenance work per year; and if I pay my employee €20 per hour, the maintenance costs will be €468 per year.

So if I subtract this amount from my savings of €3,000 minus €910 in total investment costs, €468 in maintenance and €250 in depreciation, I will have €1,372 less in costs in the first year. This is the amount saved after I made the one-time investment of €750 for the cleaning robots.

In the following years we no longer had to make any investments. Because the vacuum cleaners had already been paid for. But we charge depreciation to replace it every three years. And we only have to calculate a third of the time because on average we only need one replacement per year. In the following years, the associated costs were only €53, a third of the €160.

We deduct the acquisition costs from the €3,000 saved by canceling the room cleaning. In addition, maintenance costs that were at the previous year's level were deducted. We also deducted depreciation because we had to buy a new vacuum cleaner on average every year. This means our savings in the following years amounted to €2,229 savings. Isn't that endearing?

And it continues to be the same savings in the third year, the fourth year and so on. You can download a table on my website. This allows you to calculate how much you can save and earn by making your business processes more effective and efficient through automation and delegation. It doesn't have to be your business that you're optimizing. It could also be something else you do privately. Have fun with your extra time and money saved!

Implementation steps

The main goal for you is that you only complete tasks that you enjoy. Because to learn and grow you need energy. Either you grow with your company or your company outgrows you. When this happens, you become a slave to your own company. So let’s recap the six steps you need to take to implement this plan.

You need to eliminate all tasks that are not productive.
Automate necessary tasks as much as possible. And if you can't fully automate it, delegate the rest. But delegate it, including full responsibility, to the service provider or employee. Hold the person, supplier or service provider responsible for the results.
For example, increase the effectiveness of the sales process. Add an upselling product to the sales process. Or introduce

Down-selling product into the ordering process that generates additional revenue.

Additionally, you should make the process more streamlined and ergonomic so that it is easier to complete and takes less time. However, remember that there is no point in making processes more efficient if they are not productive, are not needed, do not generate revenue, or do not provide additional value to customers. Because doing so will only make you run faster in the wrong direction!
Focus on completing only the energizing tasks yourself.
Use this energy to learn and grow together with your company.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Make a list of the tasks you complete each month and estimate how much time you spend on each task.
Remove and eliminate all unnecessary tasks.
Do the calculation for the remaining tasks as I showed you before. You can find a template to download on my website.
Start with tasks you don't enjoy, the biggest savings, and the quickest results.

You can now optimize your business and make more money while working less.

Am I willing to kill my child?

At the beginning of 2019, my landlord offered to reimburse me the entire value of my business if my company moved out of the property before the end of the lease so that he could use the building himself. My immediate questions were:

Should I agree to this?
What happens if I accept the offer?

I knew I would then have to find a new building quickly or close the business. But do you think I was ready for this? Honest? When I didn't know what to do, an internal struggle began within me.

What type of termination agreement will we conclude?
What does this mean for the musicians and bands?

The idea of terminating all of the bands' contracts felt ridiculous after almost 10 years of working to get as many bands into the building as possible. And now I'm supposed to throw them all out at once! I asked my tax advisor for advice. I asked him:

How can this be implemented optimally for tax purposes?

He said: “They should sell the whole business to their landlord so they can take it over and close it down, use the building and take all the assets with them. Another possibility would be an asset deal through compensation for the early termination of the leasing contract. But the money then ends up in your company's bank account. Any profits you make from this must be taxed at a rate of 30%. However, if you sell them your entire company, Germany has a very nice tax rule: you can have a company

sell once in your life for very low taxes. I would advise that in this case.”

After speaking to my tax advisor, I had a long series of conversations with my landlord. But they told me, “We’re not going to buy your business. We are a software company. “We’re not interested in buying a company that runs rehearsal rooms,” which of course made perfect sense.

Apart from that, they would also have taken over all of my company's liabilities. When you buy a home or business, you never know what's inside. Because it would be risky to buy the entire company, they declined.

So we had to find another solution. Then I asked my tax advisor:

“Give me a rough figure for how much more my landlord would have to pay to compensate for the additional tax burden if we do the asset deal?” My tax advisor started doing the math.

Finally, after a week, well, it seemed like a week, but it was probably only 3 or 4 days, he came back with his calculation for which he charged me €1,400. If you know the formula, you can calculate this on the edge of a postage stamp. But this is how specialists make their money: They know the formula! In any case, it was an expensive letter for a small bill.

His calculation said that they would have to pay 50% more for the asset deal than if they bought my business so that I would end up with the same net amount after taxes. I forwarded this letter to my landlord.

The letter enabled me to negotiate a higher price for compensation. However, they only ended up offering about 10% more than the original price. Which wasn't enough to compensate for the lousy tax situation.

I was quite distressed and felt hopeless about the situation. On the one hand, I had the opportunity to be compensated for the total value of my company

to get. On the other hand, I didn't want to spend a third of the money on taxes or cancel all contracts with the musicians! I did not know, what I should do.

Difficult decision to sell a company

I took a break, stepped away from stress for a while, took a deep breath, and began using my decision-making meditations. I went to Lovina and spent a whole day there thinking and meditating about what to do with my business. Whether I should sell it, close it or move it to another location.

I realized that my ideal scenario was for my employee Chris to take over the entire business. After working with him for a few years, Chris became the good heart and soul of the company. Many people have even asked me, “Is Chris your son?” He looks and acts like you.”

“No, he is not my biological son,” I replied, “but I feel a strong connection with him and working with him is almost like working with a family member.”

Richard Branson, a blueprint for selflessness

I was in a terrible situation and remembered what I had read in a book by Richard Branson. When he got into trouble over a legal dispute with British Airways, they grounded all of his planes. He too was in a situation where he didn't know what to do. This was around the time the war in Iraq began. To solve his problem, he did something completely selfless.

He simply used a plane that was still allowed to fly, loaded it with supplies for people in need and flew it all to Iraq. There he helped people from other countries leave the country by flying them out of the country. That made this happen even though he was desperate.

That got me thinking about setting up a foundation instead of giving the money to the state as taxes. I would have preferred to give money to a charity, start my own charity, or convert my business from a for-profit organization to a non-profit organization.

I spoke to my tax advisor about all of these options. But in the end there was no way around paying taxes. Chris and I decided that it would be best to find another house or building where we could continue to operate Rooms4Music and just move the bands there.

The long search for buildings began. We looked at a lot of buildings. We have researched hundreds of buildings on the real estate market. We were thinking about buying a building. We considered renting a building.

But we learned how lucky we were with my old landlord because they haven't increased the rent since I started using the building. When I rented additional space it was a little more expensive, but overall they didn't increase the rent. Now we have seen that for all the buildings we are looking for

viewed, would have to pay a higher price per square meter than we charged our bands.

If we had done that, we would have had to make the bands pay significantly more rent to keep the business profitable. We would have had to increase the rent for the bands by about 100% and that wasn't an option! Because most bands have at least one student, and one of them always complains: “I don’t know how I’m going to pay the rent.” Most bands wouldn’t have been able to afford the rent for a rehearsal room if the price had doubled.

Aside from thinking about charities and donations, I thought about how I could best help my bands find new rehearsal spaces. So I contacted all the other rehearsal space rental companies in our area and contacted the media. I sent out press releases about the situation and called the television station. The story eventually ended up on a Südwestfunk news broadcast. They reported on the situation and we got in touch with even more landlords who were willing to rent space to musicians to take on some of my bands.

We have also set up a service for the bands who have rented our studios to help them move all their equipment to their new rehearsal space using a rented van once they have found one.

In our contracts I usually had a four-week notice period. However, we have omitted the cancellation deadline in this situation. Whenever a band found a new space, I was willing to let them go without notice so they could move out immediately, which saved them rent and allowed them to pay for the new studio. This meant we were able to get all the bands out of the building on time because our contract with our landlord stated: “The building must be ready for occupancy by July 31, 2019.”

Kill my child

For my marketing, I used an email delivery service to send my press releases, offers for studios and newsletters to my customers. This time I had to use this mailing system to cancel contracts. We sent out 137 lease termination notices in a mass mailing! When I pressed that button to send the emails, it felt like I was killing my child.

When you run a business for almost ten years, it becomes part of your character. In Germany we have a word for a GmbH (limited liability company). It is also called a “legal entity”. After ten years, the company was no longer just a legal entity; it became more like a person with a very specific character! Of course, it reflects the character of the business owner, at least at first glance.

That's because Chris was running and operating it while I was away, so it started to reflect Chris' personality more and more, and our customers loved his style. I grew up listening to rock music, so my target audience was rock bands, the handmade ones Music and bands playing good old rock and roll.

But Chris is a musician who produces music electronically, and as the business grew we got more and more musicians doing that too. They needed recording studios, not rehearsal rooms. Over the last two years, the character of my business has evolved to be more like Chris's than mine. I lost some of my connection to my business remotely, and Chris stepped in and filled the vacuum.

As you probably understood, I previously described my ideal scenario in which Chris takes over the company. So I asked Chris: “Do you want to do that?” After some thought, he said: “Klaus, I enjoy my job,

but it's just a job. My dream is to be a musician and that is what I have planned for the future.”

I asked him, "So, are you okay with us closing?" He responded with a question, "Have you ever seriously considered that?" And I said, "No, I don't want to kill my child. I want to find another solution to keep this business going, to provide studios for musicians."

A life-changing call that we will never forget

At the time, I had no idea that my subconscious had already made a decision; After we had to admit that it was impossible to find a new building, I agreed to the deal with my landlord and decided to close the business.

That same week Chris got a call from a band and they told him, “Chris, our DJ is sick and we have 30 gigs to play this year. Are you available by any chance?” We couldn’t believe it!

We had just decided to close Rooms4Music and then a week later Chris got this fantastic offer. The name of the band that Chris got the offer from is called SDP.

Chris is now a band member and replaces the previous DJ. Today SDP plays at the biggest festivals in Germany, such as “Rock im Park” and “Rock am Ring”. They bring tens of thousands of fans to the Munich Olympiahalle and the Stuttgart Schleyerhalle.

I'm so happy to see how he's grown and that his dream has come true.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Which of your tasks are you willing to kill?

View the list of tasks and activities you recently created
Choose the task with the greatest potential for optimization: the one you don't enjoy, has the greatest potential for savings, and achieves the fastest results.

Mindstorming exercise

Mindstorming is like brainstorming, but you do it alone, just for you.
Listen to your inner voice and write down your ideas.
At the beginning you write down the numbers from 1 to 50. This tells your subconscious that you need to come up with 50 ideas.
Put yourself under positive stress and give yourself just 15 minutes to do it. Because with the time limit, creativity explodes.

Collect 50 implementation ideas for the task with the greatest optimization potential

Musicians are looking for rehearsal rooms

Yes, unfortunately the time has come, the Stuttgart rehearsal room center is closing. Due to the building owner's own needs, Rooms4Music will cease operations at the end of May 2019. We have over 100 bands their rehearsal room and musical home. We are now urgently looking for new premises in Stuttgart for the musicians.

After a long and intensive search, we unfortunately did not find a way to continue at another location. I'm very sorry for the musicians, but unfortunately the real estate market in Stuttgart doesn't allow them to continue at a reasonable price at the moment.

We had a building in mind, but the renovation costs were beyond all reasonable limits. That's why we unfortunately had to refrain from doing it again. And so unfortunately I have no choice but to stop operations here in the Holderpark of the Stuttgart rehearsal room center and close Rooms4Music after the end of business operations.

Despite an intensive search, we unfortunately have no way of continuing it in an economically justifiable manner. I'm stunned myself, and I know that the bands are now losing their rehearsal opportunities and the producers are losing their recording and mixing options.

I myself have to bury my child Rooms4Music. And my colleague Christian Böttcher is also affected by this. He has been running the business for the last few years. I will have to let him go, and he too will be his

Ready2Jam rehearsal rooms have to close.

We are still desperately looking for space that we can find for our musicians and offer them a new home. That's why we want to provide as many contacts as possible between musicians, bands and possible landlords.

If you know where something is available, or you have a rehearsal room yourself... Or if there is still space in your rehearsal room and you can sublet it to a second band, then enter below: Your email address and the size of the room. How much space it offers and the location... So that I can put you in touch with the musicians:

Keep On Rocking For A Better World!

Your task for today

So if you are willing to share your rehearsal space, if you know where a recording studio or rehearsal space is available, please let me know and enter on the Rooms4Music.com website:

E-mail address
the site
and the key data of the room.

I'll forward it to our musicians who can contact you directly. Another request: share this page or video on your social channels. So that we can provide our musicians with as many new rehearsal opportunities as possible at short notice. Thank you.

Become an investor

After three years of intensive travel around the world, I settled in Bali. Then it was 2019 and I had this offer on the table from my landlord to take over my business and refund its entire value. And I did it. At the end of 2019, the money for the early termination of my business's lease ended up in his bank account. With this amount I was already financially secure! However, I couldn't invest it because so far I can't invest directly or buy land here.

I tried to open a stock account for my business in Germany but the rules and regulations were so complicated. They kept sending me contract forms that were 30 to 50 pages long. I tried to open a stock portfolio for my GmbH with three brokers in order to trade stocks and securities on the stock exchange. But it didn't work for anyone. Everyone complained that something wasn't filled out correctly, so I finally gave up. So I kept the money in my bank account and it couldn't work for me.

Then the pandemic started, and Indonesia was smart enough to say that all foreign visitors could stay as long as the pandemic lasted without needing a visa extension. It was therefore no longer necessary to leave the country to extend the visa. Nevertheless, most visitors left Indonesia, so there was great competition between accommodations and the cost of living fell sharply.

During this time my cost of living fell by about 50%. This means that Bali has experienced deflation of around 50%. So I was only spending half of my usual living expenses, and since I no longer had to travel, I was able to live on a very, very small budget. And that was a beautiful thing!

Retire with a guaranteed income

After the pandemic caused the market to plummet in mid-2020, I had an idea: I should simply turn my business, Rooms4Music, into its own bank.

First, I converted it into a holding company called “4ster Holding GmbH”. The GmbH only lent me the money as a loan.

Now it was possible to deposit it into my private account and invest. I invested in stocks and ETFs at a time when most markets were drastically undervalued. I no longer needed a stock portfolio for my company in Germany. That ended up being a pretty good situation because after the markets crashed due to the pandemic, there was a lot of growth, stock prices went up. Meanwhile, I still benefited from the very low cost of living.

If I invest privately, realized profits are taxed with a capital gains tax of 25%. But if I invest as a company, they will be taxed at the corporate profits tax rate, which is 30%. There are different tax rules for both. It is only cheaper or better if I trade with a slow hand and rarely move my assets in my private portfolio. But at least that was also a kind of tax optimization.

In 2019 I also attended the seminar “Managing taxes wisely”. It was about better handling of taxes and of course about the German tax system. I tried to apply what I had learned in the seminar. But at the end of the day it was almost useless. The most important thing I learned from this seminar was that I simply had to get rid of the German tax system because it is so incredibly complicated that you can only run away from it.

Here in Indonesia the tax rules and tax rates are much more favorable. For example, personal income tax is a flat 10%, and small businesses are not taxed at all.

But what about taxes when selling real estate? When we buy property in Germany, we pay between 3 and 5% of the purchase price in taxes. In Indonesia it is less pleasant because, first of all, it is a sales tax, meaning you pay the tax when you sell the property, which is usually a higher price than the purchase price and therefore results in a much higher tax amount. In addition, the tax rate is 10%, instead of 3 to 5% in Germany.

The tax situation for real estate is not as good here as in Germany, but the growth expectations are much better. Indonesia has inflation of almost 10 percent per year. You can easily tell by the amount printed on the banknotes. The smallest banknote you can get is 1,000 IDR, and the largest is 100,000 IDR, which is approximately €6 or US$6 at the time of writing this expat travel guide.

These large numbers on the rupiah bills reflect the inflation that Indonesia has had in the past. Due to this inflation, the value of assets, especially real estate, has increased tremendously. So you can easily expect real estate prices to increase ten to twenty times over the next ten years. In Germany and the rest of the Western world, however, property prices are unlikely to rise by more than 20, 30 or 50

% climb.

Investing in Indonesia

So far I haven't been able to invest or buy land here directly. But it doesn't matter. Because on July 7, 2020 I met Komang at the cacao ceremony. We fell in love and have lived together ever since. She now acts as an investor.

So I give her the money to invest as a loan and she invests it on her behalf. In the end we share the profits. This is a very good thing because it negotiates local prices, which makes investments and purchases cheaper.

When I got married in Germany in 1998, my living expenses increased by about four times! I tried to make money, but my wife kept burning it! And now, after I married Komang, she haggles over prices until she gets the local prices. Together we live cheaper than I could alone!

A year after we met at the cacao ceremony, we married on August 22, 2022. Well, since we moved in together, I have been helping my wife organize pranic healing retreats and her business has been going smoothly ever since. This is so wonderful to see.

Since I'm an investor and can live off my assets, I have the freedom to work whatever I want as long as I don't get paid for it here. So whatever I like to do, I do it! And whatever my wife likes to do, she does it! So she continues to teach prana healing, yoga, qigong, you name it! And that is her passion. My passion is to help her grow her business and like I said, it's great to see her business go through the roof in the process.

Komang is so good and she loves bargaining with the locals. She gets the best prices here, which keeps our costs low and lets us enjoy our financial freedom.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Make a plan on how you want to invest
Search, book and attend an investor seminar
Open a stock portfolio with a discount broker if you don't already have one

Mission to Mars

Hello, I'm Klaus.

I'm currently taking the Millionaire Mind Intensive. Do you want to know what I learned and experienced? I doubt it! Do you really want to know? OK! I'll tell you!

So first of all, this seminar is in Kuala Lumpur. I traveled to Kuala Lumpur and this is what I learned during the seminar: I am a money monk! The universe takes care of me. I do not need money! And now I can live in complete serenity without having to worry about money.

At the seminar they asked me: "But why do you need money?" And I thought, "I don't know!" To find the answer, I sank into meditation and found out: I want to go to Mars with my lover! And I want to come back with twins, the first twins born on Mars.

And then they had this fun incentive: They held a lottery! I looked through my lottery tickets. There was one that caught my eye. I had one with the number: "10 911!" And this number somehow spoke to me. I thought:

“That must be a sign! The number 10 symbolizes a new beginning, and 911 is associated with emergency and rescue.”

No, no, no, I was thinking of something else! Have you heard of the German car manufacturer Porsche? They have a model called 911. So I imagined a different meaning of 911 when I read the number. I imagined the car! With this lottery ticket I thought I would win 10 of these cars.

I will have 10 Porsche 911s! My imagination ran wild and I started dreaming about what I would do with ten Porsche 911s. Do you want to know how it turned out? ...I'm going to Mars!

Mission to Mars: Ready to take off

It's time to board the spaceship. OK! Wonderful!

Boarding is complete. Please do not smoke until the captain has turned off the seat belt signs.

Mission to Mars: Space Experience

A dream came true, yes! This is Klaus Forster on Ocket ReX. I'm on my way to Mars! Melon Ask talked to me and I told him, "I want to have sex in space without gravity and get my wife pregnant; then she'll have twins on Mars!" And now I'm on my way! I also told him that I was short on cash... Melon laughed and offered to give me a ride for free! Can you belive that?

After a few days in space, I realized we had a problem. So I called the control center and told them about it: “Houston, we have a problem!

First: the gravity simulation is still switched on. So I can't have sex in zero gravity.

The second problem is: There are no women on board! I think doing twins in one shot is challenge enough.

Despite the absence of women and the obvious gravity, I am still determined to create something incredible. Now I guess I have to get pregnant alone?!?!? I don't know how to do it as a man, but I'm not giving up!"

Due to the large distance, it will take a while for the radio waves to reach Earth. Then people in Houston have to think about it. Even though I may not have all the resources to get pregnant, I am determined to find a way. I'll wait for Houston's response and let you know later.

Mission to Mars: Experiences with the HBOT spacecraft

This chapter might surprise you! But not in the way you think. I'm in the spaceship now! I'm here for fun, but really to heal. I'm in an oxygen chamber right now. But I'm not here for an emergency, just for prevention, or let's say it's for cure.

Recently I had an accident with my scooter. Because it's so warm here, you drive around in a T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops. Well, if you fall off the scooter you get some pretty unsightly scratches on your skin. Most of them are healed now, but I have an injury on my foot that isn't healing. Well, as the Aussies say: “Shit happens!”

So what is this oxygen chamber all about? It has an increased air pressure of 50 kilopascals inside. It's like being underwater. This is an overpressure that is about half an atmosphere higher than one atmosphere. So 1.5 atmospheres is the pressure to which the air pressure is increased. This is the water pressure you have when diving at a depth of 5 meters. If you are scuba diving or free diving and you are diving at a depth of 5 meters, you have approximately 1.5 atmospheres of water pressure.

At the surface of the water you have a pressure of one bar. This comes from the weight of the air. Under water, the pressure increases by 1 bar every 10 meters. So at a depth of 5 meters you have a pressure increase of half a bar. And that is the air pressure in this oxygen chamber.

You can hear the airflow through the mouthpiece. And this airflow is pure oxygen. So you breathe almost pure oxygen. And you stay in here for, say, 60 to 90 minutes. This overloads your blood with oxygen. The pH of your blood increases and it becomes more alkaline. This is a smart thing to do because most people's blood is usually too acidic. Being more alkaline has many positive medical side effects.

It even reduces your stress levels; you can think more clearly and the healing process is accelerated. That's always good. So I'm enjoying that here. To be honest, I haven't experienced the results yet. I'm not entirely convinced either. But I'll do a few more tests and report back later!

Mission to Mars: Twins conceived in space in zero gravity to be born on Mars

I spoke to Melon Ask. I told him I wanted to have sex in space without gravity and get my wife pregnant! I'm definitely excited to be part of this project so she can give birth to twins on Mars. I am confident that the results of the tests I am conducting and my commitment will contribute to the success of this mission.

And now I'm on my way. I also told Melon Ask that I was short on cash, so he gave me a ride for free! Can you belive that?

Houston, we have a problem

Let me call upon the earth:

"Where is the restroom?"

Due to the long distance it takes a few minutes. The radio waves have to travel all the way to Earth. Once they get there, the people of Houston will have to think about it... and then they'll come back with an answer.

So I'll tell you more about it later! I really hope we get a response from Houston soon. And I hope the wait will be worth it. And that I can delay peeing long enough.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

What is your mission to Mars?

Think about something very big
Something completely crazy
Something that seems unattainable within your lifetime

Why I had to write this expat travel guide

ergonomics

Yes, I am an ergonomics freak. I like to simplify things. I love effective things. That's why I always simplify everything. I hate double treatment and having to do it twice. Once I understand how to do it, I'll try to automate it to make it easier to reproduce the same results with less effort.

To put it another way, I'm lazy! I don't like doing things twice! I like a strategy that gets results. Yes, “effectiveness” is the key word behind it for me. Results only come when you do the right thing effectively. In the end, this means you work less and gain more time.

You can travel with the time you save. And you get a lot of inspiration when you travel, and that's a wonderful thing. Ergonomics ultimately leads to less work and more time. Time to think. Time to travel. Fewer distractions so you can concentrate better. And those who have more time to think know what is important and can concentrate better on the essentials.

And if you have more time, you can travel. And traveling is a very inspiring experience. And with these new inspirations, your thinking time will become more effective. And in the end, you get better results with less effort, less work and even less cost. This way you can save even more money and become financially free much sooner.

gratitude

But what about gratitude? I learned from my sister how she overcame sadness, grief, and the pain of grief after her husband died. And she did it by being grateful for the time they had together. And I learned that gratitude is a habit that can be learned, practiced and embodied.

People always say that you can't buy happiness. Incorrect! You can buy happiness. I found a way to do this by simply automating your gratitude through monetary donations! Simply set up an automatic transfer to donate some money. Let's say it's only €1 a day, but it reminds you every day that you can afford it and you can be grateful for it. And that's like buying happiness.

Some people say:

It is better to give than to receive.

But this is a very stupid interpretation of the original because it creates the mindset that people who give are happier than me. You are then trapped, feeling poor while others are happy. But the original saying is:

It is better to be in the situation where you can give than in the situation where you have to take.

And that leads to a much better mindset for getting rich.

Get rich, become wealthy.

So you buy happiness by regularly donating some money. And once you can afford more, you can use this strategy to buy even more happiness. And it works. That being said, gratitude provides a very strong foundation for abundance. The beautiful thing is that when you are grateful, your fear goes away. At the same time, you don't feel any fear.

And here in Bali, people practice gratitude with their small ceremonies three times a day. And you should look at their faces to see how they smile and how happy they are afterwards. The friendliness and their tolerance, especially their frustration tolerance! I am always impressed by this.

Yes, they have less drama in their lives. This makes them feel safer. You have less stress and more awareness. And more awareness leads to faster and better decisions. With better decisions you take a better path and your life is a better journey. This will make the journey of your life more enjoyable.

Love

Now, how about love? Well, I love freedom. I especially love freedom of mind. I love to travel. I love financial freedom. Yes, financial freedom means abundant life. It's about loving money. I love my assets. And of course I love my children, and my children are the main reason I'm writing this expat travel guide because I love them unconditionally.

And this expat travel guide is also about a woman, Becky, who I fell in love with. She shared my love for Bali and she shared her love with me. And I am very grateful because she made me leave my golden cage in Germany. Becky made me move to Hanoi. She made me want to move to Asia, travel and live abroad. And I am so grateful for the encouragement her love gave me.

And now I want to give something back. That's why I would like to gratefully give back what I have learned along the way. I want to help you move faster and live your dream sooner than I did. I want to encourage you to find your Bali.

Bali is just a joker in this expat travel guide, a placeholder. Bali can also be your travel destination, but it doesn't have to be. It could be anywhere in the world. It can also be the place where you live now. But this expat travel guide is intended to help you find your paradise.

Reasons of the heart

To my beloved children (who are now adults): I miss you and I love you unconditionally. The lifestyle I live today stems from a dream that began in 1989. That was more than 30 years ago. And this expat travel guide, write for each of you:

So, my beloved children, I want to encourage you to pursue your dreams and make them come true. Learn from my mistakes, do better in your life and find your own Bali, whatever the joker, this placeholder means to you. Live your dreams. Take the next step and enjoy your journey.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Buy yourself happiness by donating.

I Love The Island Of The Gods, Bali!

So HARD To Enjoy Life Enlightened In Paradise

Preface

“Wow, are you on vacation?”

“No, I work here!”

So hard to enjoy life enlightened in paradise

Your task for today

Which place can be your paradise?

Do it now!

Table of contents

About the author 4ster

Winter refugee

If you “never” go, you will “never” know

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Let go

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Dedication: For my children

widow

Marc

DJ Qris

Becky

Sinta

My kids

Your challenge for today

The Island of the Gods

sadness and gratitude

Mimpi Manis - Sweet Dream

Head over heels in love with Bali

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

introduction

More than 40 years ago

Another 15 years ago

Recognition for passion

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Shock in the morning

Please take care of everything.

You can call me.

But I won't be there for a few days.

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Grief: The most valuable time in life

Route 66 on a “rubber cow”

When you are grateful, you can't be afraid

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

What is a workation?

What are digital nomads?

Activities at the workation in Bali

Mastermind

How do digital nomads work?

Findings from the workation

Reduce living costs and taxes

Intellectual property is a mistake

Modeling Excellence

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Self and constantly work

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

The darkest point of my life

Munich instead of California

German overregulation

“We’ve always done it that way!”

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Jesus

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Transform your company

Entrepreneur seminar

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Make you obsolete in your company

Seminar junkie

Live abundantly in paradise

Your task for today

Big goals

Speed of development