How I lost the ability to lose.

Four months ago I decided to leave all my friends and family at home in Germany and travel to Australia to risk everything.

Yes, literally everything.

I left all the people behind, who I loved to pursue my dreams.

However, in the next four months:

• I founded my first company,
• I reached 650.000 IG followers,
• I built my own brand called “STOA“, earning me leveraged income
• I traveled through south-east Asia
• I got to know the most inspiring people I have ever met,
• I networked with millionaires in Bali, of which one was convinced of me enough to work with me as a business partner today.
• And I celebrated my 19th birthday.

That is the power of emptying your cup.

Your friends, your family, and your loved ones: People who might want nothing but the best for you, may not know what is the best for you.

They might mislead you into a life, that doesn’t fulfill you or a path, you aren’t meant for.

There will be points in life in which you are working towards a goal, that does not fulfill you. (and you might encounter one right now in this moment)

It may not even be your goal in the first place but someone else’s goal, who convinced you, that it’s a good idea to follow it.

Imagine dedicating 3, 5 or even 10 years of your life to reach such an ambition, just to realize at the end:

“I don’t want this. I never did. I wasted a decade of my life. A decade... of my life”

This … is failure. You can fail in life.

I’ve met people, who did. I saw nothing but sorrow, frustration and despair in their eyes.

They dedicated all they had towards something they never wanted in the first place.

How can you blame them? School taught us, that more means better. Study more, get better grades, get a high-paying job, and get praised for it. Not enough? Get even better grades, get praised even more, and get an even higher-paying job.

And that’s okay: For some people.

Some people want this life and they are meant for this life but how are you going to put every single kid out there into one system and expect everyone to fit in?

Schools can only do the most by trying to fit in as many people as possible.

That is why people need to “empty their cup”

Put more work into it. Fill your cup up to the rim. Doesn’t fulfill you? Empty it to the bottom and fill it up with something else.

Your Work might never pay off.

Have you ever worked towards a goal almost obsessively, to reach a light on the other side of the tunnel?

I hate to break it to you, but there might not always be a light.

I know: “But Goggins told me to always keep going”

and he is right, just not in that direction.

You see, self-improvement & business are all about making mistakes and trying out new ways.

Let me give you an example:

On Social Media, you’ll see a lot of people trying to go viral and make a living out of it. Some people like me manage to.

Others don’t, despite weeks, months if not years of effort. Why?

Because they do the same stuff over and over again.

They try out the same ideas, that did not go viral, over and over again with a couple of little changes. 

They are simply too afraid to try out something else, that’s even more risky and might ridicule them in front of others.

If it didn’t go viral before, believe it or not: It won’t go viral the next 10 times.

They fill up their cup with the wrong liquor and they try to fix it by pouring more into it.

Let. Go.

Your idea was bad. It’s time to accept it and empty the cup.

Try a different idea.

Only when your cup is empty, you can fill it up again.

Here’s another example, that a lot of you will resonate with:

Study reports show, that 68% of relationships fail after 3 months.

The maximum duration, that human beings can pretend to be someone, they’re not is 3 months on average too. See a correlation here? I do.

People end up in this hopeless attempt to save their relationship by spending more quality time, listening more, communicating more, giving each other more physical affection, and trying to solve each and every problem, they encounter just to get a temporary emotional high together, which in the end, results in the same dry and toxic relationship they had before.

Let. Go.

You might have never been meant for each other and you might have fallen in love with a possible future you created in your mind instead of with the person itself.

That was your mistake.

Not their mistake.

This is your fault.

It’s time to empty your cup.

it’s time to break up.

When and Why Should You Empty Your Cup?

12 months ago I realized I needed to empty my cup when I was sitting in school 6 months before graduation and started “hating“ school.

Don’t get me wrong I was a good student.

I was a straight B to A student.

however, whenever I got my grades I was unbothered by the results.

Give me an A+ or a straight D. I just didn’t care anymore.

So I worked more to get even better grades.

I figured “If I performed better, I would enjoy school more“.

So I tried filling up my cup, which was almost filled to the rim already.

Better grades, same result: I still didn’t give a damn.

I figured this wasn’t it.

This is how you encounter you are working towards the wrong goal and it may be time to empty your cup.

If you get the results you wanted, if you pour your cup up to the rim but it only fulfills you temporarily, you might pour the wrong liquor.

If you feel temporary joy only from the results, but not from the journey itself, you will see yourself seamlessly chasing happiness, chasing goal after goal just to feel miserable 90% of the time.

You will find a new gap to fill over and over again to feel that temporary joy.

But what if you found something, that makes you feel that fulfillment permanently?

Something, that motivates you intrinsically.

Something, that you will truly love working towards even before achieving it?

Something, that makes you enjoy the journey?

That was what I wanted and at that time I was already influencing a couple thousand people with social media. I figured, that this stuff is the future and has major potential.

I was pretty talented in writing, video editing and putting my diverse thoughts into words.

Perfect to affect millions of people positively and give them value.

Enough value to receive value back in return.

but my parents wouldn’t let me build my little internet business at home, while I could be studying. Especially not with 10.000 Instagram Followers at that time

A gap year was okay though. Traveling around the world, was okay.

I figured I had an idea, I had the drive, and the more work I put into this business, the more potential I saw in my future.

So I went ALL IN.

That was when I emptied my cup.

I finished high school with a 3.0 GPA (2.0 Abitur) which is equal to a grade B:

I worked 3 jobs right after and went all into social media to book a flight to Australia with one of my best friends, who was just as motivated as me to start his own thing and got a 1-year visa.

These 3 jobs didn’t bother me.

I hated the jobs but I loved working cause I worked towards a goal, fulfilling me.

My goal. My ambition. Not someone else’s.

As I’ve shown you before, it turned out to be the best decision I’ve ever made in life:

It turned out to be an even better decision when my mom found my Instagram a couple of weeks ago.

She saw the videos of me traveling through south-east Asia and decided to ask my older siblings, where I got the money from.

When they told her, I am financing all of it through my digital marketing business, she called me and asked:

“Do you even want to study anymore? I trust you. I trust in what you’re doing.“

It might be time to go home. Time to let go and leave the traveling behind temporarily.

Time to build a long-term future out of this stuff.

At least it feels like it.

I don’t know yet. My cup is half full.

I will fill my cup to the rim and let you guys know after.

How emptying my cup made me unable to lose in life.

Every curse is a blessing.

Every failure is endurable.

And Every loss is an opportunity if you see the power in an empty cup.

Failure is an opportunity to fill your cup with something new again, however this time you’re a bit better than before.

You don’t see failure as a reason to stop anymore but as an opportunity to test new waters.

You seem to understand, that failure is a part of the process and does not put you further away from your goal but closer.

Every time a door to an opportunity gets shut in front of your face, you just turn around and encounter 20 other doors, you could enter.

You will wake up every morning with the enthusiasm of a little kid.

Life will almost be like… a game. A video game.