Today I’m publishing an incredibly valuable email exchange that I shared with Nuno Alves, the creator of HeartKi.com.
I came across Nuno’s work after doing some hardcore soul searching.
I was searching for long-term direction in personal life and business.
It was one of Nuno’s articles called The Seven Densities of Consciousness that really opened my eyes.
What caught my attention was Nuno’s description of life in the fifth density:
5D is the consciousness of uniqueness and individuality. Graduation from 4D to 5D happens when the individual realizes that being kind to others must not compromise his identity and integrity. In 4D the individual was always kind no matter the cost to oneself, and this would often incur in a penalty if others did not hold the best of intentions; but in 5D the individual has decided to protect, defend, safeguard himself, above the principle of existing at peace with others.
This is made not as a way to offensively project his desires towards others, but with the intention of preserving his own truth and essence. As such, 5D is the consciousness of uniqueness, individuality, and self-expression. In physical terms, a 5D realm is equal parts solid matter and subtle energy. Physical bodies become malleable, and entities can more easily transverse, and mold time and space through thought and energy.
In 5D the focus becomes less on the relationship and interactions with others, and exploring the senses and the external reality, and more about the inner connection to Intelligent infinity, and one’s own intrinsic nature and Essence. 5D is the “last” realm where physical matter exists.
Nuno Alves
After reading Nuno’s description of the fourth and fifth densities, I realized that some of my greatest difficulties in life and business stemmed from promoting peace even when it conflicted with best interests.
In modern society, there’s a huge emphasis on compromise.
You’re told that you have to compromise to live a good life.
You’re supposed to accept the boundaries of reality as defined by authority figures...
But what if you can’t always compromise because you want to live life on your terms?
What if you have to do things that are confrontational, uncomfortable and painful to live the life you truly want?
I imagine there are millions of people who are stuck in the realm of hyper peace and kindness – which absolutely plays an important role in society…but is kind of like mining for gold and quitting moments before you actually strike gold.
As you can imagine, I had questions for Nuno.
He brought answers.
Really good answers.
The following advice will help anyone who’s searching for clear direction in life, business & beyond…
Question #1 (Stefan):
One of the things that creators struggle the most with is building something of legitimate value over the course of multiple years. Your website is an excellent example of an evergreen online business because it has the potential to serve people for a very long time while also generating a nice source of online income. In my experience, the best online businesses are those that strike a balance between benefiting humanity and generating a healthy profit. You could call these social businesses, evergreen businesses, or businesses that contain goodwill. So why do businesses with goodwill tend to work so well?
Answer #1 (Nuno):
First and foremost thank you for considering my website as benefiting humanity. The paradigm or philosophy you’re referring to with what you call evergreen business, equates to a form of exchange we could call win-win: an exchange between two parts – individuals, companies, organizations, groups, or any other – where both sides are meant to come out from the exchange better than how they were before it. This is in contrast with a win-lose paradigm, where your personal success, or of your business, implies (or allows the possibility of) the other part coming out of the exchange with less, losing something, having a partial outcome, or otherwise drawing the short end of the stick, so to speak.
In a win-win mindset, you measure your personal success not just by your own gain, but including also if and how much gain you’re able to provide to the other, or others. So in a business you give money in exchange for a product or service, but you’re getting equal value in return if not more, and vice-versa. Both parts gain in each exchange, that mutual gain becoming a gauge by which the overall quality of exchanges is measured.
When you put forth a desire for a service/business that speaks to you from the heart, it will always be, somehow, designed to fit these molds. It doesn’t have to be charitable or purely ‘selfless’ in the traditional sense. It can very well be a business or product, and it be about anything: medical equipment, transportation industry, fashion accessories, children’s toys, painted coffee mugs, music, art, and so on. What matters is that you want to bring added value to the world, raise its energy, make it brighter. To create lightness and embetterment in some way.
A mindset that contemplates individual success at the loss or deceit of others (win-lose) is one is of scarcity/lack of resources, often prone to allocating those resources through die-hard, Darwinian competition. It implies, for example, when you think having “more” involves others being left with less, taking from others, or any situation where you winning implies someone else losing. Additionally, within such mindset altruistic service (one that’s performed with the actual best interests of others in mind) can be completely separate of what’s regular “business” (allowed to be performed in a self-serving manner), often being at odds with one another. This is when you have beliefs such as, if you genuinely want to care for another then you shouldn’t ask for money, or, if it’s about profit then there’s no room to mind wellness/well-being/integrity, for example.
Whereas when a win-win mentality is prevalent in a given setting (a business, an industry, a society, nations and countries, and so on) everyone in the setting will gain and grow, because all are vowing to combine the individual gain by achieving gain for others, even in business transactions and services. You’re still vowing to serve and be successful, mind you, the difference being your measurement of success takes into account how you create gains for others. Such a setting will foster exchanges where all sides involved always benefit ‘by default’, exponentiating mutual growth that way. Additionally, an environment with such a mindset as a whole tends to not feel “successful” if some are in a state of perceived inferiority – unfairness, poverty, decay, etc. You could call this a mentality of no one being left behind, if you will. Finally, there’s that more ‘ethereal’, feel-good feeling of having served others constructively and made a difference through what you produced and/or the way you conducted the service. That can be an added reward on top of what you’re offering tangibly. And the appreciation can often be a solid foundation for future partnerships.
(Not all exchanges in life get to be win-win, or be win-win for all sides involved. That would be an idealistic, perfect scenario, when we live in a world that isn’t about perfection. The real world is a practical affair that can sometimes be brutal and unforgiving when things go sour. So if and when you’re facing the threat of loss, injustice, or harm to yourself at the hands of another, at that point you can and should adopt a more assertive and battle-hardened stance to persevere and protect yourself, and there won’t be space for ‘creating gains’ for another. But by the same token, it’s possible to hold the intention, and be on the lookout, for opportunities where win-win exchanges are viable, and look to implement them to the extent it’s possible.)
This is, I think, how what you call evergreen businesses fit into this understanding. They represent the practical implementation of an essential principle of “fair exchange”, if you will, and a paradigm of win-win exchanges, which contrasts with the negative/destructive way business can sometimes be conducted in this world. And whatever success they have represents the willingness of the awareness of the world in accepting and subscribing to this paradigm.
Question #2 (Stefan):
I work with many online creators who make a living building and selling products on the internet. If I had to choose one topic that freaks out creators the most, it would be time. Most online creators, and most of humankind in general, interprets time as something incredibly scarce. This is especially true once a person enters their 30’s, and feels like they immediately have to find their true calling in life. What advice would you give to someone who feels like they’re racing against the clock to create something of lasting value on this planet?
Answer #2 (Nuno):
When you decide to go your own way – in whichever form this takes shape – the management of your own personal time, and space, play a big part in the process. If you have family, you’re going to be dividing your time between them and work (that is always the case, but creative work can be quite self-driven, which can complicate things). If you’re self-employed, you can struggle with figuring when you should be working and when you’re supposed to rest. If you’re working from home, these problems can be aggravated due to activities of different kinds clashing together in the same space. Creative types tend to thrive in isolation and focus, so lack of quiet and/or privacy can be an issue. Additionally, you may also have to navigate some thin lines, such as those between laziness and rest, and/or between diligence and overworking.
On top of this, managing your own drive and motivation is also part of the process, because no matter how much you’ve set out to do – and unless you’re Elon – you can’t be working all of the time, non-stop. Look, I don’t care what exceptions you name, you just can’t. There can, and should, be stages of intensity and peak activity and effort, but not indefinitely, held throughout your whole life. If you do that tiredness will creep in, and consequently motivation and creativity levels will drop. So part of your… time is going to need to be invested in nurturing yourself and feeding your creativity, with moments of not-doing, leisure, and/or inspiration. I consider this to be non-optional, part of the process, whether one likes it or not.
In broad strokes, the suggestion here is to gear up for the process. You won’t know how to manage your own time and energy if you hadn’t done it before and no one taught you, if you haven’t seen it before and it’s something new. You’re going to struggle, but you’ll have to learn it yourself, and that is, as I said, a process. There’s a learning curve to it. But the good news is that as long as you keep at it and don’t give up, you can’t fail. That may sound like a cliche, but that’s what it comes down to.
Now, say you’ve survive this process, and you manage to stay in touch with your inner drive, your creativity, at least consistently. You’re connected in heart and mind with a force of some kind, that keeps propelling you forward, producing, working, and having ideas to put in practice.
This is when the feeling comes of not existing enough TIME in all of existence to fulfill what you want to fulfill, reach the goals you want to reach, do what it is you want to do. That’s when Time really comes forth as a scarce resource, and, I believe, where you were coming from when asking the question (once more my apologies for the long-winded response).
But in a way this a good thing. If you feel this, it means you’re fully connected with your sense of meaning, with something that drives you passionately. It means you’re succeeding, or you’ve succeeded, at not getting too caught up with the things causing entropy, lack of energy, and/or absence of ideas, and you’re instead putting those ideas in motion. Or, in other words, where I come from you’d say you’re succeeding at coming from the heart with your work. And that’s good. It’s something you need to keep. That sensation is valuable, having many ideas is in itself a form of abundance.
Here there’s no going around it: you have to accept Time is a limited and valuable resource, and you’re not going to be able to do everything you ever wanted to do – or at least, not all at once. And the advice from me here isn’t particularly groundbreaking. You have to prioritize what you do, or in other words, use your time as best you can. First, you have to choose, out of your ideas and efforts, either big ones or those that are part of a bigger picture, the ones you believe/guess/estimate to give the most value and/or effect, the most bang for the buck. This is already named, it’s the Pareto Principle, stating 80% of results come from 20% of choices/actions/effort you put in. So you have to judge what things are the 20% you need to be doing, and leave in the drawer the rest, to possibly be picked up at a later point. Then, out of those 20%, you’ll have to split your efforts between A) those that are relatively small and doable and can be accomplished quickly, signaling your brain you’ve accomplishing something and allowing you the dopamine when you do; and B) those things that are bigger endeavors and take much longer to accomplish. Those you’ll have to split them into manageable milestones, and you’ll have to toil hard to accomplish each. If you don’t split the bigger tasks/projects into milestones, what will happen is that they’ll feel endless, never progressing significantly, and may be left abandoned in the shelf, maybe neither being completely discarded, nor decisively completed. The issue is that even unfinished and undecided things can take up space too.
Question #3 (Stefan):
I’ve personally witnessed someone build a profitable online business incredibly fast. To be fair, this person was a top 1% master of their craft. But they managed to completely change their reality within 3 to 6 months. This is why I tell people to consider the possibility that you can have (almost) everything you want within a matter of 6 months – if you’re willing to focus your intention on performing actions that deliver the results you want. But many people still find it difficult to grasp that humans have infinite potential, and all possibilities exist. Do you know of a better way to help people realize what they’re truly capable of accomplishing under a short timeframe? How can one use their raw human potential to overcome the mental barrier of time?
Answer #3 (Nuno):
Time can be a mental barrier – what’s kept away in the horizon can appear so daunting you never come close to it – but, it can also be the one critical argument in favor of change.
Time was in fact one of the core motivating factors for me to finally leave my ‘regular’ corporate job, which I did at age 29. There was a point when I was on the fence about leaving, and someone (inadvertently, without knowing the impact it would have on me) said something to me. What the person said was, “If you’re really going to leave, then you might as well do it now. What’s the point in delaying?” In that instant those words clicked. You know when you hear something you’ll never forget? It was what made me reach the tipping point. I made the decision to leave that very day.
A human life lasts roughly 80 years loosely speaking, give or take. And by the time you start contemplating (if you ever do) such a thing as meaning, purpose, usefulness, etc., to any significant extent, that is to say, if what to do something with your life that isn’t soulless and purely out of obligation, that can be positive, carry a good feeling to it, and serve the world, typically 20-30 years of your life may have already passed – if not more. Point being: life goes fast.
So in terms of changing gears and going down a different path, provided you’re aware of the impact and you have some form of plan in place, my point is always the same. What you’re going to do, whatever it is, is going to involve a process, which is likely going to take its time. So if and when you’re seriously contemplating the decision to change, to take that step, then any unnecessary delaying of the decision is just going to be a waste of time.
You can pick up many more golden insights like this at Nuno’s website Heart Ki.
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