Welcome to Ensomato!
For about 10 years I was thinking that I wanted to start a business that will help people holistically improve their lives, and now I finally feel ready for it. Welcome to Ensomato! Intellectuality, anecdotes, and coaching.
“Safety has both its anxieties and delights, growth has both its anxieties and delights. We grow forward when the delights of growth are bigger than the delights of safety and the anxieties of growth are lower than the anxieties of safety.” – Abraham Maslow
Who is Alex?
In 1995, in a medium to small city in Romania, an ambitious boy was born. I remember how creative and different I was from other children, constantly inventing and finding different ways one can use a toy. Unfortunately, I had poor emotional and social intelligence for reasons that I was not responsible at the time, but I was very passionate about engineering and aircraft and I spent a good chunk of my time watching documentaries about that topic. That big passion was about to change though. At the age of 15, I decided that I needed to better myself and learn how to behave and socialize properly. I tried everything I could find to fix myself, and slowly but surely I made a big change in my behavior.
After that journey, my passion shifted to self-improvement. Even people that sigh when they hear about self-improvement still do self-improvement, it is just that they do it in a passive, less conscious manner. When you sit at the table with your best friend talking about how bad were you treated by the employees of the tax agency, you do self-improvement. You talk about what is acceptable behavior and what is not, even if you don’t realize you do that. Unfortunately or fortunately I was pushed over the threshold, I just can’t live like a dog anymore, licking my balls instead of finding out what the hell is this life about.
I’m sure there are great aircraft engineers around, but I very rarely meet people who really change their lives in a radical manner. Usually, their faith is dictated by their childhood and adolescence. At most, they manage to break away from their conservative background, become more liberal personalities, and make more money. That is because they successfully finished their studies, moved to a bigger city, and/or changed their social environment for a better one. Yeah for sure, there are a lot of people who read self-help books and content on the internet, it’s very popular right now, but how many of those people are really doing quality personal development?
Even if the content they consume is high quality, putting all those ideas into practice is harder than they initially thought. You meet experts instead, people who have mastered certain areas of life and are praised as role models to follow. Especially those who become masters of business, those who make a lot of money. They are praised because their success is in your face, their success is material. That is great but not enough. A more holistic and integral approach is needed so that material abundance will really make you happy. Money accentuates who you are, if you are a low-quality person, money will only inflate your narcissism. How many wealthy people who abstained from buying huge mansions and stupidly expensive exotic cars and yachts have you seen? Luxury is mostly a trap, those things cannot make you happy.
After I finished high school, I was thinking of enrolling myself in a psychology major but after some research and advice from others, I chose physiotherapy instead because I also love sports and biology. It turned out to be a good decision, my major was pretty much good precise information and practice that offered me a cool profession. In more abstract majors like psychology and philosophy, many parts can be useless or incorrect.
There is a chance to not get the most accurate and useful information possible. Honestly, I could learn all this “soft” stuff that I love about personal development from books and courses. 13 years after my teenage decision for emancipation and thousands of hours of serious work on myself I finally feel ready to start this business.
At the age 27 I moved to Gothenburg, Sweden and enrolled in an ICF coaching course. Coaching is a wonderful and powerful tool for helping people unstuck their lives, but this will only happen if they really want it. I can only guide you as a partner but it is only you who will manage to unstuck yourself.
Thinking exercise
Let’s make a silly analogy, it is not perfect but bear with me: Let’s say your life is a car and your mind is the owner. The fuel is your income, and the ability to buy fuel is your career. The engine is your health, and the appearance of the car is your fitness level, body language, style of dress, personality, social skills, and so on. The inside of the car is your inner self: your knowledge, thoughts and the way you deal with them, your spiritual level, your philosophy of living life (yes everybody has that, even if they are not philosophers). The places you drive and park your car are your environment: home and work environment, close friends, spouse, and family. The way you drive in traffic is the way you deal with other people.
If you only focus on learning how to afford more fuel for your car, but don’t pay attention to maintaining the car, replacing the worn parts, driving carefully, and avoiding parking in dangerous areas, the amount of fuel you can buy won’t do any good for your car. You just need enough fuel to drive to your destinations and some spare. Have you ever met a person who takes perfect care of their car? It’s pretty rare. Maybe they take good care of their wheels, which would translate to training only the legs at the gym.
Usually, people are very good at one, two, or three important areas of life, but if you’re not at least good at all the essential areas, you’ll feel like something is missing. I’m sure you’ve heard of depressed millionaires, suicidal top athletes, and award-winning stars addicted to cocaine. But that’s not all. I believe there is “that one thing”, that if done right, can completely improve all other areas of your life. That one thing is CONSCIOUSNESS.
In our car analogy, that would be the owner of the car becoming aware of all the ways he/she influences his/her car and other people’s cars. Anyway, it takes a lot to really explain what consciousness is, and that requires its own article. Consciousness is improved through suffering, dealing with trauma, radical self-honesty, discipline, self-improvement, life experience, trial and error, meditation, spiritual work, and more.
Once my consciousness improved, my whole life changed. My body language, my social skills, style of dress, goals, interests, intuition, and the people I surrounded myself with. I no longer accepted toxic immature people in my close circle, and that did not come from an inflated self-identity or narcissism. I simply could not have fun around childish people anymore. I still love children very much, but adult children are not so fun.
Changing yourself comes with downsides sometimes, you won’t really resonate with most people anymore and need to search for the mature ones who are rare. This is true self-improvement, increasing your consciousness and then, guided by it, meticulously taking care of every other part of your life. You can be very conscious but still have a questionable character and a miserable life.
Think of meditation masters of various traditions who manipulate or abuse their students, or who simply say and do questionable, weird things. Ken Wilber calls this “waking up without growing up.” We need to do both: wake up and grow up, it’s not that easy. When I meet a woke-up-grown-up person it is like looking at a piece of art, what they did to themselves is art. So I want to help as many people as possible achieve this through my work. There are so many traps, wrong information, propaganda, and charlatan influencers who only want to take your money, that it would be very hard to do this without learning how to distinguish wrong information from the good one.
Afterword
You might ask: Becoming better relative to what? Relative to understanding the world, improving your quality of life, and that of those around you. The 21st century’s most important skill is not just dealing with business or programming the AI, but mastering self-improvement. What I want to do with my work here is to help you think for yourself not to believe ideologically in what I say, it is about teaching people how to fish not giving them fish. If that is done right, dealing with business will be child’s play.
I named this business “Ensomato”, it is inspired by the Greek word “ensomatónoun”, which means “integrate”. It integrates pure philosophy, psychology, sociology, politics, health, spirituality, and coaching, for helping people be able to say that they really lived a wonderful life. But that takes lots of self-honesty, courage, discipline, books read, and years of putting all that into practice, on your part. We can only guide you and show you the path. Follow me on social media where I post interesting short insights and new articles. Please share it with your friends if you like it. You are welcome to book a free one-on-one discovery call with me. Have a happy life!