bramdelisse.me

Tag: Personal Growth

  • Recent efforts on living a human Life in western 21st century.

    Recent efforts on living a human Life in western 21st century.

    written to educate myself.

    Table of contents

    1. On my personal purpose

    2. On addiction and my addictions: weed & being busy

    3. On Zen Buddhism, my religion

    4. On my project: Dembrane

    5. Message for my future self

    “Compassion” Bench near Trophy Point at West Point – Dave Lowe

    1. On my personal purpose

    What is my personal purpose? Why do I do anything at all beyond physical survival? Let’s try answer this in a framework inspired by how Jo Weston is answering this question for Dembrane.

    Purpose: To bring more Light and Love to Earth.

    Vision: A world where humanity is sustainably enlightened, living in a thriving homeostasis with all Life on Earth.

    Mission: Live a present, loving, cooperative, and wise life – with enjoyment 🙂

    Bram: Cooperate well 🐓

    2. On addiction and my addictions: weed & being busy

    I am addicted to weed and being busy.

    It’s no severe addiction, but it is worth mentioning to myself. Both external remedies I use as a solution for the same internal fear: being not optimally productive. I need to learn to let go of that fear without external remedies. But I am practicing well, I’ll get there 🙂

    While practicing, I have two sources of information that substantially help me understand what happens that make me show addictive behaviour:

    1. Psychology: In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts – Gabor Maté
    2. Religion: Step 2 of the Noble Eightfold Path, as explained by Joseph Goldstein on Waking Up.

    *My use of ‘religion’ is worth giving context. According to thesaurus.com “religion” noun is defined as: “belief in divinity; system of beliefs“. For me, there is little divinity apart from the magic of the existence of this universe and its life. For me, ‘religion’ is a system of beliefs that helps me live the good life in western 21st century society. If someone is aware of a more fitting word then ‘religion’: I am interested to learn!

    Highlight from In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts

    “I just try to fill an emptiness. Emptiness in my life. Boredom – a lack of direction.”
    – Richard, 57, addicted to cocaine.

    “The meaning of all addictions could be described as attempts to gain control over our life experiences through external remedies… Unfortunately, there are two sides to all external means by which we try to improve our life experiences: they are always good and bad. No external means improves our condition without simultaneously worsening that condition.”
    – Thomas Hora, Beyond the Dream: Awakening to Reality.

    Insights I got from Joseph’s Goldstein’s insight into the Noble Eightfold Path

    Every human has a strong tendency to get addicted to sense-pleasures.

    This makes total sense: sense-pleasures are one of the highlights of the experience of being alive. Obviously they are addictive. Our whole biology is build around this fact.

    3. On Zen Buddhism, my religion

    I believe I am becoming more religious. For years, I have been exploring my own Framework for living a human Life in 21st century Western society. But I am learning the nuances and complexity of creating a system of beliefs. It is an incredible difficult task, and I can see why there only come new once in to existence every century or so at maximum.

    There is a lot wrong with organised religion, in my ill-informed opinion. I have talked to many religious people on the streets (most Christian) and I rarely heard a deeper understanding beyond repeating words in which they’d put blind belief. Being able to fully grasp and live by a complex system of beliefs is incredibly hard. It’s not something we can expect to happen if you simply accept a saviour and go to church every so often.

    But religion is amazingly powerful. Life is messy. We’ve created a society where no longer we can blindly follow our biological instincts and live a happy Life. Society’s invention to give direction for new-born Life through a set of beliefs and practices might be one of the most powerful pieces of technology we’ve created in history.

    I really like what I’m learning about Zen Buddhism. It makes sense. It feels like a complete set of beliefs that can work well for me. I’ll keep using my personal framework for daily practical work, but will spend most of my additional spiritual time on studying the Noble Eightfold Path instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. (bonus points if you got the pun.)

    4. On my project: Dembrane

    Dembrane is doing well. It is hard work, but I can see something grow. 2024 was a very senior student project. 2025 was the year of learning to be a business. 2026 can be the year of becoming a great business. We have the right people and the momentum. Work-life is also going well. I think I learned a bunch about stress and how to deal with it in a healthy way.

    The amount of people are growing! It’s becoming a real party 🙂

    Excited to really push the gas for 5 more weeks. And then it’s already holiday. I want to really focus these last 5 weeks. Let’s cancel anything non-hell yeah outside work.

    5. Message for my future self

    Hope you are doing well 🙂

    The Bram of 16 November 2025 defined his purpose today. You’ve read it above.

    Also, I’m trying to be less distracted. Think it’s going decent. On a bad day I have 3h of phone screen time. On a great day I have 1 hour. I think I am more in the moment then ever. But this is hard to quantify. Here I need to trust the process.

  • My final story of the Startup Talents program

    7/11/2025 @Ormit, de Bilt.

    Our final training day was about story telling, and I was tasked to write a story capturing my Startup Talents journey. To get started, I looked back at my notes from February of 2025 – what was it then that I wanted to learn? My notes were clear: I was focused on understanding leadership. A quote from my notebook: “I want to figure out what type of leader I want to be.”

    Leadership was the central thread of my Startup Talents journey. There where many emotional, inspiring, and fun moments over the year – to many to list here in this story. Some where simple and to the point – as when Xander and I figured out over dinner that “soms ik gewoon mijn bek moet houden.” It doesn’t have to be complex I guess. But there is one story that I find quite telling for my grown understanding of leadership – and I would like to share this story with you.

    During the ‘Find Your North Star’ day on October 15th, we had an exercise where we had to find our values out of a list of 200. Following the exercise I crossed out many values, grouped a bunch, until I ended with my four core values: Presence, Love, Collaboration, and Wisdom. “Tsja..” – I thought – “that doesn’t say a lot – those are the core values of Life, so of course I end up with these.” But when we shared our values with the group, I was surprised to find out that others had completely different values! After finding this out, I wrote the following in a journal:

    Although my values feel obvious to me, I found they are actually unique. Therefore, by simply living my own core values, I am already a leading and powerful force in society. And additionally, I am the person I want to be.

    I love this! It means that I can simply do what feels obvious to me, and positive change will follow.

    One of the additional things I got to better understand through this program is how I can be quite wordy. Therefore, let me concisely summarize my learnings on how to be a great leader:

    • Focus on being your best self.
    • Trust the process.
    • Good things will follow.

    Some other learnings

    • I am quite serious by default. It is almost guaranteed to improve the process if I crack a joke every now and then.
    • I am wordy, I want to explain everything. It is almost guaranteed to improve the process if I try to say less things with less words.
    • By default, I attend to the group. It is almost guaranteed to improve the process if I perpetually start action by attending from within.
    • My personal mission statement:
      • I am Bram Delisse – and every day, I follow my 4 core values:
      • Presence: I live in the moment. I am not distracted. I live a non-dual life, part of the whole.
      • Love: I smile. I feel. I connect with others through conversation and feeling. I enjoy.
      • Cooperation: I look for win-wins. I try to build something bigger together.
      • Wisdom: I seek the truth. I take the whole into account, and do what should be done.

    Reason for writing

    Wat wil ik schrijven?

    Ik wil het process van Startup Talents afronden. Mijn core learnings hier vatten op een manier dat ik dat process kan afsluiten. Afronden als een stabiel blok waarop ik verder kan bouwen.

    Naar wie schrijf ik het?

    Naar de Bram over 1 jaar. Om contextual te informeren over wat er voor stappen stappen zijn gezet door de Bram van dan. Waar zat Bram mee – waar dacht hij over na – wat voor keuzes maakt hij en waarom. Eigenlijk een soort decision log. Het moet af in 45min. Dan is v1.0 klaar. Eventueel nog een likje verf later – maar dan hoef ik het iig niet meer aan te raken.

  • A rough period, and its learnings

    I’ve been struggling lately. Since the summer of this year I’ve slowly been creeping upon a burn-out, finally relaxing a bit with an internal role change. In parallel, my Love relationship is struggling. My partner is not getting out of the relationship what she would like to.

    What have I learned?

    1. I have a personal mission!

    I live for 4 fundamental values:

    • Presence
    • Love
    • Cooperation
    • Wisdom

    Although my values feel obvious to me, I found they are actually unique. Therefore, by simply living my own core values, I am already a leading and powerful force in society. And additionally, I am the person I want to be.

    I can incorporate these daily by following my mission statement:

    I am Bram Delisse – and every day, I follow my 4 core values:

    Presence: I live in the moment. I am not distracted. I live a non-dual life, part of the whole.

    Love: I smile. I feel. I connect with others through conversation and feeling. I enjoy.

    Cooperation: I look for win-wins. I try to build something bigger together.

    Wisdom: I seek the truth. I take the whole into account, and do what should be done.

    2. My Framework for Life is getting solid

    I, am three things:

    • body
    • mind
    • love

    I, can do external work

    • Foundational work is required for survival
    • Ambition work may be done for impact

    When doing work, it is critical one lets go of the Ego. If not, the performed work will feed the Ego – which is a bottomless well – and therefore value is extracted from the world into heat. When doing work without Ego, one can help align our society of Life.

    When doing work, it is critical to set boundaries. If not, the performed work will extract from the I (body, mind, love), which makes the I instable. External work needs boundaries to:

    • preserve the body’s health
    • preserve the mind’s sanity
    • preserve love’s fertility

    3. What’s next?

    Keep going strong at my career, with boundaries for the I. There are few places I can execute my ambition work combined with my fundamental values more pure then at Dembrane. Let’s make the most out of this I can do in a sustainable way.

    The boundaries is an art I need to learn. It will come less through research, and more through practice. What might help is ensuring the core things for the I get the required energy:

    • Body: Sleep 7-9h a night; Don’t smoke weed or drink alcohol to often; Exercise 3 times a week; Stretch; Don’t scratch my skin; Go to professionals for care (hairdresser, physiotherapist) (the holy trinity)
    • Mind: Meditate regularly; Rest: have periods of not having to do anything; Look for inspiration: read or listen (Zen)
    • Love: Spend time with people and nature with full attention and no goal.

    Happy with these learnings 🙂
    I believe I’m on my right path. But poh is it heavy sometimes.