What do you do today?
As of writing (August 2020), my work and service revolve around the themes of self-discovery, wellbeing, and success. I focus on professional expression, soul, and body.
Professional: I am managing the founders’ psychology mentoring program .Cocoon and also being a mentor. In .Cocoon, we support startup and scale-up founders in their self-discovery journey to grow their business and themselves. As a mentor, I work with founders and also with people with handicapped start positions, e.g., refugees.
Soul: I continuously work on my self-discovery / personal development with the overarching theme of the journey to the True Self. The amount of time invested equals a third-shift so I can semi-jokingly call it my second job.
Body: Recovering from some ailments has brought my attention to studying and practicing holistic healing. I constantly learn and apply new things and also share what I’ve learned with others who need support in those areas through publications and consultations.
I enjoy supporting people in those journeys to the True Self, emotional and physical wellbeing, and on the business front, to personal and company’s success.
How did you get there?
In the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Since then, many things have happened. And now, I am in this place and time in my life. Some of the aspirations have been motivated by wanting and some by needing.
I wanted to be an entrepreneur and do something with IT since secondary school. That led me to subsequent studies and career, giving me the knowledge and experience in business, management, software, and startups.
I needed to start addressing the emotional and physical ailments to transform my life from suffering to wellbeing, and that led me to the exploration of the soul, self, and body, emotional and physical wellbeing and self-discovery from various perspectives, including, but not limited to psychology, spirituality, and mysticism, energy in its various expressions, fitness, nutrition, meditation.
Although I plan things, most of the turns in my life have happened as unexpected events thanks to people I have relationships with and the opportunities that have come as a result. That has led me to become less of a planner and more into sensing the shifts in the currents of life. However, I continue putting my intent on the higher-level goals in my life - the things I want to experience, ways I want to grow, and ways I want to contribute to the world.
Some examples. In late 2017 we started a SaaS project, and one of the co-founders initiated to join Startup Wise Guys accelerator, a great experience that wouldn’t have happened without his initiative. Through the accelerator network, I met an investor and mentor, Carl Frauenstein, and Carl connected me with the co-founder of .Cocoon Rein Lemberpuu. After meeting Rein, I joined the .Cocoon program as a client where my mentors were Mark Ashton and Rein. While working with Mark, Rein and .Cocoon, I stumbled upon the books written by Theun Mares, and that helped me to understand better what does “Path with the heart” means. My SaaS project’s co-founder and I realized that our paths with the heart, the more profound aspirations of the individual life purpose, are not aligned, at least for that particular period of life (the meaning here is that at the deepest level, or the highest level, we all are climbing the same mountain, just from different sides, and with time we may come to understand it very well in the heart, not only in the mind level and then the alignment comes back). We decided to discontinue that SaaS partnership, which brought my professional life to joining .Cocoon as a venture partner initially and CEO now.
My conclusion here is that relationships with people are the make or break factor in the life scale and, to be correct, even beyond this scale. Again, it’s an acknowledgment that I still need to continue bringing from the head to the heart.
Why are you doing what you are doing?
I had my “underwater” period a few years ago, during which I went through burnout, depression, and bodily ailments. During that time, I developed an ever-growing curiosity for self-discovery / personal development, spirituality/mysticism, and emotional and physical wellbeing. Gradually coming out of the “underwater” stage, I see my interest in those areas continuing increasing. Therefore a natural choice for me is to work on things that I feel are interesting and purposeful.
With our work, we are always creating something for the others (even a natural farmer nowadays participates in the exchange of goods). I believe to create something is better than to be passive. But to create something that is aligned with one's sense of purpose is better than to create just something. So my “why” is to create support for people in the areas that feel interesting and purposeful for me – self-discovery from the angles of psychology, spirituality and business, emotional and physical wellbeing, and as a natural result – success.
Where are you going? What is your vision?
I have a vision for me as a person and for my work - creative - creation part.
As a person, I will continue my journey of self-discovery towards True self and wellbeing. This path leads through psychology, inner work, spirituality, mysticism, biological nutrition, and several other aspects. I invite new relationships in my life, which can help both sides amplify the learnings and the creative contribution for society.
In my creative expression, I want to grow .Cocoon to work with more and later-stage founders and their teams to amplify the positive ripple effect our work has on our clients and through them on their communities, countries, and broader society. And I am in the ideation phase for a scalable and thus easier affordable component to support the self-discovery and wellbeing journey for more people.
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