On 22.08.2025, I boarded a plane in Budapest to start a new chapter in my life.
I have been living in Asia since then.
This post is part one of a three-part series summarizing my past year.
The full series is:
A year around the world
A year within myself
A year with her
Questions
There were a few questions that came to mind before writing.
How many fears did I leave behind?
How many prejudices collapsed?
How many times did my opinion change?
How many times did I say “I was wrong” or “I might be wrong”?
How many times did a conversation become more important than a sight to see?
Then I realized that even though these are important questions – to me – they are not really the most important changes in me.
A year within myself
I only intended to include one statistical data in this article.
During this one year, I wrote 221 posts here on my blog. Of these, 71 were personal.
A few weeks before the end of the one year, a section of my journey came to an end.
But at that moment, it continued.
In this article, I summarize how experiences became experiences for me. How my earlier intuitions proved to be true as the months passed.
And of course, there are many things that I had not thought of before.
Before I start, however, I consider it important to say in advance:
I may be wrong!
I see the world with my own eyes. I feel it with my own senses. And in my mind – sometimes verbally and in writing – I often add that this is just an illusion.
It’s not by chance that I got the OM symbol tattooed on the back of my right hand…
And I have another thought to add.
Today, nothing stops me from being brave. I now have the courage to write the following thoughts. And I feel exactly how much this quality is needed.
Of course, I could be wrong…
In the eyes of the world
I’ve received a lot of feedback from the world in a year.
About courage. About selfishness. About helping. About carelessness. About envy. About freedom. About mental preparedness. About human weakness. About open-mindedness. About overthinking.
One of the most mentioned structures is “I’m not at the same level as you.”
I’ve been against this expression for a while now. I prefer to use the phrase that we’re on a different wavelength.
If there’s one thing I’m different about, it’s that I believe much more firmly in the illusion of how I see the world. Maybe this inner belief seems higher to others?
The Secret
Someone has asked me what my secret is.
I have no secret.
But today I believe that I have managed to create something exceptional. I have taught my structured brain to accept feelings.
What do I mean by a structured brain? A person who has all the papers on his desk at the top. Who keeps a to-do list and a calendar. He doesn’t see problems, but tasks. He then solves them. He leads teams. He lives an organized life.
Most of these people I know are less good at managing their feelings.
On the other hand, those who are driven by feelings, e.g. painters, musicians, artists, etc. are generally not known for their love of systems.
I am not saying that structured people are emotionally paralyzed and artists are scattered. These examples are just to illustrate the two poles.
I have systematically analyzed the world my whole life. I still do. But I have incorporated feelings into my filters. Today I not only analyze them, but also experience them.
This is certainly not a unique combination. It is not about my excellence. For me, it just means that I experience it as a blessed combination of stars.
I think I have become an interesting combination of the brain and the heart.
Feelings
It is not by chance that I mention the concept of “integration”.
I have had an idea for years. I have talked many times before about the need for a way to consciously influence our feelings.
Now I have found it. And I can articulate it.
The world constantly asks me questions. I choose my answers. This is the influence of my mind on my feelings. In most cases, I can decide what to answer. So now I often realize that I have given an automatic response, and I can immediately change this response if I want to.
This realization is the result of a conscious decision and a series of actions in my life.
Happiness
I started to present the third element of my undisclosed secret 60 days ago in the world of “The Miracle is Already Here”.
I firmly believe that miracles surround me at every moment. I can now easily recognize them. And I give them names.
Today I can stop not only for 3 seconds to experience the miracle. I do not attribute a big role to time in this stopping. Every number greater than zero means something. But today I can sit down without effort for even ten minutes to watch the grass grow.
In my project “The Miracle is Already Here” I give others the opportunity to practice.
In this series, it is not my feelings and insights that are important, but the viewer’s own.
I feel that the moment will come when in this project I will not have to think that I may be wrong. Not because I am wrong or not wrong. But because I already feel that there are those who stop for a moment and see their own miracle in it.
And I have another important realization about my own happiness.
Many people misunderstand me because my path looks different from the outside than it does from the inside. This is natural. From the outside, it may seem that I am constantly happy. This is very hard to believe, I am sure of this.
But I am not constantly happy.
I believe, I live this, that happiness only exists in me for a short time. It doesn’t matter if it lasts 5 seconds or 5 minutes. Today, I know the moment it appears that it will end. I don’t cling to this moment. I don’t want to keep it. I don’t want to let it go. It is impossible to keep it, and I don’t have to let it go, because it will go by itself.
I have become different in only one thing.
I have learned to notice happy moments around me. I believe and live that there is always the opportunity to discover it around me.
And so – like a butterfly – I fly from one happy moment to another. The distances between moments have simply decreased.
And this may look to the world as if I am constantly happy.
My names
I was born with the name István.
When I was 13, someone gave me another name. From then on, everyone knows me as Soma.
Last year, before my life in Asia, I started using the name Steve for practical reasons. It roughly corresponds to my Hungarian birth name. (There were already those who said that this was not true. That’s okay. I decided.)
The birth name is a choice given to me by my parents. Fate wanted it so that I was given a different name when I became independent. Fateful? Who knows! Maybe it’s not even important.
I got it twice. The third time I chose it. As a second independent decision in my life. (The first was this new way of life.)
Perhaps this choice is even more fateful. The thoughts described in this post describe a new person. Steve emerged with the emergence of the digital nomad life. I think of myself as Steve now.
I know that not everyone can accept this. No one has to accept it. To some part of the world I will always be Soma. Maybe to a few people István too.
The name is not the real issue here.
Boundaries
A more important question is that Steve sees the world differently.
Soma was also able to draw boundaries, for example. But he couldn’t really keep them.
Steve is capable of things that he wouldn’t have been able to do before.
For example, I now know that I only allow relationships in my life that are based on mutual respect.
Whether it’s a personal, social or business relationship. Today I know exactly what I allow others to do and where a given relationship ends.
Of course, I’ve made a few mistakes in this year, and I’m sure I will.
But in this case, there’s the previous thought. I’ll give you the answer to this mistake…
And it’s important that Soma also used his heart. A lot. Maybe sometimes too much. Many people loved him for his sensitivity. And some people took advantage of that same sensitivity.
It wasn’t the heart that was missing. The boundaries were missing.
He and I
I am sure that the nighttime fight mentioned in the previous post was the result of a basic tension in my whole life.
I have been searching for my other half for 15 years. That is when my sleep problems started. Anyone who knows my life knows why the time for this came.
Years later, I went to a psychologist. His words were written into me for life.
István, you keep yourself busy during the day very well. But at night, during sleep, there is no other sound but that inner voice. You can’t sleep because then there is nothing to suppress the inner shouting.
That is when I started to pay attention to that inner voice. There were times when I begged him not to shout. I have to sleep, otherwise we will both die. There were times when I promised him that I would free him, to be patient. To believe me and let me sleep.
And then Steve appeared. He became stronger and stronger over the months.
And I slowly realized that I had been waiting for it all my life. He became free. I became free.
Soma will always remain within me. Through him I arrived at myself. It only took 50 years for this journey.
And it was no coincidence that I saw myself as a butterfly and not as a phoenix. More than a year ago… The phoenix dies to rise again.
I did not feel death. I was transformed. I guard and integrate everything within myself.
Today I have forgiven myself for everything. I accept my mistakes. I feel my pain and traumas.
The decisions
My most important step was the decision.
And surprisingly, it wasn’t the choice of a digital nomad lifestyle.
The decision that made me who I am today was that I said:
I am happy!
I won’t be happy. I am happy now, in the moment.
With all my pain. This was also a feeling that became true in me.
Today, when a past pain comes, the following scene will play out. I will sit this pain down like an old acquaintance. We will have a coffee together. Then I will show it the door. You have to go! I have other things to do. I am happy right now…
Words
I have learned a lot about the world.
I have exchanged experiences with many people.
I know that my story is surrounded by words.
In connection with this story, the expressions I learned earlier appear in me. Idealization. Overcompensation. Narcissism. Grandiosity. Egoism. Selfishness. But today their meaning is just a memory in my mind. I don’t have to defend myself against them. I don’t have to explain them. Neither to myself nor to others.
Words are becoming less and less important in my life.
Stories, however, are much more important. And I can only write them with words. I also realized that writing is my spiritual breathing. So I continue to use words, because in this way they are still very important.
My consciousness has already reached an abstract level where even my own understanding gets stuck. Where purely my intuitions work.
I can’t even talk about it, let alone describe it.
This was also a major change.
I used to want to understand everything. I searched for evidence.
Now I accept a lot of things as they are. I don’t care about the “why” and I don’t need evidence.
The last hug
I became a different person. I have the courage to say this.
And I arrived home.
Home is really inside me.
I love the whole world.
That’s when I arrived, that’s when that certain phase ended when a few weeks ago I realized that I hadn’t hugged a single person yet.
That’s when I turned to Soma.
We looked deeply into each other’s eyes. We are one, there’s no more fighting.
Steve can finally live. And Soma doesn’t have to carry everything alone anymore. And he knows that Steve will protect him from now on.
We hugged each other.
And I arrived home.
But I didn’t arrive.
I believe that the road is endless. To arrive… This expression doesn’t resonate with me. I’ve arrived somewhere. It’s like a rest stop on a hike. I stop for a bit. I take a breath. I eat a sandwich. And I keep going.
A small piece of the fog where the path leads is perhaps visible.
I don’t want to see beyond the fog anymore.
But I’m curious about my next name.
Buy me a coffee?
If you enjoyed this story, you can buy me a coffee. You don’t have to – but it means a lot and I always turn it into a new adventure.
Buy a coffee for Steve
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