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Person Sascha

Philosopher | Existential Coach | Online Marketer
Sascha Heupel | AMOR FATI

SASCHA HEUPEL: PHILOSOPHER, EXISTENTIAL COACH, ONLINE MARKETER, NOMADE

I am Sascha and here I would like to introduce myself to you in more detail. I will write about my life, what inspires me, how I came to AMOR FATI and about my contributions to AMOR FATI. So you get a first impression.

I am a philosopher, existential coach and online marketer. I live minimalistically, freely, without a permanent residence and travel the world constantly. I am inspired, for example, by impactful books, existential philosophy, the hammering Nietzsche, beautiful nature, unique locations and straight humor. But most of all, I am inspired by the question of how to live a free, authentic and fulfilled life with flow and ease in all areas of life.

Therefore, I love, live and teach the holistic and pragmatic AMOR FATI philosophy of life, which aims to create stable, competent, free and especially authentic personalities to live a fulfilled and happy life.

In addition to my work as an AMOR FATI coach, I am the administrator of our website, publish articles in the blog, plan as well as organize our community trips and host the AMOR FATI podcast.

My contribution to AMOR FATI is to spread the philosophy and to make it accessible to other people, in order to help holistically and pragmatically. I want to spread some of the fire that burns in me for AMOR FATI and ” an awesome life”. Simple as that!

I help my clients to develop holistically, to overcome inner blockages, to realize their potential, to do their own thing and to become stable, clear, authentic and free and therefore to integrate the AMOR FATI lifestyle or parts of it into their own lives. This is what I have been doing and living for many years. Because: There is no real life in the wrong one.

More details about my coaching content with examples can be found on: Coaching Details Sascha. If you want to get a detailed insight into the AMOR FATI work, check out the feedbacks and videos. Here clients talk about our mutual work: Coaching reports

Over the years, four areas have emerged with which I not only help other people in the form of coaching and mentoring, but which also describe my life and me as a person with hopes, passions and rough edges well. Based on these, I will tell you about myself and my life in the following. So if you want to get to know me even deeper, you are welcome to continue reading.

The four areas are:

  1. Philosophy & Therapy
  2. Fitness & Health
  3. Online Marketing & Digital Work
  4. Travel & Freedom

“BECOME WHO YOU ARE!” & “PHILOSOPHY TEACHES US TO ACT, NOT TO SPEAK.”

If you take Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Become who you are!” and Seneca’s “Philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak.” combined, then we’re already pretty close to my own story in the area of philosophy and therapy. Because as one of my favorite comedy icons Stromberg would say, “Life didn’t throw nothin’ in’ my collection bag for me, either.”

What may seem serene, cheerful, relaxed and arrived today, was once: pure chaos. Triggered by the sudden death of my mother in 2009, the subsequent turning away of parts of the family and friends, and several other factors caused me an existential life crisis. Everything was upside down and in question. Disorientation, powerlessness, meaninglessness and lack of clarity dominated my life. I fell into a depression and, according to the doctors, I was also burned out and thought twice about whether I wanted to go on living at all. Then I completed a total of three psychotherapies and took medication. These made me somewhat “fit for everyday life” and more stable, but by no means more cheerful, playful, relaxed or fulfilled. In addition, I had about 50,000 euros in debt, an unfulfilling job and relationship problems.

If I would have known the chaotic Tyler Durden back then, I’m sure I would have immediately thought of his world-famous quote:

“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”

Because that’s how it felt: lost. But somehow, deep in my being, there was the warrior will to live and the will to get out of it. I feel grateful today for the chaos that existed in me, in my body and in my soul at that time, because it started my journey and even made it possible in the first place. Or as Fritz the Nietzschmeister says about it:

„You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star. “ – Friedrich Nietzsche

and

„You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you not first become ashes?” – Friedrich Nietzsche

So I let go, took courage and worked intensively on my situation. In addition to therapy, I tried many different things to become more relaxed, to find myself, to do my thing, and to evolve into a happier and more fulfilling life. Some of it worked for me, some of it didn’t. “Patient stable, therapy successful” the doctors said. I said: Right, but only “stable for everyday life”!

I could have lived like that until the day I died. I could have made a career and earned money in the profession I had at the time. I was very grateful that things were getting better, but something inside me still felt “unfulfilled”. I didn’t know how to interpret this inner voice at that time. Today I know that it was worth waiting and listening.

Because years later, at another time in my life, when a mutual friend brought Dr. Christian Zippel into my life and with him the AMOR FATI philosophy it really struck a chord in me: inner resonance.

Since then I wanted to know everything about this strong and free philosophy of life, to try it out for myself and if suitable to integrate it into my life. I felt like a child at play, playing simply for the sake of playing – because it is so beautiful. So I invested over several years and did a lot of coaching and traveling with Christian, lived with him several times, made him my mentor and thus learned to live, love and teach the AMOR FATI lifestyle for myself. Today I would say I have been philosophically and therapeutically trained by Dr. Zippel and applied it in parallel to myself, my life and my clients individually. A wonderful and impactful experience.

In addition, I completed further training in existential therapy and read specialist literature on the topics of existential psychology and therapy. This combination of my own life experience, the AMOR FATI training with Dr. Z and the study of specialized literature allows me to bring the area of philosophy and therapy into AMOR FATI and my coaching / mentoring sessions.

LETTING GO & SUICIDE COST ONLY ONE LIFE & A LOT OF COURAGE

Long before I had anything to do with AMOR FATI, my heart was beating for fitness and bodybuilding. I was working out with friends in the private gym around the corner and wanted to gain some muscle and lose fat. Over time, my interest grew and I started reading books on this subject.

After a few years of training, I completed various trainer licenses at private academies on the weekend over a period of two years – in parallel with a part-time job and full-time university studies. In addition to the classic trainer B and A license, I also made a personal trainer and nutrition trainer license and worked with several coaches in this field. What started as a “thing between friends” now made me grow mentally and physically. I was developing and although I didn’t know it at the time, my interest in philosophy was also born during this phase of my life. Because bodybuilding and fitness is pure philosophy.

Although it was never my intention to build a business out of this, over the years the voices from friends and acquaintances for help became louder. So I shared my knowledge free of charge and gave my first real coaching at the age of 18. I read specialized literature on the subject, lost several times 20 kg, gained 15 kg of muscle and started my own fitness business during my studies.

Here I built up my own supplement store with a partner and soon I even made my fitness coaching full-time. In addition, I trained by myself six days a week, gave personal trainings, took part in bodybuilding competitions and consumed steroids for three years in a row at the end of my bodybuilding time. Don’t worry, I was my own lab rat at the same time, doing new blood work every two months and talking to specialists about it. A very intense time.

Since I have double scoliosis, physiological problems appeared more and more as my training became heavier. 230 kg hack squats didn’t leave my spine unaffected, although my obsession was always on execution and how to get the most out of the lowest resistance. So I built a team of doctors, physical therapists and chiropractors for myself and my clients to take a more holistic approach from a physical standpoint, in addition to nutrition and training design and mindset work.

Everything was going well, I was successful. But after ten years, I had the feeling that the game of “fitness & bodybuilding” had been outplayed. It felt like it was now time for something new.

A very good mutual friend of Christian and me is bodybuilding world champion, Peter Baers. I sat with him for a mutual project and confided in him that I wanted to get out. Get out of the supplement store, get out of my work as a fitness coach, get out of steroids. I told him that I felt like I had to take this leap, even though it felt like “suicide” since my entire identity and everything I had worked for years was attached to this. Peter had previously recommended Christian’s book Leider geil, fett und faul to me and now he advised me that I could discuss my concerns with Dr. Z in person if another opinion was important to me. Peter and Christian already knew each other very well and personally from shared travels.

So I got to know Christian in person and I went to Rügen for a coaching with him. We discussed my concerns and after two days of consideration, I told him my decision: “I’m out!”. Still on the spot, I told some of my clients, got out of the supplement store and discontinued all medications as no doctor would normally recommend: All chemistry out, without the classic discontinuation over time.

Bodybuilding was dead. The successful personal trainer Sascha had died and I had killed him myself. Philosophically one of the most formative events of my life and it felt awesome and correct.

As I wrote on the page Our Origin, Christian and me not only met in the context of this coaching, but as he would later say, our lives became entangled. I fell in love early on with the freedom, minimalism, and uncompromisingness with which Dr. Z masters his life – feather-light, deeply relaxed, yet focused. The feeling of my inner resonance was so great that I had to pursue it. I wanted to know how my life would change if I integrated just a part of it into my own life. This was also the birth of AMOR FATI.

Today, I include my knowledge of fitness, health, nutrition, physical therapy, fascia, blood and hormone levels, yoga and meditation as a component in my coaching sessions to help my clients on a physical level.

“Many are afraid of the small, the social death and hardly dare to step out of line; even more are afraid of the big one, the absolute death – whereas they should be afraid of a dead life only.” – Dr. Christian Zippel

LIVING ACCORDING TO YOUR NATURE IS THE WAY TO A FULFILLING & AWESOME LIFE!

My first career stop after graduating from high school was an apprenticeship as a marketing communications specialist. Afterwards, I wanted to study, but my average grade wasn’t good enough to be accepted straight into university. So I decided to apply for a job at an advertising agency and later to work at a newspaper publishing house. My position was customer manager, consulting and sales.

A few years later, I took up the idea of studying again and studied business administration with a specialization in marketing. I also completed a further training as an online marketing manager. Then I used my skill and know-how to build up my supplement store and fitness coaching business mentioned above.

Marketing has always occurred in parallel with everything I’ve done in my life, and so after my career exit from fitness and bodybuilding, I reached back into this with more focus. I wanted to go deeper into digital marketing and back into an agency environment to collaborate with awesome people, to implement exciting projects, to learn and grow together. So I organized myself a job as an online marketing manager at Germany’s number one sales trainer, Dirk Kreuter. I was the fourth employee in the newly founded marketing agency, sat on the floor in the hallway for a few weeks because the office space was remodeled and started my work. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

With the team we realized so-called performance marketing projects within a few weeks and helped our clients online to more sales and customer inquiries. We took care of the strategy, positioning, realization of websites, graphics, communication, ads on Facebook & Co and everything else that was necessary to make a project successful.

At that time in my life I was working sixty hours a week and loved it, even though I knew I couldn’t do it that way for eternity, as the volume and pressure of work tended not to decrease. But by far the most important thing, besides all the success and hustle from that time, was that I gained a very good and close friend.

Together with him, we started our own business after approximately one year of kickstart agency life and successfully built up our own online marketing agency with two other partners. We wanted to do our own thing. At the same time, I also shared my marketing know-how with my clients in the form of coaching and training.

One morning, after about a year of self-employment, I was sitting in my home office with a cup of coffee and thought to myself, “You could actually do this from anywhere, as long as there’s internet.” This was the moment from which I became enthusiastic about digital nomadism and realized the untapped potential of freedom that was still unused here. Because after all, I could also work remotely at the beach, by the pool, in the mountains, or from anywhere else as long as there was Internet. The scales fell from my eyes. I was flashed and full of euphoria!

Even when I had already given up my residence in Germany and was traveling the world, I was still realizing projects in online marketing with my already mentioned good friend Falco in addition to my AMOR FATI coachings. And so my online marketing manager existence peaked in the fact that while I lived on the road and gave my coachings, I managed twelve online stores in ten different countries in parallel and coordinated eight international freelancers / employees for this.

Throughout all my online marketing time, I was involved in projects that spent a total of more than five million euros in advertising budget on Facebook and Instagram alone. I personally was responsible for marketing campaigns with a four-digit daily ad spend on these platforms. Financial success started to set in and I was able to say goodbye to my 50,000 euros in debt in no time at all. But more importantly, I was amazed by what was achievable with focus, digital work organization, and fun while traveling.

I’ve cut back on online marketing and digital work. I still support my friend Falco. Otherwise, I only use my experience and know-how within my AMOR FATI coaching sessions and help my clients to build or expand their own business. It is important to me to give something back and this is what I want to do with my AMOR FATI work and by combining my skills and using them for this in the best possible way.

Realizing who you really are also means asking yourself what you love and what you would do if you had only one year more to live. And I would continue to travel, organize crazy and deep AMOR FATI community trips, fire up the barbecue with my friends, drink a pint of Dortmunder Kronen and laugh about the same stupid jokes as I did back then.

Why?

Because it’s awesome, it feels right, because it’s in alignment with me and my nature. This is the way to fulfillment and happiness: A life in accordance with nature. In resonance with your own nature!

I KEEP MY HEART MORE ON BEAT THAN MY LEGS: LIVE DANCING – DIE LAUGHING

We are thrown into this life as human beings. No, you can’t be everything and you can’t become everything. For reasons of time alone, you have to decide, because – attention spoiler: You will die … And that is fine, too!

Moreover, you do not choose your genes, your parents, your early conditioning and also not your breast or penis size. Nature’s ovarian lottery has decided. In some cases, the zip code in which you were born says more about your life outlook than your average grade and IQ combined. Sad.

To realize your own nature, to accept it and not to frantically try to make a square out of the circle by hitting it harder and harder means to know yourself. You are good the way you are – stop whining and do make something out of it!

We have to live with this “thrownness”. Yes, we must also learn to deal with the apparently hard sides of life that inevitably come with it: Death, illness, disappointment, losses, transience, changes, suffering, existential fears, etc.

And in spite of this thrownness, the inherent fate in life and all the other packages that you have to carry, you should say “Yes! You should clarify your personal meaning and of course why you want to stay alive. And then you learn to dance. And for this dance of life you should keep one thing above all: your heart (and your nature) more on beat than your legs!

“And even to me, one who likes life, it seems butterflies and soap bubbles and whatever is of their kind among human beings know most about happiness. To see these light, foolish, delicate, sensitive little souls fluttering – that seduces Zarathustra to tears and songs. I would only believe in a god who knew how to dance. And when I saw my devil, there I found him earnest, thorough, deep, somber: it was the spirit of gravity – through him all things fall. Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughing. Up, let us kill the spirit of gravity! I learned to walk, since then I let myself run. I learned to fly, since then I do not wait to be pushed to move from the spot. Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself beneath me, now a god dances through me.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

I dance as well, through the world. Today here, tomorrow there. In November 2019, I deregistered my residence in Germany, sold all my possessions and now travel the world with two bags and about ten kilograms of luggage. I change countries about every one to three months, see where it attracts me and if I like it, I enjoy staying even longer. I only have a health insurance for emergencies and fixed costs of about 200 euros per month. In addition, I live completely legally free of bureaucracy and taxes. Sounds too good to be true? I thought so too at the time. Today I know: An indescribable freedom.

As part of my AMOR FATI work, I also help clients to live a more liberated life, to unregister and to travel permanently. In this way, they too can learn to dance between worlds. I do not only coordinate the organizational part (what, has to be done when, how and where), but we also work together on the emotional topics that often arise through the process of letting go. Being free has to be learned.

The biggest advantage, in my opinion, is not that you end up with your own business, more money and less bureaucracy, but that traveling and being more open to the world leads to a new level of inner development. Other places and cultures open up new perspectives and through this you have the chance to get even closer to the core of your being (your nature) than you would ever have been able to do in an entrenched, toxic environment. Minimal invasive methods often don’t help anymore. When you are alone with yourself and all external environmental factors are switched off as far as possible, you get to know your essence even better and you can then grow deeper into it. Inner contemplation is full of abundance.

“Freedom means: free space. Free time. Free life. Free death. Or as we say at AMOR FATI: live dancing, die laughing.
Of course, this is not a standard model in such an extreme way. But a philosopher would not be a philosopher if he did not live his ideals.” – Dr. Christian Zippel

NO, I AM NOT A SHOW OFF

We should take ourselves less seriously. It’s all just a huge cosmological theater. Humor liberates and that includes being able to laugh about yourself. I don’t write this text for you to think at the end: “But Sascha also believes that he has the biggest balls around here, doesn’t he?” I am just as much a human being as you are. I write this text to introduce myself, to make you think and laugh and to clarify two simple points:

  1. Life is awesome: Have the courage to face it with open arms. Become a yes-sayer to life, no matter what has happened to you so far.
  2. If you want to live a fulfilled and happy life, then let go and start living according to your nature: Become who you are!

If I didn’t wrap the two points above in philosophy, but said it in my flat, pragmatic Ruhrpott-German, my answer to the question of what the path to a fulfilled and happy life looks like would be:

Find out who you are and live by it. Have the courage to fight for what is necessary and learn to let go of the rest. And when life shits in your front yard again, make sure you find a beautiful flower. Plant it directly on the poop pile and watch how it thrives and explodes in color. So stop crying about the shit. Start and make something out of it, dare. Life is great – cheers!

The Danish philosopher Sören Kierkegaard had a little more style:

“… it is dangerous to dare. And why? Because you can lose. Not to dare is wise. And yet, by not daring, it is so terribly easy to lose what even in the boldest of dares would be difficult to lose … one’s self. For if I have dared the wrong thing – well, then life helps me by its punishment. But if I have not dared at all – who will help me? And moreover, if I have not dared in the very highest sense (and to dare in the highest sense is precisely to become aware of oneself), I have gained all the advantages of this world … and lose myself. How is that? – Sören Kierkegaard

Dare to become who you are. Look also into your dark corners, look at your shadows and don’t forget your torch: who else should bring the light into your life, if not you?

If you’ve read this far, I respect you. I did it only because I wanted to know how it ends. Don’t worry, we’re done now, my beer is getting warm. Nobody wants that, right?

Zippel? Anything philosophically high-sounding to add?

“What can you lose that you won’t lose anyway? Nothing – and nothing should stop you from risking everything – for the best possible life.” – Dr. Christian Zippel

With this in mind.

AMOR FATI
Become who you are!
Yours Sascha

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