My mindset, my principles, my story.
You are missing a few pieces in the puzzle of life.
No choice is perfect.
Everyone has a few missing pieces in the puzzle of life. Some pieces are lost and can never be replaced. Some pieces add beauty through the empty spaces they leave behind. Others are replaced, but never quite fill the void. What matters most is how we choose to deal with that emptiness.
I have always admired people who are deeply passionate about what they love – people driven to do more, achieve higher and work harder for what they believe in. Each one of us makes choices every day. Some are trivial, while others may shape the rest of our lives. Yet the real question is not only which decision we make, but how we feel after making it.
There will always be people ready to advise us, warn us or point us toward what they believe is right. But at the end of the day, we must trust our own inner compass. Who knows what we truly want better than ourselves?
As children, we rarely doubt our instincts. As we grow older, we begin to fear wrong decisions, obsess over alternatives or avoid choosing altogether. But in a world of endless options, there will always be another possibility. There may never be a perfect choice, but there is a choice that becomes ours because we have the courage to make it.
For me, life has always been about the individual mind-set. When I imagine open cages and birds flying in and out, I am reminded how important direction and insight are. Some people restrict their flight to the inside of the cage. Others cannot gather the courage to take the first step outside. A few fly so high that the distance becomes impossible to measure. In the end, our mindset determines the direction of our flight.
Creativity is not an industry. It is a way of life.
The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself.
From an early stage of my life, I had the ambition to do something creative – something exciting, something meaningful, something special. I understood early that such an ambition demands constant effort: to improve one’s thoughts, to sharpen one’s actions and to keep developing one’s own character.
Creativity is often misunderstood as something limited to art, design or entertainment. I see it differently. Creativity can be applied to almost everything in life: to business, to relationships, to leadership, to recovery, to discipline and to the way we rebuild after disappointment.
After university, I began my career as an investment banker working in New York as well as in Frankfurt, Germany. Later, I entered renewable energy investments for a short period before moving into real estate. At first, I thought real estate was conservative and boring – not a creative business at all. Life proved me wrong.
After leaving Europe and entering the Dubai International Financial Centre environment in the early years of Dubai’s modern growth, I moved into branding and selling real estate developments in the Middle East. At that time, branding real estate projects in Dubai was still unique. I was among the first to approach real estate not merely as property, but as imagination, identity, narrative and lifestyle.
The business grew at exceptional speed. With the support of my family, I was at the right time, in the right place, with a model that suddenly moved faster than almost anything I had known before. At 32, I became used to success, money, large turnovers and momentum. It is easy at that age to confuse a strong wave with a permanent ocean.
Always question your own assumptions.
Success can blindfold you faster than failure.
The Dubai real estate market was expanding, off-plan projects created significant paper value, and the business appeared to have extraordinary leverage. I made money, spent money, reinvested even more into the same market and diversified too little into other models.
At the time, I rarely questioned market risk or market change. Success made me blindfolded. I believed the market could continue for years. Today I know that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop.
Then the financial crisis of 2008/2009 arrived like a tsunami. It destroyed the market and, with it, much of what I had built. Initially, I was naive enough to believe the crisis would affect others but not me. Life and the market proved me wrong. Like many other investors, I lost almost everything I had worked for day and night, including weekends. What had taken years to build vanished almost overnight.
After that, the blame game began. People were blaming, accusing and filing cases against one another. Everyone had lost control, but nobody wanted to accept loss. Sharing good times is easy. Sharing bad times – especially when significant money is involved – is one of the hardest tests of human character. I learned the hard way that legal time is very different from business time.
Today, I am far more relaxed about storms. They are part of a creative life. You may suffer defeat. You may be misunderstood. You may have to rebuild from the ground up. But the essence of a creative life is perseverance: the ability to keep following the rainbow within your heart even after everything around you appears to have collapsed.
Failure is not the opposite of life. It is one of its deepest teachers.
If you cannot win, change the rules.
We are programmed to succeed. That is why failing at something we created, loved and poured ourselves into can be one of the hardest experiences of life. Failure can feel personal because the work was personal. It carried our sweat, our tears, our hope and our identity.
But if we never fail, we do not live a full life. We live cautiously, inside the boundaries of what is likely to work. That may be safe, but it is not how we discover the full measure of our potential. We must learn what no school truly prepares us for: how to fail, how to stand again, how to learn and how to rebuild without losing our soul.
The most important moments of my development began around the age of 33. I went through bumps in the road for many years. I would not tell my younger self to avoid them. Without those bumps, I would not be me. And today I am glad that I am me.
A man who stands up for an idea, acts to improve something or refuses to surrender sends out a ripple of hope. When those ripples cross with the ripples of others, they create a current strong enough to sweep down walls of resistance. This is true in business, in personal recovery and in society itself.
The challenge for entrepreneurs is that the companies we dream about, envision and build are not just numbers. They become part of us. They are extensions of our imagination, discipline and future. That is why defeat hurts so deeply. Yet this is also why rebuilding can become so meaningful.
Work is where you find yourself.
Meaning is the antidote to emptiness.
I like what work offers: the chance to find yourself. Work is not merely an activity that generates funds or creates desire. It is a period of gestation in which you earn your integrity, make plans, settle your debts – financial and emotional – and confront the problems you might otherwise run from.
Work can be escape, but at its best it is discovery. A person who loves his work is not trapped by it; he is fulfilled by it. He is occupied not only with tasks, but with values, goals and the joy of building something that has meaning.
Stress is often not caused only by difficult issues. It is caused by the absence of a larger sense of meaning. When your work is connected to purpose, even pressure can become part of your energy. When work is empty, even comfort can feel like a cage.
Therefore, the question before every new venture should be simple and honest: Why am I doing this? What are the consequences? Will I be able to succeed, and if not, what will failure teach me? Once you answer those questions, you can move forward with clarity.
Put your energy into the actions you have chosen. Learn from the past, but do not live there. Face your hurdles rather than flying away from them. Surround yourself with people who share a similar outlook. Follow a strategy, but remain flexible enough to adjust. Success is often found in silence, discipline and repeated effort long before anyone else can see the result.
Ethics are not decoration. They are the foundation.
Leadership begins with responsibility.
The impact of our ethical choices is just as significant as the impact of our business decisions. Employees, partners, customers and communities are affected not only by what a company produces, but by how it behaves.
For me, business ethics are not a soft subject. They are civilized practice. They reduce harm, create respect, improve performance and establish trust. Every organization that wants to survive in the long term must decide what kind of culture it wants to create.
Ethical decision-making requires more than rules. It requires a system of values, a moral code, self-regulation and leadership that understands its responsibility. A respectful workplace, responsible governance and transparent standards are not obstacles to success. They are part of success.
Good leadership depends on the relationships between people. A leader must be aware of his own behavior, the consequences of his decisions and the way others experience his actions. It is not enough to ask whether a decision is legal. We must also ask whether it is fair, responsible and aligned with the standards we want to live by.
Companies that act ethically do more than protect their reputation. They deliver value to shareholders, improve conditions for employees and contribute to the communities around them. In that sense, ethics are not a burden on business. They are a source of strength.
The law of action and reaction.
We control our actions, not always the results.
Every action, as the ancient sages and modern thinkers have observed in different ways, carries a reaction. Whatever action we take in business, relationships or life in general, it returns in some form.
An action is always taken in the present, but its result may arrive tomorrow, years later or even in a form we do not immediately recognize. We can act with sincerity and discipline, but we cannot control every outcome. The action belongs to us. The result belongs to time, circumstance and the wider field of life.
This does not mean that life is random. It means that life is subtle. Motives give actions their direction. If you act out of impulse, fear or selfishness, the result will carry that energy. If you act from wisdom, compassion and clarity, the result may still be difficult, but your conscience remains intact.
We cannot always choose what happens to us. We can choose how we respond. When the result is unexpected, painful or unfair, we must accept events with tenderness, composure and peace – not as weakness, but as strength. Life will always throw situations at us. How we face them is usually a matter of choice, and that choice depends on our mind-set.
Trust your intuition, but train it with knowledge.
Enlightenment is the space between your thoughts.
During my life, I have learned that intuition is real, but it should not be confused with impulse. Some feelings come from fear, ego or outside influence. Others come from a deeper inner voice, shaped by experience, wisdom and emotional intelligence.
The more our minds are distracted, the easier it becomes to mistake noise for intuition. To trust intuition properly, we must train ourselves: by listening, by reflecting, by studying, by observing and by taking responsibility for the results of our decisions.
Faith and blind faith are also not the same. Faith can be supported by logic, reason and experience. Blind faith denies reality. A life built on wisdom must know the difference.
I also believe that much of what we call corruption begins where the sense of belonging ends. When people feel no connection to others, society or purpose, it becomes easier to take without conscience. Where there is belonging, compassion and spiritual awareness, corruption becomes far more difficult.
Money is a means, not the destination.
Well-being is the measure that remains.
Wealth is one of the tools toward human well-being, but it is not the whole purpose of life. Money can buy comfort, access and pleasure. But money cannot buy peace, sleep, compassion or a meaningful relationship with yourself.
There are pleasant things that can be bought, and there are pleasures that must be cultivated from within. A house is not the same as a home. A bed is not the same as sleep. A table is not the same as gratitude. The external world can support well-being, but it cannot replace the inner work required to feel whole.
In business, success is not only profit. Success is also the positive influence one creates: over companies, employees, partners, families and communities. The well-being of those connected to your work becomes part of the real measure of your achievements.
If the people around you grow, if your organizations become stronger, if your work creates opportunity and if you can look at yourself honestly in the mirror, then success has a deeper meaning than numbers alone.
Crisis reveals what must be rebuilt.
The future belongs to resilient builders.
The Covid-19 pandemic reminded the world that global systems can fall quickly. Markets dropped, manufacturing was disrupted, supply chains broke, tourism stopped and unemployment rose. The pandemic exposed how fragile many structures had become.
Yet every crisis also reveals the need for new models. We must create more sustainable local alternatives, strengthen local employment, build responsible supply chains, support communities and avoid environmental damage. A resilient economy is not built only on speed. It is built on balance.
The world is being reshaped by the Fourth Industrial Revolution and by the convergence of social, mobile, cloud, big data, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other powerful technologies. For an entrepreneur, the rule is simple: things are never as good as they look in moments of euphoria, and never as bad as they look in moments of fear.
Do not be overwhelmed by crisis. Use crisis to test creativity, patience, teamwork and endurance. Keep calm, keep developing and keep standing. Young entrepreneurs especially must protect their work over the long term, even if they sometimes feel like strangers in a noisy world that does not yet understand them.
Vision makes the extraordinary possible.
Achieving the extraordinary is never linear.
I am a strong believer that if you have a clear vision of where you want to go, everything else becomes easier. But achieving the extraordinary is never a linear process. Life is about defining your own vision of success and getting there in your own signature style.
I remember something my father told me when I was growing up: every morning, when you look at your face in the mirror while shaving, there is no hiding. Can you live with what you see? You are the best judge of yourself. Everything I have done has been influenced by that thought.
I still want to make fundamental breakthroughs. I still want to help create work, ideas and projects that make the world better for generations that follow. That requires courage. It means doing research and taking risks that others may consider foolish. It means accepting that the day before something is a breakthrough, it may look like a crazy idea.
What I seek today is not only challenge, but connection – a more balanced relationship between mind, body and soul. In recent years, I have developed through positivity, patience, meditation and the daily effort to reconnect what pressure and crisis can separate.
Gratitude is the final chapter and the first principle.
Thank you for allowing me to be me.
All of this would never have been possible without support. My family, my children, my friends and my partners have given me strength through storms, patience through difficulty and courage when I needed to begin again.
I am thankful to those who encouraged me, stood by me and allowed me to remain myself. I am thankful to the people who did not only share the good moments, but also the difficult ones. It is easy to stand beside someone when everything is shining. It is far more meaningful to remain when the lights go out.
To everyone reading this, I wish you courage on your own journey. Do not fear your missing pieces. Do not fear failure. Do not fear your own creativity. Define your worst case, accept it and move forward. Trust your intuition, but train it. Act ethically, even when it is difficult. Build what has meaning. And when life opens the cage, choose the direction of your flight.
After all, happiness is a choice. And a creative life is not something we wait for. It is something we create.
By Robin Lohmann