First edition hardcover March 2018
E-book E-pub in English (USA) December 2021

Excelling in Freedom
A recipe for personal development

©2021 Excelling in Freedom

Illustrations: Odesign, Ruud Overwater, Mijke van Dis
Translation: Anik ten Have
Final editing: Peter Roemeling
Design: ZIEN communicatie & grafisch ontwerp, Joris Schriek
Portrait: Eyescream, Yvette Wolterinck
E-Pub: Pumbo.nl

ISBN: 978-90-812163-4-0
NUR: 734

This is a publication by:
Peter Roemeling
CoC: 27193593
mail@peter.roemeling.nl
www.peterroemeling.nl
www.linkedin.com/in/peterroemeling/

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

“A human being is curious by nature and wants to grow’

Peter Roemeling

Table of contents

Introduction

1. On the origin of questions

2. Being human, three parts and personal development

3. Layout and reading guide

Part 1 Yourself

Chapter 1 Who am I?

1.1 Elvis feels ‘all right’

1.2 Unruly gut

1.3 Sense of Self

1.4 Exercises, activities and recipe

Chapter 2 Where do I want to go?

2.1 Darwin’s ambition

2.2 Driving brain

2.3 Self Direction

2.4 Exercises, activities and recipe

Chapter 3 What steps do I take?

3.1 The courageous Don Quixote

3.2 Zealous heart

3.3 Role Awareness

3.4 Exercises, activities and recipe

Part 2 The world around you

Chapter 4 Who are the others?

4.1 Stalin as an instinctive conspirator

4.2 Empathizing with the world

4.3 Empathetic Outlook

4.4 Exercises, activities and recipe

Chapter 5 What is logical?

5.1 The sublime simplicity of Einstein

5.2 Thinking about the world

5.3 Systems Judgement

5.4 Exercises, activities and recipe

Chapter 6 What do we have to do?

6.1 Shackleton conquers through endurance

6.2 Acting for the World

6.3 Practical Thinking

6.4 Exercises, activities and recipe

Conclusion - Growing wings

Chapter 7 Excelling in freedom

7.1 Bouman chooses freedom

7.2 Balance with yourself and the world around you

7.3 Excelling in Freedom

7.4 A recipe for personal development

Afterword - The essence of being human

Acknowledgements

Literature

Introduction

“We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.”

Nelson Mandela (from: ‘Long Walk to Freedom’)

With this book, I hope to inspire you with a vision of personal development. And to encourage you to gain more self-knowledge and become more aware of yourself, so that you can grow further. I am convinced that people who are more aware of themselves also become more aware of their surroundings. This has a positive impact on their environment which changes with them. In this way, you contribute to a more beautiful world. Together we take small steps towards more freedom.

1. On the origin of questions

As a child, I grew up in freedom. My parents gave me space to be a child. At a young age, I always played outside: fishing, playing soccer, making fires, building huts and rafts, and climbing trees. Always on adventures. At the age of eight, I joined a soccer club. And from the age of thirteen, I got hooked on windsurfing (preferably on the lake of Zuidlaren), something I still do with great passion. I liked windsurfing much better than soccer. I also preferred to go skating. When I didn’t show up at soccer practice a few times because there was ice to skate on, I had to justify myself in front of a committee. I didn’t understand why I was blamed for my absence and decided to quit soccer. From the age of thirteen I always had a job on the side, because I didn’t get pocket money. First at a shipyard, later teaching windsurfing lessons and renting out windsurfing boards. I also worked as a shelf stacker and picked tomatoes. Everything I earned, I spent on windsurfing and, later, on going out. My parents always respected me and my choices.

Their only condition was that I had to do my best in school. I didn’t have to get straight As, what mattered to them was that I did my best. This childhood has made me a happy, joyful, curious, confident and optimistic person. As a young adult, I learned that not everyone has this outlook on life. I realize that I possess something valuable and I want to share that with others who need it and for whom this is not a natural way of being. ‘Life is actually very simple’ is a thought I often have. It’s a vision I would like to propagate.

Over the years I have read many books, delved into theories, developed my own, and others have shared their personal experiences with me. All these factors have helped shape my vision and help me put my vision into words.

In addition, in recent years I have worked a lot with people as a process supervisor, coach and trainer, and I have been able to support them in their development. I find myself in the grateful position of mapping out their way of thinking. Young and old, talented athletes and celebrated CEOs, civil servants and businessmen. People for whom everything in life goes smoothly and people who struggle with things or don’t feel happy. The lack of freedom they experience is caused, they believe, by external influences and circumstances.

Gradually, the underlying question surfaced: ‘What is a human being?’ After all, if you don’t know what a human being is, can you make the right choices and be or become happy? A proper understanding of man is necessary to explain life. Man must be the starting point.

In addition, I was strongly attracted to the subject of freedom. It took me a long time to identify it, but it is clearly intertwined with being human. In the spring of 2013, journalist Ton Verheijen interviewed me and wrote an article titled ‘This child gives everything for freedom’. This article showed me how important freedom is to me in the search for a vision of man and for an applicable method to gain more self-knowledge.

Whenever I ask myself what my intrinsic motivation is for finding freedom so important, an example from my high school days always comes up. I was no good at reading and language. Marten Toonder’s comic books, featuring Ollie B. Bommel, Kappie, King Holewijn and Tim Tuimel, were my salvation. However, they were not considered to be literature. I had to read heavy stuff, like Hermans’ The Dark Room of Damocles and Nescio’s The Mooch and other books I found morbidly uninteresting at the time. So my preferences were not taken into account; others claimed to know what was good for me. The teacher did not pick up my passion for the books of Marten Toonder in order to stimulate my development. Instead, I was judged by a system which was not mine. As a unique individual with my own peculiarities, I needed a different way of learning and growing. I hated reading books and only started reading again after high school.

In my view, man is curious by nature and wants to develop and grow. This natural drive can be used in freedom, without an oppressive system. This was also my motivation for co-founding De Vrije Ruimte in The Hague. The motto of this school for pupils aged four to eighteen is: ‘Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire’.

The final push to start writing this book came to me on St. Nicholas’ Eve 2013. One of the presents I unwrapped, around 6 pm, turned out to be the book The Long Road to Freedom by Nelson Mandela. As soon as I read the title, I immediately thought: ‘That’s where I’m going to make a contribution’. I want to contribute to a more beautiful world by helping people to free themselves from their obstacles and to support them on the road to greater selfknowledge and a more conscious life.

The next day I learned that Nelson Mandela had died on December 5 at 7:50 pm. Now I am an extremely commonsensical person, but I can’t deny that this ‘coincidence’ really won me over. The theme of freedom is a great universal concept for mankind - it is vital.

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”

Albert Einstein

2. Being human, three parts and personal development

In my work, I help people become more aware: of themselves, of their actions, of their goals and of their environment. Awareness is necessary to be able to make good choices in the context of personal development. In order to do my work well, it is important that I have a good understanding of a person in relation to personal development. Otherwise I cannot properly guide people in their process of discovering who they are, what they want and what they have to do in the world or for the organization(s) they work for. That’s why I went on a journey of discovery, which has provided me with insights that I am happy to share. The common denominator here is a threefold approach. The theoretical outlines are given briefly below. This introduction sketches the framework and the most important concepts for your personal development. You can read the detailed explanation in chapters 1 to 6.

Belly - head - heart

Shubin (1960) discovered that every human being is made up of three tubes that are formed between two and four weeks after the fertilization of an ovum. These are the neural tube, the intestinal tract, and the circulatory system with the heart as central node. After seven weeks, the structure of our body is complete and we speak of a fetus. It took nature 3.5 billion years to evolve from a single-celled organism into what man is today. A being with a belly, head and heart.

Two horses and a charioteer

Socrates (470 BCE - 399 BCE) also describes the essence of man, the soul, in three parts. He uses the metaphor of the pair of horses and the charioteer for this. Socrates compares man to the combined power of a pair of horses and a charioteer. One horse wants to enjoy and do what feels good, satisfy its needs and urges. The other horse is ambitious and zealous and wants to get moving.

The charioteer represents common sense and logical thinking. His job is to keep the two horses in check. This threefold division has a clear connection to the triad that nature has given us: belly, head and heart. The virtues of temperance, wisdom and courage are also related to this.

Yourself in three

The American philosopher Robert S. Hartman (1910-1973) describes how our personality is made up of three parts: the intrinsic, inner or moral self; the systematic or thinking self; and the extrinsic, outer or social self. And not only is your personality constructed in this way, you also value yourself in these three worlds: intrinsic, systematic and extrinsic. Thus, three values emerge.

A value gives direction to your thinking. That is why there are three thinking styles: Sense of Self, Self Direction, and Role Awareness.

The world around you in three

Not only do we value ourselves in this way, we also value the world around us intrinsically, systematically, and extrinsically, according to Hartman. This results in three styles of valuing and thus three styles of thinking about the world: Empathetic Outlook, Systems Judgement, and Practical Thinking.

Three phases of development

Again, it is Socrates who has a beautiful metaphor for this tripartite thinking about the world. The metaphor is known as Plato’s cave. According to Socrates, development involves three stages. The phase of empathizing with others’ perspectives by engaging in conversation with other people and contemplating the world. Then the phase of logically considering facts and seeking truth and knowledge about the world. And finally, the phase of using the knowledge gained for the benefit of society.

Six thinking styles

Both the course of evolution and the philosophies of Socrates and Hartman are characterized by tripartite divisions that are interconnected extensions of each other. Starting from the tripartite human being, six universal values emerge that are important to develop as a human being, divided between yourself and the world around you. By living these values, you develop skills. If you examine how much value you attach to each of these six values, you will gain insight into how important you find it to apply or deploy these values (to a greater or lesser extent). The values give direction to your thinking. Thus, six directions of thinking emerge: six thinking styles.

Each thinking style indicates a direction that leads us to skills that are important to be human and to develop your ‘being human’. The skills to be developed depend on experience, age, and aptitude.

Balance and Excelling in Freedom

It is essential to treat these six values and thinking styles equally. After all, Sense of Self, Self Direction, Role Awareness, Empathetic Outlook, Systems Judgement, and Practical Thinking must be in balance for personal development. Bieri (1944) states that experiencing this balance is equivalent to feeling free. If you attach less value to one or more of these six values, an imbalance will be created. You don’t think in one or more directions, or not sufficiently, and therefore don’t develop those skills that help you become more human. You start to feel unfree and do not use the full potential of being human. If you do feel freedom and you use your potential for the benefit of others, you are actually Excelling in Freedom. You become more skilled, gain wings and rise above yourself.

3. Layout and reading guide

Layout

The seven chapters are about what Excelling in Freedom means in a general sense as well as what it means to you. The book is divided into two parts and a concluding Chapter 7. Chapters 1 through 6 each deal with one of the six universal values, thinking styles and skills.

Each of these six chapters is structured in the same way. It starts with a personal story about a well-known person to give a concrete example of the topic in Section 1. The theoretical knowledge and facts in Section 2 underpin the personal story. A description of the thinking style in Section 3 gets you thinking about the value you assign to this thinking style. The slightly edited description of the Hartman value profile by Dorien Derksen of TTI Success Insights Benelux is used for this.

And finally, in Section 4 you will find some exercises and activities that will encourage you to develop and to examine yourself.

In Section 4 of Chapter 7 you can note what you want to do, your ingredients for the recipe. You can then get to work to increase the value you attach to the universal value, to change your way of thinking and your thinking style, and to further develop the related skills.

Part 1 deals with the triad that relates to yourself. It consists of: Chapter 1 Who am I?, Chapter 2 Where do I want to go?, and Chapter 3 What steps do I take?

Part 2 then deals with the tripartite nature of the world around you. It consists of: Chapter 4 Who are the others?, Chapter 5 What is logical?, and Chapter 6 What do we have to do?

Finally, Chapter 7 describes the meaning of Excelling in Freedom. The process of developing yourself in balance with the world around you. The chapter ends with the values you assigned to the thinking styles and shows the balance between all six thinking styles.

All chapters invite you to write down the activities you want to do with the purpose of growth. Together they form the ingredients of your recipe for personal development. To become more human, contribute to a more beautiful world and take small steps to respect and enhance the freedom of others.

Classification by threefold divisions

The threefold divisions mentioned above are summarized in the tables below.

Threefold division of you as a human being

Threefold division of the world around you

Reading guide

There are several ways you can read this book.

The most obvious, of course, is from beginning to end. Each chapter makes you empathize, think logically and puts you to work, in order to understand what Excelling in Freedom is all about and find out your own recipe for personal development.

Are you a doer and do you learn by doing? Then you can start by reading Sections 1.3 and 1.4, 2.3 and 2.4 through 6.3 and 6.4, and doing the activities. In Section 7.4, read what your recipe for personal development is and what value, skill, and thinking style is most necessary for your personal development.

If you then want to read the example and underlying theory of one or more thinking styles, you can read the corresponding Sections x.1 and x.2.

Are you guided in your personal development by means of this book? Then decide together with your coach/supervisor the order of reading and getting started, provided, of course, that the supervisor is familiar with the theory in this book.

Is your coach/supervisor not familiar with this theory? Then I recommend reading the book chapter by chapter and discussing it with your supervisor. In this way, the coaching process will take shape, and gain structure and content, in seven sessions.