How Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now taught a fashion CEO that ‘your mind is your greatest enemy’

Frederieke van Doorn, the founder and CEO of Hong Kong-based women’s tailoring brand Frey, read Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now during stressful business times

It taught her the power of controlling her mind by living in the now, not the future or the past, which helped her stop spiralling into anxious thoughts

Reading Time:2 minutes

Published: 5:15pm, 15 May 2024

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997), by German self-help author and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, is a guide to living based on various spiritual traditions, which advocates for the power of living solely in the moment rather than focusing on the past or future.

Frederieke van Doorn, the Netherlands-born founder and CEO of Hong Kong-based women’s tailoring brand Frey, tells Richard Lord how it changed her life.

I started reading it two or three years ago. It was at the beginning of what I’m doing now with my own company and brand. It was stressful; it still is. A very good friend recommended it: “You need to read this; it’s really going to help you.”

Through the book, you find out that your mind is your greatest enemy.

Eckhart Tolle speaks at the James L Knight Centre in Miami, in the US state of Florida, on April 24, 2019. Photo: Getty Images

If you learn to control your mind by living in the now, not the future or the past, and just pay attention to what you’re doing now, it’s so powerful.

At this moment, there’s no pain or stress – it only comes from the future or the past. I can get lost in thinking about things I’ve done in the past or about the future.