Cosmin Angheluta has long found his passion for sharing stories with others, from letting games and software do the talking for him to at last speaking for himself.

If you also want more people to hear your story, here’s how Cosmin followed the path and pursues his life goals.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m Cosmin Angheluta. I was born in 1995 in Romania and moved to Italy when I was 8.

Since I was young, I always loved stories, so I searched for a way of telling them. And a few years ago, I decided developing games was a great way of doing it.

But game development is not that accessible in Italy, so I became a software developer and decided to start a blog to keep telling stories.

In the meanwhile, I also fell in love with self-improvement and personal growth. So my stories focus on writing and self-improvement techniques for content creators like me. I want to simplify the path of those who want to start but don’t know how. And I think there is no better way of helping others than trying it out myself.

What was your favorite story when you were a child?

I always loved fantasy stories, but when I was a child, I didn’t have access to many resources and books because I lived in a small, poor village of a few hundred people. So everything I knew was folk stories my parents and my grandparents told me.

When I came to Italy, however, I had access to my first library. And fell in love with fantasy series like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or the Inheritance Cycle (which not many people read, unfortunately).

Could you tell us a bit more about the games you developed back in those days?

Before even studying game development, I tried making smartphone games. I loved playing platforms like Super Mario, so I made many copies of Nintendo’s masterpiece. But none of those projects had more than a few levels because I didn’t have the necessary knowledge to complete them.

Later, studying graphics and game development, I made a few 3D school projects. And in one of them, I was in charge of building a story on the mysteries of Turin.

Not many people know, but I discovered Turin has a magic history, and it’s part of the two triangles, the black one (with San Francisco and London) and the white one (with Lione and Prague). So I had to exploit these two stories to build a 3D puzzle platform for players to solve.

Being a software developer now, how does sharing stories help with your career in your opinion?

I think storytelling permeates our society in any dimension possible. And if you’re a software developer, you can use it to convince more people to buy your solution. So even if I’m not working directly in the marketing environment, I collaborated with it many times and gave my input.

Unfortunately, only a few developers see the power of storytelling and use it actively. Most of them consider it useless, and it sometimes disappoints me.

What inspired you to keep on sharing more stories and life techniques?

I have always had difficulties building strong relationships during my youth since I had to move a few times because of my parents’ jobs. And during my university years, I had a major breakdown because I was alone and with no friends.

And I decided I needed a change.

So I started following many self-improvement influencers and reading books like How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie or The Slight Edge (my favorite) by Jeff Olson. And writing stories about the same topics felt natural. I wanted to spread the knowledge I was collecting.

After I opened my Medium account, writing about blogging also felt natural because I read much more about that. But I never wanted to abandon the self-improvement topics that helped me in the past. And if there is even the slightest chance I could help someone else with my stories, it would be worth my time.

How do you use Effie, and what other useful tools that you think it’s great to have in your writing workflow?

Before trying out Effie, I used mainly Google Docs for writing, Grammarly for improving clarity, and Notion to keep an overview of my articles and their writing or publication state.

Also, I sometimes used Adobe Illustrator for small infographics or mind maps to explain complex concepts or make small recaps.

But over the past month, I have been using Effie to enhance the clarity of my articles, and it successfully replaced Google Docs.

Now, I can create a small map of concepts at the beginning of the article, and I keep my mind open so I can always check the direction of my article. So it helps me keep an eye on what I am writing to avoid diverging from the core concept.

Also, I plan on building some of my future explanatory infographics with Effie, if possible.

What do you like most about Effie? Are there any features that you find useful while using?

I love the way you can create mind maps so easily. It was the first thing I tried out, and I never thought of a solution so simple and efficient. I use many lists to create outlines for my articles, and now I can transform them into more efficient structures.

I also like writing using markdown because I think it is a powerful yet simple tool you can learn in a few hours. Instead of losing time searching for the font weight and style, you can put some hashtags or asterisks and format your text without leaving the page. So it helps you focus more on writing and less on other useless stuff.

I love how the text changes colors to show that it applied some markdown styling, so you can never make anything bold by mistake, for example.

I also heard an Android version of Effie would be coming out soon, and I can’t wait to try it out. Sometimes, I find inspiration while I’m not home, so I’d love to synchronize those notes with Effie.

How would you motivate and improve yourself to become a better version?

I think people should never stop improving themselves.

Sometimes, my friends make fun of me because I always focus on becoming a better version of myself. I keep searching for books on productivity, motivation, or social psychology and share my latest challenges and theories.

But this is who I am now. I love challenging myself to become better and improve my body and my social skills. And I enjoy winning those challenges, even if they’re challenging sometimes.

The only dream I have is to become an independent writer. Working for someone else is not part of who I am, so I would do anything to avoid that. This is my greatest motivator.

I started two years ago, and I didn’t know how to write in English nor had any expectations. But I came so far, I like where I am landing.

My blog, the Cosmopolitan Mindset, has been growing in the last year. So I just need to remain consistent because consistency is the key to independence.

If you’d like to know more about Cosmin Angheluta, make sure to check out his blog, the Cosmopolitan Mindset for more tips on productivity, self-improvement and writing.