Do you know this? You had a dream, and it took a few years for it to become reality? And then you can hardly believe it when it does.

That’s what happened to me with my book “Living Without Fear”, which I finally have in my hands as a printed book. I can hardly believe that this is now the book that I had been carrying around with me for years and that I decided to write when I attended a three-day workshop with Gerry Robert in Zurich three years ago.

His workshop gave me the courage to create the cover of my book and share it all over my social media channels. “I am now writing my book. It’s titled ‘Living Without Fear.’ And you can ask me about it anytime. I will not give up until it is finished.”

Great feelings but only for a short moment

It really took courage, but it also felt really great. Although only for a short moment! Because after this, the self-doubt kept visiting me. Who would want to read my book? Nobody is interested in why I suffered from depression for years and had suicidal thoughts again and again, because I saw me as a failure again and again. What good is my story to others, I asked myself.

Every time I wrote another chapter, I felt good and felt that my writing made sense.

If I then took a long break from writing because I didn’t feel good enough or because life threw new challenges at my feet, shame rose up in me. Why had I opened my mouth so wide? I could have started writing for myself and published my book when it was ready. No, I had been so cocky. My social media posts on Facebook were seen and commented on by many, and I knew no one would forget my announcement.

Covid changed everything

And then Covid hit. Fear crept in. Collectively. Everyone was afraid of what would happen next. No one knew how long it would take and what else might happen.

I felt obligated to make a constructive contribution to fear. But I didn’t know what to write – knowing that what I wrote during the lockdown wouldn’t get into readers’ hands until much later.

So I stopped my book writing project and started my podcast titled ‘Living Without Fear’. Why in English and not in German?

Just before the pandemic, I had been to South India with a small group of women and had shown them the country, the culture, and India’s special way of balancing body, soul, and spirit. I felt very connected to those people in India we met, and I knew from earlier travels during that special time. So I wanted to provide them with a small, encouraging message every day. And for this reason, I decided to use the English language.

Self-love, self-worth, and self-discovery

I never dreamed that some of those short texts I wrote for the podcast would later find themselves in my book. That idea came to me much later. But they have exactly the right place now. Because the second part of my book is meant to give you help with quite a lot of topics like self-love, self-worth, and self-discovery for every day.

For a long time, I put off editing my texts or put other things, “more important” things, in between. I also struggled to find a suitable editor. The one I finally found was convinced that my text didn’t need great editing services but was very fluidly written and more in need of good proofreading.

So, I set out to find a proofreader.

Even sending my text to the editor had taken me a great deal of courage. I was full of self-doubt that she would tell me: Your text is all well and good, but it needs a lot of revision of your thoughts. But no, contrary to my expectations, she found my text very well written. And the proofreader also sent me positive feedback.

A former colleague and friend also motivated me to publish my book. She had read it through in one go and reported back to me that my text had touched her very much because we had a similar story.

Each of these positive feedbacks encouraged me. But after that, the self-doubts kept creeping up and settling in my brain, like in a cozy living room with a sofa. They sat there, those self-doubts, and kept saying, “Esther, who do you think you are to touch, motivate, and inspire people with your book?”

At every further step in the book’s production, the self-doubts signaled again, “We’re still here, and we want to save you from a major debacle. Because when the text came back from the proofreader, I had to read once again my whole story in order to accept her changes made in proofreading mode and check that everything was now all right. 

Esther, you could have written this better!

Another time I read my book all the way through when it came back from London from the translator. While re-reading, in so many places I thought, oh, Esther, you could have written this better, or this passage could have been deleted. Or does this chapter even make sense?

But I decided to stick with my initial courage and keep going.

With the graphic designer came another person who read my book. And when he had laid out the text, I had to deal with my text another round, not only once, but just twice, in German and in English.

But by now my self-doubters had become quite weak on their comfortable sofa in my brain. They kept making themselves heard, but their voices had become increasingly quieter. The thought “Now I will soon publish my book” became more and more determined. Now nothing could divert me from my path.

Fortunately, I had had enough of this eternal harping on my book content.

Enough is enough!

And even if the book will be criticized in the future, I (almost) don’t care. Because I know that it has already helped my translator to look at certain things differently and handle challenges differently. And also in her writing group, one of my thoughts from the book has taken root and helped further.

A pleasure to read and it inspires

Moreover, just today I received a message from America that it is a pleasure to read my book and that it has inspired the writer to edit his own texts.

So, I wish that “Living Without Fear”, my biography and the many thought-provoking impulses, will help you too and a few other people to overcome their fears and depression and to lead a better life – in joy and peace with themselves and the rest of the world.

Find more details about the book and a special gift for you here: www.livingwithoutfear.ch

 

PS. A heartfelt ‘thank you’ to the many dear people who stayed by me during a certain period of my life, who always believed in me, and who helped bring this book to publication: Abigail Graham, Adrian Ochsner, Annette Golaz, Barbara Tänzler, Bruno Dietziker, Claude Vollenweider, Conny Bisagno, Edeltraud Burgunder, Ewa Stürzinger, Istvan Juhasz, Märta Wydler, Milly Zurfluh, Richard White, Rita und Domenico Marrone, Susann Gassmann, and Walo Hauser.

 

 

 

 

 

The post The Book Is Finally Here: ‘Living Without Fear’ first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post The Book Is Finally Here: ‘Living Without Fear’ appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

My classmates at high school told me 25 years later that they didn’t understand what was going on in my life at that time. I was like a gray mouse, they said. I always speak with a shy voice, and they hardly understood me. I had so much fear at that time. I remember. I felt so lost. My father was the principal of the other high school in town, and everybody of my teachers and colleagues knew my father’s position. I felt so ashamed. I was so much afraid that everyone was laughing at me when I opened my mouth.

This fear was so big. I remember I prayed to God that he helped me to get rid of it. But God wasn’t listening to me. When I was 20 years old, I decided to fire God, because I didn’t believe anymore that he would be helpful. I felt so much better after that. I decided to take control of my life.

Dismissing God helped me to get rid of my fear immensely. I became unstoppable. I wanted to experience all I liked: relationships, drugs, and have not the faintest bad conscience at all. This phase didn’t last too long.

I had to find a place to live, work to earn my living and pass university exams. My fears came back, and I didn’t have any thought model to get rid of them. I tried it with psychology. This helped to a certain extent and during some time in my life.

As I dated the father of my two boys, the fear of losing the love of my life was huge. But that fear was nothing compared to the fear I felt when I was pregnant with my boys when they were born and started growing. Certainly, at night, I was spending many sleepless hours imagining what could happen to them. It was a whole nightmare.

Last year, I finally found relief by starting to meditate, and great teachers showed me a way out of anxiety and fear. I decided to help as many people as possible with the topic of fear and started writing my book “Living Without Fear”.

My podcast with the same name was born during lockdown because of Covid-19 this year. Over 60 episodes have been played more than 2400 times in 52 countries.  

You might have asked yourself in the past or you might have looked for methods how to overcome fear, but you haven’t found yet something which really appealed to you.

I try to summarize here what I think is important in dealing with fear.

The overwhelming feelings of fear and anxiety are always connected with time: with the past or the future. That’s why I believe we need to focus first on the element of time. Secondly, we need to focus on making a conscious decision, and in the third step, we concentrate on making happen the change. Having time, a decision, and a change of mind, we are on a good way.

I created 9 beautiful thoughts, which always help me to change my state of mind from fearful to fearless.

My 9 powerful thoughts to live without fear:

1. My painful experiences belong to the past. I consciously leave them there.
2. What I have experienced in the past will not be repeated in the future.
3. I concentrate fully on the moment I am experiencing now. I take a deep breath.
4. I am grateful for what I have, for the person I am, and for what I have already been able to learn in my life.
5. I immediately bring fearful thoughts of the future back into my present.
6. I realize that my fear of what awaits me in my future cannot change anything except that it makes me sick.
7. I ask myself the question: Do I want to live in fear or without fear?
8. I make the conscious decision: I let go of my past, I let go of my thoughts about the future. I do not think what will be in an hour, what will be tomorrow or in a year.
9. I stay in the here and now and enjoy the moment – with myself, with the people and things that surround me right now.

My deepest wish is to give a shortcut to escape the suffering and pain I experienced for so many years.

If you like to write to me or to speak to me, I’d be more than happy to hear from you.

PS. Here are my 5 Keys To Increasing Your Self-Esteem. You can download them for free:

Click here to follow my blog on:

The post 9 Powerful Steps to Live Without Fear first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post 9 Powerful Steps to Live Without Fear appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Writing makes me happy. Why? It is such a privilege for me to be able to express my thoughts and feelings in words and publish them in a blog or in a book and inspire others.

Do you feel the same way? Wonderful! Congratulations for being in the same universe than many others.

Or are you sometimes feeling overwhelmed because you are not able to express yourself as you would like to?

Don’t give up trying and trying again. I’d like to encourage you, because I know that there are always ways to reach your goal if you really wish to. I’m not only talking about writing. Everything in life is possible. It’s only a matter of trying and not giving up. Once you have discovered this, you can change all you like to change – in all areas of your life. Believe me!

But let’s stay with writing as I see the progress many people already made when they gave me the chance to help them.

I’m sure something is blocked in you that you cannot yet express yourself as you wish.

So, try to find out what is blocking you.

Do you give yourself permission to speak up, to say what you really think? Or is there someone in your family or in your closer surroundings who is criticizing you or whom you are simply afraid of because he or she could do it? It doesn’t even have to be real. It just can happen in your thoughts. Maybe, if you try to speak up, this person wouldn’t react as you fear she or he would do. But as you didn’t try, and you were always afraid that it might happen, you even don’t know the reaction.

Do you allow yourself to be authentic or are you afraid of the reactions if you were authentic and you never dared to be or only a small part of it? Are you afraid of showing your real thoughts and feelings?

I know exactly how you might feel. It sucks, this feeling of being afraid of losing a friend or a family member. Whenever I spoke up in my family, my father got very much upset. I always said the truth, but he didn’t want to hear it. He always blamed me for being ungrateful. This verdict was the most devastating for me. Afterward, I always felt so ashamed, so bad, so destroyed.

That’s why I stopped speaking up more and more. I preferred to stay silent. I tried to please others as often as I could. I was convinced that all are like my father and don’t want to hear what I really think. There were a few very special moments when I felt rather safe, I dared to be open. But normally, I kept my thoughts to myself and my diary for most of the time.

A very sad consequence of all this was that I didn’t trust my intuition anymore. I listened more to others than myself.

Does this resonate with you?

So, can you imagine that you have a similar fate?

Can you imagine that you’re writing is somehow stuck, because you’re not yet allowed to speak up or live the life you really dream of? Could it be that you feel being hindered from living the way you sometimes feel would be the right way? Could it be that you have friends and family members who don’t want you to be as you wish to be?

What helped me in the last years a lot is the fact that I only have one life and if I don’t try to be the person I really want to be, I will waste the valuable time of my life. What always comes to my mind are the articles I read about people interviewed in the last phase of their life and who said that they regret not having done this or that or not have been the person they always wanted to be.

What do you think?

What I always tell myself in moments when there is more fear and anxiety in me to speak up or do certain things, I don’t want to regret anything. I want to play out fully.

And that’s what I do now.

Writing my own story, “Living Without Fear”, also belongs to this chapter, and I know this book will also help others to overcome fear and find the courage to be the person they really wish to be.

Do you decide to play full out? This decision will also help you to get into a writing flow. Believe me!

Let me know your experiences with writing and with being authentic!

PS. If you like to get more input on how to change, subscribe to my weekly newsletter:

The post Writing and Playing Full Out first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Writing and Playing Full Out appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

I always wished to help others and teach them what I’ve learned during all the hardships I’ve gone through, but I thought I’m not good enough.

When I started talking about giving coaching, my former group psychologist and my peers laughed at me. I was devastated.

Do you know this kind of situation, where you know you’re right, but the others around you tell you something different? You start doubting and you start giving up your ideas, even when you feel so deeply that your colleagues are wrong. Don’t let it happen. Listen to yourself!

I know, it is hard.

My psychologist and the group therapy participants told me to look for a normal job, where I would get a paycheck at the end of the month and where I would not have to bother about money anymore. They literally told me to accept that I am a normal person and that I should stop thinking of myself being special and not being willing to do normal things like others do. I felt destroyed. I even accepted that I won’t succeed in going another way than the normal one.

You may wonder why I listened more to others than myself. I was conditioned since childhood. My parents always told me that I was wrong. Whenever I was insecure, I kept on listening to the others.

But I got myself back, and this uncertain state of mind didn’t last long. A few weeks later, there was again my inner voice, which started popping up and telling me that I needed to go my way, do the things I decided to want to do, and to be working on my own business.

I started digging deeper, listening to all ideas which crossed my mind. I would have needed a person, who helped me to sort out my ideas and to set up a proper business idea and strategy.

Unfortunately, I had already spent a huge sum on a business coaching program, where my mentors had taught me a lot of methods and strategies, which I had implemented as well as I could. But an important puzzle piece was still missing.

I didn’t have the right mindset.

Do you know this situation? Have you already tried a lot of different things, but you didn’t succeed? So, stay with me! I might help you.

All changed when I started working on my mindset. And yes, I needed a coach, and he helped me to change from being uncertain into having certainty.

Suddenly, I could recognize how these feelings of not being good enough have been hindering me all my life to go forward. I often dared to do some good steps. For example, I overcame my self-doubts and finally published my first children’s book. But then, I started doubting again about my mission in this life.

Does this resonate with you?

So, how did I change my mindset? My coach’s method helped me to change my state of mind, not only once a week, but always when I need it: daily, hourly, and in any situation. By repeating over and over again the sentences I’ve chosen to make me feel good, I suddenly started believing it.

Does this sound too easy to you?

I understand very well. That has always been my problem, too. If something sounded too easy, it felt suspicious to me, and I didn’t follow it anymore.

Another important point in changing your mindset is to accept that it needs constant repetition. I always gave up too early. I went to a seminar and felt great after it, but I didn’t keep up with the things I learned there.

Today, I feel stronger than ever. I’m so grateful that I didn’t give up my dream of coaching others. It feels so immensely good to help others to grow. But the most important thing for me is to help my clients to change their mindset and to get away from lifelong suffering and not feeling good enough. So, little by little, step by step, they start believing in themselves and in their dreams of building up their own business.

If you like to learn more, accelerate your process of changing your mindset, and gain certainty, get in touch with me or listen to my podcast “Living Without Fear”.

There is also my new Youtube series on “Finding Joy in Writing”.

The post Try again and again, and don’t give up first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Try again and again, and don’t give up appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

It is just amazing how it works. Writing is healing, growing, and becoming stronger than ever.

Have you experienced this as well? Or do you rather believe that this is not possible, or it doesn’t work with anybody? Let me explain it to you.

Without the Covid time, I wouldn’t have learned that much. This time pushed me to step out of my comfort zone and do a daily podcast for more than 30 days.

The podcast with the title of my upcoming book “Living Without Fear” gave me the possibility to think about my life and how I’ve learned to overcome fear and a huge amount of self-doubts.

For example, I suddenly realized why it has always been difficult for me to be in groups and feel comfortable. As I highly sensitive person, I would feel all the energy around me from the other people. Normally in a group, there are very different energies around, which would not match with each other.

I would notice this and be torn apart because I like harmony. I would be overwhelmed to feel all these different sensations and not be able to manage them and bring them together.

I always felt how some people were excited to be in this group and how others were bored or annoyed to be there. I was in between, and I was unable to connect with my own feelings. I was too busy with the feelings of all the others.

It has always been a nightmare to be in a group. In my twenties, I unconsciously started solving the challenge by identifying the negative thinking people and building a smaller group with them and by stepping out of the whole group.

This way, I surrounded myself with like-minded people and then, it was rather easy to build an anti-group to the big group, and by being against the big group, by feeling better than the others, I had a reason to be there.

This always worked well – for many, many years, until the moment I realized that I didn’t want to be any more a negative thinking person, criticizing others and therefore feeling better than the others. This latter thing I luckily learned was a false belief because I realized as well that the negative thinking always led me to criticize myself in the end, and this meant a supplementary amount of suffering as well.

Nowadays, it isn’t easy for me to be in a group, but I know the reason and I always try to concentrate on myself as best as I can. For a certain amount of time, for a few hours, this works for me, but for half a day and more, either it makes me feel exhausted or I tend to get into a nervous state of mind, where I start talking and interacting with people, but be aware that I try to please others and that I’m not myself anymore.

Does this resonate with you?

When I was writing and speaking my podcast’s episode with the title “The Others”, I became aware of those patterns and I also realized why I got them.

Do you want to hear, how I phrased it?

“Some time ago, I noticed that I am like a musical instrument that always tries to get tuned to the right sound of the others. Whenever I went to a meeting or to an event, I turned on all my sensors to catch the mood or the vibrations of the other people in the room or just sitting beside me and I completely forgot myself. I always felt great when I met like-minded people and I could share my thoughts and beliefs.

When I met people, who were rather different than me, who showed me that they wouldn’t appreciate me being like I was, I suffered a lot.

Even when I seemed rather certain about myself, the presence of that kind of people got me in a state of mind with a lot of self-doubts in no time.

I always asked myself how this could happen in such a short time. I realized that already as a child I needed to focus on my parents and that was the reason why I couldn’t learn to focus on myself.

It took me so long to see how it helps so much when I turn on all my sensors onto myself first. Then, I feel what I need right at the moment. Perhaps, I need to have a few minutes or even only a few seconds just on my own without speaking, totally concentrating on myself.

After this, I may decide to reach out to the others around me and offer them my awareness.”

How do you cope with these kinds of situations?

Do you write down your thoughts to get a clearer mind?

Do you have a journal that you used a long time ago and that sleeps in a cupboard somewhere?

How about taking it out and starting to write again?

Or how about buying an empty book and filling it with your thoughts?

If you like to listen to the episode “The Others” I was mentioning before or to another one of my almost 40 episodes, go to my YouTube Channel or download the free App Podcasters in the App Store, Google Play or listen on Spotify, Google Podcasts or Apple Podcasts or click here:

PS. If you like to get more input on how to change your mindset, subscribe to my weekly newsletter:

The post Writing is Growing first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Writing is Growing appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Have you ever thought about writing your book and your own story? I guess, you have. But then you gave up this idea again because self-doubts started popping up. Am I good enough in writing? At school, your teacher told you that you are not good at grammar or writing an essay.

But an inner voice has been telling you again and again, that you’d wish to write your book. Maybe, you’ve started already. You’ve been writing a few pages. While re-reading what you have written, you told yourself that this won’t go anywhere. There are better writers than you.

I know exactly what you might feel. I always wanted to write my book. I studied literature, I worked as a journalist and I always shut down my idea of writing a book. I didn’t feel good enough.

Do what you like

Joining a business coaching program, I was told to do what I like the most and turn it into a business. I didn’t believe my coaches at first. I was mistrusting. But I tried: I published my first children’s book because I thought with a children’s book I wouldn’t put myself too much in a window and I wouldn’t be judged as hard as with a book written for adults. It still took me a lot of courage, and I felt rather uncertain. Fortunately, I had success with my first book. This gave me the idea to help others with children’s books. I started my business with this.

The idea of writing my own story was still there. Should I dare to write it now? I was struggling a lot with the idea. But then, I jumped in very icy water. I created the book cover of my book and posted it on all my social media channels, saying I will start writing my story now titled “Living Without Fear”.

Looking at your life and understanding you better

I started my healing process by writing my story. It was amazing how all the puzzle pieces of my life came together. You may not believe; how powerful this feels when you look at your life and you start understanding for the first time why things happened as they did.

While writing my book, I started coaching others to do the same. What an amazing journey began! Usually, when my clients start their book-writing journey with me (for the moment I have a lot of female clients), they don’t even know what her book will be covering. Although, there is always this indestructible wish to write a book.

Helping others by finding their own blocks

One client didn’t even know which topic her first book will be when she booked my coaching for six months. We didn’t know each other, but when we met for the first time and when I was asking her a lot of questions, we found her topic after two hours and some tears on her side because of the emotional part of speaking about her life story. What is even more amazing in her story: Being a Pilates instructor, she chooses to write about pull-ups – something this graceful woman isn’t able to do yet, although she has got a lot of muscles having worked as a police officer in her former life. She wants to find out why she is not able to do pull-ups properly, and while writing and doing a lot of research, she is figuring out what is blocking her physically and mentally and what could be the exact reason for others, who have the same challenge.

Another client, having tried to work in so many professions and jobs in her life, started writing her book in order to find out where her mission shall guide her. She knew that she wanted to inspire others and help them not doing the same mistakes as she did. Re-writing her story which is a rather emotional process helps her now to heal and forgive herself for having needed many rounds in her life to start the thing she always wished to do in her earlier childhood: Being on a stage, speaking and inspiring others – a thing she wasn’t allowed to do because she grew up in a family of hard-working people.

Daily motivation with the podcast

My own book “Living Without Fear” was nearly finished, when the time with the Covid Virus and the lockdown started worldwide. Fear became such a big topic that I decided to wait for the publication of my story for a few more months because I want to integrate some chapters about this special time with Covid-19.

During this time, I started writing texts for my daily podcast on the same topic “Living Without Fear” including topics like self-worth, not feeling good enough, gratitude, or letting go, and I was very touched by the feedback from Indians listening to my daily episodes in their severe lockdown in their four walls and telling me that my positive thoughts gave them the motivation to stay alive.

I feel very grateful for bringing light into others’ lives, and for my clients helping heal and fulfill their life dreams.

If you want to get started with writing but you’re still afraid, check out my special Writing Program “Believe You Can Write” here:

The post Writing is Healing first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Writing is Healing appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Living without fear: Is this possible?

Some say, it is not.

But I think, it is possible. How? I’ll explain.

But first, I’d like to talk about the podcast series with this title I have started a few days ago.

In Switzerland, we experienced now three weeks of lockdown, which is nothing compared to Italy where it started many weeks before.

During these three weeks, I kept on doing my daily yoga practice, my meditation with Deepak Chopra and my gratitude posts on Instagram.

But what I missed, was a daily and freshly made inspirational talk, until JT Foxx (World’s #1 Wealth and Business Coach and Real Estate Investor from the US) started his program with powerful webinars, interesting life coaching sessions, daily podcasts and a new platform called Millionaire Flix, where he gives access to all his teachings and talks.

You may not like JT Foxx. I understand very well. But what I loved and what I find so helpful is that someone shows up every day, talks about the actual situation and brings great people to his talks, who experienced a lot of crisis before and who explain their point of view.

I know, you would say now: Deepak Chopra and JT Foxx? How on earth can you bring them together?

But let me explain.

They belong both to my personal universe.

Deepak gives me the spiritual guidance since many months now, and JT Foxx reminds me of my time as a journalist, where I always wanted to have the big picture about things going on. That is why today, it is so interesting for me to listen to JT and to his personal coaches, because they try to analyze the situation daily. They discuss as well about how differently the countries are reacting to the situation with the Corona virus and how the world will be affected after the crisis.

JT Foxx gave me the idea of this podcast and an easy technique to broadcast my message. A beautiful friend and photographer, Reham Fathy, encouraged me to take action. Thanks a lot!

Every morning, I produce now a new episode of a few minutes, available on different platforms like the free app Anchor, Spotify, Google Podcasts, RadioPublic and Breaker (see links below) or here:

Now, why did I choose this topic: living without fear?

Fear is my topic since ever. My whole life, I worked so hard to get rid of fear and pain.

During the last few years, I found great coaches, who helped me to overcome this fear.

My life got so much easier, with so much less pain and suffering.

A hand reading with the amazing Brent Bruning gave me the ultimate courage to step out of my comfort zone and start writing my story and my book I always wanted to write.

The title for this book was clear: Living without fear. Besides, before I really started, I even published in November 2019 my book cover on Facebook to show that I will write and publish it in 2020.

In my book, I will share what I’m already sharing now in little pieces on my daily podcast.

Why is it possible to live without fear?

How can I gain certainty with myself? How can I survive the countrywide lockdown and eventual quarantine by structuring my days? How can I feel comfortable or even great although missing so many things?

My mission is to give away a very simple thought every day, which can be integrated into one’s day and can be remembered in very difficult moments during the day.

I hope that many people can listen to my podcast and take these little ideas into their day in order to suffer less.  

I know how it is: suffering. I suffered so much.

Living without fear, pain and suffering is such a relief.

Please share the links to my podcast with people, who you think need it.

Thank you so much for help.

LIVING WITHOUT FEAR is available here:

Website: www.anchor.fm/esther-buerki

Anchor (free app available on App store or Google Play): LIVING WITHOUT FEAR von Esther Buerki

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0yBM8rNjixc1xBxaexZ688

Google Play or Google Podcasts (app for Android)

RadioPublic: https://radiopublic.com/living-without-fear-69P9z1

Breaker: https://www.breaker.audio/living-without-fear

PocketCasts: https://pca.st/4takw24d

Follow me on Bloglovin!

The post Living without fear first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Living without fear appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

It has been an Indian woman living in Switzerland, who introduced me to Deepak Chopra’s meditation circle, half a year ago.

Since then, I’m doing my 20 minutes of guided meditation every day – a thing, which I dreamt at least 20 years of, but which I never succeeded in.

Why? I got so much distracted every time, distracted by my own thoughts. Whenever I tried to sit still and concentrate on my breath, it took me less than a minute and my ‘radio’ in my head started its show.

I call it ‘radio’ – these tons of thoughts running one after the other, starting with my daily program, what I have to do, what I should not do, what I missed to do the day before, then thinking of my challenges with my sons or people around me, and ending by the thought that I feel ashamed that I wasn’t able once more to concentrate on my breath without thinking a lot of other things.

How many times did I try to stop this ‘radio’ in my head and pushed the reset button to re-start meditating?

Until half a year, I was convinced that meditation is something for other people but not for me.

Deepak Chopra, an Indian-born American author and inspirational speaker, helped me to get silent inside.

For sure, it isn’t working all the time. Some days are still hard for me to be concentrated on Deepak’s words. But the soft music at the background and his mantra for every day helps me as well to breathe slowly and deeply and relax.

My first 21-day-meditation experience with him was centered on abundance, abundance in every sense of life, love, health, wealth, etc. There, I discovered GRATITUDE.

For sure, I knew what gratitude was and I had often felt it in my life before. But, concentrating on gratitude for every day I’m living, breathing, thinking… this was something totally new for me.

I don’t know when I had the idea to create a gratitude post on Instagram every day. But I don’t regret it a single moment. I’m even looking forward to posting a gratitude picture and a small sentence every single day. It belongs now to my daily ritual right after the meditation or, if I don’t have the time then, during the day.

Some of my friends started telling me that they love and enjoy seeing my gratitude posts every day, which fills me even with more gratitude.

Since I started meditating, my mindset shifted.

I grew up in a religious family. My parents, my younger brother and I went to church every Sunday, and we followed totally this big church community. I started going to the children Sunday school, when I was six or seven years old and I participated in all the church activities until I left Switzerland at the age of 20. The year in Paris gave me the courage to leave this community and to forget about religion and God and to go my way with Freudian psychology.

37 years after this, Deepak’s meditation brought me back to my spiritual side, but not anymore as rigid as it has been when I was a teenager.

I don’t believe in God. No, I don’t want to be dependent again.

I didn’t start to become religious again and reading the bible every day as I tried in my puberty years. But I started believing in something, which is bigger than me and which has a bigger plan than just mankind. You may call it ‘universe’ or something else. It doesn’t matter, which name one puts on it.

My mindset shifted though. I feel relieved. This relieve comes from the thought that I don’t have to feel responsible for all my actions and my being. I can let it go, and by ‘it’ I mean this huge package of responsibility.

I have replaced it by trust; trusting in myself, that I will be doing the right things, that I’m perfect as I am, that everything will be okay; and trusting in something bigger than me, which will be guiding me.

What a change after letting gratitude and trust coming into my life.

I’m extremely grateful for this. You cannot believe, what this means if you didn’t experience the same.

Have a look at my Instagram account (esther_buerki) and send me a message, if you feel like it. I’m looking forward meeting you.

The post Gratitude – my new Instagram journey first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

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The post Encouraging people to write their books first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Encouraging people to write their books appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Publishing a book is like being pregnant and giving birth to a child. “Leonard and Loulou”, my first children’s book, is like a child who is taking me on a journey I never thought it would exist.

I had sent the German manuscript to several publishing houses in Switzerland, and guess, nobody wanted to take it. I was sad at the time I got these answers. Today, I am happy that it worked out for me like that.

End of October 2017, I decided to put the book on the Swiss crowd founding platform called wemakeit to raise some money to print the book in Switzerland. And I was so excited to see how the money came in because 34 of my dear friends decided to support me. Thanks so much again.

“3000 Swiss Francs should do it to print some hundred of copies of my book”, I thought. To find a printing office took me a long time. I asked at least 10 printing offices to get an offer. I always wanted to have a nice hard cover with a solid binding because the book should be resistant to a lot of hands to be touched by and to get handed over to the next generation.  How I love my children’s books, which I looked at as a child and I could look at again with my two boys now!

As a multicultural being, having studied French, English and German, I wanted to start with the book in three languages. Again, my friends are so wonderful. They translated the story into English (Marlyse Treichler) and French (Jacques Roch, the father of my two boys), and another friend (Cornelia Schmidt), who has her own translation office (I can give you her address because she’s got no website), lectured it. Thanks a lot to you all!

The very beautiful layout was made up by my neighbor, Adrian Ochsner and Printed Matter. Thanks, Adrian!  You may ask him for editing your book.  But at the moment, he loves doing some big construction works, he is driving construction machines and will be having time for graphic design again in about one year. That’s what he told me when he was devotedly repairing his newly-bought old tractor the other day.

Last but not least, also many thanks to my friend Kiril Charov (Swiss-Bulgarian doctor and artist) who found the great Bulgarian illustrator Teodora Dimitrova. She invented the main characters, my boy Léonard and our cat Loulou according to the pictures she got from us. Thanks to her, the book has been published. Before, Kiril had found another illustrator who didn’t fit at all to the story, and I nearly stopped my project to publish the story because I couldn’t imagine the book with other illustrations than they are now.

And the picture shows the wonderful action launched by my friend Dave Hertig (the big Swiss expert for Content Marketing Services) when he interviewed me in Zurich at his event, and half of the participants wanted to have my book.

You can order “Leonard and Loulou” as a hard copy by sending me an e-mail or you can buy it as an eBook at Amazon or iBooks. My latest and craziest idea is to bring the book into the Chinese market. Chinese people are very fond of Heidi and a lot of Swiss products. And I already see “Leonard and Loulou” in front of my inner eyes in Chinese. I let you know when this idea will be starting to fly.

The post My first children’s book is born first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

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