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.

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.

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

The other day, we’re talking about travelling to India again. Big Boy was rather excited about the idea, Little Boy wasn’t. So, we started discussing, we three, about the good and bad things about spending our vacation in a totally different country than Switzerland.

Little Boy told us: “I’d be coming under the condition that we won’t sleep again in this cottage hotel with a lot of spiders, cockroaches and worms which were eating the wooden walls at night and disturbing me in my sleep. I want to have the nice hotel room we had when we went to India the first time.” This was a clear statement. Big Boy reacted in a way I wouldn’t have expected: “Oh, no”, he said, “I loved our cottage in this beautiful garden with a lot of nice plants and flowers, and I loved it because it was so simple.”

Well, two boys, two different views… I tried the financial aspect: “The first time, we had more money and the third time, we tried to keep the budget low. And for the price of one night in the nice hotel room, we could sleep ten nights in the bamboo cottage. What do you thing about this?”

Little Boy answered, surprisingly different than we expected: “I have enough money on my bank account to pay one night or two in the nice hotel or if you want one week.” This was typically Little Boy and very generous.

We kept on discussing a while, but couldn’t find a solution fitting to every one’s needs of us three.

I tried a different approach: “How about the flight”, I asked the two boys. “Cheap flight, long travelling time and at least two stopovers? Or an expensive flight with Emirates, but quick and only one stopover.”

“Emirates….! Definitely”, cried Big and Little Boy. “We want to watch again all the movies like the first time. Not like last time. The service wasn’t nice and the movie program was rather poor.”

Okay, okay… I said: “Our budget is limited. Emirates would cost us more than 1500 Swiss Francs on the top of the cheap flight. Do you want to spend this money for just the movie program”, I asked.

Big and Little Boy started to evaluate what makes more sense: cheap flight, expensive hotel or expensive flight and cheap hotel. And they tried to calculate which solution would be more suitable for my finances.

Little Boy tried to reduce costs by a cheap flight, in order to get rid of the bothering insects. Big Boy tried to convince me of a comfortable and short flight, in order to prevent me from jetlag and exhaustion. That was very sweet by him. But I understood that he didn’t want to renounce to the entertainment program.

At the end of the meal, I was proud of our reasonable conversation with my 10 and 12 years old boys, but I proposed to postpone any decision and get back to it another time.

I’ll let you know how and when we’ll be finding the solution for our next trip to India.

The post Different views first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Different views appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Grounded

I didn’t like being barefoot when I was a child. I had my woolen socks, knitted by my grandmother, and they definitely were my protection against too much life and summer action.

I loved spending my free afternoons on my bed reading stories about a courageous woman in Lhasa or an intelligent French lady having an unhappy love affair.

It was in India that I dared walking nearly barefoot during five weeks. I only had my flip-flops.

The first time in my life, I felt grounded by my bare feet.

Certain feelings take a long time to grow.

The post Grounded first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Grounded appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Some want to have a nice dinner for their birthday; some want to go shopping, and this boy wanted to go swimming in a pool.

Swimming pools and India don’t really belong together. But for little boy’s birthday wish, mothers have to make possible everything, even in India.

Of course, our little green paradise with our small hut didn’t help in this situation. As we hadn’t been in the middle of nowhere in India, a few hotels with pool standard were around.

And so, we sneaked in a well-known hotel where we had celebrated New Year’s two years before. We pretended being residents, and swoops… we jumped into the pool.

It was hard to get little boy out of the water. He’s a fish and uses to play for hours being a real fish.

The offer of having some sweets with his older brother in his favorite restaurant took his pool session to an end. Thank Goddess Sweets!

The post Birthday wish first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Birthday wish appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

“Mom, where did you put my swimming suit? Where did you put my wooden gun and my fishing net?”

Every half a day, I’m looking for something I put away a few days ago or more.

Two teenagers drop a lot of items at places where they’re not meant to be. And one has to be consistent as the boss of the house.

Living two weeks in this tiny hut in South India is a real salvation for a mother. First, there isn’t a lot of space to spread out things; and second, the number of belongings for the vacation is extremely reduced to the one at home.

I’d wish I could spend more weeks of the year with fewer items around my boys and me. I’m sure one could concentrate on more important things than looking for our belongings.

I admit it doesn’t have to be the monk style, but just a little bit more concentration on the essential of life.

The post Sweet VIP box first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Sweet VIP box appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

This is India, too. You won’t believe that this picture hasn’t been taken in London, Paris or Rom. And it wasn’t a five star hotel. It was a coffee shop in the quarter of the Tibetan colony in Delhi.

How come that this coffee shop knew what is modern art in serving things?

I don’t know. But I know that I don’t like to get the same things all over the world like cloths or coffee shops.

I like to drink my coffee or chai for example at Clafouti in Varkala in a mug, which has always another color or shape every day.

The variety makes my day, not the sameness. How about you?
 
 

The post Hot chocolates in Delhi first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Hot chocolates in Delhi appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Spending two days in an Indian train might be unimaginable for Swiss people, and this with two kids who like to move every minute.

But no worries! There is so much going on in such a train: So many different people getting in and out, so many sellers of various sweets, drinks or different curry, so many breakfasts, lunches, afternoon teas and dinners.

And there was plenty of time to just be together and have fun with our Tibetan friend.

The moment itself became important; and one forgot the many hours to still be on the train.

If I lived my days in Switzerland like this, I’d be less stressed by the exigence of life…

The post Enjoying the moment first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Enjoying the moment appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Returning from India we stopped for a few hours in Abu Dhabi. This airport is a melting pot, which I think is very enriching: you can find so many nationalities, so many ways of dressing and so many different faces.

My boys feel very comfortable in such a surrounding. And I hope they will be without prejudice facing other cultures in the future.

As a kid I got to know a few Germans in Germany close to the Swiss frontier. They spoke, dressed and behaved like me. This wasn’t rather foreign.

When I finished school, all I wanted to do was going abroad. I spent one year in Paris, some month in England and in the States. I always dreamt of living abroad.

But I am still in Switzerland. I don’t know why. Perhaps it is my task to show my boys how to travel to other countries and to open their minds for other cultures.

Maybe… and maybe we will be taking off all three together one day. Who knows?

The post Exciting life abroad first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Exciting life abroad appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

We didn’t have a lot of space in our friend’s kitchen because it was their living and sleeping room at the same time. But it felt extremely cozy and my boys loved it.

Nobody’s kitchen tasted better than Karma’s. Was it because the preparation and cooking took hours while we were talking, playing games, joking, laughing or singing?

We wouldn’t like to spend so much time on such a tiny space with our family. We’d very quickly get on our nerves.

It is wonderful with friends. You can choose them yourself and decide how much time you’d like to share with them.

And real friends don’t care either whether you live thousands of miles across the ocean. And they aren’t upset when you don’t call them every week.

The post Real friends first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Real friends appeared first on Swiss Made Story.