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 was pitch dark in the room and the middle of the night. I was lying in my wooden crib. I was probably three years old.

“Mama”, I called out, “Mama…”.

I was afraid. I was afraid of the dark, of being alone.

“Mama!”

Nobody came.

I could barely recognize a cupboard and the curtains in front of the window. There was no light.

There was nobody who comforted me.

“You cried a lot at night,” my mother told me years later. “But I could not always get up. I let you cry, and at some point, you stopped. When you were bigger, you climbed over the crib and wanted to sleep in our bed. But this did not work. I couldn’t sleep well.”

I know. I also remember climbing over the crib with all my strength with my short legs. I trudged to the door in my pajama, I could barely press down the door latch, I trudged along the corridor and opened the door to my parent’s room. I loved the smell of my mum’s bedsheets. I loved to feel her warm body. It felt safe.

I remember. She always carried me back into my small, dark room with the curtains and the cupboard.

For many decades, I did not understand my mother, why she acted this way.

I was so angry at her for not being able to give me the warmth and love I so badly wished to receive.

For years, I sat with psychotherapists, hours and hours, I lay on my psychoanalyst’s couch, and I cried a lot, tears of despair, of hopelessness, and of being lost in this world.

With the help of professionals, I analyzed myself, my mum, my dad. I tried to understand my mother. Why couldn’t she give me more love? I tried to understand my father. Why couldn’t he tell me that he loves me, that I’m enough?

Again, and again, I slipped off into the bottomless depths. If there had been a simple method to put an end to my life, I would have done it. I thought about it for the first time when I was 16, and I thought about it many years until I finally found the key to my happiness only a few years ago. But this will be another story at some other time.

Let’s come back to this little girl with her beautiful long blond hair and blue eyes. She was perfect. But she didn’t feel it. Her parents told her the opposite.

It was a Sunday afternoon. We mostly went for a walk after lunch. My mother wanted me to have my long hair to be either plaited or tied together or on top of my head. That Sunday, I wanted to be different. I don’t know what brought me to this thought. Did it happen at the church? Did someone mention my beautiful hair and suggest to me to keep it open? I don’t remember. But I remember I fought this fight with my mother to go for a walk with my hair open.

“You look like a witch”, my mum said, defeated.

I heard how she put myself down. But my pride to have won the game was bigger. I felt so different walking on the streets with my hair open. I was convinced that everybody would notice it.

My father did and he had his camera with him.

Unfortunately, the picture got lost, but I see it very vividly in front of my eyes. I sat there on a tree with my open hair – like a princess.

When we came home, I started looking at myself with my mum’s eyes. I saw my long, very fine hair hanging down my head in long strands and I didn’t think it looked so great anymore.

The way I looked at myself for many years was the way my parents saw me. I was far away from perfect; I wasn’t even enough.

It took me so long until I finally understood that my parents would look at themselves the same way, feeling not being enough or good enough. They are now in their nineties, and I get the impression that they haven’t changed much, and they would not always feel good about themselves which is sad.

Today, I recognize as well that my parents did the best they ever could do for me. They gave all. I’m grateful for this although it has been a very painful story for me for many years.

So, this was a small part of my story.

How about your story? Have you been struggling similarly?

Would you like to write your story?

Writing helps to heal wounds from the past. My clients experienced it.

Here is a special checklist I created for you to encourage you to do the same.

PS. Join my free Facebook Group “Believe You Can Write” and listen to my podcast “Living Without Fear” where other women tell how they overcame their struggles.

The post Writing My Childhood Story first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Writing My Childhood Story 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.

Has writing been a difficult thing for you in your past life?

You must have had other strategies to get rid of your challenging feelings and sorrows.

My great support in difficult times has always been my journal and my writing. Whenever I felt I couldn’t cope with situations or people, whenever I had difficulties in solving my problems, I started writing.

Putting into words what was bothering me helped me a lot.

Maybe you had people around you who supported you and who listened to you when you felt depressed or desperate.

I realize that I have often been on my own. I didn’t feel understood by others. That was the reason why my journal was at my side and listened to me without judging or interrupting me.

Maybe, I was more afraid of not being understood by others that I decided not to talk and write to my best friend, my diary.

In my early twenties, I started seeing a psychotherapist, because my best friend recommended me to do so. She had started studying psychology and as she was convinced that psychotherapy could help me, I tried it out.

I was very happy I could share my thoughts with my psychotherapist for an hour per week or even two weeks. But during the rest of the time, I was again on my own and as I didn’t always want to bother my best friend to speak always about the same challenges, I spent more time than ever in company with my diary.

My diary knew all about me. Isn’t this amazing?

It knew all about my relationships, for example, all about my adventurous life in Connecticut in America, when I was one of 200 counselors in a creative work camp for 500 children from the high society of New York. It has been my awakening as a shy woman, who didn’t dare to get too close to the other sex and who experienced for the first time what great love and the feeling of meeting a soulmate meant. I didn’t have anybody to talk to about all these overwhelming feelings which kept me up at night or which bothered me during my free time. Phone calls from the States to Switzerland cost a fortune at that time and writing letters to my best friend meant that I would get her answer in about two weeks or later. What other solution was there than writing?

Today, we can quickly write a WhatsApp message and our best friend is at our side when we need her or him. What a big difference!

But maybe, you’re in a difficult situation and you don’t want to talk about it with your friends.

Why don’t you try to start writing down what is going on in your mind every morning or every evening?

At the end of the day, you might write down all that you are grateful for. Gratitude is a beautiful key to happiness.

In the morning, you might put together all your goals for the day or all the amazing things you would like to attract into your day. Or it might help you write down some affirmations: how you’d like to be and see yourself, for example, I’m freaking amazing, I’m unstoppable. Maybe, you’d like to write down one of your limiting beliefs and transform it into something positive: For example, it’s difficult for me to earn the money I need for my children and myself, and change this into all the money I need for my children and myself will be abundantly flowing into my life.

It’s incredible how much power words have and how even more powerful they become when written down. Try it out!

PS. If you like to start writing, try out my special Writing Challenge that focuses on changing your mindset:

PPS. If you like to get more input on how to shift your mind, sign up for my weekly newsletter here.

PPPS: Click here to follow my blog on:

The post Writing To My Best Friend: My Diary first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Writing To My Best Friend: My Diary 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.

Have you ever dreamt of being published?

When I was a teenager, I dreamt of writing stories like Frederica de Cesco, a Swiss author known for more than 50 books for teenagers and more than 15 books for adults. She is the reason as well that many years later, I decided to travel to India totally on my own.

Do you have similar souvenirs?

Being a teenager, I imagined how it would be to write my books and get published. When I saw my name for the first time at the beginning of an article in a Swiss newspaper, it felt great, and it felt like dreaming a bit.

Do you also have dreams, and have you ever experienced that suddenly part of them do become real?

I was so proud of my first article. I made it into a newspaper. This was a good start. I was convinced, there will be more for me to come.

I didn’t expect my father’s answer and I didn’t count on my lack of self-confidence. “Everybody can do this”, was his answer to my boyfriend, when he asked my father how he felt about his daughter. I was devastated, because my father didn’t feel proud of my article.

This is a small part of my very personal story, and this is also the reason why it took me so long to get back to my dreams of my teenager time.

For many years, I didn’t have enough people around me who told me to do what I really liked to do, or I didn’t have enough courage to write my own texts and search for possibilities to get published.

I needed mentors.

Do you have a mentor?

If not, I highly recommend to you to get you one, because it takes so much time to figure out what your mission in this life is, if you do it on your own and if you don’t have people in your network, who encourage you to follow your heart and go for your dreams. A mentor helps you to accelerate your process immensely. You cannot believe this, if you haven’t tried it out yourself.

If you believe that you don’t have enough money to pay a mentor, it’s a totally wrong perception. If you save money on a mentor, you lose a lot of money and a huge amount of valuable time in your life and in your business.

So, if you dream as well of getting published, but you feel afraid of taking action to find a possibility, don’t give up, because this is the worst thing you can do.

I know what you might think now.

A lot of people always keep on repeating this: Keep going, don’t give up.

I always believed that this doesn’t work with me until I really kept on going and I became unstoppable.

Besides, do you know Unstoppable Tracy, the great motivational speaker and athlete, born as a 4-way amputee? I came across her a few months ago, when she was interviewed by another famous motivational speaker Les Brown on Facebook.

Whenever I feel overwhelmed or I doubt whether I’m able to do something, I have to think of Unstoppable Tracy. What she realizes in life – with so much positivity and mental strength – is just mind-blowing.

So, I always ask myself: Why shouldn’t I be able to leave my comfort zone, if someone without two legs and two hands is able to climb in the Himalayan mountains?

If you wish to reach a goal such as getting published, don’t give up your dream. There might be a chance coming sooner than you dreamt of. The next year could be your year of seeing your picture, your name, and your text published in an international magazine.

Watch out for more news to come in this blog, or on my social media channels.

PS. If you like to get started with writing but you’re still afraid, sign in for my special Writing Challenge here:

Photo credits to Dave Hertig.

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The post Getting published first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Getting published appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Wouldn’t it be nice to find joy in writing?

I remember I was sitting in school at the back in the corner close to the windows and I was trying so hard to write a nice essay for my German teacher. I didn’t succeed.

Does this resonate with you?

My teacher was never happy with what I wrote. She was criticizing me that I didn’t put a personal touch into my essay. I used to stick too much to general statements.

No wonder, I was so afraid of opening up and showing what I was thinking.

Writing has a lot to do with mindset. Self-doubts and fear are the biggest blocks in writing.

Why?

When I got the chance to write my first article for one of the biggest Swiss Newspaper, “Die Neue Zürcher Zeitung”, I was so afraid of failure. As I had studied French literature, I received a French detective story to write a review about it and the author. It took my days, weeks, probably a whole month to finish this article. I always re-wrote it.

When I sent it to the editor, I was so surprised that she didn’t answer me, but just published the article, without changing much. What a surprise! But I felt so miserable, because I didn’t want to spend again weeks on writing one article. I wanted to be more effective.

The thing was that with every article, I got more self-confident. And that was exactly what I needed to be able to write apace. And I also discovered joy in writing for the first time in my life.

My dream and also my goal were to get a job as an editor at a daily newspaper. But these jobs were rather rare and the journalists, who got a job at the largest newspapers, stayed for their lifetime. I figured out that I had to work very hard. I applied for an internship at all Swiss German newspapers. Luckily, I got a chance at two different newspapers for three months. And this was my breakthrough in writing.

Writing one or even two big articles a day helped me to get into the flow.

And the most important thing I learnt was to write the whole story without reading back and editing. Once, I had all written to the end, I started editing.

This is also the method I always teach my book writing clients.

If you start writing and you read back, your inner critical voice pops up. You start criticizing your sentences. You re-edit, you fix three sentences, you add one or two and you never come to an end.

Does this sound familiar to you?

Whenever you have to write something, you remember your last writing experience and how big your suffering has been. That’s why it never changes. You already start with your negative state of mind, and it’s so logical that your mindset is always blocking you from having fun and feeling joy when writing.

Can you imagine that I feel when someone wrote something while staying in a flow or the way I described it before? You may not believe it, but I can. and I beg that my German teacher definitely did as well, when she was correcting my essays. I remember I was maybe writing five sentences and deleting three and I never succeeded in filling more than one and a half pages in two hours.

Although, I loved reading since I was a child. I was about ten years old and I had almost read all the books from my library except the special detective stories for boys. When I was asking my school librarian, what else she would recommend to me, she realized as well that there were not many books left, and she told me to ask my parents to take me to the big library in town.

Do you have similar memories?

My first writing client was my younger boy, now 14 years old. He didn’t like reading and writing at all, when he was younger. Whenever he had to write a summary for school, he was suffering so much, and myself as well sitting at his side. I tried different techniques with him.

I asked him to tell me the story before he started it putting into words. This helped already a bit.

Then, we worked on getting into the flow. What he used to do, was to write one sentence and then read again from the top. He spent hours on writing half a page. I was desperate. I told him not to read what he had written already. He wouldn’t believe me at the beginning. Slowly, but steadily, he got the point. I was so happy.

Last year, I realized what I have been able to teach him. Every Thursday, he had to write a short summary of his week for his teacher, and he allowed me to read it as well. There, I found long and funny reflections about his school week put together in a nice and definitely entertaining manner. I was so proud of him. He himself loved to write it and his teacher loved to read it as she told him.

So, if you were convinced that the joy of writing is something you were born with or it needs a special talent, I could help you in discovering the opposite.

Watch my video series on YouTube about how my writing journey started with a diary and how I overcame my self-doubts and how I published my first children’s book.

If you always dreamt of writing amazing texts or even your book, stick to it. You will get there, too. Believe me!

PS. If you like to get started with writing but you’re still afraid, sign in for my special Writing Course “Believe You Can Write”:

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The post Finding Joy in Writing first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Finding Joy in Writing 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.