Wouldn’t it be great to go on holiday and not only come back with a healthier body and a more relaxed mind but also have figured out the way ahead, maybe found more clarity and even one’s purpose, or picked up some new strategies for increasing the number of smiles every day – long after you returned home ?

For years we have been searching for that perfect place to offer just that. We considered New Zealand, Cornwall in the UK, Vancouver and Victoria Island in Canada, California and those traditional holiday locations. And then we discovered a well-kept secret: a place that is not marketing itself like Dubai and is not well known like the Bahamas or Paris, yet provides the most stunning natural beauty combined with history & castles and abounding outdoor opportunities: Schwangau with Neuschwanstein Castle in the Bavarian Alps/ German. You must check it out. Have a first look here: The Perfect Christmas Holiday

or watch this You Tube video: Village of the King’s Castles

With two experienced professional certified coaches who chose to make  Schwangau by Neuschwanstein castle their home, we can tailor your holiday to move you forward on the important questions in your life while relaxing and having fun outdoor or indoor.  Ask us to make your trip magical!

Silence is so much more powerful than noise or talking – in so many ways. You can’t use it though, unless you feel comfortable with silence. Most people don’t.

You may remember the “awkward” silence in a conversation you had and remember how fast one of you “covered’ it with saying something, anything, …just so it wouldn’t feel so awkward. Silence is hard to stand, hard to maintain….unless you decide to focus on it, decide to become comfortable with it and train yourself in staying silent. Why ?

In conversation, silence encourages your counterpart to keep talking, to deepen his/her statements, to reveal more of the motives behind his/her earlier sentences. It signals that you are listening and ready to hear more. Silence provides space for depth and encourages exploration. It creates deeper relationships, relationships in which it is ok to just BE together.

Staying silent on your own is another matter. Most of the time noise and clutter dominate our lives. As a result we feel constantly busy. Some of us have grown so used to feeling busy that they get confused when they are not. They instinctively fill any empty slot with a new task, cramming more things into their fast noisy lives. The result is that you can’t see the wood for the trees. You are IN your life, driven by immediate requirements, emergencies, commitments. What you miss is seeing ONTO your life. Leaving the day-to-day behind and reflecting upon what’s going on for you from a perspective far above your daily actions.

In fact, being silent for a while and stopping the mad routine of DOING DOING DOING, is the only way to reflect about BEING, about who you are in this life and more importantly about who you are still becoming. This is where I have been.

I have to say that I was shocked myself how easily one gets sucked up into the DOING-TRAP, working off to-do lists, completing task after task (our move, the establishment of the international coaching practice in both Dubai and Germany) and even feeling accomplished in the process of it.

And then, one day I woke up and realized I was not walking and enjoying my life but running it, sprinting the last months along. Why ? There is no rush, there is no point in arriving. The whole point about living a happy life is about enjoying the journey and regularly correcting the course of the journey by reflecting upon one’s life. This is what I took my time of silence for in the past week, reflecting – just being still and listening, just writing down what I heard, just viewing my life from a “mountain” – is what I have been doing in the past weeks.

I have come to some great new insights and visions for my next life phase. I feel refreshed and full of energy to enjoy the next stretch of the journey. I have made a commitment to spend regular time in silence - treating myself to this pleasure on a weekly basis. How about you ? When do you harness the power of silence ?

I just came across some great quotes about enthuiasm. This one from Samule Ullmann, I absolutely love:

“Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”

Think about it. Isn’t that so deep and so true ?

Ralph Waldo Emerson also commented on enthusiasm: ” Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is due to the triumph of enthusiasm”

What are you enthusiastic about ?

What were your ideals when you were younger ?

Remember a time when you were totally enthusiastic last ? What was it about ? Who was it with ?

How could you get enthusiasm back into your life ? How could you be enthusiastic more often ?

The million dollar question is: How to find my passion ? And my simple answer is: CREATE it ! Yes, this is no mistake. You don’t need to search for it, discover it or find it. Your passion, purpose, reason for being or life contribution can actually be created ! Sure, you will need to spend a bit of work on knowing and understanding yourself. But from there PASSION IS A CHOICE (just like happiness is a choice) ! All you need to do, is to decide that you WANT to live your passion, that it matters to you.

There are lots of techniques to get you in touch with what brings you alive and what you feel passionate about. In my workshop “Discover Your Life Purpose & Love Your Life” I use the major one’s. But you could start with taking 15 minutes for yourself answering 3 simple questions:

“What do I love doing (even if I got no money for it) ?”
“If I could anything I wanted to do and money/time/family would be no issue, what would I do with my life ?”
” What did I use to enjoy as a child ?”

Answer each question with 10 lines at least. Don’t stop until you have filled all 10 lines. Then have a look at your answers. Anything you had lost touch with lately ? Anything that gets your hear beat faster ?

How could you get more of that into your life now ? What if you CHOSE AND DECIDED to put these passions into the centre of your life ? How would your life be different ?
What changes would you have to make ? And if you made them, what (or who) would you have to say “NO” to from now on ?

Now commit to ONE ACTION for the coming week that will have you live (one of) your passion(s). Then learn from it. Stay conscious about how you feel and what impact this one action has on you and those around you. Then decide to do it again until it becomes your life and who you are !

CHOOSE TO LIVE YOUR PASSION.

A poem from Celaleddin-i Rumi Mevlana

Passion makes the old medicine new:
Passion lops off the bough of weariness.
Passion is the elixir that renews:
how can there be weariness
when passion is present?
Oh, don’t sigh heavily from fatigue:
seek passion, seek passion, seek passion!

I have worked on this with numerous clients and this summer, when realizing my dream of moving to and coaching from our beautiful new location in the Alps, I have experienced the full blast of it myself.

To create the life you really want, you most likely need to break with the familiar, “break shells and bust out of boxes that may have become quite familiar and neatly decorated, lined with the soft illusion of safety”. This is likely to be painful. Staying where you are is certainly easier, yet the question is: does it make you happy ?

Once you have become clear about what really matters to you, what uniquely defines success for you, you are ready to take the jump, make the changes towards a life that is more aligned with who you are inside. At that moment you can garantuee, absolutely garantuee that your inner critic, that voice that says “don’t try”, “it won’t work”, “you are crazy, stay where you are”, “what if you won’t make enough money”, etc etc will shout out its objections loud and clear. People around you might join in, pointing out all the risks….all the risks whether real or just their own fears and worries.

It is very important for you to know, that it is inevitable that your inner voice will point out all your fears, most likely blown out of proportions. This doesn’t mean you are on the wrong path. The fact, that your inner critic presents those worries and counter arguments so strongly, is a sign that you are on the right path, the path to fulfillment, to becoming alive !
The way to handle those objections is not to give up and return to where you were, but to explore those worries “you will not make enough money and starve”, and cut them back to realistic size “well, I will earn less at first, but I will survive, won’t starve”. Or maybe you realize them as your parents’/grandpa’s/teacher’s old voice. Ask yourself, what life would be like if you it stayed as it is for the rest of your life. Would that be ok for you ?

Knowing that you can expect those objections to come up is 90% of the battle won, because you are prepared, ready to tackle them, rather then being tackled by them.

When we had decided to leave Dubai and move to our dream location in the alpine countryside (with no major industry nearby), we had our own inner critical voices as well as many parents and people around us pointing out the risks. We could have kept talking and day-dreaming about it and stayed where we were.
Having taken the jump, gone through restoring an old house this summer (work I had no idea how to do) and creating our new home and coaching base was the best thing we have ever done. We are living the outdoor life, climbing mountains, cycling along lakes and running through the fields. We spend loads of time together as a family and engage with our neighbours. And we are helping other people realize their unique definition of a fabulous life, coaching them from this magical place – mostly on the phone.

But, yes, moving along the road of fulfillment is a RADICAL act. It is not about not having fear, it is about keeping going despite the fears, knowing that what lies on the other side is worth it.

1. Change is going to happen

2. You can choose to try to fight it or adapt – or even better: be pro-active and create the change YOUR way !

3. Although you can’t stop things from changing, you can control how you respond/react to them

4. Everyone reacts to change differently

5. Often when a door closes, a new, “better” one opens – but you need to choose to see it !

Yesterday, I experienced a real life example of these principles. Listen to this:

I could not believe what I saw in the letter, but indeed, our landlord was telling us with 6 month’s notice that he was not going to renew the tenancy agreement for our villa beyond December. He was going to demolish our entire compound of 10 villas built only 4 years ago ! If you know Dubai, you know that it has become common practise to “re-develop” plots to increase the profits. It is also a way to kick-out tenants with the view to charge new tenants a multiple of the previously charged rent (rent increases to existing tenants are limited to 7% p.a.).
When we rented the villa 4 years ago, the rent was at the top end of the market, but with rents rising 30% p.a., I knew that villas like ours where now being let at double the price we were paying. Finding an affordable villa that was still near my daughter’s school (traffic in Dubai is terrible) could have become a nightmare for us … but instead, after the initial surprise about the notice, I just couldn’t help but smile….

We had spend the past 6 months trying to work out how we really wanted life to be for us, where we really wanted to live ourselves, where we would be able to do the things that deep inside us mattered most to us and had meaning and ….where we really wanted our daughter to grow up. And the result was, that we took the decision to move, move away from the stress, the city life and lack of nature in Dubai ! Yes, we had decided months ago to not only move locations but also scale down and simplify our life so that we could do more of the things that mattered to us, be the type of wife/husband, mother/father, friend/colleague etc we really wanted to be and create those events and experiences that we would be proud of in old age.

Yes, we were going to leave anyway !

I felt so relieved, and so happy. The little voices in our heads had surely tried to convince us to keep things as they were “Why bother changing ? It is so much work. Just stay and enjoy life. You have it good, don’t be ungrateful for what you have…” The little voices were trying to convince us to just stay one more year, earn some more money, just keep going one more year. But we had finally chosen not to listen to them and go anyway. We committed ourselves to a new place in beautiful nature, where we would be able to spend more time with each other and live on a lower budget. And it felt so right.

I was so glad that we had not waited for things around us to change, holding on to the hope that what we liked about Dubai would stay the same… I suddenly felt (rather than just knew) what it meant to be in control of your life …rather than being controlled by life’s events. We had created our own change, the change we really wanted, the change that was surely hard work, too, but had a clear direction for us and hence felt wonderful !

And the best of it all….I know how to repeat this !
If you spend the time to figure out what really matters to you, clarify your values and those of the loved one’s around you, you have a guiding light for your path ahead. You can initiate the change that is needed to make you live more aligned with what matters to you, to have more integrity. This is a choice and you have to be pro-active. But as a result, you will change your life – rather than your life changing you.

The time where wealth was measured in the currency of money is over ! The new currency for measuring “wealth” is called MEANING.

This line struck a cord with me and put into one sentence what I have sensed after coaching around 100 clients in the past years.

“Money simply doesn’t hold as much currency as leading a meaningful life. As a part of a worldwide trend towards a search for more meaningful lives, people are looking for more fun, family and friendship and less money and “things”. Where money was once the currency of a successful life, wealth is increasingly being measured in connection with sustainability and happiness.” says Judy Chapman, the author of the article.

Research all over the world supports this and Judy quotes an Australian study which shows that health, community and friends contribute more to people’s happiness than money or their financial situation.
From my own quantitative research in Dubai I know that Dubai lags a little bit behind this global trend: the majority of people still believe that more money will create more happiness for them (I guess that’s what many people come to Dubai for in the first place). The number of people searching for meaning, however, is ever increasing, also in Dubai.

So where does this shift from a money-centric society to a one that emphasizes meaning and happiness come from ?

Seemingly people are yearning for slowing down and creating more time for themselves. People want quality instead of quantity and significance instead of mere success. And they want to spend their money on enriching experiences that will make a difference and that gives their life meaning.

According to Dr. Clive Hamilton, one of the authors of “Affluenza – When Too Much is Never Enough” there is a rising trend in “downshifters”: people who make a conscious decision to accept a lower income and a lower level of consumption to pursue other life goals, such as more balance, more personal fulfillment and time with their families.

When asked about the change “downshifting” had on their lives, “downshifters” talked about improved health, more time with family and friends, more personal freedom and joy of living and many new opportunities they previously did not think existed. These changes are very similar to those my clients report when following their own meaningful path based on what uniquely matters to them (their values).

Judy Chapman’s article ends with a beautiful paragraph:
“As the 21st century unfolds, the question facing countries around the world is not how they can become more economically prosperous. Rather, it is about how we can build vibrant societies in which meaning and connection are not casualties but cornerstones. Make yourself part of that process!”

I share the longing for community, meaning and connection and that’s what brought to life the Develop & Grow Community, our group of exceptional people dedicated to supporting each other in growing into their full potential and their most aspirational selfs. Money is not on top of our list of values. Connection to others, giving back and making a difference is. That’s what meaning is for me.

My considerations were triggered by a friend of mine who has quit her full-time corporate career (with her husband following within the next weeks) and who is about to realize her dream life by moving to a different/new country and setting up their own business in what could be described “the middle of nowhere” or “the countryside” (please note that what a dream life is to YOU will be different by definition ! and replace her version in your mind with what a “dream life” would be for YOU).

My friend told me that people around her where passing comments such as “you are so courageous” to do what you are about to do. She could not understand at all why people would see her plans as “courageous” and explained to me that in her mind there was nothing courageous about doing what you love, and that, in fact, it was the easiest she could think of doing, because doing what you love is so effortless.

Her words triggered some deep contemplation on my part and for the first time I wondered whether it might indeed be more courageous or at least more risky to stay in a life that is not the way you want it. Usually people point out the all the (financial, emotional…) risks of leaving the “mainstream way of life”. But what if the risks and costs of staying in a mediocre life are even bigger ? And what are those risks and costs ? …the lack of excitement, …the lack of aliveness, …the lack of adventure ? I think the biggest risk is probably not to have fulfilled one’s potential, not to have even tried. To come to the end of one’ life and to find that one had not even tried might be the biggest pain of all.

Robin Sharma captures this beautifully in his quote:

“What fills our hearts with regret are not all the risks we took. Instead, what causes us to feel immense sadness is thinking about all the risks we didn’t take, all the opportunities we did not seize, all the things we did not do. Life is short and the years will slip away very quickly, like grains of sand passing through your fingers on a hot day on the beach. You were meant to shine and let your talents see the light of day. There is but one failure in life and that is the failure to try.”

So, I have found deep admiration for my friend’s perspective and I deeply wish that my own daughter will grow up with the same attitude that it is more courageous, and that there is more to lose by staying in a mediocre life than by realizing your dream and doing what you love. She will have all my support when she comes round to it.

If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being,
then I warn you that you’ll be unhappy for the rest of your life.

~ Abraham H Maslow (1908-1970) – Psychologist & Author ~

Related Article: How to be courageous ?

CHOICE #5: Don’t compare yourself to others people – set your own goals and standards.

Do you know the saying “A happy man is one who earns $100 more than his wife’s sister’s husband.” From childhood we have learned to measure our success by comparing ourselves to what others achieve. As a result, we never reach the point where we can finally relax. Remember the rat racer doesn’t enjoy the journey but hopes for happiness at the end, once he has achieved, accomplished …. With a whole society of rat racers, there is no time to ever relax or else “you fall behind”.
Your emotions are negatively impacted, too. When comparing yourself to others, you may feel resentment, jealousy, anger and unfairness. This is called relative deprivation and happens even to millionaires.

The solution is to consciously choose a different measurement system. Authentic happiness comes from setting yourself higher goals or standards, not from comparing yourself with others. Most people live as if there was some kind of finish line and panel of judges at the end of our lives, counting the awards, titles, wealth amassed and awarding us prizes for it. Sadly, most people only realize too late, that there is no such thing. When you come to the finish line of your life, nobody cares what you have accumulated in money, titles or awards. You are your own judge !

So the only way to enjoy your life is to become clear NOW what sort of life you would like to have had and who you would like to be remembered as. Then live and judge yourselves according to your own unique plan.
A happy life is one created by you, a unique creation that cannot be copied from someone else’s recipe.

CHOICE #6: Step off the hedonic treadmill. Money (and stuff) can’t buy us happiness.

“Wealth is like health, its absence breeds misery, but having it doesn’t guarantee happiness. Everyone needs to cover basic needs. But once you attain that, happiness varies for everyone” as Maslow told us.

Research is proving that beyond covering basic needs like food and shelter, more wealth does not lead to more happiness. In fact some research (like the British one quoted in the introduction) has even shown a negative correlation. With wealth in Western countries having risen to its highest ever levels and happiness sunken to its lowest ever. Stress, depression and anxiety are increasing in the countries with the highest wealth levels.

The reason stuff (like cars, clothes, jewelry etc) and money does not make us happy in the long run is partly explained by hedonic adaptation. This means that we are very quick at taking our new position for granted, and then judging it as normal. As a result we don’t even notice the change anymore. Do you remember the last salary increase you got ? How long did it take for you to take it for granted and wanting something else ?

This doesn’t mean we should avoid money and material goods or that we can only have either wealth or happiness. It does, however, mean that we need to recognize happiness as the ultimate “currency” and start working on finding meaning and purpose in what we do. The value we gain in doing what we love will create money, and often even wealth, as a by-product.

CHOICE # 7: Keep learning and growing through action and allow yourself to fail !

Every child is born curious with an insatiable need for growth and learning. This is part of our nature as human beings. As young children we put into practice everything we learn, test it, fail and try again. In fact, we learn through action, through trying and playing.

As older children and adults we become concerned about failing, which stops us from trying and keeps us in the status quo. As we stay in our comfort zone over long periods of time, we begin to be bored with our life and start feeling stuck.

To become happy, we need to grow and there is no growth without action. Movement and growth are inseparable. It’s when you move out of your comfort zone that you grow. But what if you can’t decide between all the possible actions ? Toss a coin. It does not matter which action you take, you will learn from any action. To make this clear: ANY action is better then no action. But how do we get ourselves to act when we are so afraid of failure ?

To describe something as “failure” involves a judgement call. And a judgement requires a judge. Whose judgement are you accepting ? Who is your judge ? Often people find that they accept the judgement of their neighbours, their parents, their bosses without being conscious about it. Once they become conscious, they choose their own judge: the people they really care about or their own heart….

Let yourself be inspired by Alva Edison, the inventor. Edison had more than 900 failed experiments to invent the light bulb and upon being asked how he coped with so many failures he answered “Failure ? What failure ? I have learned 900 ways of how not to invent the light bulb”. It is all a matter of perspective (see choice #1). But something else is critical here: Edison focused on the learning in every “failure”. Every failure is just feedback about what works and doesn’t. It is a fantastic resource for deciding how to try differently next time. Choose to look at all your experiences (good or bad) as opportunities to learn something about yourself or the world around you and notice how much more you will enjoy your life.

CHOICE #8: Forgive

To create lasting happiness in your life, you need to let go of negative emotions about people. Holding on to negative emotions such as anger, envy or hurt creates more unhappiness for the holder of the emotions. Letting go of these emotions free us to move on with life. Again, easier said than done.

The first step is to realize that there is no value for yourself in holding on to your hurt. It is not moving you forwards but holding you back. The next step is to decide to let go of the matter. If you can’t simply let go choose to see the situation from the other person’s perspective to understand it better. Understanding helps forgiveness.

To do that, imagine you have a meeting with the person and silently tell him/her everything you need to say. Reproach, get angry, insult – whatever you feel needs to be said. Then pause. Take the other persons position – physically move to the spot you just talked to. Stand or sit like the other person would and really feel into him/her. Then have this person explain why he did what he did. Then go back to your own spot and receive the message. Play this role play a few times, then notice how your feelings to the subject have changed. You are now ready to forgive and pave your way to happiness.

CHOICE #9: Foster friendship and connections – help others

Researchers who studied people’s level of interest in and attention to strangers found that people who were sad spent 35 percent more time focusing on strangers who looked unhappy than on strangers who looked happy. So surround yourself with 5 happiest people you know. Send them an invitation today ! Happiness is contagious 

Ed Diener and Martin Seligman, two of the leading positive psychologists, studied “very happy people” and found that one of the key differences between happy and unhappy people was the presence of “rich and satisfying social relationships”.

Spending time with people we care about and who care about us provides meaning, safety and comfort. We want to be loved for who we really are, for our authentic self. Often people complain that they can’t find the people who love them unconditionally and truly care about them and that everybody is so self-absorbed. Don’t wait to be loved. Love. Choose to be different and start showing others how you care about them by doing something nice for them today. Expect nothing in return. Just keep doing it. You will see how the benefits will come back to you and you will have plenty of people who care for you.

CHOICE #10: Take responsibility for everything that happens to you.

It is so easy to blame outside factors or others for things that are not going well. It doesn’t make us happy though. Blaming takes our power away. By blaming others we are giving ourselves the “victim” status and get stuck because we are waiting for the other person to change or act. Being a victim and being stuck is not a position that makes us happy.

To claim your power, take responsibility for everything that happens. If people who work for you make mistakes, think about how you could have helped prevent that mistake. If your partner doesn’t come home in time, think about what you could do to make him/her want to come home earlier tomorrow. If your children are stressing you out, think about what you could do to make family life more fun. Be pro-active ! Take responsibility. It is much more fun than being stuck.

And don’t confuse taking responsibility with blaming yourself for everything. They are two different things: one lifts you up the other deflates you. So check in with your feelings. Taking responsibility makes you feel great !

Finally, I want to mention the more commonly known factors for more happiness: exercise moderately and regularly and ensure that you get between 6-8 hours of sleep. But the most powerful tip of them all: CHOOSE to be happy – now you know how to do it. And if you don’t, remember that that’s your choice, too !

Well, William H. Murray, a Scottish mountaineer, wrote in the Scottish Himalayan Expedition about the benefits of burning one’s bridges:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back; always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have dreamed would come his way.

And even Goethe agrees:

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it ! Boldness has genius, magic and power in it.

When are you jumping ?