Claudia's Blog

Last week I practised letting go. BIG TIME. And it took me a LONG time to get to it. But before I tell you about that let me take a step back and start the story a tad earlier.

Being loyal - or letting go?

If I learned one thing during my childhood, it was loyalty. And as a woman to be the one who lives it, triggers it, makes sure it happens.

* Regardless of how bad the situation. 

* Regardless of how much people crossed boundaries.

* Regardless of how tough a situation might be.

* Regardless of how useless things were.

 Don't get me wrong: Loyalty is a great trait. 

It helps in relationships - not dropping the person at the first sign of difficulty or non-alignment. 

It helps in the career to fighting through issues and uncomfortable situations. And can result in more confidence in self and a more conscious career path.

It's environmentally friendly as it means holding on to things longer and not fall into the mindless consumption trap.  

But like...

Superficial small talk does not build relationships. That is valid for the business world too. 

You might believe deeper relationships are unnecessary in business - after all colleagues might not be your friends.

They might not be - that's not the point here.

Deeper relationships WILL create different results (more of that at the end of the post) - for ALL parties involved! So, worth giving it a go.

Many leaders are guilty of asking those dreaded, one-dimensional questions that lead nowhere beyond the small talk instead of asking intriguing questions that trigger deeper conversations. 

How can you do that?

Focus on the other person. 

Everyone wants to be seen and heard. 

Even the ones who consider themselves humble, self-less, or give themselves the label of being introverts. 

So, here's a suggestion for 9 very different questions to knock your next business meeting out of the park.

Some are really BIG.

Don't be afraid or shy though to ask them.

Most people LOVE to...

In a relationship - be it in business or privately, we often take the eyes off this "we're building a future together that we're both enjoy" - even if it sucks today. 
 
While we're busy being angry, frustrated, or annoyed at someone, particularly in business - despite striving for collaboration and progress - it's actually easy to forget (or not even define) what success means for all participants and the organisation.  
 
Or we start blaming someone for the unwanted situation!
 
The antidote: 
 
1. Stop judging the other person-  
THE FASTER WE JUDGE THE OTHER PERSON, THE QUICKER THE RELATIONSHIP GOES INTO DESPAIR.

I know, I know, easier said than done. If we pay attention to our own desire or habit to judge we can stop it. And become curious. Might not work all the time - but it's a great start to be aware and give it a go. With practice, it will work more regularly - promised.
 
2. Remember that the energy in a...

Why can't they get it - it's so easy?...you might think.

Here are two surprising and probably rather counterintuitive tips on how to change this quickly and effectively.

We all know someone who says he or she is a perfectionist. Here's what's behind and 2 crucial things to know about it. 

Insight #2: Surrender (to what life presents you with)

Surrender – not a word anyone really likes, right? The connotation is rather negative. It smells and tastes like giving up. Losing. Not being in power and control anymore.

The thing is: life can be wonderful. And really shitty.

And throw things at us which we consider as horribly bad, heartbreaking, extremely difficult or challenging, tiring or exhausting or even unbearable.

And it rarely unfolds exactly as we want it to.

Very often these are situations we cannot change or don’t have any control over. Or life presents us with stuff we have not planned (if we consider it good or bad is a matter of perspective. A topic for another time)

We get fired from a job.

Our partner ends a relationship.

A person is treating us horrendously bad (we could change the situation, not the person though).

Our assets shrink to nothingness due to a downturn in the economy.

We get sued for something.

Our job is suddenly being moved to a...

Insight no 1:

Whatever someone does “to” me, has nothing to do with me and all to do with the other person.

 “He never said thank you – he’s ignoring me….I’m not really important”. We’ve all been there. Someone treats us horrible, outside of our set of values or understanding. We start interpreting, put a label on the behaviour, judge, and unfortunately, the judgement often has to do with beating ourselves up on some level.

It must be me, right? Why would this person say that otherwise (or ignore me, or be rude, offensive or whatever)?

WRONG.

We all go through some struggle. So does the person we might have issues with. Most of our thoughts circle around ourselves (this is why we take things so personally!). So do the thoughts of the other person.

Their rudeness, offensiveness, negligence or dismissiveness has nothing to do with us and all with him or her. How he sees the world, what kind of challenges the person deals...

Too much to do (or so it seems) and too little time. A common disease which attacks me as well from time to time. Suddenly things seem to pile up and before we can blink, the day is over.

And the pressure increases.

And voila: we feel stressed, thoughts start racing in our head, we're urgently looking for solutions, start rushing and trying to be even more efficient than usual. 

More often than not with the result that we're even more stressed AND still not all things are being done, we start lagging behind, which boosts stress again.

A pretty damn horrible spiral. 

Thankfully there are some strategies that help us getting out of that. In this video I talk about the 3 I found really helpful and most effective (there are many more - still, got to start somewhere, right?).

No time to read or watch?

Well, that's exactly the trap we fall into when we got so much to do. Instead of hitting the brakes and changing something, we continue doing more of what we've done in the...

87 % of all people in Central Europe are stressed - regularly. From a bit of stress to burnout symptoms. Stress creates havoc in our life. In our bodies. And for relationships. Time to deal with it - let's start with some measures for acute stress.

We all have learned to deal with stress - some more, some less. Most solutions are rather intellectual: Raise your awareness, don't let people get to you. Think positive. 

All those measures make sense. 

Often though, we find ourselves reacting with stress so quickly that the awareness is out of the window - or we find ourselves permanently stressed, as it built up slowly and we did not hit the brakes early enough.

If we're in the middle of high stress, our body tries to protect us. Which is great. 

The thing is though - we're not made for constant stress. This reaction was supposed to put our body in an alert situation to bring us out of range. And if we're permanently alert, the chemistry in our body creates havoc.

...