Auf Wiedersehen 2009 (in my head...)

8 AM in Brooklyn. 5 AM in San Francisco. 2 PM in Mannheim. December 31st 2009. Time to reflect.

2009 war ein gutes Jahr.
But then, all years seem good in retrospect. I am blessed with a great life. I am very healthy, which is the greatest gift.

My 'work' has been OK. I love coaching and want to do more of it. I am not sure if the 'recession' has affected my business. So far, the recession has been nothing but a phantom for me. I have heard, read, talked about it, but not witnessed it for myself. Lucky, I know.

This year I made an effort to tell 3 of my closest friends how I really feel about them. A kind of love letter for Christmas. That is very gratifying. I love to make people tear up. It's not a mean thing at all - it's just so nice to see that I touch them right to the heart.

One of my proudest moments: breaking my squash racket by playing. It had been over 10 years since I played the last time. I feel so 'sporty' breaking equipment through sheer force.

Band of the year for me: Phoenix. Lisztomania makes me happy.

Movie: Up, District 9.

Book: Meines Vaters Land.

Biggest accomplishment: Creating and leading my first workshop.

Missed opportunity: Get back into running.

As for plans for 2010: I want to laugh a lot, be relaxed. Really enjoy the moment and appreciate more.
I want my coaching business to soar. And I want to start to work on my long term plan to have a place in Berlin and Brooklyn. I love both places.

For all of you who read this, I wish peace of mind, awareness and a warm feeling in your belly.

We are all connected and LOVE is the awareness that we are!

Frohes neues Jahr, happy new year! And happy every moment to you.

What my clients taught me lately

By now you know, that I am a life and business coach. If you aren't familiar with coaching, go here to find out what it is about: www.softskillscoaching.com

I love coaching for various reasons. It is a great feeling to help my clients and notice how their lives get so much better. How they break out of their fears and limitations and dare to live the life they want.

Another reason I love it, is because I get a lot out of it myself. Each session with a client teaches me something. 

Here are 3 of the lessons I was reminded of lately:

1. PARANOIA SUCKS

Being paranoid doesn't get you anywhere. It paralyzes you and drives you crazy. You are spend a lot of time imagining things. The antidote to paranoia is connection. First breathe, then remember that it is most likely all made up. Then establish connectedness. Paranoia will vanish and there will be room for 'you'.

2. SMALL CHANGES IN YOUR ROUTINE CAN BE HUGE

Start to exercise more often, change your diet or cut out nicotine or alcohol. It can be life changing. My client is so enthused and she tells me she can focus better, has great energy and doesn't wake up in the morning with a '1000 pound elephant' on her chest, full of anxiety. She is more balanced and enthused about life and all the possibilities.

3. AUTHENTICITY IS A SUPER POWER

Be yourself and things will be easier. People appreciate authenticity. It's what most of us yearn for. It's not always easy and it might be scary. But if you dare to be yourself, you might be surprised about the welcoming reception. For me, being authentic is about being true to yourself and to your own values. It takes out the guess work. It gives me courage.

People don't need to be taught, but they need to be reminded. Thanks, clients, for reminding me. 

4.      

When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer - Walt Whitman

My sweet boyfriend Lenny showed me this poem after he read my last blog entry. I am honored that it reminded him of Walt Whitman:

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide,
      and measure them,
when I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with
      much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

                                      --- Walt Whitman 1865

How the sky looks today

Der Himmel ueber Berlin (literally: The sky over Berlin') is one of my favorite movies. It's called 'Wings of desire' in english. Highly philosophical and thought provoking.

Angels overhear our thoughts. So much noise. The constant chatter of our heads. I am trying to be more aware of it.

Der Himmel ueber San Francisco is nothing but blue today. I call it California-Blue. Being from Germany, this sky is special to me. Back home we might only get this color on the nicest summer days. we call it 'Kaiserwetter' - weather for a Kaiser. The sky also looks bigger in the US than in Europe. I am sure that there is a scientific explanation for it - I don't really want to know... I just love the sky as it is.... It's a sky you can get lost in and that seems to turn more blue the longer you look at it. And sometimes it quiets down the chatter in my head ;)

Catching up

A quick list of everything that happened since my last blog:

1. I went backpacking for 5 days from Mammoth to Yosemite. The first time backpacking EVER.
2. I had a life changing experience, taking a 3 day course: The Landmark Forum.
3. I developed an awesome workshop my coaching partner PJ Chan: From Dreaming to Doing.
4. Traveled to New York to hear U2 play in front 81 999 people, plus me.
5. I left the PC world and bought my first MacBook Pro - and LOVE it.
6. Made peace with my father and created the possibility for us to have a great loving and exciting relationship.

And that's all I can think of right now.

I feel great and productive and a lot of it has to do with everything I experienced in the last 7 or so weeks.

Backpacking was profound. For the first time I realized for myself what a great system the human body is. It was miraculous how fast it regenerated. A full day of hiking, with weight on your back...at night I felt tired and beat. My hips were tight and I ached. One night in a tent - crappy sleep with lots of interruptions (like BEARS), and still I would wake up refreshed and new the next morning.

The Landmark forum course changed my life in many ways. It really brought home the point that everything in my life is made up - that I am the one who decides what something means. And that there are a lot of 'stories' I just believe to be true. Just realizing this made me aware of the power I have in creating anything I want. And there was way more that was helpful to me. It is a 42 hour course after all and I will not even attempt to summarize it. If you are undecided about taking the class: take it! It is worth every penny.

Coming from a space of 'what's possible', it was a breeze to come up with our newest workshop: From Dreaming to Doing. We have so many exciting exercises and learning packed in this. It will make a big difference in people's lives and I am thrilled to be creating what is important to me and what has meaning....

The U2 concert was, as expected, outstanding. Being in a stadium with 82 000 people just blows my mind. I felt connected to the people, the music, the band and the causes U2 supports. I seem to feel that connection a lot when I go to visit our friends in Brooklyn. Connection rocks ;)

Mhm PC vs MAC - that was a big step for me. I made up that I can't spend the extra money for a MAC. After all I am from Germany and I was brought up in a frugal household. But after a more that frustrating experience with my 2 week old Dell, I had enough and converted. OMG! I am in a different world. A computer that works, is fast, beautiful...I could go on. All you Apple users - I know, I should have switched sooner.

The part of my father is worth another blog or a conversation...

I am glad I feel somewhat caught up. Thanks for reading!

All I know about Twitter...

I learned from Kenie and Steph...DANKE!

As promised in my last post, here is everything I learned (so far) about Twitter...

My lovely mentors covered the following items with me over the phone:

- purpose of twitter
- twitter core functionality: status updates, @replies, retweet (RT), and direct message (DM), tagging (#hashtag), and trending topics
- sharing links and imparting knowledge within a 140 character limit (bit.ly)
- twitter and other social networking platforms (tweetdeck)
- other topics? ;)

Purpose of Twitter:
Twitter is a Mikroblog - a way to share information quick and real time. It is limited to 140 characters which forces you to think and share the essence of information. Great way of bottom lining :) It's an aggregator of information (love that word, it's new to me). You can follow individuals and find out what they are up to. You can also follow e.g. businesses and find out about special deals. Or your favorite band. Or you can find out everything about one topic (more on that later).
There is almost no privacy on Twitter, so everybody can see what you wrote - with the exception of direct messages. So there is also a Twitter etiquette. Which I will not discuss here because there are great articles about that all over the web. Google it!

Status updates:
After you created your Twitter account, you are ready to go. The easiest thing is to send updates - pretty much like the status on Facebook, but limited to 140 characters.

@replies:
If you see a Tweet you like and you would like to respond to the person, you choose @reply. So, let's say you read my Tweet: 'writing my blog' - and you want to reply to me by saying: @nicolegruen - way to go!

Retweet:
If you would like to repost something you read, it's good manners to pay tribute to the person that posted it. You are re-tweeting and you label it. So let's say I posted a really interesting link to an article. If you retweet it, you would do so by typing: @nicolegruen cool article ....

DM:
Direct messages. This is self-explanatory

Tagging:
Now that is cool: You can look up any word you want and then see all the Tweets that are currently posted that include that word. You do this by 'hashtagging'. If I would like to see everything about life coaching, I enter #coaching in the search field and there you go!

Trending topics:
That's the most talked about topics on Twitter. You can see them on the right side of the home page...

Sharing links:
Because there is a character limit on Twitter, you need to make it short and sweet. That includes the links you would like to send out. And of course there are tools you can use to do so. One of them is: http://bit.ly/ You just go to the web site, enter the URL you would like to shorten and the tool will return a shortened link which you then can post.

Tweetdeck:
Another tool! That one pretty much combines Facebook and Twitter. Meaning that you can read all status updates there and that you can also send status updates to both. Twitter and Facebook simultaneously.

That's all I learned and I am using it. Today I installed TwitterFon. It's an application for the Iphone that allows you to do pretty much everything you can do on Twitter.

So I am still all fresh but for now I will play with Twitter and see how much fun I can have with it. It is already a lot of fun for me to go online and see the statuses of everybody I am following...

So - follow me on Twitter and I will follow you ;-)

Attemps on staying young

So it all started with a radio show a couple of months ago: http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R901300900 . The guest William Deresiewicz had written an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education about modern technology http://chronicle.com/article/The-End-of-Solitude/3708). I will leave the interpretation of what was said and written to you.


For me it was clear: Facebook (FB) and texting are the devil and if I didn't want to be in the category of superficial, disconnected people, I'd better go and do something about it.


So I did - I went on to FB and I 'unfriended' all contacts that weren't my friends. I felt great.

And then I heard about Twitter - and dismissed it as another one of Satan's ways to destroy all deep communication between humans.


And on it went: I was anti-Iphone and whenever I saw a 'young' person text, I sneered....


It felt good to be self-righteous and on the path less traveled. It also felt a bit alone. And not so much fun. But hey, feeling right can't be beat - Right??


And then I learned a new word: LUDDITE. This is what I was told: Luddites where people that pretty much resisted modern Technology. And this is what Wikipedia is saying: "The Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the early nineteenth century who protested—often by destroying mechanized looms—against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work and changing their entire way of life."

OK - I was one of them and I also realized something else: I was getting OLD. Not my looks (of course...yet), but my views. My resistance to change and to go with the flow. This really bothered me. One of my best friends Agnes, passed away 2 years ago at the age of 94. I loved Agnes for her connectedness with all generations and her openness to pretty much everything.

And this is when I decided to ask my friends Kenie and Stephanie from Brooklyn (both in their 20's) to be my mentors. They gladly accepted and we had our first phone conference (with agenda and all) yesterday. Topic: Twitter.



I will blog about everything I learned in my next entry - just in case some Luddites are reading this.

Oh - and I am back full blast on Facebook, own an Iphone and started to Tweet.... it feels good to be reconnected.