Why personal growth?

I’m so happy to have started my journey of personal growth, which I love calling my inner journey.

Yes, it’s hard sometimes to intensively reflect yourself, to tune into your body, to observe your thoughts and emotions, but it’s so worth it and your growth never stops.

It is a process.

The word ‘Personal Growth’ has become a much deeper meaning for me over the last couple of years since I have been diving deeper into my personal growth. In this blog post, I want to share some success stories with you, to inspire you to start walking and to keep going, even if you might think at some point:

What did I get myself into?

My first success relates to my sensory channels and my perception. I knew that my visual sense was already strongly developed, but thanks to my yoga teacher training my kinaesthetic sense unfolded, too. And just to clarify, doing my yoga teacher training was already a beautiful result of my personal growth. With two strongly developed senses and a better perception of myself, I noticed that my auditive channel however was slightly underdeveloped. Which brings me to my success: I’m treating myself and others more consciously, with even more love and respect. I see more, I feel more and after months of sharpening my perception skills, I also hear and listen more. It is so enriching to give my life more depth and meaning by the power of personal growth and better perception skills.

My second success story relates to my linguistic skills. Thanks to my better perception, I have also been able to improve my possibilities and means of expression, both verbally and non-verbally. The beautiful thing is it’s not only me feeling that my communication have become clearer, it is also acknowledged by others. Especially in moments and conversations when I was truly present, with all my senses. This is really the key to everything, to be present in the here and now. For example, if you have a conversation with someone, really focus on that person, avoid distractions, look at the person, listen and gradually feel into the person. I know it is not always easy, but start by bringing your awareness to your perception. Speaking of communication… I am a communicative person, hence it’s also a success for me to see, feel and hear, when it’s better not to say anything and to stay in silence. Who can relate?

Talk is silver, silence is golden.

Train your perception, because this is where communication begins. Always.

When it comes to communication, I also increasingly notice, especially when overhearing conversations in cafés, how many conflicts and misunderstandings simply derive from a different perspective of life. You must know that each person has their own individual perception, hence everyone sees the world differently. Everyone has a different map of reality. Does this make sense?

The map is not the territory. (Alfred Korzybski)

This phrase illustrates the differences between belief and reality. Our perception of the world is generated by our brain. Every perception, every map looks differently.

I understand more than ever that there is no such thing as compartmentalisation. No right or wrong. There are simply different perceptions based on education, values, culture and developed belief systems.

With my personal growth journey, my understanding for the other side of the medal has dramatically improved. I feel more relaxed, probably because I am fighting less for my perception of the world, but instead regard other perceptions as incredibly exciting and inspiring.

Last but not least I record as success what Mahatma Gandhi already said:

You must become the change you wish to see in the world.

I understood that I am responsible for my life, only me. I also realised that we as human beings have the wonderful capability to impact the pathways of our brain in order to overwrite negative and unwanted emotions, behaviours and actions with something positive. We can change our lives from negative to positive. Isn’t that amazing?

Of course, it’s always easier to blame someone else in a difficult situation, but nothing will ever change, if you don’t start with yourself first. My change and personal development clearly shows the positive shifts in my life, by starting with myself. By changing myself and my perception of reality. I extended my map of reality by reflecting myself and my environment. So as a result I notice immediately when I am reacting and acting based on one of my automatisms. Then I can intervene consciously, I say ‘Stop’ and make a new and better choice.

Like Lao Tse said:

Every journey begins with a single step.

I understood that this first step needed to come from me. And so my personal growth journey started.

I want to inspire you to start walking and to keep walking. The process never stops. And it is such a blessing to develop and to grow. Trust me, life holds so much love and joy, once you start walking. What’s holding you back?

Yours, Nina

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Feminine Success

Interview with Henrike Dorndecker about Feminine Success

H: What does Feminine Success mean for you?

N: For me, Feminine Success, means that we, women, use our soft skills more again. I think that we have really good access to our intuition, but that unfortunately we sometimes disconnect from it. However, if we have access to our intuition and if we follow our heart, then I know that we can truly be successful. But first it is really important to use our soft skills and our intuition or to reactivate these skills if they got lost over time and then use them goal oriented. I also strongly believe that the perception of ourselves is key to success. That we are aligned with ourselves and in balance. That we really know who we are and what we stand for in order to be truly successful, the feminine way.

H: Thank you. And which areas are important to you at the moment? What are your successes or which challenges are you currently facing?

N: Well I have to say that since I’ve been going deeper into my personal growth, I’ve succeeded in many ways. Obviously everyone defines success differently, but I looked at questions like ‘Who am I?’, ‘What do I stand for?’, ‘What are my core values?’, ‘What do I want to achieve for this world?’, so I looked at the big picture and I’ve transformed my life in many ways. Nevertheless, there’s always room to grow and I think that for me personally I still want to improve listening and following my intuition, especially faster. I want to shorten the head-heart dilemma, which I think we all know too well. I want to be able to access my intuition even quicker, because I truly think that what we intuitively think is what is right and what we come back to when it is time to decide. However, we often make a detour, because we become insecure by what our mind is telling us.

I also think that especially for us women it’s important that we allow ourselves to be softer again. In a world that feels somehow dominated by men, I think we have un-practised this softness, but it is so critical to Feminine Success. Be strong with softness.

H: Yes, right, I totally agree. What is your profession, Nina? What do you do? What do you offer and where do you see a link to Feminine Success here?

N: I work as Life Strategist. It is my vision to encourage people to reconnect with their true self and to live in full alignment with it. I follow a holistic approach based on body work (yoga), mind work as well as essential oils. Hence, it’s an approach covering body, mind and soul alike. I’m so enthusiastic about this topic as I understood that we cannot be successful only in one area of our lives, but that we need to strive for success in each area of our lives. Everyone of course defines ‘success’ individually which makes it so exciting. To become successful we need to know who we really are, and when we do, our success is unlimited. Moreover, we will be truly happy and fulfilled. If we know who we really are, then we have access to our true potential and we can activate it, but if not, we will never exploit our full potential. And this is what I do, what I’m passionate about, this is my mission.

H: Great, I think the world needs more people like you. Last but not least, do you have a personal advice that you want to share here?

N: Yes sure, my main topic is to encourage people to live in alignment with their true self, because I truly believe that we can only be truly happy, once we know who we are. So I would recommend, don’t be scared, follow your heart and intuition, do not apologise for who you are, feel your body again, watch your thoughts and emotions and reconnect with yourself. And to be very specific, practise yoga, breathe and meditate. If you have never done this before, just start with 1 minute for meditation or lie down with your hands resting on your belly and deeply inhale and exhale into your belly. This is a simple calming exercise, but you’ll notice the increase in your energy for sure.

H: Fantastic, Nina. Thank you. This was a great conversation and I loved your simple but very effective breathing exercise at the end. Thanks. 

N: Thank you for having me.

PS: If you understand German, also watch the live interview on Facebook on my page ninaspinknotes. 

Perception

Do you love what you do?

In order to explore this question in more detail, I went to a workshop hosted by Do Work You Love. The workshop was about visualising my dream job as part of my dream life as well as planning the first action steps to achieve this goal.  This process was supported by a big poster named Canvas, comprising information and knowledge from different areas, such as personal development, business development, coaching and psychology.

The canvas looks at different areas in your life, such as

• Who do you want to be in the future? How do you want to live?
• Which role does the job play in your life?
• How does the job need to be in order to achieve self-realisation and to use your skills and strengths accordingly?
• What are your immediate next steps in order to get closer to your dream job and dream life?

After an introduction of all 8 participants, we teamed up in pairs of 2 to become sparring partners or dream life buddies for the next 6 weeks in order to support each other, but also to challenge each other on our visualisations. We worked on the Canvas for 2.5 hours by talking about our dreams and by asking each other questions. When the workshop was about to end, we did a final round to talk about our experiences during and after the workshop. When it was my turn to talk, I said something like “Well, my topics seem to repeat themselves, and I don’t seem to make much progress. I feel like I’ve been working on the same stuff for a while now.” When I shared this with my workshop buddies, they clarified – against my own perception – that I actually made progress and that topics didn’t repeat themselves, but that I developed them and moved them into a new dimension (e.g. more frequent, bigger etc.). The workshop organiser listed the ‘projects’ I had already started and that I was currently working on. It was only then that I realised how much I had already achieved in 2017, but that I didn’t give myself enough credit for it. I didn’t acknowledge my achievements sufficiently. Just to give you a few examples: I currently do my yoga teacher training, I hold yoga classes on a regular basis for friends and friends of friends, I have launched my blog, I have established an Instagram account called ninaspinknotes and only recently I have set up a fan page on Facebook for the same account. I read books about yoga and personal development, I listen to podcasts and I network with people to seek and give inspiration.

Hence, how can I say that I’m not making any progress? I’ve learned the following from this workshop and the feedback, thank you!!!

There may be a discrepancy between self-perception and perception of others.

Acknowledge yourself, your progress and your achievements.

After this workshop, I decided I wanted to go a step further concerning self-perception versus perception of others. I wanted to understand how I’m perceived by other people, and to reflect on what I like or dislike about the results, to understand discrepancies between self-perception and perception of others and to confirm my strengths whilst working on my perceived weaknesses. So, I used a questionnaire from the workshop and sent it to friends, family and acquaintances. It holds questions about associations with me, about emotions felt, which colour/animal or furniture I could be and what I could do more or less of. I gave people about 1 week time to get back to me and up until now I have received 20 responses.

The feedback was lovely, interesting and touching. Luckily, there was a good match on my strengths and potential for improvement, which means I am pretty well aware and have a good self-perception, yay. However, I also received a few comments that I wanted and needed to understand in a bit more detail, so I can make sense of it. A few comments to work on in the future, as they repeat themselves. And some comments to simply take note of.

Obviously I am me, with all my experiences, emotions, feelings, character and personality, and it’s not like I will become a new person based on the feedback received, but I think it’s essential to reflect on ourselves in order to grow, to improve. Hence, my path of self-reflection included being brave by asking others for their honest and direct feedback, but at the same time to trust my intuition. . This means that I can make use of my strengths even more, just by having moved them more into my conscious mind, and to be more aware of my ‘weaknesses’ or things to do less. At the end of the day, it’s like Anais Nin says:

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Everybody sees the world through their own filter, and very often we are mirrored by other people. For example, if we dislike something about another person or we get annoyed about someone’s behaviour, we most likely hold this characteristic within us, too. Or it could be something we’d like to have, hence the annoyance about someone else having it or living it. If criticism gets to us, then we should probably think about the reasons why, because it is very likely it has got to do with us. If that is the case, we can and should solve this limiting belief for us first, as otherwise we will always doubt our capabilities. Once we have solved these limiting beliefs within us though, we are free, we feel good and we can simply enjoy…life!

Yours, Nina