How Can We Best Be of Service To This World?

Photo by Armin Rimoldi on Pexels

Dear Future Self,

Life feels so good right now, can it get even better? And what do you think, how can we best be of service?

What does it look like to be of service to the world?

It’s quite funny to think that it’s only been a year since I moved to my current home. It’s 8:30 in the morning, I have been outside with the dogs and fed them, and as I write this all three of us are on the couch in the living room.

I wake up happy, I go to bed happy. I get so much more done in a day than I ever would have imagined.

I’ve solved a washing machine problem this morning, tended to my plants, had breakfast, planned for some future articles, checked my emails and danced a little in the kitchen.

In no way would this have been possible a year ago. The birds wake me up around five these days, about half an hour later I hear my dog  Izabella sniff on my bedroom door to let me know he’s awake and that he wants me to open doors for him.

The last thing I did before bed last night was repotting some plants for my front yard, which is already mostly set up for this summer. Last year around this time it was a dump. And that was how my life felt then too.

How I got here

I had lived with my partner in Berlin and when we broke up, I called my friend who had this beautiful old house in the countryside that I had visited before, to see if I could go there to clear my head.

I was lucky, or things were as they were meant to be, he was in the house when I called and I could just take the dogs, a backpack, jump on the train and go.

After a week, I asked if I could stay for longer, and we’ve been renovating the house together since. There’s still a lot to do, but I couldn’t be happier, I feel.

While I was living in Berlin, working as a web designer from home seemed like an excellent thing to do.

I didn’t love it, but I was proud that I could do something many other people couldn’t, there definitely were feminist aspects to it, and I got to support fantastic projects.

Yet, after a short while of being surrounded by so much nature and beauty, having the quiet and space to be with myself, I realized how much I disliked doing it.

I was inside looking at my screen, and all I wanted was to be outside with my plants.

I tried to arrange my schedule, so it would allow for enough outside time during the day, but it just made the dread of going back to work bigger.

Obviously, after a break-up and a complete change of scenery from busy Berlin to a village with just about 1000 inhabitants, there were countless internal transformations going on as well – it was a perfect time to rethink life in general.

The first thing I realized, was that I had never even thought about what a life without a partner could look like for me and how I could be happy just by myself. What did I really like? How did I want to live? But that’s for another article.

On a whim, I applied for a scholarship for the Inner MBA, a programme I had fantasized participating in when it started the year before, but wouldn’t have dared to apply for then.

I got accepted, and I feel I couldn’t have had a better container for the changes I was going through in this past year.

You can read more about the programme here – I can highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in personal growth and who wants to learn more about how we can transform society. But this is not why I’m writing this post.

What are you really good at, how can you use it to be of service?

Do you know this feeling, when you hear so many interesting and inspiring things, but then there is one sentence, that you won’t get out of your mind again because it’s precisely what you needed to hear in that moment?

I had that when Rose Marcario talked about leaving her job as the CEO of Patagonia, on the opening event of the Inner MBA, after creating so much valuable change for that company and our world in general.

She said something like: “I was thinking about where I could best be of service. How could what I do have the biggest impact?”

And while supporting possibly world-changing projects with my web design skills is definitely a meaningful thing to do, I always knew that it was not how I could best be of service to this world and that’s why it didn’t make me happy.

That realization was so meaningful to me, that I share it now, in the hopes that it reaches someone who needs to hear it too.

After this realization came a period of exploration, listening, uncertainty and learning, but quite immediately everything became so much easier and lighter.

If you, too, have a hard time doing your work, doing what you feel that you have to do, ask yourself: is what I am doing how I can best be of service to this world?

And I’m not saying that you should resign from your job right a way, if it is not how you can best be of service, I simply ask you to consider and explore what would make you happy and then to see if you can come up with ways to make it happen.

Because this transformation has been so meaningful to me, I became a self-actualization coach, which is something not so dissimilar to being a midwife for adults.

I can now help you to uncover and birth your true self, and to stop suffering from trying to adjust to a society that in its current state is making everyone who tries to participate sick.

So, if you’re sick of suffering, of feeling stressed, depressed, overwhelmed, sad, or even just, like you know that there’s more waiting for you to explore than you can see right now, book a call with me or join the I AM CREATOR School because finding ways that help you to live a happy and fulfilled life, will make me very happy too.

And our world really needs as many of us as possible to be of service, to uncover their full potential and to be able to step into their full power in order to create the changes we’re so desperately longing for: more love, less stress, more freedom, less fear, more peace, less destruction.

___

I still marvel about the fact that my days are easy and joyful now, even when difficulties arise. And I’m not just saying that to sell you my services.

It still surprises me every single day and I can value it so much because I was struggling with feeling depressed, ungrounded, unhappy and directionless for such a long time.

And that while I was successfully working and organizing projects. You don’t have to be all the way on the ground to feel like you need to turn your life around to make it more meaningful, joyful and lighter.

Difficulties will always be there, no matter which path we choose, but knowing that we do something that we love and that what we do matters, is life changing.

Especially if we do that publicly, the positive ripple effects can be endless, surprising, yet so easy to enjoy.

I’ll end this with a quote from Mary Oliver: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

It’s never too late to make the changes you need for a happy life. And the best time to start is always now. How can you best be of service?

What stops YOU? (I know I had all kinds of explanations and reasoning why I didn’t deserve or couldn’t possibly live a happy life – they’re all not true!)

I hope that you have a wonderful and joyful day and that you may come up with simple ways to bring more joy into your own life and into the lives of those around you.

I love you,
Verena

► My Future Self Journal ▼

Why do I write to my future self? ◼︎ ●

Self-Actualizing, personal development, the search for more options, finding out how to actually live our best lives, or simply experiencing growth and change for any reason, might feel weird, scary or uncertain.

Yet impermanence or becoming is something we all share.

I started to write and publish some diary post a while ago, and looking back at them even a month later, I felt like I should rewrite them because my perspective had changed so much.

But that would be like trying to erase the most essential part: the journey.

We don't just arrive at a certain point, we struggle, fight, fall down, run in the wrong direction, come back, stand up, fall again and yet continue.

We laugh, love, enjoy, paint, sing, dance, discuss and find ourselves surprised by the unexpected. With every experience, we spiral up and can dive into deeper levels of experience and understanding if we allow ourselves to do so.

This series is a documentation of a journey into the unknown.

It shows how vulnerability and fear can be present, and welcomed, and not stop us.

It's about admitting mistakes and acknowledging how easily we can be wrong, no matter how mindful, present, in tune and aware we are.

We'll never know until we try.

But most of all it's about celebrating life in all its different forms and shapes, colours and sounds and tastes, in depth and lightness - to witness life's endless beauty and continuous unfolding.

We are all a part of life's magnificence, the question is: How much of it do we allow ourselves to enjoy and experience?

The more we open up and liberate ourselves from what we thought we knew, the more we allow to see things in new ways and the more love we share, the more magical life becomes.

May we open our present with presence and let our future selves continue to experience life wholeheartedly.

May my honesty inspire yours and show you that there is nothing to fear. Everything is working out for the greatest good. ❤️

With lots of love for you and this world,
Verena

Get Your Personal Wheel of Colours

The Wheel of Colours is a traditional tool to help us understand what we need or can share in certain situations.

We are all made up out of the same colours, but they are arranged uniquely in each person – which is why we need or can give different things in different moments.

If you’d like to find out what can support YOU when starting a project, or working with other people, to successfully finish something, to heal, to spark your creativity or what your unique gift is, that you bring to the world, then the Wheel of Colours will help you to see this and yourself more clearly and show you how to use these insights in practical ways.

It will also show you how you can listen to your inner truth and that of others, what your most important lesson is in life and what challenges you might have to overcome.

Once you’ve learned what you need to learn, you can start the wheel again, this time more smoothly.

In the past, people often only got these insights and realizations towards the end of their lives – but you don’t have to wait until then.

🌈 You have the power to create your reality.

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Clarity - Confidence - Connection

In the CREATRIX School we bring clarity, confidence and connection into every area of our lives - and we look at a different topic each month.

This month is all about community, and thinking about how we can best work and come together with others - so that we can build the world we want to live in together.

It's fun, it's exciting, and it is surely also challenging, as we have to become honest about our wants, needs and desires.

What are yours?