Be the Qu_ing Book Introduction – be the first to read it!

Read the Be The Qu_ing Book Introduction

Would you like to get a sneak peek into my upcoming Be The Qu_ing book?

Find out why I think every person can benefit from becoming a qu_ing, discovering their divinity and becoming their best self, and why I think it will help YOU especially.

You will also find some worksheets to download for free at the end of this introduction – so you can get to work on becoming your unique version of a qu_ing right away.

What is A Qu_ing?

The word qu_ing is a mix of the word queen and king.

A qu_ing rules over their life with clarity, grace and great care. A qu_ing is a person, in their full power, who is living out their highest potential. A qu_ing is generous, present, kind, patient, honest and open.

A qu_ing knows themselves and is excellent at what they do.
A qu_ing knows how to set and reach goals with joy and ease.
A qu_ing knows that they are a representation of the divine.
And so are you.

And the best thing: any person can be a qu_ing, independent of their sex, gender identity, or where they are and how they feel about their lives right now.

All it takes is a conscious wish to change your current experience and to allow yourself to experience what else is possible.

Where does the term Qu_ing come from?
As many nouns in German (my native language) are gendered, we’ve been trying to use different ways of writing, which are more gender inclusive.

One variant uses the “_” (underscore), which is the one I use in German and like best because it encompasses the fluidity of gender and not just the inclusion of two or more genders.

Like everything else, gender and sex exist on a spectrum*. With female on one end, male on the other and all other gender expressions in-between.

There are Hijras in South Asia, Sistergirls and Brotherboys among the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities in Australia, Two-Spirit people among Indigenous North American communities, Muxe in Southern Mexico, Fa’afafine in Samoa. Rae-rae in Tahiti, and many more.

I can also highly recommend Thomas Laqueur’s book Making Sex for a view on the history of sex and gender in Western societies and Anne Fausto-Sterling’s Book Sexing the Body for learning about contemporary ways of trying to put something that exists on a spectrum into two distinct boxes.

Even in Western societies, those who don’t quite fit gender norms often revolutionise their fields because, I believe, once you’ve broken the rules of one norm, it becomes obvious that those norms can be questioned and other ways are possible and might even be better for all.

A qu_ing rules over their life with confidence because they have had to work independently, and often had to learn to thrive in isolating contexts, to know who they are, where they come from and where they are going.

They dare to lead, and guide and direct those around them towards wholeness. Through their existence, they often live a life of service, and thrive to represent the best version of themselves, and the potential in others, each day.

Embodying goddesses has helped me immensely on my journey to step into my responsibility here on earth, and to allow myself to fully experience life and to enjoy it.

The work of Abiola Abrams and Acharya Shunya has had lasting effects on my life and I wholeheartedly recommend checking out their books and other offers, if meeting your inner goddess is something you’d like to explore more fully.

And while people of all genders can also embody a goddess and her qualities, we might not feel comfortable or confident to do so.

I chose this term, embodying my qu_ing self, as a way to create something that, I think, is missing, but can be beneficial to all.

I believe that a raised consciousness is calling for new terminologies and with creating and establishing new concepts, we can grow into the new possibilities that are opening up, as a result of our bigger understanding.

Many of the terms like king and queen, god and goddess evoke images of famous people or gods and goddesses who inhabited these roles, and the stories told about them.

Not all of them have been gentle or kind and most, if not all, have also taken advantage of their power position at one point or another.

They all have their right and their function, but more and other ways are possible.

I believe that we are entering a new time and that with this new time we can and need to find new words, new ways and new roles.

If we really want to live, celebrate, express and experience our oneness, then we can do that in a representation of the highest self. One that has not existed before, one that is free from an image, does not belong to a certain race or tradition, is not assigned to a gender or sex and can truly represent our shared divine nature.

That’s why I choose the term and archetype of the qu_ing – to allow the growing potential of oneness to unfold in all of us.

Why become a qu_ing?

Do you remember the times when you thought anything was possible?
When did doubt about your unlimited powers creep in?

Growing up, most of us were told that there are limitations to what is possible. Well-meaning elders tried to protect us from hurt, by passing on the limitations they’ve experienced.

And if we don’t question these stories, we can end up experiencing the same limitations and pass the same experience of lack and fate on to others.

But we also have the opportunity to live a different life, experience love, joy, abundance, connection and to flourish as our true selves if we consciously choose to do so, and have the tools to embark on the change.

I believe that you are divine and so am I and so is everyone else.

But many of us forgot how to live it.
Each of us is a part of consciousness, a reflection, a thought turned into form, part of creation and creator.

All we have to do is to acknowledge that, try to understand what that means for us, and then to open up to live it a bit more every day.

A qu_ing lives this life, an empowered life, a divine life, a life in which they remember that anything is indeed possible – if we begin to ask the right questions.

I’d like to share with you how you too can live like a qu_ing, or even become the qu_ing you were always meant to be, starting today.

I didn’t start out thinking this way. In fact, quite the opposite. I was struggling with self-doubt and self-hate for as long as I can remember. Until I stopped and found a new way to relate to myself. And that is what needs to happen. We need to say, so far – but no more!

It’s a decision we make.
There is no one else who gets to decide who we are.
We have the most power when talking to ourselves and telling ourselves how and who we should be.

Once we come of age, a state that is terribly under celebrated in many parts of the world, we forget that being an adult is not about drinking or driving or even voting, but that at this point we have to take on full responsibility for our lives.

Few people do and so they are kept in a state of arrested development.
I was one of these people, remaining a bit of a teenager acting like a grown-up until my late thirties when, I realised that I did not want to continue feeling like life was just happening to me and I had to arrange myself within it.I wanted to find out how to actually enjoy my life.

I wanted to be fully me and I wanted to be free. So I figured out what that meant and required of me.

Would you like to know this as well?

Whatever has happened to us in the past can be healed and does not need to define our lives, we simply have to figure out what we need to heal.

But it’s a conscious choice we must make first, to allow for healing to take place.

To become a qu_ing there are a couple of important things to remember:

1. Criticism always comes from those who have achieved less, not more.

2. It is very difficult to be good to others if you’re not good to yourself.

Which means, for once, that whatever change we seek, we have to start with ourselves.

The better we treat, know, respect and eventually love and spoil ourselves, the more generous, loving, patient and kind we can be with others.

If we nourish the qu_ing in ourselves, we can also celebrate the qu_ing in others.

When we catch ourselves judging or criticising somebody, we can always remind ourselves of the above statement and check, why we feel the need to criticise. What in us is hurting right now? What do we need to look at in ourselves and take care of?

When we judge or criticise something about ourselves, we are also never acting from our highest self, but our conditioning and our ego. We can recognize that and learn how to stop that.

When we dislike someone or something, it is because we see something in them, that we either don’t tolerate or suppress or don’t like about ourselves. Often we criticise exactly the bravery, novelty, daring, openness that we seek for ourselves.
So instead of voicing or even just holding on to the criticism silently, we can unleash and celebrate our own qualities, and be grateful for the opportunity that we recognized a new place for us to free ourselves from conditioning, whenever we feel the urge to judge critically.

If other people share non-constructive criticism with us, we can also thank them and silently think of the above statement and maybe also remember, that whatever any person reveals, says much more about them, than about the person they are judging.

Another person can never ever know where you are at or what you need better than you.
Yet, many of us often assume they can or do. This can lead to an unhealthy play of power dynamics.

The number one priority should always be to find a way to trust and hear your inner voice.
It’s the only advice that counts, when you are trying to reclaim your intuition.

We’re all trying. Most of us mean well, and to overcome conditioning takes time and practice.

Once we start treating ourselves as qu_ings we can treat others like that as well and everything will flow much more effortlessly.

Most people live way under their potential and don’t trust themselves enough to change something about their lives.

As this is the majority of people, they might not even notice it because everyone around them is not living out their full potential either. Again, I was right in there**.

**It’s very difficult to know what is actually possible for us if we haven’t tried. Last Saturday, for example, I had a day of extreme flow.

I went on a date with a person I didn’t know, and all we had talked about was where to meet.

Not only did I arrive just on time, without checking the transport schedule, when I did, she arrived with a picknick, and I brought cake – a perfect dessert and addition to what she brought.

Before I met her, I had a knowing that the first name of her child was an A. Which was true, too.

On my way back, I had 7 minutes to catch my bus, and decided to risk missing the bus and go grocery shopping.

I went in, grabbed what I needed, without rushing, or even thinking about the bus any more, and as I stood in a pretty long line, people just disappeared in front of me so that when I got out – the bus was just arriving.

This might not sound like a lot, but the effortlessness of these things really amazes me. I didn’t ask for the name of her child, it came up and surprised me too.

When we trust and allow, we meet the right people, know the right things, show up at the right places at the right time and long lines dissolve in front of our eyes.

But when we schedule, hurry, arrange, push and try to control, life becomes stressful, we miss chances, have misunderstandings and come home exhausted instead of ecstatic.

This leads to more stress in life, and while our body knows and tries to send us messages to let us know that we are out of balance, we are quite used to ignoring these messages or see them as extra stressors.

Back pains, headaches, low immune system, all kinds of sicknesses and pains are how our body tells us that it needs us to change our thoughts and actions so it can come back to balance and thrive.

On top of the physical pains and troubles we might experience, if we’re not living our highest potential, we have to deal with doubt, uncertainty, insecurity, a lack of direction, stress, poor boundaries, confusion and, as a result, also with failure, low self-esteem and other manifestations of the unhappiness we experience.

To live as a qu_ing and to explore our highest potential means to start defining our lives for ourselves. It means to start exploring and finding out about all we could possibly be, how to be it and then bit by bit starting to embody it.

To live as a qu_ing means to replace doubt, uncertainty and insecurity with clarity about who we are and where we want to go in life and to take the steps to get there. It means building a strong connection to our inner knowing and tapping into the genius of collective consciousness.

This will inevitably lead us to live healthy, happy, fulfilled, empowered and generous lives, as it allows us to enjoy and cherish what we have and to create more of what we love.

It allows us to see and regard ourselves as the divine beings we are, powerful, beautiful and unique.

Unique in our ways but equal to everyone else. Because we are all different reflections of the same one consciousness.

Again, you may ask why a qu_ing, though, and not a king or queen?

I believe that we’re entering into a new paradigm, in which we will eventually overcome a lot of binaries and categories that are actively separating us from each other.

One of these binaries is gender categories. We can already see them becoming much less relevant for younger generations. There is much more fluidity emerging when it comes to gender and gender roles.

This process will happen over time, and it won’t hurt if we already start to imagine and embody it with our own generation.

The qualities described in this book have nothing to do with gender. We all have them and can learn to embody them. This is not something new. Gods have changed gender and sex, some fish change their biological sex with age, people transition, people transform, we always have, we always will.

We are who we are AND we can change.

So, here are some questions for you:

• What would a qu_ing, your best version, your best self, look and act like?
• What qualities are most called for when you want to treat yourself and others well?
• What does it mean to lead by example?
• In any moment, what is the very best way for you to be or act?

These are the questions a qu_ing asks themselves, and this is what you may start asking yourself as well.

The answers to these questions will be uniquely yours. You may look however you like, you may work on or spend time with whatever you like.

We all express our inner qu_ing in our own unique ways, and that is how we will be able to live together peacefully as well.

If we stop limiting ourselves, we will stop trying to limit others.

If we allow ourselves to express freely, we can appreciate that in others as well.

Bit by bit, we will see the beauty of humanity unfold, recognise that everyone can contribute and has their place and that only together we can represent and live as humanity, an ecosystem, a planet, a universe.

Everyone is needed, everyone can be free, and everyone is loved and contributes to the evolution of life. Our world is incomplete without you – shining your bright light as your unique self, and this is why it’s so important that YOU start turning into a qu_ing.

Not only will it make your life more joyful, successful and lighter – your unique qualities are so desperately needed in our changing the world.

What would you look like as your best, free, most loving, kind, creative, joyful, most powerful and most benevolent self?

That’s your qui_ng self, no matter who you are. You’re at your best, when you are being yourself, truly.
To that, let’s start.

I love you very much and I can’t wait to see you become your own qu_ing and enjoy this life a bit more every day until you will one day wake up and notice that all your wildest dreams have come true.

Your new friend, Verena

Who am I, And How Did I Get Here?

Until not that long ago, I thought that living life in today’s world was difficult.
I struggled to oversee everything I felt I needed to know to make good decisions for myself, and everyone I knew seemed to be struggling with similar issues.

There was drug abuse, alcohol and other forms of distraction. There was overconsumption, lost potential, unresolved arguments, mistrust and the inability to be content and present in the moment wherever I looked. We were feeling the weight of the world on us and didn’t know what to do about it.

And we thought we were the absolutely best people around because we did not ignore the suffering of the world. We were suffering with the world.

We were and are loving and kind and open, had and have incredibly good hearts, so much talent and so much beauty to share.

But no one outside our circles really cared about what we did. Sure, some made some money and had their moments of fame, but others died from the drugs or are still struggling with depression and a fear of power and taking control over the fate of their lives.

None of us knew how to play this game of life because we built our lives in opposition to what we saw modelled by generations before us and societies in which we felt we didn’t fit in.

We had no clue what we were doing, but we tried to change the world. We knew we wanted something that made us whole, something to hold and guide us and to be that guide and safety for others. We tried real hard.

We tried to create a place that was free from discrimination or exploitation, but none of us wanted to be powerful or take on too much responsibility for fear of getting called out or selling out.

We wanted to just be and thrive, but we were caught between our wish for pure freedom and expansion and our fear of responsibility.

So we digressed.

And I can’t even tell you how much magic was going on in the underground bars of Berlin in the 2010s. In nightclubs and parks, in bars, cafés, movie theatres and galleries. There was so much beauty and potential so much joy and lust, yet, an equal amount of desperation, fear, self-destruction and lost hope.

At some point, we all had to make a decision to stay and continue to self-destruct, or to find our way out, each in our own ways.

I had a lucky angel in the form of a person come to me, who sometimes gently, sometimes surprisingly guided me out of all the excuses I came up with for my own disempowerment and called out all the demons I so deeply cared for inside of me.

No shadow was hidden from her bullshit-detector and no matter how much I didn’t want to look at them and leave them be, she challenged me to release them.
I’m forever grateful for that.

Our paths split after a while, but my journey continued.

It let me through many dark valleys of my past and often seemed to take almost all of my energy, guiding me onto the edges of steep mountains to challenge myself to grow, just to throw me back into a river of unknown new challenges.

I didn’t always know if I would come out alive, but I somehow knew that if I didn’t that would be OK too because under no circumstances would I want to stay where I was or go back to the fear, longing, disempowerment and desperation.

It was scary, but I knew that if I made it out, it would be worth it.

Eventually, the river took me to the sea, where, like a bird who forgot to fly, I first learned to float and rest until I was able to spread my wings and fly again, to where and how I was always meant to be***.

***In the first episode of his Podcast The Michael Singer Podcast, Michael Singer is talking about a bird who landed on the water and forgot to fly, dealing with the waves and storms and enjoying the sunshine, as an analogy to our lives. We, too, have forgotten about some of the powers we have, just like the bird forgot that he is able to fly. Check it out, if you’d like to hear this from him, I find this to be a very useful image.

The storms I found and still sometimes find myself in, turned mostly into breezes and I continue to be able to float on the rivers and the sea as well. These moments of rest, especially in unknown and surprising water, give me the energy to climb new mountains, taller and taller or simply lift up in the air all together.

I do believe I can fly. I just haven’t figured out how yet.

I just read in Florence Scovel Shinn’s book: The Secret Door to Success the following:

“Working with spiritual law, we are bringing to pass that which already is. In the Universal Mind it is there as an idea, but is crystallised on the external, by sincere desire.

The idea of a bird was a perfect picture in the divine mind; the fish caught the idea, and wished themselves into birds.

Are you desires bringing you wings? We should all be bringing some seemingly impossible things to pass.”

Florence Scovel Shinn wrote this over a century ago. Even then, Lamark was supporting this theory of evolution. Today, mainstream science is slowly catching up to the power of our words, our thoughts and our actions as well.

Quantum leaps are possible, evolution shows how much we can transform if we set our mind to it.

The newest research in epigenetics proves that we can change our genes with the way we think and live. If we wish, we can find our wings.

All we have to do, is to begin to make the necessary changes. It’s quite simple: If we don’t make the decisions to determine our lives, life will. But we can play an incredibly huge role in directing our lives, if we begin to listen to and live a life let by our true desires and wishes.

The journey which let me here has been going on for the last ten years or so, and is now alchemised into this writing, as short and precise as possible.

I’m a trained anthropologist and have an MA in Cultural Anthropology, Politics and Russian. I had a weekly music radio show for 17 years and DJed a lot. I worked for different NGOs in Germany and Ukraine, and ran my own for a while.

I’ve organised transnational art and culture events in Europe. I have worked alongside Roma communities, who have been subjected to some of the most extreme outcomes of societal neglect and discrimination. Some of the people I met in these times are now my family, and we created a bond that is built to last.

I owe a lot of what I know and share to the opportunity of living in Roma communities in Ukraine and learning there what it means to love and be included community, against all odds. , This is something that I had never encountered or experienced in my privileged life in the West.

My queer parts, my academic parts, my people parts, my music, my design and my writing and teaching, until recently, had always been somewhat separate and it felt difficult to bridge it all.

But my journey has taught me that it all belongs. We are all made up of many different parts and experiences which might not always make sense at first sight, but I’ve come to understand that there is no distinction.

The loss of people we love changes us, the same way that a personal achievement does. It all helps us to grow and to get to know ourselves better. Tragedy and joy become the same when we learn to accept them for what they are: our unique experiences that allow us to meet ourselves fully.

If you haven’t jumped yet, into the abyss of truly meeting yourself, I hope that this book will inspire you to jump into the stream of life and let it take you apart, just so that you can come out with much more clarity, understanding, trust and love.

There’s really nothing to fear.

The conditioning is our armour that keeps us from breezing and being free. Ego holds on to it for its life, yet with every brave thought and movement it cracks and becomes more flexible, until it might eventually resolve or fall off completely.

Your story might be completely different from mine, or you might recognise similarities.

This doesn’t matter. If you ever feel overwhelmed, stressed or scared, lonely, powerless or simply exhausted, but have a tiny bit of hope in you that things might change for the better, then this is for you.

And there’s no reason to be afraid, even if losing yourself sounds like the scariest thing right now, to give up what you think you need will simply allow bringing you everything you really need and could ever wish for.

Because you are perfect and unique and 100% good and have the ability to make the biggest miracles happen, if you believe this now or not.

This book is simply here to bring you joy, love, trust, clarity and freedom.

If you open up enough to believe that you are loved, supported and guided on any step of your way, you will feel it soon enough as well. And then see it and then live it and then, begin to share it yourself.

What I suggest in this small book might require a lot of letting go of old beliefs, habits and routines.

But what you will get in return will be worth it.

Are you ready?

If you’d like to see this for yourself, I’d like to invite you to play a game with it:

Read each mindset shift once and when you are done write a short summary of what you remember. Then, when you pick up the book again, see if what you remembered the first time is the same that you remember or notice the second time around. Has your perception changed? If so, how?

If we’re open and receptive and put what we learn to practice, we’re always spiralling up.

Which is why I would also like to challenge you to really practice each of these mindset shifts.

Again, it’s like playing a game. Just try each one, and see how it feels.

On this note, I’d also like to offer a warning: If you just read this book, without trying each mindset shift for yourself, and adjusting it to your own needs and circumstances, you won’t have much benefit from it.

„Knowledge that is not in the bones is just a rumor.“

This quote is assigned to the Asaro tribe, who live in the Papua New-Guinea. When I first heard it, it brought a great bit of clarity into my life and I think it can do the same for you.

It answered the question of why I often couldn’t take it seriously when people gave me practical advice that they didn’t practice themselves, or why people could read thousands of books and still not be able to live their lives in the way they wanted to.

It’s because they did not practice their knowledge.

So, the key is to practice and then to see what works for yourself. With everything in life.

That way, not only will you benefit most and will immediately know what works for you and what doesn’t – you can also share your new practices with other people, from a place where you actually know what you are talking about – and create the ripples we need to level up and raise our consciousness on a larger scale.

If we share knowledge we haven’t tried, we are simply spreading rumours with minimal positive effect.

Telling someone about something that we’re not practising ourselves yet, will never have the same effect as being a living example of it.

For this reason, I’m not sharing anything with you that I have not put to practice.
These are the rules and practices I live by and which I teach to and model for my clients.

They have completely changed my life and can change yours too – for the better.

I discovered these rules when I was simply trying to ease my confusion, stop being overwhelmed and insecure all the time, and started to read and explore in many different directions.

On this journey, it soon became very clear that with the confusion, and insecurity disappearing, more energy became available to enjoy, to be present and to experience.

So, I really dare you to try. One step at a time. With every one change, more energy will become available for another.

Of course, this book will not be able to present everything I have to say and share with you. I’m already working on my second book, where I will show you how to implement these shifts in a very practical way over the course of twelve months, with a focus on a different area of our lives each month.

But this book builds the basis and also for the CREATRIX School and my coaching offers, both of which you can book and join through my website.

This book will give you an overview over how to bring more love, clarity, confidence, connection and freedom into your life, so that you can advance on your journey to becoming your true self, best self, your qu_ing self, guided by and trusting your inner knowing and learning to handle any crisis with grace.

This book exists for two reasons:

Reason #1: To make it as easy as a possible for you to live your most fulfilled life – a life in which you are truly happy, feel loved and find belonging. A life in which you are true to yourself, stand up for your beliefs, and have all the energy, love and power to be there for yourself and others.

Reason #2: I’ve written this book for myself because I know I need it. The changes I suggest are radical in some ways, but they are very loving. The conditioning to other ways of being is strong, though. I too need to remind myself to come back to these rules or mindset shift all the time. They are my support & I hope they can be yours too.

Some of the things I say might be controversial, but they are all rooted in love and here to create more understanding and less division, I think you will notice that once you try.

Very much in line with Buddhist traditions, the goal is to reduce suffering: for each of us and for the whole planet.

If this is not your goal, then this book might not be for you. If this is not your goal yet, but you are willing to listen (or read) and find out if it might be your goal as well, then I can’t wait for you to read on.

One of the most wonderful things I’ve experienced since I began my own journey of self-actualization, is reading books and listening to people talk, who only act and talk with the best intentions for everyone and everything they encounter.

There’s a difference, when you listen to a self-help book written by someone telling you how to advance your career the way they did, so they can make more money from selling it as a book, and someone who has discovered something that was deeply helpful and meaningful to them and they set out to share what they learned, so others may benefit from it as well.

I’m not judging either, everyone is on their own path and has to do what they have to do. I’d simply like to encourage you to train your intuition by looking for people’s intention and feeling into what you perceive and receive.

You will feel the difference, and the different meaning these two approaches can bring to your life. Again, everything has its place. So do you and your feelings.

As someone who has often been made fun of for being too nice, discovering these wonderful people, many of them Hay House Authors, felt like such a great relief because the way they braved their own vulnerability and hope for something better and more just, made the shy flame inside of me become strong enough to be here now and share my few words with you.

To quote Brené Brown: “You can’t grow behind armour.”

To grow and be ourselves, we first need to allow ourselves to be who we are. And for that, we need to feel safe. Seeing other people who share and proudly live what we’ve been hiding can give us this sense of safety. We have to know we’re not alone. At least, I had to discover that before I dared to become my true self.

We have to feel safe enough to allow for all of our feelings, whether we think of them as good or bad, positive or negative. All feelings have to be felt, and all parts have to be accepted.

Only then will we begin to feel a sense of true freedom, and clarity will move in almost automatically.

What has been bothering and limiting us, will lose power over us, once we allow it to surface and to let go of the pretence will allow us to build the connections we seek.

This does not require anything from the outside world. It only requires us to allow ourselves to be ourselves at all times. To be the qu_ing, our truest and best self, the real person that we are, not a toned down version of ourselves.

For that, we begin to quiet down enough to allow for what needs to surface to come up and stay curious about what’s to come, this way, more and more of our true self will come out as well.

This won’t be achieved in a day, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be achieved over time.

This book will show you one way to get there.

My approach is based on Positive Psychology.

Abraham Maslow, the founder of Positive Psychology, studied the most thriving people of his time, under the preposition that we all, any human, could be like them.

He noticed that to be thriving, growing and expanding is actually our natural state of being, and what keeps most people from thriving in the same way as these extraordinary people, are blockages, which have been built up through unresolved issues, such as trauma and conditioning (collective trauma).

As a result of this recognition, he also founded the school of self-actualisation coaching, which helps people to come back to that thriving self.

I’m a self-actualisation coach and this book is the foundation of my work. I help people to come back to this state of thriving, by removing the blockages that keep them from it.

As self-actualization coaching was invented to fill in where conventional therapy didn’t reach people and help them find true wholeness, this approach works especially well for those who have tried many other approaches, such as traditional therapy before, but have not been able to reach the results they wished for.

The ten mindset shifts I’m introducing in this book are the ten of the most common blockages, I’ve encountered, which you can examine and release, if you wish, to allow for a free flow of life, to experience blissful thriving and to become the qu_ing that you are.

I hope that you will find this book useful and that it will inspire you to let go of your shields of protection. That it will strengthen your inner flame to develop the internal strength and allow yourself to not shy away from conflict. Allow yourself to be vulnerable and honest, while knowing how to protect yourself, without having to hide yourself.

I hope you will begin to allow yourself to express all that you truly are, without limitations, and to let yourself be guided and protected by love and forgiveness and the energy of ever-evolving light and life.

„We all have two lives. The second one begins the day you realize you only have one.“
Confucius

Preparation – How do you want to live?

Every coaching session I give, and I believe, any new situation we find ourselves in, should start with the question: What do you want?

Often people don’t know, but I believe, it’s the only thing we need to find out.

As I’ve referred to above, as I see it, each one of us is one part of a huge beautiful mosaic that constitutes our wholeness. We don’t all want the same, and we shouldn’t all want the same. What each of us has to do, is to figure out what we want, and then how to get that.

Because confusion, not knowing what we want or not allowing ourselves what we want is the biggest obstacle on our way to a fulfilled life – and obviously to getting what we want.

If there’s a table full of gifts and you can’t decide which one to pick, you will end up with the one that will be left over.

In the past, this realisation might have led us to believe that we should quickly pick the best one, before somebody else takes it, but I think that we are slowly starting to really see that there is one perfect gift for every one, and that the table is expansive, existing beyond our limited ideas of possibilities.

I’ll address this more deeply in chapter three.
What’s good for you might not be good for me, and vice versa.

Quickly picking the wrong gift because it’s more prestigious, will not bring us the same fulfilment as learning to listen to ourselves and then intuitively picking our right gift.

We don’t need to know why, but we can start to trust that we have this inner knowing, that our body knows, that if we let our hand guide us to the right gift, without rationalising or judging, it will be the perfect gift for ourselves. This trust will not ever disappoint.

It’s never once disappointed me.

I’ll give you an example from last weekend. A new friend I made invited me to go to a Five Rhythms Dance Meeting, something I’ve been wanting to try for a while now. On Saturday, every time I thought: “Dancing” my whole body lit up in excitement and it was as if my soul were jumping for joy.

Then on Sunday, same thought, no reaction whatsoever. Since the class was in the evening, I decided to give it some time. But as I still felt no interest or joy when I thought of dancing in the afternoon, I told my friend that I might join her another time and started to work on a drawing that I had been meaning to finish for a while.

I ended up finishing the drawing and two more that same evening, which made me incredibly happy and also let me to picking up the work on this book again, something that I didn’t find the courage to do for some weeks now.

And this is making me incredibly happy, too.

Was it the reasonable or logical thing to do, considering that I’ve been wanting to go dancing for so long? Maybe not.
Was it what I would have done in the past? Probably not.

My new friend was delighted when I told her that I let my body decide and we had a super nice conversation that followed afterward, so our relationship deepened through this as well.

I know that my body and soul are much wiser than I could ever be and I share this experience with you so that you dare to build this trust as well. Take the risk of acting contrary to what we’ve learned and have been told.

To quote Florence Scovel Shinn again: “Always follow your hunch.”

So if you don’t know what you want right now, or don’t trust yourself to know what you really want, that is OK and quite normal when we live in a world full of illusions and demands.

But by trusting your intuition more and more, you will get to know yourself better and eventually also know what it is that you really want.

And we can begin the work exactly where you are now.

To kickstart this journey, I’ve prepared some exercises and you can also watch this video in which I explain the difference between your purpose, your vision and your calling.

You can download the worksheet with the exercises here: Session 1 Worksheet – they will all help you to get to know yourself better and are the ones I invite my coaching clients to do for our first session.

Take some time with this. A week might be a good period of time. Allow for what you read and the exercises and thoughts to land in your body. To arrive. To integrate.

Then come back here.

Now that you have begun to take account of where you are at in life and where you might want to go, we can get started.

And we begin with letting go of old beliefs, breathing and practising lots of kindness.