#817 Insight & (Negative) Experience

Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: What role does (negative) experience play in gaining insight? That’s the question we explore in Room #817 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Insight (and gaining it).” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…

Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.

Let’s dive right into today’s topic then: insight and experience. On one hand, we want to look at the role experience plays, as I said, in the context of insight and gaining insight. We’ve already touched on this here and there before. And today I’d like to go a bit deeper into it and, above all, take a look at what your biggest realizations have actually been, if you dare to look back over your own life and past experiences, at the insights you’ve drawn from them, and how they may ultimately have changed your life, or your business. And what kinds of realizations, say from professional contexts, were maybe sudden, decisive experiences, or were they more gradual steps you went through? There might be all sorts of different constellations here. And to what extent have they influenced your life or your business? And what might have been the biggest realizations for you that you’ve gathered from relationships, from interpersonal experiences and so on? And using these kinds of examples, I think, we can take a closer look together and pull out certain aspects. So it makes sense today to actually look at which experiences I can bring in as examples, in order to draw out certain aspects together, in our shared reflection. So when we think about insight, what are the first things that come to mind in terms of your own experiences, where the biggest “aha” moments might have been that contributed to that? I’m really curious what comes together today, and which perspectives we get to capture. With that, you’re warmly invited to join in, as every morning, and start this shared dialogue with me. And just a quick reminder that this is being recorded, as always — which means anyone joining automatically agrees that it’s being recorded and will be published afterward. We also have three small rules: a profile photo in which you’re clearly recognizable, your first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. That’s proven itself, simply to make sure we’re dealing with genuine, sincere contributions and not trolls. If for whatever reason someone doesn’t want to agree to that, wants to stay anonymous, or maybe can’t speak today because there’s too much background noise or something like that, you of course always have the option, as usual, to just use the chat instead — and I can check in on that in between and pick up on whatever fits the topic well. Good morning, Layla, a very warm one. What do you have to say about this topic?

Good morning, Yasemin, a very warm one. First I’d like to repeat your invitation, because I think it’s really great when people come up here, and we have so many wonderful people in the audience. I wanted to underline that once more, like a broken record. Now let me get to my actual point. Yasemin, I felt a little bit like we were sitting around a digital campfire just now, because in your Authors’ Breakfasts, the theme of “crisis as opportunity” already came up — I believe it was your happiness expert who said that. And I was just thinking to myself what I automatically think of when I think about negative experiences. And it’s honestly a bit depressing, because I’m a teacher, and it’s school. That’s not really about my professional career as such, I wouldn’t necessarily put it that way — I’d rather say, because I’ve had so many positive experiences there too, and since this is being recorded: hey, thank you, dear kids, you’re wonderful — no, seriously, I really do think it’s a wonderful profession, you get so much back from it. But what I have to say is that you don’t only make positive experiences during your school years, and that has really shaped my professional life as a teacher, I have to say.

Yes, really fascinating. Thank you so much. The fact that this is one of the very first things that comes to mind for you, almost as a reflex, I find genuinely fascinating. Personally, I actually don’t have particularly fond memories of my own school years either. I have to admit openly, I never really liked school much. For me, it was more like a kind of mental juggling act that I comforted myself with, essentially wriggling my way through it, so to speak. And, well, since we want to look at both negative and positive experiences today — I remember my university years very positively, and probably my school years all the more negatively by comparison. Though that wasn’t necessarily because of the teachers or anything like that, children themselves can be quite horrible too. So there were really a lot of interpersonal experiences there that still bring up painful memories when I think back on them. Those are the kinds of impulses that come up for me. And I find it really fascinating that you’re saying certain aspects there actually went on to shape your professional path to some extent. Maybe you’d like to make that a bit more concrete. The first thing that occurred to me was, did the negative experiences you had, for instance, contribute to you now trying to do things differently, or better, on your own path in that field? Or how should we interpret that?

Well, I once learned that self-praise stinks, even though these days I can name my own abilities without slipping into constant self-deprecation. That’s actually a development I’ve only really made in the last few years, and I really made a lot of that progress here on Clubhouse, to some extent. And it’s really true, when I look at it — I don’t want to become the best teacher in the world. I just want to be the best teacher that I personally know. It would be lovely if I could actually pull that off. And I know so many wonderful teachers. So this is an undertaking that will probably last a lifetime, or at least the rest of my career, and I’m looking forward to that challenge. What I have to say, Yasemin, is that I experienced something quite similar to what you described. For me it was actually like this — and this is very personal, but that’s okay for me, because this is something I can talk about publicly. As a child I was teased a lot, because at twelve, thirteen years old, I hit puberty and suddenly developed a very feminine figure, with a very large bust — I’m deliberately putting it that way. That was very unsettling for my classmates. There were other things that unsettled them too. I really went deep into analyzing this, into psychology, and thought about why that actually was. I come from a small village where there weren’t that many migrants besides me — though I am actually German-Tunisian, so I’m a kind of hybrid. I never really belonged to any one clique. And, well, then I really was, I was teased very badly. There were actual terms used — I don’t even really want to say it — that T-word, the one that can also be used for the desert. And then “monster” got tacked on after it. That simply wasn’t nice. Or boys would place bets on who could grab my chest during the school trip. I’m not sending any warm regards to my former classmates for that, because it was truly horrible and awful. And, well, I got handed a leaf once, said thank you, passed the leaf along and said “please.” I played that little game thirty times over. And yes, there were just so many things like that where I kept thinking, I want to do this differently. Even as a child I always thought, I don’t want to be like them. And of course you protect yourself to some extent and try to lean on whatever abilities you have. And for me that was always my mind, that’s what I always relied on. That was simply very important to me. But then it wasn’t just classmates who occasionally denied me that, it was also teachers — in seventh grade I wrote a poem, which I’ve actually read out here before, and I went to my teacher with it, and the response was, well, but that’s really difficult. Then sentences like “not everyone needs a high school diploma” would come up. Then I went to my mother, and my mother asked, which school do their kids go to? “Well, I think they’re doing the Abitur track.” And that settled the argument for me. And that’s why I made myself a few promises. So when I see schadenfreude, or things that aren’t working, I don’t want to play judge, instead I work on group dynamics, so that a class grows together as a group. Because every teacher does that, or at least a great many teachers do. I didn’t invent that approach myself, it’s simply the case that it’s very important to do that. And there too you can genuinely influence group processes in a positive way. If someone is being gleeful about someone else’s misfortune, I let a bit of my humor come through, I’ll say, you’re acting just like that boy from the Simpsons who says “ha-ha” right now, and then they look at me like, “what do you mean by that?” and I always say, “well, look, schadenfreude means taking pleasure in someone else’s suffering. Is that who you want to be?” That works out pretty well in most cases. And, well, I don’t know, I just tell my students, you know what, kids, I want you to become rich and famous. And if not famous, then at least rich. Because here’s the thing — I can’t evaluate their potential. And in my own life, my potential was always evaluated, what I could and couldn’t do, based on some arbitrary set of facts people had about me. And that just doesn’t work. So I always tell them, unfortunately I can only evaluate your performance. So you need to show me your performance. And that’s also why I always say, education is something the learner has to pick up, not something that gets handed to them. Because I can meet you where you are, and I can show you a path, but you always have to walk that path yourself. What I can do is make it easier for you to walk it. And a really important sentence I use in my classroom is, you know, kids, if you want to slack off on me, please just let me know, because — that’s a classic teacher line — I get paid either way. I don’t even like that line myself, but I happen to be the only person in the room who mostly has an Abitur. I earned my lower-secondary school certificate first, then my vocational school certificate, and only then my Abitur. I’ve often heard people say, not everyone needs an Abitur. Do you really think you can handle university? I think it’s wonderful when people become teachers regardless of their skin color or religion. I can deal with things like that very, very well. For me, my teacher-trainee year was a real turning point — that was the first time I was treated as an adult, not as a child or a learner anymore, but as someone who was actually teaching. That was really, really lovely. That was a wonderful phase for me. I think it’s important to pass that on to the children too, to let them know that even if — I always tell them, it’s really important that you realize you’re only hurting yourselves, not me. And of course that probably makes me sad too. But still, the fact is, it doesn’t hurt me, ultimately you’re the ones hurting yourselves. So I want to ask you to please just do the work. Because I don’t want to be like my own teacher was. And yes, there were some difficult situations — one teacher used to switch the light on and say something like, “so that a light might go on for you too,” that sort of thing. And I made myself a very firm promise that I would never use that kind of demeaning communication toward children, teenagers, or even adults, whenever I can help it. So I try to throw roses, but even my roses have thorns. Yes, you can tell, this topic really moves me a lot.

Thank you so much. And now I’m really curious what perspective Sonja might bring in here too, or whether she’d like to jump straight into what’s just been said. Above all — I remember from a lecture, or a seminar, during my studies, since I studied education, that we once dealt with a topic around upbringing, in the sense of, what are the underlying connections that make it, for instance, that in one case someone turns to crime and in another they don’t, why some people end up turning to drugs and others don’t, and so on. We looked at a lot of different questions there, and what was interesting was that all sorts of different answers were given. It was about strain, about fear, about violence within the family — various different aspects came up. And there was this recurring question from the professor, whom I really remember very fondly and very positively, who kept asking, well, is that really always true? Aren’t there also other cases where things turned out differently, in a manner of speaking? And exactly what you just described made me ask myself the same question — is that really always the case, and does it really land the same way for everyone, or what’s actually happening there? Because even though different students sit in the same class and hear the exact same thing, that doesn’t mean they all walk away with the same realization. One person might get one thing out of it and another person might not, and I find that genuinely fascinating to look at more closely. Sonja, a very good morning to you. What do you have to say about this?

A very good morning to everyone. On the theme of insight and experience — I actually appreciate that “negative” is in parentheses here, because the example I want to bring today is something from the recent past, and I’m honestly not entirely sure myself whether it was a positive or a negative experience — but I want to share it with you either way, because it’s definitely rich in insight. I generally consider myself a very reflective person, and I’ve always thought it was highly desirable to be maximally reflective, and I’ve always seen it as a real strength that I manage that so well, even in emotionally very difficult and challenging situations, and quickly too. But over the weekend I got a completely new perspective on that — namely, that this self-regulation, this reflectiveness, this ability to regulate myself quickly because I’m so reflective, can actually come across as quite unsettling to other people. Because when I start telling someone about a painful, relatively recent event, it often comes out as just a report. It’s not accompanied by the emotion I actually felt in the moment, because I’ve usually already processed it emotionally beforehand. And that’s exactly what happened over the weekend. Beforehand I’d been out cycling, grounding myself, opening up my senses, and I really wasn’t in that raw, processing kind of emotional state anymore, I was completely calm and balanced inside, very much at peace with myself. And the person I met up with, to talk a bit about what’s been happening in my life — a fresh breakup, having lost the love of my life, having lost my sense of home, and this feeling of being completely without direction, trying to figure out what opportunities might actually be hiding in all of that for me — that person gave me the feedback that this was really unsettling and hard to grasp, when the emotion isn’t being carried along with it in the moment. And then I looked back at other situations in my life with this new piece of information. And a few parallels jumped out at me, for instance in my professional life too. I once had a boss I really didn’t get along with, because we had very different approaches to work, and I tended to deal with my emotional stress entirely on my own and only ever presented her with results. I was always very calm and composed. And she sensed that there was some kind of big values gap there. But I was friendly and completely matter-of-fact with her. And she couldn’t quite place that either. I could feel that she perceived me as a threat. She couldn’t grasp it, she kept looking for the catch — what’s off about this? Something must be wrong here. This is inhuman. And that exact feeling — “something’s off here, and it’s threatening” — is also exactly what got reflected back to me in my relationship. This over-reflectedness, and regulating too quickly. And that’s a genuinely valuable insight for me. I don’t yet know what to do with it, because I still consider it desirable to be very reflective. And I’m now trying to figure out how I can get to a place where I can still nurture and hold onto those more human traits alongside it. And if any of you have any ideas, I’d be really grateful for a bit of guidance there, because for me this is something completely new right now. Thank you.

Wonderful, thank you so much for sharing that too. And I actually find it really fascinating that this is something where you might not have found the right or fitting answers for yourself just yet, but you’re noticing that, well, there is a kind of insight here, in a manner of speaking, but then we’re back to the same point of, and now what do I actually do with it? I’ve noticed something, picked up on something, I’ve drawn an insight from it, and now the question is how it continues from there, in the next steps — how do I deal with it, what do I actually translate into action or into doing here? And this insight, the realization you arrive at — and I find this really interesting in this context — doesn’t yet mean that the process is finished, but rather the question of what happens next with it. So what do I do with it now? I find that really fascinating. Just a quick note here, by the way, since the rooms aren’t fully scheduled yet — tomorrow, in the room on emotion and insight, we’ll take a closer look at exactly this aspect of emotion, in other words, what role emotions play in insight, or in gaining insight. So we might touch on that a little bit today too, of course these emotions do flow into it, but I just wanted you to know that tomorrow we’ll be focusing more specifically on emotions. Layla, I’m really curious what you think about this. And then I’d love to pick this up again myself too.

I don’t want to jump ahead here, because I think you have more expertise on this than I do. But Sonja, for me it’s like this — no, actually, Sonja, what you just described is something I’ve often been accused of in my own life too, or that’s happened a lot to me anyway. I’ve asked myself why that is before too. I don’t know if it’s really comparable, but for me it’s like this — I have two sides. One side is very matter-of-fact, I’d say, paired with a lot of politeness, when I manage to pull that off. And the other side is that I’m like a child — I can get so incredibly excited about things, I’m very easily enthused. And I actually worked through that once, when I had my burnout, and over the last few weeks and months I’ve broken it down again for myself in a new way. What became clear to me as an insight is that, for me, negative feelings are something I have to regulate, something that isn’t supposed to have a place in my life. And you can look at your own underlying beliefs there — if you were taught that you’re supposed to be nice, that you’re supposed to stop crying, that you’re supposed to be well-behaved and not take up too much space, then that’s the kind of thing that can happen. Which isn’t to say that upbringing is the only factor at play there. And then there’s the other thing — someone once told me that what I have is a kind of “felt matter-of-factness.” So I believe I’m matter-of-fact, but I’m actually not. It helped me to take a step back, because I actually like that about myself, that I’m like this. And I don’t even know if I really want to change it, because what I’ve noticed is that I don’t get understood. And that not being understood drove me up the wall, because I can look inside my own head and know that all those feelings are still there, even though I can rattle it off very matter-of-factly to you. If I tell you about my grandmother’s death right now, I can turn that into a very matter-of-fact report, even though I carried a feeling of guilt about it for decades, because I didn’t say goodbye to her on her last evening, even though my mother told me I should. I was sixteen and I didn’t do it. And yes, those are the kinds of things where I’ve noticed for myself that I actually need this, so that feelings don’t get too big for me and don’t overwhelm me. So it’s a strategy I’ve developed for myself that works really well. But it’s very unsettling for the people around me, because I can switch from the emotional straight into this other mode. And then you get everything from being over the moon to utterly heartbroken. What’s going on here? But I can open up, I don’t know how it is for you, but it takes time and it takes a lot of trust. And then it works, then I manage it. The path I’m on right now is to take that step back and really look at it — why am I like this right now, why am I telling this story this particular way right now? And it’s lovely to get feedback from the outside on that too, I’m grateful for that. But I’ve also learned that I don’t just accept everything. In the past I used to try to be even more understated, even more diplomatic — I’ll be however you want me to be. Which doesn’t mean I’m a pushover, because I do have principles. I just want everyone to feel comfortable, that matters to me. And I can twist and bend myself for someone, but at some point I break through again. So I think this strategy I have is a good one, and I keep examining it. But it keeps getting reflected back to me. And I find it really interesting to meet someone in whom I now recognize similarities. So thank you for that. Yasemin, sorry, I didn’t mean to talk for quite so long.

It’s all good, thank you so much. And yes, I think what’s important to emphasize first here, as always, is that there’s no right or wrong in this context, because the context we’re in always plays a role too. When you were telling that story, Sonja, it reminded me of something too — I actually shared this story with you all before, about a job interview I once had, for a program within the company meant to get you to the next level, which involved a kind of assessment center. It went really, genuinely well, they were completely thrilled. And yet, that didn’t lead to me actually being accepted into the program. And I got a similar piece of feedback there too. That’s why it came right back to me just now, because they essentially gave me a similar kind of feedback, along the lines of: everything was perfect, but even with the conflict situation, and how I handled it and so on, their concern was basically, but doesn’t that do something to the other person, doesn’t that do something to the employee, that everything runs so perfectly, so flawlessly, so to speak — they literally called it perfect. And that ultimately led to me not being able to take part in that program, which, looking back now, really isn’t a big deal at all, in a manner of speaking. But it shows that, depending on the context we happen to be moving in, the exact same thing can lead to something being seen as good or bad. And that’s again a very individual, personal evaluation that each of us makes. And I think that plays an important role here. If we look at this again — what happens when we have experiences, we naturally go into analysis mode too, which is essentially what you’re doing right now, to some extent, through this reflection. You’ve received some feedback there, and now the question is, what do I actually do with it? Which means first of all taking a look, comparing different reference points from your own life, and looking at them, and perhaps first arriving at the realization — right, this happened in other contexts too, where there were maybe similar reactions, or different reactions, like what you shared about your boss, or your manager. And on the other hand, there’s also the question of how I personally evaluate that. We tend to lean toward thinking in either-or terms here too, and now we get to remind ourselves once again that there isn’t just one “it is this way” or “it is that way,” but that it’s always tied to context — we essentially move through completely different roles all the time, and encounter different people every single day. What you just described, you received as feedback on one hand, but on the other hand I’m sure you’ve also gotten feedback from people who admire that you handle things so well, this reflectiveness, this way of dealing with things — and that it might even lead to admiration, or even to a kind of role-model effect, where people think, I’d love to learn how to do that too, how do you do it? So it depends on who I’m dealing with, and that has to do with the person too — the context we’re in, and then the person, how far along they themselves are, how they deal with certain things, and that leads to a corresponding reaction. That’s the first thing that comes to mind for me — you can take a look at what that triggers in you. And the other thing in this context is that we’re always moving within areas of tension and dilemmas. That means there are certain situations that simply can’t be fully resolved. And the question is, is there even an answer in terms of right or wrong for that? Or is it more a matter of having to endure it, in a manner of speaking, accepting that it simply is the way it is? Including the knowledge that I can’t resolve it, that there will always be people who evaluate it positively on one hand and negatively on the other. And how do I personally deal with that realization? Sonja, what do you think?

You’re touching on something really important there, this having to endure it. Maybe that really is what it comes down to, simply enduring it. Because you’re completely right that there are also people out there who reflect this back to me as an admirable strength. And I honestly can’t really enjoy that, because at the same time I also know that it’s exactly what cost me the love of my life, because she was afraid she couldn’t keep up, felt comparatively imperfect and small next to it, and often wouldn’t even engage in conversation because she felt I was too eloquent. And that’s so sad, because I’m so full of warmth and love and willingness to listen, and honestly, everything is there that I think a partnership needs, or really any relationship, whether romantic or professional — it simply needs that kind of warm listening and understanding, and for the other person not to try to blow up the situation with their emotions, but to genuinely try to work toward a solution and to understand. Just to first reflect back, hey, I heard what you told me. Let me summarize what I heard, and I understand you. I feel with you. And if that ends up feeling too perfect and triggers fear instead, then that’s a dilemma that I genuinely believe you just have to endure, and that it’s an extremely painful lesson of life. Because for me it means I’m faced with a choice: do I stay authentic and keep nurturing and living that way, or do I maybe have people in my life whom I love more than anything, but around whom I can’t show myself as I truly am, and then I wither away inside because of it. That’s a truly painful dilemma. It’s not nice at all.

Absolutely understandable. And right when you said that, another aspect came back to me too, something we’ve talked about before — everything comes with a price. And in this context, sometimes that price is positive and sometimes it’s negative, in a manner of speaking, depending on what it actually leads to. It might be that a relationship ends up breaking apart. It might also be that people grow closer together through it, so also a positive price, in that sense. Either way, it always comes down to that same question of price. And at the same time, we’ve probably all experienced comparable situations where certain things didn’t go well in a relationship, for instance, or something similar, regardless of whether it’s a romantic partnership or just an interpersonal relationship in general. Ultimately, it’s often the case that with people who aren’t particularly important to us, or who aren’t particularly close to us — how would I actually deal with that situation? I think it’s worth looking at that too, because with someone I’m not personally close to, someone I don’t attach that much significance to because that closeness simply isn’t there, or because there’s no real relationship behind it, I would probably evaluate a similar situation, or a similar piece of feedback, or a similar experience, completely differently than with someone where I might be paying a high price for it, where, for example, the relationship suffers because of it and ends up breaking apart. And here the question also comes up — we always look at relationships as an interplay, we always say that we contribute something to the relationship ourselves, but at the same time there are aspects we shouldn’t forget either, from my point of view, namely that certain traits or personality characteristics also shape how the other person deals with it, and I don’t necessarily have influence over everything. In other words, what the other person makes of it isn’t necessarily always in my hands either. So it’s also worth looking at, what’s my area, and what’s the other person’s area, so to speak — not in the sense of trying to change things or change the other person, or thinking, well, could I have — because we’re always our own harshest critics, always looking at it purely from the perspective of, what could I have done differently, or better, to make it work — and then we’re back to this idea of enduring, of accepting that sometimes it might actually just be better, because the underlying levels are simply too different, or however you want to put it — and by level I don’t mean education or anything like that, but quite generally how someone handles certain situations and so on — and that this sometimes means it’s actually better, in a manner of speaking, to genuinely let go, even if that’s hard, and even if it comes with an emotional negative experience attached to it. Layla, you wanted to add something too.

Yes, actually — this makes me think of my own dance territory, Yasemin, your dance territory — I know Dirty Dancing was a long time ago, but that’s actually a nice way to untangle this for yourself too. And Sonja, listening to your story, I felt reminded of something, and I wanted to say, I’m really, truly sorry, and I genuinely mean that — I consider you one of the great people, and I don’t think you should have to shrink for that. This isn’t even really about your relationship specifically. But I know that feeling. I know what it’s like to have felt ashamed of how much I earn. To have felt ashamed of my own degree, even though — I keep saying this, but I say it so that everyone knows they can achieve anything — I earned my lower-secondary certificate, my vocational certificate, and my Abitur, even though everyone kept telling me I wouldn’t manage it, or nobody believed I could. And I think that’s where I picked up this perfectionism. But that same perfectionism is also what gave me my first burnout. And that made me think again about your boss, and I thought, right, she never noticed. I mean, I don’t know, I wasn’t there, but what I’ve noticed for myself is, back when I changed jobs, before my burnout, I used to go to work in the dark and come home from work in the dark. I kept that up for four weeks, and then I cried my eyes out. I just couldn’t anymore. Right up until the end, nobody noticed I was having a burnout. People asked me if I was in love with one of my students, because I seemed so cheerful. I felt like I was dying on the inside. But you just don’t say that out loud, because you don’t notice when the cashier is in a bad mood while handing you your bread rolls either. With a teacher it should be similar — which doesn’t mean I hide my personality, it just means I don’t want children to suffer because of my personal situation. That’s simply not their dance territory, to put it kindly. And this isn’t advice, by the way, this is just how I try to handle it in my own world. These days I do let it show a bit more. I’ve explained this to Yasemin before — it’s like a pendulum, and sometimes that pendulum swings a little too far in the other direction. Four years ago I got an MS diagnosis on top of everything. Then last year an ADHD diagnosis got added too. By the way, I’m doing great, and my life is wonderful, and I’m glad I’ve gotten to know myself this well. And yet I keep bringing it up again and again, partly because it’s a processing thing for me, and partly because I come across as so matter-of-fact — because I always have this feeling that people think I do everything effortlessly. But I actually try hard, and it is work. Some things I do just shake out of my sleeve easily, but it’s still work. And that always made me a bit sad personally. Because when I had to tell my ex-boyfriend — he said he only had a lower-secondary certificate, and I said, so do I — and inwardly I thought, yes, and still, I don’t want to. Even back in lower-secondary school I was reading “The Good Person of Szechwan” by Brecht. Education, real schooling, has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence, and that man was certainly intelligent too, but I always felt like I had to hide something, because I’m the kind of person who, if I read something beautiful, wants to read it out loud. One of my most beautiful experiences, maybe my most beautiful one, was when my first boyfriend used to read to me from “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” every night, and I’d fall asleep to it. I find that just wonderful. And I have a similar image to yours in my head. I have this picture in my mind — I’m afraid to bloom, but if I don’t bloom soon, I’ll wither instead. And I don’t want to wither. And anyone who loves me, who cares about me, surely wouldn’t want that for me either.

Wonderful, thank you so much. Sonja, would you like to pick that up?

Yes, that image of blooming and withering is actually something I have somewhat in my own head too. And I was completely in bloom during that relationship, because I lived out everything I’d always told myself I wanted — this is how I want to build a relationship, this is what I want to bring into it, I want to be this open, attentive, and loving. And yet it led to my partner not blooming at all, but withdrawing more and more instead. I didn’t realize that it was actually because of my own blooming. That was an extremely painful experience. Right now, for instance, I can feel the emotion, you can probably hear a bit of it in my voice. There are other moments where I can’t get that emotion into my voice or my body language at all anymore, because it’s already been processed, because by then I’m really just narrating it. My realization is, if I want to keep blooming, then I have to move on, I have to meet other people. I just have to look at this as a beautiful lesson, with a painful final chapter to it. Right now I don’t yet know what that will look like going forward, but one thing I do know for certain is that I want to keep blooming. And that’s why I’m walking through this pain and accepting it, and hoping that life lets me level up and simply carries me into a next level, so that I can feel happiness again too, and bring everything I have to give into it, so that it makes other people happy as well — and not just professionally, because that already happens there without question. I want to experience that in my private life too. Thank you.

Thank you so much, and ultimately here too — life, I think, consists of different stages, in a way. It’s a kind of journey, in my view. And on this journey, we always have different companions accompanying us through different phases of life. And by life companion I don’t just mean the personal relationships we have with individual people, say as a couple, but for me a life companion can also be a boss, colleagues, whatever it might be, if we’re in salaried employment, for instance. It could be the team we work with. There can also be phases where we’re simply traveling alone. They’re just different stations that we pass through. And you just said you have to, in a sense, keep moving forward for the sake of continuing to bloom. I’d like to underline briefly here that you don’t have to keep moving forward, you’ve chosen this path, to keep moving forward and to want to keep blooming. And that’s entirely legitimate, a completely individual decision. There are other people who might decide otherwise — and here too, the price, for instance, might be that a relationship, in this case a romantic one, breaks apart. In other cases, other people might decide not to move forward, and possibly not to keep blooming. They also pay a price for that, possibly the price of not being able to keep blooming, in order to hold on to what they already have. And that’s a trade-off we each have to weigh individually, again and again, against the backdrop of the experiences we’ve had, and to decide, through reflection, how we want to deal with it. And what’s interesting too — I’ve told you about this before — is that in interviews with successful people, and that’s exactly why I can relate so well to what you just described, that emotion isn’t necessarily audible or perceptible anymore once it’s already been sufficiently processed, or reflected on, or, so to speak, checked off by you. And with those interviews with successful people, I told you before, when the question of failures comes up, it often takes a while before they can really dig anything up. That has to do with this reframing, as it turned out in the analyses. It’s not that they don’t want to share that experience, it’s that this reframing, this processing, has already taken place to such a degree that it takes a while before they can find anything at all. Because they’ve already processed it in terms of lessons learned, they’ve already extracted what they needed from it, they’ve already reframed it, and so they never filed it away as a failure in the first place, but rather as a life experience, so to speak, and simply kept moving. That’s a genuinely fascinating phenomenon. And here, on one hand, this self-regulation, in the moment, allows me to check it off, to let go, to keep moving forward, which is really important, and in neuroscience that’s actually described as the advanced level, so to speak, of training yourself to really handle certain things well. And on the other hand, we have a person in some context — a work context, a friendship, a romantic relationship, or whatever it may be. And depending on where that person stands, it naturally does something to them. But then, Layla, as you put it so beautifully, that’s the other person’s dance territory, not my own, from my perspective. Layla.

I actually had another question on this topic, because when I look at everything I know about successful people — and success doesn’t necessarily mean just professional success, it can also mean success in life more broadly, however you want to define that for yourself. It could just as well mean, I have lots of friends, I’ve, I don’t know, accomplished things — shout-out to my father here, six children and truly, truly an amazing life achievement. What I keep asking myself is, how do you actually pull that off? Because from my own experience, I sometimes get the feeling that people are technically still “in training,” but at some point they just stopped moving in the gym, and now they just stand in front of the mirror, looking at themselves, thinking, no, the way I am right now, I’m already great, look at those muscles. And then I get this feeling of, well, where does further development actually happen then? Because for me, life really is about movement, about continuing to walk forward. And that’s always been a bit of a sticking point for me, maybe also because whenever I reached a goal, I always immediately wanted to move on to the next one. But when I look at successful people, with some of them I find myself thinking, well, now you’ve settled into your success comfort zone. You now know how things work, and you spend the whole time either projecting or transferring, trying to project your own past experiences onto other people. And that’s how you end up with sentences like “well, you’re just not trying hard enough” or “you’re too stuck in your comfort zone,” and I think to myself, that’s a bit like one rabbit telling another rabbit, “my, what long ears you have” — because maybe you’re the one stuck in your own comfort zone, and you’ve settled into just being yourself and no longer wanting to change. And of course that’s a balancing act, Yasemin. I think it’s important to be yourself too, but we live in an age of individualism, where being authentic is everything — but authentic at any cost, without continuing to develop, is a different matter. I hope the question came through clearly.

Thank you so much. Just a quick note regarding hand-raises — you’re always welcome to raise your hand and speak up in general, but starting at quarter to nine, due to the limited time we have in this room, I won’t be taking any more hand-raises, simply to make sure we can wrap up reasonably on time at nine, out of respect for everyone’s time. And for those of you who might be joining for the first time today, or haven’t been here that long, just a reminder for the coming days too, that when you join, please raise your hand in good time, and make sure you have a profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, your first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio, simply to make sure we’re dealing with genuine, sincere contributions rather than trolls. And if you’re planning to join us again over the coming days at Deep Talk and would like to take part in the conversation, it might be worth preparing that in advance. Also, another reminder that a recording is running in the background here, so anyone who joins in is agreeing to that as well. And apart from that, of course, we also have the chat, which we do incorporate too, so feel free to make use of that as well. Sonja, would you like to respond to that briefly?

Yes, a few thoughts came up for me. One thought was around this idea of one rabbit telling another, “my, what long ears you have” — I didn’t know that comparison before. And it made me think, do I let myself be told things by people whom I feel don’t actually live up to the lesson themselves, or haven’t understood it? And I actually distinguish between them simply not living it, versus them not having understood it at all. I’m quite willing to learn something from someone even if they don’t perfectly model it themselves, as long as I get the sense that, hey, this person is noticing something in me that I’m not seeing so clearly myself. And I’m very, very grateful for that. So my expectations of the other person maybe aren’t quite as high, because I always look at what learning opportunity might be hidden in there. And for my own path, I’ve now made the decision to focus much more on my professional growth going forward, because the very thing that showed up as a weakness in my private life, without me being able to foresee it, since I got absolutely no warning signs beforehand, is actually a huge, huge strength in my professional life. So I’m going to focus on my strengths now, and I simply hope that this phase of life will also help me overcome this personal, private pain a little better. Life happens in waves, and this is currently a wave I’m not quite so fond of. But I’m trying to ride it. Thank you.

Wonderful, thank you so much. And that would actually have been my closing question for you too, Sonja — what has it actually given you? Really turning that positive lens on it once more and looking at it that way — you’ve already partly answered that, but maybe you’d like to pick it up again, to go into that reframing once more, in a manner of speaking, and shift the perspective a bit. Because we do tend to keep pushing that painful, negative aspect to the foreground and seeing it more clearly, partly because it hurts, and partly because it might threaten our sense of security or cause worry, and so on. Various things play into that, and I think it’s really important now, as we close out the room, and I’d genuinely love it, this is my warm invitation to you, if you could look once more, and more strongly, at that reframing — what has this actually given you so far? And after that we’ll gladly move into our closing round for today.

It reminds me a little bit of the way a dragonfly develops. We often had dragonfly larvae in our garden, and occasionally got the chance to watch a dragonfly actually being born. We photographed one together through its individual stages once. A dragonfly’s birth like that takes about an hour, and if you watch closely, it becomes very clear what an incredible feat of strength that is. Up until then, the dragonfly larva’s comfortable environment was the water. And then it slowly crawls out of the water and uses the first rays of sunlight and the air to break open its shell and peel itself out of it, letting itself fall backward, then severing the last threads at the front. Then the wings slowly get dried by the sun. And that’s an extremely vulnerable moment, because during that one hour it’s completely at the mercy of any predator. But once that hour is survived, it flies off as a beautiful dragonfly, gliding freely and happily, in my perception at least, happily through the garden, having found a whole new environment for itself. But that one hour of emerging, of transformation, that’s the part you actually have to get through. I have the sense that I’m right in the middle of that transition right now, just about to move into a new comfortable environment. Thank you for this room and for the opportunity to share these personal things with you here.

Wonderful, thank you so much. What a beautiful image, and I’d like to just let that stand as it is. Let’s move into our closing round for today. Layla, Sonja, what are the key points, highlights, or other aspects you’d like to underline once more?

First I’d like to say a heartfelt thank you for this room and for the experiences that were shared here, because sharing something like this always takes real courage, even when it looks easy. And that’s the trick, isn’t it — things looking easy even when they’re not. Which is why, “fake it till you make it.” I’ve decided for myself that I’m going to rewatch “Dirty Dancing” now. I have to say, I loved it as a kid, and then I rewatched it decades later and thought, this can’t be real, what kind of image of women and men is this? “Nobody puts baby in a corner.” I never wanted to be that young girl who just carried the watermelon. I found that awful. But sometimes you also see things from different perspectives — because that whole “nobody puts baby in a corner” thing is actually kind of lovely too, everyone can think about that however they like. And the image of the dance floor, the idea that I have my own dance territory and the other person has theirs, and that I can unfold and develop within my own dance territory instead of only having to look after the other person’s, that image I personally find very beautiful. So thank you for that.

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Sonja.

For me, one realization is that it comes very easily to me to share personal things with a group. What’s actually hard for me is not sharing things, keeping them to myself and working through them entirely on my own. Some people see that as a strength, and I want to keep seeing it that way too, because I keep getting the feedback that it helps other people when they hear these kinds of examples, because it gives them the chance to recognize themselves in it, or to take something away for themselves that they can use for their own progress. And I’m so, so grateful, dear Yasemin, that you host this room every morning. It’s always a real pleasure for me whenever I have something to contribute and get to do so here. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. And of course my thanks go to all of you too, for bringing these personal experiences into the room and speaking about them so openly and honestly, making yourselves approachable, tangible, and experienceable in that way — that’s anything but a given. And that’s also the reason behind why we have the one or two rules we have here, which I’m quite strict about, because they’ve simply proven themselves over time. Just a quick note here too, since some feedback came in through the chat — I completely understand if someone says, for whatever reason, I don’t want my name to be known here, or I’d like to stay a bit more anonymous, or something along those lines. I have total respect for that, and it’s completely fine. At the same time, the room rules apply to everyone, and if that leads some of you to decide not to come up on stage after all, that’s completely fine too — please really do make use of the invitation to participate through the chat instead, maybe drop in a question or a statement that we can pick up on along the way. Because through all these different perspectives, this reflection space naturally becomes richer and more multifaceted, which allows us to gain new insights together. So I’m genuinely grateful for every contribution from the chat too, in a manner of speaking, and I know you all make good use of that, which I think is truly wonderful. And ultimately there are various ways, I think, that you can personally deal with this, and everyone gets to make that decision individually for themselves. There are also different contexts in which I might handle it differently myself — it’s not that one particular way is always right, universally and in general, but rather something to keep looking at contextually, again and again. I can remember, for instance, that in a professional context I handle this with a certain degree of transparency, in first conversations or similar situations, whenever I feel it’s somehow called for to talk about it, in a manner of speaking. I’ve told you before, for example, about a job interview where I was asked about my weaknesses, and I said, I don’t know if you could really classify this as a weakness, but I do know from experience that people meeting me for the first time don’t necessarily immediately warm up to me and take me into their hearts, so to speak — they often first look at me with a certain skepticism, which sometimes triggers a bit of discomfort, or leads someone to perceive me as very critical, or something along those lines. And I quite often deal with that very openly, for instance in training situations, where I bring it up myself and say, by the way, if I look really angry at some point, just so you know, that just means I’m thinking really, really hard right now, it has nothing to do with me not liking what you just said or anything like that. I know that this often comes across that way to people, so I get ahead of it, so you can classify it correctly. Of course we can’t preempt every single situation like that, in a manner of speaking, that would be far too exhausting. But in certain contexts it makes sense to talk about it openly and transparently, to address certain things, and maybe to use reflection to think through in which contexts I can handle a situation in which way. Can I bring certain things into the open without overdoing it, and here too it’s about striking that balance, and you get to decide for yourselves what that balance, or that equilibrium, looks like from your own perspective, and then to approach human encounters with a certain mindfulness, continually noticing certain things and continually addressing certain things. And at the same time, there’s an aspect I find really important here too — even though we contribute, through many of the things we do, to how a given communication unfolds and so on, we also have to accept that this has its limits, limits in the sense that, in that interplay, I’m also dependent, in a manner of speaking, on the other person, on how far my counterpart is even willing to engage with it, to deal with it, depending on where that person currently stands. And that might be a completely different standpoint today than it will be in three years, or than it was three years ago — change happens here too. And accepting that, to some extent, realizing that we constantly find ourselves in areas of tension and dilemmas that can’t always be resolved — I think that’s ultimately part of what makes us human, being able to realize that, and to look at how best to handle it, how best to place it for ourselves, and to keep making a decision for ourselves, again and again: how do I actually want to handle this, in this particular context, in this specific case? And that can look completely different in a different context, in a different case, with a different person. So, on that note — we touched on the term perfectionism earlier, and I don’t actually know if I would describe it with that term myself. In part, it’s simply something that gets attributed to us from the outside. Anyone who is themselves human — and that’s all of us — knows what it feels like on the inside. Internally, it’s painful for all of us, and joyful for all of us. Every experience we have is meant to be understood in both directions at once. So even though we often feel completely alone with our pain, or with our joy, in the moment, we’re actually going through very similar, comparable situations, and it’s worth reminding ourselves, in a manner of speaking, that we’re not alone in that either — that every single one of us, and I include myself in this completely, has our own challenges to keep mastering, and gets to master them, and that with every challenge we’re also given a bit of a chance again — and there we are, back at the positive side of things — the chance to grow beyond ourselves. With that, thank you all so, so much for these wonderful contributions, for sharing so openly here today. Tomorrow we’ll dive back in with a focus on emotion. It actually came up in the chat too, whether this doesn’t also have something to do with feelings — yes, absolutely. So tomorrow we want to go even deeper and look at emotion and insight, what role emotions actually play in insight, or in gaining insight, and I’m really looking forward to that. So please join us again tomorrow at 8am for Deep Talk, when we go deep again. Until then, take care, ciao!