Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: What lies behind empowerment, and how does it connect to our overarching theme of power and violence? In this expert talk, Pathfinder for People Andreas Bellof joins Dr. Yasemin Yazan to explore empowerment and sovereignty…
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.
A very warm good morning. Today we welcome Andreas Bellof, on empowerment and sovereignty, as a guest for our expert talk. Andreas, Pathfinder for People, has been accompanying successful people through change processes for over 30 years and guiding them out of temporary crises. As a certified consultant, business coach, speaker, and bestselling author, he knows how to lead people to a conscious life full of depth and fulfillment. Besides consulting and training entrepreneurs, self-employed people, and executives, he offers exclusive 1-on-1 online empowerment programs. The offering, specially tailored to the needs of the target group, from the Soul for Business Leadership Academy he founded, and the Bellof Methodology he developed, are hugely popular with his clients. His mission? Strong personalities, exceptional companies, excellent results. What lies behind empowerment, how to succeed not just in appearing sovereign but actually being sovereign even in challenging times, and how all of this connects to our overarching theme of power and violence, that’s what we’ll talk about today. In that spirit, I’m happy, dear Andreas, to officially welcome you at my side today. Good morning.
A very warm good morning, and thank you so much for the invitation and the opportunity to talk a bit here about my experience and about the wonderful, great topic of empowerment.
Yes, we’re totally curious too, and first I’d like to start with the question, what do empowerment and sovereignty actually mean? Maybe let’s first address these terms.
Yes, defining terms beforehand makes an extreme amount of sense, and so we’re already at a really, really important topic that often gets forgotten in this context, namely first defining the terms you’re talking about. A lot of energy is usually wasted there already, to put it that way. So for me, empowerment is simply enabling, if we look, regardless of which area of life we look into, it’s simply enabling people. I can enable myself and give myself the possibilities. In the private sphere, in my family, I can make sure that I let each individual develop, that they get into their own personal potential and can simply expand their self-efficacy. And that goes into companies too. I’m around a lot in companies, or self-employed people come to me too. It’s exactly about looking, okay, what’s actually holding us back, what’s actually limiting me, where’s actually the origin to be found for us feeling so trapped. That’s really often the case. Or also when landing in this feeling of powerlessness. So not in this psychological, let’s say, manifestation, but it starts really, really small, that we sometimes just have the feeling that a situation in life confronts us, regardless of which area of life, where we have the impression we can’t do anything about it at this point. We’re more or less helplessly at the mercy of the situation, and that’s exactly the point where it’s about this feeling, you can work on that, there are ways to make sure this feeling doesn’t even arise in the first place. Because once you’re in this feeling, the energy expenditure needed to get out of it again is quite high, and that’s why it’s a good idea to make sure and do everything to not even fall into it in the first place. And that’s possible.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And sovereignty then results from regaining this control, so to speak, so getting into a kind of self-efficacy, or what is sovereignty in this context then?
Well, I don’t like the word control that much, because control would mean we can control something, and control, in my world, in that sense, isn’t necessary at all. So we don’t have to control anything. In truth, it’s the case that we can’t control anything either. It’s similar to security. Security is ultimately an illusion too. And that plays into it. Sovereignty means, if I’m simply, I’m in every situation, no matter what comes my way, and that’s now the highest form of sovereignty to attain, well I’ll say, I’m not yet at the point where I can say I’m 100 percent absolutely sovereign in every life situation. But the ideal image is that no matter what happens around you, what happens to you, what maybe happens to people you love, that you can simply always stay sovereign in these situations. That means you don’t let yourself be, well, I’ll say, influenced by the situation, by the event, by your emotions, by your feelings, by all that can happen there. That might capture it best. But can simply handle this situation with your self-efficacy. No matter what it is. That can be illness, that can be some life event, that can be job loss, that can be all sorts of things. Your partner leaves, that goes all the way to serious illnesses or maybe even the loss of a loved one. The point is to handle the situation sovereignly. That doesn’t mean floating on cloud nine, or basically no longer having any negative emotions, but rather recognizing, okay, the situation is what it is, now I look at it and find a way for myself to handle it sovereignly, self-determined. That’s actually the point. And not letting myself drift like a plaything or like a nutshell on the water, if you’re out on a big lake with a small rowboat, and then wind and waves come and the weather gets bad, that can be unpleasant. You might even feel helpless and powerless then and no longer really know what to do. That’s exactly the opposite of sovereignty. Sovereignty for me simply also means, I know when something happens, how do I now handle the situation, I know what my next step is, to simply handle the situation reasonably. That doesn’t mean negating that I’m not yet a friend of just this “everything is good and everything is only positive.” That’s not truth in my world either, because just like light and shadow belong together, and ebb and flow belong together, a positive experience belongs together just as much as a negative one. Though positive and negative is an evaluation we give ourselves in the situation, and thus we have it in our own hands. And that’s already a really essential key too. So how do I actually get into this sovereignty. That’s actually one of the most essential insights, that I understand that no matter what happens around me, that happens first, and a whole lot of things happen around me that I don’t even notice at all, and only when I direct my focus onto it, when I look at it, do I perceive what’s going on there, and then something happens in me, and because I direct my focus onto it, direct my attention onto it and perceive what’s there, an effect arises, my reality, and if I understand that this is how it is, then I have a key to how I get into sovereignty, because I can decide myself how I deal with the things that happen, that pass me by in the stream of life, whether I resist it, whether I swim along, whatever I do there, I have that in my own hands. Grasping that once, that’s already the essential key for sovereignty, then of course you can do a lot more, because we have many, many systems in us, starting with the subconscious, through the great mind, which often just has a few faulty programmings. And if we pack all that together and bring it back into harmony, then it’s not that hard at all. It’s really simple. That’s also then what I call prosperity. And that’s this “then I’m sovereign.” Now there are many definitions. We could google it or look at what the dictionary says about it. There are quite different descriptions of sovereign there too. But basically they just describe the ability of, well I’ll just say, an individual or a group of people, to simply be able to handle situations. Simply to be sovereign, not to be dependent on others. That also has a lot to do with self-responsibility.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Some terms came up there that I’d like to pick up on a bit further. This faulty programming you were just talking about, of our brain, has a function in quite a lot of places too. The question is just whether it’s actually helpful in every context and every situation. You just said, if I direct the focus onto it, maybe we can look at this aspect of focus once more. Because what exactly do you mean by that? I can change the focus or direct it onto something specific, but if I’m not even aware of what I actually have to direct my focus onto in the situation, how do I do that then? Or maybe to resolve this misunderstanding first, what you concretely mean by this focus in this context?
Yes, focus is first and foremost, where does my attention actually go? Let’s take an example in the current time we’re living in here. I have several possibilities of what I could do with my time, for example. I know people who have MTV running in the background all day. They let themselves be told all day what terrible things are happening in the world, where there are crises, what’s happening right now, how to live correctly. They let themselves be told that all day. That does affect perception in some form. That gets processed at some point, if I’ve heard it often enough, I believe everything that’s said there too. And just with my focus on these things, whether I become aware of it when I hear it or not, that’s not the point at first, but simply the fact that I spend all my time more or less intensively with this “letting myself be told,” and simply let this information be pushed into my system, I’d like to put it that way, my focus and my attention is on all these many negative things. And for my part, for example, I haven’t watched news this year, I think, either on the radio or on any TV channel, because that just doesn’t make sense for me anymore. So it’s not that it doesn’t interest me. I am indeed interested in what’s happening in the world, but it’s just that I can decide for myself what I occupy myself with all day. So do I occupy myself with all the suffering. That’s terrible. I’ve been to Africa myself and do a lot of charity projects too, also to help people, because that’s simply a need for me. But it’s just my decision where I place my attention, which topics I occupy myself with. And I just had it yesterday in a coaching session, it was also about the question, well it was said, well I have so little time. And that’s a good example, you can maybe grasp it quite well there. And what I find interesting is that overall, as a society, we do strange, crazy things. So we want to pass the time, we look for pastimes. The only resource we have that’s extremely limited, and also the only one that’s limited at all. And yet we do a lot to pass the time. So the only resource, so the limitation, we pass that. And that then has nothing to do with sovereignty anymore, because if we look at what most people do when they pass the time, they’re rarely sovereign. So I don’t mean, if someone exercises to do their body good. That’s not a pastime for me, but well-invested time. Pastime for me is, I just try to make sure time passes. But then I basically waste a gift. And I find that a shame. That then has nothing to do with sovereignty in my view anymore, but I just surrender to the situation and let myself drift. That can be nice sometimes too, but it shouldn’t take over. And those are actually the essential points for me. Of course you can go into depth everywhere now, we could probably talk all day about that. The point is simply, everyone actually knows for themselves what’s really important to them. And that’s where you need to place the focus. So where I want to go. We have, and that’s again to maybe define this focus term a bit better, I see that with a lot of people who come to me too. I even see it in companies, that’s often the case there too. If I say, okay, what’s the goal, what do we want to achieve together, then I get told all sorts of things about what people, or also the companies, the managing directors, what they don’t want. So they don’t want people to be sick so much, they don’t want them to do so much nonsense, they don’t want all sorts of things. People don’t want a lot of things, they don’t want to be sick, they don’t want all sorts of things, and that doesn’t help us though. And there the focus is just in the wrong place, because if we direct our focus on what we don’t want to have, then our attention is on the topic of what we don’t want at all. And then there are a few universal laws, like resonance and attraction. If we direct our attention to the things we don’t want to have, then we make them, so to speak, energetically attractive, and then, then it’s like a magnet, then we attract them magnetically. You can believe that or not. You can consider that esoteric hocus pocus. It’s simply my experience. I can observe that every day, when people place their focus on the things they don’t want to have, they get more of it. And if you manage to direct the focus onto what you want to have, onto this state of being, how it is when you have what you want to have, if you place the focus on that, then you attract exactly that. So that sounds a bit crazy. It’s actually the case that if it works, there’s something magical about it, and that’s exactly the point. And that’s how we simply get into sovereignty too, directing the focus onto the things. So that’s like a laser. That’s also such a really, really tangible image for me, I studied precision engineering and optoelectronics, my technical background, and dealt a lot with measurement technology too, and with a laser you can do really great things, you need really, really little energy, a few milliwatts or maybe a few watts is enough, and then I can do crazy things with it, and with just a few watts I can cut wood, cut through a wooden board. Why is that? Because I focus this energy in the laser beam onto a really, really small point, so the energy that’s there gets focused onto a really, really small point. And through that I can achieve a big effect. And that’s exactly the key in many places, if I don’t want to invest so much energy into something, or maybe can’t, because I don’t have the energy, then it’s a good idea to simply focus the energy. Then I can achieve great things with it. Maybe that explains a bit how I understand focus.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much. And especially what you described, that it can be spooky for one person or come across as somehow energetic or esoteric for another. I found it nice, the example from the technical context you brought. Neuroscience also has findings here that very clearly show it’s not hocus pocus or anything like that at all, but that basically, just as you described it, because this focus gets directed onto something, exactly there visibility arises too, so to speak, let’s call it that. We know this from the example, many of us have experienced it, they might be occupied with buying a bag, or thinking about buying a certain product, a car or whatever. And suddenly it’s the case that you have the feeling, as if overnight, you see this bag everywhere on the street, or this car everywhere. Best of all, the exact same model in the same color as the one we’re eyeing. And you ask yourself, what actually happened there now? They weren’t there before, were they? Yes, they were there, but the attention wasn’t directed onto them. That means the focus was elsewhere. And so I simply didn’t perceive them, didn’t see them. And that also explains very, very well that the moment I focus on negative things, I see more of these negative things, or get more as an answer, so to speak, than if I look at these positive things. I find that great with this focus. Maybe we can also address that again in this exchange, maybe someone has questions about it too.
Let’s gladly address it again. I’d like to pick up two aspects again. One is, I gathered from how you described it, that it’s something, so it’s not something you’re born with, so to speak, but that it’s definitely learnable. Maybe we can talk about this possibility of empowerment again, this enabling, that it’s not something given to us in the cradle, but that there are basically maybe strategies, techniques, or whatever you can give us, to some extent as examples too, that can enable us, with which we can enable ourselves. That’s one thing. And the other thing is, I’d then like to build a bridge to this overarching theme of power and violence. Namely, we’ve opened up various rooms with the most varied topics, all the way to bullying, mobbing and so on. And also things like power in the classroom. And what we’ve noticed is that power has a lot to do with this interaction too. So it’s not something that happens from outside, both in a positive and negative sense by the way, so not viewed one-sidedly here either, not just happening outside and I’m at its mercy, so to speak, but has a lot to do with this interaction too. And there we get into this topic of empowerment and sovereignty too, namely when we start establishing this self-efficacy. Maybe we can tackle these two aspects together, before we also open up the hand-raises.
Andreas.
Yes, then I’ll start again with self-efficacy. The question is, what do we actually want to achieve? So what actually is effectiveness? Do we also have to define this term again? When can we actually speak of effectiveness? We become effective when we apply another universal law, namely cause and effect. With that it’s also completely clear, if I want to become effective, so regardless of whether I want to achieve self-efficacy now or effectiveness in my environment, then I first have to set a cause, because without a cause there will be no effect. And if I now want to achieve self-efficacy, then it’s already completely clear, without a cause that won’t work. That means I always have to think about what causes I need to set, may set, to achieve an effect I want to have. And it’s of course extremely useful to know what I actually want. And, as I already said earlier, not to occupy myself so much with what I don’t want. So not so much avoidance, not being so much in this consciousness of lack, but simply occupying myself with what I actually want, where I actually want to go. And there is, to build the bridge to that, how can I manage that for myself, there’s a relatively simple 10-point plan for me, I can just briefly pass that along. So it’s actually not that difficult. The very first question is, I have to grasp for myself who I actually really am. I have to know my roots, I have to know where I come from, and I always call that, or say about it, I simply have to be able to answer the question, who am I actually, when I really am. So not when I do something, not when I have something, but when I really am. When all the roles are gone, when what I’ve given myself as a task, if I take all that away, so I’m then no longer man or woman, no longer spouse, no longer employee, no longer self-employed, no longer executive, no longer entrepreneur, but who am I actually, when I really am? I need absolute clarity about that, and once I have that, I can figure out from that what I really want. So not what others want from me, not what others expect from me, but a crystal-clear goal clarity about what I personally want. You could also say, what my soul wants. Maybe not everyone can relate to that.
You, Andreas, you say it’s so simple. I think most people already fail at this first point. That’s not so simple at all.
Well, I’d say, the point is, you said it’s not given to us in the cradle, there I’d want to gently contradict you. I’m convinced that when we come into the world, we have everything we need. Of course we’re allowed to learn and train certain abilities and competencies. Lifelong learning, I can only recommend that to everyone. We’re allowed to keep developing further there too. But basically I’m absolutely convinced that when we come into the world, we get everything with us, in terms of dispositions, talents, that we need to get into this empowerment and to get into sovereignty. We have all the dispositions there, we get everything with us. But they’re extremely unique. So there are no two the same, I see that in my personal work too. I don’t think there are two same people on this world. It’s like leaves on a tree. They might be more similar in a lot of places, but you always find something that’s a bit different. It’s the same with people. I do an analysis of the energetic DNA too. You can see that from it. It’s like DNA. It’s totally unique. Now it’s simply the only task, if I want to find out who I really am, you said that’s hard for many, just to think away all the roles, just to take away everything others have put around your core being, so upbringing, society’s expectations, education, whatever, your environment that shaped you, just, in quotation marks of course, but think that away. And that might seem difficult at the beginning, when you start dealing with it. But I notice that when people come to me, that it goes relatively quickly for a lot of them, and then, like a knot bursts, and then they suddenly notice that there are a lot of things where, when they occupy themselves with it, they notice, this actually doesn’t belong to me at all, and once you do that, you can write it down or, it’s a bit different for everyone, everyone has different access to it, there are different thicknesses you can do, you have to look a bit at the personality and at the dispositions, but if you then practice that, then you relatively quickly get to the point where you say, okay, I believe that belongs to me, but I notice it actually has nothing to do with me, and if you occupy yourself with it, it goes relatively fast. The more you occupy yourself with it, the faster it goes. And then you relatively quickly find out, okay, if I really want to find out, then there’s a really simple solution to the problem. Who am I really? Namely, if I can bear that at the end I say, I am. And then you don’t need to put anything after that. If I’ve managed that for myself, then I’ve made it. And I admit again, of 30 days in the month, I only manage that on 20. But the 20 days where I manage it are great. And the other 10 are my homework, I’m still partly working on that. Can you relate to that?
Yes, absolutely, and what you described as not so difficult, I think it also becomes clear, because you also said people come to me then, and it’s of course also about the type of questioning and so on. I think you can actually find answers relatively easily, in quotation marks, or take this path too. It gets easier the less I know about it, in quotation marks, but also when I do know about it, even the best coach has a coach, to get accompanied here accordingly too. And so I’ll gladly advertise for you, dear Andreas. So whoever would like to work through this 10-point plan for themselves in the sense of empowerment and sovereignty, and would like to be accompanied here, because they have this concern of bringing about more self-efficacy in their own private or business environment, establishing it, then gladly get in touch with Andreas too, to learn more about it here and be accompanied through it too. Andreas, we don’t have time to actually go through all ten points now. Maybe you’d like to pick up one or two more points, maximum, from your ten-point list, not necessarily in order, just to give a bit of a feel for what’s still hidden on this list. And otherwise I’d then like to actually build this bridge to this overarching theme of power and violence at this point, because then we’d like to open up the hand-raises too.
So I’ll pick out two more points that might also play a role in what we can discuss afterward. One point I find extremely important, for me life is a game, it’s the game of life, and it’s not about, I think that’s an illusion many hold, it’s not about winning a game in this whole matter, so the game of life, it’s not about winning it, because there’s nothing to win, it’s about playing the game. And if I’m playing a game, then it makes extreme sense to know the rules of the game. That’s why one of these ten points is, know the rules of the game of life. Simply occupy yourself with how the universe, I’d like to say, functions. Understand the basic principles of how the universe is built. So this world we live in. Everyone lives in their own world, even though we’re all traveling on the same planet. But simply understand how that works, these basic principles. I already said earlier, cause and effect is one of them, or resonance and attraction is one of them, but also polarity and duality, and there are a few more. Once I’ve understood that, really understood it, not just read it and said, well okay, that seems to be somehow the case, but these are life principles I have to integrate into my own being, into my own daily doing, so they become a matter of course. And then I can play the game of life with, well I won’t say no effort, but with much less effort. Because if I know the rules of the game, I can play the game better. That’s one point. And another point that’s essential from my point of view has to do with the topic of decisions. On the topic of decisions we have a connection through the Atlas of Decision-Makers too. But decisions are a really, really important topic. So a lot of people make too few decisions, and thus they make a decision too, and they’re not aware of that. So you may occupy yourself with the topic of decisions, and there’s a simple exercise. There are a lot of people who really struggle a lot with decisions. There’s a simple exercise you can do, that you can train, to make decisions faster. So there’s no right decision anyway, because there’s no wrong one either, but decisions are simply there so things keep moving forward. So if I’m at a fork in the road, and it only goes left or right, and I don’t decide, then I simply decide to stay standing still. So if I don’t decide to go left or right, then I decide to stay standing still. I make decisions either way, even if I don’t make any. And whether left or right is right or wrong is again the question I evaluate, because in truth there’s no right or wrong. And if I listen deep within myself how I should decide, basically we always know, so I really always say, what the right decision is in the sense of, this is now on the agenda to go in this direction, what the right decision is. We know that deep inside ourselves. We’ve just unlearned to listen to this very first impulse that comes when a decision is pending, because our brain and our mind explain to us so quickly why that might be nonsense, that we don’t even think anymore about whether this first impulse we had might not have been sensible after all. We don’t even get to that anymore. We all have this ability, and that’s what we train really intensely when people come to me, not just to trust this very first impulse, but to perceive it again at all in the first place. With a whole lot of people this impulse just doesn’t get properly perceived anymore, because the brain is immediately at work and the chatter tells us what to do. And by the way, the brain doesn’t help us with decisions. So this might trigger one person or another, but I’m absolutely convinced, personally, the brain doesn’t help us with decisions. Why is that? Because our brain can only ever make a logical construction into the future from past experiences, and that must necessarily be wrong. So if we want to look at what makes sense, the difference to the brain is if we listen to what our soul tells us. Whoever’s known me a bit longer, or maybe already follows me, knows that I talk a lot about the soul, because that’s our actual, real, truer core being. And if I manage to have a dialogue with it, and that’s possible, it’s also quite simple, if I have a dialogue with it, then I know, and that’s this very first impulse, it reports immediately, if I listen to it, if I trust it, then it works. And I can name a lot of examples, I don’t know if we still have time, but if there’s interest, we can do that afterward in a discussion. I can name really, really many examples where I accompany people who follow this very first impulse and then absolutely great things arise, even though, if you look at it from outside with logical understanding, this is totally crazy, totally out there, you’d sometimes even say, how can people do something like that, but if you look at what emerges out there, it’s always great, and that’s why I can recommend to everyone, learn to perceive that again, this very first impulse, and then to really trust the impulse too. That’s something completely different from gut feeling, which people always like to confuse. Gut feeling is something completely different, because gut feeling arises in the subconscious too, again only through experience. That’s much slower. Gut feeling comes much, much later. This very first impulse, that’s what it’s about. With that I don’t actually want to say much more from the 10-point plan, so we still have the opportunity to step into the discussion and give the audience a bit of room too.
Would you like to build the bridge to power and violence again, before we open up the hand-raises?
Okay, bridge to power and violence. Let’s see, what does power mean? Power means, you’d have to define the term again first, but let’s take, I’ll take one of many possible definitions, someone believes that because of their position, their standing and whatever, they have power. Power means, from my point of view, if someone really has power, so can do something that influences others, you could maybe formulate it that way too, then they’ve been given this power. So no one comes into this world who fundamentally has power, except over themselves, and if a person or an institution gets power over other people, then that only happens if they’re granted this power. I know that too triggers some people, but in my world it’s like that. That means, if someone else has power over me, you could maybe describe it that way too, then I’ve given up the power, otherwise they wouldn’t have it. That’s how powerlessness arises. If I give up the power, of course I no longer have any, and that’s how powerlessness arises. But the truth behind that is, at least in my world, if I recognize that I’ve given up the power, I know what I need to do. Then I can get the power back. With violence it looks a bit different, though I also say, and this too will trigger some people, if I experience violence, then, I always say, I’ve laid down a button. Violence doesn’t always have to be violence in the sense of hitting or oppressing or whatever. Violence can be quite subtle, quite small. Sometimes a word, a spoken word, or a spoken sentence, is already violence being exercised, where people then really suffer under it, sometimes simply under a spoken word. And nevertheless I’d also like the awareness for this to increase, also overall in society, that violence too can only be exercised if there’s an opponent. In in-person seminars I always show this. You put your hands against each other and one tries to push the other’s hand away. If you’re ever in a second room somewhere, you can try that out. One tries to push the other’s hand away. So you could call that exercising violence, in a mild form. That only works if the other pushes back against it. If they don’t create counter-pressure, nothing can happen. So I have to put up resistance. And that’s the key for me too. So this is really very simplified. Of course in individual cases you have to look very closely at what the causes are. There we’re back at cause and effect. But if I take away this resistance, then no violence can be exercised anymore. That’s why, interestingly, there are such clever sayings in society. Not all of them are right, but people say, for example, resistance is futile, there’s something to that. So if you understand it correctly, because I can only exercise violence if I, as the one experiencing violence, put up resistance. If I take away the resistance, the other can no longer exercise violence. And you can roll that out again in all areas of life. You can look at that everywhere. I admit there are quite a lot of life situations where it’s not so easy to take away this resistance. But violence can only be exercised if there’s resistance.
Yes, I have some questions about that too, but I think I’ll hold those back for now. That would be something we could discuss in private sometime. A lot of questions come up here. I think for one person or another too, possibly. I find that nice, because it just raises new question marks too, and accordingly new impulses to think about certain things again. So I’m quite classically thinking now of some extreme situations or such, and whether that statement only applies to everyday situations. I’m torn on that, it could well be that you could even transfer that to extreme situations with reframing and so on. So I think, Andreas, that’s an exciting topic that we should exchange about again sometime soon over a glass of wine or whatever. I’m already looking forward to that, if you agree, and would actually like to use the time now to give our listeners the opportunity to join in too. Andreas has opened various doors where we can dock on again, to step into the exchange. So if you have questions, if you’ve just gotten impulses that made you think, where you’d like to dock on again, or your own thoughts or experiences you’d like to bring in, maybe even a tip from Andreas directly regarding empowerment and sovereignty, then join in gladly. For the next few minutes I’ve opened up the hand-raises now. Please note again that we record the room the entire time, that the whole thing gets published later too, and anyone who joins automatically agrees to that. We also have three small room rules, a profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio, to make sure these are serious contributions and not Clubhouse trolls. And anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason can gladly use the chat to bring in a contribution or a question here. Then I’ll pick that up in a moment. I’ll take a look in a moment, and another quick reminder, since the room is limited to 60 minutes, please, I’ll leave the hand-raises open for the next about five, six minutes now, and then close them again, so we can make sure we get out of the room reasonably on time at nine.
Yes exactly, and with that I’ll just take a look now. Ella had brought in a few aspects here in the chat. Among other things she wrote, I think the difficulty is asking yourself the right questions. That was about the 10-point plan you talked about. And then came, let me just read out what she wrote, “with that you’re saying we’re impulse-driven at the end of the day.” That referred to the impulses. “What about rationally made decisions?” So maybe we should look at this component of decisions, impulse etc. again. I think that the result of a decision doesn’t necessarily have to reflect whether it was a good decision or not. Maybe let’s address that first and then we can see if there are further aspects we can pick up.
Andreas, which point would you like to start with?
With the decision.
Let’s start with decisions.
Yes, so decisions, now you can look at it. So what about rational decisions? You’d have to clarify first what a rational decision is. So a rationally made decision. That means I have two or more possibilities. Now, that could be, well I’m not saying it’s all nonsensical to do that, but let’s just look, we bring together what are the advantages, what are the disadvantages. There are really great methods for how you can arrive at decisions, also through rational weighing. But what do we do when we rationally weigh things? We try, from our limited horizon of knowledge that we have, maybe including others we ask, we try to find advantages and disadvantages of certain paths. Then we look at what are the advantages, what are the disadvantages, and then we write down, so and so many positive points, so and so many negative points, then we maybe give them a rating too. And then at some point we arrive at the result, rationally weighed, always from the basis, that’s what I already said earlier, we try to evaluate and judge that with our brain. And the really bad news is, that’s all based on the past. And that might have been a really good idea 20, 30 years ago, because a lot of things continued linearly. That means, with a whole lot of things that happened, regardless of which area of life, personal as well as professional, you could predict a lot forward from past experience. And that was also relatively reliable. But now let’s just look at the world we live in. Basically not that much can be projected from the past into the future anymore. The only thing we know is that everything will change very quickly and unpredictably. That’s the only thing we can recognize. And how do we want to develop a rationally sensible decision for the future with the knowledge of the past? So that’s still a contradiction for me somehow. We don’t know at all what can happen ahead, and we can now see, for example with AI, how fast that goes, that everything we knew until the day before yesterday actually gets turned upside down. Everything that was still certain until the day before yesterday now just gets turned on its head, and then we simply can’t really get anywhere anymore with rationally made decisions that happen on the basis of our past experience. We simply need different approaches there. That’s why I believe it’s simply more sensible to trust these real impulses more again. And yes, we’re impulse-driven either way. The only question is which impulse we follow. Do we follow the impulse of the soul message, which is this quiet information right at the beginning, or do we follow the impulse of our subconscious, processed rationally, which then gives us an explanation for why it’s that way. And that doesn’t have to fit for everyone. That’s just my view, how I see the world. Everyone’s allowed to see the world differently. That’s completely okay.
Let me follow up on that again. So is that statement you’re making only related to the individual? Because I’ll bring up an example now, because otherwise the question arises, I’ll definitely ask whether experiential knowledge even still has relevance at all, in quotation marks, because, let’s assume there are two people applying for a position at a company. One has a lot of experiential knowledge, the other has little experiential knowledge, against the background of not yet having worked in that field. Doesn’t have to be age. And if you now say, basically I can’t base decisions on that, but it all has to be impulse-driven, in quotation marks, and I can rely on that, can that be transferred to such areas too, or is that a different form of decision you’re talking about here? I find that important to possibly differentiate too.
In my world, everyone’s allowed to live that however they want, however feels good for them. Everyone’s on a different path too. That depends a lot on personality too. There are quite a lot of people who, simply due to their energetic disposition that they bring with them, need this rational weighing, they just need this logical explanation behind it, and they need this, at least felt, security in the explanation that they can explain it logically, what they now want to do. And that’s completely fine. Nevertheless, I’m noticing right now, because you’re saying, when hiring people I have the experience in companies, so I sometimes accompany companies where it’s also about filling difficult positions. And there we very often now look not so much at the person’s experience, but rather at their energetic disposition. So what energy do they bring into the team? And what’s actually needed now in that team? My experience is simply, over the last two, three years, since I’ve been doing this very intensively, that we achieve much better results with that. And sometimes a person who actually has no experience in the field they’re being hired for can make a much bigger contribution to the company, if the energetic disposition is right. So I’m not saying, I don’t want to say that everything we’ve learned and all the experiences we’ve had should just be pushed aside. That’s not what I meant to say with that. I’m convinced that in many cases it only helps us to a limited extent for the future. So method knowledge is important, having competencies to do certain things, that’s important. To do things right, I’m absolutely convinced experiential knowledge is good, to do things right. But to do the right things, I believe experiential knowledge only helps us to a limited extent in the future. Does that answer your question a bit?
Yes, to some extent. I think it actually depends on how you look at it. From brain research, I’d now, maybe you’d like to address that too, from brain research a distinction is made regarding emotional decisions. Basically decisions get made emotionally, even if we don’t want to admit that, often. It’s even discussed to what extent decisions get made at all. So it’s, if at all, a really, really small share. Usually it’s the case that a decision gets made emotionally and afterward, so to speak, an attempt gets made to argue it rationally. And of course in the direction my emotions had already, so to speak, steered me, so the gut feeling at that point. And you said, for you it’s something different from gut feeling, this first impulse.
I’m actually talking about the gut feeling in the direction my gut feeling had already steered me. So that means the emotion is already there beforehand, it triggered it, and then I try, so to speak, to find arguments that support this impulse I already had, so to speak. So the question arises, to what extent are decisions even made rationally at all. Yes, they’re not emotional, and we live in a kind of illusion, like what you said earlier with control or security, that doesn’t actually exist. And then this aspect you addressed, that’s the sum of experiences. That’s also supported by brain research, to say, basically we can only ever dock onto what was there before and experienced and stored. And accordingly the problem with gut feeling, this is now the view of neuroscience, it can, in quotation marks, if we’re now thinking in right or wrong, it can be the right decision, but it can also be the wrong one. It has to do with whether I’ve already stored enough experience in this constellation, so to speak, in this context with these parameters that have an influence on it or not. And that’s why I can rely on my gut feeling, in quotation marks, but I can be just as right with it as wrong, in quotation marks, you could put it that way now, depending on whether this gut feeling was really generated based on a comparable situation. And so for me, if I were to take that now and say I agree with that for myself, ultimately the only consequence is to say, hey, I only ever know in retrospect, and that’s again, as you already said, an individual evaluation I make, whether that was a right or wrong decision. I can also reframe it, like, for example, if only because I did it this way, this or that opened up for me. That’s also a way of dealing with it. But only in retrospect can I evaluate that for myself. So maybe I can also just go in and say, hey, I don’t need to worry so much about decisions, even big decisions, because I don’t know in advance anyway, but can only evaluate in retrospect. So I’ll just do it now. And accept that I can’t plan everything in advance down to the last detail, or know what’s coming, but based on the best possible framework conditions available to me, or prior experiences available to me, and the feeling I bring into it, simply make a decision, instead of staying stuck in this standstill you described earlier. What do you say to that, Andreas?
Yes, I’d like to answer with the words of Kierkegaard, who says life is lived forward and understood backward. That’s exactly the point. And I’m absolutely with you. That’s why I distinguish between this first impulse and gut feeling. I’m completely with what neuroscientists are proving right now too, based on measurements they’re actually managing to do, that you can scientifically substantiate this, that it’s not an idea, not nonsense, but that it actually works this way. Yes, I’m absolutely convinced that we usually only make emotional decisions, and only then, and as I said, brain research can show this, so the decision gets made and then the brain starts processing and finding an explanation for it. Then we have the explanation in consciousness for why we’re deciding that. Then we decide it. But the decision has actually already been made beforehand. But that’s a decision that exists out of gut feeling. There it’s exactly the same, it plays a role what experiences we’ve had, what, you could say, beliefs are programmed there that generate all that. Such an emotion arises simply because a past experience gets triggered, and that’s how the emotion arises. And that then makes sure we do something, and the mind then explains to us afterward why that was sensible. Or why the feeling arose that way. And then we do something from that. But that’s not this very first small impulse I mean. That’s something completely different. That’s why I differentiate that too. That’s important too, that you differentiate that. And if we just look, okay, I’d like to say, for complicated matters I think experiential knowledge can help us. Because complicated matters are ones you can explain logically, and there are simply a lot of things at the same time, and then it feels complicated. But at the core, I can break it all down into small puzzle pieces, and I can then work through those after a logical consideration. So for complicated matters, I’m convinced experiential knowledge can actually help us, and it remains valuable for that too, but for complex matters, so for truly complex matters, I’m absolutely convinced that only helps us to a limited extent, if at all, and there it makes extreme sense to take a different path. And since the world will tend to become more complex in the future, it makes a lot of sense to occupy yourself with how you deal with complex situations, so not the complicated ones, a lot of people confuse it, but with the really complex ones, so the ones I can no longer explain logically, that I can no longer foresee, where there’s no longer a clear cause and effect that the mind can grasp.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much, and with an eye on the time I’d like to ask you two final questions in your direction, before we wrap up. One is, we’ve addressed quite a few aspects, picked up various topics and so on. Was there something regarding this topic of empowerment and sovereignty that we haven’t addressed yet, where you say, I’d like to place that briefly at the end though, because otherwise it would really be a shame if that somehow wasn’t included, and I couldn’t have shared that as added value in this room. That’s one question. And the second is, if our listeners have the feeling, we want to learn more about this, we’d like to talk to Andreas about these topics, we’d like to book accompaniment or whatever, through which channel, how can they best reach you?
So I’ll start with the last question again. You can reach me simply through all social media. I have a profile everywhere somehow. The easiest way is of course through the website. There we also have the option, if you want, to simply talk with me about a topic for 15 minutes, or also 20, or half an hour, depending on how it goes. That’s absolutely non-binding, and I offer that simply because I’ve had the experience that only people who then end up having a meaningful conversation contact me. That’s very interesting. Nothing else has actually happened in the last year. That’s why I can keep offering that quite openly.
What’s the other point? I just looked in the chat and there’s one more thing at the very end. I’d like to briefly address that too. Yes, I differentiate between competencies and personality. Why? So competencies are something I can acquire. Competencies don’t necessarily have to do with talent. I’d like to briefly address that. Talent is something we’re given in the cradle. The question is, that’s a gift, we bring that with us into the world. The question is, do you unpack it? If you don’t unpack the talent you brought with you, you still have it, and you’re just not using it. That has nothing to do with competence. I’d like to differentiate that too. Competence is something you can train. You can train competencies. I can train my rhetorical competencies. Then I can speak well rhetorically. As an example. So only competence can I train. And personality is something different again. So we have the core being, and then there’s the personality. Personality is what you are at the moment. If you take a personality test, for example, whichever one, from whichever provider, you get a statement about how your personality is at that moment when you take the test, usually it’s a questionnaire you get to answer, how your personality is at that moment. But that only has limited relation to your core being, because personality is what you are at the moment. But that’s not what you are in reality. It’s rarely identical in the rarest cases. Personality is what you currently are. Of course a part of that is what competencies you have. What plays a role a bit is which of your talents you’re really already living, but in personality, that’s what you currently present as a person, your entire experience plays a role, all your imprints, everything plays a role, and that doesn’t necessarily have to match your core being, and that’s then where people feel, maybe that’s the closing sentence, where people feel something’s not right in my life, and search, set out to find what’s actually the reason why something’s not right, why things in my life feel weird. And that’s always when the personality, the current personality, doesn’t harmonize with the core being. Then something’s out of tune, and we notice that. And if that’s the case, then I can only recommend to everyone to look, okay, what frequency can the personality be tuned to, so the discord goes away. That’s also again a simple key with which it works.
Yes, great. Frequency is a nice keyword here. Thank you so much. That was Andreas Bellof on empowerment and sovereignty, as a guest at our expert talk. Feel free to reach out to him, to step into the exchange, to maybe get accompanied too, or whatever, so in exchange to see what might be on offer for you too, in quotation marks. It’s always an individual story too, to see what fits for me, where do I feel comfortable, what are my next steps. I found it great, there were various aspects in there, especially impulses that also make you think, I find. Maybe you can also make it visible via emojis toward Andreas, whether you took away different impulses for yourselves, whether there were aspects that made you think again, that resonate and so on, I’d just be happy, because that of course represents the possibility, in this interaction, that we get one thing or another visible here again too, especially since no one was on stage today. And I find it great in any case, Andreas, because these are aspects that might well be debatable too. Yes, but that’s exactly what makes it worthwhile, to really initiate change here, to think about it again, and at one point or another possibly also to check your own stance, your own opinion, on one hand, and on the other, if needed, possibly also correct it. Those are all aspects that go along with this learning and lifelong learning too. So I find it great that today, in the context of empowerment and sovereignty, with a view to self-efficacy, under the overarching theme of power and violence, we could look at this together. Thank you so much for your time. Afterward the whole thing will get published with a bit of time delay, so to speak, in our podcast accordingly. So follow here, follow me, follow on LinkedIn, and that’ll be announced there when it goes online, so you have the opportunity to listen to one thing or another afterward, or listen again with some distance, to make corresponding notes etc., or also in the sense of repetition, because that promotes and accompanies us in our daily doings too.
Yes, Andreas, would you like to say something in closing, before we round off the room together and I briefly announce what topic is coming up tomorrow?
Yes, I’d just like to say thank you, on one hand to you, for providing this room, but also thank everyone in the audience who invested their time, gave it to us as a gift. That’s always a special part of appreciation for me, when I see that there are people who give me their time. I mean, you could be doing something else right now, you’ve given your time now as appreciation to us. Really, really warm thanks for that. And maybe as a look into the future. Just make bold decisions, occupy yourself intensively with the question of who you really are and what you really want. And then go for it, no matter what others say, no matter what others think, no matter what your mind sometimes tells you. So don’t believe everything you think, but just dare to live yourself. That would be my message to close.
Oh wonderful, a beautiful closing message. Thank you so much.
Yes, and we’ll continue tomorrow with resilience in dealing with power and violence. The question we want to engage with, what role does resilience play in dealing with power and violence? That’s what we want to look at in the room tomorrow, so to speak, and see together in the reflection room where your impulses, thoughts, experiences lead us, so to speak, in exchange, in dialogue with each other. So you’re all very warmly invited to join again tomorrow at 8am in the Deep Talk Club. I look forward to it, thank everyone for being here, staying with us, and also for putting questions in the chat etc. In that spirit, whatever you have planned today, have a nice day, and see you tomorrow at 8 again here at Deep Talk. Ciao! Ciao! Ciao.
