Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: How can insight actually be generated from personal challenges? That’s the question we explore in Room #830 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.
A very warm good morning to you all. Today we’re talking about insight through challenge, and under our overarching theme of insight and gaining insight, we’d like to look today at how insights can actually be generated, or gained, from personal challenges. And, as every morning, we want to look at this together from our own experience, bringing in different perspectives, or picking up on impulses that come to mind for you with this title, to step into reflection together in exchange, and through that maybe pick up new thoughts, sort out thoughts that are already there, and gain insights from that together, through the room itself. So, as every morning, you’re invited to warmly join in and step into the exchange. For anyone joining for the first time today, just a quick reminder that the room is recorded, and anyone who joins automatically agrees that it’s not just recorded but published too. And we have three small room rules to join in and step into the interaction on stage: a profile photo in which you’re clearly recognizable, first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. That applies equally to everyone, and it’s simply proven useful in the past to make sure these aren’t Clubhouse trolls, but genuine contributions. Anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason, that’s totally legitimate too, feel free to use the chat and bring in your thoughts there, so we can pick them up and talk about them. I check in from time to time, and if it hasn’t been addressed yet, in quotation marks, or fits well thematically, I’ll gladly pick up one thing or another. So, with that, the room is open for today. Please remember we’re now also transcribing the room, even though it’s not published yet — preparations are running in the background. I’ll say a bit more about that in a moment too, just so we don’t let too much time pass and create long pauses, because that’s obviously a bit awkward when relistening later, in quotation marks, if you get the feeling, is the recording even still running or not. So, again, don’t let too much time pass, jump right in and step into the exchange. That’s one thing. And the other thing, which maybe fits in wonderfully here with this transcription I mentioned — we’ve decided we don’t just want to record these daily rooms, but also make transcriptions of them available, so that things can be relistened to, and notes can be drawn and generated from them. And I’d like to tie in directly with something that fits well with today’s room topic, insight through challenge. We tried out various tools, looked at them, and settled on one we’re working with to prepare all of this for you. But of course, with all these tools, a certain amount of effort naturally arises too, to go through a certain review process and weed out possible errors in the transcription. And, yes, insights were of course gained through challenges there too, so to speak. On the one hand, there’s a huge variety of different tools on the market, meaning one or another has to be tested first, just to see how good the results actually are. We did find an AI-powered tool we’d like to use for this, and will use, and are already using, to extract these transcriptions. At the same time, even though this AI-powered tool is great, there’s naturally still a residual potential for errors there. So basically there are two ways to deal with that — those were the challenges we ran into. Either you do a kind of quality assurance pass and go over it again. That works great, but you can imagine, if you go through the data from an hour-long recording — I don’t know if anyone here has ever transcribed something, how many pages of text we’re actually talking about here. And so that naturally comes with a certain amount of time involved, so the first tests were actually checked again for quality assurance, but then, through these challenges and the result — how long does this take, how long does that take, and here, as in so many other contexts, it’s really about speed of implementation. That means it has to work fast too. We’ve now tested things, we’ve looked at it, we’ve settled on a tool, and of course it needs a certain lead time too, to make sure gaps don’t keep appearing in between. So, pre-producing at least two weeks of data material, so to speak, to bring in a bit of breathing room, because then it’s no longer a scramble, but the rooms that have been recorded can actually keep being transcribed calmly and published, so that everything runs smoothly in the background, setting up a kind of process here. And these challenges are naturally important too, to be able to make decisions based on them. And so, for example, one decision was just made very freshly, to say, okay, we’re allowed to step back a bit from these quality expectations here too, to some degree. So what’s more important here — that it’s published and accessible, or that it’s really reviewed again in the sense of working error-free? And we’ve now decided, I’ve decided, to say, we’re going to lean more toward speed of implementation here. That means the recording is there, the transcript is there, and the timestamps are there. You can tell at that point that something might not be right, and you have exactly the option to go to that timestamp and listen in again. So, leaving that responsibility to the reader or listener, and not having the expectation of having everything perfectly prepared and finished, but instead, in the interest of speed, simply letting go at one point or another. And that’s not always easy, because especially when you look at how we’re socialised, whether that’s spelling, capitalisation, working error-free, we naturally have different standards for ourselves there too. And it’s always a challenge here too, weighing different considerations, to make the best possible decision, well aware that one person or another might stumble over it, might even give feedback or a comment, unsolicited too, you know how it is, and to deal with that accordingly. And that’s maybe just something from personal experience I wanted to share with you. So, we’re still on it, we’re taking the time to prepare a certain amount of data material now, simply to make sure for you that once we’ve started, these recordings and transcriptions really do go out daily, and no gaps appear again. And that’s why we’re preparing a bit of data material now. But we’ve actually made pretty good progress already, so we’ll be starting relatively soon here. And we’ve decided to lower the quality expectations a bit, taking you along into the responsibility too, into self-responsibility, so to speak — you’re welcome to listen in again at one point or another and check it, if you notice there are still errors in it, because the system does make mistakes here too, it’s not error-free yet. Although you have to say, it’s really incredible what’s possible now with AI-powered tools. When I think back to my time at university, I did a lot of research work, not just during my dissertation phase, but even before that, during my diploma thesis too, and so on. And in this context, especially in qualitative research, you work a lot with transcriptions, and they’re even so detailed that you can capture tonalities in part too, and things like that, not just the plain text form. And I can tell you, that took days, weeks, sometimes months, depending on how much material there was, to really listen in with different tools — and back then we already worked with different tools too — to be able to rewind, to slow down the speed of the interview, and so on and so forth, to do it all manually. It was incredible how much time that took. And if you look now at how far we’ve come today with all these AI-powered tools, that this can work automated — it’s an incredible efficiency you can derive from that. It’s a high speed you can work with here. And that of course allows us to make the data material accessible much faster too, and a huge relief in terms of work, freeing up time for other things. Or, if we didn’t have these tools today in this form, we probably wouldn’t even have been able to offer you something like this — not just recording, but also publishing the transcriptions. So, yes, it’s really fascinating to look back on this, and at the same time to really pick up on different challenges we encounter in everyday life, and to be able to bring the insights that arise from them back into decision-making. And that’s why I wanted to bring this up as an example here, because I think it fits really well, and share it with you. And I’d like to invite you to join in again. Insights through challenges is our topic today. What impulses, thoughts go through your mind? What experiences have you had with challenges in everyday life that led to insights, and I’m glad Marc is joining us too, let’s see. Marc, what are your experiences?
Good morning to the whole round. I have two points. First I’d like to respond directly to what you said, and had to smile, and I notice that we all always jump into judgement — thank you so much for your account, and you just explained that this might not have full quality, and I immediately had to push back on that a bit, within the rooms with you. Who says that doesn’t have quality? Because if you make this data available to us, I know there’s no editorial team behind you, like at a newspaper, which has a whole dedicated team for every issue. You provide data, and that data has the same quality and value for me as whatever I pull out of it, regardless of whether there’s a typo in it or not. And I had to briefly think about how I’d deal with a situation like that, what the challenge would be for me there. And you did it wonderfully, and that’s how I’d solve it too. The communication is simply there. For reasons of time and the flood of data, it’s just not possible to weed out every error. And still, the value I can draw from your speech, from your text, and from this transcription can be very, very large for me. And that’s why I wouldn’t link the quality of the data I receive to that, but simply to the value of the data. I’d focus on the value, not on the correctness of the written word. That would be my first contribution to start with.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much, and of course, as you’re saying, it has a lot to do with our judgements too, and at the same time it’s always a challenge for yourself too, to make decisions and see how to deal with it. Because if I bring up an example — you might know this from social media contexts or similar — the younger generation, generally, tends to place less value on things like capitalisation and so on being followed correctly. Maybe also whether it’s a WhatsApp message or a social media post, and accordingly maybe only using lowercase and not even looking at whether something’s capitalised or not anymore. Which I personally don’t find bad, per se, in quotation marks. And yet, of course, the reactions are there. I definitely know this — if there’s a spelling mistake in a post or something, the attention immediately, in quotation marks, gets drawn to that. And there’s a response. Not from everyone, but from individuals — whether that’s in the form of a comment, whether that’s in the form of a personal message that gets sent, or maybe a rating in a comment and so on. That means we naturally trigger reactions out there with this too. And even if I communicate this here in the room, and it’s fine for you, and we’ve committed to this, so to speak, there will always be people at this point who show a reaction to it, in quotation marks, possibly, and to be able to let that go for yourself here. I think this is a learning process too, getting out of these “old patterns,” and maybe simply, primarily, in the interest of speed here now. And you just said, basically the quality of the content doesn’t actually suffer from this, but these are really things we’ve learned to look at very precisely in school or similar, and you notice how these patterns just pull and grip at this point. I don’t know if you’d like to add anything, Marc?
Yes, I can understand your point incredibly well. It would be the same for me as an entrepreneur. I value you a great deal, dear Yasemin, and I think a hundred percent of the room would agree with that too. Your expertise, the way you moderate, and if you go out into the world, so to speak, the way I’ve gotten to know you, with texts, with images, with audio, then you always have — and this came up so nicely yesterday in your Authors’ Breakfast too — we’re human, and we’ll find people who like us, and we’ll find people who don’t like us. There are envious people, there are correctors, there are improvers, and then it comes down to what perspective we take. And to avoid this from the outset — I observe this in political talk shows too — I’d say right from the start, this text isn’t perfect, and if I’m approached with the attitude that my text isn’t perfect and my website isn’t perfect — I actually get approached about that a lot too — then I say, I know. That closes the topic. I know, because the time I’d need to make my website 100 percent perfect would cost me so much revenue that this revenue, and the money, and the business I can run in that time, are more important to me than being able to say at some point, I have the most perfect website in Germany.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. And just as we have here, we have challenges in everyday life at various other points too. So if we just look back a bit at ourselves personally, maybe one or another example comes to mind for you too, through the example picked up here, or through images that arise from it, other perspectives you’d like to bring in too. So you’re warmly invited to think a bit more about which insights you’ve gained from challenging situations in your life or business, that you’d like to bring in as examples here too. And above all, to look at which insights from challenges have contributed to your personal development, or maybe even influenced or changed your own life or business in some form. And to really come into exchange together through the different examples and perspectives, to have the chance to structure your thoughts a bit. It triggers images in others too, and then to see what happens in the exchange. I think this was a really current example too, to show that there are challenges everywhere in the background for all of us, that we have to master every day, and with the challenges here, which I do view positively from my perspective, because they ultimately open up the chance to generate insights. Not every challenge gives us insights, maybe — that might also have to do with how we deal with it. We had that room about not-learning too, so to speak, that maybe you don’t have insight as a resulting quantity, as a result, from it. But challenges in themselves ultimately give us the chance to actually generate insights, and so it’s worth understanding everyday challenges, in whatever form or shape they take, as something positive, and using them for ourselves in the sense of gaining insight too. And while I’m at it, I’d like to point out, since the rooms haven’t been posted yet, that over the next few days we’ll also talk about insight from success, or failure. And we’ll also talk very specifically about insight from mistakes. So, to get into that differentiation a bit more. Today it’s actually the case that we’re looking at quite general challenges, without first evaluating them as positive or negative, and then we’ll look at them in the context of failure or success, or in the context of mistakes, opening up rooms on that topic very specifically in the coming days too, to really dive deeper into it. And I’m curious how our judgements or connotations, and the associations of these terms too — sometimes not so easy to put into words — arise for us in that context, and what they are, and how we deal with them. So I’d like to briefly repeat again that this is a space for reflection, about different perspectives, and explicitly invite you to join in and share examples and thoughts with us, to see what direction the room develops in. And a reminder that the room is being recorded, and we have three small rules: a profile photo in which you’re clearly recognizable, first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. Anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason is welcome to bring in thoughts, questions, or similar in the chat, so we can pick that up too. Marc, do you have further thoughts, or other examples, further examples for insight through challenges?
Yes, for today, for example — today, I’m totally relaxed, and it won’t be a challenging day. Why won’t it be a challenging day for me? I know exactly what I have to do. Right now it doesn’t look like any bad news is going to arrive, either by email or by phone. And that’s where I get to the word challenge. It only becomes challenging when something happens, today or this week, that breaks my daily work routine, the thing I do anyway, where I know exactly what the steps are. Only then, when this pattern-breaking comes, only then does it become a challenge for me.
Yes, I think it’s great that you bring up this aspect again, to really look at what a challenge actually is in this context. And you just talked about pattern-breaking, for instance. That means we often have days where we don’t expect anything challenging at all, but a challenge arises through some situation, so to speak. And we can definitely look at this — basically, as you just said, a challenge only really becomes one when I can’t handle something with my classic routines or patterns, through the experience I’ve gathered, so to speak, but when I’m actually required, in some way, to think new thoughts, to maybe reconsider a situation, to maybe even hit certain limits. And so a challenge isn’t necessarily always something planned. There are also a lot of surprise effects to it. But I can also face challenges quite deliberately, in a planned way. It might be interesting to look at whether there are situations in your life where you take on challenges quite consciously and with full joy, so to speak. And on the other hand, there are situations that are maybe unplanned, where we might start a day completely relaxed, and then something happens that requires something of us. And through this being required of us, we have a challenge. And depending on how we deal with it, a corresponding insight can result from it. Marc.
Yes, I can fully underline that. For me, the situation right now, for example, is that a close colleague I work with is now going into her own business in part. That obviously wasn’t the news I wished for, because it’s, let’s say, uncomfortable, because I like my routine. And afterward I thought, hey, what positive effects could this have? My workflows are going to change completely. And this is where it helps me, with challenges, to briefly look back into the past. We’ve all had moments in our lives where we really didn’t feel good — whether that’s a separation from a person, a partner, whether it’s because we lost our job, voluntarily or involuntarily, and so on. But today I’m sitting here with you, chatting totally relaxed, in a really good mood. And with this awareness that everything turned out fine, that nothing happened that really knocked the ground out from under me so much that I couldn’t talk to you today anymore — looking back on that gives me trust. And you said something really great earlier, dear Yasemin, that if we don’t get into action, if we always wait for the perfect moment for the solution to occur to us — I don’t have an immediate solution to a lot of questions, a lot of challenges. But I’ve noticed that if I leave my office and go for a walk for myself, an hour or three-quarters of an hour, into the woods or a quieter environment, suddenly ideas come to me that I didn’t have before. And I really make use of this, especially when things are really, really bad, or I think, oh man, you really don’t have an answer for that right now, I have no idea, I can’t even imagine how this is supposed to work — then I leave my workplace, and for me personally, for Marc, it’s really important to go into a completely different environment. That could be a café too, but definitely out of the office, so that creativity processes can unfold anew there. And the most important thing for this to work at all is trust from the past — I can’t speak Cologne dialect, but people from Cologne have a great saying, “it’s always turned out fine so far.”
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. And you picked up various terms there. On the one hand we had quality, or quality expectations, earlier, trust, letting go, and then maybe also quite deliberately switching rooms, whether that’s switching rooms in the sense of getting something to drink, taking a shower first, or maybe going for a targeted walk or something, going into nature, to just make use of certain things, to allow creativity through the calm that sets in, and through that to be able to make decisions again. I actually find that interesting too, because I had exactly this situation myself late last night. I kept checking in on things. In the newsletter — I’ve linked the link for you again too, by the way, so for anyone who doesn’t know the newsletter yet, you have the option to sign up here too, you can see the link pinned above us — the newsletter now actually goes out three times a week with different topic focuses, and Mondays are Neuro News, and here I have various things available to decide what I pick up for you, because I have the impression that it’s a real added value for you to read it. And there actually wasn’t really anything in there yesterday where I had the impression, this is, well, a great insight, sure, but can this really be interpreted and picked up as added value by one person or another for their personal development or their business? It didn’t really convince me personally, in quotation marks, and then last night, at some point, because it had gotten late due to a training session that had taken place, I decided to just go to sleep. We’d also talked about this sleep process, which is important too, because the brain keeps working. And I found it really fascinating this morning, when I got up, that just through this process of going to sleep, so to speak — a challenge of going to sleep, and letting the brain keep working unconsciously — this morning I arrived at the insight to say, hey, everyone’s allowed to decide that for themselves. And I’ll just pick what appeals to me most and is most obvious to me, where transfer can be made, so to speak, and then everyone can decide for themselves whether they find it interesting or not. Here too, again, this aspect of letting go, and taking the reader into the responsibility too — does this interest me or not, everyone can decide that for themselves. I don’t have to make that judgement myself, in quotation marks. And so I think this letting go is, on the one hand, always an aspect that plays an important role too. And then, enabling creativity in this context — we had a room about that too — it becomes clear that it’s not just walking, doing sports, or whatever, depending on what fits you personally and fits the situation you’re currently in, what you can actually implement right now — I wanted to mention that going to sleep plays an important role here too, sometimes just letting go and letting the brain keep working on its own, to then actually find answers the next morning, for example, like for me today. And I could have kept looking back and forth and researching for another three hours, or I could just make the decision, okay, that’s enough for now, tomorrow morning is another lovely day, and who knows what’ll come out of it. What do you say to that, Marc?
I think that’s great, dear Yasemin. And I’d like to add to that — letting go can be a doing too. Because we always think that when we have to do something, when we have a challenge, that every action immediately leads to an answer. But for me, setting this creative process in motion is special, because I no longer feel powerless. And everything I do, when I no longer feel powerless, helps me in the situation. And if I need sleep, then maybe I’m not getting closer to the solution in that moment. But I’m not powerless either, because I’m deciding — I’m doing something now, I’m getting out of the situation, I’m letting go. And by getting out of the situation, I’m actually doing something again right away. And getting it clear in my head that it’s not like a maths problem, where someone told me how much 2+2 is, and if the 4 doesn’t come to mind immediately — but I set all the processes in motion that can help me approach the situation the next day with a new perspective. And that’s just how it is — when we’ve slept, when we’ve gone for a walk, or when we’ve done something completely different, laughed or distracted ourselves, we suddenly have completely new ideas. And the next day this same fact looks completely different too. And I’m one of those people who served in the military. And I didn’t learn much there — I’m not really useful for defending you all. But one thing I learned, and I’ve never forgotten it my whole life — whatever happened in the military, we were always told, only write a complaint the next day, and only address it again the next day. And I remember that so, so often — that the next day, with a new perspective, makes the exact same situation look completely different.
Yes, absolutely. And this makes it clear too that emotions play an important role in this context too. That means, basically, it’s an impulse we might have in the moment, and with a bit of distance you can handle the situation completely differently, because the emotions have settled by then, the impulse is gone — the first impulse we might have had — and accordingly it becomes possible to look at the situation again with completely different perspectives and viewpoints, and to make completely different decisions too. So we have a lot of aspects to pick up here now — doing or not-doing, not-acting. So what does not-acting mean? We still act in the situation regardless — letting go is a kind of action too, in quotation marks, but not action in the sense of, I need a solution for this right now, this very moment, but rather getting out of the situation, going into calm, into a pause, or also — you put this so nicely, and I’d like to pick up this aspect too, we’ve mentioned it again and again, but we sometimes forget it — humour, and laughter too. That also means not taking it too seriously, in quotation marks. Of course that depends on the situation we’re talking about too. It might not work in every situation, or we might not manage it in every situation, but a lot of everyday situations, where it’s not about survival or existence or anything like that, can also be handled with a certain humour or laughter, for instance, as a possible technique too. And for calm, pause, sleep, we might also add breathing, or something like that. I can consciously go into meditation too. I can consciously shift my focus onto other tasks, push something aside for a moment. And the interesting thing is that the brain keeps working regardless. We sometimes have the feeling this has to get finished somehow, and want to finish something “forced,” and maybe take on this challenge. And I very often experience, from my own personal experience at least, that it helps much more, for me personally at least — that’s why I do it very, very often, getting out of the situation in some form, and just knowing that afterward, at some point, when I look at other things, through this shift in focus, I’ll come across things where I suddenly have an idea, because I’m engaging with something completely different right now, but I encounter something there that might actually lead to a solution for the other challenge too. That’s why it’s actually interesting, on the one hand, to bring in impulses quite deliberately and consciously by doing research, and at the same time it can be really important to get out of the situation and just let it work on you, and see what can come from that. Do you have further thoughts or examples on that, Marc?
Yes, I actually have a question for you, or for all of you, whether this has ever happened to you too. I’ve noticed very often that answers come to us while we’re talking about something — and that reminds me of the saying, think before you speak, but actually what happens is that I speak and then think, and through that arrive at new solutions. So if I have a friend, or a partner, who just listens to me and doesn’t answer my questions, but instead I explain a problem to them by saying, imagine what just happened — I very often notice, while speaking, that I say, now I’ve got it. Has that ever happened to you too?
Yes, very often actually. And there’s definitely research being done on this too. And we can look at the therapeutic context here too — it’s often the case there, for example, that the therapist maybe just listens and nods, without commenting on anything much, and yet you still get this feeling, wow, that was a great conversation, even though basically only the other person spoke. And that has, to some degree, to do with the fact that thinking processes take place through speaking, so to speak — not just juggling thoughts mentally, but really speaking them out loud, and in that moment I hear myself too, so different senses are involved here that come into play accordingly, and thinking processes take place that lead to what you could call a “self-conversation.” So basically we could do the same thing in front of a mirror. We don’t use that, though, because talking to yourself is a bit socially odd, so to speak, connotation-wise. But basically it would help just as much, and so there are so many situations where we can just have someone on the phone, or sitting across from us, where we talk about the problem or the challenge, and actually find answers too. And so these therapeutic conversations also have a self-healing effect, not just through techniques or methods, so to speak, that the therapist applies, in quotation marks — or it could be a psychologist too, for instance, or a coaching session with a coach — but simply through the fact that someone’s just listening, and I, in the conversation, so to speak, through speaking out loud, through perceiving it again, listening to myself, trigger processes, and then find answers to it. So it’s a really fascinating phenomenon, and it really works incredibly well, at that point. And there’s so, so much research on this, where you can basically look up these details too. This isn’t unique to challenges, by the way — talking about past experiences, for example, has a self-healing effect too, in quotation marks, and so on. So this reflecting, which gets automatically set in motion through the thinking processes that get triggered. It’s really a fascinating phenomenon. That means my conversation partner basically doesn’t need to do anything except be present, maybe nod in between to signal to me, I’m still listening, if they’re sitting across from me, or just say “uh-huh” as a short signal, and then I keep talking myself, so to speak, and generate the biggest insights through that, even though my counterpart basically hasn’t contributed a single sentence, hasn’t put in an impulse. It’s really incredible. Marc, does anything else come to mind for you on that?
Yes, I’d like to thank you at this point, dear Yasemin, because you really helped me a lot on my current trip. I actually had the situation where something really serious happened, and I had no answer, and I really wanted to reach out to you. And after the emotion had settled down, after a cappuccino, I realised — and I’d like to share this insight — that the person who wasn’t there, purely through my imagination, and in this case that was you, helped me a lot. Because I imagined, if I were talking to you now, what would Yasemin do? How? What could Yasemin help with here? And then the insight came to me, Yasemin will ask me questions. And then I thought, well, I can do that too. And so I asked myself questions, and basically had this internal dialogue — not talking to myself, but imagining how I’d lay out my problem to you, and how you’d ask me questions, pleasant ones, unpleasant ones. I answered these questions honestly, and so, even though you weren’t there, I arrived at a new solution. And so, thanks for your indirect help, dear Yasemin.
Oh, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much for sharing. I find that really fascinating, and I can actually share that from my own experience too. I do that a lot too, and very regularly, especially with my coaches and mentors, who maybe don’t always have an immediate appointment where you can discuss something, and especially with challenges, mentally stepping into the situation and saying, what would coach or mentor XY do right now, how would they handle it, or what questions would they formulate for me — and just through this brain juggling, imagining that and taking on that perspective, getting answers to that, it’s really fascinating. What our brain is actually capable of, through certain shifts in perspective we take, and a certain closeness to people we can already assess relatively well — what could possible questions be, what impulses might come up here, what can I pick up on. And just this mental imagining of it brings us closer to the solution again, I find that totally fascinating, and can only confirm it, I do this very gladly and very regularly too. And I personally find it incredibly helpful too, to really take on new perspectives, in terms of self-efficacy, so to speak. Do you have further additions on that, Marc?
Yes, it’s also about the fact that I want to be a good role model in my relationship too, and it’s much, much easier for me to give clever and wise advice when I’m not personally affected, and I notice, when I’m emotionally affected myself, that these suggestions don’t come to me immediately. And the main keyword here is judging the situation. And then I also remember our conversations on Clubhouse, and I say to my partner, I’m going to really try to shift my perspective now. And I want to show you that it’s really not that easy. That things we’ve learned, and insights we have, still require application. And you only get that through training. And I want to try this training too, because otherwise I’m just an advisor who says clever things, but an advisor or a friend is judged by what they do too. And that motivates me additionally to act in new ways too. So there we are again, at pattern-breaking.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. And that’s why we have different components here for how we can generally deal with challenges. On the one hand, shifting perspective yourself, on the other hand taking pauses or similar, which we picked up on. Then bringing in external impulses — that can be in the form of, I type terms into Google and see what I find, all the way to external support. Whether that’s a coach, an advisor, whatever, against the background of already-existing expertise, so to speak, to be able to pick up on certain things. Taking a shortcut with consultation, because I get shown different options directly, and can then choose from among those options, for example. So, there are various possibilities here. And that’s why it’s important to actually use the different options available in different constellations too, and see how we can apply them for ourselves. And, yes, I find, ultimately, in this context too, and this becomes clear again and again, in various training constellations too, which I’m also part of myself as a participant — I mention this again and again, gladly, because some people think, in quotation marks, I don’t need a coach, or I don’t need an advisor, or whatever — to underline and reinforce again here that even the best in their field have coaches and advisors and external support at their side. And that’s really important from my point of view too, because I keep dealing with people through whom I can get completely new impulses in different situations, quite deliberately, against the background of their experience, and then pick that up, for example, through the experiences I have with these people, so that I can even take on this person’s perspective in a situation where my coach or mentor, or whatever, isn’t actually right there with me. I find that a really, really fascinating phenomenon at this point. And we often have the feeling, especially in the context of coaching or similar — I know this from everyday life too, from myself, by the way, not just from my coachees — that you often have the feeling, I don’t have a concrete concern right now, what am I supposed to discuss. Especially then, you might know this if you’ve ever booked this, you’ve maybe booked several coaching sessions, and then the next appointment comes up, and you often have this feeling, because there’s no immediate challenge to master right now, I don’t even know what I want to discuss today. And still going to that appointment, and seeing what comes of it, because it doesn’t always have to be the immediate challenge I’m facing, to really bring in someone from outside, so to speak. We have so many things — and I find this is actually a challenge too, one that doesn’t present itself to us as a challenge. We don’t think about a lot of things at all, and only through this exchange, only through this space I open up, so to speak, by making use of this service, do I even get the idea to look at various new things through different lenses, things I hadn’t thought about at all. And so it doesn’t necessarily always have to be the challenges I consciously perceive as challenges — sometimes the challenge is just realising, even if I feel like there are no challenges at all, that there are still topics that occupy me, that I can pick up, where I might be able to go into reflection, and that this space is allowed to be created in the first place, so to speak, to become aware that there’s even a challenge there that wasn’t clear to me at all, and to derive insights from that too. What do you say to that, Marc?
I can only underline that from my own experience. It’s the same for me too, and I’ve had the experience of being on my way to my coach, and everything’s totally relaxed, and someone once just asked me, everything seems to be going fine for you, why are you going there? And I say, well, sometimes it’s just fun to say, hey, how are you doing? Then we drink a coffee and talk, sometimes about completely different things too. And it’s totally relaxed, and afterward you come back super relaxed and can throw yourself back into your work. And in this context, with coaching, dear Yasemin, I just want to say, for me personally, it requires huge trust — the hair on the back of my neck stands up when I read online about how I’ll never have to acquire customers again, or how I’ll make a million in such and such time. And then I look at these people and think, well, apparently it didn’t quite work out for you. I don’t know why you’re still working, because if my safe is so full I don’t know where to put my money anymore, why would I still hold events like this? Unless I’m maybe just a total people-person. But there are also a lot of great people, and I get that feeling with you too, who ask good questions that are worth engaging with, because they can really change our lives. And I’ve also often been asked, well, I don’t need that, I discuss things like that with my partner. Then I say, that’s an interesting aspect. Theoretically I can discuss a lot of things with my partner too, but the danger I see there is that if my partner also puts a finger on the wound sometimes, asks us things that aren’t so pleasant, then I notice I automatically go into defence mode, if I’m having a bad day. I might feel attacked then. But my coach gets paid to tell me unpleasant things. I can’t be angry at him for that, because I’m paying him to put his finger on the wound.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And, on the one hand, he’s actually been given the task by me, so to speak, to give feedback here. And it’s not an unsolicited overstepping of boundaries, so to speak. That’s a really important aspect too. And I go into that conversation with a completely different attitude too, so to speak — I actually want to get different impulses at that point, that’s one thing. The other thing is, since you brought up social media — this “how do you become a millionaire in seven days,” I’ll exaggerate it a bit more too, or “become a millionaire overnight,” or similar — here too, terms sometimes aren’t used cleanly. Basically, coaching isn’t about showing someone how to — even if that were theoretically possible, that you could become a millionaire overnight, that’s certainly possible too, maybe someone could tell you the lottery numbers or something — that wouldn’t be coaching either, because coaching, basically, represents something completely different. And here too, of course, in quotation marks, and I’d like to raise awareness about this too, terms simply aren’t differentiated cleanly, used differently than they might be discussed, evidenced, or defined in theory or in the field, from the approach, simply because it sounds fancy. And we don’t just have this in the coaching sector, we have this in many other areas too. That means you’re of course allowed to look more closely here, and have a critical eye at this point too. But that doesn’t mean, just like in other fields or professions, that there aren’t just as many great coaches, advisors, therapists, and so on, on the other hand. So we can always establish that it has to do with the people and the individuals and their experience and qualifications and so on, whether someone is actually working professionally at this point or not, and not to let ourselves be misled here, so to speak. And also not to fall into a generalising judgement here, in quotation marks, along the lines of “it’s all rubbish somehow,” but there are definitely good examples among them too, and then to look at who you turn to in this context too. The next aspect I’d like to pick up on too is that a lot of my challenges are connected to technical things too. Especially this planned-or-unplanned thing earlier, this surprise effect — because I work with technology a lot, this is especially present for me in a technical context too, just to look at a completely different level here too. That means, basically, these are often tasks that should actually be done relatively quickly, maybe take five minutes, but because of some technical challenge you didn’t expect — whether that’s a page that’s currently not accessible, that can’t be retrieved, whether it’s some bugs in the system or something, whatever, something completely unplanned — it can suddenly take an hour, two, three hours, until the issue is somehow resolved, or you just have to let time pass until you can access a page again. Sometimes you have no influence over it at all, and sometimes you’re allowed to find solutions yourself, so to speak, or let someone else find solutions. But how much time can pass with things like that, that’s also incredible, I find. Especially with technical things, that’s something that eats up a lot, a lot of our time, sometimes even a “deadline,” in quotation marks. And on the other hand, since I’m talking about technology, I’d naturally like to pick up on this topic of AI tools and AI-powered working and so on too. On the one hand, it’s incredible what efficiency opens up here through these possibilities, so that certain everyday challenges, whether that’s about posts, content creation, or similar — these are everyday challenges too, that we have as self-employed entrepreneurs and so on — can actually be solved relatively quickly. In the sense of, especially if we look at this from the aspect of time efficiency, it’s incredible. And since we said not all challenges are actually conscious to us, in quotation marks, I’d like to pick up on this point again too, especially this AI-powered aspect. And we’re looking at this very, very, very closely right now, and analysing very precisely, testing very precisely, and trying out a lot of things too, to generate insights. And it’s always fascinating here too, to go into an analysis and evaluation, and actually notice that a lot of people haven’t even realised yet, in quotation marks, what challenges will arise from this, because they’re not engaging with these topics at all. So a gap is opening up here right now, so to speak, or the gap is growing, the divide is getting bigger. And while some are getting really intensively into this, and already using it for themselves and gathering experience with it, and these learning processes, we said, need a certain amount of time too, because it doesn’t happen overnight — for other people, these challenges aren’t even rolling toward them yet, in quotation marks, along the lines of, that doesn’t affect me, or I don’t need that for my work, or something. But what’s rolling toward us here, in quotation marks — and I don’t want to stoke fear with this, or anything like that, but really this — if I don’t really engage with one challenge or another here, and we’re back at this aspect of coaches, advisors and so on. That means certain things, technological developments too — in this concrete case it’s a technological development, so to speak — if I don’t work together with coaches, advisors, or similar on that, my partner doesn’t help me in exchange there. I can maybe talk to my partner about how the coffee tasted, and they can maybe give me feedback if the coffee I made today wasn’t particularly good. But that doesn’t necessarily help me, especially in a business context or similar, to be able to recognise or see connections in relation to the future, to get new impulses, and to really deliberately take on topics, so to speak, that I hadn’t even seen coming toward me at all. And I find this external support really important here too, because I simply don’t have the eye for it at all. And if I only ever surround myself with the people I normally surround myself with, I do get new impulses here too, but maybe not additional further impulses that are really relevant in relation to my everyday life, private life, business. Because business and private aren’t to be looked at separately here either, but they actually affect each other too, so to speak. And I find that really important to mention in this context too. Marc, do you have anything to add to that? And then we can move straight into the closing round.
Yes, two points. I engage a lot with China, and I talked with a friend over the weekend. One point I’d never thought about — that China will also have a problem with a shortage of workers at some point. Why is that? Because of the one-child policy. The Chinese still have an average age of 38, while India has an average age of 27, where I thought, oh boy, if they don’t manage that, maybe I can still get through with my company, but then really what’s currently in the media, India becoming the country that somehow becomes the economic market leader and so on, even if you might not be able to imagine that yet. And the second thing — on my trip, I had to laugh at myself. Challenges also sometimes come completely out of the blue, like when I was standing in Italy trying to get a parking ticket for my car, and I couldn’t manage it. And with broken French, English, Italian, and pantomime, I showed the person across from me, I somehow can’t figure this out. I, as a managing director, wasn’t able to get a parking ticket. Why? Because I didn’t know the language. I could have looked it up on my phone if someone had been there, but I didn’t know that this parking meter needed my licence plate number so I could complete the process with my credit card. And that was an insight too, one I can heartily laugh at myself about — that you can even be overwhelmed by parking, and that could potentially have resulted in my car getting towed, and so on, and I really didn’t want that. I wish you all a good start to the week.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much, and to close I’d like to pick up on two questions in the chat from Ismail too. He asked, does a challenge relate to the time needed to resolve something, or are my abilities not sufficient at the moment to resolve something? And I’d say there are definitely various components to what we can experience as a challenge. So with this example about technology, it might not be, per se, that I don’t have the abilities, but that it’s simply something unexpected that just needs more time. Yes, that’s a nice example of that. On the other hand, it could be that I’m maybe missing certain experience, or routines, that would help me resolve a challenge, in quotation marks. But a challenge can also mean that there’s maybe a challenge I’m not even aware of yet, that’s there per se, in the room. That means I don’t even recognise it as a challenge, or don’t recognise a problem at all, because the connection isn’t clear to me at all. So we can definitely look at this from different perspectives, and I think the examples that were picked up this morning, by Marc and me, definitely help to understand these different perspectives — that challenges can be looked at from many different perspectives, that there are different ways of how you or what you understand as a challenge for yourself, what forms there are of it, and how insights can be generated from it, in quotation marks. So I found that really fascinating. Thank you, thank you so much, dear all, for listening, and for the question contributions too, especially to you, dear Marc, I found it really enriching again today. We’ll continue tomorrow with insight from success, or failure, and how insight can be derived from past successes or failures too. That’s what tomorrow will be about, and so I’m really curious what direction we’ll go in tomorrow. You’re warmly invited to join again tomorrow morning at 8, with different examples and experiences, so that we can once again enrich each other through the exchange, through the dialogue, in this space for reflection, and see what thoughts come up and what emerges together in the exchange. With that in mind, I wish you a wonderful start to the week, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning at 8 again in the Deep Talk. Until then. Ciao!
