Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: Who’s actually holding the reins? Marc, Vera and Jürgen join Dr. Yasemin Yazan to explore self-empowerment — why looking inward beats looking outward, how fear can be one of the biggest powers holding us back, and whether self-empowerment can really be trained…
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 good morning to you all, and sorry for the delay — an update was still running that I had no control over how long it would take, so I had to push the room back by about ten minutes. And with that, I’d like to warmly welcome you this morning to our next room, on the topic of self-empowerment: who’s actually holding the reins? That’s the question we want to work on today — over the past few days we’ve already seen that the topic of power and self-empowerment has a lot to do with ourselves. Today we want to look at that more closely. What actually constitutes self-empowerment, on one hand? Interesting was that, with the aspect of power, we found that it’s essentially an interaction — power can only be exerted, in a sense, when there’s someone on the other side who interacts with it in some form. And on the other hand, with the aspect of violence, we had this same point: that violence, so the thesis goes, only works if there’s some form of counter-force present — not counter-force as a reaction in the form of violence, but rather that I do something with this violence, or allow it, or don’t allow it. Whether there are exceptions to that or not would need a closer look, but that’s not the topic of our room today. Today is really about looking at what self-empowerment actually means, how it can be shaped, to what extent we actually hold the reins in our hands — do we even do that? — and finding answers together. So you’re all very warmly invited again today to join in and share your first impulses and thoughts on self-empowerment, building on what we already discussed yesterday in the room, and picking up on one or two things from there. One of the keywords that came up yesterday was also the aspect of responsibility — maybe we can bring that in here too and take a closer look. So please feel free to join in, share your thoughts, and see where the room develops together.
And another note for anyone who might be joining for the first time today: the room is recorded the entire time and published afterward, so anyone who joins automatically agrees to that. We have three small room rules: a profile picture you can be recognized by, first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio, simply to make sure these aren’t Clubhouse trolls but genuine contributions. Anyone who doesn’t want to do that for whatever reason can of course use the chat, and we can pick up on whatever hasn’t been addressed yet in the exchange, in the dialogue. So with that, I’ll mute myself and see who’d like to join this morning. A very good morning to you, dear Marc — what are your first thoughts on the topic?
Good morning, everyone. Yes, I have two thoughts right away. The first thought is probably one everyone arrives at — that self-empowerment is actually a wonderful word to begin with, and it’s supposed to help you steer and control your own life in a self-determined way. And then I asked myself, okay, but what powers are there that fundamentally act on my life — powers acting from the outside? And that’s already the point I want to make: if we’re always looking outward, that means we’re dependent. I actually arrived at this because I’d read something by Kafka, about a young man who, more or less in his sleep, at some point turns into a cockroach. And from there I arrived at a story about how people always hope that something will change on its own. And these powers, this outward orientation, always saying, my boss doesn’t understand me, my partner is totally, I don’t know what’s wrong with him — we’re always looking outward. And for myself, I found a completely different approach: not to look outward. Because there are things like economic circumstances, social structures, or cultural conditions. You’ve told us yourself, dear Yasemin, that we’re also captive within our own cultural sphere and can’t always act as freely as we’d like. I’ll stop here for a moment, otherwise I’ll throw a thousand thoughts at you in the first two minutes, but those were my first considerations.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Would that mean that looking inward is correspondingly important — not looking outward but inward — is that the conclusion? I’ll just go with that for now. Yes, that was the consequence for me, that I first looked inward, because this self-empowerment — not making myself dependent on external economic, social, cultural, or other influences that I’m exposed to, because every one of us is exposed to some kind of influence, and I can’t determine that on my own authority. Because, dear Yasemin, you were born into your culture, you didn’t decide that yourself. You’re lucky to be alive and taking part in life, just like me, but we were both born into different cultural spheres, and each of us has our own history. We can’t influence that at all. So it makes sense for me to first look inward, where I can actually bring about change, because I can wish for many things, but I first have to work with what I have. And what I have is myself. And that’s why I’m also the greatest power — I have within me the greatest power to act with self-agency.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And that brings me directly to another thought. On one hand, it’s about interaction with the outside world, and there we have the opportunity to look at ourselves and see to what extent self-empowerment can let me influence one thing or another and thereby initiate change. But we’ve also touched, in various places, on this aspect purely in relation to ourselves — the interaction with ourselves, so to speak. We’ve talked in many places about beliefs and things like that. So it’s not just this aspect of the outward interaction, but also the interaction with myself. Self-empowerment plays a special role there too — that would be another layer. Not changing something outward, but changing something in myself. So not in interaction with someone else externally, I don’t know if you understand what I mean, but in relation to myself, to my own thoughts and so on. Self-empowerment plays a role there too. Marc, would you like to add something?
Dear Yasemin, I’m grinning and smiling right now. Yes, exactly — after reading your titles I thought, Yasemin doesn’t do anything without a reason. I went in two different directions of thought. First I thought about, on my own authority, what does “acting on one’s own authority” even mean, and because of my father’s situation I arrived at the idea that when things aren’t put in order, other people end up deciding things for you instead. And then you gave my brain the most important impulse, after which I stopped myself and thought, yes, but Yasemin also wrote it in the subtitle — taking the reins into your own hands. Aha. And then completely new images formed in my head. Acting on one’s own authority versus taking the reins into one’s own hands — that produced completely new results in my head. And yes, exactly what you said. That’s how I arrived, mentally, at going in the direction of “acting on my own authority,” meaning that later in life I won’t be determined by others — that if I haven’t sorted out certain legal matters, some guardian won’t be appointed over me who tells me how I have to live, even if that’s not what I want, simply because I haven’t settled things legally. But that’s a long way off, and until I’m old I still have the chance to act on my own authority in other things. And from my personal experience, that simply begins with myself — by becoming aware of where I stand, what I’ve done so far, what my strategies have been, and so on. So directed inward, not outward.
Yes, and yesterday we already had various terms in the room. On one hand it was about clarity and communication, which we can pick up on again — on one hand, it takes transparent communication, and the prerequisite for that is, to some extent, that I myself am clear about what I actually want and who I am. And then we had the keyword decision over the past few days, which I’d also like to underline here again, or address separately. Against the backdrop that I’ve noticed very frequently recently — and we can look at how much this actually has to do with decision-making — that people find it incredibly hard to make quick decisions, possibly out of fear of somehow deciding wrongly. And in the expert talk we already had this keyword decision, where one image used was that you can picture it like a path that forks into two directions, say to the right and to the left. And the moment I don’t decide, it’s essentially a standstill — I stay put. I’d like to pick that up here too: to what extent does a conscious decision actually play a role in this context, or what kind of force can it develop? Marc, would you like to say something on that too?
On both points, dear Yasemin. You just mentioned the most powerful, the greatest power of all — I see it exactly the same way. Fear is one of the greatest powers we have. And you can explain the origin of that better than I can, because our brain needs fear so that we can survive. But unfortunately it’s become so distorted that fear, which used to help us survive in the past — as humans, so we wouldn’t get eaten and so on — is still so deeply anchored in us that it doesn’t just protect us from not surviving anymore, but also protects us from living a better life, simply by keeping us from taking action. And on the topic of decisions — this week I listened to a really fascinating podcast with the CEO of Trigema, who doesn’t always share my values and views, but whom I have huge respect for as an entrepreneur. In this interview they asked him — I can’t remember the name right now, but you know who I mean, the ones who did that advertising with the monkey — what was your biggest wrong decision in your life? And he answered, completely self-assured, within a millisecond: I have never, ever in my life made a wrong decision. I only ever make decisions. And when I notice that a decision no longer fits, that things have changed and what I’m doing is no longer right, then I make a new decision. But I have never made a wrong decision.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. To pick up on a few more points: we also had this aspect of saying no as an important point, which came up again yesterday too. And I also remember, in one of the rooms or one of the interviews we did with Patrick Wenke, he said that saying no, conversely, also means saying yes — saying yes to myself, for example. I think that saying is great, we can bring that in too. And about the fear you mentioned — yes, fear is one of the emotions we’re born with, it’s completely human, and it has its function. It’s nothing bad per se, quite the opposite — its function is to protect us, namely to secure our existence. That means our brain is designed to check, first and foremost, every stimulus that comes in for whether it threatens me in some way, or threatens my existence, and to act accordingly. And so it’s a really, really important protective function of humans. But in many places it hasn’t adapted enough yet — adaptations, especially viewed evolutionarily, take a certain amount of time, and we as humanity are developing so quickly overall that evolution, biology, can’t keep up quickly enough at this point, you could interpret it that way. And that leads to us showing fear reactions in various places that may be completely unfounded in that context. So it makes sense to become aware of that and keep coming back into steering, into self-efficacy, by being able to check certain aspects. And one of these checks, in this context, can be the very simple question of whether my existence is actually threatened or not. Because the fear that gets triggered as a feeling afterward is based on exactly that. In many places we’ll probably already have to answer that with no. At that moment, we can already handle certain situations quite differently. And there we’re already directly in self-empowerment. The moment I know certain connections, have a certain awareness of things like brain functions, I can ultimately move into self-efficacy — apply techniques, learn and apply them, to bring about change in myself, both inwardly and in my effect outwardly. I find that a really exciting thing. Marc?
Yes, on that point I found something that had happened to me before too. I’ve had two lives — one before my self-employment and one now, with my self-employment. And I kept meeting people, and still do, who direct their view of self-empowerment outward, onto their career-building activity, so we just say, I don’t feel comfortable in my job. Well, okay, my boss is 60 now, maybe he’ll do another five years, then it’ll get better. My partner is annoying me right now, well, they’re going through a rough patch, they’ll probably change. And we find reasons for everything, always externally. And if we don’t ask ourselves how we want this change, and change always means work, then it’s very, very unlikely that anything will change. And you just mentioned Patrick, dear Yasemin — I have the deepest respect. We know a lot of things intellectually too. I’m also plagued by self-doubt sometimes. I also have fears sometimes. And I’ve also read a lot of things where I know, in terms of the approach, how they work. But what Patrick achieved through sheer willpower, to mention that again, that’s something I have the deepest, deepest respect for. Every change begins with the first step. But a path is long. And I’ll admit this quite openly, I stand by it — whether I would have done what Patrick did, taking on those hardships on the way there in Bhutan, starting with the flies and animals swarming around him, I don’t know. And that’s why I bow to him. And Patrick, if you’re listening or someone tells you this — deep, deep respect for what you accomplished there.
Yes, wonderful. That’s about the marathon he ran and took part in, and that maybe brings us to another point in this context, namely to what extent self-made experiences play a role in growing beyond yourself, so to speak. Because that run really was an enormously massive challenge along the Himalayas, uphill the whole way, and for someone who’s really more of a hobby runner than a marathon runner, that was truly an enormously massive challenge too — also for the others who took part. We’ve done various expert interviews on this, you can listen to them in the Deep Talk Club podcast, it’s really, really fascinating. And that raises the question for me: to what extent do such experiences we make, boundary experiences, both mental and physical, also ultimately contribute to coming back into self-empowerment — by, for example, making positive experiences that then enable me, on one hand, to possibly learn new aspects on my path that I can apply again, and at the same time also pay into things like self-confidence and self-worth in the sense of pride. I’ve managed it, I set myself a goal and I achieved it. That doesn’t directly relate to this context of power, in the sense of what we discussed earlier about outward interaction, but it ultimately pays into my personality, into the development of my personality along the path I’m laying down, so to speak. And when I then find myself in situations involving self-empowerment, all these prior experiences I’ve had play a role too, strengthening me, for example, to handle the situation, or rather causing me to withdraw, and so on. Marc, would you like to add something here too?
Yes, very gladly. I’d like to share something with you too. I said I’ve had two lives, and my life changed colossally. To do all of what you just mentioned, dear Yasemin, it takes, first of all, honesty with yourself and self-reflection. And back then I looked for a coach, and I looked for a coach for the reason that my relationship had ended, I’d lost my job, and I had virtually no contact with my son anymore. But I had an answer for everything, and I also had a justification for everything, for why it had turned out that way. And I remember, in the first few minutes we sat together, my coach said, okay, let’s look at where you’re at right now. We all tend toward self-deception and always look for the cause externally. And then he said to me, well, what speaks against it? You’ve tried it with your strategy. And he asked me a single question: are you satisfied with how things are now? And I said, no, I’m not, otherwise I wouldn’t have come to you. I’m curious how this develops, but I’m not satisfied. And then he said, good, that’s the first step — honesty with yourself, self-reflection. And only once you manage that does it become possible to question things, to change things. But this honesty with yourself, not looking outward, not blaming others for why something isn’t working, that the boss is stupid and that clients just closed shop and disappeared. And I really had an answer for everything, for why I was standing where I was standing. And through this clever way of asking questions — we’ve had this topic before, dear Yasemin — that when you talk to someone you know for certain is being paid to help you, not to hurt you, who has no selfish motive to tell you something because they’d benefit from it, but only the task of helping you, that led me onto a different path back then. And still — maybe you can say something about this too — when someone seeks help and learns to act on their own authority again, am I still always skeptical? You know yourself that there are many people who haven’t learned that, that certain professions aren’t protected, and that I often hear such nonsense — that you’re not allowed to be afraid anymore and can just smile everything away, and that I just walk around grinning like I’m on drugs. Total nonsense. I have days where things go well, I have days where things go badly. But being able to press the off-switch and say, stop, take control — that works much, much faster. But of course none of that means that self-doubt doesn’t keep coming up. And it’s not that we just walk around grinning all day, all year, like in some cult. That’s really important for me to emphasize again.
Yes, absolutely. I always say, the weeds in my garden don’t disappear just because I simply think them away. That means it does take, on one hand, some positive visions you can set for yourself, and affirmations you can make. But you can also get a lot wrong there — there are parameters from brain research that influence whether that works or not, whether it directs your focus correctly. That’s a different thing from just wishful thinking. And of course it also needs action, because without action, nothing happens. If I just imagine getting up and then don’t actually move, while I’m lying in bed, then nobody gets up. So I find that quite interesting. And what’s also important, I think, is that these are always snapshots. Because even if I get support from outside, or if I go into reflection myself, with or without support — we talked about this once in connection with insight and so on — that means these are always snapshots, and that fits with this aspect of decision-making too. I’ve done some reflection, myself or with outside support, and gained insights for the moment, and I act accordingly. And then it’s again a kind of trying-out and observing and, if needed, readjusting, and we’ve seen that in many places with models and so on — how does it go, plan, do, check, act, I think, I’d have to think about the order of the third and fourth step. That means we have this here too — simply reflecting on certain things, looking, then taking action, and then checking. And if I check and feel that things haven’t changed, or not the way I’d like, then I’m also allowed to make adjustments accordingly. That applies equally to decisions as to any other process or aspect I reflect on for myself, any behavior. And here, too, it’s about moving away a bit from this “wanting to get everything right immediately.” And looking back, we’ll find that maybe three weeks later, three years later, or whenever, we judge things quite differently, because through neural connections, through all the experiences we make along the way, we keep forming new connections, and after a certain time we naturally judge and evaluate things differently again, and arrive at new actions, activities, and new behaviors. But that doesn’t make what I did before any worse — quite the opposite, it’s to some extent just, I’ll call it, fallibility — because I can’t think of a better term right now, maybe you have a nicer term than fallibility. But simply accepting that these are always snapshots, so to speak, that I can work on to the best of my knowledge and conscience, and then checking, in order to move into the next step or the next loop, so to speak. And that’s an ongoing process at this point, and it doesn’t end. And so we can basically transfer this to every context, and not have this claim to perfectionism regarding decisions, regarding approaches, regarding “maybe I’m currently dissatisfied and would like to create satisfaction” or something like that. And here too you can look at to what extent the terms dissatisfied and satisfied are even correctly connoted by us as part of our socialization — should I only get moving, so to speak, when I’m dissatisfied, or shouldn’t I also grow beyond myself while satisfied, because otherwise I’m in my comfort zone? This growing beyond yourself happens exactly where I go beyond the limits, so to speak, not staying within my comfort zone, within my safety zone, but trying out new things too. So all of that are aspects you can look at here as well. Would you like to continue on that?
Yes, very gladly. I just had a wonderful image in my head, at least for myself — your subtopic is taking the reins into your own hands, and I just imagined the two of us, dear Yasemin, meeting up and me wanting to learn to ride, and you being a fantastic rider, and now with the reins in hand, I watch and say, Yasemin, that can’t be that hard, I want to be able to do what you can do — and you get on your horse, and I watch, and my wish is always, how do you hold the reins, left and right, that can’t be so hard. And I pictured the horse as a metaphor for life and everything around it. And a horse that bucks, runs fast, or throws me off right away — it’s just not that simple, that I ask someone, Yasemin, show me how to take the reins in hand, I picture it, then I can do it too, then I can do the same thing you do — instead I have to stick with it, and that’s, for me, through your title “taking the reins in hand,” also a very, very long road, and it’s just not enough if we have someone in front of us who simply tells us, this is how I do it — maybe you have a completely different approach to the horse, or to life, or to your environment, and you have to try all of that out and practice it, but just because I’ve watched how you do it, that doesn’t get me anywhere near deciding, I’ll take the reins in hand too. And all I want to say with that is, this obviously doesn’t happen in two or five minutes. It takes a certain amount of stamina too. Self-reflection, and after that — self-reflection would be point one for acting on your own authority. And the second is discipline. And if you look at famous athletes, why they’re so successful — we’ve had this topic here too — talent, maybe you have that. But most of them have been successful long-term because they were disciplined, not because they were more talented than others.
Thank you so much. And Ismail added the order in the chat — “plan, do, check, act.” Thanks for that too. And Alexandra also added the “TOTE test” — abbreviated for whatever that stands for exactly. Alexandra, maybe you’d like to join and say something about it — “Test Operate Test Exit” it says, but people who don’t know the test can’t really do much with that. So it would be great if you have time to just join and give a short explanation, or of course through the chat works too. And with that, we can look at that too if you like. And what other aspects haven’t we touched on yet? I’d like to extend a warm invitation to everyone else too — we’ve opened a lot of doors in different directions now, maybe you have further aspects we haven’t addressed yet that we should also consider. Vera, a very good morning to you — what do you say to this?
Good morning. This whole time, while listening to you all, I’ve had a situation from my own life in my head, where I ask myself whether that was self-empowerment or just coincidence. For many years, while I was working, I worked very much at the limit of what my body could handle — but you only notice that afterward. In any case, at some point the situation was such that I badly sprained my foot. Maybe half a year later I broke a foot. About a year later I broke my arm. In different situations. And then I asked, hello body, why are you doing this? You’ve never had a break your whole life, and suddenly. And then I decided, okay, my body wants rest. I need to listen to my body, and I made an agreement with my body — it leaves everything intact now, it doesn’t break anything else, and in return it gets more rest from me, and I pay more attention to it. Among other things, I introduced prevention days, on which I simply called in sick if I felt like zero. And look, my body has stayed intact ever since. Was that self-empowerment, or was that nonsense? What do you think, Yasemin? (Laughs.) I talk to my body quite often — we’re in dialogue, and I find it works. But whether it only works in my head, ultimately maybe it doesn’t matter if it works. But I really do wonder whether you can influence yourself that way. I don’t know what my brain would say to that.
Yes, thank you so much, a lovely question in this context. And there really is quite a bit of insight from brain research on this, especially regarding aspects like belief. We’ve touched on this in some rooms before, that ultimately it doesn’t really matter what we believe in — belief plays a very important part here, because it directs our thoughts and our focus. And the moment you have the feeling, the impression, with your body, and believe that you’re in dialogue with your body, then a certain effect naturally takes place — in the sense that you set in motion a certain kind of control, like inner healing or similar processes. So that certainly has an effect. We just always have to distinguish again — and here we’re back at the point Marc raised earlier — there’s a quality difference you might notice yourself if you try it. It’s not like the kind of affirmation where you just say “I’m strong, I’m good” and so on — if you don’t believe it, that has no effect at all. And it’s the same here with this dialogue. If you go into dialogue with your body, so to speak, and don’t believe what you’re telling yourself, it won’t have any effect either. But the moment you’re yourself convinced that it has an effect, and you conduct this dialogue on a different qualitative level, so to speak, then something can unfold in the body accordingly, and there’s plenty of evidence and studies on how that can be controlled. One well-known example I brought up in this context was that muscle-training study, which is really fascinating — where they trained the index finger, and others actually, physically trained the index finger for real. So one group only mentally, and the other not mentally but actually, physically. And the muscle growth was almost — there was a slight difference, but it’s astonishing how close it was to the physical training, even though one was only mental training and the other was physical training. But it needs those corresponding parameters, and if I just tell myself something nice over coffee without really believing it, then the probability of an effect is significantly lower than if I’m actually convinced that I can achieve something with my body through this dialogue. So I think that could well have had an effect in your case. And we know this from many other places too — when we’re not doing well mentally, we often develop physical symptoms relatively soon afterward, sometimes with a slight delay, and that’s talked about a lot in medical contexts too, that when things keep coming up, it’s not always so helpful to just take medication or something, because that’s treating the symptom, not the cause, and so it always makes sense to look at the cause instead. Marc, would you like to add something here too?
Yes, I’m smiling a bit — that connects right now, actually. Every change begins with the first step, and just this morning I got a video from a friend of mine showing Bruce Lee. I mention that because I used to be really into martial arts. But acting on your own authority, learning that art on your own, that takes a whole lot of work, and self-reflection, and the willingness to walk that path. And I was probably, for a while, the only karate fighter in Germany who thought that if I just believed firmly enough, mentally, or pictured how good I was, that I’d eventually become good. Until I of course realized that imagining it alone isn’t enough if I don’t really believe it, and if I’m not also willing to take the step, whatever those steps involve.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Alexandra just commented that she can’t join right now. So if there are terms from Alexandra in the chat that we don’t recognize, feel free to just google them yourselves and look them up. On what Vera said, there was a note that it was essentially embodiment. And Ismail asks: is self-empowerment a skill, can it be trained, and how? Let me give you the chance to answer that first — Marc, Vera, how do you see it?
Yes, it can be trained, and I can really say that from my own experience, because I really was able to — my life, I have proof of it. Everything in my life went downhill. I lost my apartment, lost my partner, had no contact with my son, and then no job either, unemployed for over a year. It can’t really get worse than that, except health — health is really bad, because there’s nothing you can do about that. And everything else — once I learned to take the reins into my own hands again, which is also the subtopic here, I took the reins into my own hands myself. And I wasn’t any luckier, and I’m certainly not more intelligent than many, many other people. I just decided to take the reins into my own hands again, and asked myself, are you satisfied with how things are now? The answer was simply no, and I looked at the strategies I’d had so far. They’d all failed, and so I didn’t look outward but inward, and that, with very high probability, was down to me. After that came overcoming the fear — the second fear, what happens if it doesn’t work — and building self-confidence, because of course you can’t just say I’m confident now and wake up the next day saying, nothing can stop me anymore. And then you can work on this self-empowerment and this self-worth. But it’s important to me — otherwise this all sounds like empty hype talk. I started the room this morning saying it’s important to look inward. But of course there are also factors like individual circumstances, personal abilities, our cultural conditions, and also economic factors. And that also requires good self-reflection, because I can believe in my product or some invention as much as I want — if there’s no market for it, the market won’t materialize. And a healthy dose of self-reflection is needed for all of that too. And self-reflection, past a certain point, always works better when you can do it together with someone, because then you simply get asked different questions and arrive at new answers through that.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Vera, did you want to add something too, or shall we bring Jürgen in directly? Please, Jürgen.
Wonderful, a very good morning, dear Jürgen. Good morning, dear Yasemin, Vera, dear Marc, and everyone in the room. I wish you a lovely Saturday. Thank you for your contributions. I’m triggered, so to speak, by the keywords from the last contributions — training, being able to learn, and dialogue. I have to note, for myself, that with all these terms beginning with “self,” it always keeps coming up that I myself am only part of a larger whole. And if you can follow how I understand self-empowerment, then there are two essential positions as target quantities of my self-empowerment: being in a position, always in a position, to make decisions, and to take responsibility for those decisions. And I think that can be learned, but if you only learn that, you’re missing something quite essential. Because there has to be someone — and there basically always is, since we’re social beings — someone, or very many people, who have to bear and endure our decisions, and who, on the other hand, also accept that we take responsibility. And that, for me, is the loop back to the completion of self-empowerment. I could have said this provocatively at the start: self-empowerment requires empowerment by others. Because if I hold on my own that I’m now the top decision-maker, and I’m always able and willing to take responsibility, then I always have to assume that I need a counterpart who accepts that, who first recognizes my decision-making competence, and then also consents to my taking responsibility, possibly on their behalf or on behalf of the group. So for me, this self-empowerment, like many other topics, isn’t — and Marc has said this several times, I fully agree — there’s no plan, no checklist I can work through, along the lines of, once I have this and can do that, then I’m self-empowered. Instead, for me it’s a lifelong process of experience in interaction with everyone around me who also wants to empower me.
Thank you for listening. Let me ask you something on that — how do you see that in relation to the interaction with myself? Who empowers me externally there? That’s the ghost that stands for no. That answer had to come, dear Yasemin. Constructive self-talk is basically really the first checking quantity, or the first checker, that I have to accept — that I don’t stand in front of the mirror every morning, sorry if I put it a bit flippantly, but I think it hits the point — that I don’t stand in front of the bathroom mirror every morning patting myself on the shoulder, saying, I think Marc said this, I’m the greatest, I’m the best, everything is attainable, and I grin away all problems because I only think positively. No. Rather, that I look myself in the eyes and ask, are you really who you believe you are, so powerful? That’s the first step — the reflection inward, before I confront others with the result of that inward reflection. Because only then can I represent myself in my own empowerment. I hope I’ve answered your question.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Marc, Vera, would you like to add anything else before we move into today’s closing round? Marc. Yes, dear Jürgen, exactly this self-reflection, and the first step, having an answer for everything and saying, I already know where things are headed, I’ve got all the wisdom already, and then facing the honesty and answering the question, could other people in your environment see you differently? No, absolutely not. And then listening and hearing, yes, we do see you differently. And then recognizing, oh, what effect do I actually have on others? Do I want to have this effect? And what effect do I really want to achieve? What is the wish behind my effect? And does it fit — then I wouldn’t have to adapt so much, but is the wish behind my effect also what I truly want? That requires a working process, but it only works if I’m completely honest with myself, Marc versus Marc. And that can sometimes be very painful, but afterward it gets better.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much, and let’s use the opportunity to move into the closing round here. I just saw Jürgen raise his hand again briefly. Let’s start from the back — Jürgen, Vera, Marc, in that order, then you can add your point too, dear Jürgen. Thank you. Yes, I just wanted to react spontaneously — I really liked that phrase, dear Marc, “Marc versus Marc.” I can already picture myself looking in the mirror every morning with the heading Jürgen versus Jürgen. So, thumbs up, really good. Thank you so much for this room, I really enjoyed listening to you all and also having the chance to contribute my own point. Thank you, dear Vera, and you too, Yasemin, for the moderation. I wish you all a lovely weekend. Thank you, ciao, bye.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Vera. Thank you for the room. And I think what self-empowerment is, really, is something very important — only if I’m empowered with myself can I decide and live independently. So this was again very uplifting this morning, thank you.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Marc. I’ll close the round today with religion, because I found something about self-empowerment there too, namely in Buddhism — there are tons of books, pages upon pages about cause and effect, karma. I wish you a good start to the weekend.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. It becomes clear that this is a big topic, and here you can of course pick up very different aspects. We picked up, as examples, aspects from yesterday’s room, and added a few more today. That shows in how many different directions this can be worked on, in terms of how I can train something like this, to come back to Ismail’s question. Especially if we think about the whole topic a bit more holistically — we’re not only active privately, we’re also active in business, a person is a unit in interaction with others, we’re social beings and so on — then it makes sense to say: there isn’t the one technique or the one strategy that I can use as an instrument and then self-empowerment simply works. Instead, there are many, many levers I can apply in different places, try out, and really specifically train with. Especially against this backdrop of a holistic approach, I can really recommend the BERN concept, which was developed in the context of stress management by Tobias Esch and his team from neuroscience — that’s a hint I’d like to give here. You can find it in the Knowledge Base, at yaseminyazan.com, under the Knowledge Base and then the keyword stress and stress management. There you’ll find these four essential points explained — it’s not just about behavior, it’s also about things like movement, aspects like relaxation, and also nutrition. So that also shows that it needs to be looked at holistically here too.
And especially this aspect of cause and effect, I find particularly exciting, because you surely know the quote — I believe it was Albert Einstein — that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And in that sense, we’re right there again with this example of cause and effect. That basically means training, in the context of self-empowerment, is nothing other than repeatedly applying different levers, using different techniques, tackling different aspects, in order to see what effect that has. And there we’re directly in self-reflection too. And then, against the backdrop of the effect — did it work, did it not work — against the backdrop of the analysis and evaluation I arrive at, I can then, if needed, change the “cause” lever again to see what effect results. And I can do that not only outwardly, in interaction with others, but also in relation to my own behavior, my own approach, and so on, in many places. And regardless of whether it’s about self-empowerment or other aspects, in many places I can use this cause-and-effect principle very nicely, combined with the reflection and analysis I undertake, and then making adjustments again, as a way to keep developing awareness against the backdrop of the observations I make, quite consciously observing: if I do this, what happens? If I do that, what happens? How does my body react to it? How do people around me react to it? And so on. And building on that, continuing to act, try things out, in the direction I want to steer things, and then, based on the insights I generate for myself from that reflection, deciding again how I want to continue with the next step. And doing that in small steps, a little bit each day, eventually leads to a point where, looking back, you notice, wow, quite a lot has actually happened, and along the way you maybe didn’t even realize it. But looking back, once some time has passed, we suddenly recognize much more clearly, for ourselves, the differences between before and after. So, in that sense, also an appeal, or a message, of courageously simply trying things out — you can’t really go too wrong, so to speak, so we’re also allowed to bravely make decisions, given that we don’t know anyway what’s right or wrong, so to speak, regarding the future. Simply bravely making the decision, walking the path, and repeatedly applying small levers, and simply through trying things out, then reflecting, evaluating again, making adjustments, entering into the learning process as an ongoing, lifelong-learning process. And that can be fun.
Wonderful, thank you so much. I think a lot of aspects came together here, and tomorrow we continue with the digital campfire. I’m looking forward to that too, because we said we wanted to pick up this aspect — power and education — there. Since we won’t be doing a separate, dedicated room for it anymore, because it just didn’t fit chronologically anywhere I tried placing it, I’ve decided to bring it up tomorrow at the digital campfire instead. That means I’ll come in with a few impulses already, to tell a few stories quite candidly from my own history, and then I want to bring you all in fairly quickly too, so we can get into an exchange and talk about power and education. I think that will be a very, very exciting room tomorrow. So you’re all very warmly invited to join again tomorrow, when it starts again at 8am in Deep Talk. In that spirit, I wish you fun. Until then, ciao.
