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Where are we heading to?

This question popped up just this morning when I opened Instagram.

I must confess, I like Instagram and I often go in and check and find inspiration and ideas how to live more sustainable, I see great campaigns against many injustices on this planet, I follow people I adore like Deepak Chopra or Ram Dass and this is great.

But what I also see is that there are thousands of women who call themselves influencer, mom blogger, whatever name you want to give them, who expose their whole families, grandparents and neighbors of neighbors to the world wide web. They literally “sell” their life and feel like kind of a celebrity.

I mean, seriously, I show my home, my sacred place and start to tag everything from the lamp on the ceiling to the rug on the floor, I give away shopping codes and link web pages while hoping that people love me and follow my life and at the end of the day BUY.

This kind of commercializing products is not only weird, it’s also going into a direction where being unique seems to be outdated.

Every mom blogger account has the same brands (at least for what I can see in Germany), the wear the same jewelry, call themselves even designer because they put their name on products they designed? To be a designer for you normally need to attend classes in a design school, university, whatever, but hey, this is the easy way, right? They eat the same, the drink the same tea, they own the same coffee machines in their stylish mainly white colored new built homes and their kids have the same toys and clothes and prams. All for the price of inviting people into their life on a daily basis, day in and day out, from morning to bedtime routine, being healthy or not feeling fine.

I’m honest and especially the ones who build up their life like this will not agree on it, but filling the washing machine with the camera in my hand or making a time-lapse of how I clean the kitchen is NOT real life and is far away from what we should do with our time.

As wonderful as all these technologies are, as careful they need to be handled. What do we teach our children when we document every step we take, inside and outside? What do we teach them if mommy is putting on her make up each day in front of the phone while she’s talking to the phone instead of talking to her child?

Did you ever check your screen time per day? I know that it hits you once you start to focus on it, at least it hit me when I checked it, because this screen time means that you spent the time with a phone in your hand instead of being in the real NOW.

Eckhart Tolle wrote this wonderful book “the power of NOW” and I can recommend this to everyone – we are all right now here and we should spend our time wisely.

If it’s your job and your income to advertise and to sell, that’s great, but do it need the 24/7 exposure to the whole world? Isn’t it enough to create good selling content and pictures and tutorials?

I may never understand but wanted to share as I feel we are heading to a time where personal contact starts to be rare and real life exists only in form of a hashtag.

Go out, meet friends, take your children to the playground and just sit there, watching the leaves dancing in the wind with the sound of children laughing and playing, that’s real life, at least for me.

Take care

misssfaith <3

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Do we lose sight of what really counts?

Recently I have the feeling as if nothing seems to be important anymore except of “standing out of the crowd” or “being exceptional” or also “being utterly successful”.

Is this really all that matters? Why are we live through our jobs instead of bringing our personality into work? Counted as numbers and cherished only when achievements are visible.

Corporate life is seriously making me tired and let me wonder what I can change to be more mindful and more human in what I’m doing.

My recent job is project manager in a quite big research company, but the truth is, it doesn’t matter if I’m a manager or a worker, I need to fulfill my job obligations like everyone else. The only difference is that I wonder if I’m in a position to change things profoundly, because this is what it would need to make me happy with what I’m doing.

I work with a team, several teams on different projects, and I’m supposed to manage the project which also means to manage the team. It’s getting harder to do this recently because we are put under pressure from so many different angles that I already struggle and I’m in this position quite a while and know how to distinguish between important and not important. The trend is to focus on the not important because a few upper management people sat together and thought they need more oversight and so they set goals for them internally and to meet these metrics we need to report.

Of course there is a need of oversight and I fully understand this need, but what I don’t understand is how the priority setting can drift so far away from our job?

If I should give you an example – you are working with animals and the utmost importance lays on the health of these animals then what would you rather do? Go to the office and calculate how much you paid for food for the past 6 months in order to be prepared to justify in case someone would ask you in a couple of months OR take care of the current situation where an animal is sick and urgently needs a vet to check on its health?

You see what I’m talking about?

We run reports, we fill in excel sheets, we sit in conference calls almost 60% of our time, we ensure that all metrics look awesome but at the end of the day we forgot what we are actually working on.

The worst time eaters are meetings, and again, of course there are meetings that make a change but be honest, in most meeting we have throughout a week we aren’t productive. We talk about work that has been completed (which obviously could be shared in an email), we talk about where we are on this day (which is OK in meeting one of a week) and we talk about what we need to do to reach goals. But instead of staring to work on these goals we jump right into the next meeting, and the next, and the next, and then it’s 2 pm and we completely forgot to have lunch but cannot go anyway because we have to use the one-hour time-slot before the next meeting to actually work.

I have many colleagues with families and children, and also those without, one thing is equal for all of us at the end of the day when we are exhausted in our own home falling asleep early because we know what awaits us the next day at work: We start to wonder if we work for a living or live to work.

The answer is clear for me. I work for a living, this is not a question at all, but I also realize more and more that I want to see a change – be it a major shift of my personal work life or be it a major shift of valuing employees in the company I’m working for.

We all know these workaholics and we will never change their perception, that’s fine, but we need a change for the rest. I want to be able to focus on priorities and I want these priorities to be the humans, the clients who pay in the end and the purpose of each project I’m working on. I don’t want internal administration to take all this away from me for the sake of having vice presidents eating salmon tartes at a meeting somewhere to praise themselves.

I want colleagues who love their job and not colleagues who struggle to get their work done because its simply too much.

I want also healthy people around me and not people who drag themselves sick into offices because they are scared to lose their job.

I want to have working hours flexible but respected, I don’t want to receive meeting invites for 8 pm my time just because others are too ignorant to realize that they are in a different time zone.

I want managers who care about their people and wish them a well-deserved weekend instead of asking them on a Friday noon for some extra work.

Do I want far too much? I don’t think so because it’s known that happy people are more productive than unhappy people. So hey, companies out there, what are you waiting for?

It’s not really too complicate to make employees happy.

Provide them with a proper workplace

Ensure they have coffee, tea and water supply

Offer them a time to have lunch

Allow them to take their work home when needed

Be as flexible as you expect it from your employee

Ensure they can handle the amount of work within their scheduled work time

Show them that you support families

Give them a bonus work good work

This list could go on but I hope you realize what I mean – I did not even add the high salary because not everything is about money. Of course we want to be paid properly for our work (and it would be nice if women finally can be paid equally rather sooner than later) but what we want is a work place that appreciates US and is not treating us like a number in the system. We can only be good at work if we feel good, if we are healthy, if we are supported when needed.

I see people quitting to go into lower paid jobs to stay mentally sane – honestly, this is where we need a shift! It can’t be that companies lose good people because they don’t care about their people.

I’m furious if I hear these stories and then I realize that one day I may be the one who quits because I cannot handle the amount of stress anymore. Recently a 6 months vacation sounds like paradise for me and I bet I wouldn’t miss a day at work. That’s sad because it’s well known that people who love their job are doing them better than people who don’t.

Change to more humanity, change and make all of us happy because I promise you will see results after a short time – not because we run like hamsters in a wheel but because the more focused we work the better the results will be – EVERYWHERE!

LoVe from misssfaith

than rolling out the mat

This will be another blog post.

Meanwhile while I am writing that one I would like to know from you:

What means Yoga for you?

I look forward to all your answers <3

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One month is gone

One month is gone already – it’s February!

We are getting closer to the renewal time of spring. How lovely is alone this thought.

Are you also tired of winter?

In general I like winter, if it would be the winter we all dream of. Snowy landscapes, cosy homes, steaming tea cups, children building a snowman…

The problem is that my winter doesn’t look like that. Whenever we would have time for these real snow days there is no more snow but grey mud or even worse just rain.

The first time my son was on his new slide was the last so far because since then there either was no snow or in the snow regions it was so much that they called out the emergency status. That means we have a new slide, a new snow suit, even wonderful warm boots but no snow.

The same goes for the snowman. As wonderful as a winter could be, this winter wasn’t showing up like we wished (at least not in Munich).

Others may say now that this isn’t entirely true, and they are right. The winter for us wasn’t like we wished for. We work from Monday to Friday and only the weekend is the time where we could fully enjoy the winter-wonderland. If we would have had time throughout the week our feeling towards this winter would be different.

As always in life it’s the personal perception.

I’m not complaining, we are fine, we won’t break into tears because of these missed snowportunities 🙂

The interesting part is indeed how different we all see things.

My husband is Libyan, for him everything under 0°C is too cold to go outside unless you have to. For me, I like the warm days more but it’s OK if it’s cold. I learned there is no wrong weather, there are only wrong clothes, that’s the way to handle the weather in Germany. And our son? With almost three years he is simply exploring the world. If it’s cold or warm, dry or wet, lighted up or dark, he will always find something on every single day that is interesting.

January

We started into this year with a month full of snow, rain, grey days and a bit of winter sun. The first half of January was a re-adjusting at work for me. Even if the break between Christmas and the new year is just a couple of days it seems as everyone is starting new and not too stressed into another year. The second half took the speed up again and currently I ask myself how to survive a full year with this level of stress.

What comes next?

The simple answer would be February.

I know that my work life will change a bit in the next months as projects are closed and new are starting. I hope there will be more time again to focus on my development, professional as well as private.

As days start to be longer again we will wait patiently for the spring to spend more and more time outside. The lack of sunshine is draining the last depots. Even better to have the possibility to plan a short vacation before the long summer vacation this year.

Travelling with a toddler is not pure relaxation but indeed a wonderful experience. We plan another flight with him in March and look already forward to new discoveries.

Apart from that I guess the only plan is to enjoy more and worry less.

People tend to be stressed 24/7

Going back to what really counts in life is one of the keys to happiness. Our jobs are eating lots of time and if we don’t work we worry about work. That’s not how it’s supposed to be. Once you are out of the office you should start to enjoy your private leisure time. Somehow many forgot how it works.

We don’t live to work until we die. The purpose in life should be greater and bigger than heading to work and be a good employee, employer, boss, manager, consultant, sales assistant, truck driver, whatever you work. Where are the happy men and women, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, wives and husbands, cousins, artists, dancers, hippies, all these who don’t have places in their work?

At work I am a manager but the rest of my life I am a woman, a mom, a wife, a yogi, a painter, a cook, an artist, a writer, a blogger, a psychologist, a healer and so much more. I need this work-free time to be happy in everything else that I’m here for and being stressed because of my job should not have a place there. Not I, neither my husband nor my son deserve to be surrounded by a stressed person.

We need to let go

It’s hard to let go and just be. I know because I’m not good at it but I try. I will never stop trying to let go as it is one important part for my own sanity.

One month is already gone. Eleven more will follow until we reach 2020 and what do we want to remember? The sleepless nights of worry, the break-downs of being over-worked, the mistakes we made?

No, we want to remember the lessons learned, the laughter, the love that surrounded us. We want to remember the good time which was more than the bad time. To reach this we have to let go and that means to shift our focus. At work my focus is on my work but as soon as I shut down my laptop and turn off my phone the focus is on me and my family – that’s where it belongs to.

I wish you all a shift of your own personal focus. Let go of what isn’t needed at all and minimize the stress as best as you can.

Months are passing by so fast – we need to cherish the time we have!

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Less is more – my way to minimalism

Less is more – my way to minimalism

Minimalism is something I like so much. It gives you room, space, air – open spaces are a symbol of liberty.

How to start and apply this minimalism in a small flat which once was a single home? Now this is the home of our family, means my son, my husband and me and a change is needed.

The more we have the unhappier we are?

This sentence is partly true.

I am de-cluttering, everything, every tiny space in the house will be turned upside down. While doing this I start to realize how many things we have, how many unused items, how much of what doesn’t make us happier because most of it is hidden behind doors, in the back of an wardrobe buried under something else.

What do we use and wear frequently, what do we use and wear from time to time, what do we use and wear never?

Sorting out makes me feel good. This act of letting go is not only sorting my wardrobe but also sorting my life.

How much do you have in your life that doesn’t make you happy?

Have you ever thought about it?

We live in an overflow of possibilities.

How many white shirts does one single person need? Seriously, even if you wear them 24/7, even if you change it twice a day – the amount of clothes in my wardrobe isn’t to be justified. Not even if I try to find an excuse.

This overflow is present wherever we go. I think we are a generation with an amount of choices that is hard to handle, especially when someone has not yet developed a certain kind of confidence.

If your path in life is not yet clear and you are searching for your personal way you will find thousands of possibilities and you end up in a jungle.

The importance of going back to the roots

I think it’s important to cut down what’s not needed as much as we can. I say extra as much as we can. We don’t have to start and go so far back in time that we have the next “problem”. A certain kind of minimalism is needed, at least for me. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to use these billions of possibilities we have.

In contrary, it means that I am thankful for what we have. We are lucky to have this wonderful choice! The minimalism has to set in when we are choosing. Instead of taking all we can, which has the risk of getting lost again, we should take what we can handle.

I want to write, what I am doing here, that means I take the opportunity and use the internet for what I like to do.

I also would like to start a yoga teacher training and I could sign up right now. This opportunity is just a few clicks away. But I would not be able to succeed right now because I have a full-time job, a family with a toddler, a quite full calendar and barely time for writing and some yoga.

Do you see what I mean? I cut down and let go. That doesn’t mean this chance has passed, that means it isn’t fitting in at this moment. Once the toddler is older I may want to think about it again. Or I may have something else by then which is more important for my life at that stage. You never know where life goes. Things that were once important are vanishing from your life without leaving even traces. Sometimes it’s even enough to listen to your gut feeling.

My way

My way is just starting. Or even better said, this journey is the destination. Not everything in your life need to hit a predefined goal!

What am I doing in general?

I don’t have a plan, that means I go by intuition which is my way. Maybe you are the same kind because I have enough pressure in my life that I cannot fully control (like work for instance), it wouldn’t feel good to put myself under another kind of pressure. For some persons that won’t work because they need a strict plan in place. This is your way to find out what’s best for you.

I made a list, my list. It is kind of a plan, that’s correct, but it’s not written in stone. This list is like a working document. I add things as they pop up and I cross out either because it’s done or because it’s not important anymore. This list has no priorities, if I have checked something on it at the end of the day, then I’m happy. If not, then it is like it is.

To be honest, for me this works best, I don’t feel depressed when this list is long because I know that nothing on that list is urgent. Everything on there will make my life less cluttered once it’s done but without any pressure behind.

Let go AND change

My way doesn’t end here because I realized that it’s not only about minimizing what we have but also about making changes.

I used my electric toothbrush for years and would have had so many benefits in my brain to convince anyone to buy an electric brush. You don’t believe what I use now. A bamboo brush.

No plastic, no electricity, no batteries, no timer, no sounds, a simple and easy bamboo brush.

Does it make me happy? Yes!!!

I changed! The way forward for me is not only about getting rid of things. It is also to think about what we have and how we could improve there. Not feeding the plastic industry is a good feeling! This is just a small start.

I’m far away from being perfect and there are many things where I can start to check for alternatives. There are also many things where I don’t find alternatives because I wouldn’t feel happy with the alternative. And sometimes even there simply are no alternatives. The balance is the key, as it is so often. As long as you know where to cut things down you will be fine.

Every step you make to improve your life and your environment is important. If only each person is starting we all would make a difference. Be the example and show your family, friends and neighbors what alternatives we have.

This is my way.

I just started and am happy if you share what you are doing.

What about you?

Are you trying to change?

Are you living with all you need but not more?

Do you have stuffed closets and no clue what’s inside?

Are you lost in the jungle of possibilities you have?

How do you want to change your life?

Are you happy with your life as it is?

Let me know – I would love to hear your stories <3

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