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Beginner’s Mind

28. März 2024

Shall I tell you about one of the greatest fears in my life? It's to feel boxed in and get bored. To stop growing and to run out of firsts – in my job, in my marriage, in my life. Luckily, in the last couple of months, I have been busy with a lot of “firsts”: I took a salsa class with Tobias. Actually, I have done a lot of salsa dancing back in the days, but dancing for the first time with your partner who is just taking his first salsa steps forces you to let go of your expectations and embrace this new beginning. It was a really interesting challenge to let him take the lead, and the course definitely felt a bit like couples...

Addiction

24. März 2024

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If I told you that I drank an entire bottle of whisky before lunch to drown my sorrow several times a week, I guess I would get quite a few messages from people concerned about a potential alcohol addiction. Luckily, that is not the case. I do, however, do sports almost every day and don’t feel at ease when I can’t move my body. I do catch myself taking out my phone several times an hour to look at it for no particular reason. I do feel FOMO when I don’t visit Linkedin for a day. Hardly a day goes by without me eating several servings of chocolate or sweets. Now, does this make me an addict? As someone who has gone through an intense phase of...

Smart Luck

23. Februar 2024

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I have a thing for expressions that are almost intranslatable. That only exist in one language. Like bagnasciuga. L’appel du vide. Gluggaveður. Saudade. (Go ahead and google those, I’ll wait :-) Or my all-time favorite word: Serendipity The Cambridge dictionary defines it as “the fact of finding interesting or valuable things by chance”. To me it’s a life philosophy. It’s my safety net against boredom. My antidote to being boxed in. And although chance is a defining element in it, to me serendipity is the opposite of “blind” luck. Blind luck is something that happens to you without your influence. Serendipity is what I define as smart luck. And I'm not the only one. Christian Busch, author of Serendipity Mindset (see box below), thinks of serendipity as “unexpected good luck resulting from unplanned moments, in which proactive decisions yield positive...

Curiosity

8. Februar 2024

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“Don’t be nosy.”“Don’t ask stupid questions.”Curiosity killed the cat – they say. There was a point in my childhood where I shifted from asking lots of questions to expecting myself to figure things out by myself. The Encarta encyclopedia (who still rembers the good old CD-ROM?) turned into one of my best friends. I refused to eat with chopsticks instead of admitting that I had no clue how to use them. When someone asked my if I had read a certain book, I'd rather say yes and hope I'd get through with it than asking what it was about. At that time, I would never have guessed that one day running classes about product discovery would become my bread and butter – let alone that I would...

1% – Drifting into Failure

8. Januar 2024

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A little scratch on the leg, maybe a dry nostril that cracked open just a tiny bit - we will never know what caused my husband’s leg to develop a severe bacterial infection last week. Despite several visits to the doctors and even a check-up at the hospital, the unlucky combination of his symptoms manifesting with delay in his blood results, Tobi’s eagerness to make his ski holidays count and medical practitioners not laying out the possible range of scenarios to pay attention to led to two surgeries and a week at the hospital. I couldn’t help but notice the parallels to a book I am currently reading, called Drift into Failure (see section below for my review). Our bodies are in fact living organisms that represent...

Poetry

26. Dezember 2023

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My first true love was ink on paper. Letters lined up neatly on a piece of paper. The smell of a new book. Sentences scribbled into carefully hidden notebooks to caputure a fleeting feeling. I was, am and always will be in love with books. Since I was a kid, I would pour my heart and soul out on paper - just to find it again in someone else's writing. In fact, I got so obsessed with certain books that I would hide them from my sister, afraid that by reading them she might be able to take a sneak peek into the deepest chambers of my soul...

Home

15. August 2023

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32 days 52 minutes and 17 seconds - that's how long it took me to get sick. The kids were the first ones, then Tobias started complaining. I thought I'd never be affected. But it turns out: even I can get really sick. I'm not talking about the infamous Bali belly (that one tormented the whole family, too...

In and Out of Love

9. Januar 2023

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I don’t know what’s going on lately and if it is only in my circle, but a lot of people seem to be going through a rough patch in their relationships. This made me think about nothing less than ...

Good-bye 2022, hello 2023!

19. Dezember 2022

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Opt in, opt out - this was my mantra for 2022. I started it by deleting my entire newsletter base, giving all subscribers the opportunity to make a deliberate choice of whether or not to re-subscribe (still very thrilled so many of you came back :-) When we look at other people’s lives, we tend to see all the things they accomplished, but are missing most of the context on the price they paid, the opportunities they did not pursue or how they felt about their choices. While I am looking back on a very successful year at Product Academy, I want to shed some light on things I opted out on: at least 7 podcasts and 4 conferences I was invited to speak atcountless coffee chats...

On My Shelf

16. Dezember 2022

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Time flies… and there are two more butterfly editions I want to send out this year 😊 This one is all about the books that inspired me in 2022. So in case you are looking for Christmas gifts or holiday reads, here are the books that made it onto my shelf (or that I pulled out again after a while…): Bittersweet by Susan Cain: If you have a melancholic side, rank high on the sensitivity spectrum, or always had a feeling there might be something wrong with you for this deep sense of longing, this book is for you. It talks about sorrow and longing and its connection to creativity, about grief and inherited pain. I will admit it sometimes feels a bit repetitive and could...

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Beginner’s Mind

Addiction

Smart Luck

Curiosity

1% – Drifting into Failure

Poetry

Home

In and Out of Love

Good-bye 2022, hello 2023!

On My Shelf

Tanja’s Butterflies

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