Category Archives: Discoveries

My favorite story collections

February 13, 2019Books I read, Contemplations, Discoveries, Self-Gamificationvica

I read many story collections in my life. Many of them were very good and enjoyable to read. But there are only two I could name by their titles and which are the first to pop into my mind when speaking of inspiring stories. These are Being Here: Modern Day Tales of Enlightenment and Being Here…Too: Short Stories of Modern Day Enlightenment by Ariel & Shya Kane.

In fact, reading of the first book ignited a turn in my life I have never thought would be possible. I might not have dared to write books or anything else as daring, have I not read that book and all other books by Ariel and Shya Kane, listened to their radio shows and participated in their live seminars.

I first saw Being Here: Modern Day Tales of Enlightenment when an online retailer generated a recommendation based on my previous orders of self-help and motivational books. I read many self-help books before and still felt lost. So after buying and receiving Being Here: Modern Day Tales of Enlightenment, I resisted reading it for almost two years. But my sight kept being captured by the beautiful butterfly on its cover, and even by its spine when I tucked it between the other books on one of my bookshelves.

At some point, I surrendered and read it. I learned about a unique approach called Instantaneous Transformation developed by Ariel and Shya Kane. And with time, I learned and experienced the three revealing principles of this approach.

First, I realized that if I resisted something or tried to get rid of something – a thought, a habit, a person, a task, a book (see above 🙂 ) or anything else – I didn’t get rid of it at all. This person or thing just kept on sticking around, dominated my life and often became overwhelming.

Then, I learned that I couldn’t be anywhere else or anyone else at any given moment – I could only be who and how I was (or wasn’t), whether I liked it or not. And whether I judged my situation or not.

Finally, there was the Kanes’ third principle – anything that I allowed to be exactly as it was without judging or trying to change it, completed itself in an instant.

As I read Ariel and Shya’s books and articles, listened to their Being Here internet radio show, and participated in their live seminars, I experienced what it meant to let myself and others be just as we were. I discovered how to breathe and savor my life moment by moment, completely and freely. I came to understand what I truly wanted, what was my heart’s desire.

Yes, reading Being Here: Modern Day Tales of Enlightenment was the moment when this beautiful journey I am now on began. It was a journey of curiosity about what was happening at any given moment of now and what could happen if I surrendered to my wishes and did what my heart called me to do, instead of what I thought others wanted me to do.

As I practiced transformation, being in the moment, I discovered again and again that kindness and honesty were mutually inclusive, not exclusive. That allowed me to start observing myself non-judgmentally, in my life and also in the process of writing, teaching, and consulting.

I was delighted when I heard of the successor of one of my all time favorite books and of its concept. Being Here…Too: Short Stories of Modern Day Enlightenment is unique because the stories in it relate the magic of being here. These true stories were written by fantastic people of various walks of life, background and beliefs.

If I try to summarize the new book in three words, then these will be: Inspiring, empowering, brilliant. (You can read my full review of this book here.)

I strongly recommend reading and re-reading both books. You will laugh, smile, feel inspired, uplifted, utterly well in yourself and discover each time some new aspect of every story, which you didn’t notice during the previous read. They are that multidimensional!

#transformationmadeeasy #arielandshyakane #shortstory #truestories #inspiration #motivation #compassion #beinghere

Every New Book is the First One

February 20, 2017A mother's diary, Books I write, Contemplations, Discoveries, Experiencing the writing process, Writingvica

I used to think that if not writing itself then at least the rest of the process of bringing a book into the world will become more and more routine with each new book.

But it doesn’t look like that at all. I am working on my books nine, ten and eleven these days and I must say the work on them differs very much from those before and between each other.

One of the books I work on this year, and which is being edited by a professional editor right now, took me four months to write and one whole year to revise it.

It is not my first non-fiction book and not my first work where I made research, contemplations, and developed concepts. However, every step in creating this book, both writing, and editing felt like it was the very first one. Every bit of the process requested me to think out of the box, made me feel creatively uncomfortable, and made me exclaim, “It was never that way before!”

The paradox of wishing some calm of known, of a routine and at the same time longing for new and exciting accompanies me every time I work on my books.

I do feel challenged and feel an urge to complain. But when I slow down and look honestly at what is happening, I don’t want the whole process to occur in any other way.

I want each book to be new and exciting. In truth, I want it to be unknown, however scary this process might be.

And as long as I want it this way, I guesstimate that it will be like that.

What about you and your writing projects? Does each of them surprise you in any way? If yes, then how? If no, did you look close enough? Or non-judgmentally enough?

Picture: My children never stop surprising me. Here is my sweet little girl at the past New Year’s Eve party, claiming that the hat she was wearing was a bike helmet.

An interview: My first appearance on YouTube

March 10, 2016Books I write, Contemplations, Discoveries, Memories, Writingvica

At least I think it was my first one. I don’t know if I appeared on the background of somebody else’s video or if someone found funny and filmed as I frantically tried on a bus trip to finish a sentence of a story I am currently writing, while at the same time preparing to get out of the bus. The latter happened just yesterday. But I don’t think I was filmed. Phew!

But the interview I want to tell you about was intended. It was made in connection with the author talk I gave at the SGS School of Creative Writing, at Trekanten Bibliotek og Kulturhus here in Aalborg, on the 2nd of March.

Samuel Mork Bednarz, or Sam, is a student at the SGS and he is also a part of the SGS Social Media Team, where I also participate.

Sam is responsible for the SGS podcast, and currently he is taking interviews with the authors giving author talks at and for the SGS.

I have given several interviews up to this point (this interview took place about a week before the author talk), two of which were recorded on audio.

It was fun to observe myself, the feelings and thoughts generated by these experiences. During the first interview I felt so unusually that I smiled shyly at the recording smart-hone and said “Thank you!” at and to it before answering the first question by the interviewer.

The interview with Sam was filmed and I watched it last night for the first time. Again managing to observe myself non-judgmentally while watching.

Some automatic thoughts judging my appearance did appear but they were short and fleeting. Instead I had fun watching this person on the computer screen, so differently looking and sounding from what I know when I look in the mirror or hear myself talk. I watched her with curiosity finding the things she said so new, and also laughing along with her and the interviewing Sam.

This experience was so strikingly different from that many years ago in Germany as I watched myself on TV after being filmed in our cleanroom at the Institute of High Frequency Electronics of the Technical University Darmstadt. At that time I had assimilated the cliché that nobody liked watching him- or herself on TV. I followed this tradition and said to anyone who would listen how terribly I looked on the screen, while I secretly enjoyed when people objected. At some point they stopped objecting and listening to my ever returning moans about how bad I was. So at the end I was left with a feeling of having failed and not have done enough.

Now I realize that I was thrilled to see myself on the screen. I looked so different. And yes, surprising.

I am glad that I had this epiphany at this point of my life when my children are small, so that I convey to them these moments of being OK with myself and just enjoying all the surprises my life and my true self bring with them.

I wish you all happy self-discoveries and fun watching my first interview on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5RK8mvmkew

How a poster made my day

September 29, 2015A mother's diary, Discoveriesvica

This is what happened last week. I picked Niklas from kindergarten and we took a bus to go home. Niklas was happy to see that his favourite seats right behind the driver’s cabin were free.

As soon as we set down Niklas looked up and saw a poster with speech balloons all over it, similar to the one we discovered a month before, where each of the balloons were of bright and different colour. Niklas asked me to read the text on the poster. As I read, we discovered that again all of the speech balloons, except one, had a phrase staring with Thank you.

“Thank you that you reduced the volume of the music you listen to. It is a great style!”

“Thank you for helping the woman with the stroller. It is very kind of you!”

“Thank you that you greeted the driver when you entered. It’s a great style!”

And so on.

The special one of the balloons had the following text:
“This is for you, who is on your way to a job interview. We cross fingers for you!”

I couldn’t stop a big smile widening my face.

And then I recalled the special speech balloon from the poster Niklas and I saw a month before. “This is for you, who is coming from the hairdresser’s. You look great!”

I reminded Niklas of that one and we both grinned. Right after that Niklas asked me to read all of the text on the poster again.

Picture: Niklas and I share the love for buses. This picture was taken in Cambridge last year in front of a double decker. We were thrilled to discovered that Niklas’s toy bus had the same number as the bus we saw on the street we were walking.

P.S. The story “Nothing is Like it Seems”, which I started posting last week, will be continued next week. I will be posting this story bi-weekly until it finds its end.

Why do I need to write?

August 31, 2015Books I write, Contemplations, Crazy ideas, Discoveries, Favorite quotesvica

In one of the posts on The Kill Zone blog, when asked for the reason to write, I answered in the comments that I write because I need to release the stories looming in my head.

This is true.

But there are also more straightforward, simpler reasons for this.

One of them is that I just simply need this.

I need to write.

I liked how J.K. Rowling has put it in her interview with Oprah Winfrey. She said that writing kept her sane. In a similar way, Lady Gaga described how her creativity in songwriting and costume design didn’t let her go completely crazy.

I quote both of them from memory, but I guess this applies to everyone. We all need a bit of creativity every day. Whether it is a drawing with one circle two dots and four lines symbolizing ourselves, when we are young, or when a programmer composes a new and simple algorithm for a complex problem.

We all need something to keep us sane. We need that glimpse of light that appears inside us when we have just created or discovered something beautiful and exciting. This pulse of light comes much earlier than the appreciation by others we all strive for, even if we are not doing art professionally.

There is this genuine self-appreciation, completely lacking arrogance. It might be a sigh with a smile, it might be a nod. It might be completely invisible to someone else watching. But it is there.

We often ignore it, because we don’t think it is important. We think the others, whether family, friends or strangers, can evaluate us and what we do best.

But do we really need external evaluation to live our lives to the full? We do strive for the positive one. But do we need it?

I don’t know. I am not quite sure we do. In spite of all the striving.

Sometimes we think we need something, like a new peace of furniture, a new scarf, a new note-book for writing, a new book to read, another cup of espresso with dark chocolate on the side to savor.

You guessed correctly, all of these and many more do appear in my thoughts lately, some of them regularly and with exponentially ascending intensity, where the last three share the second top position on my “What do I need to survive?” list after my family.

But today I had an epiphany. I might have had it before or I might have even read it somewhere written by someone else (probably many times in many different ways) and forgot afterwards. I will probably forget it and have it appear as an experience again, when I most need it. Just like today.

So here it goes.

We all need to create or discover something new every day.

Even freshly cleaned house can be set into this category. Because when you unclutter your home, find new ways to arrange things, dust and vacuum or wipe the floors inside and then look around, you might think that it looks like a new place. This happened to me on Saturday, when after four hours work I finished laundry and cleaning our house. Our new house looked even newer and cosier then.

There are many possible ways to be creative. And there are many new to discover. Writing is still my favourite.

I am sure you have also experienced such glimpses of creativity and the pleasant feeling inside during the process and right upon completion of a creative activity.

Such a feeling of appreciation to be able to create something new is sparkling for me also right now, in this moment, as I am finishing this post.

Wishing you many creative, sparkling moments! Every day!

Picture: There are many necessary ingredients to feed our creativity. Beauty is one of them. Here you can see our orchids — glamorous but unpretentious beauties in our living room.