Nika Life Coach.

Now I’m a believer . Not a trace, of doubt in my mind.

“All of your dreams can come true – all you have to do is believe in yourself”

“If you believe in yourself anything is possible”

“Believe in yourself and you will be unstoppable”

These are just some of the quotes I scrolled across on my instagram (which is @nikafiguringitout in case you were wondering). I get the message – I should believe in myself, its not too hard to decipher. Yet what I never scroll along is – how do I start believing in myself? And – why did I stop in the first case? Clearly I am not the only one that lacks this skill, otherwise my feed would not be full of these quotes.

With anything that lacks so greatly in our minds, it can usually be brought back to childhood. In early childhood, we are told that we are not to do certain things just out of fear that we might hurt ourselves. What is mere survival turns against our belief that anything we want to do, we cannot. There’s nothing wrong with parents not wanting you to hurt yourself, for example jumping off a wall. But sometimes this fear can get extended into society norms. For example girls are told not to do certain things because its for boys (say fishing for example) and boys are told not to do certain things at it is for girls (say cooking or wearing certain clothes). What starts off as mere prevention of mortality, spills into survival inside a society and its rules. And as often as they do, rules come with limitations.

These self imposed, or society imposed limitations is what teaches us not to believe in ourselves in the first place. They also don’t stop in childhood. As we grow older we are not encouraged to start our own businesses, change the world by becoming activists, rather we are (well most of us) encouraged to fall in line with norms of the masses. Go to college, get a job, pay off your debt before you buy a house. As people struggle to even achieve this – lets be honest really tough goals – they limit themselves in believing things outside the norm are even harder. We are all installed with these fears, that it takes great courage to let go of them. They have become so reliable to us, these limitations, that they have guided us through life it is almost hard to imagine what it would actually be like if you truly believed in yourself. It takes great bravely to leave these fears behind. In all honesty, I myself am not there yet.

Let me know of your experiences!

Why not to take things personally

If you haven’t heard the phrase “Don’t take it so personal” in your life you are most likely lying or probably very forgetful. Not only is it a staple in life, to me it is a strong belief that most things in life should not be taken personally. I live my life by “Its more about them than it is about you”. Memories are highly inaccurate, perceptions are skewed towards your own experiences and expectations – its almost hard to think anything we say would have any effect or impact on others. Remember the whole “the dress is blue – no its black” fiasco? If we can’t even align on colours, why should we agree on any other kind of facts? I’ve generally believed you see what you see because of your own story and I see what I see because of my own history and teachings. If you have a problem with me, its really your problem and not mine in the first place. I just trigger something in you that you carry from your past or currently present that provides friction in your own story.

So the question remains. Why do we take things personal? Why do we have to learn that it has nothing to do with us? Why do we have this tendency to think we could be the cause of someone else’s pain? Why do we give ourselves the power?

I have two theories:

1) I only see my perspective so it has to be me.
When we are first put onto this earth we can only see what our eyes see. With time we learn depth, shadows and shades and even later after a couple years do we learn that people have another perception as well. Ever played “Peeaboo” with a kid? Surprisingly you can’t play that with a grown up because we grow capabilities that help us understand what other people are able to see. We never do this step with our thoughts because we are never taught to. It is evolution to understand what your enemy can see and what not (comes in handy when hiding!), but its not evolution to understand “The lion doesn’t actually want to eat me, it just wants to eat anything, I just happen to be here. Its nothing personal”. Instead we just think: “The lion wants to eat me”. Not taking it personal is not a cognitive capability that is that helpful when thinking solely about survival. Yet little do we explore how much humans can make each other suffer on a day to day basis. It is helpful to learn what people might be thinking from their own personal internal perspective as a child what people can see from their own person internal perspective.

2) If its me – I can do something about it.
Another theory is the element of control. Who wants to admit they have no influence on their life and the life of others? Few people. We as humans like to believe in free will. That we have the strength to change the world, to empower, overpower and manipulate other people. We try to control our lives by controlling our weight, our careers, our schedules, our family planning or daily rituals. We try to control time by inventing clocks, the universe by creating laws of physics and even the weather where possible. If we can’t control how people think of us, if we have no impact on others what so ever – then how can I change it, it if its bad? If a teacher doesn’t like me because I remind him of a previous student he didn’t like – then I am supposed to just accept the fact that I will be treated differently – perhaps even punished and that has nothing to do with me? I can’t even change it? Feeling helpless is a terrible, terrible feeling. We try to avoid that by telling ourselves even the negative stuff has to do with us. We said something wrong, we laughed too loud and if we change that, then other people will treat us differently. I often hear women think if they lost weight, or would be prettier, the world would be kinder to them. Its a sad thought really.

I’m not saying perceptions can’t be changed. People’s perceptions might not be fair, but they are valid. They are valid as they are the reality they perceive. You can change the way people perceive you – if they think hard workers come in at 8am, but you are someone that comes in at 10am and stays late, well then either accept that you will never be a hard worker in that person’s eyes or show them how hard you work by showing how much you delivered or cave and come in at 8am. You can alter how people see things, but you can never, never take it personally. You are not a bad worker because you don’t come in at 8am. You shouldn’t be insulted by the fact that you are not what other people expect you to be. But rather – show them that you are just as worthy if not even more worthy because you accept their reality as nothing having to do with you personally. Accept that kind of power.

Find tips on how not to take things personally from this article from Forbes magazine and please always feel free to reach out to me about my life coaching services on the contact page or comment section below.

5 Things I learned By The Age of 30

I turned 30 last week. Unlike most people – I am proud to have turned 30. Life is short and for some people even shorter. Each step, each day has a beauty and a honor to it, its nice to have milestones like 30 to have a second to look back and reflect on things you have learned but also to look forward to many things still left to learn. I sat down and wrote for me, some of the key take aways from my first 30 years:

It’s more about them than it is about you.
People are far too much in their own heads to be thinking about you that much. How they feel towards you, how they treat you – it all has to do with them and nothing about you. You may remind them of someone or say something that triggers them, but its all out of your control and has nothing to do with the person that you are and your essence.
You can dance if you want to.
Dance whenever you get the chance because a) no one is actually watching b) you do not get enough opportunities in life to dance. Let go. Move and enjoy your movement. Don’t think about dance steps or copying someone. Let your body and your mind be free for that millisecond in your life.
You are not the mistake you made.
So you did something wrong. Its says nothing about the person that you are and your capabilities. You made pancakes – does that make you a pastry chef? No. You made a mistake – it doesn’t mean you are one. It does not define you.
Go to the bathroom.
Any time you leave a place, go to the bathroom. You won’t know when you will ever have the chance again. You might get stuck in traffic, your car might break down, the train might have delays. There is only a benefit to having an empty bladder or bowl. Treat yourself right, and look out for yourself.
If the show doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit.
If you don’t match with someone or you don’t click – that’s fine. It’s like placing diesel in a car made for gas. It won’t work and isn’t meant to. You are not made to be with everyone and be friends with anyone and that is fine. There are plenty of cars that do take diesel. Accepting yourself will help you find your tribe.

Bonus tip: Above all – make yourself happy.
If there is one thing that will help you get through this life, and help all others around you, it is if you are happy. Take care of yourself and treat yourself to the happiest life you could imagine living. That is the biggest benefit you can do to yourself and those around you.

Eminem Was Wrong: You Better Not Lose Yourself

Don’t get me wrong – there are plenty of moments where it is good and highly enjoyable to lose yourself. For example when creating any form of art, when enjoying a good conversations with friends or watching a movie. Getting lost in the moment is about being present and aware of your surroundings.

Yet, then there is the other kind of losing yourself. The one where you lose yourself to to-do lists, tasks, a career, duties – anything that doesn’t add energy to your life but rather takes it away from you. So many things are added to our lives that we forget to take a step back and think: How am I? Do I want to be doing this? And – Do I want it to change?

Taking a step back would be beneficial – it lets you check in with yourself and how much energy you have. It could be that you are running low and you need to tank up in order to meet the duties of every day life. And on another note – do you really want your life to be governed by external things? Do you really want to be an empty shell just spending your life closing items on your to do list? You can – I am not saying that is wrong, but is it really the way you want to spend your life with not even a moment dedicated to your own happiness?

There are a couple of ways of tuning into yourself and taking a step back, its best to find out which works for you:

Find a routine task that you do on your own – for example shower, brushing your teeth, hey even going to the toilet. Dedicate that time to check in with how you are living your life and spending your energy. Remember not to be judgemental, just check in. You also don’t have to change anything in that moment.
If you can, assign yourself “me time” just like any other task on your to do list. This could be yoga, meditation, reading, going for a walk, whatever it is make it just as important as any other task.
Write in a journal. It doesn’t have to be a novel, just at the beginning of your day or end of the day whenever you feel you can make the time, jolt down how your day was and how you are feeling. It can be a sentence, it can be 500 pages, you do you.

The issue with losing yourself is that often you don’t even realize you have. So its best to be proactive about it. Everything in your life is better when you are more of yourself. The more we are ourselves the more our uniqueness can add to the quality of other people’s lives and our own. And if you don’t believe me on that, please do comment below – I am sure I can change your mind.

The Secret About Self-Care – Three Points to Follow

To some of us, self-care is new concept. Most of us were raised by parents, who were not aware of the concept themselves. And some people still feel that self-care is something fluffy, something for weak people or something for women. Self-care is something new to many of us, so its important we understand what it is, so we do it right and get the effects that self-care provides.

Self-care is about making sure that you are taken care of your needs so that you are in the best health to help others (if you chose to do so). That means mentally and physically. Does that sound like wearing a face mask to you or getting your nails done? Perhaps that’s a part of it, but that’s not the essence of it. “There is a difference between treating yourself and taking care of yourself” my friend Don. “I think that’s where people get it wrong”. Because getting your nails done, although it might feel nice, will not make sure that you are mentally and physically healthy. So what does?

One: Exercise. Which is probably what feels like to some people as the opposite of a message or getting pampered but it is not. Your body is meant to move. Its here to get you through life, from point A to point B. Exercise for the love of your body. Because your body deserves your love for all it does for you. Do an exercise that you enjoy and see how you feel – you will feel better than you ever did getting your hair done. It can be a walk, it can be yoga, it can be as fast and as slow as you want it. As long as you move.

Two: Therapy. To be in the best inner state you can be, talk to someone. You don’t have to have a trauma, a mental illness or even go to a therapist. Find someone you can talk to that gives you the feeling of being understood and helps you see things in your life clearly. Someone that gives you a moments pause in this ever evolving life. This is such a vital part of self-care. Its caring for your inner health. It’s taking a step back out of your regular life to tune into how you feel and addressing any worries and concerns that may be lingering and prohibiting happiness day to day.

Three: Isolation. Spend time just with yourself to tune into yourself. To find out how you are feeling, what you want, you need to check in with yourself. You can do it while exercising, you can do it while writing in your journal, you can do it getting your nails done. Just make sure you do it. People often forget about this part of self-care. The focus on the care but not on the self. And guess what – its kind of a really important part of it. Don’t be scared to spend time on your own. Its a thing that takes training and you can start with just 10 minutes. Make sure you do it with awareness, put your phone away and try to just ask yourself: What do I need? You may be surprised what you come up with.

If you are doing one of the above but not the others, you will feel unbalanced. If you are always isolating yourself, you will feel almost depressed and cut off. If you focus only on exercise, you will not feel emotionally ok. Try to find a good mixture of the three, yet if you end up doing one more than others that is more than fine. Its about the balance.

At this point, self-care sounds like a lot of work. Yet its more of a shift of focus rather than additional tasks. When done, self-care doesn’t seem like a task or draining. In the end, it does point to what my friend Don was mentioning, it does end up feeling like treating yourself.

So go ahead. Treat yourself.

The Infinite To Do List

Anyone else wake up on Sunday morning and think about what they have to get done for the day? Writing it out like that just seems crazy – it’s supposed to be the day of rest. In many countries most stores are closed on Sundays, its Oprah’s soulful Sunday and instagram’s self-care Sunday. No one mentions “To-Do Sundays” – and yet, if you spend your Sundays doing no chores, not cleaning, not going to some function due to social obligations I would say you must be the Dali Lama because if you are human – 99% chance is you are working off your To-Do List with any free time you might have.

Most of the time we usually are working on what we must do. Even on a Sunday. Some of us write lists, others keep repeating the tasks in our head what, others use self-guilt – whatever it is, we all find ways to get stuff done. Life is full of chores and fun fact – you will never be fully free of things you have to do. You will need to brush your teeth, you will need to shower, you will need to feed yourself. Basics are tasks too. The goal is to find the balance between the things you need to do and the things you want to do. The have to is inevitable, so try to mix it with things that make you happy. Do chores with your loved ones, listening to your favourite music or podcast while cleaning, watch a TV show while ironing. Mix and match to not feel completely drained.

Yet sometimes we even go to the extent that we invent stuff to do. I often catch myself thinking “What else do I need to do?”. I know I’m not the only one when I talk to people around me. We are constantly thinking about what needs to be done and when we should do it with the limited free time we have. Instead of making sure in our free time we recuperate, we fill it with more energy draining tasks. Do we even know how to do nothing? People go on vacation and fill it with things to do. People can’t imagine meditating, or just waiting for the bus without checking their phones. I wait for the bus and think about what I can get done so I have less to do, by for example answering work emails, which just creates more email flow. Have we gotten to a point where we don’t know any more just how to be? In a society where functioning and delivering is a highly valued commodity, we fear being lazy, we fear not producing.

Perhaps its time though, to practice not adding to your To do List. Even machines need maintenance – take the time to give yourself some maintenance. You are your most valued commodity. What’s the worst thing that can happen, if for one Sunday, you just decide to do everything you felt like doing and nothing of what needs to be done?

Go on, give it a try and let me know what’s the worst thing that happened.

Fun Fact: Mental Health Is Not about Being Calm

Last week it was mental health awareness day and what it did for me is make me aware of how little people know about mental health. Talking to people, conversations were about people needing to be more calm. People needing to “calm down” or “chill out” more. Ah yes, correct, we all do, but that is not really the point of mental health. Mental health equal being calm. It is a way to minimize the seriousness of mental health. To be honest depressed people are actually some of the most calm people I have met. What people perceive as calm and really actually feeling peaceful inside is totally something different.

I would actually go ahead and say that pretending or forcing yourself to be calm is a way of deflecting. A way of not dealing and not feeling what is going on inside. A way of deflecting. Which is, believe it or not, not healthy for your mental health. Its like keeping a coke bottle that has been shook to sit around for months and months (hint- eventually it will explode). If someone is balanced, they have no issue of addressing their feelings or feeling them. That is a strength. Even the Dalai Lama admits to feeling angry. Feelings are a part of us and showing them takes more courage and control than concealing them.

I don’t think most people are aware of the fact that calm and mentally healthy are not really correlated. Some people of great mental health might be loud, enthusiastic, passionate about life. Saying mental health is when you are chill is an easy way to not admit to yourself that mental health can affect you more than you think. Its a simple way to brush it under the rug and not address it. When doing that, should make you aware this is exactly why you should start looking into your own mental health.

But its normal that most people avoid it. People don’t want to associate themselves as mentally unstable or unwell. People that are described as such, are not seen as functioning, integrated parts of society. We tend to shun them out, or at least we used to. People of mental illnesses were pushed away, we didn’t talk about them at family functions, we would look at them awkwardly. Hopefully with time that changes – we all suffer from anxiety at times, feelings of inadequacy, thoughts that follow us into the night. Our mental health is like our physical health, sometimes we get ill – we get a cold and we need some healing. The earlier we accept that the healthier we can be. First step towards it, is understanding that calming down is a childish way to not dealing.

Purpose Integrated

Purpose seems to be THE millenial word. Somewhere I read we are called the purpose generation – the first generation who care more than just having a day to day job with a good income. We have had the luxury to not grow up in times of strife, with parents who already had steady lives and were able to give us a comfortable, steady life. The last generation built a stable foundation. They got to enjoy the fruits of a growing economy and a long time of peace. And as humanity has this ever growing need of development – our generation has developed past this. We no longer care for ourselves and our families but look beyond. We are set, our loved ones are set, now how can we do more?

No wonder older generations have a hard time with that. They didn’t have the luxury to think beyond their immediate needs. Hence we should not feel bad for looking for purpose or say you want some more in your life. Being able to look beyond your existential needs is what the world is currently lacking. Yet – with such a globally accessible world, with so many problems, its hard to know where to start. And at the same time, you are still expected to live up to the basic expectations of society – job, income, stability and now on top of that you also strive for purpose and dare I say fulfillment?

Most try to combine the above – a job that gives you lots of income AND purpose. Yet – there are probably three of those in the entire world. You might find it – and if you do I would greatly salute you and tell you that its ok to develop and find something else after that. What drives our purpose may change over time. You are not bound to life to one purpose.

Its an ideal case and a dream to find a job with a good income and purpose. It really would be great if there were more of those jobs. But I will have to tell you – most of us won’t find it. The difficulty to find your purpose, but believing you should is what has caused our generation a lot of anxiety, pressure and depression. There is a pressure to always do better than the last generation – always do better than your parents. And then we put all the pressure on ourselves to do better and find a purpose and then there are such few jobs that can give us that – its a cocktail that can only lead to disappointment.

Many of us, and that I fear my generation doesn’t understand, will not be able to combine income and purpose that easily. We will have to do jobs that will not make many people happy, that will not have impact on many lives, endangered animals or the planet. But that doesn’t mean we have to be without purpose. Enter your purpose into your job. If you are in charge of printing – make sure to use recycled paper. If you are passionate about women’s issues – start a women’s club at work. And if your work doesn’t allow it – balance it with your free time. Volunteer at a dog shelter, volunteer at the suicide hotline from the comfort of your home, or start a blog. Be driven to action by your purpose, don’t let the lack of it drag you down. Its amazing you are looking for it and don’t forget, it can really change over time. It shouldn’t be an additional pressure but should be a joy in your life. If you can’t find something today – doesn’t mean its not right around the corner.

When Your Guts have Feelings of their Own

Gut feelings. I wish they had a better name referencing to some organ that could be associated with something more delightful. Probably its named after where we feel we notice the feeling the most. The soft feeling we are biased towards one direction or have a feeling something is wrong. We often don’t know where the feeling comes from, yet it is present. Gut feelings can up in various forms – some people call it intuition. It doesn’t always have to be in a negative such as twinging or tension in your gut or chest but also in the sense that you are able to breathe easier, or feel your shoulders relax. Or even perhaps you hear yourself say “this doesn’t feel right” or “I don’t know why but I like this”.

Research says that often we know things in the back of our mind – our brain is like a sponge, it picks up on all kinds of information yet to not overwhelm us, it filters out a lot of information as well. It’s like a google search, that only shows us the top results but actually there are 500 other pages you could click through for information. It is believed that the gut feeling is an aggregation of these pages. As it is hard to summarize, sometimes it is not clear. But a feeling is there.

I believe that not having a clear message is the main reason why we question our gut feelings – they don’t speak to us clearly “Don’t do this because XYZ has happened before”. We just get a feeling: Something is wrong or something doesn’t feel right. As we have no logical explanation why we feel this way – we disregard it. We question why it’s even there and if we should listen to it. Instead to consider it a valid guidance, we instead enforce self-doubt. It also makes it hard to also justify to other people why you made certain decisions. Telling people we quit a job because you didn’t like the vibe or decided to pursue a big investment due to a good feeling will make people think you are reckless. Can you imagine making all your decisions about your life based on your gut? Providing no rational explanation for any of them?

I haven’t yet explored living a life just following my gut. I wonder if I could – a tax paying, law abiding citizen. But one thing I do know for sure, we should all stop doubting our gut feeling. It is there for a reason and it doesn’t need to be interrogated as if it did something wrong. It is your mind, your body telling you some information that you already know, but can’t recall. Give it an ear, don’t ignore it. Perhaps don’t let it make a decision on its own but let it guide you as you would be guided by a trusting friend. At the end of the day, the only person that has lived our whole life, knows our experiences and how we handle them is only us. Remember to be your own best friend, trust yourself as you do others.

Please Don’t Always Be Happy

This morning I was reading an article in the New York Times about dropping your kids off to school (bear with me, this article is not about that topic). As many children start going to school, they are introduced to a new world of structure and obligation that they will be a part of hence forth. One of the things that really stuck with me in the article was the point about how draining the day might be for children because they are expected to always be “on” and that’s new to them. The honesty of that hit me because yes, we are always expected to be “on”. To participate in class, to deliver at work, to be social in our free time. Where does the expectation come from that we feel we always have to be “on”? Every second that we are outside of our house, we are deemed to be wanting to deliver.

My first assumption would be that when you are happy it means your life or you in a good place. In a place where you are able to give to others. Looking at it from that perspective, of course the world would want you in that capacity. Society is extremely functionally driven. When in a mental health class the instructor asked what does it mean to function in a society having a job and getting a paycheck were the first things mentioned. We see getting paid and paying taxes means you are an integral part of society. You play your role. The more you deliver at work, the more successful you will become. The more friends you have, the happier your life is. Everything is presumed to function on the ability of you to be able to give – your energy, your time, your

This leads to a dangerous fact – namely that it is not appropriate for people to be down, or sad, or just have a day where they don’t feel like delivering. Can you imagine getting called out in school and being like “I don’t feel like answering this question today I just feel low on energy”. Or at work asking to move a meeting because you don’t feel up for it and are worn out of being social? Its unimaginable. I wouldn’t have the guts, I would just say I am sick or pull it together. Which makes the world very black and white – either you are fully in and functioning to your max, or you are totally out of it.

The best approach would be to have it all more balanced. Do you find sometimes you start off the day on the wrong foot and by the afternoon you are full of energy again and ready to be social? Life is not linear, no matter how much we want it to be and comes with it ups and downs. You can be down, just as much as you can be happy. A life without any downs is not possible. Don’t even start with expecting that kind of life from yourself. Accepting that there are times you won’t feel like functioning, that there are times that you almost can’t is the first step to have a more balanced life. And that way you can save yourself some energy and not be drained by the end of the day like children after going to school on their first day.