determination

A Christmas tale of a dream come true

Joerg Kuehn · Dec 14, 2022 · Leave a Comment

I was in a complete panic … sweaty, jittery, and close to throwing up … when I entered the audition stage in Singapore on a Thursday afternoon in March 2012. I had gone to the wrong venue initially and only made my audition slot with a desperate 1km sprint in tropical conditions. The 5 judges invited me to take a seat and told me they were ready whenever I was.

All my life I’ve had this dream. I wanted to play an instrument, bringing people together and have them sing along with a smile on their faces. And, all my life I had stood on many stages, usually slightly tipsy, telling myself one day I would be a musician too. But sadly, I did not do anything about it.

My good friend Sascha discovered my longing and during Christmas 2010, he bought me a guitar. But a busy job and terrible experiences during my singing lessons kept me from progressing at all towards my dream. (Sascha surely remembers my desperate attempts at rendering Hotel California, which made my singing teacher resign).

It was not until the end of 2011 when I suddenly discovered a perceived short cut… the ukulele. With only 4 strings, I was relatively quickly able to play 4-5 songs. As part of my self-discovery and self-expression journey, I thought it was time to do some busking. “Naive” is probably far too nice a word to describe my expectations.

Please don’t let the good life pass you by

Joerg Kuehn · Jun 29, 2022 · Leave a Comment

It was one of these days when everything seemed to go wrong.

I had helped a client prepare for an important meeting with one of their major customers. Just before the meeting, we realised there was a substantial flaw in the presentation. It was so bad the meeting had to be cancelled and moved to the next day. An embarrassing and tricky situation. I dropped everything, frantically trying to understand the issue in our calculations. It was highly complex, but, by all means, we had to have an answer by the evening. Stress! Pressure! Anxiety!

While I was scrambling for solutions, an email popped in. And it pushed me over the edge. I had planned a large personal event in June. Suddenly, the hotel provider “had to sadly cancel all 22 room-bookings due to a technical error.” All other hotels were full due to a major sporting event. This meant we had to cancel an event for which guests from all over the world had made travel plans. A complete disaster.

Why not quit my job?

Joerg Kuehn · Apr 27, 2022 · 2 Comments

It was the 24th of November 2013. I was working as supply chain Director for Procter & Gamble, just about to complete my coach certification with the International Coaching Federation (ICF), and I was totally confused. I knew I had to make a difficult and life-changing decision. Should I become self-employed, moving into coaching, where my passion clearly was?

I was scared and completely lost about what to do. I was constantly making two different lists:

Why I should quit my job!!!
Why I should not quit my job?

I was going nowhere, until I came across the following questionnaire by Tim Ferris. On the evening of November 24, I sat down and put my thoughts on paper in answer to his 5 key questions. I had no idea it would change my life.

[Read more…] about Why not quit my job?

Is it a threat or a challenge to you?

Joerg Kuehn · Feb 22, 2022 · Leave a Comment

‘‘The test you will take today is designed to help us identify people who are exceptionally weak in their problem-solving reasoning abilities. Your performance on this test will not be scored like most normal tests, but rather will be classified as either above or below a predetermined cut-off score. If you score below that cut-off, this suggests that you are exceptionally weak —in other words, well below average in your problem-solving reasoning abilities. Thus, this test and the scoring method used are designed only to separate those who are especially weak from everyone else.”

This is how Dr. Chalabajev and her team introduced the test to participants of group 1 in their study about how people deal with performance anxiety. Group 2 was introduced differently, with the underlined words replaced as follows: weak by strong and below by above. The intention was to trigger fear in group 1 making participants feeling under threat, by being at risk of getting classified as “especially weak”, whereas help group 2 to identify the test as a challenge where they could potentially be identified as “especially strong” problem solvers with not much else to lose. In scientific terms group 1 was targeted to become “goal-avoidant” and group 2 “goal-approaching.”

The study results* are in my point of view mind boggling:

What if failure were not an option?

Joerg Kuehn · Jan 27, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Benjamin Zander is a conductor for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and a professor at the New England Conservatory of Music. For more than 25 years, he faced the same problem.

He noticed most of his new students had this nagging voice in their heads, saying things like, “Oh Lord, this guy must be really good. No way I can be as good as he is. And what if I’m not? What if I’m not very good at all? I’m not sure I can do this!…”

The result? Zander noticed many of them would not reach their top potential.

Why? It wasn’t a lack of effort. They worked frantically, but not from a good mental and emotional place. They stayed in a constant state of anxiety and fear over how their performances might be judged.

determination

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