annahapunkt, Author at Anna Huwiler Coaching

When spirit came to see the atheist

I haven’t had any relationship with anything even closely resembling “religious” for a very long time. In fact, when I’d read one of Brené’s book about research showing that we need some form of faith to embrace the inherent messiness of being human? I was like… there just HAS to be another way. And yet, there’s now this story of spirit and the atheist.

Fast forward about eight years, I still wouldn’t call myself religious – but that may well be semantics. I attach “religion” to the big Abrahamic religions, and this will never be me. Turned out my spirit has boobs (not negotiable). And I still have to *choose* spirituality, set my rational mind aside, who likes to tell me about hard facts and science – anytime.

On the other side, I have begun to find acces to something larger-than-I-comprehend, and it enables such wonder in my life. Allows trauma to heal, my relationships and career to flourish. I share, even if I’m terrified to alienate my former self and some of my current friends.

Embracing something bigger: My path to spirit

I slowly began to develop a certain trust in spirit through working with my coach. The entrance point was about beginning to see how much not being able to have faith had limited me. I mean… If I had bone-crushing evidence why something wouldn’t work, ever, from how stuff went in the past. Why, oh why would it go any different this time? And yet, there were all those people around me now who HAD this weird faith and kept going beyond where I’d ever go myself.

So, I started to exercise that muscle with a very active choice: I would literally tell myself out loud that I decided to trust something bigger today. And of course it did pay off some – it’s even rationally explicable ? – because if you try more, statistically, it’ll work more. So my smart mind was onboard with this sorta-let’s-trust-it-a-little. Unsurprisingly, I still struggled quite a bit.

Enter Mother Ayahuasca

I only very recently deepened that trust way beyond what had been predictable for me by sitting in Ayahuasca ceremony. I was basically forced into surrender by nature of the medicine. So I did, and that was when spirit came to see the atheist. On the other end, I had this taste of what becomes possible if I fully embrace spirit as a part of life. (Still gives me all the feels just thinking of it!)

I haven’t “converted”. Rather I feel reconnected with Mother Earth, with my own Feminine and my wonderful, juicy body enabling me to live a life on this planet. Even my rational mind is fully onboard, because I experienced literally first-hand how much suffering gets taken away by surrendering to spirit. To the fact that the human mind just isn’t construed to pick everything apart rationally (and this includes the most intellectually gifted ones) – it’s exhausting and so, so limiting.

I still choose spirit, every day. Only now it’s a much more intimate connection than before and I see what She provides in every moment, even (especially) when in pain, fear and discomfort.

I am ready to die every day, because I have truly lived.

Why leadership is for everyone, and you, too

Leadership From Within

I don’t know about your understanding of leadership, but mine used to be quite narrow: Leadership is about leading other people in a (more or less) professional setting. Ok, maybe I lead my animals, too. But I never got to which degree it actually penetrates my whole life, all the way down to how I lead even myself every single day.

Of course it depends on the definition of leadership. Generally we tend to define it in a way that doesn’t necessarily include these opportunities. But – hasn’t that been part of the problem? Defining leadership as something exclusive that concerns only a few of us? Most of us handing over the power without many questions asked? Sitting at home hoping for things to turn for the better in at least some areas of our lives?

What if we had a more sober look at what leadership means? This is what I came up with:

Leadership means going first

Who actually said the leader is the one on top, sitting safely in a castle (kind of), ordering about others to do the dirty work for them?

Tell me, what calls you forward more: Someone who goes first – courageously, vulnerably – showing the others it’s possible to expand their world without suffering great harm. Or someone hiding out and letting others do the risky work?

If we have a look at the horse’s world, the answer is immediately clear. While an aggressive leader may bully a herd into following them for a while, it’s always the peaceful, poised types who end up with a big family.

Also – how many great things happened because someone got inspired? And from there, things grew, and new formerly impossible things suddenly got created.

Leadership means being clear & compassionate

Humans (anything with a brain, really) highly value clarity – to a degree where we actually prefer an aggressive, but clear type over someone kind who changes their mind more often than their underwear.

It’s a thin line to walk when you want to encompass both – and many, many people think it’s an either or. But just imagine someone has done the work to bring both: The crystal clear conversation AND the compassion to listen and understand what’s going on on the other side.

What if we knew we could have the tough conversations? What if we knew we were safe and held AND the really relevant stuff would be brought to the table? What became possible from here?

Leadership means to take a stand

We are not the most consistent kind. Rather, we are a bunch of strategies that proved themselves successful in the past, random decisions based on feelings and whatever bullshit we momentarily make up in our mind (and yes, this goes for the smartest amongst us, too! Sometimes especially them. I know what I’m talking about.)

If we want something to happen that’s not quite inside of what’s familiar and reliable, we need someone gently supporting us. Someone who reflects what they can see going on – without muddling it up with their own stuff. Someone we can rely on if we get caught up in our stuff, once again. Reliably, honestly standing for what we really want. Reminding us of the power we actually have within ourselves.

Can you see how all of these start within yourself? How you can learn to lead yourself, and then expand on supporting others from this point in a very seamless manner?

Can you see how it’s actually a lot more about authentic realness, and a ton less about those games of power and pretending we tend to confuse leadership with?

Can you see how leadership actually is for everyone and how we can make the world a better place if we all do it?

The art of creating a spacious life

Joie de Vivre & Self-Love

I recently made a list. A list full of “pointless” activities. Stare at the mountains for a couple hours. Breathe really deeply. Just have a long random chat. Then, I realised I don’t actually know how to create that without fretting about time “lost”. My life is full of activity. Business activity, recreational activity, well balanced – but pretty much brimming with doing. Which I love, but I noticed it comes at the cost of spaciousness.

Generally, as a society, we don’t really value space. We got so good at cramming in everything all the time. Even our recreational time. How often do we pause and admire the beauty of the flowers next to us, really? Literally and figuratively.

We live life at high speed. Striving for the next thing, the next box to check off. The better we are able to achieve, the more we throw ourselves into the experience. And if it’s for you like it’s for me it’s super sneaky: We DO feel we’re creating a balance, while really, we aren’t. We more like create ourselves as the perfect machines, because we noticed the machine works better with some well measured ~~oil~~ downtime. But actually, we stick to the very same paradigm. The paradigm of optimisation, perfecting our output.

We avoid creating clarity of “what is”. Not that we are aware of it – we are so buried in our world of “should” that we don’t even know how to look at the simple facts anymore. We probably think we do, but no – we rarely really create space. Seemingly pointless space. White space. More space than we feel makes sense. Definitely more than we feel comfortable with. Space to live, breathe, be and free of any kind of “should”.

Consider lots of stuff we do to recover doesn’t really count. Classical examples would be dawdling on the phone or computer. Watching movies or reading novels. Going on a run. They’re (obviously) not bad activities. In this context hoewever, they all too often mean we’re not really off. The space isn’t truly white. Rather, we try to calm ourselves down, divert our thoughts, bring another energy in – but we kinda still are on. We’re not fully on or fully off, we’re in between. (Speaking of which, check out Bay LeBlanc Quiney’s brilliant article about this!)

Consider the art of creating real space lies in the discomfort of consciously wasting time with something that seems pointless – and consider that you may have to learn it anew, bit by bit. And consider it’s ultimately not so much about how much time goes into the white space at all. It’s more kind of a way of living. Infuriating isn’t it? It really is a piece of art.

What if shame existed for your best self?

Play With Spirit

Shame? No way, you might say. It is the fear of not belonging, after all, which means it’s inherently about others. It’s an evolutionary thing made to help us stay save in the cave. It’s our emotional hardware to keep us in check. And yet, is it? What if it was possible to develop a different, nourishing view?

I personally have lived with shame storms for a long time. So pretty much whenever I did something socially courageous, I could be sure of an intense aftermath. I accepted it as unavoidable and began to arrange my life around them. Meaning I would either avoid feeling the shame in the first place (mostly). Or put up with long, gruelling recovery times (sometimes).

At some point & with the support of my coach, I began to choose more into sitting with the impact. My ability to sit with my own shame grew, and it did lose some of its power over me. However, it still sucks to sit with the storms. And recently, with my own breakthroughs around spaciousness, trust and flow, I felt like I began to outgrow my own old shame story. Impossible things kept happening and I became curious.

What if shame didn’t have to be the unavoidable default at all?

And… what if shame actually wanted to tell me something, something about myself? What if shame whispered a story into my ear, a story about abandoning myself, and not so much about abandoning the others at all?

I mean it doesn’t even evolutionarily make too much sense to be terribly afraid of not belonging to some random stranger, does it? Even with friends – do I really make sure I belong more when I go home and beat myself up for everything that might have been out of (some made-up) line?

So… What if shame – especially the intense and stormy kind – actually showed up because I’d abandoned myself and my values to please others? And – to bring it back to belonging: Not “just” with myself, but on top abandoned my own tribe, my own people?

What if at some point my own inner knowing resorted to slapping into my face, because otherwise I just wouldn’t listen?

Do you have to courage to ditch the old and create something new?

With old patterns running it’s always worth having a look at why we kept them and how they used to serve us. So if you’re curious what it has given me to feel all of this shit at this point, the answer is quite simple: A sense of control. When I relate to my social interactions as something I can control, I “only” need to be good enough to succeed. It allows me to hustle, to DO something – instead of slowing down, going inwards.

Getting curious in the moment and be open to feel what’s there to feel in the moment, no matter the momentary discomfort. Say the scary thing in the moment. The only way is through, and it’s not an easy choice.

I have created a vision for myself. A vision in which I hold shame in reverence. A reminder made to help me see where I abandon myself, where I speed up and seek control.

A vision in which I am deeply present with my people and serve them with all of me – rather than have a part of me constantly hiding away, making sure I’m only saying those “right” things.

I am incredibly excited about exploring this future 💖

The journey to success is flat-flat-flat-flat-boom!

Create Choice

Meaning: It’s exponential, but we usually completely misunderstand the term. Have you ever paid attention to the flat part of an exponential curve? It’s a very long, very flat part. If it’s not there, it’s probably been cut off – and THAT is the issue here.

I recently went surfing on an artificial wave (pic above), and it actually looks pretty decent, which reminded me of my entrepreneur’s journey. Both of them looked really, really flat for a long time. We just don’t usually pay that much attention to the flat part. I believe this needs to change.

At some point I took off in both surfing and entrepreneurship – and it looks like a huge leap from outside. Which it totally isn’t. It’s more like: We don’t understand exponential growth. Sure, we can grasp it intellectually, but our instinct naturally gravitates back to linear.

So, we make up a “before” and an “after”. She can’t surf until she can, and she can’t create her business until she can. It’s the reason why the six figures in six month scams work so well: There must be an easy fix, and all you need to do is to find it. Because obviously others can do it. Boom. Without the flat part.

While there may be cases in which those do work, in general it’s the exponential journey. It looks flat while we are putting pieces together in the background. Whether it be about learning to read a wave or gathering the inner strength to take a stand for an unusual business idea.

We are blind to exponentiality even when it works.

It’s part circumstances: You may train in a difficult ocean for a long time – literally as well as figuratively if it comes to the entrepreneur’s journey. And then, some circumstances change and we make that leap. And it’s so funny: If we’re inside the exponential journey, we’re so quick to attribute it to luck. We overlook the magic of the exponential journey. We can’t see we were ready when it happened, because we invested in the flat part.

Or, what do you think? How well would I have surfed the “easy” wave if I’d never before seen a surfboard? How courageous would I have been after having been tumbled upside down by the whitewash? And, quite the same: How would I have created that client if I’d never been willing to invite someone before? How willing to get back up after a major setback if I’d never been tumbled upside down on a smaller scale? You get the idea.

You will never “get” exponentiality. It’s about your choice.

Exponentiality is never going to feel natural. Rather it’s a constant choice away from letting impatience get the best of you, and into the journey. How often can you see there isn’t missing a lot – and oh, how often is it about being willing to let go of exactly the temptation right in front of you?

Of course it’s not necessarily “wrong” to follow what tempts you. If you begin to commit to something bigger than what’s predictable for you and your life, it’s worth checking in though: Does it serve your journey, your vision, your bigger goals? And you may find – like I usually do – that rushing into what’s the obvious and automatic choice is going to cost you dear.

We humans are notoriously blind to our own automatics, and it takes one conscious, courageous choice at a time to create what we really, deeply desire – without getting attached to immediate results. You may be on the flat-flat-flat-flat-boom train after all.

What is your exponential journey about?

Your voice is everywhere

Reconcile the Misfit in You

When we have a hard time accessing our own voice, we often go down trap of thinking it’s exclusive – that it only shows up when all the pieces fall into place, and you’re finally sure about the thing you want to say. Those are the occasions when it comes through naturally, because something is so deeply important to you. It’s oh, so easy to go down that path of exclusive fit, waiting for the muse, the perfect moment, the right topic.

It’s also misleading, and it strips away your capability to access your own truth. If you are willing to listen beyond the chatter, the emptiness below, the not-knowing, and the fear even lower… You will find what’s uniquely yours to contribute. Just beneath, just a little bit more elusive, just a little bit more quiet, just a little bit more than you would like it to.

Bring it forth. We need you.

I had a hugely hard time to publish anything for years. Why add to the noise? What may be relevant? What may attract attention?

And I distinctly remember this point in time when I mustered the courage to go back to my old drafts (thanks coaching) only to realise I really loved at least some of them – without a single additional edit.

Who am I to judge whether my writing is useful or not? Who am I to withhold what someone else may be waiting for? Does it have to be good for everyone? No. It has to

I have since been on a journey turned inwards. What is my truth I want to express today? Trusting some of my people are going to find what I share and benefit from my journey. So, slow down and learn to listen. Listen for the whisper of intuition to come through. The hunch of what may be yours. And go, create – not to get likes, but to serve that one person over there that desperately waited for your raw truth. Bonus hint: Most likely, they won’t give a fuck about your perfect edit, version 26.5 😉