Creative Status: Episode 51: Daniela Hartmann: Merging the Inner & Outer Worlds

Creative Status is a podcast about using creativity as a vehicle for improving your life by deconstructing ego, integrating the shadow self, and designing and manifesting a real life.

Every episode explores how the creative process can help you GROW REAL by moving towards wholeness in yourself by making the unconscious conscious.

In this episode of Creative Status, we delve deep into the fascinating philosophy of Daniela Hartmann, a coach who seamlessly merges the realms of inner reflection and external action.

Daniela is an author, international speaker, meditator, corporate trainer, executive coach, and leadership consultant. Her life’s work has been a tapestry woven from diverse experiences, and today, we uncover the threads that make up her unique view of life and how to make it REAL.

Having walked diverse paths as a journalist, a United Nations employee, and a seeker of Tibetan Buddhist wisdom, Daniela’s wisdom spans continents and cultures. With a passport adorned with stamps from eight countries across four continents and a heart open to the world, she brings a wealth of knowledge to the table.

Daniela has distilled her vast experiences into what she calls “The GRID BluePrint.” This innovative framework is designed to help high-performing leaders and game changers harness their inner truth and guidance. Through her work, she assists individuals in actualizing their unique recipes for personal growth, responsibility, integrity, and diversity.

Join us as we uncover the secrets of merging inner and outer worlds. Discover what happens when you embark on this profound journey of self-discovery and how it can transform your leadership in an ever-evolving world.

Tune in to this episode of Creative Status for an insightful conversation that will inspire you to embark on your own journey of self-realization and heart-centered leadership. Daniela Hartmann’s story is a testament to the power of blending the inner and outer worlds to create a life that’s both meaningful and impactful.

Subscribe to Creative Status today and be part of the conversation at the intersection of creativity, REALNESS, and personal growth.

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Thanks a bunch,

Oli

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Episode Links:

Daniela’s website: ⁠thegrid.global⁠

LinkedIn: ⁠http://linkedin.com/in/daniela-hartmann-the-grid-global⁠

Email Daniela: daniela@thegrid.global

Creative Status Links:

The Creative Performance Transformation Lab: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠olianderson.co.uk/creativeperformance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Show Transcript: Merging the Inner & Outer Worlds

Show Intro

Oli Andeson: Oh hi there, Oli Anderson here, you’re listening to Creative Status. I’m a creative performance coach. I help people to bring realness into their lives and businesses. Realness just means that we are moving towards a deeper connection to ourselves without hiding behind a fragmented self-image that we picked up because of self-hypnosis and social programming.

That we’re more connected to other people because we have a stronger foundation within ourselves of confidence and trust. And that we’re more connected to life itself because we have an understanding of how life works and we embrace it so that we can grow with it instead of growing against it and being frustrated and miserable because of the distortions and ego resistance that get in between us and life.

That all sounds very nice and it If you understand this stuff, it will improve your life exponentially. Every episode of the podcast, we talk about how the creative process ultimately is a journey of returning to wholeness or to realness in the sense that I just talked about. Today’s interview is no different. It’s an interview with Daniela Hartmann from TheGrid.Global. She’s a coach as well and we have a really deep conversation about the link between the inner and the outer worlds.

Normally when people are on these transformational journeys, at the start at least, there is a huge gap between what they feel is inside them and how that is reflected in the outside world. We ultimately talk about in this interview what to expect as you start narrowing that gap, how you can narrow the gap, the kind of things you can expect along the way, the qualities that you need to cultivate like trust and belief in yourself as you navigate that terrain. Loads of cool stuff about the transformational process.

Daniela, thank you so much for your time. Everyone else, thanks for listening. If this helps you in any way, please leave a review. Or don’t. It’s your life. Anyway, here’s the interview. Thanks a bunch. Boom.

Interview

Oli Anderson: Oh, hi there, Daniela. Thank you so much for joining me on today’s episode of Creative Status. I feel like this conversation is going to take all kinds of twists and turns and we’re going to end up somewhere different, let’s just say. Before we get into it, would you like to introduce yourself, tell people what you do and how you ended up doing it, and also what you want to get out of this conversation that we’re about to embark upon?

Daniela Hartmann: Yeah, hi Oli. So my name is Daniela Hartmann. And my trajectory is that years ago, I worked for the UN, had a kind of integrity crisis, went into Buddhism for 20 years. And now I’m taking that sort of philosophy into a kind of coaching to support people to discover their own authenticity. Because I just, returning to Europe after more than 20 years outside of it, I felt that there is a lot of a gap, you know, between what people perceive as life to be, and feeling that there has to be more, or that whatever they are embodying is slightly fake.

So I think some of the tools I’ve learned, and we’ve talked about it too in our preparation, this movement is quite strong. And the philosophy that I’ve learned is very pertinent to that. What I want to get out of this conversation with you is to exchange our views, because you’re working in a similar field, and you’re interested in the similar themes about how we can bridge our, let’s say, internal yearnings, or values, or how we want our life to be, and how we think we’re forced to live, or how society mirrors back to us what is right and what is wrong.

Oli Anderson: Yeah, that’s amazing. So you’re 100% in the right place. The main theme behind this podcast is that the creative process is ultimately a journey back to our real life that we should have been living all along, but that we, for whatever reason, decided to invest our time, energy, and attention into something different. Something different meaning something unreal.

Maybe it’s a job or a career path that, you know, we just found ourselves in because we’re going through the motions, or we didn’t believe in ourselves, whatever it is. Maybe it’s empty relationships. Maybe it’s just a life where we’re not expressing ourselves because we’re worried about the kind of feedback that we might get if we say what we actually think for a change. And ultimately, when we find the right creative process for us, we can’t help but merge the inner and the outer, because we’re making the unconscious conscious. And it’s that gap between the unconscious and the conscious that we’re not aware of, initially, that causes this void that you’re talking about, I think.

So before I rant and rave at you too much, maybe that’s the starting point. Where do you think that this disjunct between the inner and the outer that leads to these restless feelings, the void, whatever you want to call it, why is that so prevalent these days, would you say?

Daniela Hartmann: Well, one thing I kind of saw, I assume it has something to do with what we’ve been through the last three years, that some people had to sit and suddenly had time that they’ve never had before, you know, to reflect on where they’re going. And all the things that they had worked for, and especially in Germany, and I know you’re in Britain, so I assume it’s basically the same thing.

You know, you have school, you have an education outside, like whatever college or university or vocational training, then you have a job, and then you get retired in the middle, you make a few kids. And it’s quite a straightforward path. And suddenly that was disrupted. And suddenly everything that felt so secure just didn’t work anymore. At least that is why people started approaching me and wanted to learn more about meditation, more about insight, how to deal with emotions. What about you? Why do you think it is?

Oli: I think it’s like COVID exacerbated the problem, because like you said, people were forced to just spend time by themselves. But I think when they were forced to spend time by themselves, they ended up being alone with their thoughts, and alone with their egos, basically, the version of themselves that they’ve created or constructed, in order to hide from their realness in the first place. And the reason I say hide from their realness is that a lot of people, and I’ve said this so many times on the podcast, a lot of people, they end up being conditioned to disown parts of themselves. When they disown parts of themselves, which can be good things and bad things, it’s always because some external source has caused them to feel shame or guilt, or in the worst case is trauma.

And so instead of facing those emotions, they just pretend that they’re just pretend that those parts of themselves don’t exist. They create a version of themselves, which I call the ego, which is basically a truncated version, a fragmented version, that tries to exist as though those things have just kind of vanished from thin air, but they’re always there beneath the surface. And so when people find themselves been alone, in lockdown or situations like that, those parts are basically screaming for their attention, because they’ve stopped being so busy.

They’ve stopped distracting themselves. They’ve stopped doing all these things that people do, trying to grasp the wind and hold on to all these unreal things that they think are going to give their lives meaning. And they’re just there confronting themselves. And in those moments, that’s when it’s basically a turning point. You can either choose to face that stuff, which is going to be painful in the short term, but in the long term, it’s going to return you where you need to be and align the inner and the outer.

Or you might decide that you’re going to keep hiding. And that’s when you find new ways to be busy. You distract yourself with, I don’t know, like a new hobby or something that doesn’t really have any internal significance to you. Whatever it is, that’s the choice that is always there. And I think a lot of our lives, we’re just so busy being busy that we don’t have time to pause and reflect and see that, okay, what I actually want in my life is buried beneath the surface because I’m just, you know, I’m running, I’m shadow boxing basically all the time trying to deal with things or fight things that aren’t even there, if that makes sense.

That was a really long winded answer, sorry. But what I’m saying is that we’re so busy distracting ourselves from what’s real that we don’t know it’s a problem until we reach breaking point, something like that.

Daniela: Absolutely. But also there’s very little in our societies to show what a path to realness is. And I think one big point, being in these different cultures, what we’ve shifted from in our Western culture, so to say, is before there was a certain need for a certain social structure just for survival. And even though the last 50 years were the times of shift, I believe, since probably the Second World War, but we needed people before to function as a certain way to keep the social order. And now suddenly we get into a new era where want is predominant. We can suddenly have so many more choices and people are confused by these choices.

And this way back to ourselves, I mean, we do have psychology, which is wonderful as a tool, but on an everyday level, because the spirituality has gone, or let’s say religion has gone down the drain for some good reasons. People are looking for paths. And this is why I actually went to India in Nepal, because that’s where I was able to find a lived spirituality that appealed to me. But even if people feel that something is wrong, how to find the path and how to trust themselves. You’ve been told all of your life that your feelings are whatever, stupid or unreal or shameful, or, you know, I’m not going to earn you any money or, you know, girlish, whatever you want to call them. How do you unearth them and trust them?

Oli: Yeah. Do you think feelings are always real? Because I think this is one thing that confuses people. Like I think feelings are just temporary. They’re passing. There’s that famous thing. I don’t know who said it, that emotion means energy in motion. And if you let it go where it needs to go, then it will dissolve basically. And you can learn what you need to learn from it and return to realness.

But if you put some kind of a mental block in between the feeling and the feeling going where it needs to go, that’s when you start to cause problems for yourself because you’re either stopping it from dissolving, or you’re just resisting it and distorting it and avoiding it completely. And that leads to this gap, this inner chasm to become wider and wider. But actually, one thing I always say to people in my coaching practice is feelings are important.

We shouldn’t deny our feelings. They’re better out than in and all that kind of stuff. But at the same time, if you only ever focus on your feelings, well, you’re not necessarily going to get what you really want. And this is the confusing part, maybe, or where it can be misinterpreted. A lot of the time when we want things, we want them to avoid our pain. We’re running away from something. But other times, if we can figure out the things that are real to us, like our true values and our true intentions and all that kind of stuff, and we decide that that is what we want, and we run towards that, then we can use the feelings as a springboard to those things rather than a barrier, if that makes sense.

And so in answer to the question, I think part of the path to realness is just accepting and embracing whatever comes up, but channeling it into some kind of a vision that is the most clear and real picture we can create. And obviously we won’t know 100% it’s real until we get there, but we can keep kind of redefining it and clarifying it as we move forward. But ultimately, it all comes down to emotion. If we’re not moving in alignment with something that is calling to us from deep inside ourselves, then that gap between the inner and the outer is always going to be there, and it may even get bigger and bigger the more that we hide from it. So sometimes our feelings can exacerbate the problem, I think, if that makes sense.

Daniela: It can. I mean, whatever. I think for me, the main thing is identification. If we identify ourselves with the emotion and say, I have to be happy or I am happy, and that is the me, then it’s too much. And as you say, it is emotion, and the whole life is emotion. We always talk about neither to reject nor to accept, so neither to fully identify nor to fully reject anything, but the wisdom of these feelings and to start to identify which, let’s say, sensations, emotions, feelings, we want to say sort of resonates with our soul.

And there are these nourishing, let’s say, feelings or emotions. There is a sort of deep love. Some people say it’s a verb more than an emotion. But there are things that are more true to us, like kindness or warmheartedness or compassion, and to see the truth in them as such, but also understanding that there’s never a goal as such. We’re constantly a work in motion, or how do you say, a work in progress, and that life is…

And sadness can give us just as much information about where we’re heading or what is right for us or what is real for us as happiness can or as joy can. So I see it as… In Buddhism, we say we have the Buddha nature. So this is like all-encompassing, innate wisdom, which is what we’re trying to return to, to fully embody Buddha nature. And any feeling comes from Buddha nature and returns to Buddha nature, and then everything has this wisdom. But just never to hold on to it and make it solid or real in the sense of, you know, if I’m happy, I’m successful. And if I’m unhappy, I’m a loser.

Oli: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re 100% right, in my opinion. It’s exactly what you said about identification. I personally have found in my life and working with people, the main problem for all of us is our identity. When we identify with the ego version of ourselves, instead of the experience of ourselves in reality, which is, you know, constantly moving towards wholeness or Buddha nature or God or whatever people want to call it.

If we’re moving with it, it’s an experience. But as soon as we filter it through identity, that’s when we try and make the intangible tangible in the way that you’re just saying. So we have some kind of an experience. Because our identity is conceptual, and it relies on interpretations, we’ll interpret events that happen in our lives through the lens of the ego or the false identity that we picked up. So instead of seeing it as a learning opportunity, when things go wrong, for example, we’ll label it as I’m a failure, usually because of the underlying emotions. And then we’ve made a twofold mistake:

One, we’re identifying with some intangible thing that doesn’t even exist. It’s totally unreal, because it only exists as part of the filter between us in life. Two, we’re identifying with the emotions, and we’re trying to make them tangible as well, something that can’t move forward and dissolve and take us back to wholeness or Buddha nature or whatever.

And so we’re constantly blocking our progress, not even progress, we’re blocking our expansion and growth with something unreal. That’s why I’m always saying the opposite of reality is ego, because the ego is the only thing that stops us moving with that flow. And it’s purely because we can’t handle uncertainty. And so we try and make the intangible tangible, which is impossible. And so really, maybe there’s an element here of stepping back from identity completely. Because I think, you know, the human journey ultimately is a journey of fragmentation to wholeness.

Maybe we won’t reach wholeness completely until we’re dead. But as we go, as we go through that process, and we do get more and more deeply aligned with wholeness, what we actually realize is that our identity doesn’t exist. Really, it’s a tool, we need it, it’s a tool. But that identity and clinging to it is the thing that causes there to be a massive gap between the inner and outer and that causes us to believe there’s a void.

But actually the void, that’s not real either. It’s just trying to make the disconnection between, you know, who we think we are and who we actually are, making that disconnection tangible. And as soon as you realize that it’s intangible, because it’s just an illusion you picked up, that’s when it dissolves and you can get back in the flow. And you don’t have to look for a path, you don’t have to seek a path, you’re just back on the path because you never left it. You just thought it had gone, if that makes sense.

Daniela: Yeah, there’s a couple of things that I just want to quickly interject. We’re talking something about underlying emotions. And I think when we look at these emotions, we need to really look at the underlying belief systems, you know, that are associated with these emotions. You know, when we talk about shame, and we talk about this is right or wrong, there’s often a very, very complex belief system. And then we have to find this way back to our core. And in Buddhism, which I find quite interesting, we have the ego.

So this is identification and making a solidified I, you know, where your whole personality is being taken up by an emotion or a job or, you know, something like that. And we’re in the middle and the world revolves around us. And what we see is right. And what everybody else does either agrees or not. And that means they’re either right or not. And we talk about, but we also talk about something like a healthy self. And that’s a healthy understanding of us being an independence with our environment, the people around us in the dependence, and to feel our individuality in it, but being in the flow with everything that is basically, and it is what I call, you know, going back to the core or heart-centeredness.

So when I work with my coaching clients, we talk about heart-centered leadership. Because we’re not used to taking that as the guiding light, you know, our intuition, our instinct, this Buddha nature, this individuation of whatever source. So I find what I need to do, what I needed to do, first of all, because obviously, I have to take that path as well, is to unearth that, and then to trust it. And again, because there’s hardly anything in our society that, you know, jubilates when you come along and say, here I am. And you know, my intuition says I’m going to be a rock star. To go that path, it takes a lot of time and a lot of support. How do you give that sort of support to your clients?

Oli: I think it comes down to exactly what you just said. And I love the way you said it, you have to unearth it, and then trust it. So ultimately, when you’re on this path that we’re talking about, which, you know, it’s the return to wholeness or reality or whatever. Eventually, you get to that point that you’ve alluded to, where you realize that your small version of you that you’re identifying with, that you’ve tried to make tangible, the ego, is the illusion of independence and separation from everything else. Separation from other people, separation from your environment, separation from life.

Eventually, you reach that point of no return, where you see that your beliefs about yourself, and it’s always beliefs that lead to that illusion of independence, you see that those beliefs are unreal. Once you’ve seen that you can’t unsee it. And that’s when you kind of cross over the threshold into the world or reality of interdependence, where everything is connected, where, you know, if I really want to make a difference to the world, I can’t just serve myself as an independent thing. I have to serve you, I have to serve everybody else. And it’s about realizing that once you’ve got to that point, you’ll have seen inside yourself that there is some gift that the world may not be jubilant about right now.

But if they’re not, it’s because you’re not using it to serve enough. And I think it’s just about stepping over, it’s two things, stepping over the threshold into interdependence and realizing that, okay, the only way you can truly be real is to give the real things that you already think you understand to the world, rather than just to yourself. That is going to allow you to have deeper relationships with other people. But then the extension of that is that because you understand how reality works, and ultimately, it’s that thing from Ecclesiastes in the Bible, it says vanity, all is vanity.

Ultimately, everything in the human experience, it kind of is meaningless on a long enough timeline, because we’re all going to die, we’re all going to be forgotten. We can experience real things while we’re here, and we can dissolve into wholeness, whatever, when we die. But ultimately, whether our gifts are received in the way that we think they need to be received or not, actually doesn’t matter. Because we need to be outcome independent about it. Because reality, ultimately, is about getting to that point where you realize, okay, your self-worth does not depend on the outcomes that you get.

So let’s say you’ve been through this process of growing real, you’ve been meditating and grounded in your realness and everything, you’ve realized you need to be a rock star. You go out there, you write the best song in the world, and nobody likes it. Well, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Actually, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you put yourself on that path, and you close the gap between the inner and the outer, and that you shared something real. Because as you share it, the process of getting to the point where you can share it, actually gives you everything that you need, if that makes sense. And so what happens after that, it’s all gravy. Do you see what I’m saying?

Daniela: Absolutely. And talking about what reality is, when we started this conversation, we did talk about the outside and the inside world. And it’s to start to believe or to trust our internal reality more than the outside reality. That when we know something is true and right, and for me, it’s also a physical feeling. I can feel it in my, let’s say, chest. I can feel it that I breathe deeper when I’m sort of attuned or aligned, let’s say. I can feel like I’m opening up as a person.

It’s hard to describe, but there isn’t, when I drop into myself, and we were talking about it before and too, that how important grounding is. To kind of when we want to explore this internal truth of ourselves, that might not be reflected on the outside at all. And when we tell people, here I go, I’m going to be a rock star and write the best song ever. And everybody’s like, great, you can’t even sing a tone. To say, yeah, but that’s not the important point. The important point is that I know for myself, that is my path.

Oli: Yeah. Let’s go. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, go ahead. So I was just going to say, let’s go down that road of the outer world, reflecting the inner world a little bit more, because I think that is really important. So people reach these breaking points, let’s say, where they realize that they need to change their lives by changing their relationships with themselves. Ultimately, that ultimately means that they need to reconnect to themselves at the level you’re talking about, where they’re totally rooted in something real, they’re grounded, they can feel in their body that they’re on the right path.

And it is important to feel in the body, because that means you’re not just in your head, you know, given into mental chatter and all that kind of stuff. If you do that, your life has changed in that very moment, because as soon as you reconnect to that realness, that’s it, you’re where you need to be. But the problem is, if you want to call it a problem, that if you change your relationship with yourself right now by snapping your fingers, and it is a real change, because you’ve grounded yourself in the way you’re talking about, the external world is not going to change immediately, right?

It’s going to take, it takes some time to catch up. And there’s a number of reasons behind that. But before I start, you know, ranting again, what do you think those reasons are? Like, why? Why is that that lag between the inner shift and the outer reflection of that shift?

Daniela: Well, first of all, I believe because, I mean, we do have a shared, to use the word reality again, as a society or as a family, you know, it’s something that has some sort of motion behind it. A family has been running for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. A society has been built up over thousands of years. And suddenly you kind of say, no, everything is different, or it’s not as it seems. It’s hard to get a moving train to stop.

But what we need to do is to kind of be so grounded and to sort of say, we understand that the train is running into the wrong direction. So we choose to jump off, or we choose a different train, whatever, you know, metaphor is the best. Or maybe even better, we are going to turn the train around. So what we experience in the material reality is always the end product. It’s actually the end of creation. And the moment it appears, it’s already gone. You know, because change is impermanence, is never ending.

So this internal shift has to come first. And we need to have to just sort of wait it out, because there is some sort of motion behind the world outside. And also ourselves, because we will vacillate, facilitate, what’s the English word? Vacillation. Yeah, you know, you kind of go back and forth. Am I actually right? Have I gone crazy? Am I not? And then reground. It’s not, for me, at least, it wasn’t just a thing. It was like going back and forth quite a few times. And then people have to catch up and see, oh, yeah, she’s different. And then people drop off, new people come in, opportunities open up. Yeah, that’s how I see it. How do you see it?

Oli: Yeah, in pretty much the same way. So I think one thing that we all forget is that society or the world is just other people. That’s all it is, right? Like we talk about it as this kind of mysterious entity that has control over our lives. And to some extent, okay, like the law and all this kind of stuff can affect the things that we’re allowed to do. But ultimately, the world is just a collective reflection of how humanity is relating with itself. It’s a reflection of our fear. It’s a reflection of our need to control things. It’s a reflection of whatever is going on inside of us, basically. And a lot of the time, when people are trying to change the world, they’re actually just looking at the external world, which is a reflection of everybody else. And they’re basically trying to rearrange the furniture on the Titanic, which means they’re just dealing with the surface level details. Or to use another way, it’s like they’re looking in a mirror and they’re polishing the mirror, trying to change what’s inside the reflection on the mirror, if that makes sense.

Daniela: Absolutely. Yeah.

Oli: And actually the only way we can change the world, if we want to change the world, is to change ourselves. It’s the, you know, it’s a total cliche. It’s the Gandhi thing. Be the change you want to see in the world. But ultimately, that’s it. Like I personally don’t believe we can have like a social movement or we can have like a new religion or anything like that. It’s ultimately about getting people to the point where they grow real in their own lives. And the more people that grow real individually, the more that reflection in the mirror of society is going to become more and more real. And so ultimately, in relation to those two levels, like the level of the individual and the level of society or the world, the world is not reality, by the way, that’s something I love to say.

But anyway, the individual and the collective levels, only if people do the work on themselves, is the outside world eventually going to catch up. And there’s going to be a lag. And the lag is where people start to lose faith and to lose trust in the process. It’s exactly what you said. Like maybe they, they wake up one morning and they’re in the mood to change their lives. They’re super hyped up. They’re super motivated. They’re like, right, this is it. Finally, I’m going to change my life. I’m going to meditate every day. I’m going to exercise. I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that.

They might have cultivated a more real connection to themselves. But like we said, nothing changes overnight. And so when they’re looking at the outside world, expecting the reflection to change and it doesn’t, they lose faith, they lose trust. And so they go back to the old way of being. Society is the same thing. Like people are always trying to change the world and to, you know, restore faith in the human spirit and blah, blah, blah. And sometimes there’ll be a little movement, a social movement or whatever it is, and they’ll make some progress. But then the world, when you look at it, it appears to be getting worse and worse because people are more fragmented and blah, blah, blah.

And so they, they go back into hiding. And so actually the only solution, I think, to narrowing the gap between the inner and the outer is to constantly cultivate that feeling of realness in yourself every day. And eventually things will change. The outside world has to change because as you cultivate that feeling of realness, you will make subtle choices that are different to the ones you would have made when you were disconnected from that realness.

Maybe it’s just the way you communicate with people. You might be more grateful for them in general. You might be more accepting. You might be more peaceful, whatever it is, because you’ve cultivated those qualities in yourself. And over time, day by day, as you go through life, giving the world what you’ve been giving yourself by cultivating this feeling of realness, the world will eventually reflect that because, you know, ultimately what we give is what we receive because the world and our relationship with it is just, it’s a mirror-like thing. And the only way to change the reflection in the mirror is to change yourself. Something like that.

Daniela: Yeah, and I think to me, to kind of go a step back, is to really start to trust ourselves again and to cultivate love for ourselves. And I always do that with my clients. I first go into self-appreciation. So I first try to kind of let them see where have they trusted their gut, their voice before and it worked. You know, so it’s not just a weird outside concept. It can be small things, you know, whatever, asking somebody out for a date or, you know, it does need to be, you know, having changed the world, but the sort of trust.

And what I do with my clients also is I do an exercise with the two voices. Like I had this one client and she had an immense amount of problems with her employees. She was running a doctor’s practice, but you know, she was not taking care of herself. So why would her employees mind her if she doesn’t mind herself? You know, she’s showing the whole time that she’s neglecting her health and her time and that she’s overstepping her boundaries. So I worked with her with the two voices, you know, the harsh voice, the criticizing voice, you know, and the more softer, let’s say, the little angel that says, Hey, you know, take a rest, drink another glass of water, clock out at 6pm like everybody else.

And I just asked my clients or asked her also just for a week, just listen to the small voice, you know, no matter how scary that is, just do it. And, you know, her whole, the atmosphere in her practice changed, because people could say, oh, yeah, she actually does what she says or what she wants, you know, she’s setting boundaries, and she’s keeping them herself. So I think that’s the first thing is to bring people back into the trust of their own inner wisdom, let’s say, or their realness, as you call it. And the other thing is, I call it the three minds, you know, or it’s often called the three minds, the brain mind, the heart mind, and the gut mind. And to learn to identify, you know, what does my logical mind tell me?

What does my, let’s say, feeling in a good way, tell me, you know, this is good for me, this is bad for me. And my gut instinctively, you know, what is dangerous for me, in any way, you know, where am I secure and rooted. And it takes time, it takes awareness, and it takes meditation. But I find the people, when they start to reconnect to that in a safe space. And I think we as coaches, that’s our number one thing really is to give that space and that support for self exploration. And for people to find their own solution. And as you just said about, you know, people go out, they do their thing, they get to solutions, they go back.

For me, it’s because first of all, they haven’t really gotten rid of their programming. So they get triggered again and again. Yeah, you know, to go back. And the other thing that I find is the whole cycle of victim perpetrator and rescuer. Yeah, that people approach conflicts or difficulties with, you know, somebody must be the villain. Yeah. And, you know, I’m gonna save the world. And then, you know, we’re the rescuer, but at the same time, suddenly the perpetrator towards somebody else, but we’re also the victim. And there’s something that’s really toxic, instead of finding, you know, a constructive solution and saying, that’s what I don’t want, you know, whatever. Yeah, a certain aspect of society is not working, what is a constructive solution without all the blame and the hate and the fight and all of that?

Oli: Yeah, yeah. Everything you just said is so important. I love how you just brought some practical things into it. Because ultimately, it always comes back to trust. Like I should probably change the name of this podcast to trust or something because like every episode, the fundamental quality that human beings need to embody to live a real life is trust. And if you can trust yourself and trust life, things will always work out. Like this is just how it goes.

And even if they don’t work out, you’ll be able to trust yourself to accept that you’re dealing with what’s inevitable and blah, blah, blah. But anyway, in relation to what we’ve kind of been talking about, about the inner and the outer, I think we can say, and tell me if you agree, if there is a massive gap between the inner world and the outer world, it is always a symptom of a lack of trust. And the more that you do trust, the more that you are going to narrow that gap and have the outside world be a reflection of your realness, basically. And the only way you can get there is to trust that you don’t know everything.

So you have to step away from those roles that are on the drama triangle. You’re not a victim. You don’t need to rescue other people. No one needs to rescue you. You don’t need to persecute other people. ETC, you just need to focus on what is real in you when you’re grounded, deal with the emotions that pop up and move with them towards some kind of a vision. And if you can do that and keep going deeper into trust, then the gap between the inner and outer will be very thin. That’s how I actually see all this now. What do you think about that idea, ultimately?

Daniela: I absolutely, I completely agree with you. I do think we have to always talk about, at least for me, I’m talking about processes that took years. It’s not something where I just thought, OK, you know, I want to change my world. And after two weeks, everything worked because this programming, these thoughts that we have, the self-image that we have, outside forces, you know, that get suddenly angry. If you’re not that cute anymore or, you know, whatever it is as a woman, you know, that’s usually it.

You know, I went along with a lot of things when I was younger because I thought, you know, I just wanted to be nice. And then suddenly you say, I’m not nice. And people can turn up the heat quite a bit on you. And we need to give ourselves space and grace, especially grace comes up a lot for me lately, to look at the blocks that we have, to grieve our old selves when we kind of put them to sleep. And something that I also found is to trust in joy, because a lot of people, and I had that too sometimes, that it almost feels a little naughty to be joyful and to be happy and to give a fucking, sorry, a flying something about…

It’s OK, you can say that. I swear all the fucking time. But sometimes it’s just like, whatever, you know, there it is. Things are hard, but I’m just going to have a good time, you know, and I’m going to listen to this good voice that tells me all this, you know, this self-assuring voice. I’m going to have my ice cream. I’m going to watch a stupid Netflix movie. And, you know, maybe the world is on hayfire, you know, and to trust that it works. And the funny thing is, you know, the outside world, there were certain things that probably will not shift, like the German government will not shift overnight, you know, and a lot of policies that I think are crap. But what I found is that there was a very natural development of who navigated or gravitated towards me when I was in my center and who basically dropped off.

Yeah, at a certain situation, it almost felt like I was ejected off. You know, people would not answer my emails anymore or my calls or something, you know, it was just like, and if I would meet them and I would say, hey, listen, I emailed you three times and you didn’t answer and they didn’t even see it. Yeah, it’s so funny. It’s kind of a rearrangement. And suddenly, yes, people come up if it’s a quality you suddenly exude or something. And also, we just get out of the situations that feel fake. It’s just, it’s like feels nauseous to have certain debates.

Oli: Yeah. But yeah, like, I’ve seen this happen as well. And it’s really simple, actually. If you’re unreal with yourself, you’ll attract unreal in your life. If you’re real with yourself, you’ll attract real within your life. It’s that simple. It really is that simple. The thing is, at the start of these journeys, most people aren’t consciously aware that they’re being unreal, because they play in certain roles, all that stuff. Eventually, though, when you start to wake up, because you’re tuning into this feeling of realness, this inner feeling, this inner connection, whatever word you want to use, to realness, the outside world will start to shift. And actually, this is something that can help you trust more.

Because ultimately, if you shift, if you cross over that threshold from unreal to real, the outside world will start making kind of subtle changes. And it will be things like people that were unreal, will slowly slip away. So you can make space for the real stuff to come in. Certain things that you thought you used to care about, you won’t care about anymore, because you realize you were just chasing it for the sake of your ego and identification and all that kind of stuff. And it will slip away to make space for the real stuff. And so at the start of this journey of merging the inner and the outer, those subtle signs are things that allow you to trust the process.

But the thing is, if we’re still, you know, kind of fresh, shall we say, to the journey, we take those signs as signs that things are going wrong. We take it as evidence that things are going wrong. But actually, it’s evidence that things are going right. And the other thing I just want to say quickly as well is we are dealing with an addiction here. And it’s an addiction to the ego. The ego is addictive. And that’s why sometimes, you know, the programming that we’re trying to let go of and unlearn and all that kind of stuff, it can take a very long time to get rid of, which is fine. And it’s normal. And I don’t think we can judge our progress.

But the other side of the coin, I’ve seen quite a few people get over this stuff really quickly. Because as soon as you realize that one belief is unreal, and you let it go, well, there’s no real difference between an unreal belief that is small versus an unreal belief that seems big. And ultimately, all those unreal beliefs can kind of fall like a house of cards. And you step into that threshold with over the threshold from unreal to real with more and more frequency. And you start taking the actions that are real, you start making those real choices. And life can change quite quickly, actually, I think not always, but it is possible. I just wanted to put that on there. So yeah, sorry, what did you want to say? Sorry?

Daniela: Yeah, I think it goes quite quickly, depending on what has already been bubbling up on the inside, you know, some people had, even if it’s an unconscious journey. And another thing that I that came into my mind is, I really, what was very important to me, I feel like when I’m doing and with my clients, to have a support, because the real feels unreal in the beginning, right? It’s like, you know, the king, what was it the king without clothes or with this king with new clothes, it’s, there’s an in Buddhism, we have this one story about a well where poison has been put in, and everybody, you know, has drank from it, except for one person, and everybody goes crazy, except for this one person, because of the poison. And to and then eventually, that put that person also drinks the poison just to be like everybody else coming out, you know, and starting to become healthy, again, inside can feel very lonely. Yeah, yeah, you’re right. So in the beginning, you know, I was kind of thinking, Oh, coaching, it’s kind of weird, I didn’t really understand what it was. Because, you know, again, for 20 years, I was kind of buried in a hole in Asia. But I started to understand how important it is. I mean, it could be a coach, it could be a friend, it can be anybody. Yeah, yeah. But who says actually, you’re right. It’s the world that’s crazy. Yeah, exactly. You’re tapping into the truth. You know, it’s not just make believe.

Oli: Yeah, yeah, I love it. It goes. It goes, it goes back to the mirror thing. Like I’ve seen this with this is the main value of coaching, actually, like when we’re coaching people, we don’t see them as the world sees them. We are actually holding space to talk to them as though there’s a reflection of their realness in that mirror. And for the duration of the coaching session, they’re sharing something that is real, and it’s been reflected back to them. And there’s a book about coaching I read ages ago. And it said, if there was a guy, and he was walking home, like from work every night, he’s been in the office all day, you know, having an unreal time, probably.

If he walks home from work every night, and he just stops at the same lamppost, and he just shares the deepest contents of his heart with that lamppost, that will actually help him like you’ll feel better because he’s sharing the real stuff. And the sharing actually allows a lot of our problems to dissolve, it validates the real things, like I keep saying. And if you can get that with a lamppost, just by sharing, and, you know, the art of sharing basically means that it’s not just inner, it’s also outer, and you’re starting to cross that threshold we keep talking about. If you can do that with lamppost, imagine how far you can get with a natural other human being, who is ready to like, hold space for you and to walk through that process with you. So that is something super valuable.

One more thing I want to say, sorry, before I kind of wrap it up, because I’ve gone over the time, sorry, is what you said about things can happen much more quickly if the unconscious stuff is bubbling away. That is the truth. I’ve seen this so many times. And I think people can take this as a practical nugget for their own lives. Ultimately, I’m always saying on the podcast, right, we all have this natural drive towards wholeness. If we’re moving towards wholeness, it means we’re not blocking the unconscious becoming conscious with our ego stuff. The unconscious becoming conscious means that our shadow self is trying to find a way to emerge in some way.

Normally, that will be some creative thing, or it might be, you know, some emotion that needs to be expressed, whatever it is. If people look at their lives, and they’re on these journeys that we’re talking about, there will be something that is calling to them from the unconscious. And if they grab hold of that, and they eradicate the unreal beliefs that are stopping them moving with it, that is when they’ll get the fastest results. Because the shadow self is real. It’s moving with the flux of life and all that kind of stuff. And if you move with it, that’s when you’ll get, you know, expedited progress, basically, because you’re not resisting life. You’re going with and accepting what needs to move within you, something like that.

So I’ve been ranting and raving lots. I had more coffee than usual today. So I do apologize. I interrupted you like a bunch of times, but this has been really good. How would you sum up this conversation? Because we’ve been everywhere, really, we’ve covered all kinds of things. What’s the, you know, what’s the conclusion here after all this? And can you also let people know where they can find you online and all that kind of thing?

Daniela: Definitely. Well, there’s this quote by Ram Dass, which I love, which says, we’re all just walking each other home. And that’s kind of my motto in life as such, to allow for people to be who they are, and to sort of see what naturally evolves between me and people, and especially in coaching to support them on their way home, and they define what home is for them, and at what speed they are walking.

And I would sum up that this is, you know, home being realness, and that it takes courage, and it takes eventually an unshakeable trust in ourselves, in our healthy self, to let go of the ego, to let go of identities, to let go of the false beliefs in the outside, and to walk our path. And as you know, as you said, you know, embodying what we are, and then it happens on the outside, and to have that patience. Because it’s the only way to live a fulfilled life. And living an unfulfilled life, for me, is the worst thing that could ever happen. And where one can find me is, what I do as such, is I coach people through the GRID process. And GRID stands for G for growth, R for responsibility, I for integrity, and D for diversity, to really find this way back home. And then in diversity, how do we live that in an interdependent world?

So my website is thegrid.global. And yeah, there’s free discovery sessions there. And even if people are not interested in coaching, I love to chat with people. And I love to hear about their stories and their path. So I’m always happy for people to just hop on for an hour with me for a cup of coffee and just hang.

Oli: Let’s see what happens. That’s awesome. Well, Daniela, thank you so much. I’m going to reel myself in, or I’m going to keep ranting at you. But I’ll share your website and everything in the show notes. Thank you for your time.

Daniela: This has been really fun, so I really appreciate it. So thank you.

Oli: Okay, bye-bye.

Daniela: Bye-bye.


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Hi, I'm Oli Anderson - a Transformational Coach for REALNESS and author who helps people to tap into their REALNESS by increasing Awareness of their real values and intentions, to Accept themselves and reality, and to take inspired ACTION that will change their lives forever and help them find purpose. Click here to read my story about how I died, lost it all, and then found reality.

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