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Monika Schmiderer, 37, was a successful entrepreneur. The more she shone on the outside, the emptier it became inside. She lost herself out of sheer "musts". This is how she found her inner voice again.
High up on the mountain in Tyrol, she lives as it feels fulfilling: conscious encounters with nature, meetings with selected people and precise rules when it comes to digital media. For the "clarity", for which Monika Schmiderer herself struggled for so many years, she finds an ideal environment here. But that Recognizing inner patterns, dealing constructively with feelings is not tied to a specific location. "Clarity is an inner attitude that is stronger and more stable than the storms on the outside," said the 37-year-old. "It is not the opposite, but the absence of confusion and uncertainty." In her latest book, "Find Clarity", she described how to build such a safe fortress. A guide to more depth, created over four years of work. With The prospect of a self-determined life.
A constant must
She was once more than far from this goal, "a child of the 80s", she writes. "I believed what the world taught me." To want to be better than the others. "And that efficiency makes us successful and success makes us happy." This is how she went from a hard-working girl to a top-class student, a fast student and ultimately a committed young entrepreneur. A creative force in demand with his own advertising agency. She worked late into the night, listening to everyone and caring for the planet. "But more and more often I left the conversations empty-handed, feeling alone in company. It was difficult to find peace in the evening and to get out of bed in the morning."
While she was able to maintain the image of the super woman for a while, her soul got sicker and sicker. "But I had to do so much. I had to be quick, but I couldn't make any mistakes. I had to assert myself, but I couldn't offend anyone. Give everything, but should take little for it. I had to be compassionate and approachable, but even deal with it if something got too close to me. " The longing not to want to go on living in this confusing world grew for the then 26-year-old until she managed to get help. Exhaustion depression was the name of the diagnosis. A long, healing path followed with intensive, sometimes alternative therapies. "I've learned to set healthy boundaries and honestly follow my own needs. Meditation helped me a lot and flow writing. That means: just write down thoughts, ideas and feelings as they flow."
As far as her agency was concerned, she only looked for partners who fit one hundred percent on a human level. She said goodbye to friendships that were not good. Today she works without any medication.
Inner direction
"The simplest principle," Schmiderer knows, "to bring more order back into life is the principle: Yes inside, yes outside. No inside, no outside. If I get a yes from my stomach brain, for example, it would be nice to find the courage and the strength to live it. " You radiate the security gained in this way: "You are no longer so susceptible to exploitative people or toxic relationships. Things that used to weigh heavily on me no longer reach me."
The three voices within us that can guide are instinct, intuition and inspiration. The former reports itself as a pure survival concept when I am in stress, live in fear and worry. Attack or retreat, i.e. aggression or resignation, are the alternatives. "But if I learn to be with myself, to relax, to deal with my feelings constructively, I regain access to intuition, to the abdominal brain." It gives me a clear direction: Do I want this or do I not want it? Finally, inspiration, as the third step, "connects us with the source of creativity and inventiveness, brings the new, the daring into our lives."
Heal the wounds
Schmiderer's book aims to lead to this experience with seven rules, such as "eliminating externally determined goals and excessive ideals" or "breaking the avarice-greed cycle". At the very beginning, however, there are the aforementioned "inner patterns of need". Each of these, we learn, has its root in one Self-esteem that doesn't have to come from childhood. You could be injured at any time. "I am not welcome", "I am not enough", "I missed out" or "I have to do a lot for love", "I have to be successful", "I have to take care of others", "I have to correspond "these schemes can be something like this.
"The fear of letting go, of standing up for yourself, of saying no, can only arise through these self-esteem deficiencies," emphasizes the expert. "When we notice that our entire life is shaped by a feeling of must, we rush from one to-do list to the next, it is worth taking a look with a new honesty: Where does the breeding ground for all of this come from? " Because at the end of the day you only have to think about what you would actually like to have done while you were busy having to.
But why do we have to? For everyone who says, "I'm trapped, I can't get out", Schmiderer has a sound argument: The more often you distract yourself from your true feelings, listen away, and numb them, the smaller, narrower and more insecure everything becomes in the inner realm of possibility. "And what I still dare to do today, I might not dare to do in a year."
Own attitude
Schmiderer emphasizes that it is not about quitting the job straight away, fleeing the relationship and the like. Because Inner clarity and security enable us to have a completely different standing. "You can deal more calmly with criticism and stress. And as soon as we no longer react as usual to external influences, something different, something better comes towards us."
