Gjør som tusenvis av andre bokelskere
Abonner på vårt nyhetsbrev og få rabatter og inspirasjon til din neste leseopplevelse.
Ved å abonnere godtar du vår personvernerklæring.Du kan når som helst melde deg av våre nyhetsbrev.
Alfons has been working at Amazon, Microsoft and Hewlett Packard in Executive and Senior Leadership roles for the last 25 years. He has studied various martial arts over the same period. As time progressed those worlds and their principles merged for him and enriched each other. When he became a parent, a whole new world of insights opened up. Ulrike is a well-known Tai Chi and Ikebana teacher in her community. She serves as a staff teacher for 'Mindfulness for Kids' at our Elementary school, where she also leads the PTSA art docent program. Before moving to the US, Uli practiced as Medical Doctor (OBGYN) at the University of Aachen in Germany. LIVE HAPPIER, HEALTHIER AND MORE SUCCESSFUL IN 52 WEEKLY STEPS At many points in my professional life, I felt challenged to 'go all in' and sacrifice family health or my personal passions for success at work. Not that I was asked to do it, but I thought I had to. Luckily, I caught these imbalances early enough to avoid going down on a doom spiral. I started to pay close attention to principles and methods that helped me be more efficient and allowed me to have both a great professional career as well as a healthy and fulfilling personal life. Live is a marathon, not a sprint. Our lives must be balanced to have sustainable success and fulfillment. In this book, I want to share the principles that helped me achieve that balance. Those principles and methods are based on scientific research as well as what I learned from mentors and role models at work and in my personal life. Much of what you will read stems from martial arts lessons and strategies I learned in business. A significant contribution also comes from my wife Uli and her thoughts on minimalism, simplification, the arts, and focusing on experiences rather than material possessions. None of what you will read is rocket science or my own discovery. However, it is a summary of principles and approaches that worked for me over the past 25 years, leaving out all the things that I learned the hard way not to work. Those principles helped me stay sane and healthy in environments of extreme challenge and pressure. PUT ON YOUR OWN OXYGEN MASK FIRST When you travel on any commercial airplane, you will need to go through the safety briefing before taking off. One of the things that stuck with me was the advice to "put on your own oxygen mask first." It seems to go against our instincts initially. We want to help our kids or the elderly before we turn our attention to our own needs. However, that is shortsighted. Even as we desire to help others, we first need to take care of ourselves. This is how this book will start. We will go from the ground up, starting with habits that improve your health and physical wellbeing. Being healthy is the basis for everything. From there on we will take it to higher levels. However, always remember: you need to get yourself into the right place first before you can have a positive impact on your work, the people you care about and society. HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED Whether you plan to read through the whole book once and then come back to tackle the things that resonate with you or you plan to go week by week and chapter by chapter, here is what awaits you. This book is structured in four parts. The first three present a plan for weekly habits to add to your portfolio, the fourth is a reflection on general learnings and methods to achieve your goals at work and in life. Part I - Healthy Habits Part II - Be More Effective Part III - Spiritual Balance Part IV - Reflections on Achieving Your Goals
"To find and to understand the principles means to find the heart." - Hilmar Fuchs. Uli and I have been practicing various forms of martial arts for over 25 years. We learned Karate, Kobudo and Tai Chi from our teacher Hilmar Fuchs. We studied Aikido for a while with a friend. We explored Jodo with one of the leading experts in North America. We spent some time learning the Yang family style teachings in the school of a direct decedent of the Yang family and current leader of the style. We learned how defensive shooting techniques and empty hand fighting can be combined into a coherent system. Most of the principles and thoughts in this book come from what we have learned over the years from our teacher Hilmar Fuchs. Some were inspired by other leaders in martial arts and outside of that realm. And yet another set was driven and inspired by questions from students in our classes. Occasionally we had some insights on our own. My spirit animal is the horse, which, together with the love of Uli and our daughter for horses, inspired the name of our school, Kicking Horse Tai Chi (Keru Uma Budo). It also reflects my need for freedom and finding my own way, which you can probably spot in a few of the thoughts and recommendations we're giving. We truly believe that you need to develop strong roots but then find your own way. Uli's spirit animal is the mouse. Like a mouse, she is curious and looks into all corners of a problem to come back up with an unexpected insight that she found. Like a mouse, she also likes to be grounded and stay out of the limelight. Uli is a passionate artist and art teacher at our kid's school. Being a visual person, she loves using imagination and pictures to support her teaching. Look for her thoughts on visualization and imagination throughout this book. With that, we hope you will enjoy the book, find a few things that make sense to you and maybe enrich your own practice. We cannot teach universal truths, but we aim to offer ideas for your own explorations.
Abonner på vårt nyhetsbrev og få rabatter og inspirasjon til din neste leseopplevelse.
Ved å abonnere godtar du vår personvernerklæring.