United States of You: A Travel Guide

By Kathrin Köster

The United States of You is a game changer: it enables you to align your mind, body, and heart in a systematic way to gain sustainable access to your source of infinite energy. With this self-leadership book, you'll learn how to be balanced and constantly in touch with your creative power. You'll gain inner clarity by being aware of yourself and others. How? You see and manage yourself as a team of four: the four Mes or Formies. Each Formie represents a vital part of you: your mind, your body, your heart and your consciousness. You will become familiar with the language and the needs of all Formies, enabling you to be in command of yourself and your life. You will gain stamina, inner strength, wisdom, and joy. Especially in times of disruptive change, you'll benefit from an increased awareness level with which to master life.
But be aware: beginning this journey means buying a one-way ticket. You only can move ahead - there is no way back. Embarking on this journey means changing yourself, regardless of how tiring the trip gets.
To smoothen your journey, you get a navigation system, the L-Loops which you can follow through each part of your inner map to locate self-limitations, let go of mental and emotional patterns, learn more about yourself and your issues, laugh about your quirks and the funny side of life, leverage your insights to changed behaviour and love what you do and who you are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: tredition
• Release date: Nov 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9783746982977

Book preview

ABOUT PIONEERING

I am a pioneer. I have broken free from many self-limitations and others’ expectations. How? By exploring my mind, body, and heart, and gaining access to my CORE, my inner compass for authenticity and resilience, the source of joy and creativity. I began my journey with tiny steps, followed by bolder leaps. Over time, I acquired deeper insights and developed tools, making the journey faster and safer. I was lucky enough to travel with my partner and best friend. We were each other’s tour guides. Travelling together is so much easier and more joyful than travelling alone.

I wrote this book for people setting out on their self-exploration journey and who might like a companion by their side: a companion who shares new insights and gives useful hints; a companion who encourages and helps accelerate your own journey; a companion who lets you know you’re not alone; a companion who shares her story, as well as those of other pioneer travellers. And last but not least, a companion who helps you to always see the funny side of life.

To where exactly are you travelling?

You’re travelling to the lands of your mind, body and heart. These are the three parts that make up all human beings. By using this book as your travel guide, you will learn that each land is an equal component on your journey towards yourself. You will hear the voice of each land calling for deeper exploration. You will gain precious insights and end up in a loving friendship with the representatives of these lands, Mr Mind, Buddy Body and Her Highness Heart.

In our modern society, we are most familiar with the Land of Mind. And that’s why we’ll start the journey with a ‘mind safari’. When you follow the travel guide you are led to learn more about your body and your heart. It is an important goal of the entire adventure to be aware of what’s going on in any of your lands at any given moment.

But shouldn’t you know yourself? Shouldn’t you be familiar with these lands? Only in theory, if you have a fully developed consciousness. In practice, your lands are shaped by the experiences you’ve had since early childhood. You have been exposed to influences from your parents, extended family, teachers and friends. They all have left their traces in your lands. You have been shaped or ‘informed’ (made into a form in the literal sense) and yet you are unaware of all this. The shape you find yourself in after this ‘information process’ differs from individual to individual, depending on factors such as the society you live in, your gender, family background, educational background and personality.

The goal of your journey consists of (re)discovering these shapes and forms. You bring them to light. You bring them back to your consciousness. The path is not as cumbersome as you might expect. It’s even quite simple because it is mapped by the L-Loops, a navigation system comprising the six steps of consciously Locating, Letting Go, Learning, Laughing, Leveraging and Loving. You locate and let go of so-called issues that are casting dark shadows on your lands. This is the main preoccupation at the beginning of your journey. You will oscillate between the Locating and Letting Go loop, amazed by the discoveries you make. With the help of tools provided in your travel guide, you will be able to deal with the issues and proceed with your journey, entering into subsequent loops.

The more issues you identify and deal with, the clearer you can see your CORE. I call this process coring. Your connection to your CORE will become increasingly stable during your journey. You will be better connected to yourself. You will learn to ‘listen’ to what the lands’ representatives say and feel: this process nurtures your consciousness, Conscious Me. Conscious Me is the fourth member of team YOU and takes an increasingly active part in navigating you through your self-discovery journey. When you have gained some travelling experience, Conscious Me will align all three lands in the same way a team leader coordinates his or her team members.

During your journey you’ll discover and develop all four major parts of yourself to make sure that they are aligned and working together as a high-performance team: your mind, your body, your heart, and your consciousness. I call this team the Formies. They form the individual. They are your four mes. The Formies are YOU!

Once the Formies are fully aligned and harmoniously collaborating, you are well connected with your CORE. If we go back to the analogy of lands, you become the United States of You.

When you experience this kind of teamwork inside yourself, you are in contact with your travel destination. Whether you call it inner source, inner knowledge or intuition, it is the fountain of your energy, your creativity, your joy and love. It is the realm of your passion, the fuel that drives you. It is the place to be. It is the CORE.

Because everybody is different you might have preferences regarding the stopovers during your journey, the speed, the comfort of accommodation etc. However, it’s essential that you take responsibility for moving forwards — nobody can do this on your behalf. You are in the driver’s seat.

A word of caution before you set out. Beginning this journey means buying a one-way ticket. You only can move ahead — there is no way back. Embarking on this journey means changing yourself, regardless of how tiring the trip gets. So, take a deep breath and jump into the adventure!

WHY SET OUT FOR SELF-EXPLORATION?

Why leave everything behind and set out towards new frontiers? Here are some of the motivations that have proven to be common triggers for your fellow travellers.

Inquisitiveness and pioneering spirit

Inquisitiveness was my main motivation. What does life have to offer after all has been achieved? Isn’t there something more, I asked myself, having successfully mastered the normal course of life: a great relationship with my partner, good health, my own house in a good neighbourhood, a solid career, a decent and regular income, a well-regarded profession, good looks. What was the problem?

According to the accepted social norms, I was leading an ideal life. But my heart spoke a different language: I felt I was standing still, captured in endless repetitions, day by day, with the curve of excitement and joy flattening out. Boredom was lurking on the horizon. I felt increasingly that I was being buried alive. I longed for something different, unfamiliar insights, the exploration of new feelings and the thrill of the unknown.

Although I was usually happy with my life and had nothing to complain about, my curiosity would not allow me to stay in my comfort zone — and it was clearly a comfort zone, a quite luxurious one at that. But an inner voice was driving me on to discover new terrain. I could have gone to live abroad, to explore the world, but this didn’t appeal as I had already lived in other countries and experienced different cultures. Rather, I was attracted by a terrain I knew I could only find inside me, not out there in the world. There was a whole new universe to discover.

And so it was to be. I found an exciting wealth inside myself as soon as I caught glimpses of my true self, my CORE, diligently digging through layers of beliefs and emotional patterns that were hiding my inner world from my consciousness. I became fascinated by this journey, which made my life so smooth, deep and rewarding. There were fewer conflicts in my day-to-day encounters, waves of bliss, new bodily sensations, strengthened mental power, increased emotional clarity.

Everything comes at a price. The cost of this self-discovery journey was to let go of everything I was familiar with in order to create space for the new. It was a cumbersome endeavour that took much self-discipline and perseverance. It also required a lot of courage as I wasn’t sure whether I was making the right decisions. I don’t want to gloss over it. This journey brought me the darkest moments in my life, but I did it anyway. And I persevered, because I realized that there is no way back. And even if there had been, I wouldn’t have retreated. I did not want to return to the creeping boredom.

Search for a meaningful field of activity

A typical point of time for people to begin their self-discovery journey is right after university or at the end of a similar period of formal education. It’s like a fork in the road of their lives. Coming from a structured, familiar environment, they face uncertainty and the need to take decisions. The lucky ones know what not to do — but what should they do? This is the big question for many of us.

Zebib recalls the abyss she looked into after finishing her studies: ‘I asked myself, what should I do with my life after graduation? For a long time, I had this clear picture about my professional career: I wanted to work in sales, because I liked people. I wanted to earn a lot of money. And I wanted to work for a strong brand in order to learn as much as possible and to have an employer with status. After a sales internship at a prestigious company, I changed my mind. Working there did not FEEL good. My heart said, don’t work for a company when you don’t feel that your work is meaningful. And my mind said, you’re lacking the experience to establish your own start-up. So I was kind of stranded after graduation.

I had a lot of career opportunities, including rolling out corporate values as a member of the CEO’s office at an IT company. But I didn’t want to brainwash people with something I hadn’t developed myself, something that had been imposed on me as well. I was also offered a job as a sales representative in a pharmaceutical company in Switzerland. From the minute I walked into that office I felt I was pushing against an invisible wall. Nobody talked. People walked around, hunched over, as if they were carrying heavy loads. Everything was grey. Just grey. I felt like an alien and immediately knew I couldn’t work in such an environment.’

So there she was, with her excellent qualifications but no ambition to seize the opportunities she was offered. She was puzzled, to say the least, and decided to start her self-exploration journey in order to find out what she really wanted to do.

It doesn’t have to be that clear and dramatic, though. Young professionals or mid-career people often gradually discover that they are not fulfilled in what they do. They start to hear a little whisper that rises to an inner cry for re-orientation towards new areas of activities.

This happened to Burak after a couple of years in his first job at a retailer: ‘People suffered. The business had exploded and the legacy IT landscape couldn’t cope with the new requirements. The staff had to make up for it with workarounds, muddling through the mess. Everybody was exhausted, and I felt compelled to help with a new IT solution I was developing and rolling out. Over time it dawned on me that it would take years to fix all the problems,and I lost interest in working for a company that did nothing to support their people. One morning I lay in bed and just couldn’t motivate myself to get up. Horrible. I just couldn’t. I knew I had to do something — not only thinking about what I could do, but I had to change things. I decided to get my act together and change the whole situation — by changing myself.’

It also can happen to people in retirement age who find themselves in a vacuum. They start to reflect on what they have been doing their entire lives. Jerome remembers: ‘I had been selling Christmas decoration for decades and had built up a prosperous business. And then I began to doubt the meaning of the whole business: All this stuff — who needs it? Isn’t it just waste in a preliminary stage? I sold my business, which I wanted to do anyway because of my age. But then I wasn’t a happy and wealthy guy sitting in the Caribbean enjoying life. I felt empty, with filled pockets — how ironic. I wanted to do something meaningful. But what?’

Increase self-esteem

Many travellers suffer from a negative bias towards themselves, or even an outright inferiority complex. They tend to focus on their deficiencies and weaknesses, always seeing what they don’t have and cannot do. They are very harsh towards themselves. This phenomenon is especially prevalent among people who feel peripheral to the society they live in, e.g. for reasons of culture or ethnicity. It’s also common with unemployed people or women who have not worked for some time.

Maria from Russia is an example: ‘Back home, I felt invincible. I knew the ropes. Nobody could offend me. But here in Germany, I need to be careful. I don’t dare wear colourful clothes. I don’t want to stand out from the crowd. I feel judged all the time. In the market or shops, when I get my groceries, people ask me where I’m from. My accent tells them that I am not a local. When I say Russia, I see the disappointment in their faces. Were it France or Sweden, it would be charming and thrilling. But Russia? We are second-class citizens. I don’t want to be judged because I have a different passport. I want to inspire people as an individual, as ME. And for a long time, I wasn’t aware of how much I wanted to be seen as myself, not as a representative of a group of people. All of a sudden, I felt I needed to break free from that kind of life.’

Maria regarded her environment as hostile and suffered silently without being aware of it. In order to change her situation, she consciously changed her perspective.

Aimée from Western Africa, studying in Central Europe, had a similar starting point. She felt like an outsider in her cohort of fellow students even though it was a multinational group. She felt marginalized by the others who tried to avoid her in teamwork assignments: ‘The professors told me that I was not engaged. Some of them even asked me whether my English capabilities were sufficient to follow their lectures. I was desperate. What was wrong with me? I didn’t dare speak up and join in discussions. When I tried I felt a lump in my throat and stayed silent. Where did it come from? It was like self-sabotage. And then the truth dawned on me: I felt intimidated by being the only black person in the group. I couldn’t believe it. And I set out to end this belief with my self-exploration journey, which started by going beyond the colour of my skin.’

Struggle for appreciation

We all struggle for appreciation. In all spheres of life, we have a strong need to be heard and seen, to be appreciated. And we relish acknowledgment, even if it’s only the two words ‘Thank you’. This becomes especially obvious in a family and workplace setup. Sibyl was very engaged at work but felt increasingly exploited: ‘The more I give, the more my boss takes — and he takes it for granted. I’ve been working overtime for so long that it’s become normal. Now he also expects me to answer emails in the evenings and at the weekend. I have applied to be paid for more hours. He says he doesn’t have the budget. At the same time, he has established a new hierarchy and hired a team leader no one really needs. I feel like I’m being tricked.’ Her frustration fired Sibyl up for action. She decided to end this unsatisfactory situation. She was determined to become more assertive and decisive. And she knew that she had to become stronger from inside.

Cedric felt helpless: ‘I couldn’t get my point across. We needed to change our strategy to cover new cloud solutions. We needed to jump on digitization. If not, our company wouldn’t make it in the long run. But my boss wouldn’t listen to me. He thought I was a loser. He didn’t even make the effort to talk about my arguments. I was so furious after a meeting that I smashed the mouse of my PC against the wall and couldn’t help crying.’

This incident kicked Cedric out of his comfort zone and put him on track of his self-discovery journey towards becoming stronger from inside and starting to live a self-determined life.

The struggle for appreciation often starts with the assumption that we have to get it from people around us. This assumption changes during your journey as we discover that the source of appreciation resides on the inside.

Inspiring leadership

During times of change we are often faced with uncertainty regarding the future. This is positive, since uncertainty provides space for our own ideas. It’s like a vacuum we can fill, a huge playground where we can experiment.

Maria has a leadership role. She is thrilled by the options she has in times of huge changes. She wants to make new things work, although she sometimes feels overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenge. She asked herself: ‘How can I do more with the same number of people without