I grew up in a small ( 4,000 residents ) town right in the middle of Germany as the oldest of 3 kids.
We had a very traditional German family set up: My mom as the family manager looking after us kids
as well as our house and my dad as the bread-earner in a highly-paid job.
My dad taught us kids, that it is very important to have good education, work hard, get a good
and well paid job and create yourself a decent financial stability. Don’t spend everything you earn,
better save the money for later or invest it in long-term assets ( like education ). It has definitely
taught me, to be very careful with money and think about new purchases twice. ( Do I really need that? )
My mom was responsible for our upbringing and development. She is a superstar when it comes to organising
and can juggle several things at once ( life can be hard with 3 kids ) while always staying calm.
She taught us how to manage everyday life, like cooking, being clean and tidy, to behave well in public and a lot more.
She is diligent, incredibly caring and often works so much to the benefit of others that she forgets to care for herself.
I had a very good and protected childhood. Family was and still is the safest place I can imagine.
A lot of my core values evolved from what my parents taught me, others have been added or amended in recent years through experiences, and after I have moved to New Zealand to live with my partner.
I have defined these main core values for myself:
- Family & Love: My family is my biggest blessing in life. They have given me a solid foundation by providing me with love, care, life lessons, values, independence and so many of the qualities that have made me the person I am today. Depths matters more than breadth. I prefer building intimate and deep relationships with a few people rather than many and spend more time with them. Family and good friends have my highest priority.
- Health: This is one of my newer but important core values. It has been added a few years ago after I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. I know what it feels like to be in a miserable health condition and not being able to manage everyday life. Everything around me suddenly became secondary. The one and only thing I wanted, was to feel ‘normal’ and healthy. I have learned the hard way about how important it is to treat your body and mind well. I now exercise almost daily, eat a balanced diet, sleep and rest adequately and enjoy life.
- Stability & Structure: At times life can become very chaotic because things are changing all the time beyond our control. I try to create a stable backbone that helps me to get through these times more easily: a financially secure position, cultivating stable relationships to friends and family, establishing routines, trying to make smart decisions.
- Curiosity: It’s fun to know things and life is fascinating. I acknowledge and try to understand things.
- Joyfulness: Life is short. I try to do things that bring joy and try to limit doing things I hate. It is important to also enjoy the small things in life.
- Diligence: I work hard to finish a job and try do do it well. I aim to always try my best, be eager to learn, be persevere and push through obstacles. I plan ahead if necessary.
- Calmness: I aim to stay calm in any situation. I can’t control everything around me and I can’t control the reaction of other people. I try to respond with peace and calmness. Anger does not help!
- Consistency: I develop routines and form habits that become my second nature. I try to create processes and frameworks that are consistent in producing meaningful results.
I believe that my greatest strengths that will help me through my learning and career development are my patience, my eagerness and commitment to learn new things and my self-discipline to push through tough times without giving up. If there is an obstacle and my intellectual skills can’t solve the problem, my discipline will jump in and help me push through it. Past work mates often valued my helpfulness, reliability, calmness and humour ( I am mainly a sarcastic person, though. ).
I may certainly struggle at times with my self-doubt and my inner voice telling me that I am not good or smart enough. I tend to set myself high standards which are sometimes too hard to achieve and this leads to frustration. Receiving bad feedback often enhances my feeling of self-doubt and not being good enough and sometimes makes me feel more insecure. I am also not a very creative and engaging writer. But I am very open to learn and practice any techniques that can help me shake off my self-doubt and become a better writer.
I have not had many experiences so far working as part of a team on the same project. In the last 6 years I worked as an Account Manager and have been in teams where everyone worked on their own tasks. However, 2 years ago we did a team building activity and went to the ‘Escape Room’ in Wellington with our work team of 12 people. Some of us had been in an escape room before, but with a smaller group of people. So, without any preparation beforehand, we all went into this room and it went totally wrong! Everyone was running around and did their own thing. No communication with each other. Some people ( including myself ) got completely lost about what was going on, gave up and just watched the others who chaotically tried to solve the puzzles and escape from the room. We didn’t use any strategies at all and this is why we failed to get out of the room in time. The strategies I would try to use next time is to sit together in the team before a project starts and to talk about the upcoming problem. I think it also helps, if everyone has a set role/job within a team and knows what he/she is supposed to do. In my escape room example, I think it would have helped to nominate people for different roles: e.g. a leader, the seekers, the information gatherer, the communicator etc.