Life is a workshop
A special encounter with the other and with myself
Menorca, August 2019. My friend Clara from Barcelona is coming over for two days. I look forward. We haven’t seen each other in five years. We met at an international event at the time. My life was in turmoil at that moment. I just barely drowned, I could always come up to take a breath. She traveled the world to teach, I thought for her own company at the time. In my experience, she was successful and full of self-confidence.
Conflict Active
In Menorca we go on the road together. We talk a lot, swim and enjoy. I listen, observe and evaluate. Clara now lives in Mallorca, in a small house near a large house, with a vegetable garden and various animals. It turns out she was working for a school at the time. There she was fired and she no longer works as a trainer. When I ask her about it, she first says: “In South America I don’t teach anymore, because it’s a mess.” But also in Europe, contacts had ended in conflicts. “I am an envious machine,” she explains. She tells extensively about the various conflicts with people she worked with, such as her boss and various contact persons. I’m surprised there’s no end to all the similar conflict stories she shares in so much detail and that she routinely concludes with “who cares?”. As an observer, I see that she is still conflict-active and is processing things.
Desire for recognition
Her current goal is to get confirmation for her work from doctors, she says. This shocks me: such a conscious woman, whose main goal is to get recognition for her work? I answer: “Doctors have a certain trajectory, that’s where their focus is and then it stops. In my experience, the follow-up process and how the patient feels afterwards is not the doctor’s job. Is it an idea to collect your beautiful experiences and write them down?” No, she hates that, she says. “Then you shouldn’t do this, can you film it?” I ask. She wants to give training and treat people again. “Yes, just put your focus here. Would this be your goal?” She gives some examples. A customer is in pain 24/7 and after her treatment the pain is gone. I share my experiences: “The first day the customer is 100% happy, the second day 50% and the third day the customer has forgotten that he was in pain 24/7.”
Success is what you are
Wanting to get recognition from an authority may be the pain of the recognition you didn’t get from your parents. In Clara’s experience, her parents had remained teenagers who really didn’t want to have children and didn’t want to be responsible. She felt unwanted. Funny, because she lives her mother’s wish: independent, no children, alone and a lot of travel, just as her mother would have liked. During our conversations she can also make this link herself, great. Clara thought she was successful. And this is of course true, but not for the customer. Success is what you are. Everything you do, you do for yourself.
Life is a workshop
I smile and spontaneously receive a five-year evaluation. How I have grown, happy and relaxed, I think now. I am happy with myself and full of energy. I dare to say: ‘ Marjolein I am so proud of you. What mountains you have moved, how clever when you look at where you come from and how you are doing now. Dear Marjolein, never doubt yourself, you are doing so well. Enjoy your children, you are also a whopper in this, see how beautiful they are. Life is a workshop, you meet in the moment you are allowed to meet. Have faith in this, do the things you like, everything you do you do for yourself. To be a more beautiful, better person, wife, trainer and especially mother. Your goal is to grow in consciousness, to be true to yourself in everything you do and in every choice you make.”
I want to say to myself and everyone:
‘Good luck, I believe in you!’
Personal question
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Life is a workshop
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