I HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE

I did it - my very first Change & Evolve Letter!

Hello and a very warm welcome to the very first Change & Evolve Letter!

Is it strange to start a newsletter with a piece about why I am starting my own newsletter? Maybe, but then I suppose I am a strange person. So here it goes… I am writing a newsletter because I think a lot about many different things and I love to write - that could be a pretty good combination to get started.

I have been thinking about writing a newsletter for such a long time and until now I never dared to actually do it. I have been haunted be the same thoughts that I assume almost everyone goes through that goes on a journey like this - or perhaps it’s just me who is terrified. What always prevented me from actually doing it (until today) were the following question I kept asking myself:

Why should anyone subscribe to my newsletter?

Why should anyone want to read anything that I have to say?

What if people think what I write is bad?

What if I run out if things to write about?

I don’t have the answers to these questions (yet) and will have to leave that to my readers (yes, I am hoping there will be some) to judge. Like anyone creating something, I am hoping for feedback, suggestions for interesting topics and with that giving me the opportunity to improve the content consistently.

I want to take todays first Change & Evolve Letter to tell you a bit about me, not out of vanity but so you know who is writing this and perhaps even understand why I am doing this. In the course I will probably find out why I am doing this for myself as well…

I was born 1967 in Germany (and no, you need not worry that I will give you my whole life story here). Even if I was born in Germany, and live there at the moment, I was raised in a very international environment going to international schools in the Netherlands, as well as an England. For some reason I cannot really explain, England is what I call home. That is probably why I am writing this in my second language, English and not in my first language German. And that's already enough about my childhood for now.

In my professional life I did not only change jobs, I changed professions - several times. Here in Germany this is not well perceived and has made my professional life challenging at times.

That's probably why I mainly worked for international companies. I started off as a travel agent, went to public relations from there and switched to marketing. I then somehow ended up in sales and business development. I did interims management for several companies. I was GM Europe for a company for a while and can claim that I was highly successful in what I did and not always happy (but then who is).

I do not have a university degree and learned what I know on the job (or actually the many jobs I did). What helped me to stand my ground is my insatiable curiosity and that I am an extremely quick learner. Most of the time I enjoyed what I was doing and then then I noticed something that all the jobs, as different as they were, had something in common. Ok, the common denominator was me and what I was doing. It was something that always came to me very naturally, and that was helping (or coaching) people I worked with to succeed. So at a certain point, I decided to make that my profession, which I did. After I had been on my own journey of personal growth I discovered the Enneagram and I had finally found what I was looking for to support what I am doing with such passion.

And that's how the name Change & Evolve (we all do that constantly but often not consciously and with deliberation) came up and I started my work as a coach/consultant/practitioner and supporting people in their transformation. So today I work as a full time iEQ9 Enneagram practitioner, which I absolutely love, because it somehow never feels like work. I also still also consults companies, and I enjoy that tremendously as well. No matter what I do I need to work with people.

So that's a bit about my professional life. So what about what moves me, what are my motivations and the things I love to do? I have ALWAYS loved to write. Since I was a child I journaled. Correction, I didn't really journal, I just wrote things down to never read them again, simply to get them out of my head - something I do until this day. I also have this great love for poetry. Something I've enjoyed since I was eight years old (Thank you Mrs. Neubelt for introducing me to Robert Frost and igniting this everlasting love affair with poetry). It’s something that I had lost for quite a while though, but especially last year in 2020, poetry, came back into my life full throttle and I did a poetry challenge on YouTube where I read one poem on every day of that year, which was absolutely wonderful and got me through that year of madness. It gave me the opportunity to discover new and old poets and amazing poetry that I had not known. Apart from that I love to be outside, walking, running, cycling, hiking. I adore good food and love to cook. Traveling has been an important part of my life and I miss it dearly.

So what can you expect from the Change & Evolve Letter? Firstly, why Change & Evolve? Well, that’s the name of my business and I am very sure that this newsletter will change and evolve over time. I am aiming to write on a weekly basis, and it will be about many different things. I will write about personal development or personal growth - my own and that of others I have had the honour to accompany over the years. I am a passionate mother of two amazing children that are grown now, a daughter and a son, so it will be at times be about parenting and motherhood with all it’s joys and pains. I will write about relationships, about love, about everyday things that challenge us and that are part of our lives. Essentially it can be anything that I think about, that moves me, that keeps me up at night.

So bear with me and forgive me if at times there are topics that are not in your focus of interest. I'm always open to topics and suggestions of things to write about. It will be mainly about personal experiences and with this of course personal opinions. As I am passionate about music you will often find music videos or references to music in my newsletter as sometimes others can say certain things so much better than I can. Like this one:

I would like to thank you again for joining me on this journey and I am excited where this will go over time.

Wishing you a happy weekend

Yours

Tanja

If you would like to connect with me I would be happy to take the time for a speed coaching call that you can reserve right here.