Back to the School Bench

Oh wow! Where to publish this?

It definitely is about a change of lifestyle, but being it my lifestyle it is very personal as well, and it is a challenge... that makes it at least three of my blogs where it would fit in. As any of those is as good as the other, I chose the one that jumped into my mind first: Lifestyle.

 As of today I am officially back at school. I just collected my books for learning on how to become a Personal Trainer.

A good decade after I had promised myself to never ever do an exam again, ... I am putting myself into the situation of taking an exam again. They call it assessment these days, but I guess it's pretty much the same. At age 50 I seem to think it a good idea to take the risk of being told that I am rubbish in what I am doing... and the person who will tell me might well be at the age of a hypothetical child of mine if not younger. At university it was bad enough to get the verdict from an old-ish person... oh what am I doing again?

At least this time I know what I want this exam... sorry assessment, for. My own business has just come a bit closer. I hope it's worth it!

So here I am, like a little schoolgirl at the beginning of the new term, looking for a nice folder to put everything in, and organising my timetable. Oh please, cross fingers for me that I won't open these books and don't understand a word that is said in them.

Will keep you posted.

Extreme Challenges and Headfakes

By extreme challenge I don’t necessarily mean climbing Mount Everest or travelling to the South Pole. I mean the sort of thing that you and I can achieve by our own devices, like running a marathon, creating a work of art, or going on stage. These are the things that need guts to decide for and determination to follow through; the things about which people will ask ‘why on earth would you want to do that’... and although the only valid answer is: “Because I want to!” one will have a list of reasons of which one hopes it will satisfy the inquirer.

My challenge is to take part in a bodybuilding competition. For the first time in my life I will be on stage, in a bikini, wearing fake tan, and I will have to give a 90 second performance to music. I am 50 years old, I am not a musical person, and I don’t know what bothers me more.

If I would be asked for the ‘Why?’ my official answer would be: I always wanted to know how I would feel on stage. I cannot sing, I cannot memorise well, so singer and actor are out of the question, but I am good at my sport, and I want to show the world that it is possible to become healthy and fit even if one is past the best-by date.

The unofficial answer would be: Because I want to! I want my 5 minutes of fame! I want to know how far I can push this and if I might even be able to win! Oh yes! I don’t just want to participate, I want to win!

The headfake would be: I want my legs!

A headfake is a task in which one does one thing to achieve another. Good teachers provide headfakes for their students: “Let’s build a robot so you learn mechanics”. What they actually learn, is the boring skill of programming, and they easily do so because the task is fun. My headfake doesn’t provide fun, but a good reason to keep focused. See, I always was yearning for beautiful legs, well shaped and sexy. Life provided me with a substantial layer of padding from hip to ankle, and I never managed to keep my determination during seasonal food binges, and emotional rollercoaster rides like winter depression and monthly cycles.

All of the above makes this a valid extreme challenge, I guess.

... the more that this sort of thing has quite an impact on my lifestyle and hence on my social environment. Let me turn back the clock to 2004 when I innocently started the whole ‘let’s push the envelope’ thing, and when I had no idea on how many levels this battle would take place.

I was two stone fatter, unfit, suffering from back and headaches, and most of all; I was suffering lack of confidence. This is not a good state to be in when wanting to change things which would affect other people’s lives, too. ‘Time management’ became a much used term. The aim was, to get as much as possible out of my time for myself, and to still keep everybody else happy. In self help books this is called ‘keeping the balance’.

Well, I failed! I failed because I followed stereotypes.

I never asked: ‘Whose or what balance am I keeping?’ Only when I start writing about these things I become focused and can see those questions. The intuitive choice of words of the first draft, reveal a lot.

‘The aim was to get as much as possible out of my time for myself ...‘

‘... and to still keep everybody else happy.’

This means a balance between me and others, and not a balance within my life’s tasks.

There is a significant difference between the two. The first means ‘trying things out, but compromising should I lose control over my relationships. The second does not consider other people; it is the impartial focus on me.

I failed because I mixed up the two.

Let’s turn the clock back even further to the time before 2004. I remember my mum and grandma talking about people, who had learned skills and achieved things everybody envied, and then they did ‘one silly thing’ which pushed it too far, and they lost everything. Back then I believed that those people must be mad, and now I find myself in a similar position.

I was a master of adjusting my lifestyle to others and I received appreciation and praise. It made me feel good, but it used all the time I now need to fulfil my own dreams and needs. Now, that I have put my focus on me and hence am tipping the balance, I would wish that others would do that too, adjusting their lives to mine in order to keep it level.

Well, this is not how it works, is it?

People are not interested in changing their lives to match mine... who would have thought...? Moreover, people got inspired by the idea of personal improvement and began to change, too; just into their own direction, not mine.

I failed because I forgot that I CANNOT determine other people’s actions.

However much I might hope, expect, or ask of people: It is THEIR decision to take! And they will take those decisions according to their own constraints, many of which I don’t have a clue that they exist. They have work lives, friends, and families, all putting the pressure on. They are taking their decisions as much as I am taking mine. All my balancing acts to keep people happy, and hence them in my life, were MY choices and thus voluntary. I cannot blame them for holding me back.

I failed because there is no balance to keep in relationships! There is only a balance that I can keep within myself.

Let me put the above into a nutshell: This matter is not about balance, it is about relationships, decisions and blame. Whether we just topple along, negotiate, or compromise, none of it will guarantee that a relationship will remain stable. There are too many unknown parameters, and even the known ones are changing continuously. The only thing that I can control is ME!

My previous lifestyle had left me sick, scared, unconfident, and with a minor job and I decided to make a change to the better for myself. During the past years, I lost the fear of being embarrassed, and of getting old, but the one fear that rules them all I did not dare tackling: The fear of being alone!

Extreme challenges are limited in time. If a life is robustly settled in a relationship scene, this period will not change anything. If there are instabilities, this period will reveal it all. It is impossible to succeed in an extreme challenge, while trying to cover-up, and there is no going back, once it has started. 

The first small changes already had inspired some friends to leave the scene, would bigger changes challenge my close relationships? On the other hand: If a relationship only exists because I am desperately clinging to it, is it worth it?

I had not planned for those questions to arise, and surely not now. In a few weeks time I have to be on stage and I am questioning my entire existence. That is not good timing! Well, the timing comes with the subject, doesn’t it? While unanswered, those questions held me back in achieving my dreams. Now that the challenge has put the cards on the table, I don’t find them daunting anymore. I now know that my headfake is not ‘the legs’ the headfake is ‘to find the person within myself, who I really like, who I can trust and rely on, so that others can do the same.’

I might not have failed after all!

And another photoshoot

Oh, I could get used to this! Thinking four years back when Babul had to shove the camera into my face wherever I looked to get me used to that thing, I now just love to flirt with it. Barry 'Baz' Crabtree, was my latest victim. He wanted to do some experiments with light, and I got to show off my latest purchase, a coat I got from Camden Market during the last London visit. Watch out for 'Sai Sai' if you like the goth/punk/lolita inspired look.The blouse is from there as well and it can be dressed up with some lacy ruffles for an 18th century fashion style vampyre-ish outfit. This more dramatic style would be something to follow up on in a future shoot.

By: Barry 'Baz' Crabtree

By: Barry 'Baz' Crabtree
I wore this combined with '7 For all Mankind' - Kimmie in a dark wash for a night out in London:
Fabulous!

By: Barry 'Baz' Crabtree

Oh my, this feels like going to get a few more props. I am just not in the mood for 'normal' clothes anymore. It seems that 'quirky' is the new me! Yay!

On that note: Have a fabulously crazy spring!
Love









More Pictures of the shoot:
My Picasaweb



Find Sai Sai at:
Units 30a and 36a
London, Camden, Stable Market, Chalkfarm Road, NW18PB
lolisaisai @hotmail.com (please remove white space before @)
lizhi_lz @yahoo.com (please remove white space before @)

I did it!

I faced my biggest fear! No, not spiders. I faced the one person who always managed to throw me off balance. However much I tried, prepared, and practiced, he always managed to find the right button to bring me close to tears - unfortunately not tears of joy they were. Oh, those big strands of nerves this man has cost me when I had to propose or ask for something - and not just my nerves, dear hubbies as well. Poor Detlef had to listen through all the reasoning, the pros the cons, the 'on how to phrase it' over and over again, before I dared entering the lion's den. This man has more lines in my book than anybody else. Maybe I should even thank him, as otherwise the book would be rather short.

As I type, I have known him for more than ten years, and whenever I listened to conversations he was involved in I understood his point of views, they basically were my own. I understood his decisions, I would have taken the same. I could even understand the little quirks and oddities in his lifestyle. As soon as I had to talk to the bloke, all I wished was for the ground to open to please swallow me. My mum used to be able to reduce me back to my teenage years, in front of him I became a toddler.

About eight years in, I was talking to my mentor and I will never forget the moment: After a lot of fretting about all sorts of stuff I eventually got this bright spark. It literally felt bright in my head when I all of a sudden knew that all the fretting boiled down to one thing: 'I don't want to be scared anymore', I said and then I broke into tears.

It seems that I did a lot of crying back then. Even as a child I was known to live really close to the waterworks... but what can you do? It all happens on an emotional level, which in its very nature is rather uncontrollable. I guess, at that moment in this little room I understaood how the two are related. Whenever the fear turns into the feeling of being trapped the water starts flowing as a natural response. Others might become aggressive, I cry. Because it is humiliating, depression kicks in, self esteem goes down, vicious circle. 

I decided there and then that I didn't want that anymore. And the process started - how could it be differently - with a worry: on one hand I liked to be emotional as it works on a positive level as well. I was known as the cheery, bubbly one. Somebody who inspires and makes others happy. Would I pour the child with the bath? Would I lose the happy me by abandoning the sad me? Would I become a dull, numb bitch?

Well, I took the risk and worked my way through the issues my little brain threw at me. It was hard, it was satisfying, I lost some friends along the way but I gained new ones as well. Turns out that if people are the right people for you, they will stick with you, and the others will be better off without you, and you will be better off without them. Although it sounds sad, it actually is a win-win. Have I become a dull, numb bitch? I am sure some people will think so. But as a matter of fact: I don't care anymore! There are still plenty of others who think that I am inspirational and gorgeous - bless them! I was worried that I might end up alone, but I didn't. In contrary, since I feel rooted in myself, I seem to be more appealing to people than ever before... who would have thought that? 

Three years of soul searching and endless lines of writing I needed to find this out. And it is not just a conclusion that I repeat like a mantra to be able to live it. It is in me now, with every single cell of my body I can feel that I truly believe (in) myself. And today I got the proof that this is not just an illusion. The culmination point of all the hard work condensed in one phone call. 

The outcome? Hmmm, how can I describe this? You know that I am a girl of colour. So imagine my early years in a colour scheme. Every build-up to a conversation was shades of purple, depending on the respective stage more raspberry for rage, or more blue for depressed. Then the conversation itself usually starting on a pale orange with purple spells, to then rise to a deep orange via red with flames, to then numb me in a dark burgundy. Then the aftermath - ash grey, imagine 'Iceland after the Volcano' grey, lasting for days until it eventually turned into a mid-blue which usually meant: leave me alone, avoiding situations like this.

This time it was different. Actually, there was one little slightly orange deep breath at the beginning and then there were a lot of yellows and greens... and at the end? White. Really! Nothing! A bit of pride, yes! But nothing loud or emotional. For the first time the feeling of being peers... 

It seems that in this whole process I eventually learned to put a value onto myself, which allows me to negotiate. I think I  am starting to grasp the concept. It is too simple to blame the other side. It was never his problem, was it? It always was mine. If I feel inadequate I cannot expect others to come down to my level, and I surely should not try to pull them down. I however can make my way up to their level. As soon as I had found my value I didn't feel inadequate anymore. And it seems that my newly gained negotioation skill might even have won me a new friend.

If I were to give a speech...

First published in 2009

If I were to give a speech - This would be it!

Hello, and thank you for having me here. My name is Rika Nauck and my father in law would be proud to hear that I am introducing myself as a ‘dilettante’. So here I am: Rika Nauck, dilettante!

When I was still young, ‘looking pretty’ worked well for me to achieve things, I nevertheless felt the strain of having to be successful in something. I just couldn’t decide what that might be, since I had much too many interests. In his calm and charming way my father in law explained to me, that if I wanted to, I could divide people into two groups; one group is good in just one thing, but pretty useless in everything else – they are called nerds. The other group knows just a bit about everything, but they are not very good in any particular area – these are the dilettantes.

Unfortunately it’s the nerds who get Nobel prices and become CEOs of companies, while dilettantes usually end up in a support role. They are able brew coffee, proof-read a paper, re-design the office space and manage the expenses all at the same time, and since they lack fancy certificates and awards, secretary or business support, as it is called these days, is one of the obvious choices of profession for them.

And here comes the part where I usually get a lot of booing from one half of the population and a lot of Yays from the other one, and I’m fully aware that I might be beaten up for this. However, I am claiming that nerds are mainly male and dilettantes are mainly female. There are exceptions – I give you that - and we even have names for them: It’s wimps… and …bitches.

But, whatever the gender: nerds fall into a crisis when threatened in their field, while dilettantes feel threatened in any field they touch. Hence dilettantes have a low self esteem, and usually need many years to accept their role and to stop competing with nerds; they just won’t win.

I needed another 20 years after I had spoken to my father in law, to eventually acknowledge that I am a dilettante and that this is the best thing that could happen to me. I might not be rich – yet – but with the knowledge I have accumulated over the years I can pull myself out of any misery. All that we dilettantes have to do, is to find the niches in which we can outsmart the nerds, and the aim of this talk is to inspire you to trust your set of skills. You can do more than you think!

Take networking! It is categorized as soft skill – what in nerdy terms means: not worth the effort! However, they do network, they just call it differently, and they are doing it brilliantly. Nerds are organized in professional scenes which are fine tuned networks with a picking order, information on who knows what, and calling in favours is an absolutely common practice. If you can play your scene you will get far.

Dilettants despise of all that: for them this means favourism, and using people for profit – and hence they only network for social reasons, because then one can call it 'helping each other'.

When, some years ago, I wanted to go to a workshop on networking which was organized by the women’s network in my workplace, I needed authorization of my boss in order to attend. I was nervous because I never had asked for such a thing before, braced myself and started uttering stuff of ‘women’s network’ and ‘workshop’, and got as a response: ‘Ah, is this your knitting club? Yeah well, you can go.’

Knitting club? I knew he was joking, but that this phrase crossed his mind at this moment in time, and being in a working environment – I think that is telling, and  I can’t even blame him. He is working in a male environment and that means that one ‘moves in a scene’ rather then ‘belongs to a network’. So firstly, there is a clash in terminology. Secondly, he is a nerd by definition; he has a blind spot for these things.

We dilettantes are actually brilliant networkers, but we don’t know it because we are rubbish in defining what we mean by that. We are so scared that we might be blamed for taking advantage of people and that we might have something dubious or shifty in mind, that we rather not commit to it.

Heather White – she is the CEO of Magic of Networking and gave this workshop I was attending – she defined it brilliantly. Networking is like throwing a stone into a lake and causing ripples on the water. They will reach the other side to be picked up; they will mingle with ripples caused by others and some of those will reach you. It is a lovely image and it basically means what goes round comes round.

If you would encourage picking orders, and pushing people, you most likely would find yourself very quickly  in the company of similar minded individuals, and hence in a rather unpleasant environment – well, except if that is what you were after.

The most successful networks however, are the ones which are non-intrusive. You introduce yourself, you leave your name and your card with contact details; you have dropped your stone.  You let people introduce themselves and collect their cards, you caught a ripple. That’s it; the rest is wait and see. The rest of the networking is done after you met people. They talk with others, you talk with others, and at one point proposition and demand will find their match. Win-win for everybody.

Networks go further than scenes; they look outside the box, they need nerds and dilettantes equally. And see - alone we are just that: Nerds and dilettantes. Once we are connected in a network and starting to compliment each other we become ‘Experts’ and ‘Connectors’. All the knowledge an expert has is worth nothing if nobody knows that it is there.

In a world as connected as ours these days, experts can’t afford anymore to only work their scene and to stick between themselves. And I don’t mean experts scientifically. If plumbers only communicate with plumbers because that is what they like to talk about, they will run out of business. They may need information on how technology is changing, or how to run the business more efficiently, or how to find customers in their area to reduce cost of driving. I may be in dire need of a plumber – which I actually am … so if we both would just know somebody who knows …

Things are moving quickly, Innovation is what is asked for these days, and that needs communication between the scenes; it needs people who travel these universes and who know just enough of many things to be able to bring the right people into contact.

So in the end of the day the message should not be:

Nerds VS. Dilettantes

but

Experts AND Connectors

Together we are strong!

Related Links: 
Knitting 21st Century Style
A Network is a Home

And THAT's how it’s DONE – Networking Strategy

Networking – A Serious Game