Short introduction about myself
Hi, my name is Ilja, also known as SwissCoach. I am 37 years old and live in Zurich Switzerland. In the past, I lived in different countries such as South Africa, Australia and Asia. I love kite surfing, playing soccer and tennis. Besides sports, my focus is all about personal development and blockchain. Since English is not my native language, please excuse my bumpy English! :-)
Why I’m on steemit?
My intention for being on Steemit is to create value by posting information about personal development. Initially, it won’t be all my created content but from resources which I personally like, because it enriched my life and I would like to enrich your life by sharing this content. The people I came across first the in this space of personal development are Tony Robbis and Jim Rohn. I hope you enjoy this kind of content!
Some more background information
As a teenager I needed to make a choice - a career choice. I had no clue whatsoever, what I would like to do, in terms of career choice. The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to go to school anymore at this time. Still being at high school, I did various job practicums to get clarity on what I should do next. I simply couldn’t find anything which I truly felt connected with. At the age of 16, I finally found myself sitting in an office of a career counsellor. After having filled out some random tests and a couple of sessions with an so called expert, it was clear that I should become a chef. A chef?! Okay, why not…
Becoming a chef
Not knowing what else to do, as an 15 year old, I followed the career councillor’s advice. Although I really enjoyed cooking, being in the kitchen and preparing all this delicious menus, I knew within the first 12 months that this will not be my ultimate destination. I accomplished my apprentice successfully after three years just for the sake of having a degree. The question however was what to do next…
The tech bubble
Back then, IT (information technology industry) was a very exciting topic and everyone was “Talking IT”. It was a huge trend back then just before the IT-bubble busted in the year 2000. Life in hospitality is tough – especially when you’re not passionate about it. Moreover, I created the naive believe, while being up to 16 hours a day in the kitchen, that working in an office must be heaven on earth. So I looked for possibilities how I could combine the office world with IT. Finally having found a company who offered me a practicum, I then did a second apprenticeship as a Mediamatician, which was exactly what I wanted at this point in time – a combination of Marketing, IT, Business and Print Media. When I accomplished also that second appreciates successfully (another 4 years) the owner offered me to become a business associate. At this time, I was 24 years old. Despite this huge opportunity, something didn’t sit right with it, so I refused and changed the employer.
Corporate world – a “dream” became reality
Somehow I thought that would never ever happen to me – a dream become true – I finally ended up working for SAP, the world’s number one software corporation in enterprise resource planning and business intelligence. While working fulltime for my favourite employer, back then, I also did my Bachelor Degree in Economics. I had an outstanding career as a channel development manager ahead of me. An amazing salary and decent fringe benefits, that’s all I needed – now I can settle. Well, that’s what I thought…
Something wasn’t right!
However, the reality was that there was this emptiness within, something was missing. Since I was a child, I loved to ask questions. I was always curious, and as an adult, this “thing” didn’t disappear. I made people think and inspired them by asking questions, over and over again. This led me to rethink my career from scratch. I wanted to find an occupation where I could ask questions all day long, helping people by doing so and even better – making a living out of it! When I was 30 years old, I went again to a career counsellor, having done beforehand already my own intense researches for a couple years. I had very clear criteria what type of person I would consider this time, to get clarity about my next major steps in my career and therefore life. It needed to be a professional with at least 30 years’ experience in his field and he needed to have the reputation as an expert in his industry.
Another disappointment and opportunity at the same time
I finally managed to find “my” career counsellor. After having invested several thousand dollars in my counselling, and without getting the clarity I was actually looking for, I knew one thing with 100% certainty. This job can be done better than what I experienced. Not only that, I also knew, by asking the “right” questions I would get the “right” answers out of the people. I knew - with a different approach, and the right education, together with my personal and professional experience, I would be able to help people who are in the same or similar situation.
Your mission – my passion
That’s when I decided that this is my ultimate mission; to help people to tap into their highest potential by doing what they really enjoy doing. If you do what you truly love, your life falls into place, that’s my attitude and that’s what drives me every single day. I knows if I would have had the “right mentor” or coach back when I was 15, things would have been completely different today. I would not have gone through so many tough times without knowing what he really wanted. Ultimately, I would have saved myself a tremendous amount of time and money. This brings us back to his initial question – doesn’t it? “Why would you wait 15 years more or even longer…?” As a result of my personal history, I created the brand SwissCoachTM, a coaching method, based on a 5 step framework to facilitate individuals identifying their (career) path. In addition to this method, I invented a system called MWITM (Mental Weight IndexTM) that allows you to identify and eliminate brain fog, (limiting beliefs and negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, grief, shame, anger, guilt and depression); mental states which more and more people suffer about.
Yours truly
Ilja
