The summits of my life E-Book

Annika Zinke

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 243

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

On the journey to find yourself, you will repeatedly encounter obstacles. Some obstacles are easy to overcome, while others you cannot overcome without a fight. We can expect a constant up and down, and not just in the realm of our emotions. The struggle to develop, to learn to love and appreciate ourselves, coupled with a wide range of experiences and trains of thought. Where are we and where do we want to go in life? These are questions that many people ask themselves and that I have also asked myself time and again. Even if there is never just one right answer, there is at least one path for each individual that they themselves feel is perfect.

Leseprobe

Foreword

The summits of my life... a title that describes me well in many respects: It's not just my passion for hiking that has taken me to a few peaks in my life so far, I've also had to put up with the odd climb and many an effort in my personal development. Where it goes uphill, it also goes downhill again, and so the path to oneself is probably never a permanent ascent. Life is characterized by the many ups and downs that you experience and have to overcome in a certain way. You can't expect your own development to go steadily uphill and only receive success and good encouragement. Just like a hike, the path to the top can be very strenuous and every now and then you may think about giving up and turning back. However, you shouldn't let this negativity get the better of you; it's much more important to take a deep breath and keep moving forward until you finally reach the summit. It is certainly the positive experiences that provide you with the necessary motivation and encourage you to stay on the ball, but as the saying goes: you grow with your tasks. The tasks may be the setbacks that await you on the other side of the summit, because just because you've reached the top once doesn't automatically mean you can't fall back again. It is particularly important in such situations that you don't stagnate and resign yourself to this fact due to habits and comfort. On the contrary, you should start the journey back up again, no matter how difficult this struggle can sometimes be. Especially because this is a battle that we often fight not with others, but with ourselves.

On the way to finding yourself, you will have some nice and some not so nice experiences. Not every day is like the other, one day you could, metaphorically speaking, tear out trees and the next you just lie on the couch with no motivation. No matter how perfect life seems to others, everyone has to struggle with these kinds of issues. Quite often we only see the flawless side. I mean, let's take a look at what is presented to us every day on social media: the beautiful, perfect world in which everything runs perfectly, you are a person without rough edges and in which every dream is fulfilled without effort. If you think about it more closely, you immediately realize that this cannot be the reality. At first glance, my life also seems perfect to many people and not that I have anything to complain about, but I also have my baggage to carry. The path to my current self was rocky, I often needed a lot of strength, a strong will and, above all, courage. Courage to believe in myself and not give up, no matter what others thought of me and possibly still think. Courage to keep climbing even though I didn't have the air to do so, and courage to let go of people who didn't do me or my soul any good. For a long time, I have also only shared the beautiful experiences of my life, but that is about to change. With everything I am going to tell you below, I am getting naked. Not in the sense of physical nudity, but on a mental and spiritual level. I never thought I would share my life story with others, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. I liked the idea of using my experiences to motivate other people, knowing that I am not alone and that many others have had similar experiences, because I too would have wished from time to time to be able to take experiences from others as a guide.

With this in mind, I hope you enjoy reading and always remember this:

"Most people are as happy as they set out to be."

Abraham Lincoln

Introduction

Where do I start?

It's a paradox to put a question like that at the beginning of a book, isn't it? Basically, it just describes what's going on in my head at the moment. All the thoughts, feelings, worries, fears, but also beautiful moments that haunt me day after day. Some of them I can organize well, others I have the feeling that they are literally eating me up, which usually manifests itself in me just sitting there staring holes in the air while the craziest scenarios circle back and forth in my head. These are the battles that I fight with myself on some days and that I always need a while to finally win. No matter how often people close to you try to talk you down at such times...in the end, phrases like "Don't worry about it" or "You're thinking too much" have never had the expected result. So with this in mind: welcome to the life of an "overthinker", as they say these days.

A nice Anglicism: "overthinking". A condition that catches up with you in many everyday situations and can make everyday life more difficult, even though you can only control it through your own consciousness. Basically, it describes the exaggerated overthinking of various everyday and life situations. Every experience, every word etc. is analyzed, interpreted and interpreted umpteen times, which often leads to things being ruined and positive experiences being blocked. There will probably not be a guide to overcoming this pattern of behavior, we are all too individual for that. But that brings us to the basic idea behind the following pages. Everything that follows onwill not only reflect a small part of my life so far, but also how I have developed step by step into a person who learns to control their thoughts and shape their self-concept for their own benefit.

But let's start from the beginning:

My name is Annika, I am 23 years young at the time of writing and I am in the middle of the life of a young adult woman. But a few years ago I would probably only have dreamed of where I am now mentally and spiritually. I'll tell you why I'm sitting here at my desk writing a book (or whatever it ends up being) in the course of the story.

The following pages are meant to reflect my path to my current self, to provide inspiration on how to find a way to heal yourself and become the person you are meant to be. I firmly believe that there is a certain path in life for every person that is laid out for them at birth. However, the aim is to recognize this and work towards living up to it. "Living up to it" may sound a little harsh, but it is probably the only way to find your final destiny. So if you are one of those people who are struggling with themselves, perhaps not yet finally satisfied with who they are and what they do, then this text might be just right for you. I don't care if I appeal to many people, the important thing is that I motivate and reach out to those who may have gone through something similar. So I hope you enjoy reading this and wish you the very best for your future. Maybe I can motivate some of you to work on yourself, strengthen your personality or even change your self-concept. Perhaps you will find a suitable method that will support you on your journey. I also needed many attempts, tried out many methods and can now say that I have found a way that makes a lot of things feel right. I say many things deliberately, because you will probably never get everything right inlife, but you don't have to. The only important thing is that you learn to deal with setbacks and perhaps take them in your stride. Because one thing is clear, every defeat gives you the chance to grow. I once read a quote that describes exactly this topic. "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." ("If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."). Even if the founder of Ford, Henry Ford, was probably referring more to his professional career, his words can also be applied to the development of one's own personality.

Carefree childhood

To make it clear where my process of self-discovery and self-development began, we have to start at a very early stage, when I was still the quiet little girl:

Childhood is a very formative but also exciting stage of life. It sounds very harsh to say that the foundations for the rest of your life are laid here, but basically there is something to it. I'm certainly not making myself very popular with that statement. Many people always try to suppress their past, thinking that their childhood may have shaped them, but that they have left it all behind them by now. This may certainly be the case in some situations, but if everyone is honest with themselves, there will always be points of contact with past events. For example, these could be moments of happiness and success that you experienced when you were young. You like to think back to them because they can strengthen your current self from time to time. However, there may also be traumatic experiences that you like to suppress, but which can catch up with you very quickly, and always when you least need or expect them. The traumas caused at that time are precisely one of the reasons why it is important that we do not allow our mental and psychological development to stagnate. In the process of growing up, we will be confronted again and again with both positive and bad memories. It is up to us to work through these. You may have heard of the healing of the inner child. The inner child describes what we learned in our childhood and what our parents, relatives, former friends etc. gave us along the way at. Depending on your experiences, it may be happy, thoughtful, anxious or sad. The following example is intended to show how the after-effects of your childhood can make themselves felt today, but does not yet relate to my story.

Let's assume you grew up in a home where talking about your own needs and feelings was always dismissed as nonsensical. This could mean that you are now a rather closed person who doesn't have the courage to open up to others. The reason for this is actually obvious, even if I'm probably going out on a limb here. From an early age, you may have been permanently led to believe that your feelings etc. are insignificant and that those around you are not interested in them anyway. This can then manifest itself in adult life through introverted and withdrawn behavior. The fear of rejection or negative reactions is simply too great, so you end up bottling up what weighs on your soul. You are afraid of communicating your own needs and feelings because you may have often been rejected as a child. Did you come across statements such as "Don't complain like that, others are much worse off" or "Don't be such a jerk" from time to time in your childhood? If so, you might want to listen to the following: Surely there will always be someone in this world who is really "worse off than you" right now. But you have to be careful here. This is a feeling that cannot be compared and, above all, should not be compared. Every person has a different feeling here and this cannot be assessed using a scale. Everyone perceives pain, sorrow, but also happiness and perfection differently. So don't allow others to devalue your personal feelings just because they would react differently in an equivalent situation. We are all individual in the way we feel and that is a good thing. Therefore, no matter how difficult it can be, don't be afraid to express your feelings, because one day you will be able to welcome people into your life who will never hold them against you.

However, if this makes you feel like you're being addressed, then please realize that you're definitely not alone. I've seen this kind of behavioral pattern before, so it's definitely not uncommon. I can't empathize with this situation one-to-one as I've never had to go through it myself, but I would still like to tell you that you will eventually find the courage to open up. And trust that it will feel good. It will open up new perspectives and push your own development a little further. Just because no one wanted to notice you as a child doesn't mean that this is still the case in your current environment. Give the people around you and especially yourself the chance to finally let your true self out, then you can be free and blossom at some point. And only when you can show them the real you will you meet people who learn to love and appreciate this version of you. A façade in front of yourself can work for a while, but in the long run it will eventually start to crumble and you will no longer be able to hide behind it.

As I mentioned before, being emotionally closed was not a problem that accompanied me. I grew up in a home where you could always talk about your worries and problems. There were certainly moments when I didn't dare to do so at first, but when I did, it never felt wrong. If you look at my baby and child pictures, you would think what a carefree life I must have led. And yes, in principle I can only agree with these statements. I grew up in a loving and caring environment, I have a very good relationship with all my family members and I always enjoy coming back home. In principle, no matter which path you take, you should never forget where you come from, because that's where the roots were laid for who you are today. That's not to say that everything you get from your family as a child is good, but God knows it's not all bad either. In my opinion, you should simply recognize and keep the things that are good for you and let go ofthose that have the opposite effect. Of course, this doesn't just apply to family circumstances, but also to friendly relationships or even your entire living environment. There are certainly family constellations that are simply toxic from the ground up and cause more inner turmoil, and it is definitely not easy to break away from them. In one way or another, the family is what has shaped you to a very large extent. That's why it's all the more important to listen to yourself and define for yourself how much power you want to give your family in your life.

Since I just mentioned the topic of detachment. The closer the bond with certain people, the more difficult it will be to separate from them. You often have close relationships with family in particular, but here too you should be aware of what supports you on a psychological level and what doesn't. Just because you grew up in a certain environment doesn't mean that these people are good for you. It's hard to break free from toxic relationships, as they can really shackle you due to their predisposition to manipulative behavior. Even if it is damn hard, ending this kind of relationship is anything but reprehensible. I have learned one thing in my life: You should never break yourself for other people and completely forget about yourself. But now back to the actual topic:

I grew up in a small family home with a large garden. Because I was close to other family members, I was never on my own. There was always someone around, from aunts to cousins to grandmothers. We got up to a lot of mischief, as one of my grannies always likes to say, and the existing pictures confirm this. I was a happy, carefree child with a great willpower, which I knew how to use from time to time. At the time, I would never have thought that this would suddenly change in my life. I don't want to say that I'm unhappy today, because that's definitely not the case. I would rather say that I am now more aware of the beautiful moments in mylife and appreciate them more, precisely because I now know how it can be the other way around. What is still very formative for me today is my strong will and my great assertiveness. My pediatrician at the time warned my parents with the sentence "If you're not careful, she'll be the boss one day". It was kind of funny, because there was actually something to this statement.

Perhaps an anecdote from the last few weeks will help. Anyone who doesn't have a spiritual disposition can skip to the next paragraph, but it certainly doesn't hurt anyone to broaden their horizons a little. I've always been fascinated by zodiac signs and it's still a popular topic of conversation between me and my grandma on my father's side. Over the last few months, I've been looking into the subject a little more closely and recently had a reading with a colleague at work. And what can I say, the sentence from my pediatrician at the time was confirmed with my birth pattern. To cut a long story short, I'm probably a born leader, but I won't go into any more detail here as I'm sure it will bore many people. Who knows, maybe I'll write a few pages on this topic independently at some point or I'll mention it here in a separate section.

Many of the formative experiences of my childhood happened a long time ago. Of course, I can't remember everything, which is why I'm leaving out the passages about my kindergarten and primary school years as far as possible. What I can say with great certainty, however, is that having almost exclusively cousins shaped me in such a way that I found it easier and easier to make contact with boys when I was at school. I always had a few female friends, but especially when I was younger, there was no one who gave me the feeling that a friendship should. Of course, age is always a factor. I think that real friendships only develop when you reach a certain level of mental maturity anyway. This image or behavioral pattern that emerged back then is also reflectedin my adulthood. I work in a male-dominated environment and my current circle of friends also consists largely of men. I'm just used to it from an early age and I've never had any problems with these kinds of constellations. That's probably why they feel so safe and right. People are creatures of habit after all, but that's not a bad thing now and again, especially if the habit still feels right years later.

The first major perceptions of my childhood and youth began at the start of grammar school. As far as I can remember, the 5th and 6th grades were still without any major worries. The first confrontations, which I also felt psychologically, began in the 7th grade. Children can sometimes be very mean to each other, and even though certain behaviors are usually definitely not justifiable, I will still do it now. Or rather, I will forgive them. Children, especially at that age, don't know what their actions can trigger in others. How do they know if they are not taught this every single day at home? In some cases, children may just be reflecting what is going on at home - after all, these little heads are like sponges that soak up all the information and words. Nevertheless, some things lack the knowledge about their meaning. As a result, it is not uncommon for people to develop psychological problems at a young age. Children are still very impressionable in terms of their overall appearance and mental maturity and therefore often follow the crowd. If you are different, perhaps because you look different, are not as brave as your classmates or simply follow your own train of thought, you quickly become an outsider and, in the worst case, a victim of society's views. Often others don't mean as much harm as they might think, which is simply due to the still blurred perception of one's actions and words. Remorse often comes in adulthood. It then depends on the maturity of both parties as to whether they draw aline under what happened during their school years and forgive the other person or not. And yes, forgiveness is definitely a sign of maturity. Of course, you can hold a grudge for the rest of your life, but will you ever be able to move on? Learning to forgive is an important step in healing your inner child. As the saying goes, only when you can forgive can you move on, and there is a lot of truth in that statement. I mean, does it get us anywhere if we spend years of our lives holding on to something that keeps upsetting us? If we never forgive, then, in my opinion, we are just as incapable of coming to closure with something. And it is precisely closure with negative events that is so important for changing our self-concept. Of course, forgiving something doesn't justify what happened, but it still helps us to deal with it in some places and makes a big contribution to inner healing.

To summarize this chapter, I would like to say that bullying can trigger a lot in young people in particular and have a formative effect on their subsequent lives. The reasons are usually inconspicuous things that, as in my case, relate to external appearances, for example. This is a point that is just as difficult to grasp mentally for such young people as, for example, discrimination based on origin and culture. Very often, children simply pick up on this somewhere in their everyday lives, e.g. at home, but increasingly often on social media. They catch statements and then project them onto their fellow human beings and, unfortunately, often don't even know what consequences they can have. Back then, I was thrown sentences like "You're completely flat" or "Your eyebrows are growing together - monobrow". These kinds of statements now only go in one ear and out the other. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case back then and it laid the foundations for a difficult adolescence. These sentences were burned into my young memory and, because of my age, I didn't know how to deal with them. They shaped me in a way andin a way that I would rather not have known, but who knows what certain experiences, even unpleasant ones, are sometimes good for. At that time, I was always heavily influenced by the opinions of others and that was anything but beneficial during the teasing period. When I compare the me I am now with the me I was then, I realize that I have developed a lot. I'm not saying that I don't care about the opinions of others, because that wouldn't be true. I just do one thing fundamentally differently: I don't accept everything. First and foremost, I decide for myself what I classify as constructive and what I classify as demeaning, and that way you can differentiate very well at the beginning who is really important to you and who means well by you and who doesn't.

What words can do

Let's observe our own behavior on any given day. How often do we find ourselves in situations every day where, without even thinking about it for a second, we say something that we would have preferred to hold back in the end? This is completely human behavior. Even if you make a firm commitment to always think about your choice of words beforehand, stressful situations always cause us to forget, and then it happens. The problem is that it is precisely at such moments that we can end up doing our fellow human beings an injustice. It certainly depends to a large extent on who we are dealing with. A sensitive or empathetic person will be able to understand our situation and know that we were not necessarily charming just because of this situation. If, on the other hand, we are facing someone who is at the end of their tether, there is a higher probability that we will experience a headwind, which in the worst case could lead to a real argument. No matter how much nonsense we say during the day, it is important that we are aware of it. For example, if we have hurt someone with our words, we should be able to tell from the other person's reaction so that we can take action if necessary. Often we don't mean things as badly as they come across. I'm talking about awareness here, but I don't mean analyzing every word before we say it. What I mean is that it is important to get a feeling for how we express ourselves and which words we use. Especially when a situation escalates, we need to be able to take responsibility for what we say and shouldn't pull our punches. Oh, how nice it would be if the adult part of our population could get their act together. Every daywe meet people who are unaware of their actions and words, but here too we need to learn how to deal with them. It requires a great deal of empathy and emotional intelligence so that we can respond to our fellow human beings and react to their behavior accordingly. Not everyone is born a master at interpreting other people, but once you start to look at yourself and strengthen your own mind and character, you can gradually apply this to dealing with others. It may also be an important step to ask yourself how you would feel in certain scenarios. Then you can take a big step in the direction of good cooperation.

It will never be the case that everyone does everything right, that everyone always behaves in a way that doesn't harm you. The important thing is that we don't lower ourselves to the same level in such situations. This is definitely not easy, after all, we humans constantly strive to behave towards someone in the same way as they do in front of us. We will certainly be successful with this tactic in some situations, but it is definitely not the mature and healthy option. I had to learn back then what words can do to people. Back then, however, I wasn't mentally strong enough not to accept what was being said, which made the situation anything but easy for me.

The words that were thrown at me back then literally burned themselves into my brain. It's frightening what that does to you. The path to my lowest point came gradually. At the beginning, I cried and brooded a lot. I couldn't understand why I was constantly being reduced to my appearance. The first confrontations about this occurred during the 7th grade. If I remember correctly, I was the only girl in my year who didn't wear a bra. What was the point, I mean, what was I supposed to put it in anyway? I've always had a petite build and my body wasn't that developed yet.