My self-development journey - a never ending story

Self-Development Journey | Personal Development | Self Growth | Self Awareness

When I started my blog, my intention was to share more personal stories that do not necessarily fit into a Forbes article. I wished to share more experiences and real life stories and less shiny content. After all, we all aim for authenticity, don’t we?

And so I came to the conclusion that I wish to share more about my personal journey of self-development in this first blog post of the year. May it inspire you, may it make you reflect and may the reading be worth your time. (Note to myself: time would be an excellent topic for another article!)

Let’s start at the beginning

Self-development is a broad topic and it also has many synonyms, like for example personal growth, personal development or self-awareness. The key is in the word “self”, I guess. It is about getting to know yourself better, being curious about your relationships with others and working through some challenges.

Why? To come up more self-aware, more resilient and with a higher level of emotional intelligence. It also gives you freedom and you get a sense of what you really want in life. It doesn’t always make things easier, but I truly feel that it is great to feel like you are in the driver’s seat of your life and decide on where you want to go, and with whom.

Let’s go back to where it all started: I believe that I consciously started getting to know myself better when I bought this book (English translation: And suddenly single again), which you can clearly judge by the cover. 🙂

At that moment, I went through a very painful and tragic breakup and tried to somehow survive that difficult period in my life. I had recently moved to a new city, where I didn’t know many people and was about to have a complicated surgery as well. So the timing was just perfect!

I recently found the book at my parents’ place again, and I couldn’t help but start laughing. It seemed so far away (exactly 10 years to be precise) and so many things had happened since then and it felt like a very long time ago.

However, I still remember a sentence from it, which got me through that sad period: This is temporary. It gave me perspective back then and it still gives me perspective today when faced with a stressful or challenging period. There is an end to it and there will also be moments filled with joy and laughter again.

Of course the book wasn’t my only “helper” on my way to “the other side of the tunnel”. I had friends, who were there for me, and I found a great interest in reading articles online and discovered Mindvalley, too. I even applied for a job there later, because I loved their work.

Self-development plane taking off!

I must say that from that moment on, I was hooked and very much enjoyed reading and learning about self-development. Most of it happened online and with free resources as my professional situation didn’t really allow for anything else, but I knew that one day I would do a coach training to also help others getting to know themselves better.

The chapter of my life following the break up could be summarised with “Project 668”. If you know me personally, chances are very high that I have mentioned it already, and for those who are new to my blog, let me briefly explain what Project 668 is/was: it is a youth NGO I co-founded in 2012 during my traineeship at the European Commission (we were 668 trainees, hence the name) and our mission was to fight youth unemployment by promoting professional development. In practice this meant that we provided free CV checks, organised events online and offline to help graduates with kick starting their career and also shared job vacancies and career tips. Being based in Brussels, it was also important to us to be involved in the fight against unpaid internships.

Careers topic taking over

The reason why I am sharing this particular chapter with you is that it was a great learning experience on many levels. When I took over the leadership of Project 668 and moved back to Brussels in 2015, I was determined to grow Project 668, turn it into a social enterprise and earn my living with it. (Spoiler: this plan didn’t work out.)

I was working part-time for an industry association back then and the other part-time (or rather full-time) was filled with activities related to Project 668. Of course I wasn’t doing all of this on my own and I had great team members who also believed in our mission and wanted to help many young people to break into the job market.

Passionate about the topic of careers and career development, I managed to not only give several workshops for job seekers, but also taught a class on career development and career orientation at IHECS Brussels.

My years with Project 668 were an enormous lesson in personal development, mainly “learning by doing” and I simply loved it.

Broadening my horizon

After six years of volunteering for Project 668, I left the organisation because I felt the need to move on and to also broaden my horizon. I felt as if I had outgrown the careers topic a bit as well, and wanted to dive into other areas. At the same time, I could continue exploring careers and leadership topics as a Forbes contributor, which I have been doing since 2018.

Inspired by the book The Happiness Project, I initiated the “Brussels Happiness Project” in 2018, together with a group of volunteers from the Global Shapers Brussels Hub (as you can see, I couldn’t stop volunteering 😃). Every month, we had invited a different speaker to talk about topics like mindfulness, relationships, careers or meaning. I must say that I very much enjoyed the different events and loved bringing people together who wanted to learn and grow.

Female empowerment, anyone?

If you are still reading this article, thank you so much for bearing with me. As you read in the title, it is a never-ending story, but I promise that the end (of the article) is near. ;)

2018 wasn’t only the year of the Brussels Happiness Project, but also the year when I became an #IamRemarkable facilitator. #IamRemarkable is an initiative which started at Google and turned into a foundation now. Their goal is to empower women and underrepresented groups to speak openly about their accomplishments in the workplace and beyond.

Thanks to the #IamRemarkable workshops I organised in and outside work, I met incredible people and am very grateful for everyone who already participated in one of my #IamRemarkable workshops.

Open end

The different #IamRemarkable workshops also led to further workshops in the area of self-development and finally to the foundation of the Growth Club. In the meantime, I also completed both my coach training and coach certification, and gave two big training sessions related to self-confidence last year as well.

This might be an abrupt end, but I am also very conscious of your time. If you are interested in hearing more, I would be more than happy to write a “part II” of this.

Personal development and learning are very dear to me and I also deeply appreciate everyone I met on this path, and am very grateful for those who are still in my life today.

Taking time for yourself, even if it is to simply be alone and go on a walk, is so important and life in itself is also a very personal development lesson in itself.

Let me end with Steve Jobs’ famous words: “Stay hungry, stay foolish”...and never stop learning.

The worst that can happen is that you grow, and that’s a risk worth taking. ✨