Author: Steve Mueller

The following is a review of the book ‘Punch above Your Weight’ by business psychologist John Potter. The first impression The book by Mr. Potter comes in a red paperback, with a clean front cover design. The first thing I did was to flick through some pages of the book, which left quite a good impression. The font size is just right and the typography allows a good flow of reading. There are many tables, columns, free spaces for exercises, summaries and graphics in the book. Also, every chapter begins with an inspiring quote and a nice little graphic. Overall,…

The philosophical question about the meaning of life, its purpose, why we are here and the truth behind all that is has fascinated people since early mankind, from the Sumerians to the Mayans, modern Scientists and Philosophers to believers and atheists. Well, it does not only fascinate people from all different kinds of ideological and cultural backgrounds, but it also frustrates many of us as there seems to be no answer in sight, at least not an easy one that all could agree upon. And even though we are all occupied with our jobs and the struggles of life – the…

All my life long I was afraid about the events that might happen in the future; I worried about the outcome of my actions and their negative results for my life in the future and I also questioned if I could cope with the challenges I was facing back then. Please don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t a scared-cat at all and my worries never started to take control over my life or reduced my quality of living, nevertheless, negative thoughts remained inside me and often kept me awake for hours in the night; thinking about things I couldn’t control or…

… before you criticize this person. The following article has a lot to share about compassion, forgiveness, empathy, and the ability to think yourself into another person’s shoes. It will also show you what you can do to develop compassion and to cultivate empathy. The origin of the famous proverb “before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes” was quite difficult to find, as there are many who simply rephrased and added their own “spin” to this commonly known quote. Many of those modern quotations added the sentence “… that way, you are a mile away from them…

Every once in a while we have the honor to meet a very special person in our lives. This person could be one of our friends, but more often we might consider this person as an enemy or competitor. In fact, we might really dislike this person and the things he says, because he continuously criticizes us. His criticism can be tremendously painful for us, as it might force us to face our own anxieties or topics that we would have rather ignored. Whoever this person is, it might just have become the biggest critic in our lives. It is…

At the time I was writing my article about methods to discover the purpose of life I was thinking about the state of mind that could possibly support one in discovering one’s true purpose in life, without knowing that I had already experienced such a state in my life. It is the state of mind you experience when your whole world starts to collapse caused by the death of a near relative, when you have a near-death experience or when you are confronted with your own mortality that figuratively forces you to erase all sorts of false purposes out of…

The title of this article might be a bit misleading as I´m not going to explain to you how you can become a king of college that has a lot of minions or subordinates like a medieval king. This article is separated into two sections; the first part will focus on the question how you can become a fancied person in your school, college or university that knows a lot of people and has a lot of friends; the second part will show you how you can become the class representative and class president. By achieving both of these parts…

Patience, effort and commitment and what it has in common with the setup of Rome’s ancient world empire, that certainly wasn’t built within a day. Nowadays it seems to be trendy to seek for the easiest way to reach aims and solve problems, if possible within the shortest amount of time. Seeking for the path of least resistance is not just a recent trend, but it is a general mindset that we apply to save time. And that’s what it does – it helps us to save a lot of time in the short run, but in the long run…

Every person approaches a problem in a different way. Some focus on the problem or the reason why a problem emerged (problem focused thinking). Others prefer to think about possible solutions that help them to solve a problem (solution focused thinking). Problem Oriented Thinking: Approaching a difficult situation problem-oriented might be helpful if we attempt to avoid similar problems or mistakes in the future, but when it comes to solving the problem we simply waste large amounts of our precious time! Problem-focused thinking does not help us at all to solve difficult situations, which is especially necessary in times where one must find quick…

Approximately 2.5 million years ago our Stone Age ancestors were facing some very dangerous perils, most of them mortal perils, if they weren’t cautious enough. Therefore it was very important for the Stone Age people to be protected by an instinct that helped them to identify potential dangers and to become aware of the peril they might be facing. This instinct was fear and it helped them to stay alive. What is fear? Fear is an instinctual response of a human being towards potential danger. It releases adrenaline and cortisol (stress hormone) into our blood stream and helps us survive extremely dangerous…

Is it possible that there is a formula that shows you exactly how to be successful in life? Could it be that you only would have to multiply a few factors in order to succeed? Would it be enough to just mix some aspects with each other, such as work, dedication, and knowledge in order to reach all the goals you have dreamt of? On the other hand, can such a complex and multilayered topic such as “being successful in life” be simplified and summarized to a list with just a view sub-items in order to create a formula for success?

Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed because of all the business- and personal tasks you have to accomplish during the day, even though there is not even enough time to address half of them? I certainly was in such situations, many times in my life. The most severe situation I can remember of arose when I took over a position of an employee that went on maternity leave and therefore had been overcharged for months and left me a lot of work that wasn’t completed. Matters were complicated further by the fact that it was a department of my company with a…

Not only Ben Parker, the fictional character from Spiderman from the pen of Stan Lee, quoted that great responsibility came with great power, but quotes of similar origins can be found all the way back in history – from the twentieth century up to the Ancient Greeks. It was Lord Acton, who wrote that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” and the philosopher Socrates “rule of worthy of might,” that expressed similar ideas. In general, I would say that the more successful you are in life, the greater becomes your power and influence, but also the more complex…

The importance of having goals in life cannot be stressed out enough, especially when considering that goals effectively help us to remain motivated throughout the journey of life. Unfortunately, many neglect the goal setting process, or do not even consider setting themselves ambitious aims for their professional and personal life. However, just by looking at the amazing biographies of many successful people you will notice that every one of them had a clear purpose in life and clearly set goals, visions, and desires that they wanted to achieve throughout their lives.

If you do think from time to time that you’re stupid or not as intelligent as anyone else, read on! It is very important to note that academic achievements reflect only a slight part of your intelligence. Above all, the way you perform in school/university reflects mostly the efforts you were willing to invest for school and whether you implemented this effort effective or wasted your time. To put it simply: the marks you achieved in school will most likely show your efforts and the time you invested to prepare yourself for the test, but not your level of intelligence!

During my life, I have met so many interesting individuals, mostly from my own country, but at times also from all over the world. What made them so unique was that they all had completely different characters, mindsets, and goals for their future lives. Yet, they had one thing in common: each of them expressed their attitudes (some more, some less) by the way they spoke, which made it easy at times to discover a person with a positive or a negative attitude. In the following, I want to make you aware of negative mindsets that might prevent you from…

Your attitude has got a huge influence on how you look at your life and will influence whether you consider yourself as someone who can master all the challenges that cross your path, or if you are someone who is scared about the challenges in life. Furthermore, your attitude can make the little, but significant difference between failure and victory. In general I would say, that your attitude does not only influence the way you think and how you perceive things, but also how you feel yourself and how you deal with problems, challenges, setbacks and strokes of fate, simply…

… as you can change everything! There are some characteristics in our life we cannot change nor influence by any means, such as our genetics, the size of our body, the fact that you are a woman or man or even your natural hair color. Furthermore, you weren’t given the chance to choose your parents and your relatives, not even your beloved cousin or your disliked aunt. But at this point of the article, we have to draw a definite line. From this point onwards there is no pre-made plan of Mother Nature that determines who you have to be or…

I am fine. No, that was an understatement. Actually, I am feeling phenomenal good. Every day I can decide on how to spend my time, completely free without restrictions. The water I’m drinking is extraordinarily clean and, even more importantly, free of germs, bacteria, and pathogens. Also, don’t have to worry where to get my food for the next day. My civil rights are being protected by a state that allows me to express my opinion (freedom of speech) without having to fear prosecution. Our children are rising up without war and famines and have the chance to get an…

I’m a passionate football (soccer!) fan and played many years in a football club as a defender. Naturally, I also had a favorite club, which was facing a rather difficult situation, some time ago. The intricate situation arose when the established goalkeeper (A) of the team announced (during the ongoing championship) to retire at the end of the season. Originally, the club officials had planned to replace the old keeper (A) with a very talented but also experienced and established goalkeeper (B) of another team, at the cost of approximately $20m. But, the plans of the manager and the directors…