From the internet: « There are two ways to cope with existential panic: do what you love everyday or copious alcohol abuse . » A new Year. With my small circle of friends, we closed 2020 and celebrated the new year with bubbles and this Dutch traditional pastry called oliebollen, a fried ball of dough which fills […]

Have you ever had a moment where you felt suddenly you were in phase with your environment, submerged by a feeling of belonging, of almost fully merging into the scenery around you and bathing in a contentment that can grow into exhilaration? The feeling of being in the right place, at the right time, and fully in phase with what […]

I may have triggered something with my previous blog about difference and repetition, something about duality and the power of this concept. Duality here is taken in its more common sense of the observation that opposite things seem to keep each other in balance and complement each other. Duality as in the intertwining of the Yin and Yang in Eastern […]

Illustration: Colette Leenen The ritual of the New Year wishes is for me the reminder of this dual movement: difference and repetition. Repetition first: rituals are repetitions. We repeat what is good. Rituals become rituals because they carry some wisdom we have acquired over the years, over the centuries, and so we repeat them, religiously. My little twist of Nietzsche’s […]

On this early summer evening I’m walking fast through the Amsterdam Central Station area towards a meeting I am very much looking forward to: I am to meet again with Victoria Speers (from Contiguity Partners) the coach that has given me the virus of coaching. She has been coaching me four years ago when I was Chief Risk Officer and […]

  “They should issue a warning before we sign for this thing!” “There should be small print in the contract, telling us how we will not get through this Masters unchanged”. “How many of us have given their lives a dramatic turn? How many have left their jobs? How many have even changed something in their love relationships? This is […]

Me: Hey Rutger, thanks for coming. I told you about this job I have for you. It’s about this website for my new “purpose in life”: my coaching practice. Rutger: ah! Of course, I should have known. Well, how about we reverse the roles for once? Why don’t I coach you through this process. What did you have in mind? […]