Hi, and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled. Now, I have an interesting challenge in front of me because I'm attempting to say my next guests name in German. So welcome. Steffi Seefeld.
Steffi:Yay. That almost sounds amazing.
Russell:That was pretty pants. But in English. Steffi Seefeld. So, yes, it's English. I was sorry, German is such a complicated language, isn't. Welcome.
Steffi:Thank you so much for having me.
Russell:And where in the world are you from?
Steffi:I'm from Germany. I'm kind of bouncing between San Francisco and Berlin at the moment. I'm in Berlin and, yeah, really enjoying both the very humble German world and the very ambitious San Francisco world.
Russell:Interesting. So, tell us a bit about yourself. What is it that you do?
Steffi:Yeah, that's a great question. So, I would say I help lovers and leaders to transmute, really, the feeling of stuckness, lost connection in relationship into that spark of being in love with life again. Or maybe just in general being in love and enjoy with life again.
Russell:That's aspirational, isn't it? Maybe we can unpack that a bit. What do you mean by love?
Steffi:What a great question. What do I mean by love? I think about love with this honeymoon face. And usually when I think about love, or when we as humans think about love, we think about a relationship, a partnership. But I love thinking about love in a way. Can I create that feeling of being so in love on cloud nine with life on my own? And of course, it's always about then, as a result, showing up as a partner, as a lover, as a friend, as a daughter, as a mother, as a father, with that kind of love with other people.
Steffi:So I think really deepening the understanding and embodying love in a way where I feel fulfilled and enjoy with life, then I can show up as a way better partner or lover in life for other people, as a community member, which ultimately, I think, really enriches life.
Russell:Yeah. The reason I asked is because there are so many different types of love, aren't there? There's the chemical first stage of a relationship. Rip your clothes off, turn it into that sort of action. Then there's sort of brotherly love, and there's a sort of a passionate love for a cause. And then you have this idea of unconditional love with the kids, perhaps. And then you get desire type loves. So it's always quite fascinating to sort of unpack it. I know I've actually written quite a lot about love in my past when I was doing some relationship work myself. And people often say to me, is love and emotion. And I always say, no, it's so much more than that. It's actually part of the human condition in a way, isn't it?
Steffi:Yes, absolutely. It's absolutely conditioned. Or how we grew up with. What kind of love did we grow up with conditional love? Did we grow up with unconditional love? Have we stayed in a victimhood of a relationship that ended really awfully for us? And have we made that our conscious, our unconscious stories? But I do think love is a state of being. I do think that we can create the state of being in love with our minds and bodies without to that point, breaking the habit of having that being conditioned to a person. Or like you said, it's that desired of your close, passionate love, what I would call probably new relationship energy, where you're just high on these chemicals, you're like, you can't function, right? And you can. A question, right?
Russell:But you can actually create that feeling on your own within yourself if you just connect with that feeling. And how would you walk through the world if you were most of the time in that feeling? That what I find fascinating and practice myself always, because life is just a lot better that way. It's a lot more fun, it's a lot more exciting and connecting, and it's wonderful to experience what we can attract and who we can attract. And if it's more time, more love, more success when we are in that state of cloud nine.
Russell:And it's an interesting metaphor, isn't it? Because you can love your job, you can love your boss in a very platonic sort of way, can't you have passion for the cause and such like. But it's interesting, isn't it? Because I wonder whether love is often described as quite a. I don't want to say the word emotional because I don't mean it, but it's sort of a feelingsy, spiritually touchy-feely stuff thing. But I think love can be a rational, cognitive thing as well, because you can actually thoroughly enjoy doing things at a very practical level. And my next-door neighbour, for example, every single week, possibly twice a week. And he does have touch of OCD, which he has told me. But he loves washing his car. I mean, it's not something I've ever done in my life to wash his car.
Russell:He did it twice a week, I swear. He has a BMW X 4. I'm sure it's going to be an X 1 soon because it's going to shrink so much. But I wonder whether we can choose to love you see? And I believe we can, because I think we often wait for love to strike, rather than actually falling in love with something we're doing through a sort of a conscious set of steps. I wonder what you think about that.
Steffi:I absolutely agree that we choose, and we are the creators of our reality, really. So, change always starts with choosing something different than how we did it the day before, or even yesterday, or whatever time before in our previous relationship or with our previous car. So really choosing, taking care of the car, and loving it more, I think it is a choice, and it is a choice of the quality of that relationship. With a car, it's obviously very different than with a person. But at the end of the day, if I love my car, I'm going to care for it, I'm going to really know where the key is, know exactly when the next inspection is happening, know the material of the leather seats, or know where it comes from. And with a partner, with a friend that I so care for or love.
Steffi:I know these exact things too. I know where they're from, I know almost the fabric of that human experience. I know what they like to eat, I know when they like to go to bed, or if they're more a morning person, if they're more a night person, where their career path is going, what their challenges are.
Russell:And I think for me, that sort of thoughtful love is more sustainable over time. And you often have relationships, don't you, that between human beings. I remember working with a couple of ones who'd met each other, and it was almost. They were consuming a lifetime worth of petrol or fuel in their relationship because the relationship burned so brightly over nine or ten months. It was this incandescent sort of experience. And after ten months it was all gone. And they hadn't figured out how. You turn that sort of neurotransmitter, neurochemistry into a form of practice. And the practice is a mindful, choiceful set of. It's the difference between loving and being in love, isn't it? There's a difference between those two things. So, you can go to work, and you be caring considered, you can be the same for your colleagues.
Russell:And it's a more grown-up type of love. It's the difference between Romeo and Juliet, falls out of love with one person, has just been playing at it, meets Romeo and then suddenly went to the burning thing, and then they turn it into the next phase again. I think it's quite interesting that you get these phases and it's the same when you join an organisation isn't it? You join, you've fallen in love with this organisation. You can't wait to do more. Then you sort of get gradually disillusioned because the organisation doesn't figure out a way of reengaging, recapturing that maturity thing. The deal stage, what are you going to do for us and what are they going to do for you? So, I'm wondering how you turn this into your coaching, into a sort of a workbench-based idea.
Steffi:Yeah. I am actually also curious what you worked through with that couple, because I found that such an interesting and very important stage of a relationship from that new relationship energy, from that high, and it's just this, whoa. And then it's gone. And what I find really important is, am I still meeting that other person with the same curiosity and the same presence as I did in the first few days or months? Because a lot of times we get used to each other. We lose the attentiveness. We lose almost like the appreciation and gratitude for that person's time. We take it for granted. And I think that oftentimes is the reason why we lose the connection.
Russell:I wonder if that's true.
Steffi:And my second option is if we kind of fall in love instead of growing in love, we might also just be blinded by, we don't want to see all these signs, right? A coach and also a partner of mine, Reed Mehelko, told me once this analogy of, if you just go super high speed through town like you fall in love and you're just going really fast, then while you're speeding through town and totally ignoring the speed limit, you miss all the important signs. And same in a relationship, you miss the signs. You don't want to see red flags. You don't want to see the differences that really matter, actually. So, I think there's also the element and the possibility of you might actually not be a great fit.
Steffi:And that will show, after all these chemicals, of the high of the new relationship energy phase of sun.
Russell:And I like that. And I agree with what you're saying there. But I wonder if there's a third factor as well. When you first have a relationship and you're very consumed with each other, you forget the external world. So, the relationship is not situated in reality. It's situated in a strange sort of bubble. And you'll see people saying, you'll see people at work are in love. They can't put their attention on anything else. And of course, what happens is that couple when it starts to associate, doesn't it? A couple goes into the world together, they start to mingle, they start to face challenges together. It's the same at work when you're building a team, isn't it? You have a great team that never talks to anybody else, and they can't function outside of that organisation.
Russell:Often its departments, they just can't talk to anybody else. I mean, sometimes that is no need to, but sometimes we certainly don't want them to. But there's this thing about how you situate the relationship in a reality. It's a bit like your idea of speeding through time, but it's that you've got to measure the relationship in a real world. And I often think relationships that burn themselves. And I think that's the same with organizations. You bring people in, it's all wonderful for a little time, but then what has to happen is relationships have to test and you have to have conflict. You have to have professional disagreement, you have to have boundaries established so psychologically safe, but you have to create a situation where people can actually professionally disagree.
Russell:Otherwise you get this sterile, sort of lovey dovey, happy clappy sort of thing that just turns into a form of gloopy, toxic positivity after a while. I'm getting all the buzzwords in today. This is going to be social ethics. I've got it all.
Steffi:I love what you said because it reminds me of the importance of in an organization, hire well, and also in relationship, like find your partner with clarity of who you are, what your boundaries are, and really what's the trajectory in your life? What are you looking for in a partner? That's one part. And the other part is, if we're very needy as an organization, as a team, as a leader, or as a lover, then I think the first step is also become the person you want to attract. Right? Become that. I don't know that generous lover or that really dedicated team member or collaborative centred, heart centred, structured expert, whatever it is that you're looking for, and really do an inventory. Who am I right now? Am I that person? Would I date myself? Would I hire myself?
Russell:Yeah. That's interesting, isn't it? I often think the hiring process, I've always been torn. And two, on the hiring process, one approach is it doesn't really matter who you hire, it's how you manage them and lead them. Because I've seen very brilliant people being hired who've been destroyed. So that's one thing which I always wrestle with. And the other thing is the sort of opposite thing. I remember people saying to one person in a relationship or looking for a relationship. Tell me the criteria you want to know. An ex-partner. And they gave me a list of things, and I think there are 14 things. And I said, you do realise it was a woman looking for a man. You do realize that's five different men, don't you? Because those 14 characteristics don't necessarily exist in one person.
Russell:Because I think when we rate things from one to 14, we don't see them as a compound thing. We actually see them as everyone has one step, but actually the first three things are so much more important than ten. And I think it's the same as organizations. We tend to recruit. I always say this thing, we tend to recruit often on passion or on attitude to specific things, and then we bring them into an organization within five or six months because of poor leadership management practice, they don't have any skill, and they don't have any passion and aptitude left either. So, for me, it's also that thing that you hire on capability, and that's the same thing with a relationship.
Russell:Would you hire someone who's strong, has great relationship skills, who knows what they want, who's an adult, and it doesn't matter if they're a bit needy because actually, as long as they have those relationship building and melding skills, that's all that matters. Because actually, does the rest matter? But then I must admit, when I look for my second wife, I had high heels in my criteria.
Steffi:I've never seen that.
Russell:I'm quite shallow, I have to say. I didn't get the high heels, but I still have a brilliant relationship.
Steffi:Why not shoot for the moon or stars? I like. Yeah. I also like the dance that we're having between relationships and leadership because I agree you can reel to hiring and to finding a partner that is not the perfect partner. Can't meet all the criteria you're looking for as a team member, an expert. But do they have the willingness and the endurance through the valleys of the journey, not just the peaks and the highs, that they stay with you, and they're committed to growing, learning, making it through and being by your side as an organisation, as a team, or as a partner. I think that's one of the most important things that I don't think you can discover or know in the first weeks or months until you really hit the first hard phase.
Russell:Yeah. And I think what's interesting here is that I'm minded because a colleague of mine was talking about this idea that he had his wife at home with his wife he lived with. Obviously, she wasn't at home because she worked as well, but he also had a work wife.
Steffi:A work wife?
Russell:Yeah, work wife. So, they had all the characteristics of a sort of loving relationship, but it wasn't emotional love, or there was no physical attraction. There was nothing physical going on, but there was a degree of workplace intimacy, because they shared all these different events together, which often exclusive for the romantic wife. And I think this is often where relationships can go wrong. They can become very vulnerable because of this idea that you have to be able to wear, sort of. And this is where I hate the concept of authenticity, because really, you have to understand the difference in personas between a work and a life-based partnership. So, I find that quite fascinating, to be able to put that strong demarcation between those two relationships. I can see it.
Steffi:Yeah, I like that because I think it's absolutely normal, right? Because if you have a nine to five or longer hour job, then you spend so much time with them, and you want to get along and you know so much about each other. You go through all these valleys and peaks together, and you're each other's challengers and supporters. So, I think it's very natural to have more than one relationship, deep relationship. And that, for me, shows up as a polyamorous concept and polyamorous being not necessarily romantic relationships, but in a way that we can love or we can be in each other's lives to a deeper degree with several people without diminishing the value of either our spouse or our children, or our closest friends, or closest leader or team member or whatever relationship at work.
Russell:Yes. That's interesting, isn't it? Because polyamorous bi is very naturally insexual, so we have to be careful on that one. But I know what you mean. It's this network, or nodes of relationships, which are different in different places, and that creates this network in which you exist because you have these different things. And the thing about it being work based is often it's same gender. It doesn't have to be opposite genders, is it? So I know you're a fan of Joe Dispenser, as am I. So tell me about the work you're doing around his thoughts and ideas.
Steffi:Yeah, it's about really becoming the creator of your own life and realizing that we all are adapting and changing in our entire life all the time. And most of the time, we're waiting for a crisis, for something bad to happen, to really wake up and change, something that hasn't really fulfilled us. That hasn't really worked for us well. And the work that I do that's designed by Dr. Joe Dispenza, is really realizing, well, we don't have to wait.
Steffi:And let's take an inventory right now where nothing, maybe something is bad, but nothing needs to be, like, dramatically bad, but do an inventory of our life and really go deep into how am I letting my environment and my past, my conditioning, my trauma, controlling how I am, how I feel, how I create right now, and understanding that I can actually prune these neurological networks in my brain and sprout new connections. So really losing my mind and creating a new one, breaking the habit of being an old self, of having these limiting beliefs, of never getting out of this relationship or never finding this person, or never making that money to afford XYZ, but really creating a mindset of abundance, of unlimited possibilities, and going through self-awareness.
Russell:Yeah, it sounds a lot like that, but also reformation. I wonder, how do you approach that?
Steffi:Yeah, the first step for me in general, inspired by the work with Dr. Joe Dispenza, is becoming as self-aware as we can, and we're taking every chance, turning every challenge into a possibility by, how did that feel for me? Who was I? What were my thoughts? What was my behaviour? How am I showing up right now? And how am I feeling about this? And then asking, do I want to continue? So that's the second step of reinventing, letting go of that old habit, becoming first familiar with that, and then really thinking about, how would I rather be? Who would I rather be? What would I rather think about this show up, say? And then how would I rather feel?
Steffi:And that's kind of the self-awareness practice, but then also the mental rehearsal, first becoming familiar with your old or present self, and then becoming familiar with your new self and mentally rehearse. And we use the tool of meditation for that. And that's not a meditation like the mindfulness meditation. I see this more as a reprogramming meditation, where you really go into when we talk brainwaves, and we learn about the brainwaves, too, the different brainwave patterns going from beta, where you're awake and you take in your external world, and you learn, and your brain is making meaning of the external and internal world, and then lower those brainwaves into alpha. And in alpha, your inner world becomes more real than your outer world.
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So that's where you can actually create, where you have access to your subconsciousness, and you can recreate your programming in less time or in a more impactful time than if we try it in our 3d world. Yeah. So that's why we use the tool of mental rehearsal.
Russell:And that's fascinating because a lot of hypnotherapy is based on that idea. But it's just about having that external guide rather than attempting, because you've got to be pretty adept sometimes who have learned how to work there. It takes a great deal of professional practice to get you there so often. Using the hypnotherapy is a great place to start. And I know you work with coaches, and you certify new professionalize and you develop coaches. If I want to find out more about what it is that you do and where you are in the world, how do I find out more about you and how do I find your website? Because I think that's where is the best place, isn't it? And this allows you to spell your name. I'm just hinting.
Steffi:Yes, the website and actually LinkedIn. My website is my name. Steffieseefeld.com. It's steffiseefeld. And that's the same for LinkedIn. Those are the best ways to connect with me and find out about the newest offerings or where am. Yeah, as you said, where I am in the world.
Russell:And it looks like there's training, there's workshops, there's memberships, all sorts of interesting things. And those of you who've not read any Joe dispensers in order to get their head in the game, it's very much something to read first, I often think, because I think the ideas are so mind shattering, sometimes it's good to have a bit of time to pause and reflect. So, are there any Dr. Joe Dispenser books you'd read first before you start practicing?
Steffi:Yeah, I would say Dr. Joe Dispenza's book, Breaking the Habit of Being your Old Self, because there is the science behind it. Even though we're releasing, or his team is releasing a lot of new research, that is incredible and really changing a lot of how we think about healing and how we think about medicine, so to speak. But also, I would say Bruce Lipton is also a great person to look up online, either his book, I forgot the title, but just any podcast really. It's all the same concept of that we're the creators of our lives and that actually, if we change our state of being, our emotional state, biology of belief. Yes.
Russell:Good. All right then. That's absolutely brilliant. So, people know how to get a hold of you. We'll put the link to your site in the show notes. It's been an absolute joy to talk to you today.
Steffi:Same. Thank you for having me.
Russell:You must be having fantastic air miles. If you're shuttling from Berlin, you must be traveling for free. Mean, amazing.
Steffi:I am manifesting that. I am manifesting that. I tried to really limit my miles because of our earth as much as I can.
Russell:Good.
Steffi:But, yeah, power of teams.
Russell:Brilliant. Well, thank you for spending time with us today. I really do enjoy it and all the best, and I look forward to your work with interest. And let's link up on LinkedIn.
Steffi:Yes, thank you so much.
Russell:You take care.