When you suddenly see kingfishers everywhere and assign meaning, C.G. Jung calls this synchronicity. Or is it just well-done Marketing brought to you by Google? An unknown word appeared in my life, and it was the project name called “Halcyon Days.” I had to spell this word several times as I mentioned it on several occasions, and I always got it wrong.
So on a Monday night when I was watching a documentary on C.G. Jung and synchronicity, I noted down the correct spelling. I hoped that I would now spell it correctly. That evening I learned that there are a few “coincidences” between C.G. Jung and J.R.R. Tolkien. That was quite a fascinating discovery as I feel these two come from two completely separate fields of my life. However, the connections are intriguing.
Kingfishers everywhere
Then, I heard from a friend about an old seventies TV-series that I binged on. It was one of those cold Saturdays and Sundays where going out of the house was just not an option. Guess what? One of the main families in the series had the last name “Halcyon”. I then learned how to pronounce it and found out that it is actually a special kind of tree kingfisher (bird). I finally checked Wikipedia: “Halcyon Days is an oblique reference to the Greek mythological figure Alcyone”.
“Ovid and Hyginus both also make the metamorphosis the origin of the etymology for “halcyon days“, the seven days in winter when storms never occur. They state that these were originally the 14 days each year (seven days on either side of the shortest day of the year[5]) during which Alcyone (as a kingfisher) laid her eggs and made her nest on the beach and during which her father Aeolus, god of the winds, restrained the winds and calmed the waves so she could do so in safety. The phrase has since come to refer to any peaceful time. Its proper meaning, however, is that of a lucky break, or a bright interval set in the midst of adversity; just as the days of calm and mild weather are set in the height of winter for the sake of the kingfishers’ egglaying.”
You all know that Wikipedia is not scientific, but it is often a good first reference for discovery, especially if you are looking for connections. Today, I read an article in which Ellie Golding was mentioned. And she has an album called “Halcyon Days”. Yes, it’s a coincidence, maybe…maybe not.
Synchronicity
What C.G. Jung would say, though, is that I assigned a deeper meaning to this, which is why it is synchronicity. I was ruminating about whether I should continue to edit my Bollywood-meets-Bond-style novel “Double Happiness”. Maybe you don’t know I ventured into creative writing a few years ago.
I never fully finished “Double Happiness.” Fear took hold of me, and I did not see immediate success, so I decided to quit. Part 1 was published, and Parts 2 to 4 are draft manuscripts on my computer. I did not even know if I still had them. And then, out of the universe, I get a sign that reminds me of India. The Kingfishers are everywhere, and my favourite Indian beer brand is “Kingfisher”. I cannot remember a time in my life that was so mellow and calm. So, if I wanted to lay my artistic eggs, this fasting period up to Easter would be the best time.
Global Rockstars
The Lens of the Writer and the Paintbrush of the Artist
We look at life from a different angle. As writers, we have a lens. We make the normal day-to-day visible with words, just like a painter who brushes a situation in a shopping centre into a piece of art or a photographer who captures a war story in one image. What we do with our writing is to paint a world inside your head, and sometimes we touch your soul. And when we touch your soul, we feel connected through the words. There is beauty in that.
I did not know about C.G. Jung until their recent explorations that he painted, and I was interested in mythical topics. When I picked up the archetypes for the second time, his words about cultural separation seemed so up-to-date that they were almost scary.
“Unser Intellekt hat Ungeheures geleistet, derweilen unser geistliches Haus zerfallen ist….Schliesslich graben wir die Weisheit alle
The Ice Palace
r Zeiten und Völker aus und finden, dass alles Teuerste und Kostbarste schon längst in schönster Sprache gesagt ist.” (Carl Gustav Jung, Archetypen, originally 1934, 2010 ed., p. 19)
Can you grasp that there is a collective unconscious in this world and that we can tap into it like a radar? There is a painting in Jung’s red book that symbolizes the channel to the collective soul. For a while, when the Internet was pretty new in the 90s, and only geeks knew about it, many of them thought of it as our collective consciousness. For me, Twitter, for a long time, was my access to the collective consciousness (These days are clearly over since X has become the new Propaganda machinery that lets Joseph Goebbels look like a schoolboy. )
Stuck in the Iceberg
Access Your Intuition
Through intuition, I hope to access the collective unconscious, and there is one way to do that: through relationships and in connection with other human beings. The Internet is now the collective, global expression of our fears, prejudices, and biases.
Most of us are stuck in a loop and echo chamber, where what we put out there echoes back to us.
Did I find Halcyon everywhere because I was looking for them? Is it just selective perception, or is Google spying on me? When we widen our perception, we can also ask better questions. We see more, and we take in more. When we connect with formerly unconnected concepts, we can be creative, find better solutions and create what is later often considered art. (Art is original, whereas most AI art is reproduced, it would typically be considered “KITSCH”).
If you are looking for ways to access your unconscious and want to use synchronicities to find deeper meaning in your life’s purpose (and if you aren’t spiritual or religious), you might want to test my worldly and perception-enhancing methods below. These will help you increase and challenge your “frame of reference.”
Actual growth only happens with more self-awareness. In today’s world, I would also suggest that acquiring philosophical, religious, and mystic knowledge of the past can help form a worldview that is not just polaristic.
(The DMIS model explains this process well. Please remind me to write about it another time.)
1 – Start with a Vision Board
Finding your purpose, or your “why,” as Simon Sinek calls it, is not easy, and it’s not something you will have from the beginning. So, we usually recommend that you start with a vision board, which could be a flip chart or poster canvas in your working space. Use images posted on it and ideas from everything that comes to your mind.
Add things that you would like to see in your future holidays that you would like to take and things you would like to have, like, you know, the best part that you always wanted or the VW hippie bus that you’re craving for the holidays in the Maldives. Add anything that brings happiness to you and add it to that vision board, and you will notice that some parts are about your life goals and relationship goals, and other parts might be about your professional goals, in determining your why, it also helps to look at pain points that you see in the world in your industry or in your immediate Community for example in your religious Circle.
If you then, from those pain points think about the future solution you can probably write up your vision like of the future State and where you would like to be in the future. from that you write your one page mission statement so this would be a more short-term idea for example how you know how you would like to work towards your vision and I can give you an example from our website so the vision that we defined was about peace and prosperity for all people quite – We also wanted to see peace in the world.
“We aspire for peace and prosperity for all people! Through global mobility expertise, executive coaching and intercultural training, our clients build sustainable relationships across the globe and act as responsible leaders.”
Angie Weinberger
I still like the vision, and I think it is still relevant, but it’s not something that you can work towards in a short time frame. So that people understand the true purpose of being in the world, helping you know with peace, it needs to be translated into something more tangible. That’s what we usually refer to in the business world as a mission. So, what we have to find is that. For myself, I’m on a mission to bring the human touch back into Global Mobility through digitalization.
2 – Define Your Mission for the Next Five Years
What I usually recommend in workshops instead is that once you have a few ideas about your mission, and this could be a time frame five years, then you you try to word it exactly as I mentioned earlier you start with I’m on a mission too and then you add it you add your goal for the next 5 years to that sentence. believe me this is really powerful, especially for social media for LinkedIn for your bio it’s really good to have that one-sentence mission statement ideally it should fit on a Post-It note.
“I’m on a Mission to Bring Back the Human Touch into Global Mobility through Digitalization.”
3 – Summarize Your Seven Main Values
It is also helpful to go deeper and better understand your values. You probably know what brought you to this stage, so I encourage you to research your values. You’re getting everything you already had when you were probably 16 and formed as a character. What are my values? We encourage
Humanism,
Clients First,
Relationships Matter,
Quality Counts,
Interaction Personally,
and Value Work and Time.
We also find it essential to check our biases and privileges regularly.
4 – Brainstorm Your Unique Selling Proposition
Once you have assembled your values, mission statement, and why, or deeper, higher purpose, you could also consider how this translates into what is called a unique selling proposition (USP) in marketing. A USP differentiates you from other providers that offer the same service or program as you do. So, for example, if you are an expat coach, you could bring your unique aspect experience, your academic background or research, or your target group might be exceptional. Hence, it is worth thinking a bit deeper here and and defining that USP at this stage I think it’s okay if you have a draft idea I don’t think you need to perfect it yet and remember that all of these things develop so as your business evolves your mission will also involve.
5 – Turn it into a Unique Loving Promise
As we work with human beings and because there is such a lack of “Human Touch” in an AI-driven social media world and a corporate world driven by metrics and tickets, I have decided to move from USP to ULP, which stands for Unique Loving Promise. In other words, it’s how I would like to be treated by an Expat Coach, and I have made this the way I will love my clients, with all their little quirks and issues. (Excerpt from “The Global Coach Journal” Manuscript).
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Tell me about your synchronicity experiences, please.
What C.G. Jung would say, though, is that I assigned a deeper meaning to this, which is why it is synchronicity. I was ruminating about whether I should continue to edit my Bollywood-meets-Bond-style novel “Double Happiness”. Maybe you don’t know I ventured into creative writing a few years ago. 
