Tonight, the 91st Academy Awards will be hosted and ONE OF MY OWN is nominated for an Oscar.

And when I say, one of my own, I mean LIPA.

A place that has shaped me like no other. A place where I grew up to be me. A place where I made friends that still to this day manage to set in my creativity, just by thinking of them.

So, I felt massivly inspired by Lynette’s nomination and our past in the management office, to write about the feeling I came across the other week, that made me be so grateful for LIPA once again.

Let me start by saying, that being fired from a job you love, is probably worse. Yet, being fired from a job you hate – is not as easy to take as you might think. Surely, the very devaluing way it was carried out in this case, puts it in on a whole new level, but days later, I realized something very valuable for myself…

Growing up, I was…how can I put it…..I was different.

I was always different.

In the English language there is this term of an „odd duck“. I don’t think I was an odd duck per se or weird or something like that (even though LIPA people might disagree on this one), I just did not really fit in anywhere.

I always had friends – luckily people feel drawn to the weird, unusual and different after all – but I just did not belong really to anyone or anything. I had many interests, again „different“ interests, lots of talent and always quite a big mouth and strong personality.

In my family this was never seen as something positive or unique. It was always a disturbing factor of being too much, too loud, too colorful, too excited, too agile, too curious……you name it. And even though, I carried on through my school life without being an outcast, I always felt alone with this „me“ and pushed away in many respects because of the way I was.

Thanks to my grandfather, I was able to dance and do music from a very early age on and it was an outlet for simply being.

When I made the expected choice of a humble job, the inevitable 3-year-training for an office clerk at a big insurance in the south of Germany began -> because, you need something steady, right? 🙂
I was so happy to have built up this „other life“ during my teenage-years, where I danced, where I sang, where I organized and played around anything creative, so that I was able to stick through these 3 years in an insurance company.
It kept this „me“ alive.

Needless to say, that in the insurance business I actually was far beyond different and unusual.
I was in fact this odd duck.
Luckily the minute I graduated from this training and was officially hired to stay in this company, the former superior I had in the department, handed me a little piece of paper with an audition-date on it. He said: „you should apply – you don’t belong here.“

I did.
And I was invited.

I remember it like it was yesterday, that I sat there in Munich, together with a girl called Susanne (who I count as part of my family today) and two other boys to go through the interview process for LIPA.
These two boys were better in everything. I remember me trying to somehow manage to speak English, falling apart over the test questions and most of all, totally stinking with the financial excercises. Inside, I already folded. I thought, no way in hell, they will take me. Susanne was very smart, driven, structured. I was sure, it’s gonna be her and the smarter one of the two boys.
In the end, they decided for Susanne and me.

And you know what? I can still feel this kind of magical moment inside of me, hardly recognizable….that’s how soft it spoke and felt. It was almost not real or believable for me and yet it was there…

…deep down was something in me, that….for the first time, got recognized.

Tears are coming up, right this second, as I write this, because……this recognition changed my life.

I don’t remember, if it was Maria Barrett or Dave Pich (which both have endless stories on me :-). But one of them said to my question, why I was chosen, that apparently LIPA saw something in me, that the others did not have.

With this being said, I just yesterday re-read my own writing in my journal of the first week of LIPA, where it states in big, fat letters:

EVERYONE HERE, IS LIKE ME.

And that was actually an understatement. Because people were even more talented, more versatile, more colorful, more crazy, more out-of-the-ordinary. I felt home.

LIPA surely taught me a lot of professional skills and knowledge, but the predominant value of this place for me, will always be, that for the first time in my life, I was not being degraded for being different, but the things that made me me, were literally celebrated. I was loved, appreciated, treasured and motivated to grow in exactly that, what I brought, that no one else had.

And I saw, what it can do to a human, being celebrated for their uniqueness – no matter how different or unsual they are compared to the majority of daily life.
It makes you bloom, flourish, strive. It makes you reach inner resources of power and creativity, that you did not even know you had and that will not be apparent in any other circumstances, except for the moments when you live and work by and through your true YOU.

After LIPA I had quite a career because of that and flew with exactly this feeling of being different and doing something great with it. My unique contribution was valuable and not comparable to anything or anyone else.

Somewhat 12 years later, I had a major burn-out and the sickness and death of my grandfather, who brought me up, made me leave the production business. Thanks to my always balancing second pillar in my life of working in a therapeutical way with movement and dance, a transition was possible and happened naturally. The money was far less though and building it up was and is hard work. The additional challenge to search for a new (inner) „home“ after my grandpa’s home was gone, the only place I could think of moving to, was the only other „home“ I knew. The mountains.

Not an area known for their open-minded creative people but I found some peace and room to breathe. Starting completely new here, I took on extra 2-3 day jobs to support my business. When it finally started to pick up, I moved again to another place in the mountains, and again, and again (I guess the moving inside of me is just part of my DNA or the never-ending journey in the search of a true home that might not be found outside but within).
So, all of these „supporting“ jobs had one thing in common. They were pretty „normal“. A „normal“ job in the office, with „normal“ people, „normal“ pay, „normal conversations“, „normal“, „normal“, „normal“ and me in the middle of it…..being „unnormal“.

Most of the time, it was me that quit those „normal“ jobs or got into arguments of the way things are being handled, and it took me until this quite unhuman layoff some weeks ago, to understand, that I never was and never will be able to work in this line of work – with these kind of people, where difference is something uncomfortable, something disturbing and something that needs to be „fixed“ or quiet down.

I saw myself in a flashback – being back in school, in my work training, with my family…..being the person that is „uncomfortable“ in many ways because in their world I appear as so different, so awkward, weird, unusual AND because I speak my mind, I reflect and share that and will always have a strong personality that stands up and out.

I could literally feel myself being back there. Being pushed down because I open my mouth. Being pushed down because I do things differently. Because I am different to everyone around me.

I am taking this layoff, as nasty as it was, as a thankful reminder to allow myself to walk away from a line of work and companies, that are unable to appreciate the uniqueness and the incredible chance it brings, to have „different“ people within your crowd.

So, what is KAIZEN for me here today?

KAIZEN is the letting go of the blame and realizing that I am just in the wrong crowd.
KAIZEN is to step out a little of this circle you hold on to and turn around and find the tribe that has been waiting for exactly YOU.

Where are you still trying to fit in and endure instead of taking a step back, look around and see, if there are maybe other people and places, that are wildly waving at you to come over?

Truly & from the ♥

Ulrike AKA (you know……PR :-))