Praise for Unbox Your Life
“Unbox Your Life will help you do just that—unbox your life and in the process discover your life’s mission. Personal discovery and sense of self-worth is the foundation of any healthy relationship which is why the private victory must precede the public victory. This book is a must-read for anyone looking to build relationships that last.”
—Sean Covey, President, FranklinCovey Education and New York Times bestselling coauthor of The 4 Disciplines of Execution
“Tobias shares his struggles and triumphs with raw honesty. This book is a gem. It will help you form amazing relationships, not only with others, but also with yourself.”
—John Strelecky, author of The Why Café and The Big Five for Life
“Tobias Beck is a remarkable coach.”
—Daniel Animati, entertainer and TVhHost (Pro7)
Tobias Beck
Unbox Your Life!
Tobias Beck
Unbox Your Life!
Curbing Chronic Complainers, Living Life Liberated, and Other Secrets to Success
Mango Publishing
Coral Gables
Copyright © 2020 by GABAL Verlag GmbH.Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.This translation published by arrangement with GABAL Verlag GmbH.
Cover Design: total italic (Thierry Wijnberg), Amsterdam / Berlin Cover Photo: kucherav / Adobe Stock Layout & Design: Lohse Design, Heppenheim | www.lohse-design.de and Roberto Nunez
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Unbox Your Life!: Curbing Chronic Complainers, Living Life Liberated, and Other Secrets to Success
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication number: 2020933910 ISBN: (print) 978-1-64250-278-7, (ebook) 978-1-64250-279-4 BISAC category code: SEL016000, SELF-HELP / Personal Growth / Happiness
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
I’d Rather Not Engage in This Conversation
What Gets You Out of Bed in the Morning? Find Your Passion!
What Are You Waiting For? Change Your Life
Giving Back: The Four Categories and Happiness
Programming Your Mirror Neurons: A Guide
Your Personal Environment and Your Growth
Diamonds Are Created Under Pressure—Just Like You!
The Dalai Lama and the Great “Mimimi”
From a young age, I had somehow found it hard to fit in. Even in kindergarten, Ms. Zenker had called my mother and instructed her to “pick up [her] son immediately!”
What on earth could such a little boy do to be sent home? Well, I’d been sledding—like all the other students. However, after sliding down the mountain, contrarily to every other child who took their own sled and pulled it up again, I had five girls pull mine back up—with me still sitting in it.
This was the first in a series of expulsions—another one in primary school, and five more in high school—until I was issued an official certificate for learning disability that granted me permission to be stupid. Failure became the story of my life, a story that was told to me so often by others that I began to believe it myself.
The system didn’t want me. It chewed me up and spat me out again.
After achieving poor results in my school exit exams, I became a flight attendant and later found myself, via a rather circuitous route, studying psychology. I wanted to find out what was wrong with me. Around the same time—call it coincidence—I ended up with a position in a telemarketing company, which also allowed me to discover some of my strengths. Talking was my thing. The system had never made that clear to me, but I found it out by myself—albeit after more than twenty years.
I became my own guarantor of success, and built up relationships with over a thousand sales partners. Eventually, I became vice president of the company. I had a penthouse with a pool on the roof, a girlfriend who worked as a model, and a custom Mercedes SLK AMG, which