Guest Blogs
Knowitall.ch often invites local experts in their field to contribute to their own blogs on our site. This means not only you will benefit from the useful recommendations that we make on our News pages, but you can also profit from some of the great advice and tips that these experts have to make on their favorite subjects. Whilst each of these bloggers has been recommended to us at some point during the evolution of Know-it-all passport and knowitall.ch, obviously we are not able to test out all the suggestions they make on their blogs, nor do we necessarily agree with all their opinions. So if you do find one of their tips useful (or not!), do let us know!
To make these blogs more accessible to you, we have now decided to group them altogether in one section, entitled Guest Blogs, accessible from our main menu bar. We will also post the most recent blogs on the home page of our site in the right hand column.
We are still building up this area of the site, and are looking for bloggers in a number of sections, including Your Home, Travel, and Leisure, so if you feel you have a useful contribution to make in either of these areas, and have the time to submit blog entries approximately every month, then please get in touch!
By Sunita Sehmi, Walk The Talk
Happy New Year and what better way to start the New Year with an uplifting piece on Happiness!
American and Israeli teacher, and writer in the areas of positive psychology and leadership, Tal Ben-Shahar, was born 1970. As a lecturer at Harvard University, Tal created the most popular course in Harvard's history. Influenced by the pioneering work of Dr Martin Seligman, the world-renowned founder of positive psychology, Tal Ben-Shahar states that his goal in teaching positive psychology "is to create a bridge between the Ivory Tower and Main Street.”
In addition to his work at Harvard, Tal consults and lectures around the world to executives in multi-national corporations, the general public, and at-risk populations, addressing such topics as happiness, self-esteem, resilience, goal setting, mindfulness, and leadership. I was incredibly lucky to have interviewed him: as you will read, he really walks the talk! Enjoy!
Having booked our Christmas holiday to Saas-Fee in July 2016 with the knowledge that it was probably our last Christmas in Switzerland, we had no idea that it would prove to be such a poignant visit.
Looking back over 2016, we can’t help but find ourselves reflecting on the many celebrities who passed away. The death of George Michael on Christmas Day was one of these sad moments. It was only upon arriving in Saas-Fee on the morning of 26th December that I heard the news. It soon became apparent that Saas-Fee had a strong connection with the singer, and after a quick internet search I discovered that the music video for Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’ had been filmed there back in December 1984.
Originally planned to be shot in the Canton of Bern, a last-minute change of location occurred due to a lack of snow, and Saas-Fee became the new setting. In case you are curious, the group and crew stayed at the 5-star Hotel Walliserhof, now renamed the Hotel Ferienart. Another piece of trivia is that the well-known scene in front of the open fireplace was actually shot in the current culture centre, rather than the chalet shown in the video.
With this knowledge in mind, and having watched the video again, our stay in Saas-Fee took on a new meaning. Although I cannot claim to have been a huge Wham or George Michael fan, I cannot escape the fact that they were a constant part of my teenage years, and thus, were indeed a part of my life that had come to an end.
By Claire Doole, Claire Doole Communications
Emmanuel Macron, the French presidential hopeful, was getting ready to take the stage, and all I knew as panel moderator was that he was meant to sit in the chair second to the left.
He and I were taking part in the Women’s Forum for Economy and Society in Deauville. I had no idea what he would say on our panel discussion about the economic advancement of women. His PR team were nowhere to be found.
So when the makeup artist whispered to her colleague that she was about to go upstairs to do his make-up, I followed her into the inner sanctum.
I needed to know if he was willing to speak in English – a red line for some French politicians – or whether he would be speaking through an interpreter. I wanted to briefly introduce myself and the first topic for discussion – the gender pay gap between men and women. From experience, I know it is important to build rapport with high-level panelists, and to sense if they get my British humour.
He did – peering over my clipboard and asking what questions I would be posing – in perfect English.
by Milena McRae, www.milenamcrae.com
As we go through life, we distinguish as clearly as black and white between the good and the bad - we learn to do this from a very young age as we are trained by our well-meaning environment to become an individual who fits in with the expectations of the system and those around us. So our beliefs about what is good and what is bad are deeply ingrained in us and form the basis of our habits, behaviours and choices we make later in life.
Once established, we use this framework to navigate through life and make conscious choices. Habitually then, when we don't like our circumstances, we are prompted into action, focusing on the negative results in order to rectify them. This causes us to focus our energy and time on the negative side of things before the desired circumstances seem even possible.
By Sunita Sehmi, Walk The Talk
Susan Anderson has devoted more than 30 years of clinical experience and groundbreaking research in working with victims of abandonment trauma.
Founder of the Abandonment Recovery movement, she is author of four books including Journey from Abandonment to Healing, Taming Your Outer Child, Black Swan: Twelve Lessons of Abandonment Recovery and a WORKBOOK: Journey from Heartbreak to Connection.
“Of all human fears abandonment is the most primal. Left unresolved, this deep personal wound can linger beneath the surface where it undermines self-esteem and interferes in our relationships from within.”
Tell us about yourself. I’m a psychotherapist specializing in helping victims of abandonment trauma, as well as other types of loss and heartbreak. I’ve spent the past 30 years researching and writing about the abandonment and related issues of relationship conflicts, attachment, separation, addiction, grief, and personal growth.
What got you into abandonment and healing? Twenty years into my career as a psychotherapist specializing in abandonment, I had my own traumatic abandonment experience. The love of my life – my marital partner of 20 years, suddenly up and left me for another woman. I felt overwhelming pain and devastation, forcing me to realize that the tools I had been using to help my clients were simply not powerful enough to overcome the lasting effects of this trauma. There was nothing in the literature of psychology or self-help that offered any true remedy, so to help myself and to help others, I began researching new ways to repair abandonment’s painful wound. The result is the Five Stages of Abandonment and Recovery.
