The Power of the Pause & The Magic of Stopping—Even Briefly

Connecting with Nature, In Rhythm With The Seasons, Listening Before Burnout, Sustainable Leadership
There are moments in a daywhen everything continues as expected— emails answered,conversations moving forward,decisions being made— and yet, something feels slightly off. Not enough to stop.Not enough to name. But present. And often, it passes unnoticed. In many professional environments,we are trained to keep momentum. To move from one task to the next.To respond quickly.To stay engaged. Pausing can feel… inefficient.Or unnecessary. And yet—it is often in the pausethat we begin to notice what was already there. The moment before adjustment You may recognize this: You respond to something quickly—and only afterward realizeyou would have said it differently. You agree to something—and later sense a quiet resistance. You continue working—even as your focus begins to thin. These are not failures of clarity. They are often missed moments of noticing. Moments…
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Protecting Your Inner Peace in an Overwhelmed World

Connecting with Nature, In Rhythm With The Seasons, Listening Before Burnout, Sustainable Leadership
The Emotional Weight of Modern Awareness There is a quiet kind of exhaustion many people carry right now that is difficult to explain. Not only personal stress.Not only busyness. But the feeling of being emotionally stretched across too much suffering, too much noise, too much urgency all at once. We live in a time where tragedy arrives beside weather reports, work emails, advertisements, and social media updates. The human nervous system was never designed to process the emotional weight of an entire world every single day. And yet many thoughtful people try. They try to stay informed.They try to care deeply.They try to remain compassionate, responsible, and productive at the same time. The Emotional Weight on our Self Eventually, many begin to feel guilty for moments of peace. As though…
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Beyond Thought: What Your Senses Already Know

Connecting with Nature, In Rhythm With The Seasons, Listening Before Burnout, Sustainable Leadership
There is a way of knowing that doesn’t begin with thinking. It begins with sensory awareness. In many professional settings, we are taught to find clarity through analysis—facts, frameworks, careful planning. These are valuable. They help us understand, compare, and decide. But they are not the whole picture. Especially for thoughtful professionals—those who notice a lot, even if they don’t always speak up—there is often a quieter stream of information running alongside the thinking mind. It shows up as a slight tension.A pause in someone’s voice.A sense that something doesn’t quite fit. Not loud. Not urgent.But present. And often… accurate. When Thinking Feels Clear—But Something Doesn’t You may know this feeling: Everything points in one direction.The logic checks out.The plan seems solid. And still—something in you hesitates. This isn’t confusion.It…
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Why We Ignore Ourselves (and How to Stop): A Path to Presence Practice

Connecting with Nature, In Rhythm With The Seasons, Listening Before Burnout, Sustainable Leadership
In the demanding landscape of professional life, it’s remarkably easy to become disconnected from our inner selves. We prioritize external deadlines, respond to constant notifications, and often put the needs of our teams and organizations before our own. This subtle, often unconscious, act of self-neglect can lead to a pervasive sense of unease, burnout, and a diminished capacity for truly insightful leadership. For quiet professionals and leaders, recognizing and addressing this pattern is a crucial step towards cultivating genuine presence practice and fostering emotional resilience. Consider the metaphor of clouds passing in the sky. "Clouds pass without holding onto their shape—endless moving through. We can learn to let our thoughts pass without holding onto them." This image beautifully illustrates how our internal experiences—thoughts, emotions, sensations—are often transient. Yet, we frequently…
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How to use Your Senses for Burnout Prevention

Connecting with Nature, In Rhythm With The Seasons, Listening Before Burnout, Sustainable Leadership
What is a good way to picture Burnout Prevention? - Imagine a lake. When the water is still, it reflects everything with clarity, and reveals what lies beneath.When the surface is disturbed however, the reflection blurs, becomes unclear. Our inner world mirrors that. Many people seek improvements by thinking harder. They analyze, interpret, plan, optimize. But deep listening does not begin with more mental effort. It begins with presence. It begins when we slow down enough to notice what is already here. That is the heart of full-sense listening. Full-sense listening means tuning in with more than the mind. It means listening through the body, the breath, the senses, the emotions, and the subtle shifts in energy that often speak long before words do. This is one of the most…
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Thoughtful Professional? Thriving One-on-One? Here is Why | Burnout Prevention

Connecting with Nature, In Rhythm With The Seasons, Listening Before Burnout, Sustainable Leadership
Better, One-on-One There’s something I’ve come to accept about myself—not as a limitation, but as a way of being. I simply work better one-on-one. As a coach.As a writer.As a friend.As a person. It’s not that I can’t be around people. I can. And I am.I show up in meetings, in conversations, in the necessary rhythms of professional and everyday life. But something shifts when it becomes one-on-one. There is space. Space to listen—not just to words, but to what sits underneath them.Space to notice what is not being said.Space to follow a thought all the way to its quiet conclusion. A Small Story Years ago, I attended a professional gathering.The room was full—bright, articulate people, conversations layered over each other like overlapping waves. I found myself doing what I…
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Listening Before Burnout: What Your Emotions Are Trying to Tell You

Connecting with Nature, In Rhythm With The Seasons, Listening Before Burnout, Sustainable Leadership
Learn how emotions like anxiety, resentment, and sadness can serve as early warning signs of burnout—and how listening to them can restore clarity, balance, and inner calm. What Your Emotions Might Be Asking of You There is a quiet moment—often easy to miss—when something inside you stirs. A tightening.A restlessness.A sense that something is not quite right. It is easy, in those moments, to push it aside.To stay focused.To keep going. But what if these inner signals are not interruptions…but invitations? In my work with thoughtful professionals and leaders, I often see this: Emotions are not problems to solve.They are information to notice. They are part of the early language of burnout—subtle, intelligent, and often very precise. And when we begin to listen—gently, without urgency—they start to reveal something important.…
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Haushalterschaft & Gelassenheit

Connecting with Nature
So often we find ourselves in despair because there is too much to worry about. Picking apart what can and cannot be changed can be a great way to empower ourselves and the ones in our care. Recently, my daughter expressed her frustration about worldwide pollution. It seemed that along with the sharing of facts, the school does little to catch those young minds as they battle the implications of what was shared with them. Tangled up in her questions, her frustration and her eagerness to make the world a better place, she asked me with some exasperation, what she can actually do. I pointed out that we are conscious of the packaging we buy, and we are purposeful with the way we use our car and the fuel (both…
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European Starlings in North America | Contemplations about Invasive Species

European Starlings in North America | Contemplations about Invasive Species

Connecting with Nature, Mindfulness, Nature, Personal Development
A Story about Three Baby Birds A few years back, an old lady asked me to raise three newly hatched starlings that had she had found at the foot of a big old tree. Reluctantly, I took them in, and lo and behold I was able to raise and release them successfully. Whenever I see or hear starlings since then, I like telling my daughter that those are our three starlings saying thank you. Today, a extraordinarily big flock of starlings landed around the house and well beyond the creek. They were so loud it was both amazing and a little bit intimidating. Afterwards I thought about writing about this, as in "I had rescued the starlings and they came back with all their friends to thank me", when I…
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Connecting over Garbage

Connecting with Nature, Mindfulness, Nature
At first, we saw some garbage, the usual, a few discarded food containers, a coffee cup lid, carelessly dropped or lost by the inattentive visitor. Nothing that could not easily be picked up and collected in a small garbage bag later (and I generally do, because it hurts my eye more to see the garbage than it is an effort to pick it up and dispose of it in a designated spot). It was a hot Sunday. We decided to go for a swim at a place along a river, where the water cascading over sheet rock is easy to access and not too deep. Walking on we came across an abandoned campsite, with bottles and aluminum foil in the fire pit. Right next to it was a good sized…
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Minding the Little Things

Connecting with Nature, Mindfulness, Nature
Leopard Frog I just came across a very small (what I believe to be a) leopard frog. Why I saw it? – Because it moved. Once it stopped, I had a hard time finding it again. Can you spot it in the picture-insert? Leopard Frog, June 28, 2023 When I held out my hand the frog jumped on it. It did not stop but kept moving, and I felt fortunate to get one shot with the little amphibian in focus. I am sharing this experience, because I felt so passionate about this sighting, so amazed at how tiny, how perfect and how fragile this little frog is. That created a sense of responsibility and reverence in me. What I learned from the encounter: Frogs are amazing. Life is precious. I…
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Spirit Plants

Connecting with Nature, Mindfulness
When I lived in the Yukon, I was given a handful of Haskap berries. I harvested the tiny seeds and started them. I planted the little plants in a raised bed. They survived winter after winter, and after a three years they produced their first fruit. When I left the Yukon, I took some seeds with me. The whole story repeated itself, and we had our first berries last summer. This summer, we have such an abundant harvest, which made me think that Haskap bushes are definitely my spirit plant: They are easy going, produce fruit very early in the season and for an extended period, they are abundant, appreciative of what I can give them, they are decorative, and they are not of interest to little harvesters like chipmunks…
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Your Body Has You Covered

Connecting with Nature, Mental Fitness, Mindfulness
When the fog is too thick for you to find your way around, your body knows where to go. That might be a bit of a metaphorical exaggeration. Please bear with me as I unroll my thoughts: Unfortunately, our area is currently experiencing dense smog from wildfires in this and other provinces of Canada. While we cannot really smell it (unlike yesterday, when the smell of a cold fire pit hung in the air), my chest felt heavy this morning, I felt reluctant to take a deep breath, and a headache was (and is) lingering. I pointed out to my daughter that there are people who spend their lives in conditions like this, where the air is polluted all the time. And how lucky we can be that this is…
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Canine Assisted Coaching Anyone?

Connecting with Nature
Today I would like you to meet our dog Danica. Danica is an English Shepherd, and she is 6 months old. She has been with us since September, and she is in training to become a Therapy Dog, assisting me in my coaching. What Danica (along with so many of her fellow canines) brings into the world is her playful, gentle nature, and her ability to live in the moment, while never wasting time with grudges. Danica loves to play with her Frisbee and with sticks of all kinds. __________ Danica’s question for you: When was the last time you petted a dog? Danica and her Frisbee (12.1.2023) __________ Manuela Zeitlhofer | Mental Fitness & Nature Coach
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Mental Fitness Snippet: Walking & Breathing

Connecting with Nature, Mental Fitness
The snow is crunching under my feet. I breathe in while I take two steps. I breathe out while I take the next two steps. My mind chatters. I think: “In” (and take two steps), “out” (and take two steps). I let go of the thoughts that want to bubble up. “In…. out” (crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch). https://youtu.be/zzReU25B79Q __________ Manuela Zeitlhofer | Mental Fitness and Nature Coach
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Playing to our strengths

Connecting with Nature, Mental Fitness, Mindfulness, Personal Development
What Playing to Your Strength is Playing to your strength means doing what you are doing well and with passion, rather than doing other things that drain you with a lot more effort. An example: A friend’s son was assessed for ADHD. In the process, it was found that he is simply a kid who needs more physical exercise than he was getting in school and at home. It was not easy, but the school and the parents found ways for him to get more play time outside and more time when he is unplugged from any technical devices. This story led me to think about people in general: - Are we living our lives playing to our strengths or are we just playing along with the structures we find…
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Unique Animals

Connecting with Nature
We have been enjoying the very unique personalities of several domestic ducks. It all began with a few barnyard-mix ducklings in 2021. In 2022, two Magpie-Cayuga ducklings followed. A number of them were males, so we found them loving new homes where they have been enjoying their own flocks of duck-ladies. At the end of this summer, we had one female (Sunny) and one male (Magnum) left. For the second time in her life, Sunny was in the process of laying eggs, and for the second time in my life, I was collecting those eggs. Sunny did not want to accept the fate I had chosen for her – that is, not to have ducklings in late fall. I kept reminding her that it is much more sensible to raise…
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My Animal Teachers

Connecting with Nature, Mindfulness, Personal Development
Minding The Little Things Series Dora & Speckles, June 21, 2021 After I had written my previous two posts, a racoon attacked and killed one of our ducks: Dora, a little black female. I was reminded that nature is neither good nor bad, nature just IS. The racoon needs to eat. The ducks don’t fight back. (And I failed to keep them safe, as our electric netting fence was not strong enough to keep the racoon out.) We have been planning to get a dog in September. Too late for Dora, but hopefully the dog will deter any predators and keep our remaining ducks safe. I am still sad about loosing that little bird. And I am contemplating what it means to be human, and to have the choice to…
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Animal Communication

Connecting with Nature, Mental Fitness, Mindfulness, Personal Development
For many people, animal communication is something that only the 'gifted few' can achieve. This of course is entirely untrue as we were all born with the ability to talk to and hear animals. Holly Davis, Animal Communication With All Species __________ Challenge: Communicate with the next animal you see. Then drop me a note! What have you learned? “Starlings”, by Manuela Zeitlhofer, May 28, 2020 __________ Manuela Zeitlhofer | Authenticity & Mental Fitness Coach
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Animal Teachers

Connecting with Nature, Mindfulness, Personal Development, Philosophy
How frequently do you interact with animals in your daily life? – Chances are that those interactions are scarce, or limited to pets. Our societies might have separated humans from animals, seeing humans as superior to animals. Yet, we admire certain qualities in specific animals. What can we learn from animals? How about patience, living in the Now, connectedness with the intricate web of life we are part of, responsibility, attentive listening, living in tune with the natural world, and sticking together. (inspired by 10 Important Life Lessons we can Learn From Animals) __________ Can you guess which animals possess then traits listed above? – This can be a rewarding activity to do with your child! Also, you might want to observe animals around you to see which traits they…
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