Patchwork Biographies: Creating the Rise
His mother was convinced he would never learn a profession. His teachers prophesied to him how to sleep in the waiting room of life. "It took me a year to remember the letter A," confesses the Frenchman Daniel Pennac in his book "Schulkummer". He also lacked everything the textbook for success dictates: self-assurance, strategy, and elite awareness.
Today, Pennac plays in the bestseller league of the literary business. His example shows that it is worth ignoring prophecies. And how worthless career strategies are that demand that mistakes and apparently senseless things be cut from our daily lives like excess fat. People like Pennac are everywhere. No one has credited them with anything, today they are celebrated.
People with patchwork biographies often make the climb
Behind her successes are resumes such as rag rugs, pieced together by inclinations and search movements beyond the beaten track. Men and women with such patchwork biographies are often more than imaginative and reflective. They gain experience in niches and on secondary squares and keep career planning at best for a laboratory variant of life. They are adventurers and curious about what lies beyond the borders. In the process, they secretly fight against self-doubt and uncertainty when siblings, friends or classmates pass them by on their way to life and hear them again and again: you never become anything!
To endure this and to take a winding path without knowing the destination requires self-confidence, courage - and perseverance. A property that is generally denied to the dreamers and the hanged. After all, they break off school and education, start something different, move through the world, let themselves drift. Such as the politician Renate Schmidt, the moderator Jörg Thadeusz and the others, who report here from their previous life.
And just when worried friends believe that they are now finally "reasonable" and heading for a secure existence, they hit a hook and take a turn that seems to lead nowhere.
Such detours increase the local knowledge. They teach maximum flexibility and motivation. Waiting and trying leaves time to unfold. It helps many to find their vocation - and that is more than a profession.
Patchwork biographies: "People who follow their vocation inspire every society."
Sociologists say that people who follow their vocation inspire every society. He who does what he does with all his heart is good at his job - and happy with his life. But it pays to question your own decisions again and again and sometimes seemingly aimlessly on the way. A life path, a career path can not be planned like the product line of a company, as often as this is claimed. Life is not a mathematical equation. Anyone who gets bad grades at school can still achieve a lot later.
The dyslexic Daniel Pennac has since published numerous books, including some bestsellers. His mother does not like to believe in his success. Some time ago, when she saw a portrait of her writer's son on television with Pennac's brother Bernhard, she asked Bernhard, "And you think he'll make it someday?"
Patchwork biography: Cynthia Barcomi
46, owner of Barcomi's Deli and Barcomi's Kaffeerösterei in Berlin My two sisters wrote the ones in the school. I was the little boy with the exotic inclinations, who already wanted to become a three-year-old dancer and later studied philosophy and dramatics. The daughter of a wealthy American family just. The only thing I was trusted to do was to marry a well-paid man. Nobody expected that I would run two cafes, farm 80 hours a week and have four children. I had to leave America far behind to realize this. And even from a distance, my parents initially tried to get me on the "right" path. When I moved to Berlin in the mid-eighties, they said I should go to Paris. When I opened my first café, my mother advised me to hire professionals for baking. I was not a trained cook. She could not understand that I wanted to try it myself - as the only child of rich parents she had never fought for anything.
It was not entirely wrong, because Berlin was really hard at first. I knew no one and could not speak German. I often felt like standing on a diving board without knowing if there was water in the pool. But I am up to it - and also because of the resistance of my parents. And I have learned to ignore the expectations of others and to listen again and again: What feels right? What not? I pass this experience on to my children.Unfortunately my mother does not live anymore. She would be very proud of me. But she would also be a little surprised that I made it that way.
Patchwork Biography: Marianne Knaak
50, owner of Sitline, specialized store for economical and ergonomic furniture I learned dental technician and worked for ten years in this profession. But then I wanted to try something new and started studying geology. Of course my parents were irritated. They thought: Now she jumps off her well-paid job and starts a college-less study. That will never happen. And then I stopped my studies even after my undergraduate degree.
Many did not understand that in my environment. For them, it was a waste of time. But I never saw it that way. The study was not a whim. It was my deep desire, and I believe that it is important for the personality to pursue such a desire, even if it does not become the job for life. I believe that people are more productive and happy in the long run if they take the time to look for the job that really suits them.
To finance my studies, I then worked in my sister's furniture business. All of a sudden, this made all my job today: In 2004, I bought the shop. As an entrepreneur, I never had the feeling that I lacked something for my job. Above all, you need inner stability and at the same time you have to be very flexible. I have both - also because I have already tried different things in my life. And I have my accountant for accounting.
Patchwork biography: Jörg Thadeusz
40, radio and television presenter ("Thadeusz", "Dickes B" and others) I have often thought that nothing will come of me. The phrase was my morning tune, when I climbed as an ambulance after the shift from the ambulance, or in my time as a couch car maker - because I was sure that I bring it at best to the sleeping car conductor. My grandma thought back then that I was wasting my time and advised me to go to university. But even as a history student, I was miscast. No blue light. No action. Only girls who underlined important phrases with the triangle. At some point I did an internship at the radio in Dortmund, and that was a direct hit.
Then I immediately dropped my studies. Here I was finally able to live out my curiosity for people and their stories, because I've always questioned every colleague and taxi driver. What color is your carpet? What do you drink in the morning, and what do your slippers look like? I'm just interested in that, and as a reward, I've heard incredible stories. Nobody is boring, I'm sure of that.
And because I'm so sure about it, then something has become of me, even though I have brought it in school only up to the class clown. It may well be that dead straight careerists grow to impressive capacities in their field. But I also always wanted to know what happened to the right and left of the path. I think you should look more than the well-being of his parents. I have always benefited from this attitude in my job.
Patchwork biography: Renate Schmidt
65, SPD politician and member of the Bundestag, former Federal Minister of Family Affairs At seventeen, a year before graduation, I became pregnant by my dance class gentleman. That was a scandal in the 60s! The director of my school told me I was a shame. I had to leave high school. I could bury my dream of studying mathematics. Instead, after the birth of my first child, I applied to Quelle as a programmer. Hardly anyone trusted me at the time to create the attitude test. But I passed with "very good" and was thirsty for having shown it to all the teachers who saw me sinking.
Today I would say that the sacking was a stroke of luck for me. Without him, I would probably have married my dance class master after graduation, studied, got children and would have stayed at home first. But early pregnancy forced me to find unusual solutions again and again. This has given me a lot of life experience that has made people curious about me. And I could have much more credibility as a member of the works council and in politics.
But perhaps the most important thing is that the sacking encouraged me to always choose the unusual path. It's about expressing the many possibilities that exist in one - and I learned early on that it will benefit you in the long run.
Patchwork biography: Daniel Goeudevert
67, successful as a manager in the auto industry and business consultant, now non-fiction author My father was a village policeman, my mother a housewife, and at school I stayed because of German. No, that is from me something special, hardly anyone has thought. But sitting down has sparked my ambition, and when I finally studied literature in the early 20's and was a teacher, my parents found that I was at the top.
Had they guessed that I would quit a few years later and go to Citroën, they would have been horrified.Give up work as a civil servant to become a salesman? That was sure descent for them. That's why I only confessed to them after a year and a half. But the change was absolutely right for me, he has led me to the executive floors of various car companies.
In the mid-90s, however, I sat in a board conference and felt like I could not breathe. I dropped out and began to write books. Many think that you have to be very risk-averse to making such decisions, but I would say that you need a bit of naivety and that career should not be a life goal. I have never clocked and drifted from life rather than trying to achieve something. Of course, I was sometimes worried that it would work out. But my many changes and detours have shown me: It is worth trusting his feelings. Otherwise you will remain blind to the opportunities of life.
