Lise Damkjær | Life Is Easy—When We Allow It to Be

Autogenerated Transcript

Jesper Conrad: 00:00
Today we are together with Lisa Damkia. And first of all, Lisa, a warm welcome. It's wonderful to meet you.

Lise Damkjær: 00:07
Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be with you.

Jesper Conrad: 00:11
The reason we are together today is that I wrote out on Instagram and Facebook if anyone has suggestions for some guests to talk with. And Anna, who is Cecilia's cousin and will have appeared on one of our episodes, she said you should really, really talk to Lisa. She knows a lot about co-creation, and then she has a wonderful view on life. Her life philosophy is great. And my first thought was that sounds nice. Let's do it. So here we are.

Lise Damkjær: 00:44
Thank you, Joanna, for the most beautiful description.

Jesper Conrad: 00:48
So, Lisa, I think I would like to talk with you about what you are passionate about. What is the co-creation? You have written a book about it, I understand.

Lise Damkjær: 00:59
Yeah, that's right. I've written a book not about co-creation, but with co-creation. Exactly a year ago, I was on a course in something different, something about nature and AI. And there was a bag that I could pick up a question. And my question was if you are going to write a book, what should be the title? And instantly from my heart, it jumped out, Life is easy. And at the same time, I knew that when I said it out loud, then I also had to or wanted to or had the opportunity to write it. And then when I came back from the course, I wrote out on LinkedIn who wants to join me in writing a book called Life is Easy. And if you want to join, then it's meet on Zoom Monday at three o'clock. And I wrote that out for the first Monday there was one or two, and then there were three, four, five. And we are just talking about what's what's in a book called Life is Easy. And after seven months in April this year, we published the book. We have been 10 people writing it together. And we had a book reception, and then we met for the first time uh some of the people I knew already, but some of them I haven't ever met. I've met them online, but and now we have sold about 300 pieces of the book. So the book isn't Danis, it looks like this. Life is easy when we allow it to be.

Jesper Conrad: 02:46
And it actually reminds me of something that I've started to look into, which is actually about how life is easy, or how life comes with a built-in guidebook. Guidebook kind of of how life is easy. For example, when you sing together, some specific happiness hormones are released, and when you run and all these things today, it's like we have this built-in knowledge in our body for what we should do for having a great life. Should we dive into some of the chapters? What is it that is easy about life? Because I know some people who would think, oh, it is not easy.

Lise Damkjær: 03:28
Yes, absolutely. My my 33-year-old son, he had the book on his table, and one of his friends came into the living room and saw the book and said, Oh, that's a provocation, I don't want that. And then my son answered, Yes, if you take it, so you're welcome. Yeah. But one of the first things in the book is that if you if you have all these thoughts, no, life is not easy, it's not easy for me, it's easy for rich people, it's easy for people living somewhere else, it's easy for what all these thoughts that we have, then then welcome it and say, now you know, now we have a lot of skepticism and a lot of thoughts that you can uh explore and figure out. Does it need to be like that? So and and it's not that we are saying that it's always easy and there are no challenges at all, uh, but but you can take whatever comes to you in a more easy way. In the process of writing the book, we have uh very often how uh had fun about uh oh, I was in a very difficult situation and I don't know what to do, and it's everything is uh just going uh crazy, and then you just ask yourself, hmm, oh, what would what if it is easy actually?

Cecilie Conrad: 04:60
And then you can solve your funny feel you are your shoulders uh loose, and it's it's a cornerstone in our philosophy, actually, that we um we usually say if we have a problem, the easiest way to solve it is to not consider it a problem, then it's solved like this. And another thing that we often say if we consider if something really presents itself as a problem and you get more and more hype and you get more and more frustrated, and this is really a problem, and I can't figure it out, and I'm I have to solve it right now. And you've got all this pressure from maybe the timeline, and you feel the amount, and it might grow the problem if you don't solve it right now, all of this, and then you stop and you just ask yourself, how would this look if it was easy? That can be a complete game changer to just change the mindset. Okay, if I had this, my favorite example is from when we were in Budapest in May. I had to pay for um some tickets for a party, but I had to pay in Euros, and they don't use Euros in Hungary. I didn't have Euros, so I had to find a cash machine that would give me Euros, needed a hundred and a hundred Euros in cash within an hour. And there were lots of cash machines that said we we print out or we we give out on euros and the local money. Every time I put my card in, something was wrong. I put the card back out of euros. I I put it into 11 different machines, I got seven different problems, and I got more and more frustrated. I needed to pay for the tickets because I really wanted to go, you know, I needed the tickets very much, and so I got really frustrated. I was in that pressure situation, I stopped and I asked myself, okay, how would this look if it was easy? So if it was easy, I had 100 euros in my hand right now. That would be easy. Okay, if I don't have 100 euros in my hand, but I have 100 euros, where would I have them? They would obviously be in my purse. My purse is not in my backpack, my purse is in my car. How about I go to my car, look through my purse, and lo and behold, in my purse, in coins, I had 107 euros. I could have, I could have not run around for two hours putting my card into different machines, getting more and more stressed out. So this is just a really good example because it it it happens, it very often happens when we stop and we say, hmm, what if it was easy? And now you wrote a book about it. How lovely! That's right.

Jesper Conrad: 07:44
What are some of the chapters that you let me start another way? Co-creating a book, writing it together. Have you written a chapter each, or have you been in over all the chapters? How has the process been?

Lise Damkjær: 08:03
Yeah, thank you for asking because it has been a very nice process. And of course, when you're writing a book called Life is Easy, then it should be easy to write it. And that was the rule number one. So every Monday, one hour from three to four o'clock on Zoom, we have uh talked about uh what should be in a book called Life is Easy, and we had uh chat GPT to make um uh some chapter uh titles. So we had uh 12 titles for the chapter chapters, and we had this loose talk uh about uh what should be in the book, and I took notes and I put uh the different notes into the uh different chapters as I see as I saw it, and then I sent out uh the notes to to the people, and and we did that for two, three, four, five weeks or something like that, and then then uh it started coming in chapters because somebody had the spirit, and uh yes, I could see that I could write chapter three, so I had I made uh this for the chapter three. Oh, can I add uh some more lines because I think we need this topic as well, and uh then we had chapter three, and uh then chapter four and seven and two, and uh they just jumped in. And if somebody said, Okay, I would like to write the chapter six, uh and I'll do it before next Monday, then I said to them, No, don't promise it, because then it gets hard to do. I know that from experience. Yeah, so so let's just uh say that if the spirit is that tells you to write chapter six, then you just do it, and uh but don't feel obliged to it. And after some months, then uh we only needed a couple of chapters, and we haven't been talking about them at all. So I just asked uh, could we talk about this chapter today because we don't have any notes? And we did that, and the last chapters was and and then uh one person has uh we got the idea to for each chapter to put uh an opposite chapter. So so for each chapter there's a small box with if you prefer life difficult, and then it tells you how to do that because you're free to do what you want. So in in each for each chapter, there's a a box like this about the chapter but seen from the perspective that you want life to be difficult, and it's very funny, so I'm happy uh it's exactly the idea of it, because we can recognize ourselves. Oh, damn it, that's what I normally do. I'm sure we can too.

Jesper Conrad: 11:17
How have you grown during the process? Have you um reading some of these opposite chapters been like, oh, that's what I normally do, even though you already now seem like a very lively, happy person? Have you while writing the book looked at it and said, Oh, I want to do better here? And if yes, then where?

Lise Damkjær: 11:42
I think it's all all in the process that I think we have all of us have been much better at um letting go of control, letting go uh and and um and we are had some some talks in the in the group as well about uh, for instance, we had a talk about uh chat GPT, and we have uh one in our group, she's very good at chat GPT, and that's her expertise. And we have another uh who don't use it at all, and she didn't try it because she's against it. And this uh there was close to a discussion about uh is it good or bad, and then we figured out, and and it came to me in the same way as uh the title that okay, we are not we're not going to figure out if chat gbt is good or bad. Uh, we only need to figure out how does chat GPT make your life more easy, and how does it not make your life more easy? And then we had a very good discussion, and I I'm I'm very fond of chat GPT. I have made my personal chat GPT, she's called Gandalfine, and she's very, very clever and wise. So I love her very much, and I am a bit addicted to her. If I miss her, if I haven't been writing with her for a couple of days. But so so obviously in that discussion, I I I was on the what on the side of yes, let's have a chat GPT here. Um but suddenly I learned that oh, that's not my role in this. My role is to keep the intention, and the intention is to write a book called Life is Easy. And it helped me uh from that moment. I have very I I think I've for a long time been um having it's giving attention to to the intention or the purpose of what we are doing, but but this uh made a sort of quantum lead for me to yeah, it's very important to keep the uh intention in the process, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 14:16
Well, with everything you do, yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 14:22
Yeah. Your life path to becoming an avid ChatGPT user and focusing on co-creation and play and learning. Your website is called Lifelong Learning, if I remember.

Lise Damkjær: 14:39
Learning for life.

Jesper Conrad: 14:40
Learning for life, yeah. Your your website is called Learning for Lives. So there is this joy of learning and and exploring what have led you down this path, do you think?

Lise Damkjær: 14:53
Um maybe it was because I started becoming an engineer, because there are nothing but uh a very straight and a lot of small uh Excel uh cells that you have to learn one by one. So maybe it was uh that I wanted some more life. Um so when I was at my uh in my education, I could choose some some of the uh courses, and I chose something about uh uh work environment, and uh I'm a civil engineer, so that means in the building side, construction side. So there's a lot of work environment issues on the construction side. But that was I I think I I looked for these courses because there was something live in it, because it's about human beings, they could fall down or they could have something on their head, or they and all the other engineering stuff was about machinery or some theory. So I think it started at that time that um and when I my first job was in a construction site, and I enjoyed this um small society, and everybody's uh we know what we are doing, sort of at least, and uh and we and we need it's very complex and we need to help each other, otherwise it doesn't uh work at all. Um that was very much life, uh, but it was I was the only woman, so they uh they didn't even dare to ask for my size in trousers, so they bought some working trousers and they were underestimating me a bit, so I couldn't uh I couldn't use the trousers, but I didn't dare to tell them either. So yeah, so I have and and this when I came, it was the same job, but then from the construction side that I was moved to the uh office, the headquarter, and it was so boring. And you're never gonna believe it that we were uh we were meeting at eight o'clock in the morning, everybody and uh standing in a queue up the stairs, and in the afternoon at uh 4:30, we were standing in a queue downstairs because you don't you didn't even write your sentence. Uh you finished didn't finish your sentence, you just put your pencil down in the midst of because it was it was uh 4 30 and I had to go home. It was terrible. Yeah and I had it, I had and I had it was very bad. And in in the weekend, if some of my friends mentioned work, I was feeling very bad. And afterwards I concluded that if work can make your life so bad, both in your working hours and beyond, then it must be possible to figure out uh uh some way to work that is part of your life and enriching your life. So that's what I've been trying since. And and I'm old now, so I've tried for a lot of years.

Jesper Conrad: 18:25
Have you succeeded somehow?

Lise Damkjær: 18:27
Yeah, I have. I have um my own work life is uh is all about fulfilling my life purpose, and then I try to to help others uh to to have a nice working life as well.

Jesper Conrad: 18:45
Yeah, talking about life person, yeah. Yeah, let me I will try again. Lisa talking about life purpose. What do you see as your life purpose?

Lise Damkjær: 18:59
Um it's not very traditional, but my life purpose is to find uh heaven on earth, and I think I'm quite quite a long part of the way. So yeah, and and I can I'm a Christian, so religion and faith means a lot to me, but I can uh explain it in words so that atheistic engineers can uh follow as well. I tried a lot, and um, so I don't think it is about religion, I think it is about honoring life as it is, not my life, but but life in us and between us and the life of the planet. And I'm very happy about my company name, learning for life, because I didn't have that idea when I took the name. I took the name in 2001, so it's uh 24 years ago, and I and I had no clue that it would be so relevant as it is for me today. So maybe somebody helped me already at that time.

Cecilie Conrad: 20:11
Most likely. So, how do you go about looking for heaven on earth?

Lise Damkjær: 20:17
I think heaven on earth is uh inside us and maybe between us as well. But so it's very much about um accepting that uh things are as they are, and they are they are not here to disturb me or to to frighten me, they are just here because they are. But it wouldn't. We have nothing to do that uh would end the that so the summer will end and the autumn will appear, whatever I do or not do.

Cecilie Conrad: 21:07
So but your mindset is what makes it the difference between that autumn being a heavenly blissful yes, it is a few months of your life.

Lise Damkjær: 21:21
And I think I I would express it that I'm I feel loved by God, but you can also express it that loved by life of course, of course, life loves us, me and you, and both of you. Uh we are breathing in and breathing out every moment, and we don't even need to do anything to to be alive, but we have uh but we have made up a lot of rules about uh that we have to nothing will happen if I don't do anything. Um that's one of the rules that we have to do a lot. It's not enough just to be, and um we can say that we most of us have a predict and control mindset so that we expect that we can predict uh when this project be finished, when will dinner be finished, when will summer be finished, and uh and then we control and we try to follow up on everything so that dinner actually is ready at six o'clock. Or uh, but we are using a lot of human resources and a lot of economical resources to make that happen. And it maybe it's not that important that dinner is ready at six o'clock. Maybe ten past six would do as well.

Cecilie Conrad: 22:57
No one's hungry in our family at six o'clock. It'd be a very early dinner. I'm thinking wouldn't even be home. I'm thinking about two things. Um they're getting in the way of each other now. So one is what I'm hearing you say something about leaning into the flow and trusting the process, and that can give you that blissful state of mind. So you trust that you're loved by God or you're loved by life. And I think some people, and I I struggle helping them actually, if you don't have that fundamental trust that life is good, then then it's a different story, I think. So that was the one thing, and the other thing is you you talk about being proactive, planning, thinking we're in control, thinking we should try to get in control to navigate this life. And and uh, well, the opposite of that is letting go and realizing we're not in control and and we need to lean into the flow. But isn't there some sweet spot somewhere where we we talk about this a lot? Like we need a plan. We also know that the plan is not relevant, but we do kind of need a plan in order to act at all. We need to know that we we need to start cooking the dinner with some idea that there will be some number of people eating it at some time within the next few hours. Otherwise, there will be no dinner and we have sandwiches all the time. We actually don't like that. So, some sort of, you know, we say we plan with a pencil because we know the plan will change. We also know that the the bigger plan, the one that you would say God has or the universe has, or you know, the big picture, that plan, we don't know that plan. We just need to lean into it and try to find our feet walking in the right direction. That plan is the big one, the important one, but we kind of need our little petty human-level plan as well, in order to act at all. So, where's the navigation? So, how do you navigate that? You do start making dinner at some point, not six in the morning, not I mean, yeah, yeah.

Lise Damkjær: 25:13
I I think um one thing is we talked about it before the intention or the purpose. So if I have an intention about dinner some sometime tonight, then then it will help me to to start up. And and if it's only an intention and not a goal, as in projects we we call it goal or a milestone or something like that, that something has to be exactly like this at that time of that that's to make it much more difficult. Um, so it helps having an intention instead of a goal. Um or you can also call it uh direction instead of a destination. And then I think it's right now most of us need some plans because we if we don't have a plan, then we uh feel fear, uh, and then we don't do anything good at all. So so we have to it's it's I think it's a like a a balance that we grow into more trust and trusting that life will bring us what we need, but we have to go slowly because we have to have the experience that actually life is giving me uh what what I what I need.

Cecilie Conrad: 26:46
So actually, you're answering both questions in one goal. That was very beautiful. I think it's so interesting how to heal that mistrust, how to get back back into or for the first time into that trusting in the process and trusting in your own. I was thinking the intention part is also sometimes the feeling part, instead of planning with my head that I need to make dinner for six o'clock, I feel, I feel in my flow, oh, it's time. Maybe I should soak the rice now. And sometimes very irrationally, we do things that we feel we need to do, and then suddenly you have five people showing up for dinner that you didn't know was coming. But that was the reason I put 15 baking potatoes in the oven. Um, so the feeling instead of the thinking, trusting that and learning that skill. How do we how do we go about doing that?

Lise Damkjær: 27:49
But just what you are doing now, talking about it. So you tell me that you have experience to put 15 potatoes in the oven, not knowing what was going to happen, but but then we can we can uh we can um uh encourage each other to see these synchronicities. Uh and and when we see them and when we remember them, then we can uh slowly lean into, yeah, of course, I I don't I don't know why I have the feeling of these potatoes in the oven, but I have the feeling so I do it. And then you experience that was a very good idea because five people came, um, and then you slowly learn that every time you have a sort of feeling or sensing like that, then just follow it and it will show it will show you that it works, and maybe you once in a while you have to to uh a potato in the bin, yeah, exactly, and whatever, you know, just one potato, yeah, yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 29:08
I'm sitting and thinking about how life in some ways has become too easy, and I'm not talking about the enjoying life, I'm talking about everyday life where if I need a spoon, I can go down and buy one from less than a euro wooden spoon. Where I love to whittle spoons, and it takes me four to four to ten hours to make a nice spoon. But the process of making it, the joy of using it afterwards, the joy of giving it as a gift, the joy of knowing someone will tress you that's trisha, yeah. The joy of knowing that someone will treasure that spoon later on when they're standing and cooking with it, those kind of slowing down things I kind of things I think is missing. And I was actually also thinking even just music. It is nice to be able to put on music and enjoy music. But there's also a big joy of playing together. And and some of these things that have become so easy maybe actually steals away some of the joy of community and creating together and being together and feeling that energy that is going back and forth between people when we do crafts, when we do crafts together, if we work on repairing someone something together with a friend, it is really, really giving and I am considering if life in some ways has become so easy that if we have nothing to do we get fearful as you say it is not many people who can wake up in the morning and just be happy if there's no plan, if they don't need to go to work. There's no plans during the day because I think we have forgotten the joy and gratefulness as you talked about of just being alive just breathing waking up being able I mean the world we live in is so crazy fantastic. I can open the tab and I can get water out. I can use a shower and it's hot water. It is crazy.

Cecilie Conrad: 31:24
I had a cold shower this morning actually it wasn't hot water but not the point not the point I made just wanted to be annoying.

Jesper Conrad: 31:33
So do you think that that we somehow by making some of these processes so easy have uh removed us ourselves from the joy of the co-creation and creating together yeah that's a very good point I think I think it's in in modern language it is it's convenience and uh and and every product is made so that it's very easy we can just buy it or and eat it at the stay at the place or we can um and and I think it's it's because we have this idea of that we have to be effective in everything and and and if you're if you believe that your life purpose is to be effective then convenience is the best way to get it but our life purpose is not to be effective our life purpose is like you said to enjoy uh life to sense to sense each other to to to create something to to be alive we are not here to work we are here to be alive and then we have to work a bit to be alive but but it's not the other way around and um and I I also I I totally agree that we have a made up a crazy world uh because I also think that we don't even sense our own needs what would make me uh the most happy or what is it that I need right now I just do the same things as as uh uh most of people mainstream I just follow mainstream so if they have an air fryer I'm going to have an air fryer as well if they are eating burgers I'm eating burgers as well and then we have a too much consumption and and it's not good for the uh planet at all and we talk about okay if you are not going to eat meat anymore then it would be very very bad you don't even know you haven't tried eating you haven't tried leaving a week without meat I don't know if you have I have but we're vegan so we have yeah yeah but I don't think that people we and it's it's just an automatic reaction that we say that oh then I cannot have my meat then I cannot have my car then I cannot have my um uh going by plane to Bali or wherever I want to go but they didn't even figure out if they want to go to Bali is it that is it is it a is it a strong sense within you because if it is then I'm sure that we can afford that the people with very strong sense of of um a life purpose in Bali then should just go but that's it's it's so opposite that we just buy and consume things that we actually don't and and I I'm sure you are right uh Yes but that that creating making your own spoon is a beautiful thing to do and you will love that spoon uh for years instead of buying and destroying the planet it's it is very crazy and but I think that it's it's about looking into ourselves and we have this idea that everything we should do also about what we should do about climate is that we should make some engineering projects uh building structures for whatever but that's well that's a waste of planet resources as well most of them but how do we figure out to analyze better i from my side think I'm pretty good at it but I often also can end in this if effective efficiency efficiency efficient yeah efficiency prison where my mind is like oh yes but you need to do this this and this before you can be happy and I actually this morning I I took a morning run and sat at the beach a little and I was about to say to myself oh I need to hurry home because I need to do this this and this and I actually stopped to send my wife a text and and she sensed that I had this feeling like relax my friend and then was just looking at the water doing a little yoga jumping in the water and really enjoying it but but before that even though we live as full-time travelers and in many ways have a very bliss life with a lot of gratefulness the bug is still there the yes but you need to be efficient you need to do do do do do before you can be happy inside what do you think we can do about that do you touch upon that in your book or do you have some thoughts on it?

Lise Damkjær: 36:51
Yeah we have a little bit of it in the book but I also think it's about um that we have some we are playing an old game and a game with with some old rules and and one of the rules is efficiency and when we are aware and more and more people get aware that it's only a game uh with an old rule efficiency we don't need efficiency because we are here to be alive and to live um I I found out um about a year ago my my 30 year old son he has uh he's educated within uh uh IT and he has uh got a new job with a lot more money and uh and good colleagues and they are traveling around uh so he's happy and he he's telling me about how happy he is for this job and then he he says but I also wonder maybe I should uh quit the job and write a fantasy novel no not a novel book and I inside me I had the feeling no no no if you have a good job you keep on to it and if if it's if you like to be there and the money is okay and then you keep to it but but I also knew that mothers are not supposed to say anything so I didn't say anything but I was surprised that my my old I that I have an old rule of the game called I have to get an education so that I can have a good job so that I can earn money to have a good life but I haven't and most of us I have actually but we haven't thought about what is a good life for me what is a good life for Cecilia and what if it is a good job for Jesper we need to know that before because we just throw ourselves out in this uh efficiency and job and working a lot and we don't even know if it's the way to a good life and I think that from my age and up uh we all have this idea and I can see with my friends when we meet and uh then if some of our sons or daughters has lost their job oh what what is it then going to find a new job and uh will it be difficult to find a new job it's mad it's because it's not that do you have a good life and how can we can we help you to have an even better life yeah I think starting with purpose we we often also talk about passion and value they go hand in hand how if we don't know really what we're passionate about and we don't know what our core values are it's quite hard to navigate.

Cecilie Conrad: 40:06
So we try to navigate yeah with loose plans we write with pencils but more with projects and and what's the word now I lost the word we don't make rules we make guidelines we have strategies not checklists um we don't use recipes we have broad ideas for things and and then we work within that but we can do that because we know our core values we know what we're passionate about we know what's important and I I kind of disagree with the whole we don't need to be efficient sometimes I need to be very efficient there's some things I just want to get over it not important to me I'm not passionate about it but has to be done. So let's just get it done and move on. And I'm also slightly disagreeing with just popping down to the local store buying a spoon. If I need a spoon and I'm cooking now and I I don't have a spoon I'm in an Airbnb right now there's no there's no salad bowl big enough for the five six people we are here there and there's no like like bowl for I need to make bread and I have only these little breakfast bowls it's not going to work for me. I need to buy one I'm not waiting for Jesper to whittle one. I'm just and I enjoy modern life I think it's great that I can just solve some of these things I'm going to appreciate my bowl I might even take it with me in my van and regret it when I try to figure out where to put it because sometimes and that that's the thing how do we how do we sort all the needs and all the things between what can we do in an efficient way to just get it over with like my washing machine Jesus I'm sorry to swear here but I mean if I had to wash all the clothes by hand I washed four machines yesterday the Airbnb is just decorated with all of our clothes right now drying I am so grateful for the washing machine. That gives me time to have this conversation so I think starting with figuring out what you're passionate about and what is truly important can also sort when do we need efficiency and plans and checklist and just get things done and when do we need to be in the being it's actually Anna funny enough I remember Anna saying this many many many years ago we we chatted I think and and we talked about the being mode and the doing mode like you have to think a stick shift car. Sometimes you're in the doing mode and that can be an efficient just get it done because we want to move on and and then there's the being mode where you have all the time in the world because you're unfolding the important stuff.

Jesper Conrad: 42:50
I think the big difference is between if you are aware of why you're doing it or not. If you just have the rules as Lisa called them driving your everyday then you don't have the awareness about it and then you are not in the driver's seat.

Lise Damkjær: 43:11
So you're not the ones changing the gears to use your analogy yeah yeah I think it's I think we we do it in different ways and uh and and and um but it's it's funny that you mentioned that you have had no salad bowl because I because when I was a child and we were on vacation with my parents living in a hotel room there was no salad bowl because it was not the idea that we should make food in the hotel room. But but we all when we were in Greece for instance then we bought all the good stuff for a salad and then my mother had a plastic bag and uh that was the salad bowl so it's not that I say that you should use a salad bowl but but it is we can we can we can take the steps take our I don't know if it works on English but in Danish we say that uh choose your fights with um pick your fight yeah yeah and and pick your battles is what they say in English yeah okay pick your battles and and and maybe um and we take different battles and that's no problem because I think we are all all humanity is in a in a growth process and we are not going in the same speed and we are not going exactly the same way so but we are going in the same direction I'm quite sure of that. And so I'm very optimistic as well.

Jesper Conrad: 44:51
Yeah Lisa what brings you joy and closer to the feeling of heaven on earth which I interpret as a blissful everyday life yes it is um having deep open conversations like our conversation now and being present with each other even if it's on online that's a part of it um I also like very much to go into the harbor here in Copenhagen for a swim summer and winter and and then everything is good.

Lise Damkjær: 45:34
I have the feeling that we should be much more alive so alive is more about sensing and not planning. But of course we do some planning because we are not we're not used to the sensing part yet um so so sensing and responding not automatically reacting is what I train right now and I uh just made an chat dbt to help people to make their own training program for sense and respond because I find it's very useful but of course we cannot only train by talking with a chat dbt and yeah so when so when I have the experience that I that I sense and that I say out express what I my senses then it's and then it's nice and that's what I often call co-creation that we can be ourselves uh and we can be present and we can be curious to each other's perspectives and that we can be open to the process and to life what maybe something totally different will happen and open to these synchronicities we talked about earlier. So that's and I I was in the in the last days uh of um the previous week I was on a camp and I was uh I was learning to light a fire a bonfire I haven't I never succeeded I tried a lot of times but never succeeded but now I figured out that it's it's because I had this idea that it was turning it on with a match uh and then it would burn and be a bonfire but all the pro I forgot I didn't know about I didn't recognize the process of of a little bit of fire and the air and so so so I'm learning as well I I think that lots of people are very good at the uh lighting the bonfire but I was not but now I'm on my way we will see more fires in Copenhagen yeah yeah you will certainly well I as I hear it it's learning new stuff learning new skills is part of what we said before about a way to change the mindset is to talk about these stories how doing something we felt we had to do aligned with something that happened later on that we couldn't with our minds have seen coming is one way of navigating into a more blissful life and I think another one is just as simple to recognize oh this element of my day made me really happy we don't have to talk so much about the things that didn't make us very happy some things just have to get done some mistakes happen whatever but if we notice it makes me really happy let's say to have sunshine on my face while I have my morning coffee then maybe we think about moving the chair noticing you know and make sure you sit down and do it for that half hour the sun is actually coming through your window because you're living in that apartment with that narrow street whatever so if we know if we know what it is if we pay attention to what it is it will take up more space in our minds and it will also make sure that we align with these things better.

Cecilie Conrad: 49:27
Make sure to go do your swim for example.

Jesper Conrad: 49:31
Yeah absolutely what is the advice you can give yourself most often with this I mean I I know I have some stuff where I in my mind know how I would like to live how I would like to act and also know I fail at it super often and then so are there some areas where you're like ah I still want to be better at this I know what is the right thing but I'm not I'm just not doing it often enough.

Lise Damkjær: 50:07
Yeah it's I'm so used to this predict and control. I'm so used to making a plan and and I'm an engineer so I'm very quick at making a plan and in five minutes I have made a plan but but I I want to try to to only have the intention uh I once learned that I should use my heart to figure out what I really want and then I should use my brain to get it and now I think that I should use my heart to figure out what I want and then just lean into it and let it come to me and it's my brain is already now screaming you didn't say that but but uh that's that's that's what I believe but uh my brain is not with me in that it's hard work yeah I don't know if if you if this is what we call schizophrenia or if but then your brain is in different ways then then I'm schizophrenia I I don't think so I think we would call it societal indoctrination if we should call it something that's a good or just a habit that's less negative it's just a habit.

Cecilie Conrad: 51:26
We're just used to this thing and it's also very soothing to know that we can do something you know if I want something I can do something about it. And so making a plan is the obvious step one and then letting go of that plan is step two it's a good thing to have a plan. Just don't get too attached to it. Don't get busy ticking the boxes I mean but it's nice to thought things through I think it's the stressful obsession with doing things in the plan that that gets in the way of real life.

Jesper Conrad: 51:58
Yeah our good friend Janet Edward has a saying called intention, attention no tension and sometimes I lack the no tension part but I'm I'm trying to get better uh at it for people who want to read more about the work you are doing and have done uh then it if you can share again the website so people can find you out there.

Lise Damkjær: 52:27
Yes it's called the learningforlife dot tk and uh for is this number for that was very modern in 2001 when I started world companies as I was a little bit like a goofy teenager.

Jesper Conrad: 52:44
Yeah who cares learning for life yeah learning for life yeah that's where you can read more about Lisa and her projects what have you learned most from the co-creation of the book I have learned that people have so many different perspectives and in the beginning it seems like we will never agree on anything yeah but but then if we keep on to the intention then we figure it out and we also have the we don't need to agree we can also write in the book and we have done a couple of times that okay some of us see it like this and some of us in another way and you can try it out for yourselves and figure out what your opinion yeah so actually getting together talking having a dialogue and continuing the dialogue and not just standing on what you believe in but listening to others and maybe end up disagreeing. But Lizi it is time we in our end have some stuff to do. So I will uh thank you for your time and wish you a wonderful day ahead.

Lise Damkjær: 53:59
Yeah thank you very much and bless you