Behind The Glass With Charlotte Eriksson

The year I changed my own character. The year I stopped fleeing. The year I took responsibility for my own becoming. For my own happening. For my own success and happiness, home and surroundings. The year I learned how to quit being myself, and instead design a new self, deliberately, consciously, maturely. The year my heart broke, quietly dying. The year the vision I’ve had for a peaceful future was erased and gone, the house I thought I was living in was thrown up in the air during the calmest summer day, and I waved my arms screaming for someone to save me. This was the year I learned to depend on myself. On my own ability to get by, even when I think I can’t, and this was the year I became my own saviour. The year I built my own home. From ground up. A foundation to stand on. A stronger character. A loving heart. Because when a heart gets broken, it’s wide open. When a heart gets broken, it’s wide open to take in and give out. To learn and to grow, stronger and wiser, and an open heart is a brave heart

I’ve made life more complicated than it is, believing I need things or believing I am lacking things that I saw other people have. But ever since I came here my practice has been to simplify. Do less but do it with more precision and thought. Make every move matter. Each morning I’m learning the simple practice of just walking. Not while listening to music or a podcast or talking to someone one the home, literally just walking, listening to the sky and the waves rolling in.

I think people who tend to feel or become disposable, are people who don’t respect themselves enough. But the good news is, we can change that any day. We just have to start letting people know that if we don’t feel appreciated and valued, we will find other friends who will make us feel appreciated and valued. If we’re in a relationship where we feel replaceable, we will make the person understand that if we don’t start to feel loved and valued, we will leave and know that there people out there who will be HONOURED to get to be with us. They will do anything to get to spend their time next to us. Those are the people we want around us. And you know what, in my experience, the people that right now make us feel disposable, they will step up and start value you if you simply show them that you won’t stay if they don’t.

Come with me for a slow walk through the streets of Berlin

When you have an important decision to make: If you knew for sure, that you would have a great life and be happy no matter what you decided. Then what would you choose? This is a powerful one. We often base our decision on if it will make us happy or not. And this needs another layer because depending on what sort of personality type we are, we usually lean towards making decisions that will give us instant gratification, we want the happiness now. Or we lean towards being future focused people, and then we tend to make decisions based on if it will make us happy in the future or not. Let’s take an example; you’re in a relationship that is not necessarily terrible, but neither is it amazing. You’re trying to decide if you should stick it out, believe that things can make it work. Or if you should end it and move on. You will walk around trying to decide if you believe that you can be happy in this relationship, OR if you can happier in a different relationship, or even by yourself. But let’s imagine that y

This is graceful ageing for me. Entering each age with intention and calm. Not just ending up there, but creating that place. Planning the maturity shift beforehand and giving myself the knowledge I will need, the strength I will need, the relationships I crave … before I get there.

I’ve written four books about leaving, songs and poems, had an endless romance with starting over, packing light. But have you ever tried returning? Have you tried going back to make things right? Have you ever left a city small and sad, determined to never return but then you’re out there for a few years, roaming the streets, intertwining with people. You make a few rounds, collect some hearts, some wounds, and one day you come to one of those lakes where everything is still and quiet. The clouds are reflecting on the surface and it’s like you see your own thoughts and past and habitual ways in the sky, everywhere, telling you something. This lake can be real or not, either way this is what it feels like. You run and run and run and run and suddenly there’s a still lake reflecting clouds on the surface. You sit down, because lakes like these tell you to do so, and you sit there for a while, tilting your head, seeing your own ways from different angles. Maybe that tragedy wasn’t so tragic after all? Maybe t

Whenever I am transitioning from one thing to the next, throughout my day, I am practicing graceful transitions. This means that whenever I am moving from one task or meeting/conversation to the next, I am completely letting go of what I just did, and completely focus on the next things I'm about to do. Before I start the next task or leave for to meet up with a friend or whatever I might be doing, I go through the situation in my mind: how I will do this, why I will do it, what I want the result to be. This is not a long process. This is literally 30 seconds to one minute. I visualize myself do this next thing in my mind. I see myself doing it effortlessly, connected to source, connected to my nature, working with diligence, and a smile on my face. And then I get started. Even if it's like, I go out to have a coffee with a friend. I quickly visualize what sort of person I want to show up as. You know, I don't just want to show up without having put any thought behind how I want to leave this person. If I go

Do I google myself? Do I read book reviews of my books? What did I edit out of my new book? Do you have to feel a lot to be a good writer? I’m answering all of them questions in this episode

This I know to be true: YOUR job is to decide exactly what you want from life. That is your job. Then it is your brain’s job, or the universes, whatever you believe in, it’s their job to guide you to the right circumstances where you’ll find exactly what you have set out to find. But they can’t guide you unless you know for sure what you want to find. So now to my actual story: End of February this year I decided to go back to Berlin after having spent the winter in Sweden. There was something going back that made me feel … anxious. Sad.. I did not want to go back. I knew I loved Berlin, I loved the city and my people, but it was the thought of going back to the apartment that made me feel off.. I realised, the girl that moved into that apartment beginning of 2020 was no longer here. I have evolved, a lot, and so suddenly my energy did no longer align with the energy in the apartment. It held me back. 
I decided, my only goal and vision right now is to find myself an apartment in Berlin that not only aligns

I feel like I am an abandoned leaf in the world with no steady footing. That’s my reality. And it’s not in the way of feeling like a victim, it’s more in the way of feeling … unimportant. I’ve been studying shamanism with a wise man from Costa Rica lately, and he’s introducing me to the lineage of Bhakti Yoga. Bhakti yoga is the path of devotion. The path of honouring, serving, basically devoting yourself to serving and loving. Loving people and the world, unconditionally. Annoyingly corny, right? Bare with me. There is something that happens in our hearts when we turn the focus away from our own bruised hearts and hurt, to instead just putting the focus on other people. My mentor challenged me to use every single interaction the coming 7 days to practice Bhakti yoga. He said: “focus wholeheartedly on doing everything you possibly can to make each person you come in contact with to feel seen, listened to, understood and supported. Don’t expect anything back. Don’t expect them to ask about you, to offer the

A chill update about everything and nothing. Grab a coffee and get comfy.

I think your 30’s are about second tries. This is when you will do things properly. You meet someone in your 20's and fall in love and throw yourself into a hectic romance because it's all so magical and ends just as painfully and now you're gonna do it differently. You want loyalty. You want silent agreements. You also know what you don’t want. You have some standards. You don’t give yourself away so easily. You have worked hard to build a life for yourself and if someone’s gonna be invited into it he better make it better in some way. You no longer do things just to do them.

An excerpt from my very first audiobook, finally out everywhere bow! The story of how I moved from Sweden to London to chase my dream as a songwriter. http://www.CharlotteEriksson.com/links

2021 will be the year i learn to live. Embracing things as they are, no longer feeling the need to change or build or grow, but instead live. be. Do what I already do and enjoy it. love it. Love my people without wanting anything from them or wanting them to think anything of me. Just simply appreciate my people. Appreciate my work, my words, my job, my project. No more pressure to achieve or produce or learn skills I feel like I should have but don’t have any energy to learn. Instead I will align. Do what comes naturally and let my new intellect (?) lead the way. Slow down. Work smarter, not harder. Have less conversation, but with more depth. do less, but do better. Do fuller, stronger, deeper, more fully.

I have felt a strange of heartbreak lately. Without anyone around to break my heart. It’s like, I’ve created the feeling of heartbreak in myself by completely focusing in on everything I’m worried about. How do you heal heartbreak? How do you heal it when there is no one to move on from?

Come hang with me for a chill chat about life and autumn and moving away from home!

Exactly a year ago I landed in Barcelona with one bag, my guitar, a broken heart and no real plans. I would stay for two months and then spend the winter Carcavelos in Portugal, in a simple but cosy little studio apartment I had found right by the beach. I had already put in the deposit for my studio in Portugal and I was excited to finally live by the ocean. I had spent a year living temporarily in different places, hoping I would land somewhere that felt like home, where I wanted to stay. I was in a phase of healing and figuring out my next chapter in life. My time in Barcelona became my in-between moment. My right to get lost in nothingness. No plans for the future, not yet healed from the past, and I enjoyed dancing in the middle. One month in I got an offer to move into a flat in Berlin, and there was just something about it I couldn’t let go of. I didn’t want to give up my dream of being a songwriter, but moving out to Portugal would mean a winter in isolation. I was so lonely I cried every day, but I

I don’t need the world to know or see or hear what I do anymore. It’s enough if one person feels it so deeply that something changes afterwards. My 'why' back then was other people’s approval. My why was, to be great in other people’s eyes. But then you kind of realise: I am the sum of the people around me and my reputation is built on what I make other people feel and actually, I feel more accomplished when I make someone else happy than when someone else help me accomplish something and that’s the switch. www.CharlotteEriksson.com