“Most of the excuses I made…

– not enough time
– not enough money
– not enough knowledge
– not the right connections

…were just ways to avoid the real bottleneck: Not enough courage.

There was always a small step I could have taken—if I had the guts to take it.”
James Clear

I made an excuse earlier in the day, saying that I didn’t have enough time.

Was that true? Or was it that I didn’t have enough courage?

If it had been important, I would have made the time or I would have found a way.

But instead of saying that it wasn’t that important, I made an excuse.

Would you like to find out what creative type you are?

Take Adobe Create’s fun online personality test to discover whether you are the Adventurer, the Artist, the Dreamer, the Innovator, the Maker, the Producer, the Thinker or the Visionary.

Do you agree with your results? Why not share you findings in the comment box below?

(I’d like to give a shout out to Sigrid Alexander for recommending this wonderful little quiz.)

 

A few weeks ago, Katja Rossel interviewed me for the latest episode of her podcast called “Business from the Heart”. 

You might like to listen in here. 

It’s quite a personal story about me being a stay-at-home mum for 18 years and then becoming a successful business owner.

Katja is a business coach and author of “ABC der Wertschätzung” and an amazingly warm-hearted and wonderful person to talk to.  

Find out more about her here.

Several years ago, Textwende asked me to translate their out-of-office message for their website.

This is what I sent them:

“Good morning / Good afternoon 

Thank you for your email. I will be back in the office on 1 September and will contact you as soon as possible after that date. If you need immediate assistance, then please contact my colleague, Mr Anton Muster. He will be only too pleased to help you. His email address is: anton.muster@musterfirma.de.

With best wishes …”

Of course, we don’t need to stick to the above text.

Something like this would work, too:

“Hello

Thank you for your message. I will be out of the office until 5 September and will have limited access to my emails while I’m away.

If you need help before then, please contact Ruth Braydon at rbraydon@email.com or 02452 8889432.

Otherwise I will reply to your email when I return.

With best wishes …”

(I know not everyone agrees with me, but I personally think you don’t need to say that your email will not be forwarded!) 

Do you use a similar text?

There are several English words that have made their way into the German language, but take on a completely different meaning.

Let’s look at three of them today: beamer, oldtimer and body bag.

If you talk about a ‘beamer’ in the English-speaking world, people will think you’re talking about a ‘BMW’. You most probably mean a ‘projector‘.

If I talk to you about ‘oldtimers’, I mean elderly people. But you probably think I’m talking about cars. The English translation of ‘ein Oldtimer’ is ‘a vintage car‘ or ‘a classic car‘!

A ‘body bag’ is used to carry a dead body from a battlefield or the scene of an accident or crime (in German a ‘Leichensack’). What you most probably are thinking about is a ‘bum bag‘ (that’s British English), a ‘fanny pack‘ (that’s American English) or even a ‘messenger bag’.

Of course, we native speakers in Germany will probably understand you. But other native speakers might be confused.