Behind The Glass with Charlotte Eriksson

Behind The Glass with Charlotte Eriksson

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Behind The Glass with Charlotte Eriksson episodes

  • Coffee chat! ☕️ Answering all your questions!

    What inspires you most? Will you go back to Bali? What’s your biggest reward from sharing your creative work online? What makes you feel free and at peace? Advice for making friends when you’re in a new place and have social anxiety?

    Come have a Sunday morning coffee with me while I'm answering all your questions ♡

    Find all my books and music at www.CharlotteEriksson.com

    56 min
  • When you're unimpressed by life... or your second mountain.

    This conversation is for you who, like me, need a challenge in order to feel alive. We thrive on creating personal challenges as a way to feel fueled and fired up, excited and motivated. Nothing drives us more than growth, development, change, moving forward. Stagnation is death to people like us.

    And this conversation is about what happens when you find yourself without that kind of challenge, and as a consequence… feel unimpressed by life.

    💭 www.CharlotteEriksson.com 💭

    27 min
  • Moving Away To Reinvent Yourself - Part 1

    Have you ever dreamt of reinventing yourself in a new city where no one knows you?

    Do you know that there is something more out there, destined for you, waiting for you?
    But maybe you're scared... scared to leave your safety, your family, the place you've called "home" your whole life?

    This episode is about moving away from home, starting over in a new place, chasing your dream and building your home in moments of belonging, no matter where in the world you might find yourself.

    If you like my podcast and want me to keep sharing my thoughts and ideas with you, it would mean the world if you took 10sec to leave a 5-star review wherever you're listening. It tells me that you want me to keep doing it, but it also makes me feel less alone ♡

    Send me your stories, questions and concerns about moving away from home and I will do a part 2!

    www.instagram.com/justaglasschild
    www.charlotteeriksson.com
    Find all my books here: www.charlotteeriksson.com/books


    1 hr
  • Losing people you love
    Everything that has ever happened to you is yours to keep. You own it. No one can ever take that away from you. Your experiences, feelings, cities you walked, people you loved, and fights you fought: they're yours and yours only. And every single thing you’ve done and every single person you’ve met will stay with you, grow with you, and it’s these things that slowly build your character. These things make your life story, and you will only lose the things you actively decide to let go of.
    You can leave someone without leaving them behind. You can keep the warm, safe feeling of loving someone without wanting to be with them anymore.
    You can keep your love for someone, even when they say they don’t love you anymore.
    Think about it: what’s beautiful about human relationships is the feeling we get from them. Think about a time in your life when you were hopelessly in love with someone, romantically or as a friend: you had so much love for this person! It filled you up with energy and heat, made you smile and sing, and the thought of this person being alive made you feel both calm and excited and most of all just grateful.
    Maybe something happened. Maybe that person decided to leave you, maybe you decided to leave her or him, or maybe it was a mutual decision to simply move on. Either way, it was not the other person that created that feeling of love and warmth inside of you, YOU created that for yourself. You let yourself feel love, for this person, but you can let yourself feel love for anything and anyone, life or yourself even, at all times. No one can take the feeling of being in love away from you. It comes from you. You can carry a gratitude of hope and safety with you, even though you have physically left him or her behind.
    You can say goodbye to people without losing the beauty they gave you.
    8 min
  • When your strengths become your weaknesses
    I know a lot of you also left your home town, or even home country, to move out in the world and change your dream, whatever that might be. I guess we all have reasons for leaving, or running away. A big reason for me was that growing up, I never felt like I had people around me who I actually looked up to. I didn’t see an adult person doing anything impressive to me. No one who lived in a way that made me excited to also grow up and take on life. I saw adults around me who were uninspired and uninspiring. They were living lives that I did not want to take on. Young as I was, I fled to the books. In books I found inspiring breathtaking extraordinary people, real and fictional, but who were so defined, in a way. Even if it was a quiet small poet, like, I discovered the American poet jack Gilbert and loved his poems but even more the fact that he fled the limelight in America when he became a little bit famous and moved to Europe and lived in kind of random hidden places, quietly, simply, just writing. He lived on a small island in Greece called Paros, where I actually later on went to spend a few weeks myself. He lived in Denmark and Germany, and just quietly wandered and wrote. I was inspired by that. What a wonderful way to live.


    Of course I also discovered Jack Kerouac. Reading On The Road was my ticket out in the world. You can leave and live on the road and not chase material success but float from experience to experience and live with no belonging and just soak up the blue sky???? WHAT? It was mind blowing. I was in awe.
    ....




    ... A great leader will be aware of his or her own strengths and understand when they are useful and when they are not useful. The dark side of their strengths will show when those strengths are used in the wrong context. So let’s say again this new leader took on his or her team with the same energy and independence and stubbornness as he or she did while climbing up to that position. He or she would then become a very harsh, critical, judgmental leader. That’s when strengths become weaknesses.


    Another example, in my own life. My strengths are pretty similar to this example. I’m independent, I don’t need anybody to make things happens. I make things happen myself. I believe in my own ability to learn and figure thing out and I count on myself to always make it work. I believe these are strengths, that I am proud of.

    But let’s place me in a context of a relationship. And let’s place those strengths inside of a relationship, and I say to my person: I don’t need anyone. I don’t need anyone or anything to make myself happy and to build my life and I can do this all on my own.
    Yeah—
    Strengths used in the wrong context will become your weaknesses.


    So what I have learned, a huge huge game change of a lesson, is that my strongest strengths, need to be my biggest awareness point, because let’s place me in that relationship, knowing I am independent and strong and don’t really need this person. I need to be aware of how I let those strengths shine through. I don’t mean suppress them, I need turn them around. How can I instead, turn them into terms like: Stability. You can count on me. Loyalty. I will not let you down. I got your back, just like I have mine. If things get rough, you can count on me to not give up. Because I never give up.
    See, if I can learn to be aware of my strengths, and learn to be aware and conscious of how I communicate them in certain context, they can stay strengths. But if I am unaware of them, they will become my weaknesses.


    Being independent inside of relationship. I am still using my strong, independent never-giving-up attitude, but in a gentler way. Saying, “I’m not giving up on you and or me or this. You can count on me.”


    What are your strengths? If you would ask your friends, what do you think they would say? Then ask yourself, in what context, if you’re being really honest to yoursel
    20 min
  • The one thing that changed how I talk to myself and my people

    Today I'm sharing one simple idea from the book Yes, And by Kelly Leonard that actually changed the way I speak to myself and to other people. 

    I’m very critical of myself. I have high standards, I am my own worst critic and toughest coach. Whenever I stand in front of a decision, I used to always say.. “yes, but…” “Yes, but… I am not skilled enough, good enough, pretty enough, popular enough,.. “Yes, but, I don’t have the contacts, the resources, the energy.” “Yes, but, remember what happened last time, yes but things don’t ever go that way, yes but be more realistic, yes but but but but…"

    What happens the second you say BUT is that you interrupt the flow of the yes. It’s basically a no.

    The premise of this book I'll be talking about in today's episode is: imagine switching that but out to and… Yes, and…

    You will then start saying things like ... “Yes, and... this has been challenging before so I’m going to have to be real smart about the plan forward." “Yes, and, since you don’t have those resources you’re going to have to put in some extra research”. "Yes and, since it feels little overwhelming right now you can ask for help or take your time. “Yes, and you did the best you could.”


    See that difference? Switching out one word changed the whole vibe! It went from highlighting the obstacles and negatives to focusing on the ways around them.

    BUT indicates an argument. You’re saying NOT REALLY. You’re saying I DON’T AGREE.

    AND indicated that you’re building upon something. You’re adding. You’re adding another angle, another twist, another thought. 

    Instead of cutting down your own or someone else's idea or thought with BUT, you can just add to it and invite them or yourself to see things from a new angle by using AND.


    _______


    Find my books at www.charlotteeriksson.com/book

    Download a free digital version of my third book Another Vagabond Lost To Love HERE
    Come say hi to me on instagram, twitter, tumblr, TikTok! 

    18 min
  • When You're Being Tested and Redirected
    What if the universe really truly has your back. What if, every time you find yourself feeling comfortable in life, the universe will make sure that something happens so you can keep evolving. As a person, on all levels. The universe is making sure that you, as an individual, becomes the highest version of yourself. And to become the highest version of yourself, you have to always be tested, challenged to think in new patterns and leave your comfort zone. What if you could learn to see setbacks and rejections as gifts: you’re being challenged to grow and evolve.


    I have always had a deep, powerful belief in the universe’s ability to guide and direct. I do believe we are the creator’s of our own opportunities and we can make things happen, but the universe will direct us, slightly, sometimes without us noticing.


    That guidance can appear as people. When I look back at my life I can see how every person who showed up in my life ultimately taught me something, or led me somewhere, or introduced me to someone, that in turn led me to the next chapter or opportunity or stage in my life. When I have fallen into moments of feeling like I have done all the work I could possibly do on myself and I am now complete and all healed, I suddenly randomly meet a person who makes me aware of all the sweet spots in my heart that I still need to work on and heal.
    When I believe I’m ready for a certain opportunity, I’m presented with a rejection, or a hurdle, or I make a mistake that in turn leaves me thinking: I need to work a bit more on that specific area.


    This summer I found myself with a very effortless daily living. Everything was calm. I had calm, stable friendships, good health, making slow but stable progress with my creative projects and I slowly made myself comfortable. In the past I had moments when I was chasing something, I was on a mission, being challenged, growing every day, and I woke up with wide opened eyes ready to fight! But this summer.. I transitioned into long slow mornings, no challenges in sight and I might have made myself a bit too comfortable. 
Then suddenly, POOF, out of nowhere, things were turned around and thrown up in the air and I found myself yet again sitting wide awake at 4am plotting out a new plan.
    For you, it might have been losing a job, losing a person, being kicked out of your apartment, the stock market crashing.. whatever it was that disrupted your peaceful existence—how did you handle it? How did you react?
    Did you curse the people and the situation, or did you take a deep breath a glance at the sky, and then thought: “how exciting. I wonder where this will lead me?”


    See, the world is not static and the idea that we will get to a point where we got it all sorted is a fantasy that wouldn’t serve us. Trauma, loss or rejections CAN catapult you into action that speeds up your personal transformation in a way that slow and peaceful living never can, and looking back at my life, all the most important big moves in my life happened as a consequence of being forced out of my peaceful stable living.


    So how can we handle unexpected hurdles or redirections? We can panic. We can curse. We can cry.
    Or we can learn to feel the universe placing a hand on our shoulder, saying “that’s not for you, keep looking, I got your back.” When we’re presented with a person who’s triggering us, challenging us, breaking our hearts… we can learn to feel the universe saying: “I sent this person to you for a reason. Your job is to find the lesson that will get you ready for the next person. Maybe the right person.”


    Things will happen, that are out of our control, we can not stop them from happening because they were always meant to happen. All we can do is choose how we respond to it. Do we panic, wish for different circumstances… or do we trust in our story, take on the storm like a growth opportunity and embrace the lessons?
    Can we even learn to take deep, calm breaths in the
    9 min
  • Deep life questions with We're Not Really Strangers

    The podcast where we ban shallow conversations and go deep 🍷 Grab a journal or a friend and answer the questions from “We’re not really strangers” with me! Send over your reflections on the Spotify app and we can share our stories with each other ♡

    www.CharlotteEriksson.com

    Find all my books here: www.CharlotteEriksson.com/books

    32 min
  • Living Through Past Achievements or Failures

    Maybe, today, I know that I am more interesting internally than I will ever be externally. My thoughts and ideas and goals and visions are grander and more magnificent than any external achievement I’ve ever achieved, so telling my past story feels small and empty because I carry bigger things inside, so I don’t often talk about myself anymore. I don’t need to. I know one day it will materialise and maybe some people will notice, or they won’t, and I no longer care.


    As long as I took pride in my past achievements I couldn’t actually completely move towards the future; I held myself back by trying to still fit inside my past story. But you will never fit your future story if you’re still trying to play small and fit in the past one. You’ve grown! Future you shouldn’t be able to go back, she or he should have evolved so much that there is no going back, and the past shouldn’t even be realistic or nurturing anymore because you are now a new you. Evolved. Bigger. More refined.

    Connected to this is of course also living through past failures. Introducing yourself with a small tone of sadness because of something you went through, or a little bit of shame because of something you did not achieve a few years ago.
    We can not show up in the present as our full magnificent new us if we’re still carrying younger us on our shoulders. We have to learn to move on and let go, good and bad. And that doesn’t mean we let go of the lessons. We hold on to the wisdom, it’s ingrained in us. We carry lessons and wisdom and knowledge with us, but I think we should place the actual experience that let to that knowledge as a painting on the wall and only look at it with nostalgia and not as anything to introduce ourselves with. It was then, younger you. Be proud of younger you. But look up to older you.

    _________

    ✦ Find all my books, writings and music at www.CharlotteEriksson.com
    ✦ www.instagram.com/justaglasschild
    10 min

About Behind The Glass with Charlotte Eriksson

From the publisher's feed

Songwriter and author Charlotte Eriksson -- The Glass Child -- lets you in behind the glass. Raw and honest conversations, essays, spoken poetry and journals exploring the subjects of growing up, change, loneliness, living as a nomad, missing people, loving people. How to live with uncertainty. What is home? What is anxiety? What is happiness?