Interview with Andreas Winter: “This is how you master the ‘mountain of life’ – and everything else too!”

"The special thing about audio coaching is that it works where it really belongs: on the emotional level. This enables you to direct your emotions and all your positive thinking towards achieving a wish or a goal. The aim of my coaching is to achieve a lively and harmonious balance between your own requirements and those of other people." On his MP3 CD " PowerCoaching. Strengthen your self! ", qualified teacher and bestselling author Andreas Winter presents coaching that has been tried and tested thousands of times for more self-confidence and composure, for dissolving fears and for achieving personal goals.

With “PowerCoaching”, your audio coaching programs, which have been successful for many years, are being released as an expanded and updated MP3 edition. What is new about this CD and what makes your programs so exceptional?

Winter: The audio programs come from the popular earlier "Power Box", a box with live coaching programs and dream journeys. But instead of another new edition, I decided to update and supplement the material. New additions include a multi-part anti-stress program and the piece "Power Trance III", another program for motivation and overcoming everyday problems. If you want to see my programs as unusual, then perhaps it is because I always try to give the listener a new perspective on stressful situations. Personally, it is important to me to remove blockages without relapse - without saboteurs, envious people or anti-coaches. If you encourage someone to "hit the table properly" or "say no sometimes", you usually only provoke opposition. But if you create a win-win situation in which the stressor, the "culprit", is finally understood, then this enables very rapid and great relief in everyday life. I believe that stress cannot be eliminated by "pulling yourself together" or discipline, but only by having the courage to recognize that the stressor is not evil, but rather helpless and desperate. The purpose of my programs is to convey this insight. From a purely technical point of view, the publisher has taken a step into the future with "PowerCoaching": We said goodbye to the old audio CD format in favor of the MP3 format. This has already proven successful with my last audio book "School time without stress!", which was thus able to be produced in full.

Who is “PowerCoaching” aimed at and who can particularly benefit from it?

Winter: PowerCoaching is a complete coaching session in around three hours. It is designed for all those people who want more than just to read a good book. When reading, you can quickly reach various limits: for one thing, reading sometimes tires the eyes, and for another, the written word lacks any emphasis or nuance of the content - you practically only "hear" your own voice. Many subtleties are lost as a result. With my CDs, I can express what I say in such a way that the content is understood and processed not on a purely rational level, but on an emotional level. I also accompany some sections with music. Music can be a wonderful way to create feelings. I thus go far beyond the potential effects of a book. The special thing about PowerCoaching is that it works where it really belongs: on an emotional level, i.e. in the subconscious.

The “Power Trance I” and “high-speed motivational coaching” promise that almost everything that is possible for our brain can be achieved. What does that mean and how can the promise be fulfilled?

Winter: The human brain is like a gigantic command center. It is here that decisions are made about feelings and behavior. Unfortunately, it is not just the conscious mind that makes our decisions, as we would all like, but mostly our subconscious mind, which works in secret. This mostly pursues emotional goals, while reason is often used for objective goals - this often leads to a dilemma, such as the one we know from the "good intentions" that are so difficult to keep. If you now use a stylistic device such as that used in power trance, you are able to assign your emotions to the achievement of a goal. Incidentally, this is how small children learn to walk - they do not think rationally about the "technique", but rather focus all their positive feelings on the goal they want to reach on their little legs. The two pieces “Power-Trance I” and the motivational coaching of “Power-Trance II” build on each other and are therefore an optimal combination for people who have not yet had any experience with self-coaching.

“The Mountain of Life” and “The Wall of Fear” sound mysterious and almost a little scary. What is hidden behind these two titles and what can the listener expect once they have climbed the mountain and overcome the wall?

Winter: The titles are metaphors that I use to describe the listener's emotional experience. The difficulties and problematic challenges of life are described as "arduous climbing up a mountain". In the dream journey, I direct the listener's focus on the meaning behind the ever-recurring efforts in life. The "Wall of Fear" is a belief analysis that takes place on a deep emotional level and is intended to convey a feeling of freedom from fear with a single insight. This dream journey is very moving; many people are particularly touched by a special passage that deals with the "mountain" of parents. The wall of fear, which seemed threatening and insurmountable at the beginning, takes a positive turn at the end. If listened to calmly, this story alone can bring about a decoupling from a blocking parental value system.

In addition to these tried and tested tracks, which you released several years ago in the successful “Power Box”, the MP3 CD “PowerCoaching” also contains “Anti-Stress Coaching” and “Power Trance III”. What is the aim of these two new coaching sessions?

Winter: The new pieces are based on new findings and many years of experience. “Power-Trance III”, for example, is self-confidence coaching. Self-confidence means not letting yourself be unsettled, appearing more convincing, “doing your own thing”. But anti-stress coaching also seemed very important to me. It’s mainly about making peace with your “perpetrators” and their representatives, such as a choleric father or an unloving mother and their counterparts in everyday adult life, with authorities and partners. I differentiate between “calm” – that’s like a forced ceasefire – and peace. Peace is the basis for constructive cooperation. If you go to the office with a bad feeling in your stomach, anger, annoyance or fear, or if you live in a relationship with suspicion, envy and jealousy, then that makes you vulnerable and sick in the long run. It’s a lose-lose situation for both sides. Both sides can win once the spell of hurt and expectations has been broken and communication is again determined by trust and forgiveness.

Some people find it difficult to engage in such “conscious listening”. What internal and external requirements must be met for self-esteem coaching to be successful?

Winter: Coaching doesn't work like a pill - swallow and wait - but rather it should convey insights. This means that on the one hand you have a desire for change, i.e. a good reason for coaching, and on the other hand you are aware of this deficient starting point. Even the best coaching is useless if you are ashamed, under pressure to meet expectations, hectic, tired or resistant, i.e. defiant. You should also be able to follow the argument and imagery passively and relaxed, and not try to rationally direct your own thoughts. But if these conditions are met, the rest is just listening, thinking along and being amazed. The listener is guided by the program from start to finish.

One intention of "PowerCoaching" is to discover and resolve certain blocking beliefs and behaviors. What exactly does this mean, and what benefit can listeners gain from this for their daily lives?

Winter: The audio coaching sessions under the motto “Strengthen your self!” are primarily aimed at identifying foreign, acquired value systems. We humans are born almost completely neutral in our beliefs, but are then subject to the influences of the society in which we grow up or in which our parents grew up. The fact that these values ​​are often long outdated in a rapidly developing society and that we therefore have behaviors, norms and beliefs that easily lead to conflict is usually completely overlooked. Imagine that you are chained to a heavy stone and are pulling it up a mountain. This represents the everyday blockages in the past and future. But suddenly you find the key to the chain and realize that the goal you are striving to achieve is not at the top of the mountain, but next to you on the level. Straight ahead with meaning instead of uphill with stress - that is what awaits those who can overcome their past and leave it behind through successful anti-stress coaching. In everyday life, this means dealing with authority without fear, being calm when dealing with bad news, having less conflict in family relationships and also gaining recognition through a self-confident demeanor.

One of the basic assumptions is that many blockages are the result of being raised by parents who themselves have problems. But how can you effectively free yourself from such often deeply rooted thought and behavior patterns without losing your orientation?

Winter: That is exactly the point that self-esteem coaching focuses on; I also cover this topic in detail in my paperback book "Too much education is harmful!" We all have an internal compass that helps us orient ourselves in the respective value system of society. This compass is called feedback. You have to know that people want to live as free of resistance as possible, i.e. stress-free and peacefully. This ensures a certain amount of adaptation. Too much adaptation, as bourgeois education wants, causes intrapersonal conflicts - people become dissatisfied and ill. If people adapt too little, however, they are avoided by society. We sense the course we are on through our well-being on the one hand and the behavior of our fellow human beings on the other. The lively and harmonious balance between both requirements is the goal of my coaching. I am therefore only trying to mitigate what too high social pressure of expectations has inadvertently caused. The goal is not educational anarchy, but freedom of choice.

When it comes to audio coaching, getting involved, listening carefully and thinking along are prerequisites for success. What is the best way to do this and what do you recommend for optimal preparation?

Winter: The best preparation is to have real peace and quiet for the duration of each program. No phone, no child, no dog, no partner should want anything from you during that time. Street noise or monotonous sounds like a washing machine are not so bad, however, because they are not an invitation or a pressure to perform. The "Power Trance II" takes the least time, at around thirteen minutes, so you can even listen to this program and let it work during a break at school or work. The "Self-Esteem Coaching" and "The Mountain of Life" each take around an hour. You shouldn't listen to these programs when you're tired or before you go to bed, but ideally in a way that allows you to feel the effect of the knowledge you've gained for a while. I recommend listening to the respective programs one after the other, but one or two days apart. However, the CD comes with a booklet that describes the optimal application.

CD tip:
Andreas Winter: PowerCoaching – Strengthen your self! Power trance I self-esteem coaching I anti-stress coaching I The mountain of life. Mankau Verlag, 3rd expanded edition February 2021, 1 MP3 CD in jewel case, 18.00 euros RRP (D/A), ISBN 978-3-86374-593-6.

Link recommendations:
More information about the MP3 CD “PowerCoaching”
More about author Andreas Winter
To the Internet forum with our authors