About Andreas
Where I come from and through which transformation I went
My early life: The struggle that shaped me
I was born in November 1987 in a small town in Erlangen, the south of Germany. I grew up in a very traditional German way, with emotionally distant parents and immense performance pressure.
Due to my parents' and society's unawareness, I faced numerous traumatic situations without having any support. As I grew older, the more unhappy, depressed, and miserable I became.
Having suicidal thoughts was normal and I had them every day.
I don't want to blame anyone because it was supposed to happen this way and, ultimately, it led me to where I am today – and it's beautiful!
But step by step.
I always had the feeling that I was different than others. As far back as I can remember, I had an inner knowing that my sad experience of life couldn't be all there is and that more must be possible:
- More happiness
- More fulfillment
- More joy
- More love
But instead of going after my dreams and changing my life, I numbed myself with distractions like computer games and weed.
Luckily I had a huge “advantage” in my life: I had a lot of pain inside of me. So at several points in my life, it was more painful to stay in the old situation than to face the pain that comes with change.
Taking responsibility: My journey begins
On my 20th birthday in 2007, I reached a point where I knew I couldn't continue like this and had to change something.
From that moment on I slowly took more responsibility for my life. Over the next months, I started:
- Working out
- My first business
- Reading my first books about personal development
- Investing in myself and my happiness
I was still depressed and miserable, but things were slowly moving in a better direction – even if I couldn't see it at the time.
Over the next few years, I intensified my efforts and these slowly bore fruit.
In my early 20’s I discovered my passion (at least in a broader sense): To work with people and to teach/help them. However, I had to take a few detours into more similar fields before I finally started coaching people as I do today.
I also met my first mentors: People who believed more in me than I did in myself. They helped me in several areas of my life and I wouldn’t be where I am right now without their support.
Back then, I worked full-time in finance and started on the side my first online business in 2015 with friends. There I discovered another passion: Creating content.
I realized that I wanted to create content about topics I felt were truly important:
- How do I become more happy?
- How do I reach my goals?
- How can I be more efficient and get more done?
This moment came faster than I thought because two months later we ended the online business and I had suddenly more time. I took the knowledge that I gained in the former company and started my first company with a focus on personal development – and it really fulfilled me.
The day I decided to follow my heart
On a Thursday afternoon in September 2016 came a moment that changed my life:
While sitting in my office, I heard a deeper voice speaking to me for the first time. A voice that I now call Intuition, Wisdom, or Inner GPS.
This voice told me to give up my normal life in my hometown, move to Berlin, go after my dreams, and do my personal development business full-time.
It didn't make logical sense, but deep down, I knew it was true. The decision was already made – and I never questioned it.
From the outside, my life looked very good: I was successful in my finance job and had a high standard of living. But inside I still was depressed and felt empty and miserable. So I didn’t have much to lose.
Within the next months, I ended all my commitments in my hometown and moved to Berlin.
When I arrived in Berlin, I financed myself through teaching jobs. Fortunately, I was free to teach personal development, similar to what I had done before. During this time, I also wrote my first book, which later became a bestseller in Germany.
In this period I noticed my desire to work one-on-one with people, coaching them and helping them to change their lives for the better.
I knew I wasn’t in the right place with my teaching jobs but I was too comfortable to change. Luckily, the pain got too strong again and in November 2017, I decided to quit these teaching jobs and started as a professional coach.
“
I started having coaching sessions with Andreas some months ago and continue to do so. What I would highlight is his excellent capacity to listen and his ability to make you see your "problems" from a spiritual perspective. Instead of focusing on behaviours and ways to control them or manage them, like I have seen with other previous therapists and psychologists, he focuses on deeper motivations causing the behaviours, and shows how it is our distortion of reality and our ego the root of all pain.
I would highly recommend Andreas to anyone wanting to go deep into a challenging but fascinating self-discovery journey.
Lorena Santamaría Ugarte, Chief System Engineer
The difficult journey of becoming a professional coach
I can be very extreme. When I deeply know something is right, I fully commit. I either learn to swim or I drown. So it was the same with the coaching business.
Of course, I had a plan to make the coaching business work, but I struggled a lot in my first year with the typical challenges every coach faces:
- Getting clients
- Limiting beliefs (“Who am I that I explain to other people how they can manage their life and get even paid for that?”)
- Positioning/finding my niche in a world full of coaches
That year, for the first time, I invested a five-figure sum in my personal development. Among other stuff, I worked with a very successful coach who also leads seminars for the world's largest company of personal development seminars.
I hoped he could help me with my business and even more with myself. Even though I was already over 10 years in personal development and investing significant time and money in myself, I was still depressed.
It was ironic: I was very good at helping others but terrible at helping myself.
During this time, I believed something was wrong with me and that I needed to fix myself. But no matter what I did, it was never enough and feelings like worthlessness, anxiety, hopelessness, and sadness always came back.
From luxury to despair: When achieving goals isn’t enough
Thanks to my fully remote business and the passive income from my book, I began to travel more extensively. I usually spent the cold months in different countries in Asia like Thailand or Bali.
At that time, one of my biggest goals was to work remotely and earn over €10,000 in passive income each month.
In March 2019, while living in Bali, I almost accidentally realized that I had achieved this goal. And you can’t imagine how happy I was – for one day.
The next day, while sitting in my luxury villa, I felt depressed again. It was even worse because to me it looked like I failed again to become happy.
It didn't make sense to me at the time: How could I not be happy and fulfilled after achieving my most important goals?
I was thinking and found a (supposed) solution very fast: I just needed to double my passive income!
Fortunately, my next thought made me realize that this couldn’t be the solution. I was trying to win the 'more'-game which is not possible because there is always more.
I also realized that I had been trying to win the 'more'-game personally: believing that if I just completed this coaching, that seminar, and read this book, I would finally be good enough and happy.
So I was running all the time and trying to fix myself and my life circumstances because I thought that my happiness was linked and dependent on these.
At that moment, this made-up house of cards collapsed because I realized that I wouldn’t find happiness there – no matter how hard I try and what I will achieve.
I felt even more depressed because I also lost hope that I ever can be happy.
“
Andreas is an awesome coach and therapist, best one I've had the pleasure of working with. Very professional but also radiating a sense of warmth, which makes it exceptionally easy to open up during a session. Also has a gift for explaining difficult psychological mechanisms in graspable terms. High and deserved recommend.
Michał Dubiel, Civil Lawyer and University Lecturer
The Awakening: The moment that changed everything
I am both blessed and cursed with a very strong intellect.
This double-edged sword is very useful in the material world, but the intellect is also the root of ALL suffering.
I always was very rational and labeled myself “a man of science and logic”. Of course, in all these 12 years of personal development until that point, I came across some spiritual literature.
I think the first time I read Eckhart Tolle was in 2016 but I had no idea what he was talking about.
If you are a spiritual seeker, you probably know that spirituality cannot be understood with the intellect, as it transcends intellectual comprehension.
In May 2019 – two months after my crisis in Bali – I did another coaching. It was with a spiritual coach, which I didn't know. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have done that coaching.
During this coaching, I had a transformative moment that changed everything for me: I realized that I’m not the body and my intellect/ego.
I realized that I’m the consciousness that is experiencing form – like the body, thoughts, or emotions. It was the first time in my life that the identification with form dissolved and became weaker.
It was the first time that the Dreamer woke up from the Dream that he had previously thought was reality.
This realization pulled the rug out from under my feet because everything that I thought was true turned out as an illusion. At that point, I didn't know how my life would go on and ever be normal again.
Luckily I “forgot” and fell asleep again, dreaming probably 99.9% of the time that I’m a human being. But something changed…
Embracing a new Spiritual Path
It is said that spiritual awakening is a process and once it has started it can no longer be stopped. You will awaken more and more, and as you do, the Dream is becoming more beautiful. (more about that in a bit)
With my awakening, my curiosity about spirituality increased drastically. And once again I jumped fully in and I consumed everything I found. There I realized quickly that spirituality isn’t spirituality.
Of course, at its core, everything points to the same Divine Truth. However, Spiritual Truth is formless and cannot be found in form like rituals, concepts, or dogmas. Unfortunately, spiritual teachings are full of these.
Luckily, I found the teachings of Sidney Banks, the Three Principles. I noticed that something was different there. Of course, Sid didn’t discover something completely new (again: there is only ONE Truth) but he was able to point toward that Truth in a very simple and clean way.
In November 2019 I attended my first 3P Event. I entered the room and I was shocked:
- Everybody looked super happy and fulfilled
- They all looked at least 10 years younger than they were
- Everybody was super nice
- I never felt so much love in a room before
It seemed to me that these people had found something beautiful for themselves and it was obvious to me that I wanted to find that too.
So the Three Principles became and still are my main source to look into the direction of Truth. Over the last years, I worked for example with 3P coaches/teachers like Dicken Bettinger, Natasha Swerdloff, and Michael Neill.
Although the 3Ps have such a big influence on me (and my coaching), for me it is very important to stay open to other sources. When it comes to teachers, seminars, or content in general I let myself guide by my Wisdom on what I should do.
So the last years I worked also very intensely with the Enneagram or A Course in Miracles for example.
Even after over five years of looking in this direction I sometimes have the feeling that I have no idea what my teachers are talking about. My intellect wants to understand it but it is an understanding beyond the intellect.
What I do know is that the more I see in this direction for myself, the more beautiful my life becomes – also the more powerful and transformative my work with my clients has become:
From fixing to Transformative Coaching: My Coaching Evolution
In my over seven years of professional coaching, my style and approach have naturally evolved. Especially as I gained deeper spiritual insights.
As a coach, your greatest asset is your personal understanding, as you cannot guide clients deeper than you have gone yourself. Your understanding is the fundament from which you are working with your clients.
During my awakening moment described above, I also realized the role of Thought as a fundamental Principle in our human experience: Whatever we think is brought to life by Consciousness, and we experience it immediately.
At this moment I had a first glimpse behind the illusionary nature of Thought and what is lying beyond that.
Let me give you a personal example:
I always thought that something was wrong with me and that I was not good enough. Because of that, I felt like this and I tried to fix that and become good enough.
This was a game I couldn’t win because – like every other human being – I was already perfect, whole, and lovable. And I can think that I’m not.
The first time I realized this, it was a fundamental shift in my level of understanding – personally and in the work with my clients.
Before I was trying to fix my clients, helping them fix their life circumstances and achieving their goals in the hope of getting more happiness out of that (like most of the other coaches).
Nowadays I’m pointing in every session to their innate space of perfect well-being, wholeness, and abundance.
Ironically, the more you find this space inside of you and live from it, the more your life circumstances will change automatically for the better and the easier it will become to reach your goals:
“
Wow! I just completed 3 sessions with Andreas and my life has been transformed. He was able in the very first session to let me see a very specific mental pattern that I was entertaining that just instantly dropped me in my being. Out of that, my business, my way of living and my perspective of life changed, and this resulted in a lot more Joy and Happiness in every day life.
Highly recommend working with Andreas, expect clarity, peace of being yourself and a deeper connection with higher intelligence as a result.
Philip Elisa, Founder of the Akashic Records School
Trusting Wisdom: From Darkness to Light
Since my awakening in May 2019, a lot in my life has changed.
Thanks to my new understanding of Thought, I’ve overcome my depression and am generally much happier – and my level of happiness is still rising.
Of course, this does not mean that I’m happy all the time. Our moods are like the weather: Sometimes there are some clouds, rain, snow or a storm.
It is part of our human experience to have moods but we can gain understanding and see them for what they are. Especially we can gain trust that no matter how the weather appears, the sun (= our innate well-being) is always there – only hidden by a cloud that will soon pass (= a thought).
The less you pay attention to and believe your negative thoughts, the more they will quiet down. And then there is space for something new to show up.
Further up I’ve already described the first time my intuition spoke to me in September 2016.
Back then, I didn’t know there is a deeper knowledge within that could guide us through life, which we can call Wisdom.
In the last years, I’ve learned that the more I listen to Wisdom, the more beautiful my life will become. But it is not only enough to listen, you also need the courage to trust and follow – you still have free will and can do whatever you want.
By trusting and following Wisdom, my life circumstances have changed dramatically – in ways my small mind could never have imagined.
It is like giving up your small ego goals and surrendering to the flow of life instead, trusting that Life knows what is best for you.
You are Life.
You give up your small self (from which EVERY suffering is coming), allow the Divine to work through you, and stand less and less in its way.
It is like living happily and contentedly in the present moment and at some point, you have an idea and you follow it. After that, you have another idea and follow again, and so on.
At some point, you will look back and have no idea how you ended up there – like it happened to me in 2021:
Living a Guided Life
I mentioned that I used to travel to Asia in the winter. However, during the winter of 2020/21, this wasn’t possible due to COVID. I felt trapped in a lockdown Berlin with almost no possibilities.
Back then, I knew three things:
- I wanted to travel
- I have a friend living in Conil de la Frontera (on the Atlantic coast of Spain)
- I wanted to ride my motorcycle more (I had just passed my exam six months ago, and the area around Berlin isn't ideal for riding)
At some point, Wisdom spoke to me and brought these three points together:
“Grab your motorcycle, drive from Berlin to Andalusia, and visit your friend for a couple of months.”
I knew, once again, that this was true. So, I went for it.
While it’s beyond the scope of this article to detail every step, today my home base is in Marbella, where I have a beautiful penthouse.
The truth is, I never intended to move to Spain and have no idea how it all happened. I just did what made sense to me at the moment and I ended up here. But it is so beautiful!
Nowadays my life and the direction my life is heading is 100% guided by Wisdom.
The more I saw how the magic unfolded, the more I began to trust – in every area of my life.
It is like Life itself created the perfect script for us – and our job is only to surrender, accept, and go for it.
Wisdom is here to guide us in every area of our life. The problem that I see on and on again is that in the areas of life that are most important to us, we want to do it by ourselves instead of trusting there too.
On the one hand, it is human to want to be in control over that which is the most important to us, but on the other hand, it is stupid. Because of this, we are more likely to keep the desired result away from us.
There is a metaphor that I like a lot that symbolizes the difference between a normal and a guided life:
Rowboat vs. Sailboat – Moving through Life with Ease and Grace
Most people approach life like a rowboat – as I did for a long time:
They have a direction they want to go and use force (willpower) as their primary source of moving forward.
Of course, you can move forward with this strategy. You can even achieve huge things considered by the world to be magnificent.
But in my experience, if you are going for small ego goals instead of following your Soul’s path, you will still feel empty.
On the other hand, there is the sailboat.
Instead of raw force, the sailboat is using the power of nature to move forward.
Of course, you still have something to do but the sailboat is moving forward almost effortlessly.
You use your inner compass to navigate your journey and move in harmony with life to get there.
Your main job is to observe where the winds are coming from, set the sails, and correct the course occasionally. The rest of the time you can enjoy the journey because you know it is not about the goal, it is about the journey.
And everything you need is always with you. Doing that, it is obvious that miracles will happen all the time:
Living a Life of Infinite Potential
As I already told you: The more I see of this understanding I’m pointing to, the more beautiful my life is becoming.
Not only are my life circumstances improving, but more importantly, I’m living a happy and fulfilled life in the present moment – the only time there is.
There are two more beautiful aspects of this spiritual understanding that I want to share with you:
1. Learning this understanding is non-linear
Usually, learning is linear: you spend X amount of time and get Y results. While it varies for each person, learning generally follows this pattern. However, this spiritual understanding is different.
This means that at any moment, you can have a HUGE insight into Mind, and your life will never be the same.
You don’t have to do something to become the infinite consciousness – you are it already! But you have forgotten Who you are and you have to remember that again.
And this can happen very quickly…
2. This understanding is infinite
The more you see and remember, the more beautiful your life becomes. The present moment fills with increasingly beautiful feelings, and more miracles occur.
What we are talking about is infinite and this is very good news! Because as I already mentioned, the more you see on this level, the more beautiful your life will become.
So there is no limit to positive feelings like love, bliss, and peace. And ultimately this is what we are actually searching for.
At the end, I want to thank you for reading this.
When I started writing this I never thought that it would be that long. But even for stuff like my “about me” page I’m using Wisdom to create – and it seems like this should be created.
I hope you have an idea now of who I am, how I work, and what transformation is possible.
I know from the bottom of my heart, that a happy and fulfilled life is possible for everybody – also for you.
Wisdom showed me clearly that empowering people is my gift to the world. This is why I am here and why I'm doing this.
I would be happy if I could support you in your journey one way or another.