I thought I Would be Happy Now – The Myth About Success and Happiness.

Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we have with us from Germany no less in the middle of the night, he's chosen to come and join us. Gido Shimanski Gido is an international teacher and coach best known for his transformational programs with clients who are often in the public eye.

He helps them under all that pressure to become the best at their game, stay the best and above all, enjoy what they have achieved so that they don't sabotage themselves in their most defining.

Comments that can draw on 100% of their potential welcome to the show, Gido. It's really great to have you with us tonight.

Thank you for having me. I'm really excited about this.

So.

Tell us your story. How did you get into this? And then I'm sure we're going to dive into to how we keep from sabotaging ourselves because that's like.

That's.

The biggest problem, I think but.

Yes. And it's been the one thing that I was intrigued by for most of my life. If I look back and I was thinking today as I was preparing for this, for this conversation, I was thinking.

If I started a little bit differently talking about my journey, what was the one thing?

That I always carried around with me. I didn't know it at the time, but there was always one question that was in my mind. One thing that was driving me crazy for most of my career and.

I will tell.

You that question in a moment because.

I had a I called it quite a colorful path. I started off as a professional ballet dancer. Actually many, many years ago. So I used to dance for the Bavarian State Ballet and then I decided I wanted to use my voice. I started acting and then to support my voice, I started singing. So I played a lot of musicals.

And I've been on stage, literally most of my life.

However.

I couldn't enjoy most of that time, although from the outside many of my friends admired what I was doing and many wanted to have, you know, wanted to play those roles.

But I was driven continuously by just one question and then that was when are they going to find out that I'm actually not good enough? When are they finding out that I don't belong here?

And.

It it became really clear because I I was, I changed from dancing into acting and of course, as a dancer I kind of felt at home because that's what I've done all my life. And then that switch into suddenly being an actor and singer, although I did study it.

I never took my identity along, apparently because I I just kept waiting to be found out, and I kept saying I want to be the leading man. I want to be the leading man, not seeing.

That I already was playing so many lovely things and in fact was a leading man in in many cases.

And I remember my partner at the.

Time at some point literally just flipped. Had it and said, can you just print out your CV for me? And I said, what do you mean? I I don't care. Just print off your CV and read it to me. And so I did, you know, being the good German boy, I got my CV. I read it out and I read all these parts out.

And.

I realized that I had an excuse, an excuse for every single part that I was playing. Why it was it wasn't valid, and I remember in that conversation, he said at the time. He said so.

Why? What is it that after dancing for the state ballet?

Touring from China to Broadway, playing these parts in cats, Mamma Mia's cabaret. How is it you still don't feel worthy. And I instantly went into.

Well, you see what? What you don't know is in the ballet. I only danced these parts because I was a good partner. Because, you know, I could lift. And then when I, when I changed into acting the first part, I just landed because I think the Director just kind of liked me. And then then the second one, I just got the part because they couldn't find anyone. You know, they couldn't find anyone else. They didn't have anyone to play the role. So they just gave it to me. And then in the next one.

And then suddenly it hit me. Do I really have an excuse for every achievement in my life?

That it has no value.

Don't really just void everything that I've done, and I I remember standing in that kitchen literally staring at my CV going.

How can it be?

That I am actually living what I set out to do, and yet I'm not living it because I.

Actually don't. I couldn't feel it.

Many years later, when I was really coaching, I was I had a conversation with one of the top footballers in Europe and and I actually never coached him. He just started talking to me because, you know, he saw a bit of my work and he said, you know, Guido, I've.

I've got the house, the wife, the money, the fame. I'll play for my favorite club. I thought I would be happy now.

And that pains me because it reminded me not that I had that kind of career.

But I remember and I see that so often nowadays that.

What you project into the world and how everybody else sees how magnificent you really are and how good you are in your talent.

And then that those, let's call them high achievers, so often don't match it on the inside and they have no idea how they're being perceived. They they literally think.

Well that question, but I thought I would be happy now.

The gap between how they feel and what everybody else is is so big.

And that is that is basically that has become my journey getting people not into more success because that's what I used to do, you know, I help you stop sabotaging yourself because you think you want to.

Role and then many years later I realized it's not about.

Landing the part, landing your job, having that husband or that wife getting the money.

Because once you get there, you will actually not acknowledge it. You will actually find the next.

Thing to go.

Well, I'm not happy yet.

So how how about?

You are as amazing as you are and what you do.

How about I can see that many other people around you can see that, and now we work on you, not sabotaging your happiness, so you can actually accept that the success is kind of a little nice side effect that happens because suddenly you embrace.

Who you really are? Sorry. That was a very long.

A long answer.

I love it. I love it. It's so appropriate in this world where we're taught from a very young age to not be proud of ourselves.

To your question.

Oh.

You know the pride cometh before the fall, and it's drummed into us in a lot of different ways, and some of it's very subtle. But when you actually achieve things that you should be damn proud that you've done. I mean, dancing in the ballet.

Just to be on the stage, I don't care if you got the role because you could lift somebody up.

Just to get there is a huge, huge accomplishment. It's years of study and practice and giving up a lot of things that other people wouldn't give up to get there.

You were just.

You may have been in the right place at the right time, but.

Synchronicities happen.

Oh they they happen. And and I did work hard, I still couldn't accept it.

But you know that.

We we all do that. We all do that. And until we get to the point where we realize that we can just say thank you. Thank you for acknowledging the hard work. Thank you for acknowledging that.

Yeah.

I.

I really am good at this. Thank you for acknowledging what?

What I've accomplished, which is really what your partner was doing to you.

Exactly.

Well, and the the, the, the, the for me, the interesting thing looking back is that.

Even when I was 17, I was always, you know, very at the very young age. I was always interested in how people take. I was always interested in how I tick and why we take the way we take and.

I guess I I also wanted to know how can we change how we take in order to get different results, but I could feel I could feel there's a fight going on could feel.

Yeah.

There was something not sitting right, but as you said, I've been, I've been taught to not be proud. I've been taught to not be too loud, to not be too smiley, to not be too going too, going too out, you know, being too outwards, outgoing.

I I remember incidents when I was a little child, you know, when I heard these sentences, I literally remember that one time and I know, you know, my mom did this out of love. She's not alive. Bless her anymore.

But at the time, she probably wanted to protect me, but I remember her saying when I was about 7 years old, she said, you know, no wonder you have any you, you don't have any friends as arrogant as you are. And that is a belief I carried with me for most of my life or don't be arrogant and people don't like you anyway. So that's.

To prove I was continuously collecting.

UM.

And then later on, when you know when, when that moment happened in the kitchen. For me, that was a breakthrough, famous moment of realizing, OK, it's already there. You're the one who's actually closing the door.

And I started exploring and I started training and I started collecting the tools and I went deep into how can I change that? And I literally just started doing this in order to help myself because I was fascinated by it.

You know, when I was young, I did the Reiki courses and you know, I did all these different things and that was something else. It it literally spoke to me about self sabotages.

And it was fascinating to see how I changed, but also how people around me said, what are you doing differently? You seem so calm all of a sudden. Of course, it was a process. And the for me, the big fun moment or the big moment when I realized this stuff really works.

Is many years later I was asked to audition again for that little show called cats I've played. You know, I've been in that show for many, many years before and I covered some roles. I've played some.

Called.

But there was this one part that I always wanted and that I was always told I wasn't tall enough. You know, they were looking for these tall booming guys, booming voices, tall guys.

But I always felt that was my part, and six years later.

I got a call saying we would like you to audition for that part and my friend said, Are you sure you want to go in for this? Because you have so much trauma.

Of rejection with that, especially with our part. And I said yeah.

But now I have these tools. I'm different now and I I mean, I sat down and I literally looked at every demon and every sphere and every not good enough. I tranced myself, put myself into those that.

Have the hell out of.

Smudged everywhere.

Me.

Forgave and forgave and forgave. And then, you know, the audition.

Comes and it was.

It was. It was very different because usually I don't know if you ever been in a situation like this. I went in and of course you just want to prove that you are worthy, that you belong there. And of course 1 little side look and you're out.

And I didn't care. I was just in there to go. Well, you know me. I know you. Let's see. You know, if this works and I've I've never been that relaxed in my life in an audition. Long story short, I got the part.

But that wasn't the gift.

The gift for me was the moment when I actually went on stage. 4 days later, only had four days of rehearsal to play. You know, cats, after six years, I went into that station for the very first time. After 25 years, I went out. Then I thought.

Oh.

And that's what I wish for. Everybody for them to just go. This is what I do right now. I might as well enjoy it because it's my place.

That in itself is such a.

Gift.

For me, that was the biggest gift.

Absolutely the biggest gift.

And then I start performing amended to coaching so you know.

Ohh, people need to know this.

Go out on the top.

For sure. So tell us about your coaching.

Well, it's kind of it developed out of this the the, the original training I did was actually a health coaching. So I was trained at looking at the underlying blocks, sabotages limiting beliefs, let it be energetically or physically. That might create an illness.

Patty.

Or hold you back from healing as fast as you can.

And that.

That technique that I learned was back then it was. It was created by a western medicine Doctor Who said we only ever look at the symptoms, but never at the root cause. And he believed. I remember him saying that 96%.

Of all the illnesses we go through, have more an emotional or, you know, a a different cause than we usually would.

Would look at.

But very quickly I realized that you can use these tools. Of course we know this. You know you can use these tools for anything once you understand the route or the route wherever you are of the of the subconscious mind and how the sabotage is or how the old identities that we are stuck in, how they really work.

You can use it for your health. You can use it for your love life. You can use it for money and and your job.

And so I just. That's what I did. I started using it for myself. I of course I have my certificate.

And and then I started.

You know, treating or coaching colleagues. That's why I kind of stayed with the creative side.

One of the very first clients they called me up just because I was the only one in the UK doing this particular technique was form A and of course I can't say the the band, but it was a band that I grew up with and it was one of these, you know, they sold 110 million records when I grew up and I was like.

Is this really the name I think?

It is and that's again when I realized the higher you get, the higher the pressure is. It doesn't mean that you are happier. It doesn't mean that suddenly you don't have any problems. Quite the opposite. If the inside doesn't grow.

And so I kind of just been passed around, you know, it it it's been very nice to just.

I well that people start recommending me. I I never actually looked at it as a business. This might be interesting for you and your audience because and that was a big problem because my identity was being an artist. Artists don't make money. Artists don't know how to be a businessman. Artists just, you know, they share. And then you go and.

And.

Find food somewhere. You know I've I've always been lucky. So yeah.

I hope you have a patron.

So I've always been very lucky with my contract, but so you know, I don't want to dismiss this, but I certainly had no concept of making this work other than oh, sure, I can help you.

And and then I had a I had a mentor in London. I lived in London for 11 years.

And.

She looked at me, she said. Do you know what I actually? Because we met through some of these healing circles. And. And I said uh, and know what you mean. She said I actually helped small businesses and some large ones, including, you know, telecom and and those big buses.

To work through their problems and you know, get into actually just.

Align for bigger success, better success scale up in all of this and I think I can help you.

And she was a godsend because she.

Patiently took me through.

We had some we set out some big goals in the beginning for someone who charged, I don't know 50 lbs for a 2 hour session. That then turned to five hours so you know it's only 10 hour an hour because that throws my worst.

Doll.

15 hours.

I mean and.

Of course you know they worked. Ish.

Hmm.

We set out some really, really big goals and I just.

Settle these goals because I wanted to see how scary it gets.

And she always said to me, I think you need to work with business people. And I said, I know.

I I I don't know business. I know artists. I maybe know an athlete, but.

No, and she said that's exactly why you need to work with business people because they have business coaches, they don't have this inner they don't do this inner work. Really. And that was about 13 years ago.

And I resisted that for a very long time.

And then we created, you know, the whole tagline and the identity around it, and I felt comfortable without it and my my niche was creative high achievers.

You know who? Maybe project being a superstar but don't quite feel like this on the inside.

And funny enough, the first person who said Ohh, that's interesting. Do you work with normal people? Was was a banker. Was actually someone in the bank and I. And and I said, what do you mean normal? Because he was, you know, in his paid payment brackets it was way way beyond my normal.

He said well with people who are not actors who are not on stage.

And that is basically how I started.

Great story.

So one thing I was just thinking about because.

When it comes to to because you, I think you're interested in your audience, is very much interested in the business side of things as well. And and I remember sitting in London and I was doing my coaching as I said.

For I started off at 50 lbs and which is of course it's a very honorable price.

And I still felt uncomfortable with it, and it didn't work. It simply didn't work. And my colleagues and the trainers in my course, they kept saying you need to go bigger. This is there's a certain price because there is a, you know, there needs to be an exchange. And I remember feeling so closed up. And I was so fearful. I mean, my throat, I couldn't even speak about this.

And at some point I mean literally nothing happened except a couple of colleagues that happened. And then, you know that pop star came in and then nothing happened again.

And then I thought, well.

Maybe it doesn't matter if I have no clients for £50, I have no clients for £100 I might as well try and I raised my price to 105 lbs and the interesting thing is suddenly people came.

And I raised it a little bit again and suddenly the the results got better and I understood how important.

This.

That you put a value on your time that is not more valuable to for someone. If you, you know, keep driving the message for in for another three hours just because you want to give value when they're done. When it's complete, it's complete.

And they were. They were complaining. Of course. They were complaining about having to pay more, but they came back. And the ones that came back suddenly had breakthroughs they didn't have before. And that always stuck with me.

And I'm not saying make yourself expensive for just for the sake of being expense.

But sit in your value. Know you know that value.

I can add a little bit to that and and you alluded to it and that's don't expand your time.

If you commit for an hour, keep it an hour.

Don't go over.

Make them want more. Make them want to come back. Don't give them everything all at once, because it's too much.

100% and I Remember Me sitting with my mentor and because she was so helpful and she saw so much where I needed to go. I remember sometimes sitting there thinking I'm I'm actually full and I just said that to be polite.

Because of course I wanted to, you know, get every drop of what she had to offer.

But it wasn't going in anymore. So you, you.

Know it's it's.

It's it's no no service to just go over. Of course, when you're in the middle of some deep.

Event some deep trauma or something and you have the time you expand a little bit. You know, I don't. I don't like letting someone hang there, but I do actually build these in. So I have. I have long sessions in my programs.

Yeah.

Yeah. And that's that's really for anybody that's creating any kind of program. If you're going to, you need to price it.

Appropriately, but you also need to not overwhelm people with information, because they won't do anything with it. So many times people will buy courses and they'll get inside the course and they're going to be they're like, Oh my God, there's so much information. I don't know where to start. I don't know where to go next. And it would be better if there were like 4 courses and they were a little bit.

The Christ and and you could go through.

Them in the sections.

And then that way you're completing the program instead of.

Same with coaching. You know, when you're when you're doing one-on-one work, do you do one-on-one work mostly or do you?

Yeah.

Do groups now.

I keep swapping 4th and back. I do one-on-one. I have my clients that I take to like 90 day programs and then I have my courses. That kind of really develop themselves out of the the pandemic. You know when suddenly people said we we need different kind of help.

And so I did that for pretty much two years. I only did courses, and now we're back to, you know, what is normal? I was. I was about to say back to normal, but what's normal anyway? So I'm I'm somewhere, the new world order, you know, so.

Did you know mostly.

So yes, I do both and I have a small membership where people just get.

Little bits every month to just, you know, keep keep afloat and keep in a good energy and keep in a community of people who want to grow and want to stay stable and a time that doesn't feel stable at all. So.

That's that's gotta be really helpful.

So how do people get in touch with you if they want to?

Well, the best way is is of course classic would be YouTube or just my website. You know gilshimanski.com if you.

Please.

Can spell it.

We'll we'll put in the show notes to help people out.

So how is that you know, how do you spell that? There is, of course, the Instagram channel.

And YouTube and I'm I'm doing a bit on TikTok so it's it's all those social media channels. But I do change them. Whatever seems you know seems to take my.

Welcome back.

Welcome back. I have no idea what just happened.

I don't either.

But I I caught it rain time, so there was not even a gap.

So go to gitoshemanskifor.com to get in touch with you and you have an offer about how to not sabotage yourself. It's a master class you want to.

Talk a little bit about that.

Yes, it's just when you go to the website, there's.

A you know a little.

Video that explains how you get into the master class. I think it's about 20 minutes talking about how to not sabotage your happiness and your success. And for me, happiness is the biggest success.

So that's just right there on the front of the of the website. And if you don't mind me sharing, we talked about this before.

I will share a little link with you so people can look a little bit into one of my topics that's very deep in my heart and that's forge.

This.

And I'm writing a book at the moment the working title is the forgiveness ninja, because I think everyone needs to be with forgiveness like a ninja just doing it left, right, center, and there you can download the first few pages of that.

Do you want to give us a synopsis of what your thoughts on forgiveness are?

Forgiveness for me is the number one self-care tool in my experience because.

Many people? Well, many people, when they hear forgiveness, they go. I don't want to go there, you know. Either they think it's too religious or maybe they think it's, you know, they instantly have some person person in their head that they don't want to want to forgive. And when you get that reaction I think well, you really need to talk about forgiveness. You really need to think about this and.

And I think there's a lot of myths around forgiveness because people think, first of all.

Well, my my biggest take on forgiveness is we are holding on to what I call unforgiveness. We're holding on to the grudge. We're holding on to that pain because we're trying to protect ourselves from let it be. You know, my, my, my sister broke my toy or let it be I was abused.

I you know, it doesn't actually matter as harsh as the sounds. Yeah, but very often we are. We are holding ourselves in that unforgiveness in that anger to go. This will never happen to me ever again. And the problem, what most people don't see is.

By doing that, they keep themselves in the very energy they're trying to protect themselves from.

And they think they feel while when I forgive, I do it for the other person and let them off the hook. And that's never the case.

Quite the opposite. You let yourself off the hook off the hook. I love. I think I'm. I'm not sure if it was the Dalai Lama or.

Someone in his circle who said, you know, don't don't forgive you, don't have to forgive the act, but forgive the person. And I always say try if you understand their background, where they come, where they came from, what they were going through, you might understand.

The mechanics behind it.

That doesn't mean you agree.

Doesn't mean you signed to what they've done and you say, well, OK, that was OK. That's not what you say, but you maybe maybe you understand it, but maybe you don't and that's completely OK because in the they might not even be alive anymore.

But in order to go, I want to be free again. So I allow myself to find a way to forgiveness and in my way that there's, you know, there's different ways to do that.

To set myself free.

Me.

And which brings me to miss number #3 without having to bring them back into my life if I don't want to. Because many people think, well, if I forgive him or her, doesn't that mean they, you know, open the door to them coming back? Said no, you can say.

I forgive you and buzz off. You know I.

Just boundaries, baby.

But hundreds baby, I don't need you in my life, but I forgive you. And that's very hard to understand for many, but it's so freeing. So I say once you understand that process.

Oh, a different thing that I find very important. And I think this is what the the biggest point is being missed.

Very often when we are stuck in this unforgiveness in this in this anger, and I see this even with my footballers, I see this with, you know, when they're angry at their trainers, they're still angry at their trainers from two years ago, I was just working to a manager from a from a big corporation in Germany. And she said I'm still angry at my boss that I had eleven years ago.

So you know, we all have these because he was verbally abusive.

You know, it's it's not just the the the abuse at home, it's it's, it's the things that we all encounter in everyday life and.

But the big thing, of course, that most people know.

Is.

The you know when relationships break up and when someone is being left, you know that we all, most of us have that kind of heartache sometime in our lives. And and I think that's quite a good example because people think, OK, there's this incident and let's take the somebody's left you.

You know, somebody broke up a marriage or.

Relationship and we think I just now have to forgive the other part. The other parts you know that that, that partner, that ex lover, that spouse and then it should be done and that's what I used to believe. And then you realize well actually it keeps coming back and then people think I haven't forgiven and I say you know, you have forgiven.

You've only forgiven 1 angle of it because.

That that thing is a cluster of many different things. So it's, let's say your spouse has left you in an in an ugly way. Yes, you need to work through that and forgive him or her in order to set yourself free. But then there's always that one question that I asked, what else are you angry about? What else are you holding on well.

Actually, I'm angry at myself that I endured it for so long. I've I known what was going on or I'm angry that I'm angry. I've had that yesterday, client said to me. I'm actually actually, I'm angry that I allowed myself to become so angry. So now. OK, what else are you angry about? It's myself. You need to forgive yourself.

And in my case, I actually at some point came to to to a stage. I thought I'd forgiven everything about one from magic breakup.

And it was clear I was completely at ease with it and I was volunteering in a in a in a course for a colleague of mine, and I was going deep in, like, seconds. And suddenly I realized I was holding an anger against God. I'm not coming from a religious background, but they're they're they're. It was. I was sitting there.

I'm angry at God or life or whatever that is that put me that keeps putting me into that same situation where I give and some people use me, and then they dropped me like the hot potato. None of that happened.

But that was a feeling, of course not. You know, I'm not saying. Of course it didn't happen, but in my case, that wasn't actually the case. But that was my feeling, and it was angry. So yes, I had to forgive even how weird is that?

I mean can't.

It's totally the stories we tell ourselves around events that happen in our lives and how we interpret those, and we can change it. I mean, that's like when I realized those like magic, somebody waved a magic wand over my whole life when I realized, hey, I can change what I think about that.

Oh.

Situation. OK. It actually changes the situation for the other people that were involved in it too, because nobody remembers anything the same anyway.

100% and I always think it's like you know, take a little child one year old, two years old, they they're screaming at the top of their lungs because, you know the world is falling apart for them because you stole their lolly or something and they go, oh, look, an airplane, they go oh.

Done shift.

And I think we all have the ability to do that. We just continuously need to prove why what happened in the past is still valid and I'm suffering. I'm still suffering.

Right.

I'm gonna keep suffering, damn it.

OK, you you, you could just let go because it's over and I understand that it's not always easy.

No.

See.

But that's why we're here, aren't we?

Yeah, I think so. I think so.

Take the cluster apart of the unforgiveness. That's the yeah.

And and they can get the first chapter of this ninja forgiveness book that you're in the process of writing. If they go to your website and visit that this has been such a delightful conversation. Guito, what's the one thing you'd like?

The audience to take away from our conversation.

Don't believe anything you think.

I mean.

Yeah.

That's perfect. Don't believe anything you think. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me. It's been a blast. It's been really, really wonderful.