Brigitta & Christian Hoeferle - Dynamic Duo

Brigitta & Christian Hoeferle-Dynamic Duo : Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

Brigitta & Christian Hoeferle-Dynamic Duo : this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
How many times have you said to yourself, I'm going to succeed? And yet you keep coming up short. You probably notice that high achievers with heart do things differently, but you just can't put your finger on it. You're curious about why high achievers accomplish more and have more satisfying relationships. It's because success is the result of your mindset and the consistent actions you take. This show is designed with your success in mind by revealing these powerful patterns of our dynamic individuals and guest experts. You can model what they do and apply to your future success. Now let's roll up our sleeves and get started. My name is Brigitta Hoeferle and this is the Success Patterns Show. And we are here live today on a totally different setup. Well, it's not totally different. It's a little bit different. This is the success pattern show. Couples edition, and I couldn't be more excited to have my best half with me today. Christian Hoeferle. Christian, the culture guy. Thanks for being on the show today.

Christian Hoeferle:
Thank you for having me. It's exciting. I'm not really sure how this will work, but this is awesome. Yeah. Couples Edition right here. Couple Couples.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Edition. So so let's talk about this first. So Christian and I have been married for 21 years, and I don't know if you can tell because we're in a virtual world, but we are we have our wedding band on our right side, on our right finger, Right, right hand. And this is my right hand as well. So we got married 21 years ago in Germany. Actually, my dad married us, which was a really cool experience in a small chapel in the outskirts of Munich. Well, it's it's basically tucked away in the Alps, would you say?

Christian Hoeferle:
The foothills of the Alps.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
The foothills of the Alps. It's beautiful. Christian gave me a beautiful picture for Christmas this year. Christian has his own company, The Culture Mastery. I have my own company with companies together. We have children together. That's true. We live together.

Christian Hoeferle:
The children have nothing to do with our companies.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
That's true. Yeah, I would. I would say that is. That's true. And we're here at the center of training, where we are, where we have our studio and where we have our trainings. So I said, Christian, wouldn't it be great? Because so many people ask us, you know, how do you have it all? Brigitta? And honestly, do we have it all?

Christian Hoeferle:
No.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
I don't think anyone has it all. Honestly.

Christian Hoeferle:
What is all.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Yeah, what is all? That's a, that's a really good question. And people ask us especially, you know, Christian works with individuals and companies and organizations. I work with individuals, companies and organizations. And, and individually they ask us, you know, how do you how do you manage a work life balance? How do you juggle a family and work and kids and dog and trainings and travel?

Christian Hoeferle:
So household.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Household, big one. How do you juggle it all?

Christian Hoeferle:
Well, I cannot juggle it at some point in my life. I realize it's hard to juggle this all by myself. And having a life partner makes that juggling a lot easier. If you and your life partner know how to juggle together. And I think that's the the stuff that's not intuitively there for most couples. I know it wasn't there for us. We had to find out how do we juggle together and who's good at juggling what and who's better juggling something else. And that may need some readjustment throughout the relationship and finding that balance of who does what and to which extent and who's good at something and who's better at something else. I think that is the relationship secret sauce.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
So. People might ask, and I want to invite you to ask in the comments questions about this show now and things that we're going to address in the future, because this is the first of many couples editions that Christian are going to do. We're going to try to do it once a month.

Christian Hoeferle:
So I need to dress up like this more often.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Yeah, you do with with actual pants and shoes.

Christian Hoeferle:
Pants, shoes.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
So you're saying for I know I know the answer to this, but for the people that are watching that we didn't get married and we already had. We weren't already in sync and we didn't already have everything figured out. Is that what you're saying? Yes.

Christian Hoeferle:
That's what I'm.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Saying. How so?

Christian Hoeferle:
Maybe you remember this, but there was a time when we were started living together, and this was before we actually had put a ring on our relationship. We both come from an environment where it is socially acceptable to share a home and build a nest together without having formalized the the actual wedding and marriage procedures. So we had a home together and we were about to get married and there was a time when, how do I say this without putting you on the spot right now? We were questioning whether and how to proceed, and I think there was one particular day when there was a breakdown between you and I, and you were.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Just.

Christian Hoeferle:
111 that I remember vividly. It included tears and it included different moods on both of our ends. And we were. Redefining how the juggling would happen, how we would excuse you, how we would align ourselves, because we were we were not teenagers when we met. We were fully grown, well, some might say fully grown adults. That's to be debated. But we were in our middle age twenties when we decided that this is the person that I want to spend the rest of my life with. And at that point, we've developed our own routines, our own belief systems, our own habits of of either successfully or somewhat successfully going through life. And those two worlds have to come together. We wanted those two worlds to come together. And that didn't happen intuitively. We had to make a conscious effort. And I would suspect that many couples in the world have a similar journey where paths want to merge, right? Imagine an on ramp on the freeway or where two two highways meet and traffic's have to merge onto common lanes. And sometimes that happens quite elegantly. Sometimes there is a traffic jam because there's different expectations of how to do this. And we've met those roadblocks. If we stick with the highway metaphor, we met those roadblocks, we met those traffic jams and those inelegant attempts at merging lanes.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
And that takes work, that takes agreements and that takes an open line of communication. I actually remember one time that we went, the kids were little and we already lived in the States and we went to go canoeing. Do you remember that on the Nantahala River?

Christian Hoeferle:
Oh yeah. A nightmare or de mare? It was. It was trying to. They are compatible, I guess, in sync. And that didn't go very well.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
That didn't go very well. And we decided we're not going to do that again. And I remember many, many, many years later we went to Martha's Vineyard and we were again in the kayak. And I decided, I'm not going to row with Christian. So, you know, you got to know what you want and you got to know what you don't want. And even within a relationship, it's okay to sometimes say, look, we're not in sync and we're either going to find a way to get to merge or to become in sync and to paddle together, or we paddle individually, and that's fine as well. When both sides agree.

Christian Hoeferle:
I would even go a step further and say, Do you always have to be in sync? Do you always have to be aligned? Because in a relationship that lasts as long as ours has and less as long as we wish for our relationship to continue, there will be aspects of life where I, you or I, or we both agree that it's best to do this separately. Case in point, this program, this show I've been a guest on your show before. I don't manage this program. If you've if you haven't produced a show like this, you probably don't know how much logistics and preparation and technology goes into this. There's a lot of prep work stuff that you don't see as you watch this. I am not involved in producing your show. I am. I show up in a clean shirt and a jacket and I need a haircut. But other than that, I show up right. There is nothing I have done to make this work. So this is a project that you do independently of me. I have similar projects that are around live streaming or podcasting as well in which you are not involved. And so there are in a at least in our definition of a healthy relationship, there are we will be traveling on separate lanes for a while and the destination is clear. We know we both want to arrive at the same destination. Sometimes the paths we take there will be different lanes. Sometimes it might actually be a different highway. It might be for one of us, it might be a detour because we need to make an additional stop that the other doesn't need. And yet we have the agreement. The that's what you said earlier, right. The structure and the common goals. We know where we want to arrive at, and that's when everything works well between the two of us. And I would argue in more than it works well, more than it doesn't. We arrive at the same location, maybe not always at the same time, but we arrive at the same location.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
What would you say is a pattern that you are aware of that we have that supports the health of our relationship?

Christian Hoeferle:
But those patterns.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Where there are.

Christian Hoeferle:
Many. Yeah, I was going to say there are many patterns there. They're evolving. And some of those patterns we threw out because we realized they don't work any longer.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Yeah. Or they. They don't work any longer. Why?

Christian Hoeferle:
Because they were inefficient. They. They left more questions unanswered than they were.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Yeah. And from where I'm standing or sitting in this case, it's also that we outgrew them or. Or our children outgrew them. Because now we have children. We're almost empty nesters. I thought for that. Know?

Christian Hoeferle:
Are you sure about being.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
I was trying to convince myself by buying you. So we're almost empty nesters. And we started building our businesses when. When our children were babies, when they were little. So, I mean, great timing hi fi for that.

Christian Hoeferle:
There's there's no there's no ideal time for children. Yes. Their success patterns that worked at some point in our lives and now they don't anymore. We outgrew them. Our children are rhythm, our businesses outgrew them. We abandon certain processes or certain patterns because they led us to this level. And then we wanted to reach a higher level. And we need a different agreements, different different way of collaborating, different ways of aligning ourselves. Plus, you got to keep in mind when we met, we were in our late twenties. Now we are, we won't say, but she said how long we were married, so you do the math. So now it's not only the biological aging, it's also the mental maturity maturing that is happening. So patterns that worked for me when I was in my late twenties. I could not get through the day today with those patterns, right? So as we grow older, as we mature, then we set different priorities in life. We have different things that are important to us and we start the day and end the day differently than we did in our twenties. Just suffice to say that we go to bed earlier.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
I've always gone to bed early. Sure.

Christian Hoeferle:
Sure.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
So I want to speak to. Of course, we have many patterns and we're going to go through them. Not on this show. All of them on this show. That's why we have many shows coming up. One of the supportive patterns that I don't think we were aware of for the beginning of our relationship was that you really value and appreciate knowledge. Well, I somehow knew that because when I met Christian, he was a journalist and he was like the interrogator. He when when he met some of my friends or family or anyone that we were in meeting, he would ask them all of these questions and like, why are you interrogating people? You're making them super and you're making me uncomfortable. And it took me years to understand.

Christian Hoeferle:
You speak in the past tense. You think I don't do that anymore?

Brigitta Hoeferle:
I speak in the past tense that it annoyed me.

Christian Hoeferle:
It does not annoy you anymore.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
I understand it now. I can relate to it now because I can relate to what you value, that you're a high logic information, knowledge based person and that you're also processing information internally. I do like when we drive to or when the kids were little and we would drive to Florida, we haven't done that in quite some time. Christian, He's the driver. And the kids would have their own little radio show in the back and I would probably be sleeping in the front seat. And then I would wake up and we would be 5 hours in 6 hours into the ride, and Christian would start talking to me about everything that he's thought about the last 6 hours. And he would ask me, What do you think about that? And I'm like, Whoa, wait a minute. I have not been on this conversation the last 6 hours, so you need to fill me in. And that's how he works.

Christian Hoeferle:
In my mind. You are. So, yes, I'm probably what some people might call a bit in my head, a little bit cerebral. And if you ever been around newer linguistic programing and NLP, then when I say that I am more audio digital and a little bit well in the personality archetypes I'm a high knowledge person, then that would explain a little bit for those of you who are simply still getting started with with that journey of self-discovery, there are different ways of experiencing our lives and some people do it more externally and other people do it more internally. I'm not saying that I'm an introvert. By no means I can be very demanding of a room. Some people would even argue. Some people that I'm very close to might argue that I like to dominate the conversation here and there, so I'm by no means an introvert. However, I am somebody who processes a lot of data who has a high level of curiosity, and I think I have a need for more information. And that's why you thought I interrogate people were I think of myself as being inherently interested in people and want to find out about them. So intent and impact don't always match up. So my intention was to find out. Brigida probably thought that the impact of my behavior was a little bit too nosy and inquisitive.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Would you say that your way of asking questions and being curious has shifted?

Christian Hoeferle:
Yes.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
How so?

Christian Hoeferle:
I've become better over time in obtaining the information that satisfies my need for knowing. In the past, I probably would have done this in a more confrontational way or in a less in a way, with very low emotional intelligence. I would come from my model of the world, and the way I would ask people questions probably only reflected my model of the world and did not take into account theirs. So that way my curious ness might have easily come across as inquisition. I think I've become better. I am still becoming better at asking questions in a open way, in a non-judgmental, nonviolent way, and in a way that lets people recognize I am interested in you and because I want to know more about you, rather than being a police detective interrogating them for a crime they didn't commit.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
How is that important? When you build relationship and relationships are built not just romantically, but also with friends, and especially with your staff, your team, your the individuals in your team, your clients, your customers, your patients, whichever field you're in. So understanding or maybe we use the word relating to the other is so much more important than understanding who you are. Which one comes first?

Christian Hoeferle:
Well, I'm not sure if I'm giving the answer You expecting. I think what comes first is know thyself. I can only I can only create for me, at least in my model, where I can only relate to somebody else if I know what my baseline is, if I know who am I, what are my values, what drives me in life? And as I then go about finding out what you value and what's relevant in your life, I can find out and compare against my value set. So that's what brought us together, right? We had a conversation about our lives, our stories, what would lead us to our meeting, and we found out that there is a lot that we share in our history, that we have a lot in common common interests. But there are also some fields that were have very different experiences and that. I would argue I'm being very in my head right now that let us to be compatible and let us say, okay, we like each other based on that. But I can only I could only find love for you knowing what I who I am. And I guess you could only find love for me knowing what you what's important to you and how I might be able to complement that.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Wow. There are so many things I want to unpack here. The first one is the difference between Christian and I. We already touched a little bit that he's very cerebral. Knowledge based, information based, logical. One might even say he lives in his maybe left brain left hemisphere of his brain. I am the opposite. I am outgoing, bubbly, very visual. I'll probably build the plane on the way down where Christian would first engineer the plane. So that's how we're different. And when we met, we were. The difference was also actually really interesting and funny because Christian was a journalist for a publishing house in Munich. I work for a publishing house also in Munich, a different publishing house, but we were on opposite sides.

Christian Hoeferle:
I was in editorial, I was the journalist. She was not. She was the the sales and marketing side which the writing and content producing part of the team is not always the best friends of the sales and marketing side of the team because sales and marketing said, Hey, I got customers who want to advertise with us, so we need to please the customers. No, no, no. We need to please the readers. So the customers, that's a different story, right?

Brigitta Hoeferle:
So I would come into the into the editorial office. Of course, Christian wasn't there because he worked for different publishing house. But I would I would say, hey, we have L'Oreal as a as a client. Can can we do a story around their newest product? And editorial will go at no, why won't we do that? And I'm like, well, because they pay a whole lot of money to put full page ads.

Christian Hoeferle:
Pay my bills. So yeah, so we so that was a different even though we had commonality in the industry that we worked in, we were in different departments, not necessarily the departments that would have a lot of professional overlap.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Right. And I had someone on the show, Mark Johnson, a few weeks ago, and I love what he said that especially nowadays that, you know, seeing and appreciating the other whoever the other is, the other, the, the person that is not like me in terms of values, in terms of how they process information, in terms of religion or or political views or what others is there.

Christian Hoeferle:
Well, we could add value system, we could add cultural background, we could add socioeconomics, we could add marital status, parent yes or no.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
And then.

Christian Hoeferle:
Within the yes or.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
No, and then within parenting, you know, are you more of a very oh, you know, it's kind of loosey goosey kind of parenting, or are you a hovering kind of parent? So there's so many others from ourselves. And I love what Mark said is really exploring the commonalities that we have rather than the differences. And I think that is one thing that you teach in your training.

Christian Hoeferle:
We work with. When I say we, I mean myself and my side of our relationship stuff that Brigitta doesn't always get involved with. We we work with multinationals and people who cross cultures for work and life and we. Encourage our clients that despite the differences that they encounter, to look for what they might have in common with those they consider to be other.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Yeah. So there's a there's a success pattern there in finding the commonality and appreciating or at least tolerating how the other person is different and going on the journey and being curious of how you can relate and what kind of common ground you can find. There was something else that you said earlier. When we are building relationships and when we are continuing to have a a respectful relationship, that we can actually go further, that we can explore things on a deeper level because, a, we have that common ground. We have respect for each other. We might have even a great track record in one area where it worked really, really well that we can then use in another area that it might have not worked so well. So maybe we should try the. Kayak. Let's go for a kayak outing again.

Christian Hoeferle:
Well, it didn't always go bad. So the example that Brigitta is referring to is two adults and two children being in a kayak canoe type of floating on the water device that you only propel with paddles and oars. And in order to do this efficiently, it would behoove the people who do this activity to do this synchronized in a in a way that propels each other forward. And I think we both are we tend to be strong personalities or we some might say we are a little bit stubborn sometimes. Me. Me. Yes, I am. You speak for yourself. So that expresses itself in who wants to take lead, who gets to call the shots. And often in our relationship, we have come to an agreement who gets to lead which activity? And in that kayaking experience, there was no agreement, there was no plan. We went about it without thinking how we're going to do this. And it turned out that we stood in each other's way or that we made it cumbersome for one another because we failed to get in sync, literally in synchronizing our motions in order to move forward and forward.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
And we didn't move forward a lot.

Christian Hoeferle:
And there was was a high degree of frustration. And add to that the fact that children are trying to follow their parents lead and the parents were giving them mixed signals. So that didn't work either. So we learned that day that we. Failed in. We got the feedback that our attempt at being aligned was unsuccessful. So we've been in other boats together, literally boats where we had to propel ourselves and it did work. So it's not that we didn't learn from.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
No, that's.

Christian Hoeferle:
True.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
It was good learning. It was it was a frustrating learning experience for me. And we did learn a lot.

Christian Hoeferle:
You seem to remember that. Oh, I had to go rummage through my memory. What is she doing? Oh, that.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Really? That's funny. So you said. You said planning. And I want to. I want to keep that for our next conversation. Where when relationship or when individuals in a relationship plan together that there's we talked a lot about agreements today that there are agreements made that there is a clear structure in place on how to move forward and that everyone in the team and we're a team of two, but we also have our own teams individually know in which direction to go. So I want to I want to keep that for our next conversation. And I want to invite you to share in the comments. What else, what questions do you have? What what adversities do you have in your relationship? And perhaps we can give you some guidance, perhaps we can even relate to them and and find another fun story. So in the comments, share with us what you want to ask us. Talking points, anything that you want to learn or just the comment that you want to leave. So thank you for tuning in today.

Christian Hoeferle:
May I add something please, before you let them go? Yeah, I, I see this as an exercise that I wasn't pulled into, but this is an idea that Brigitta had. So I was like, okay, let's do this. This sounds like a fun exercise. I am very careful in positioning myself as somebody who would be giving advice or guidance to other people in their relationship. I can only come from our perspective on what we have together for sure. And just not too long ago there was a holiday, quote unquote, holiday in the Western world called Valentine's Day, where people celebrate their loved ones in a particular way. And you had the fun idea of posting a collage of pictures of us in various.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Rather funny pictures.

Christian Hoeferle:
Staged scenarios. And there were quite a few comments online about the pictures. And there were some comments that went along the lines of my favorite power couple or other phrases similar to that. And while I respect that comment, I, I don't necessarily see ourselves as a quote unquote power couple. We are I don't know what quite frankly, I don't even know what that means. So we are a team of two and we make it work day to day. And there are times when it doesn't work well. And we're I'm not going to sugarcoat this. Neither will you, I guess. And there are times when it works really, really well. And none of us would want to have it any other way. So I I'm careful not to position this as, hey, here we come from the ivory tower of relationship success, and we descend upon you to let you know how to lead a good relationship. No, this this is something that we see as a dialog and interchange and exchange of ideas and experiences. So, yes, the common section there is for you to share your perspective. We would like to learn from you, from your successes or your feedbacks or mistakes when stuff didn't work and what did you learn from it and how did you come up with a better success pattern for your relationship?

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Yeah, love that. Thank you for clarifying that. So until next time, make sure that you tune in again next week for the success pattern. Show same time, same place at 430 right here at the Success Pattern Show. Until then, thanks, Christian, for being here.

Christian Hoeferle:
Appreciate it. Thank you. I mean, do I have a choice?

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Yeah, you did have a choice.

Christian Hoeferle:
Okay, good.

Brigitta Hoeferle:
Thank you for tuning in. And you will notice opportunities to apply success patterns daily while eagerly anticipating next week's content rich success patterns.