Publications

Routines help bring stability into our lives. That morning cup of coffee before we start the day,
the familiar ride to work, meeting a friend for jogging every other day, or the obligatory Sunday
dinner with the family. All this lends stability and structure to a week that would otherwise run
quite haphazardly.

But what happens when these routines suddenly fall apart? Do we lose our footing and drift into a sea of disorientation? There are many triggers for such a collapse: moves, career changes, but a pandemic is certainly a serious one, even more so because it hits everyone at the same time. Thus, an exciting question for the current situation would be: how can I develop stability in the movement?

As the German writer Ludwig Börne once wrote: “In a tottering ship, he who stands still and does not move falls over.” Does that mean we’d better keep moving and boldly forge ahead? But where to? Straight ahead, left or right? No one will be able to answer that question for us.
Only we can make the decision, and choose where we want to go.

This time has forced us to let go of habitual patterns of behavior and identify what we really want. This means trusting ourselves again. Especially in uncertain times, this seems to be a tall order. If you observe children, however, you will notice that they are constantly in such a state of flux. Everything is new and children embrace the new much more courageously than we adults do. Does experience stand in our way, or have we forgotten to follow our own intuition? I believe it is the latter.

Courage to let go and discover something new requires a shift in thinking: seeing possibilities instead of problems. Indeed, like a children taking their first steps or turns on skis, we too will fall down—but that’s not the point. What counts are the times we get up again.

Goodbye luxury, goodbye consumption
With consumption it is similar, as with the monthly salary: up to a certain level, we are still happy about a promotion, until the marginal utility of any further increase becomes zero. After this point we do not care anymore because the next promotion would have to be immense to fundamentally change our lifestyle. In the Western world, the last 40 years have been good years. What do I mean by that? We have lacked nothing, everything has been available and if then we have rather asked ourselves the questions about the more, but never about the whether it's necessary. However, constant availability simply leads to turning away, because it becomes boring. Something similar happens with consumption. As it has become vulgar, as a response, we don't want to test the next Michelin Star restaurant, or buy another car, nor do we need a new house in Spain - the children don't fly anymore anyway, to keep their carbon footprint as low as possible. The end of consumption leads to a redefinition of luxury. A minimalist lifestyle seems to be the natural consequence of prosperity.

A simple lifestyle
Luxury has always had a demarcation benefit, represented by the limited availability or high price. Now, platform models such as booking.com or UBER, as well as providers such as easyJet, are trivialising a commodity long reserved for those with the 'good life'. Today everyone has access to a top deal in a 5* hotel, and your chauffeur (UBER) picks you up from the airport, while your flight costs only 39.00 CHF. When the status of luxury is suddenly democratized, this triggers a turning point. Add to that the new ways of communication, which are more visual than verbal. The perfect Instagram image replaces the postcard from the vacation and WhatsApp allows us to be constantly connected with our friends despite thousands of kilometers of distance. In the end, we are longing for a break: break from the availability, to find that imperfect moment that we remember because it doesn't look like it was photographed from an ad of a lifestyle magazine.

A distinct character
Allowing for the imperfect takes courage. We have been trained for decades on what a good life should look like and now we are supposed to just forget about it? Difficult, and yet it opens up a new path. I date to say that the new luxury is strongly linked to the personalty and the stronger we build our character, the stronger our "new luxury perception" will be. The path to the good life heralds the era of artists. Individual and with a clear attitude.

"It is important that we do not decide things from external influences, but rely more on ourselves again, and thus can also make more agile decisions that are not dependent, but strongly driven from ourselves." - Tanja Schug, in conversation on VonMorgen Podcast - Episode 38

Tanja Schug explains why it is important to learn to verbalize intuition, why intuition cannot simply be switched on and off like logic, but needs impulses. Rationality paired with gut feeling leads to more clarity, security and independence in decision-making processes.

The ChangeRider special edition during the Gen*ZEO Award show in Berlin, Philipp Depiereux talks with Tanja Schug about intuition as currency.

How the potential of our intuition can be re-activated Tanja Schug speaks about in this teaser of her speech about "Cultivating Intuition".