A LITTLE STORY ABOUT BAD TIMES, THE RIGHT PEOPLE AND SELF-CONFIDENCE
Hi my name is Jonas, I'm currently living in Copenhagen and study marketing management. I love a good mix of music, social networking and sports. All this helps me a lot to get through the daily struggles we have to overcome every day.
But how did I end up being in this position?
I started overthinking my whole life when I was 15 and got bullied at my handball team. I had no self-confidence and no motivation to do anything anymore. All I did the whole day was going to school and sleeping. I isolated myself from all the social life I took part in and my life became grey and not fun anymore. My mum realised my change and she sat down with me to reflect on my life to get me back on track. This helped me so much that I restarted and changed the Handball Team. I got new social contacts, new motivation to live and the most important part - people started accepting me how I was. This is basically how everything started to become better.
After a couple of months in new surroundings, I got my self-confidence back and I started to go to dance school. In those six months, I got to meet Lea. She invited me to her birthday party, where I got to know Paula. After the birthday I got directly invited by Paula for a cozy night at Greta's place. This was another key moment in my life. We were drinking at her place and got along so well that we sat at her place until 5 in the morning while listening to the sound of birds.
After that, I went out with Paula and Greta quite a lot.
Parallel to that, I started going to a festival called Dockville that got me to know Frieda, which was a part of a big group with a lot of very nice people, which also included my best female friend Kyra. All the people had the same positive and inspiring vibe. We started hanging out, so I got 3 new friends groups.
It is important to try new things to get more experience in life and to get to know the right people. This was a big guideline for me, which helped me a lot in my year abroad in New Zealand.
My guiding thought was always to try out everything I can, which got me to a lot of very beautiful people and places. I also grew a lot of self-confidence in that time, because I couldn't speak English that well before I went to New Zealand and I did not know how to organise myself in the way I wanted. I came straight from home to the hostels of New Zealand… That was one of the biggest steps in my life so far.
After my time in New Zealand, I moved out of my flat and I began to hang out with Greta and Paula a again. We started a weekly thing called Sneak Preview (Movie shown in Cinema, but title and genre are unknown before you buy the tickets), which was another important day in my life. I met Fritz and Samuel. Two guys, which influenced me a lot and helped me through all the tough situations in the following years. In August of that year, the Dockville Festival happened again and I connected both groups, Frieda's and Greta/ Paula's groups. We all began to become a big happy family from the first second on. This let me have the time of my life because everyone in this family started to hang out at my flat and we all got to know each other better and better.
But social life is not everything in life. I started doing an internship in Event Management and I had a lot of stress there. After I tried out three different companies, I started to overthink my life. Samuel and I had a really intense talk, which gave me the self-confidence to distance myself from the whole apprenticeship thing and to start working in a retail store to find myself again and reflect on the wants and needs I have.
The conclusion of all was: Germany is not enough for me anymore! I need to go somewhere else.
A turning point for me in my life. I decided to go to Denmark and to start studying there. The experience was more worth than my grades and the whole system was fitting better to me than the German one.
One year after I decided to quit the apprenticeship, I finally moved to Denmark and it was the best decision I could have ever made. Even though I went to Denmark, I am still a part of the family, which fell apart, because all the people went to study, travel and so on, but it is an outstanding connection. I'm still in contact with most of them and if not, time is not changing our friendship. We are sometimes even happier to see each other after a long time.
I also started to learn how to DJ in the year off, so I got more and more involved in the Techno scene of Hamburg and now Copenhagen. This always gives me a good balance between work, people around me and now additionally Uni.
When I think back, I would say that without the situation I had in the handball team, I would not be at this point of life, where I am right now. This whole chain of events did happen for a reason and it turned out to be very good. There are always bad times, but it is on you to do something and change it. Not the others. Always try and reflect!
Words by Jonas Faust