What Is A Happy Self

Map Your Energy, Hunt in Sprints (or Focusing Energy #2)

Moritz Eikelmann — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 08:03:40 +0000

After studying medicine for 6 years, I began using educational videos on Youtube to a much bigger extend. I somehow ended up with content for learning and memory.

I realized this is one of the most essential skills a human being can, well …, learn.

I watched some videos regarding active recall, problem-oriented learning etc. I realized again: I could have cut my time spent for learning during university in half, for sure.

Today, we will use a metaphor:

The Lion's Schedule: hunt in focused sprints, then rest, then hunt again.

Let’s start.

Today at a Glance

Learn like a Predator or a Lion
The NeuroScience behind Sprint, Rest, Repeat
How I coach the 90-minute rule

Learn like a Predator or a Lion

Most people I studied with at university had tons of time for studying. And we used it a lot. We spent whole days at the library. Reading, writing, and learning.

The idea behind it was simple: Volume, volume, volume. The more time you spent at the library, the more you will get done, which should result in better grades.

Usually, after 4-5 hours, you saw people sleeping on their books, yawning, going to the bathroom or bistro very frequently.

It became obvious: This doesn’t really work. Though tons of people I know just pulled through for the whole 6 years with this learning strategy.

And still today, a lot of my clients do the same thing: volume, volume, volume.

But, when you have a demanding job or business, kids and a family and/or maybe a life beside these two things, time becomes a very valuable resource.

In one recent coaching engagement, we introduced "Lion Blocks": 45-75 minutes of single-task work on one cognitively hard problem, followed by a 10-15 minute real break.

Within two weeks, the same person who was "too busy" to think had shipped an offer for a new position and many pressing emails for new clients, he had postponed for months—not because he worked more hours, but because he worked in cycles that match how his brain actually learns.

Here is how it works:

The NeuroScience Behind Sprint, Rest, Repeat

The science is surprisingly simple.

The sprint-rest-repeat idea is consistent with meta-analytic evidence on micro-breaks, spacing, retrieval practice, and sleep-dependent memory consolidation.

Here is The Lion's Schedule in neuroscientific terms:

1. Focus in sprints

Performance declines with time of task: Reaction times slow, errors and mind‑wandering increase, and underlying networks in right frontal and parietal cortex fatigue. With task-switching and interruptions your performance grows significantly poorer.

2. Rest with micro-breaks

A 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis (22 samples, N=2335) found that micro-breaks significantly increased vigor (d=0.36) and reduced fatigue (d=0.35). Performance gains, at first, were small, but with longer practice in cycles (sprint - rest) this technique produced bigger results.

In short: micro pauses restore energy and mood reliably; for hard cognitive work you often need slightly longer or higher-quality breaks, not zero breaks.

3. Consolidation and make it stick

A 2021 meta‑analysis (45 reports) found that total sleep deprivation after learning impaired memory with a small–moderate effect (Hedges g ≈ 0.28), and sleep deprivation before learning had an even larger impact (g ≈ 0.62).

A comprehensive review and meta‑analytic work show that sleep supports hippocampus‑dependent consolidation, with slow oscillations, spindles, and hippocampal ripples coordinating reactivation of newly encoded memories.

A 2025 review shows that sleep reliably improves retention of previously learned material and often improves next‑day encoding.

Translation:

Sleep after learning stabilizes what you just did; sleep before learning resets encoding capacity.
Your brain uses off‑periods (sleep, naps, deep rest) to stabilize what you just practiced.
It resets synapses for new learning the next day.
Without those off‑periods, effort during the sprint doesn’t translate into durable change.

Here is how this can look in practice:

How I Coach the Lion’s Schedule

#1 Choose one hunt per sprint

Before the day starts (or the evening before), ask:

“If I could only move one thing forward in the next 60–90 minutes, what would it be?”

Make it cognitively demanding (strategy, design, writing, complex decision).
Make it consequential (moves revenue, people, risk, or personal mastery).
Don’t do “processing” (email, admin).

#2 – Run a 45–90 minute sprint (focus block)

For most leaders I recommend starting with 45–60 minutes, then moving up to 75–90 if it works.

Rules:

One task only (the “hunt”).
All notifications off.
Only tools directly needed for the task are open.

#3 – Insert a deliberate rest (10–20 minutes)

When the timer ends:

Stop, even if you’re mid‑sentence.
Jot down one line: “Next step: …” so re‑entry is cheap.
Take 10–20 minutes of genuine rest:
- Short walk, stretching, breathing, making coffee, looking outside.
- No email, no news, no social media.

#4 – Repeat and Consolidate

I explicitly don’t start with five sprints per day.

The first goal is one consistent Lion Block per day, three days per week.

For Resting:

Aim for regular 7–9 hours night sleep: meta‑analyses show that both pre‑learning and post‑learning sleep deprivation impair memory with small–medium and medium‑large effects.

After especially intense learning days, a 20–30 min nap or NSDR protocol can help downshift arousal and may enhance consolidation and later encoding.

That's it for this Saturday Sunday.

The next newsletter edition will come out on Saturday, the 20th of June 2026.

We will continue with a simple yet super powerful tool linked to the Eisenhower Matrix.

“Urgent vs. Important: The One Question That Changes Your Week"

Own it!

Yours,

Moritz

PS:

Can you rarely make time for physical activity or regeneration? Do youI feel emotionally unstable and have difficulties to stay calm under pressure? Is managing people emotionally and energetically draining for you?

If that sounds familiar, Mastering Emotions is for you. I began coaching in 2023. Since then, l've coached over 30 executives, entrepreneurs, and high potentials on building Emotional Intelligence and into becoming future leaders.

If you want to learn more about my coaching book an orientation call here:

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The 90-Minute Rule: Your Brain's Energy Bill Just Got Cheaper (or Focusing Energy #1)

Moritz Eikelmann — Sun, 17 May 2026 11:36:51 +0000

Last weeks two new clients ended up signing my coaching program. I was thrilled and we all were excited, of course. And I realized quickly that both (both of them entreprenuers) were in need of building energy.

Glad I just finished 6 newsletter editions about building energy, I saw that writing those editions help me develop my framework and the way I coach big time.

So what we started with both clients is … building energy. All the good stuff, step by step: Reduce alcohol, start fasting, bringing in the movement, tools for managing stress.

But what was clear to me in the first minutes of talking to the clients: They are both self employed and they don’t do deep work. A daily 90-minute focus ritual.

It is the time of your workday in which you move the needle on the map.

It became so important to me during the last years.

It hurts (bodily) when I can’t make time for it.

Yes, it is that important.

Let’s start.

Today at a Glance

You don’t have a time problem.
The NeuroScience behind the 90-minute rule
How I coach the 90-minute rule

You don’t have a time problem

Most people I work with don’t have a time problem. They feel like there isn’t enough time for all the stuff going on in their businesses.

Their calendars are full, their brains are sliced into 5‑minute fragments. At the end of the day they’ve answered 100 emails, sat in 7 meetings—and still haven’t touched the one thing that actually moves the business.

Or they just start in the morning, after their morning coffee, to open up the laptop and start doing … things: Checking emails, answering emails, checking social media, checking numbers, etc.

They just have an focusing problem. And they waste energy. It feels like being busy, but:

Did you work on the one thing today, that has the highest leverage, urgency and makes the most sense RIGHT NOW?

The NeuroScience Behind the 90-minute-rule

The 90‑minute rule is a simple antidote for this. Do one protected 90-minute-deep-work-session and get more output than a whole day of multitasking.

Neuroscience gives us 3 reasons:

1. Your brain works in ~90‑minute focus–fatigue cycles (ultradian rhythms).

Sleep research first showed these ~90‑minute patterns at night.
Later work suggests similar rest–activity waves in daytime attention and learning capacity.
Aim for 60–90 minute focus blocks as the outer limit.
After that, your brain is working harder for less.
Note: “90‑minute rule” is not a precise internal metronome, but a good practical approximation. It differs in people.

Sustained attention naturally decays with time‑on‑task (vigilance decrement).

Meta‑analytic work on attention shows a robust pattern:
Performance declines with time‑on‑task.
Slower reaction times, more errors, and more mind‑wandering.
So, when you start re‑reading the same line, missing details, or “snapping back” from a mind‑wandering, you should … STOP.

Task‑switching and multitasking are a “Switch-Tax”.
- Research shows: Every time you switch a task, you pay switch tax.
- Changing costs time and energy.
- Experiments show that reaction times and error rates rise when you alternate between tasks.
- This might costs you 40% of reductions in productivity.
- Not overall! Every time you switch!
- And when you’re under fatigue and start switching:
- Your performance gets even worse.

So, my 8-12 hours, all day learning session at the library while studying medicine wasn’t that great?

Yes, I guess.

I estimate I could have save a years in time in med school, if I had known how to learn and how to deep work.

How I Coach the 90-minute-rule

Coaching this is pretty straight forward. Though, there are some pitfalls you have to solve first with your clients.

So this is what I will do with my 2 new clients - once they can build energy by theirselves:

Identify the highest leverage, most urgent and important task, that really moves the needle.
Do this every morning with a pen an paper before opening up your laptop.
Then, and only then, protect one 90-minute-block during your day.
Ideally in your best focus time. Same enviroment. No distractions. You are not available to anyone.
Set a 90 minute timer and go.

In my experience the most common pitfalls are:

Asking yourself this question every morning before beginning is the hardest. It takes time to become a new habit.
Everything else seems either interesting or more urgent.
Keeping up the workflow during the 90 minutes is -surprisingly - not a big problem for most people - once they have started.

Of course, I have to give credit to Cal Newport and his wonderful book Deep Work. Highly recommend it.

That's it for this Saturday Sunday (and one week to late, I did not have time for deep work last week).

The next newsletter edition will come out on Saturday, the 23rd of May 2026.

We will continue with energy mapping and peak performance windows/rhythms.

“Map Your Energy, Hunt in Sprints"

Own it!

Yours,

Moritz

PS:

If you want to learn more about my coaching book an orientation call here:

Mastering Emotions

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"Your brain budget lives in your muscles" (or Building Energy #5)

Moritz Eikelmann — Mon, 04 May 2026 09:34:36 +0000

To all parents who plan their ideal weeks at the moment just to see it getting crushed and hammered by virus, gems and what else brewing over there in kindergarten and schools:

I feel you. Really. Deeply.

I just did not have the energy to write this edition on time. Sorry. Again …

This is the last edition of our first coaching module:

In the first quarter (14th February - 25th April 04th of May with 6 editions) we will cover covered the basic levers for building energy and presented you the best operating protocols for the human body (I stole this from Andrew Huberman).

We will conclude today with building energy via workouts. And with that I mean the gym, weights, grunting hard while lifting, looking in the mirror - all the good stuff.

All the carneval happening in gyms worldwide. Love it or hate it, I guess.

Let’s start.

Today at a Glance

Why go to the gym?
The NeuroScience behind Resistance Training
Working out every day vs Micro-Dosing

Why go to the gym?

Will keep this short and sweet. Like a cheat sheet on Linked-In.

The 5 Hard‑Science Payoffs:

You can view muscle mass as your primary metabolic sink. A metabolic buffer for glucose.
More muscle mass means: More buffer. Smoother daily glucose/energy curves.
Resistance training is an insulin‑sensitizing signal for the whole body. It improves blood parameters like: HbA1c, triglycerides, and blood pressure at the meta‑analytic level.
Strong muscle means less inflammation, and better cognitive reserve, as shown in sarcopenia‑cognition meta‑analyses.
Putting muscle on is not vanity; it is installing long‑term infrastructure for energy efficiency, resilience, and thriving in high‑demand lives.

But, wait a minute. You said: "Your brain budget lives in your muscles".

Correct. I will try to break this down the easiest way:

There are trade-offs (always in life) between the brain and muscle.
Your skeletal muscle competes hard with the brain for glucose and oxygen.
So muscle mass is an energetically expensive tissue and it’s “brain first” -when when physical and mental exertion conflict, the brain prioritizes cognition over maximal muscle output.
In turn, in a controlled, well‑trained (muscle-)system, muscle mass buffers glucose spikes, lowers baseline insulin, reduces inflammation (etc.)
By that you’ll gain: better cognitive performance via less “noise” in the brain–body-budget, fewer microstress-events, less sympathetic activation, and more headspace for thinking, not just surviving.

The NeuroScience Behind Resistance Training

Resistance training (progressive resistance training, PRT) does three things that clearly show up in meta‑analyses and mechanistic work:

1. Muscle mass & metabolic sink function

A systematic review and meta‑analysis of 111 clinical trials (1,927 participants, healthy adult males) found that resistance training increases whole‑body muscle mass by ~1.5 kg (95% CI 1.3–1.76) across 8–24 week interventions, regardless of age, training status, or training duration.
Skeletal muscle is:
20% of basal metabolic rate (energy used at “rest”).
70–80% of post‑meal glucose disposal via insulin‑dependent and insulin‑independent pathways.
More muscle = larger, more efficient metabolic sink for glucose, which reduces glycemic spikes and the need for high insulin and allostatic correction.

2. Insulin sensitivity, HbA1c, and metabolic health

Numerous meta‑analyses show that resistance training:
- Improves insulin sensitivity and fasting insulin in people with type 2 diabetes and prediabetes, independent of weight loss.
- Reduces HbA1c by ~0.4–0.7% across multiple RCTs, with similar or larger gains in more intensive protocols.
- Improves triglycerides, HDL‑C, and blood pressure, especially when combined with aerobic training or TRE.

3. Sarcopenia, longevity, and functional reserve

Narrative and meta‑analytic reviews clearly link sarcopenia (age‑related loss of muscle mass and strength) with:
- Higher risk of disability, frailty, falls, and mortality.
- Increased likelihood of cognitive impairment and dementia (OR ~2.2 for sarcopenia vs non‑sarcopenic groups).
- Low muscle quality (strength per unit muscle mass) is associated with worse psychomotor and visual‑learning domains, even after adjusting for age, BMI, and inflammation.

I think we get it now.

When muscle mass and strength erode, basal metabolic rate falls, glucose handling worsens, and everyday tasks burn more relative energy, pushing the system into chronic stress and overdraft.

Working out every day vs Micro-Dosing

In my view, there are multiple options for how to start working out.

What I found working best for clients (and myself) are the following two strategies:

1. Schedule a workout every morning before work.

The idea behind this is that, first, you do not have to workout for 1,5 hours in the gym. You can do 20 minutes every morning, e.g. every workday. This will compound.

Second, you use habit building for your workout schedule. Set this every morning and you will do a 5/5 in a brilliant week. Maybe a 3/5 in a normal week. And a 1-2/5 in a less ideal week. This happens. The important thing: Keep going.

I do this since 1,5 years and usually end at a 3/5 workouts per week.

Last weeks were less than that, which reminds me, to pack my sport bag for tomorrow morning 8am.

2. Micro‑doses every 90–120 minutes

Set a timer. Do this every 60–120 minutes during the day:

20 squats
5 push‑ups
Bridge Hold for 30 seconds (core)

Repeat up to 6 rounds per day = 120 squats + 30 push‑ups & core workout for total 3 minutes.

This maintains muscle tone, metabolic sink size, and mitochondrial engagement, without needing a “workout headspace.”

That's it for this Saturday Monday. Sorry for the delay again.

Next module is Focusing Energy.

Now that you know how to build energy. You can actually do it (building energy, I mean). It is an everyday thing, not a 1 time magic-miracle-tool. Sorry. We can’t mess with the whole energy thing on our planet.

Once there is more energy available, the next bottleneck is attention (or focus):

Many of us leak their best energy into:

constant interruptions,
reactive communication
and constant switching.

Focusing Energy is about creating fewer targets for your attention, and defending them.

Seriously, this is WAR.

You focus energy by reducing uncertainty and mental noise with clear priorities, structure, and attention hygiene.

In the second quarter (9th May - 18th July with 6 editions) we will cover the basic frameworks and tools for building bullet proof focus, save energy and raising your performance as well as productivity.

The next newsletter edition will come out on Saturday, the 09th of May 2026.

We will continue with:

"The 90-Minute Rule: Your Brain's Energy Bill Just Got Cheaper"

Own it!

Yours,

Moritz

PS:

If you want to learn more about my coaching please:

JUST RESPOND HERE. REALLY. DO IT. TELL ME WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND.

Or … book an orientation call here:

Or here :-) (I mean the button):

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"I'm always tired after lunch" is a energy-budget-fallacy (or Building Energy #4)

Moritz Eikelmann — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:28:57 +0000

Do you remember the Simpsons episode in which Moe got a brand new deep fryer? He brags to Homer that “you can flash-fry a buffalo in forty seconds.”

Homer’s response:

“Forty seconds? But I want it now”!

Low time preference is everywhere around us today. And all of us face this exact challenge every day. You food choices are one of the most critical part for being happy.

So, let’s dive into todays topic.

Today at a Glance

Your Plate is a Predictive Signal
The NeuroScience Behind Food Signaling
Master the Basics: Food Signaling

Your Plate is a Predictive Signal

Nutrition is a form of how you communicate with your brain-body-system.

So, you can eat in a way that your body (gut, microbiom, mitochondria, etc.) and your brain have less work to do:

Predicting and calculating the brain-body-budget with regular, high-quality and fine tuned (properly timed) food is easy. Imagine:

The silent flow of stable blood glucose and moderate insulin activation.
Low immune background noise.
Nutrients supporting gut health, cell functions and neuroplasticity.

But, what about chaotic, high-load and glucose roller-coaster-style? Constant snacking?

Glucose blood level spiking through the roof. Insulin peak activation.
Aggressive immune overshoot. High noise. Low Energy affect.
You gut bacteria wiped out. Your affect and feel: Tired.

If this makes sense - great.

When food is thought as communication. Let’s dive into what signals we can send to our system. And when? And how often per day?

The NeuroScience Behind Food Signaling

So, imagine every meal like a signal to your body and brain. The quality, predictability, and timing of what you eat determine whether your body runs with metabolic clarity or chronic chaos. In short:

Signal quality: Meta‑analytic evidence shows that Mediterranean and whole-food, plant‑predominant diets produce the clearest anti-inflammatory signals (reductions in IL-6, IL-1ß, CRP) across 22 RCTs in a 2022 meta‑analysis.
By contrast, ultra-processed, erratic, high‑sugar diets (e.g. ultra-processed food; UPF) are linked to a 25% higher risk of metabolic syndrome. This is tied to chronic inflammation, insulin resistance, and poor metabolic regulation in a 2023 meta‑analysis.
Signal predictability: Your system thrives on regularity. High glycemic variability triggers sympathetic surges, elevating adrenaline, and endothelial stress, while reducing heart rate variability (HRV)—a marker of autonomic imbalance. Glucose roller‑coasters and constant snacking = repeated micro‑stress events.
Stable glucose and insulin = predictable input, fewer allostatic corrections.
Sometimes, the best signal is no signal: Time-restricted eating (TRE) has high‑quality evidence. TRE reduces: body weight, fat mass, fasting blood glucose, insulin, HbA1c, blood lipids, cardiovascular risk markers.

How can this information look in real life?

Master the Basics: Food Signaling

There is no way I can tell you what to eat. But, I like to break things down to the very basic ideas. In the end:

Nothing works like the basics.

So, here are mine for food:

1. Time your day: use a 9‑hour eating window

Keep eating within 9 hours (e.g., 9 a.m.–6 p.m.), start within 1 hour of waking, and finish ≥3 hours before bedtime to support metabolic flexibility and circadian alignment.

2. Front-load your day: eat most calories early

Make breakfast and lunch your larger meals, come dinner lighter, and keep meal times predictable so your brain knows when fuel is coming.

3. Eat in this order: veggies → protein/fats → carbs

Start each meal with fiber (vegetables), then protein and fats, then starches; this sequence can slash post‑meal glucose spikes by up to 75%.

4. Prioritize whole-food, Mediterranean patterns; minimize ultra-processed foods (UPF)

Base meals on vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, olive oil, fish, and limit UPFs; this pattern significantly lowers IL‑6, IL‑1β. Make 90%+ of food coming from Meta-analysis!

5. Protect the night window: fast 12-16 hours overnight

After dinner, stop eating for 12-16 hours (no snacks, alcohol, or late-night meals). This technique has massive impact!

In the language of your brain–body budget:

Diet isn’t just fuel—it’s brain-body-communication. Clear, predictable signals lower your allostatic tax and free up energy for focus, mood, and repair. Noisy, chaotic eating keeps your system on emergency alert.

That's it for this Saturday - Monday, sorry for the delay.

The next newsletter edition will come out on Saturday, the 25th of April 2026.

It will be the last edition regarding BUILDING ENERGY.

We will end this chapter with:

"I'm fine until age 50" is what untrained muscle sounds like."

Own it!

Yours,

Moritz

PS:

If you want to learn more about my coaching book an orientation call here:

Mastering Emotions

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"I'm always on edge" is an energy leak, not a personality trait. (or Building Energy #3)

Moritz Eikelmann — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 13:03:55 +0000

You know todays topic. I am sure. Or have heard it from a coworker. I caught myself saying this line quite a few times during the last years. I even did it recently. “I am on edge.”

The problem? You just cannot build energy when being on edge. I don’t know a way where that’s possible. If you do, please send me a reply 😀 !

This time, let me be clear: There are MAGIC TOOLS for this. They work. Scientifically proven.

Plus, I read an amazing newsletter this week, which inspired me to add in a little EXTRA for today.

Let’s start.

Today at a Glance

Feeling your Budget
The NeuroScience behind Idling Lower
2 Practical Protocols for Idling Lower
The Mindset of Idling Lower

Feeling your Budget

"Stress burns calories." Yes, but there is a big BUT: What fewer people realize is that chronic stress burns a shocking amount of your finite energy budget. Even when you're sitting still.

Your brain and body are constantly running predictive models: Am I safe? What's the threat? Do I need to brace?

Every time those models trigger a stress response: cortisol rises, muscles tighten, your heart starts pumping and you vigilance is heightened. In short:

You are paying an allostatic price.

This is called Allostasis & Stress-Induced Energy Expenditure (ASEE): the extra energy your system burns just to stay "ready."

In people with chronic stress, anxiety, or rumination, ASEE can become the new baseline. You're not just reacting to stress; you're idling at high revs, burning energy you could use for learning, mood stability, relationships, or genuine rest.

The NeuroScience Behind Idling Lower

The great thing is that you can easily lower you idle: e.g. with Mindfulness, Slow Breathing and Yoga.

And don’t think “self-care” now in the fluffy sense. Think: ENERGY ENGINEERING. You use these techniques to recalibrate. Less baseline stress means more usable energy for you.

There is a good evidence from meta analysis: Mindfulness, Breathing and Yoga. Those don’t just “calm yourself”, they:

lower or normalize cortisol, especially in chronically stressed groups,
stabilize cortisol rhythm (less daytime crash, better sleep),
shift activity in key brain regions like the anterior cingulate, prefrontal cortex, insula, and amygdala-areas that regulate threat and self-referential thought,
lower cardiovascular load, reduce heart rate variability (HRV)
and reduce inflammatory signalling.

Those above are the hallmarks of better autonomic flexibility and lower baseline stress.

In turn, you have more energy left for what matters: focus, connection, creativity, and genuine rest.

2 Practical Protocols for Idling Lower

Simple and practical protocols (evidence-aligned, but flexible) could look like these:

Slow Breathing
• 5-10 minutes of slow breathing.
• Target 4.5-6 breaths per minute (~ 5-7-second inhale, 5-7-second exhale).
• Breathe nasally, with a slightly longer exhale (e.g., 4 seconds in, 6-8 seconds out)
• Posture: upright, relaxed shoulders, no breath-holding or strain.

Yoga
• 5-15-minute micro-sessions 1x during the workday:
• 2-3 simple postures (e.g., child's pose, forward fold, gentle twists),
• Combined with slow, nasal breathing and brief body awareness.

Have fun! Own it!

The Mindset of Idling Lower

On Friday Steven Schlafman’s Newsletter Where the Road Bends came into my inbox. Highly recommend his writing. His story really made me think and rethink to change things on a more broader level.

Steven did not post anything for 5 months. He lives in Upstate New York with his family. And the last winter seemed to be relentless. School cancellations, power outages and snow, snow, snow.

Instead of being nerved, complaining, wishing for better weather, he decided to lean into it. Accept, rest, simplify, go inward, focus on home.

And for five months, he went dormant:

He sat for a meditation in the morning for an hour or more in the dark with a lit up candle by his side.
Paused his Substack, courses, podcasts, networking.
Did not work on nights or weekends.
No chasing of new ideas.

What Steven found in this dormancy is that his new state changed everything else. Like putting the kids to bed without resentment. Just going to bed early. No FOMO. Extensive cooking - stews simmering for hours on the stove. Being more present. Being more intimate. He points out:

"Life as relationship. At every level. In every direction. All the way up and
all the way down."

I personally will try to think as much about this as I can during the next time.

Hope you do too.

That's it for this Saturday - eehhh - Sunday.

The next newsletter edition will come out on Saturday, the 11th of April 2026.

We will continue with:

“Food as Mitochondrial Communication, Not Just Calories.”

Own it!

Yours,

Moritz

PS:

If you want to learn more about my coaching book an orientation call here:

Mastering Emotions

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"I’m too tired to exercise” is a budget fallacy (or Building Energy #2)

Moritz Eikelmann — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 11:00:00 +0000

You might remember two weeks ago. I told you about having young children, kindergarten, gastrointestinal viruses. In short: All plans canceled! This continued for 2 more weeks and I got sick, too, yippie.

My energy resources? Were more or less depleted. With the pathogens more or less out of the system after a couple of days, the question occurred:

What is the next step now to build energy?

We had (in retrospect) a clear tipping point at home when we were all feeling better, but still decided to stay at home resting, instead of moving. As this got worse over 1-2 days, we realized:

We were still feeling “too tired to move or exercise”, but we actually weren’t.

We (especially the kids) were craving movement to build energy.

Well, here comes the Why, How To and How.

Let’s start.

Today at a Glance

Movement as an Energy Investment, Not an Energy Cost (the “Why”)
The (Neuro)Science behind CRF (the “What for”)
The Top#5 to Build CRF efficiently (the “How”)

Movement as an Energy Investment, Not an Energy Cost (the “Why”)

Movement is an an energy investment.

Though, often, we frame movement and exercise as a cost, a drain.

"I'm too tired to exercise" therefore becomes a budget fallacy.

What’s the trick here?

Last edition I wrote about the Brain-Body-Budget. Your brain, as an energy manager, burns resources for prediction and regulation. For maintaining the basics. This again: Is very expensive for us! And you KNOW (this is deeply encoded) how a balanced system FEELS (pleasant/high energy) and how unbalance feels (unpleasant/low energy).

So, in the short term exercise, of course, is a “cost” that depletes your reserves.

But: As a medium-term strategy exercise expands your energy capacity, lowers your baseline energy draw, and creates surplus for life’s demands.

Ok. This “why-part” is, by definition, a circular argument. But for a mindset intervention, it’s the first step. We need more. We need the “what-for”.

The (Neuro)Science Behind CRF (the “What for”)

Let me take you from Budgeting Energy to an undeniable fact:

High cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) HALVES all-cause mortality risk compared to low fitness (HR ≈0.47 across 199 cohorts and 20.9 million people).

“Fit” people—even if overweight or obese—match the mortality profile of normal-weight fit individuals, while unfit people face 2–3× higher death rates regardless of BMI.

Let’s break it down:

CRF is one of the most powerful single predictors of longevity we have.

The landmark studies for CRF show several implications:

Improving CRF by even 1-2 METs (Metabolic Equivalent of Task) is not a marginal gain; it moves people into a substantially lower-risk stratum.
Sitting is 1 MET, brisk walking is 3–4 METs, jogging is 7–9 METs, and vigorous cycling can hit 10+ METs.
Being “fit” is more prognostically meaningful than BMI category per se. Better “fit, but overweight” then “unfit, but normal or overweight”.
Interesting: A day with 8,000 steps and no >60-90-minute uninterrupted sitting blocks is physiologically very different from 60 minutes of gym time wrapped in 10 hours of sitting.
Lastly: Movement is not just "heart and muscles"; it is a structural brain intervention, supporting the neuroenergetic framing (more efficient networks, better perfusion, higher BDNF).

The framework and tools for building energy via improving your CRF efficiently is simple:

The Top#5 to Build CRF efficiently (the “How”)

The good news?

CRF is trainable at any age, with modest doses yielding outsized returns.

The tools are fairly simple. I think about it as a ladder from “almost no effort” to “more athletic”.

Start: Count and gently increase steps
- Wear a tracker/phone, just observe your normal week.
- Then slowly add +1,000 steps/day every 1–2 weeks until you’re usually at 7,000–8,000+ steps.
Next: Brisk walking blocks
- Turn some of those steps into brisk walking:
- 10–15 minutes per day, where you can talk but not sing, 1–2×/day.
- Goal: reach ~150 minutes/week of this “slightly out of breath” pace.
Add: Simple home strength 2×/week
- 15–20 minutes, two non‑consecutive days: sit‑to‑stands, wall push‑ups, rows with a band, calf raises.
- 1–2 sets of 8–12 reps per exercise.
Upgrade: One short interval session/week
- 5 min easy walk warm-up (stroll, comfortable chatting pace)
- 1 min FAST walk ("hard but sustainable" - breathing heavy, can say short sentences)
- Pace where you couldn't comfortably sing, but can say "the weather is nice today" between breaths
- 2 min EASY walk (recovery, catch your breath)
- REPEAT this 5 times (5 min fast + 10 min easy)
- 5 min easy walk cool-down
Refine: Reduce long sitting with “movement snacks”
- Every 30–60 minutes, stand and move 2–5 minutes (walk the corridor, a few stairs, or 10× sit‑to‑stand).
- This lowers the extra risk from long, uninterrupted sitting on top of your workouts.

There you go.

Just work your way up the ladder.

Own it! Make it yours :-)

That's it for this Saturday.

The next newsletter edition will come out on Saturday, the 28th of March 2026.

We will continue with:

“Teaching Your Nervous System to Idle Lower.”

Yours,

Moritz

PS:

If you want to learn more about my coaching book an orientation call here:

Mastering Emotions

PPS:

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The Nightly "Budget Reset" (or Building Energy #1)

Moritz Eikelmann — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 15:20:09 +0000

You might know the feeling I am having right now very well. I was on a streak the last two weeks. With the kids healthy and in kindergarten, my wife and I nailed our work-weeks, gained new momentum on our businesses and even had some time for selfcare.

We were building energy. Then, yesterday, we started making plans again - focusing energy: What makes the most sense right now? Enthusiasm was rising.

Then last night our youngest child kept us quite busy (I'll spare you the details), but the washing machine and cleaning products were put to frequent use. Today feels like all the energy is gone. No excess. Living on caffeinated credit again, hoping not to get sick as well. All the plans? On hold.

If you feel me here - let me be clear: There is no magic tool for this. But, here is how I try to manage my budget in the next days.

Let’s start.

Today at a Glance

Feeling your Budget
The NeuroScience behind the Brain-Body-Budget
The Nightly "Budget Reset"

Feeling your Budget

So, let’s talk Brain-Body-Budget. A note: This is a metaphor: A helpful one for how the brain regulates the body’s resources (glucose and other metabolic needs), using familiar financial language.

Having this is mind, here is another metaphor: Your brain is an energy manager. It is a very energy-intensive prediction and regulation organ. Most of the energy we burn is for neural signaling. Your brain constantly works on this - even at rest or during sleep. The goal?

Maintaining the basics - a dynamic baseline of activity. Sounds easy, but: This is damn expensive for your system.

As I love to coach EQ-stuff, here comes the catch (which blew me away): The brain is able to control this baseline (allostasis) via resource management. And this process can be reflected (in our brain - well and body) as affective feeling states.

In simple words:

You KNOW (deeply encoded) how allostasis and balance feels or should feel.
And you sure KNOW how deviation from this state feels (like my youngest child last night for sure).

The NeuroScience Behind the Brain-Body-Budget

Maintaining the basics - a dynamic baseline of activity, again, sounds easy, but is not.

Imagine it more like a precondition for your brain’s predictive machinery:

to sustain resting-state networks (e.g., default mode network for self-referential thought, frontoparietal for control)
to model the world
maintain memory
and stay ready for surprises.

Now image what happens during disruptions (e.g., poor sleep, stress):

If the system is overused, it goes into hypermetabolism. Energy is burned at a high idle. There is s lack of funding for growth, maintenance and repair (building stuff).
Make it persistent over years? Faster aging, elevated risk of ilnesses - wear and tear.
In essence, your brain pays a premium to be perpetually “on call,” trading metabolic fuel for survival edge.

The Nightly "Budget Reset"

Sleep and circadian management are top‑tier for building energy. Why?

In body‑budget terms, poor or unstable sleep means:

Think about sleep as the core mediator between stress, metabolism, immune system, cognition and emotions.
As a rule of thumb: Poor sleep impairs practically everything (focus, memory, decision-making, emotional regulation, hormonal balance, immune competence and so on …)
So… Fewer hours where energy can be routed to growth, maintenance and repair (GMR).
and a progressively “leakier” budget.

So for building energy, here is my current sleep framework:

Frame sleep as “your nightly energy audit”, not just rest. Make it yours!
Bedtime Routine: Establish a calming pre-sleep routine to signal your body it's time to wind down (e.g., reading, meditation, blue light filter, cool your room).
Set a Fixed Wake Time: Wake up at the same time every day, even on weekends, to stabilize your internal clock (+ exposure to natural sunlight).
Protecting sleep depth: alcohol, caffeine, late heavy meals as “budget thieves.”
Time-Restricted Eating: Limit food intake to a specific window (e.g., eating only between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.) to support metabolic health and circadian rhythm.

You get the idea.

As you might have already guessed. I won’t be able to controll number 3 in the next days. But I can do number 1 (it’s mindset), 2 (if there is time), 4 (the easiest), as well as 5 (try to stay in the rhythm).

That's it for this Saturday.

The next newsletter edition will come out on Saturday, the 14th of March 2026.

We will continue with:

“Movement as an Energy Investment, Not an Energy Cost”

Own it!

Yours,

Moritz

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WIAHS Outline for 2026 (A Newsletter Coaching Course)

Moritz Eikelmann — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 11:07:03 +0000

Hey Everyone,

Happy Saturday from Cologne.

I am late with the newsletter this year. The turn of the years can be a real breaking point regarding consistency.

My team runs LinkedIn for me for the most part, and they observed the same pattern across many creators we cooperate with: around 30–40% stopped posting.

A typical message we got was: "I'll be back posting in March. I have to concentrate on my main business."

That was me too: My private practice in Cologne went off. Tons of emails and new patients coming in (a good problem). And in 2026 I need to expand the business (and focus on that). Kids sick for weeks (influenza). Holidays. And. And. And.

Without my amazing team, my LinkedIn would have stopped for the first 1.5 months of 2026. As did my newsletter. But now I’m back.

And there’s a flipside: I used this time to develop a new idea. This year, I won’t write the newsletter as “undulating but connected topics.”

Instead, I’ll publish it as a structured newsletter coaching course.

Clear sequence. Clear progression. One module at a time.

Let’s start.

Today at a Glance

Facing the Energy Problem
The NeuroScience Behind the Brain-Body-Budget
Your Newsletter Coaching - What to expect

Facing the Energy Problem

At the turn of the year and especially in January of 2026, I was running low on energy. On the other hand, my business expanded, were building momentum.

I was unable to build energy constantly. When I was able to replenish some energy for a day, it was all gone. I couldn’t manage to focus this energy, as there were too many tasks. At the end of the day (with the kids finally in bed), I still had many unanswered emails and open loops. As a consequence over time, my physical and mental resilience went down.

In that state, even the best productivity tools become a blunt instrument. Very often, the energy budget question comes first.

And has to be maintained constantly, meaning daily. So let’s talk Brain-Body-Budgeting.

The NeuroScience Behind the Brain-Body-Budget

Modern neuroscience is painting a radically clearer picture of what “energy” really means in our lives.

Deep in the brain, neuroenergetics research shows that most of the energy we burn is not for muscles, but for neural signaling and the brain’s constant internal chatter.

Even at rest, your brain is working hard to maintain a dynamic baseline of activity, predicting what will happen next and preparing your body to meet those demands.

This work is metabolically expensive and strictly constrained: there is only so much energy to go around.

When the system is chronically overused—through ongoing psychosocial stress, rumination, and a constant sense of threat—the energetic costs add up.

This pushes the body into hypermetabolism: energy is burned at a high “idle,” and resources are diverted away from growth, maintenance, and repair.

Over years, this persistent draw on the body budget accelerates wear and tear, contributing to faster aging and elevated risk for a wide range of mental and physical illnesses.

Seen through this lens, “having more energy” stops being a vague personality trait and becomes something measurable and actionable.

Energy, in this new science, is not magic; it is the signature of a well‑managed brain–body budget.

1) Building Energy

Before you ask for high performance, ask for stable biology. “Building Energy” is not esoteric. It is neurobiological. It is what happens when your fundamentals are good enough that your brain is not constantly compensating for a depleted system.

You build energy by improving capacity and efficiency—better sleep, fitness, nutrition, and nervous system calm that lower your chronic idle.

In the first quarter (14th February - 25th April with 6 editions) we will cover the basic levers for building energy and present you the best protocols for operation your human body.

2) Focusing Energy

Once there is more energy available, the next bottleneck is attention. Many high performers leak their best energy into: constant interruptions, reactive communication and constant switching. Focusing Energy is about creating fewer targets for your attention, and defending them.

You focus energy by reducing uncertainty and mental noise with clear priorities, structure, and attention hygiene.

3) Directing Energy

Focus alone is not enough. Direct Energy means you decide where your best cognitive and emotional resources go. Though, this framework goes deeper and it is directed on the INSIDE: the one decision you have been avoiding, the one hard conversation you keep postponing. What are the deeper reasons for that (beliefs, emotions, patterns)?

You direct energy by making conscious trade‑offs and self-reflection, investing more in long‑term emotional health, relationships and less in low‑value stressors.

In the third quarter (1st August - 10th October with 6 editions) we will dive into building tighter EQ (Emotional Intelligence) and nailing the Mindset-Game. We will go through deep tools, like managing your inner team e.g.

4) Sending Energy

This is the state people want first: Presence. Calm confidence. Leadership.

But leadership is, at its core, the ability to send energy into your environment in a stable way: into conversations, decisions, boundaries, and relationships.

If you try to SEND without BUILDING, FOCUSING, and DIRECTING, you either overcompensate, become reactive, or burn out while “holding it together.”

And you “send” energy by the way you affect other people’s body budgets—offering safety, predictability, and co‑regulation instead of mutual escalation.

In the fourth quarter (7th November - 19th December with 4 editions) we will dive into how I coach frameworks for LEADING. No surprise, this starts with leading yourself and the basics for that have been shown here. But we have killer tools also for raising the bar of your leadership skills.

That’s it for this Saturday.

The next newsletter edition will come out on Saturday, the 28th of February 2026.

We will start with Building Energy with The Brain-Body Budget.

Take care,

Yours,

Moritz

PS:

If you want to learn more about my coaching book an orientation call:

Start Mastering Emotions

Slowing Down (or How to Emanate Big Ideas)

Moritz Eikelmann — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 13:43:04 +0000

Who remembers the 1969 song In the Year 2525 by Zager and Evans? Back in school when it was presented to us, it made something with the, I remember well.

We got to the end of not 2525, but 2025. Just some days remaining.

As with Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World and Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Zager and Evans predictions are more or less spot on!

From the whole degrading of our senses (and their use), becoming motionless at a point where machines are “doing the work for you”, to man and woman only “may find each other” (managed by machines, apps and algorithms), ending up taking “everything this old earth can give” and “put back nothing”.

In the end, man has cried a billion years (and doesn’t know for what). So what to make out of this right now? To be honest, I don’t know. But I have a feeling (or 2-3). The song, these lines give me a feeling (or my brain is anticipating it).

And following this emotion (energy in motion) I know one thing for sure: I need to write. And need to write more in 2026. I guess it comes down to the searching-hope-in-an-imploding-world-order thing.

Let’s start.

Today at a Glance

Slowing Down
The NeuroScience behind Slow Productivity
How I Coach Do Slow Productivity

Slowing Down

I do not have a specific coaching client in mind today. When I talk with my wife, friends, business partners, employees and clients, they all say the same:

Great ideas, real breakthroughs usually don’t come in times of hustle, of being too busy. They come when walking in nature, cooking, putting children to sleep for an hour (that is forced defocusing at its best).

We got to defocus. We got to stop being busy. Slowing Down is an essential tool for productivity and performance.

This topic seemed like a good fit to me for the holidays and change of years into 2026.

The NeuroScience Behind Slow Productivity

Cal Newport published a book about this topic, titled … Slow Productivity.

In it Newport describes the intellectual process behind big (and nobel price winning) ideas from famous scientist, writers, creators.

Famously, even on the very edge of discovery in radioactivity, Marie Curie took a long family vacation. Or Einstein, having the habit of taking long walks (10km) daily and taking naps after lunch.

Meta-analysis of task-switching studies (Wickens et al.'s 2015) showed that cognitive switching costs scale with complexity. Every new project brings meetings, emails, and coordination. A crowded project list directly undermines the sustained attention required for breakthroughs. This was shown even for brief switches (around 0.1-0.5s) which then compound to accumulating losses of productivity.

A Meta-analysis of 117 studies (Sio and Ormerod's, 2009) showed significant results for the Incubation effect. The effect describes improved performance when people step away from complex problems, as in deliberately scheduling high‑quality breaks. This might allow for unconscious processing, reducing the eyeball on ineffective strategies, and reorganizing problem representations and ideas.

How I Coach Do Slow Productivity

I don’ really coach it, like in a tool kind of way. But I recommend it, of course.

It works best when:

Focus on insight and divergent-thinking tasks, rather than for routine, algorithmic problems (Incubation shows stronger effects for the first ones).
The activity you chose for pause should be dissimilar to the original task (to avoid interference).
Your Cognitive load during the break shouldn’t be very strong.
This could be a walk in nature, light sports, cooking, maybe working in the garden, things like this.
Make a commitment and have a clear intention for returning to the problem .

You get the idea. So, bottom line:

"Rest is not a pause from productivity; it is productivity." - Steve Jobs

Let that sink in - but then:

Take action! See rest as part your productivity routine and start owning it!

That’s it for this month and the years 2025!

Me and my amazing team are doing a 3 week break from posting on Linked-In, as well as the Newsletter.

We start posting on Linked-In again on Monday, 12th of January.

The next newsletter edition will come out on Saturday, the 17th of January 2026.

Take care, Happy Holidays!

Yours,

Moritz

PS:

If you want to learn more about my coaching book an orientation call here:

PPS:

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The Inner Team (Cancel Self-Doubt for Good)

Moritz Eikelmann — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 13:30:35 +0000

Hey Everyone,

A recent LinkedIn post of ours titled "5 Things Holding High Potentials Back" kind of hit a nerve. What resonated most with the audience was Imposter Syndrome, Inner Barriers, and Presence & Influence. While reading the comments and preparing Thursday's post, I immediately thought: "Inner Team". We haven't covered the inner team yet. That’s about to change. Thanks everyone for being here. Thank you!

Today at a Glance

I Have to Control My Face at All Times
The Science Behind the Inner Team
How I Coach the Inner Team

I Have to Control My Face at All Times

It sounded like a chapter from David Foster Wallace's epic novel Infinite Jest: In stressful situations, she felt her face looked wobbly or abnormal. The anxiety of getting red cheeks. Sweating. Putting on a smile like she was acting. Trying to control all her bodily motions at all costs. I don't need to mention that this cost my client enormous energy and focus—so much so that she could only remember parts of what she actually said or did in these moments.

You can follow Andrew Huberman's protocols, adopt Peter Attia's longevity strategies, or channel David Goggins' intensity, like shout at yourself all the time. But none of it will change much.

You have to go where it hurts—whether through coaching or therapy. For this, I like to look at my clients' inner team. So here we go:

The Science Behind the Inner Team

Psychotherapeutic research on the inner team is largely based on the concept developed by Friedemann Schulz von Thun. The inner team approach is related to systemic family therapy models and schema therapies.

Friedemann Schulz von Thun is a German psychologist born in 1944. He is a psychologist based in Hamburg and your guy for interpersonal and intrapersonal communication. He is best known for developing influential theoretical models like the Four-Sides Model (also called the communication square) and the Inner Team model. He has his own institute and has major influence in fields like coaching, counseling, and organizational development.

What is the Inner Team?

We can view the mind as composed of multiple "inner team members" or internal voices representing different needs, values, and beliefs. You can make them talk to your inner boss, see what is going on with a certain problem.

What can be the Inner Teams benefits?

Becoming more aware of these internal parts.
Accepting feelings or thoughts, and collaborate with them constructively.
Improving self-leadership by integrating the inner teams players.
Clarifying internal struggles, thus reducing inner conflicts and improving emotional regulation.
Promoting self-reflection, decision-making, and personal development.

How I Coach the Inner Team

Note: This is a shortened version of the Inner Team exercise. I'm presenting it here so you can try it at home on your own. The full Inner Team session in coaching takes two hours.

Step 1: Catch the pull

Awareness is the first step here. Without asking your inner team players, my client started with noticing the inner tension. And naming the state she was in e.g. as self-doubt.

Action: Name it in one line: "I feel like I don't belong" or "I'm holding back my voice."

She wrote these beliefs down. You can also experiment with this step and give this scene a movie title. Make it very catchy. Like: “Melted Faces”. Well, not very catchy, Moritz, but a start!

Step 2: Set up your Inner Team

I give you a list of typical Inner Team key players. What are your key players?

Typical Members of the "Inner Government"

Analyst, Reason
Doer
Driver
Controller
Strategist
Perfectionist
Helper/Supporter
Security Officer
Explorer, Adventurer, Developer
Creative
Power-conscious

Strengthening Sources

Wise Source
"Inner Buddha"
Strong people- and relationship-oriented individuals
Optimists
Players
Harmony Guardians
Relationship Designers
Protectors

Typical Members of the "Crisis Team"

Critic
Warrior, Fighter, Boxer, Catcher, Killer
Boundary Setter, Boundary Guardian
Rebel

The Inner Kindergarten

The free, creative, playful, curious child
The sensitive, vulnerable child
The adapted, anxious, hurt child
The rebellious child

Step 3: Ask your Inner Team

Now you have your team. The players can be talked to. In this short version, I would recommend you, to point out 1 single player, who might be the loudest in your situation.

Action: You can ask yourself: Which player in your inner team is responsible for the core belief from Step 1?

Step 4: Visualize the core player

You can try to get to know your core player. What are his or her characteristics? What might it be derived from? Is this player holding more than one core belief?

Action: Make a sketch of how your player looks. Write down the beliefs and/or feelings/emotions accompanied with this player.

For this, you can follow along with there questions (in like you ask your core player and the player answers):

How do you feel right now?
What are situations where you (the player) are extremely important?
What do you need to relax for some time?

Step 5: Lock the shift in

Now, you can reflect on what you worked out. You can make it a new habit and start talking to your core player, e.g. once a day.

This alone can lead to a big inner change.

Action: Write three lines (talking to the player) once a day.

What happened? How have you been on this day?
What have you tried?
What shifted? Did something change for you?

This is your first step of a controlled inner communication. And as Schulze von Thun coined it:

"One cannot not communicate. Communication never happens without intention."

Of course, this is meant as a reference to Paul Watzlawick. But, as we have a lot of high potentials and leaders in this newsletter, please think about this other quote of von Thun during the next weeks:

"The highest level of listening is to grant the partner support for self-clarification."

Let that sink in!

That’s it for this month.

See you again on Saturday in 2 weeks, the 13th of December.

Take care,

Yours,

Moritz

PS:

If you want to learn more about my coaching book an orientation call here:

Masteri

PPS:

How to Build (Atomic) Habits (and regain your energy)

Moritz Eikelmann — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 13:00:54 +0000

Hey Everyone,

What fascinates me most right now is how we change under pressure and stress. Why is it so hard to regulate emotions and maintain habits when things fall out of order? I'd say this is at the core of my current work. If you have ideas and strategies that work for you, please share them with me. Thanks!

Today at a Glance

The MD I Saw Myself in Years Ago
Energy as a Core Leadership Idea
How I Coach Habits

The MD I Saw Myself in Years Ago

I had a coaching client who is a medical doctor like myself and has run a very successful practice for years now. I was like him some years ago:

He's super busy with his work and came to me seeking help. He skipped meals, ate sweets (very common in doctor offices, tbh), lacked sufficient sleep, felt drained of all energy, and lost his mind-body connection. He also skipped his daily workouts. When we spoke about how he runs his practice, several obstacles and problems were occurring—lack of leadership, employees frequently out sick for weeks, and he couldn't assert his authority as chief of the practice.

I thought about our coaching when we set up the LinkedIn post for Monday (November 3rd) about habits and referring to Atomic Habits in general.

We made a so-called cheat sheet and thought about the 7 obstacles for building habits. We had one of my favorite coaching clientele in mind, high potentials, who sure well know the pressure-stress-habits axis. This is the cheat sheet:

1/ Overloaded mind: Absolutely. He had tons of tasks per day and worked at night.

2/ Context switching: Yes. His workday was inconsistent, distractions every second.

3/ Perfectionism: He's actually quite pragmatic, which is good here.

4/ Motivation swings: He became unmotivated when going to the practice and seeing 50% of employees are sick… AGAIN.

5/ Invisible progress: He gets feedback from patients and money, of course. But beyond that, the extreme effort he puts in most of the time didn’t get noticed or becomes the new normal.

6/ Accountability gaps: There were no limits—in his environment or in himself—for making time, attention, and energy accountable.

7/ Identity conflict: Tricky one. I'd say he's okay with his identity for the professional role as an MD.

Energy as a Core Leadership Idea

As I put Agile Leadership and Mastering Emotions on my billboards and banners, most clients want to transform into future high EQ-leaders immediately.

That’s amazing, but, as always in life, there is a but:

Leadership, at its core, is about SENDING energy to others and your environment. This sounds simple—even a bit esoteric—but it's incredibly difficult. To do this consistently—not just once or twice, but daily, under pressure, across multiple relationships, with numerous tasks, needs to address, and teams to lead—requires very specific capabilities.

To SEND energy to others, you must first BUILD energy. Every day. And regenerate at night. After this, you need to MANAGE or CHANNEL energy (or most of it) toward yourself (see next chapter).

Then, with learning, repetition and rhythm, you will build EQ fast, establish a steadfast brain-body-budget and lead as agile as you every could.

How I Coach Habits

Now, where do habits come in? Where and how do I integrate habit building in coaching EQ and leadership.

It is quite simple: Building energy every day lies at the very core of the next-step-modules like EQ and leadership. Habit building is an extremely effective tool - on a protocol level - to build and sustain a balanced brain-body-budget.

So what did we do first?

Ranking the 7 obstacles for building habits and healthy routines in the first place.
For my client the top #3 were overloaded mind (#1), context switching (#2) and invisible progress (#3).
I would recommend to start building one new habit at a time for at least 30 days.
For the top #1 overloaded mind we came up with a simple thing: Sitting down at his desk at the beginning of the work day and take 5 minutes to answer a question: “What makes the most sense today?”
As clarity starts with subtraction, most of the time, day by day he deleted, delegated or scheduled a lot of extra tasks and errants. Just by a simple reflection habit every day for 5 minutes. It stopped the autopilot mode.
Further, this turned into a protected 90-minute block of deep-work in the morning.
For #2 and #3 he established a protocol for managing distractions (especially the sweets) as well as a simple, yet effective, progress tracker (paper and pencil - coloured) with important metrics (e.g. body weight, stress level via a gadget, number of cooking dinner for his family per week and so on).

Usually, when the client is motivated, many new developments follow, as there is more energy available in his system. And habit building becomes actual fun.

Let me finish toady with the author and book I am referring to … James Clear:

“Good habits stockpile ease. Bad habits postpone pain.”

I love browsing through the comments on our LinkedIn posts every Monday and Thursday. I'm always stunned by the new thoughts and ideas that emerge within the community.

Last week, Dr. Khadija Siddiqui blew my mind with the following line:

“I love how you frame habits not as willpower battles, but as reflections of environment, limits, and energy alignment.”

Let that sink in.

That’s it for this month.

See you again on Saturday in 2 weeks, the 29th of November.

Take care,

Yours,

Moritz

PS:

If you want to learn more about my coaching book an orientation call here:

Mastering Emotions

PPS:

If you're still undecided, no problem -we've got you covered. Take our Future Leader Quiz first. We'll send you a personalized analysis of your challenges and a potential outline of your coaching journey with us.

Leveraging empathy (the magic tool)

Moritz Eikelmann — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 13:00:47 +0000

Hey Everyone,

Thank you for being here. I'm genuinely grateful you're spending your time and attention with us. Every post, newsletter, and product is made with care to provide you with the most relevant insights & learnings. Thank you!

Today at a Glance

The client who drowned in a sea of empathy
Making empathy granular
How I coach empathy

The client who drowned in a sea of empathy

If you're reading this, chances are you know the sea of empathy—or tend to wade into it yourself.

I have some clients in coaching, executives and C-Level, who are 100% on the pragmatic, business-decision side of things. This is usually great for business, but bad for relationships and, to some degree, a happy life and sense of self.

For this newsletter edition, I want to focus on the other side: clients with a naturally high degree of empathy. My client was a chief of a medical clinic, chronically overworked due to a high patient load and the amount of time he spent talking to his staff.

Always thinking three steps ahead. Interpreting every signal. Rethinking what it could have meant. What does the employee's trouble with her grandmother have to do with our work environment? Tuning into everybody's soul. Pleasing. Appealing. Burned out.

At the time, I didn't know what to do with him. I'd been listening to podcasts and stumbled on the concept of Tactical Empathy from Chris Voss. I also spoke to a mentor of mine in a supervision session. He introduced me to the concept of Against Empathy by Paul Bloom.

For the result, see How I coach empathy.

Making empathy granular

Simply put, making things granular leads to more wellbeing and more action options— more degrees of freedom in thinking, behaviour and emotions.

Emotions aren't just anger, sadness, envy, shame, and guilt. They include: peeved, worried, irritated, alienated, miserable, exhilarated, enraged, troubled, concerned.

Behavior in relationships isn't just attack, flight/fight, or stay. It includes: give space, avoid influence, pester affectionately, show anger, show off, allow affection, cling to, appear helpless, completely reject contact, withdraw.

Empathy isn't just feeling what others feel. That's the core skill, but there's more to it:

Cognitive Empathy is understanding of another’s perspective without absorbing emotions.
Emotional Empathy is feeling what others feel — connecting with and acknowledging their emotions(and mine) without judgment.
Compassionate Empathy is feeling and acting, e.g. for helping others.
Tactical Empathy is understanding motives and guide outcomes (e.g. my desired outcome).
Against Empathy is a tool for clearing my own judgement. It’s about balancing empathy.

This knowledge can be turned into actions.

How I coach empathy

When I tried to apply these concepts with my client, I started just asking questions. This led to the following:

Are you leading with the right empathy at the right time?

He did not. He chose options 1 and 2 for his tool every time—with no "until."

Since options 4 and 5 might have been overwhelming at first, starting with 3 (compassionate empathy) turned out to be a smart move.

The task was simple yet effective:

Before any conversation, he wrote down whether the meeting was about problem-solving, connection, or negotiation.
Then he brought a script with anchor points into the conversation.
For example, problem-solving (Top #1) involved:
1. One empathic sentence was allowed (ideally a statement, not a question: "This must have been hard for you.").
2. Set a 5-minute time limit for hearing the problem.
3. Ask: "What can you do to solve the problem yourself?"
4. Then: "What can I add to your solution?"
5. Finally: "I see X. I can offer Y. Until Z."
6. Reflect afterward by asking: "Did I use the right approach to guide this situation?"

That’s it for this month.

See you again at 15th of November.

Take care,

Yours,

Moritz

PS:

Can you rarely make time for physical activity or regeneration? Do youI feel emotionally unstable and have difficulties to stay calm under pressure? Is managing people emotionally and energetically draining for you?

If that sounds familiar, Mastering Emotions is for you. I began coaching in 2023. Since then, l've coached over 30 executives, entrepreneurs, and high potentials on building Emotional Intelligence and into becoming future leaders.

If you want to learn more about my coaching book an orientation call here:

Mastering Emotions

PPS:

If you're still undecided, no problem -we've got you covered. Take our Future Leader Quiz first. We'll send you a personalized analysis of your challenges and a potential outline of your coaching journey with us.

How Learning Works: 5 habits to unlock faster learning.

Moritz Eikelmann — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 11:35:06 +0000

Hey Everyone,

We passed 2000 followers this week on Linked-In and have a ton of engagement on our posts. This becomes real fun and highly motivates us to deliver more, free, hopefully valuable content.

Let’s dive in.

Subscribe

Today at a Glance

The client who quit 2 times on me
The science behind Learning
How I coach Deep Learning
Action Steps for You

The client who quit 2 times on me

I often think about a client I worked with a year ago. He first came to me two years earlier with work and personal problems. He'd been through multiple therapies and clinics with no real insights or change. We started therapy. After 3 months, just when things got interesting, he quit.

A year later, he returned. He was fed up with therapy and had accumulated even more problems. We switched to a coaching approach (see How I coach). He quickly identified one core belief and corresponding emotions tied to an important relationship. He said he was having a breakthrough. Then he quit again.

He never said why.

Now, as I post content on LinkedIn and develop my coaching framework, I think about what might have gone wrong.

It brings me back to one point: Learning new things.

Are we open to change? If yes, how? How does learning really work for this specific client?

The science behind Learning

A large Meta-Analysis of Ten Learning Techniques examined 242 studies with 169,000 participants. We will break it down here today.

Simply put: Learning happens in waves. There's a rhythm to the interplay between focus, struggle, consolidation, and rest.If you sprint all day, you end up reactive (like my client).

Here's my neuroscience-based framework for optimal learning:

1/ Focus 🔕

↳ Focus on the bottleneck, not the comfort zone.

2/ Feedback 🌱

↳ Get immediate feedback and adjust the next rep.

3/ Friction 🏃

↳ Slightly beyond comfort so the brain has to adapt.

4/ Speed 🧭

↳ Slow is smooth. Smooth becomes fast.

5/ Rest 💤

↳ Stop when form breaks, not when the clock says. Get deep rest.

The study tested additional techniques. The 2 most efficient methods for learning are spaced repetition and active recall.

We created a thorough LinkedIn post covering this broader learning framework. The full content was too long for this newsletter. You can find the post here.

How I coach Deep Learning

If you've read this far, here's how I use this learning framework in coaching sessions to build emotional intelligence and teach emotional regulation. I call this synergy between learning and EQ "Deep Learning"—a nod to Cal Newport's concept of deep work (focused effort without emotional interference).

Here is my 5-step version:

Clients pick 1 thing they want to change deeply. A specific relationship, a symptom or an emotion.
We focus hard on the specific topic. No distractions, so a 1:1 coaching session is ideal.
We use a tool of mine I call Emotional DNA. It helps identify core emotions, beliefs, and behaviors tied to the most important relationships.
- It usually hits hard and goes deep.
- But: Struggle signals growth. Facing calculated discomfort is how your brain builds real strength.
- This is called Friction. This is where the coach-client relationship must hold strong.
After step 3, we pause, rest and reflect.
Finally, we work out the next smallest step possible. Small routines compound into meaningful results. The client makes a commitment.

Action Steps for You

If you do not have a coach at hand, well, book a coaching session with me (see the P.S. below).

Or: I highly recommend doing this on your own, e.g. with the Pennebaker Protocol, see here.

You can always write me an email with your experience and results, I am happy to respond to it!

See you again on November 1st!

Yours,

Moritz

PS:

Thank you for being here. I'm genuinely grateful you're part of our community and spending your time and attention with us. Every post, newsletter, and product is made with care to provide you with the most relevant and inspiring content. Thank you!

PPS:

Today we know that Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is a core driver of successful (7×), high-performing (22×), and highly engaged (70%) companies. EQ also impacts customer loyalty (+5%) and profit (+25%), while saving significant costs in recruiting and change program ROIs.

In short: For leaders or future leaders it is the best time for Learning EQ and building your company.

I began coaching in 2023. Since then, I've coached over 20 executives, entrepreneurs, and high potentials. I've collected the most common challenges. Here are the top 3:

"l often feel overwhelmed and stressed. I rarely make time for physical activity or regeneration.”

"I feel emotionally unstable and have difficulties to stay calm and focused under pressure.”

"Managing people is emotionally and energetically draining for me.”

If that sounds familiar, Mastering Emotions is for you.

In it, I personally provide the 1:1 support, frameworks and coaching tools that you will learn to master emotions in just 3 months. The program includes:

1:1 personal coaching with me over 3 months (6 sessions)
Coaching Tools like our Emotional DNA framework to identify core emotions, beliefs, and behaviours
Neuroscience-backed methods and support to help you turn knowledge into daily actions, habits, and routines.

If you are interested in Mastering Emotions and want to learn more, book your free discovery call here.

Master Your Emotions

If you're still undecided, no problem—we've got you covered. Take our Future Leader Quiz first. We'll send you a personalized analysis of your challenges and a potential outline of your coaching journey with us.

You don’t have emotions. You make them.

Moritz Eikelmann — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 12:08:29 +0000

Hey everyone!

Starting today, my newsletter will arrive in your inbox twice monthly, always on Saturdays. I've made the editions more concise and actionable, with a strict focus on Productivity, EQ, and Leadership.

There might be additional longer editions in the future covering more of the underlying framework for What Is A Happy Self.

Thanks to LinkedIn, we've grown to over 50 subscribers because of you all. Keep going!

From feeling just “bad” to vulnerable, discouraged, tired or numb.

Last week, a 6-month coaching process with a client concluded. She felt she had learned valuable new skills and needed time to reflect, process, and take action. I recalled a specific moment, when we worked on Emotional Granularity. But, what is that?

Simply put, the more accurately you can name what you feel, the more control you have over your responses. Her challenge was recognizing that feeling "bad" or "inhibited" wasn't the complete picture.

With practice, she developed granularity in her emotions, distinguishing between restlessness, uneasiness, frustration, nervousness, vulnerability, discouragement, tiredness, and numbness. Eight new words and feelings!

I'll explain how we implemented this in her life and what changed for her, here: How I Coach Emotional Granularity.

The science behind Emotional Granularity

Why do you and I sometimes stay calm under pressure but other times feel completely overwhelmed?

Simply put, neuroscience shows that emotions aren't automatic reactions. Your brain actively makes predictions, creating guesses about what could happen next and how to respond.

As Lisa Feldman-Barrett explains in How Emotions Are Made, our brain continuously integrates our inner (!) signals, past experiences, and current context to generate emotions. Emotions are flexible and shaped by our understanding of them, not just by external events.

Further, research shows that people with higher emotional granularity—those who can distinguish between specific feelings like frustration and disappointment—are better at managing emotions, making decisions under pressure, and maintaining strong relationships.

I highly recommend studying Lisa Feldmann-Barrett’s books and articles, I will link them below. She also appeared on some of the biggest podcasts in the last years, I will link them below, too.

How I Coach Emotional Granularity

I have a comprehensive approach that spans several weeks, incorporating multiple tools and sessions (I will cover this in a future edition).

Here is my condensed 5-step version:

Always (!) pause and take a moment before reacting. This part is the hardest, as we are on autopilot usually all day. As with all in life, this comes down to training or habit building. If I react in the same way 3 times in a row, chances are high I do the same thing the next 1000 times. Taking this road will lead you to a different version of the 1000 times, I promise.
Name the emotion you are feeling. As we unfortunately do not learn emotions words as vocabulary in school, use the App How We Feel (Link at the end). It is free and just a phenomenal tool for building EQ. My client uses this app to check-in twice a day or before or after difficult or new situations. By this, she build up a whole database with her emotions. She replaced “bad” with 8 different emotions.
Notice where you feel the emotion in your body. This helps you pause effectively. Identify specific areas of tension or discomfort. The app also helps with this body awareness. For my client, the feeling "bad" initially affected her entire body, while "restless" was more concentrated in her chest, and "discouraged" manifested primarily in her head.
Assess how intense it is, rating it from 1 to 10. This gives you more depth and scalability. For my client the feeling “bad” was an 8 most of the time, so pretty bad. Then “restless” was more a 5 with a light anxiety or boredom and “discouraged” presented as a 9.
Respond deliberately by choosing your next action rather than reacting automatically. Create an action plan or work on building a new habit and routine to address your most prominent emotions. Everything comes down to consistent practice. For my client, feeling "restless" stemmed from a mix of anxiety, boredom, and feeling overwhelmed with too many tasks. Since these feelings typically appeared in the morning, she developed a routine focused on concentrated work, goal setting, and prioritizing tasks.

Action Step for You

Get the How We Feel App and start checking in once or twice a day. Or take a paper and pencil, of course.

You can go with my 5-step-framework for this.

Notice how this shifts your clarity, decision-making, and energy. Over time, these small practices help you lead yourself and your team with greater confidence, resilience, and focus. Give it a try and see the difference small moments of reflection can make.

Write me an email with your experience and results, I am happy to respond to it!

That's just 5 minutes per day that might well change the trajectory of your life.

See you again on October 18th. Take care,

Yours,

Moritz

PS:

If you are interested in my coaching program “Mastering Emotions” email me or book an orientation call here.

Sources & Links

Lisa Feldmann Barrett: https://lisafeldmanbarrett.com/

Her on Huberman Lab Podcast: https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/dr-lisa-feldman-barrett-how-to-understand-emotions

How We Feel App: https://howwefeel.org/

Resisting Triggers

Moritz Eikelmann — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 07:56:16 +0000

Hello there,

First, welcome to all new subscribers! We are growing faster than I thought. And I am very, very late for the August edition of the newsletter. I have a good friend of mine, Jens, on my team now. He is helping me tremendously with Linked-In and lots of other stuff. As a result, our Linked-In grew fast to over 1000 follower in the last 3 weeks. Make sure to follow us there. We are really putting a lot of effort in designing the content. Thanks!

Today at a Glance

Why should we train to resist triggers?
Self Efficacy and Agency.
Becoming Indistractable.
Hard things become easier through persistent work over time.

Why should we train to resist triggers?

Two days ago I listend to a podcast episode of the german host Hotel Matze with Dr. Johanna Degen. I can highly recommend Hotel Matze, though it is produced solely in german (there might be AI-tools for translation).

The guest, Dr. Johanna Degen, holds a PhD in social psychology and is an expert on love and life issues. She conducts research on intimacy, relationships, and sexuality at the intersection of technology, psychology, and media. In the press, she's sometimes called "Dr. Tinder." And she truly has valuable insights to share.

Checking your phone, checking social media, swiping on Tinder. These are classic examples of external triggers. At some point, someone recommended you buy a smartphone, download an app, or try dating on Tinder. That's the external part. Over time, these triggers have transformed into internal triggers.

What am I trying to say here?

You learned to no longer need external triggers (like notifications, emails, etc.) to feel the urge to open an app or go on Tinder. The urge now comes from within. You are hooked.

So, why should you start training your brain to resist these internal triggers?

Self Efficacy and Agency.

At the end of the podcast episode, Dr. Degen connects the dots between triggers, reactions and relationsships (to ourselves and others). She said:

"You do it once, then you think mark, integrate, you think yay and then the next time it's easier and the time after that at some point you're much, much closer to your ideal, yourself for your own sake.”

When you yield to an internal trigger, like lying on the sofa and doom-scrolling TikTok, you choose the easy, familiar outcome. Initially, you might think your brain is saving energy. But:

You probably don't feel good or comforted.
You most likely don't experience feelings of agency or gratitude.
You haven't gotten any closer to your ideal self.

So, when you start resisting internal triggers, you actually start doing something (a big deal) for yourself. For your OWN SAKE.

In German, there is the beautiful word Selbstwirksamkeitserwartung.

In English, this translates to: perceived Self-Efficacy.

Self-Efficacy is the subjective belief that one can cope with new or difficult challenging situations due to one's own competencies. It is needed for tasks whose level of difficulty requires effort and perseverance.

High self-efficacy has been associated with less frequent anxiety disorders and depression, good academic and professional performance, low stress responses, rapid coping with critical life events, high pain tolerance, more health behavior, better immune system, satisfying social relationships, and high well-being.

Condensed into one sentence:

When a problem arises, I can master it through my own efforts.

Self-efficacy is critical for building personal agency and fueling your generative drive in life.

Let me share one tool that works wonders for both me and my coaching clients:

Becoming Indistractable

When I read the book Indistractable by Nir Eyal it really made me rethink Focus, Learning and managing Distraction and/or Triggers.

According to Nir Eyal there is an uncomfortable truth which we should acknowledge sooner than later:

Distraction is always an unhealthy escape from reality.
It’s a way our brain deals with internal pain.

90% of distractive triggers are internal triggers. 90% (sic!).

Resisting them, ruminating about them, and finally giving in to those triggers/your desire is highly contraproductive. This way many of our unwanted behaviours are determined in your brain over time.

You can deal with uncomfortable internal triggers in a different way, here is how:

#Step 1

↳ Look for the feeling that makes you want to get distracted. Are you anxious, bored, or restless?

#Step 2

↳ Write it down: Write down what you were doing, the time of day, and how you felt at that moment.

✅ I try to keep my notebook and a pen always right next to my laptop.

✅ I have a Distraction-Box in my daily planner.

#Step 3

↳ Be curious about the bad feeling instead of being mad at yourself.

✅ This mindfulness helps reduce the power of the trigger. Accept it as it is.

#Step 4

↳ If you feel compelled to act on a distraction, wait 10 minutes before giving in.

✅ For Pro’s: Try the tool FLOWING STREAM:

“Imagine you are seated beside a gently flowing stream. Then imagine there are leaves floating down that stream. Place each thought in your mind on each leaf. It could be a memory, a word, a worry, an image. And let each of those leaves float down that stream, swirling away, as you sit and just watch.”

Hard things become easier through persistent work over time.

Some claim there are magical tools that make hard things easy without effort.

Well, great tools exist, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 if you don't use them consistently, any changes will be superficial.

True change requires hard work over time.

Hard things made easy by hard work over time are the things to focus on - that is a quote by Andrew Huberman on Linked-In.

𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 and 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 are gateway skills to become truly indistractable.

Mastering the basics will always be superior to somewhat "miracle" tools or hacks

This encapsulates Focus, Friction and Consistence to Learn.

𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝘆 𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆 - linking these concepts together.

That’s it for this month.

See you again at the 6th of September.

In the meantime, please share this newsletter with your friends and colleagues, who might like this content.

Let’s connect on Linked-In here.

If you are interested in my coaching program “Mastering Emotions” email me or book an orientation call here:

Take care,

Yours,

Moritz

Sources & Links

Podcast Hotel Matze
Website Nir Eyal

Anger - A gift or a curse?

Moritz Eikelmann — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 10:24:35 +0000

Some words upfront.

Welcome to all new subscribers. I thank you for your support and hope for you to find my writing appealing.
This month editions comes 1 week late. Me and my family were feeling very sick (probably a summer influenza-virus). Isn’t it remarkable how great recovery feels? Though, in retrospect, how shitty did my body and mind feel the last two weeks?

An Update.

A great thing is my very good friend, Jens, will join my team, starting in August. He will support me with the Linked-In-Game and curating content. This means, we will be able to write this newsletter 2 times per month, starting in August.

12 weeks on Linked-In: Be curious - not judgemental.
High potentials and future leaders
What I still feel angry about.
Common Myths about Anger (that are scientifically false)
Mastering Anger - Navigating conflicts (science-backed)
A book for you: The Gift of Anger.

12 weeks on Linked-In: Be curious - not judgemental.

Before I started posting regularly on Linked-In 12 weeks ago, my mentor and friend Christian told me: “Moritz, you will need a very patient though at the same time fast learning mindset!”

He - so far -was right. Linked-In is changing every quarter at the moment. It becomes harder and harder to grow a following. Here is what I will try for the next 12 weeks:

Stick with the basics: Post with a schedule, comment daily and build your network. Like in real life, let’s say at a conference.
Be curious and learn: I was very happy with my content so far and got quite a lot feedback due to it’s quality. But:

I am not connect to my #1 ideal clients.

High potentials and future leaders.

So trying to make content and sell coachings for my “old network”, like psychiatrists and psychotherapists or other doctors from Germany?

Not in this world. They never react, never comment, never answer dm’s and would never buy my coaching.

As a consequence, my Linked-In stats made me think: Who do I love working with? Who really likes coaching? Who is still hungry for real change?

It is people in middle management positions, project managers, head of’s, directors and so on.
People on their way to C-Level (or not, as they find a different path).

And to finally transition to todays topic: Conflicts (e.g. with current C-Level or your BOSS) are the number 1# topic in business coaching.

What I still feel angry about.

Interestingly, conflicts are the #1 topic - Anger is not.

Did you experience conflicts at work? Yes? Me too. Sometimes I still think about or revisit past situations.

When I was a student doing an internship at a clinic, a professor and chief of medicine would just call me out in front of the whole team, asking me (at this time) impossible to know questions about a case. Just to devalue my answer before leaving the room.
Or a senior doctor storming into my office shouting “if I had problems with writing medical letters”? (The weekly schedule was designed not to admit time for that).
Or our chief physician shutting down a popular student seminar I held with my a colleague of mine as another senior physician felt threatened (she was responsible for the whole teaching section, but fucking sucked at it, in my humble opinion).

When I think about these situations today, I do not get angry any more, but it still feels like a loss.

So, for today, let’s revisit ANGER and how to use it for your own good and inner peace:

Common Myths about Anger.

Common myths about anger include several widespread but inaccurate beliefs. My top #3 myths consists of:

Anger is per se a negative emotion. It is inherited, biologically hardwired and therefore is resistent to change.
Holding in anger is always bad, and letting it out is always good.
Expression of anger leads to being aggressive.

What does science say about anger?

Anger is a natural response. It can serve as a useful tool. It signals when your boundaries are crossed or needs are unmet.
Anger is foremost a learned behavior. It can be changed.
Suppressing anger is most likely a very popular psychological self defense mechanism (so called turn against the self) responsible for increased risks of anxiety, depression, muscle tension, headaches, stomach issues and cardiovascular diseases.
Uncontrolled expression comes also not recommended The key is learning to recognize, understand, and express anger constructively

Mastering Anger - Navigating conflicts.

But Doctor! Other people make me angry all the time. And what about my micromanaging boss? And the new partner at our firm? And Trump?

It's a common misconception that others directly cause your anger.

In reality, anger arises from our interpretation of others' behavior and intentions, not from the behavior itself. This is important. I wrote a whole article about how emotions are made called The Biggest Mindset Shift by far - Your Brain is a Prediction Machine (link below).

So, to manage your anger, you first got to accept it as your feeling and your responsibility.

It’s a vital part of your inner working model. You need anger to survive. Here a framework which helped me and my clients to reframe what anger means.

1. PREVENT ANGER (start in the morning)

↳ As your brain’s main task is to run your systems and keep you alive, probably 70-80% of energy is used to do exactly this. In turn, taking excellent care of your biology, is key.

↳ When your brain is feeling good it for sure will make better predictions (meaning predict less uncontrolled anger).

✅ Prioritize your Sleep above everything else. Track your sleep quality and quantity.

✅ Do a Workout first thing in the morning (or when it is possible for you). Even if it’s just 10 minutes. Do this every morning.

✅ Give your body a rest from food, e.g. try fasting. Think about your nutritional intake. Sugar is not your friend when it comes to emotional balance.

These things come first. The rest (all the fancy tools, habit building, routines and rituals) come after that.

2. CONTAIN ANGER (during the day)

↳ You can access your autonomic nervous system very directly within seconds.

↳ This is great, as this usually does not work (therefore it is called autonomic nervous system).

↳ Inhale for 4 seconds through the nose. Exhale for 8 seconds through pursed lips.

Some words upfront.

Welcome to all new subscribers. I thank you for your support and hope for you to find my writing appealing.
This month editions comes 1 week late. Me and my family were feeling very sick (probably a summer influenza-virus). Isn’t it remarkable how great recovery feels? Though, in retrospect, how shitty did my body and mind feel the last two weeks?

An Update.

A great thing is my very good friend, Jens, will join my team, starting in August. He will support me with the Linked-In-Game and curating content. This means, we will be able to write this newsletter 2 times per month, starting in August.

12 weeks on Linked-In: Be curious - not judgemental.
High potentials and future leaders
What I still feel angry about.
Common Myths about Anger (that are scientifically false)
Mastering Anger - Navigating conflicts (science-backed)
A book for you: The Gift of Anger.

12 weeks on Linked-In: Be curious - not judgemental.

Before I started posting regularly on Linked-In 12 weeks ago, my mentor and friend Christian told me: “Moritz, you will need a very patient though at the same time fast learning mindset!”

He - so far -was right. Linked-In is changing every quarter at the moment. It becomes harder and harder to grow a following. Here is what I will try for the next 12 weeks:

Stick with the basics: Post with a schedule, comment daily and build your network. Like in real life, let’s say at a conference.
Be curious and learn: I was very happy with my content so far and got quite a lot feedback due to it’s quality. But:

I am not connect to my #1 ideal clients.

High potentials and future leaders.

So trying to make content and sell coachings for my “old network”, like psychiatrists and psychotherapists or other doctors from Germany?

Not in this world. They never react, never comment, never answer dm’s and would never buy my coaching.

As a consequence, my Linked-In stats made me think: Who do I love working with? Who really likes coaching? Who is still hungry for real change?

It is people in middle management positions, project managers, head of’s, directors and so on.
People on their way to C-Level (or not, as they find a different path).

And to finally transition to todays topic: Conflicts (e.g. with current C-Level or your BOSS) are the number 1# topic in business coaching.

What I still feel angry about.

Interestingly, conflicts are the #1 topic - Anger is not.

Did you experience conflicts at work? Yes? Me too. Sometimes I still think about or revisit past situations.

When I was a student doing an internship at a clinic, a professor and chief of medicine would just call me out in front of the whole team, asking me (at this time) impossible to know questions about a case. Just to devalue my answer before leaving the room.
Or a senior doctor storming into my office shouting “if I had problems with writing medical letters”? (The weekly schedule was designed not to admit time for that).
Or our chief physician shutting down a popular student seminar I held with my a colleague of mine as another senior physician felt threatened (she was responsible for the whole teaching section, but fucking sucked at it, in my humble opinion).

When I think about these situations today, I do not get angry any more, but it still feels like a loss.

So, for today, let’s revisit ANGER and how to use it for your own good and inner peace:

Common Myths about Anger.

Common myths about anger include several widespread but inaccurate beliefs. My top #3 myths consists of:

Anger is per se a negative emotion. It is inherited, biologically hardwired and therefore is resistent to change.
Holding in anger is always bad, and letting it out is always good.
Expression of anger leads to being aggressive.

What does science say about anger?

Anger is a natural response. It can serve as a useful tool. It signals when your boundaries are crossed or needs are unmet.
Anger is foremost a learned behavior. It can be changed.
Suppressing anger is most likely a very popular psychological self defense mechanism (so called turn against the self) responsible for increased risks of anxiety, depression, muscle tension, headaches, stomach issues and cardiovascular diseases.
Uncontrolled expression comes also not recommended The key is learning to recognize, understand, and express anger constructively

Mastering Anger - Navigating conflicts.

But Doctor! Other people make me angry all the time. And what about my micromanaging boss? And the new partner at our firm? And Trump?

It's a common misconception that others directly cause your anger.

So, to manage your anger, you first got to accept it as your feeling and your responsibility.

It’s a vital part of your inner working model. You need anger to survive. Here a framework which helped me and my clients to reframe what anger means.

1. PREVENT ANGER (start in the morning)

↳ As your brain’s main task is to run your systems and keep you alive, probably 70-80% of energy is used to do exactly this. In turn, taking excellent care of your biology, is key.

↳ When your brain is feeling good it for sure will make better predictions (meaning predict less uncontrolled anger).

✅ Prioritize your Sleep above everything else. Track your sleep quality and quantity.

✅ Do a Workout first thing in the morning (or when it is possible for you). Even if it’s just 10 minutes. Do this every morning.

✅ Give your body a rest from food, e.g. try fasting. Think about your nutritional intake. Sugar is not your friend when it comes to emotional balance.

These things come first. The rest (all the fancy tools, habit building, routines and rituals) come after that.

2. CONTAIN ANGER (during the day)

↳ You can access your autonomic nervous system very directly within seconds.

↳ This is great, as this usually does not work (therefore it is called autonomic nervous system).

↳ Inhale for 4 seconds through the nose. Exhale for 8 seconds through pursed lips. • Focus mentally on the exhale.

✅ Focus mentally on the exhale. The extended exhale is your physiological reset button.

✅ The extended exhale triggers parasympathetic dominance, lowering heart rate and cortisol within 30 seconds.

3. DECODE ANGER (with focused work)

↳ I do this myself and with my clients in coachings. It really works well. But:

↳ Building EQ is really hard. It takes time. And it takes focused work.

↳ There are many tools to apply in order to identify anger's subtypes, like Frustration, Injustice, Contempt or Vulnerability. Start simple, start here:

✅ Before going to bed, just write down 3 lines, answering the following questions: What did I feel today?

✅ Use the App HOW WE FEEL (link below) twice per day.

✅ High-granularity leaders resolve conflicts 3x faster by addressing root causes rather than surface reactions.

A book for you: The Gift of Anger.

If you made it till here. Great. Bravo!

Please send me some feedback, if you like, if this content is valuable for you (even if you are not a high potential per se).

Let me know, if you have a topic you are interested in for future editions.

"The Gift of Anger" by Arun Gandhi is just a great fit for this edition. His grandfather is Mahatma Gandhi and there are 11 life lessons in this book.

“Use your anger for good. Anger to people is like gas to the automobile—it fuels you to move forward and get to a better place. Without it, we would not be motivated to rise to a challenge. It is an energy that compels us to define what is just and unjust.”

That’s it for this month.

See you at the end of July again.

In the meantime, please share this newsletter with your friends and colleagues, who might like this content.

Let’s connect on Linked-In here.

If you are interested in my coaching program “Mastering Emotions” email me or book an orientation call here:

Take care,

Yours,

Moritz

Sources & Links

The Gift of Anger (book)

My Linked-In-Post about Mastering Anger for High Potentials

My Newsletter about How Emotions Are Made

The How We Feel App

The Biggest Mindset Shift by far

Moritz Eikelmann — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 13:14:48 +0000

When I was working as an assistant doctor in psychiatric hospitals and learning about psychiatric conditions, how to treat them (e.g. how to make symptoms go away) and how to perform psychotherapy, I felt passive, drained from my vitality and depressed.

I stopped eating healthy, stopped exercising and cluttered my mind with all symptoms and problems of the patients, but more severe: The pitfalls and fallacies of a university clinic, prussian hierarchies, enforcing leaders and a toxic work culture. This affected the was I saw myself, treated myself and how I defined my relationships to others.

Luckily, I found great mentors (professional and private), guiding me on my journey out of those clinics, into self-employment, starting my own private practice and business coaching company. Leading a more stable and happy life with great family, friends, business partners and clients.

Instead of remaining stuck in a passive therapy/psychiatric mindset, I've embraced active emotional development. Perhaps most importantly, I've transformed my approach to the how the brain works and how emotions are made.

Why context and knowledge define how we feel

For decades old and scientifically outdated models of the brain and its functions dominated what most people believed about brains, mental health, their emotions, thoughts and behaviours.

In short: The way we think about us, about our self. And the way we think about other people which equals to: Our relationships.

What we know and how we think about our self has serious implications for how we work, how we feel, how we raise our children, how we communicate and work together. And what we are buying. A lot of money has been made with myths about the brain knowledge, but hang on for a short while:

Common Myths about the Brain (that are scientifically false)

The Triune Brain

The triune brain theory dates back to the 1960s when scientists sliced up brains into pieces, colored them and looked closely under the microscope. What they got was a human brain composed of three distinct evolutionary layers: The reptilian brain (instincts), the limbic system (emotions), and the neocortex (rational thought). The evolutionary idea behind it, is that with every new step in evolution, a new layer has been added. In the end, us humans developed our powerful, reasoning Neocortex on top of all that layering, forming a hierarchical structure. As we humans are “made for thinking” and - across the board - geniuses, the Neocortex keeps the old lizard brain structure in check.

Of course, we liked this idea …

Why the Triune Brain feels so damn good

It fits with the western philosophical narrative dating back to Plato’s division of the psyche into rational, passionate, and appetitive parts. Check.

It makes us geniuses and automately smarter than other creatures (with less layers). Check.

We can make shit tons of money by selling books and seminars about how to “keep your lizard brain in check” for CEOs. Check.

How the Triune Brain spread like a virus

The idea of a Triune Brain feels good, sounds great, is utterly oversimplified and incorrect and therefore makes immediate senes.

It layed ground for many of the following concepts:

The idea that emotions (limbic brain) are neurobiologically segregated from cognition (neocortex) and the layers forming different, distinct and separated (not-interconnected) parts.
The idea that the brain therefore is purely reactive. The older parts react to things happening in the outside world, so all this emotion stuff is “out of our controll”, but: We can recapture all that lizard brain nonsense thanks to our neocortex.
The idea that our brains, therefore, are hardwired. After a couple of years (which of course you do not remember consciously) the deal is done. It’s all hardwired and layered. Take it or leave it.
The idea that, therefore, young people’s brains, especially when hitting puberty, get “out of controll”, they can’t be talked to and they can’t controll their behaviour as well as impulses. It’s their main deficit. We have to teach them (The incompetence model of young brains).

How Emotions are Made (science-backed)

Neuroscience showed us that the triune brain theory is wrong. It’s not how our brains work and evolved. Our understanding of the brain and our emotions has evolved significantly.

I highly recommend studying Lisa Feldmann-Barrett’s books and articles, I will link them below. She also appeared on some of the biggest podcasts recently, I will link them below, too.

Here is a short breakdown (I will cover her work in future editions more closely):

The brain operates as a single, dynamic network where all regions interact continuously. Emotions, cognition, and bodily regulation arise from coordinated activity across the entire brain. There is no segregation, no layering, it is all interconnected.
The brain is highly active and predictive: It constantly generates guesses about the world and body based on past experiences, refining these predictions using sensory input. This process, called allostasis, allows the brain to efficiently regulate energy and anticipate needs rather than merely responding to stimuli.
The brain can adapt, learn and rewire at any age. Neuroplasticity enables continuous adaptation, with emotions and concepts learned through cultural and personal experiences. This means emotional responses are not universal but shaped by individual and societal contexts.
Of course, when we encounter certain behaviours, we label it by “out of controll”, “bad”, “wrong”. Maintaining and building relationships with our family, kids, teens, friends and coworkers starts can be tough, but it starts in our self. Tidy up there - everyday - and learn how to speak to these people. There are no deficits or errors. It’s just how the other person predicts.

Why is this a Big Mindset Intervention?

Knowing (for now) how emotions are made is a big mindset intervention on it’s own. Remember how I wrote in the beginning of this newsletter that context and therefore knowledge are shaping how you see your self and define your relationships to others?

The triune and lizard brain idea implies that emotions are hardwired, universal and reactive. In turn, you cannot be responsible for your old emotions making their way to the surface. After all, your flight-or-fight responses from your ancestors were useful back then. Now, as annoying leftovers, they are just … annoying? Except the pleasant emotions, of course.

Finally, in this cascade of justifications, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis comes handy: Throwing big numbers into the mix, psychoanalyst claim that 90-95% of the mind is unconscious. So, who am I to reveal all the 90%? Who has time for >500 hours of psychoanalytic treatment (and who has the money for it)?

As you might know by now: Reason doesn't trump emotion—it's the other way around: Reason is the student, Emotion is the teacher. This predictive process is an active and creative function of your brain - leading to:

`THE ONLY PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR CHANGING YOUR EMOTIONS IS YOU.`

Knowing the Basics of Emotions

This is a vast and super interesting topic. I currently work on an Email Course about the Basics of Emotions.

The view of the brain with a predictive nature and function has huge and, indeed, very practical implications:

For marketing reasons I refer to this as Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Superpower on Linked-In, forgive me for that, but attention is the new currency and somehow you got to make the people stop scrolling after a long workday on commute.
As your brain’s main task is to run your systems and keep you alive, probably 70-80% of energy is used to do exactly this. In turn, taking excellent care of your biology, is key. As stable and energy efficient system, will make better predictions and learn faster.
Building Emotional Intelligence and Mental Resilience therefore starts with optimizing Sleep, Nutrition, Exercise, Breathing, Relaxation, just to name a few.
If you sleep bad, eat bad food, do not exercise, are not conscious of your breathing patterns and do not have any tools to relax, you very likely will feel bad inside, act this bad feelings on the outside, complain, overthink, get anxious, nervous, become irate and mad and so on.
These things come first. The rest (all the fancy tools, habit building, routines and rituals) comes after that.

That’s it for this month.

See you at the end of June again.

In the meantime, please share this newsletter with your friends and colleagues, who might like this content.

Let’s connect on Linked-In here.

If you are interested in my coaching program “Mastering Emotions” email me or book an orientation call here:

Take care,

Yours,

Moritz

Sources & Links

Lisa Feldmann Barrett: https://lisafeldmanbarrett.com/

Her on Huberman Lab Podcast: https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/dr-lisa-feldman-barrett-how-to-understand-emotions

Are there unteachable lessons?

Moritz Eikelmann — Sat, 03 May 2025 07:36:17 +0000

Hey Everyone,

Welcome to What Is A Happy Self, a monthly newsletter where I provide concise and actionable ideas on Emotional Intelligence, Relationships and Agile Leadership.

This is my first newsletter ever. There is a story behind this, which I will share in future editions. This Newsletter - I am being honest - goes out to 6 people so far, so thank you for subscribing and your support. I hope you like what you read.

Chris Williamson recently had Naval Ravikant on his podcast (Link below). At one point, Chris read a short, 2-minute essay exploring the question wether there unteachable lessons exists or not.

He claims that there is a certain subset of advice that - for some reason - we all refuse to learn through instructions. We prefer to disregard the advice from our tribe (our eldest, our parents, from songs or public scandals).

Usually, these are all very basic insights regarding life choices. We have all heard them along the way in one form or the other. Things like:

Money won’t make you happy.
Fame won’t fix your self worth.
You will regret working too much.
You don’t love that pretty girl.
All your fears are a waste of time.

When I read this list forth and back, I realized, that, as Chris Williamson puts it, I not only refused to learn some of the lessons (or did not implement them right from the start).

Also, I refused to hear the message from people warning me about them. And probably still do.

At our core, don't we tend to believe that we're fundamentally different from others?

We might say to ourselves:

“That might be true for them - but not for me.”

“I am the exception to the rule.”

Naval responded that, this might be true. But he replied that unteachable lessons might be too broad to be learnable. They become unteachable in this form and have to be applied in context.

Here is my approach to exactly this - make them teachable and learnable:

I recently started posting content on Linked-In. I really like it so far.

Reading, researching, writing, connecting ideas, and building tools from them is a true passion of mine. I can focus on the topics and projects that interest me most.

After 3 weeks, I started exploring the connection between Focus, Learning and Emotions a bit deeper. And my Text-To-Picture-AI-Tool came up with this graph (you find the link to the post in the Links below):

I have been practicing Deep Work (High Focus - Low Emotions) for a while and it helped me tremendously.

But Deep Learning (High Focus - High Emotions)? I love this idea. Thank you AI.

I've found that there are several tools I use with myself and my clients that might fall into this category. However, one tool consistently produces excellent results:

A Science-Supported Journaling Protocol to Improve Mental & Physical Health.
So I did an extensive, in-depth post on Linked-In about this Tool (Link below).

In the following days, I encouraged myself to pick one topic from the unteachable lessons list and do the journaling routine. I chose: All your fears are a waste of time. The practice led me back to my childhood, youth and many present situations, foremost with my kids.

Like many clients, patients, friends, and myself, a large portion of our emotions are fear-based. While this lesson may seem provocative and over-the-top at first—which is how I felt too—it made more sense after completing the journaling exercise.

What’s it gonna be for you? What will you choose? Pick an unteachable lesson or create your own.

Money won’t make you happy.
Fame won’t fix your self worth.
You will regret working too much.
You don’t love that pretty girl.
All your fears are a waste of time

I encourage you to try the Journaling Protocol Tool, too.

Feel free to email me about your experience with the tool.

I’ll be happy to give you feedback.

Take care, see you next month.

Yours,

Moritz

Links

Chris Williamson’s Podcast click here.

My Deep Learning Post on Linked-In (with the graphic).

Find my deep dive on the Science Supported Journaling Protocol on Linked-In here.

What Is A Happy Self

Map Your Energy, Hunt in Sprints (or Focusing Energy #2)

Today at a Glance

Learn like a Predator or a Lion

The NeuroScience Behind Sprint, Rest, Repeat

How I Coach the Lion’s Schedule

#1 Choose one hunt per sprint

#2 – Run a 45–90 minute sprint (focus block)

#3 – Insert a deliberate rest (10–20 minutes)

#4 – Repeat and Consolidate

The 90-Minute Rule: Your Brain's Energy Bill Just Got Cheaper (or Focusing Energy #1)

Today at a Glance

You don’t have a time problem

The NeuroScience Behind the 90-minute-rule

How I Coach the 90-minute-rule

1,000+ Proven ChatGPT Prompts That Help You Work 10X Faster

"Your brain budget lives in your muscles" (or Building Energy #5)

Today at a Glance

Why go to the gym?

The NeuroScience Behind Resistance Training

1. Muscle mass & metabolic sink function

2. Insulin sensitivity, HbA1c, and metabolic health

3. Sarcopenia, longevity, and functional reserve

Working out every day vs Micro-Dosing

1. Schedule a workout every morning before work.

2. Micro‑doses every 90–120 minutes

100+ Claude Code hacks to ship code 10X faster

"I'm always tired after lunch" is a energy-budget-fallacy (or Building Energy #4)

Today at a Glance

Your Plate is a Predictive Signal

The NeuroScience Behind Food Signaling

Master the Basics: Food Signaling

The Tech newsletter for Engineers who want to stay ahead

"I'm always on edge" is an energy leak, not a personality trait. (or Building Energy #3)

Today at a Glance

Feeling your Budget

The NeuroScience Behind Idling Lower

2 Practical Protocols for Idling Lower

The Mindset of Idling Lower

The free newsletter making HR less lonely

"I’m too tired to exercise” is a budget fallacy (or Building Energy #2)

Today at a Glance

Movement as an Energy Investment, Not an Energy Cost (the “Why”)

The (Neuro)Science Behind CRF (the “What for”)

The Top#5 to Build CRF efficiently (the “How”)

Prescribing clarity for healthcare business

The Nightly "Budget Reset" (or Building Energy #1)

Today at a Glance

Feeling your Budget

The NeuroScience Behind the Brain-Body-Budget

The Nightly "Budget Reset"

Behold the power of beehiiv

WIAHS Outline for 2026 (A Newsletter Coaching Course)

Today at a Glance

Facing the Energy Problem

The NeuroScience Behind the Brain-Body-Budget

Your Newsletter Coaching - What to expect

1) Building Energy

2) Focusing Energy

3) Directing Energy

4) Sending Energy

Slowing Down (or How to Emanate Big Ideas)

Today at a Glance

Slowing Down

The NeuroScience Behind Slow Productivity

How I Coach Do Slow Productivity

The Inner Team (Cancel Self-Doubt for Good)

Today at a Glance

I Have to Control My Face at All Times

The Science Behind the Inner Team

How I Coach the Inner Team

How to Build (Atomic) Habits (and regain your energy)

Today at a Glance

The MD I Saw Myself in Years Ago

Energy as a Core Leadership Idea

How I Coach Habits

Leveraging empathy (the magic tool)

Today at a Glance

The client who drowned in a sea of empathy

Making empathy granular

`THE ONLY PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR CHANGING YOUR EMOTIONS IS YOU.`