The Chronicles of Curious Characters

My name is Peter Lübken. I was born as a German and spent there my first 20 years.

Actually first 30 years. Then I got married. My wife, my ex-wife, is a French diplomat.

So we moved from then Berlin to Los Angeles and then to Washington DC.

I came back to Europe, to Paris, spent there three years and then in 2013 we then ended up in Luxembourg.

In the meantime we also had two daughters and after we split up when I was in Luxembourg I stayed here,

and she moved on, so I'm here in Luxembourg since 10 years.

So you're almost like a local. You said that you were born as a German citizen.

What kind of citizenship do you have right now and do you feel still German or of a different nationality?

Yeah, being married to a French woman allowed me to also get the French nationality,

and two years back I also applied for the Luxembourgish citizenship.

So you have triple, you have three nationalities. Three nationalities, yeah. I do love my home country, Germany, but I don't have a strong desire to go back.

So it's always nice to visit and to also go back to my roots, but I like it here in Luxembourg.

It's a small, beautiful, cosmopolitan country and city. There's no longing to go back.

And how many languages except English and I guess German do you speak?

Yeah languages were always hard for me at school. I tried it so we had English and French.

But I was really bad at it so only when I then started to do an MBA which was in English I then,

really learned English and then the years in the States also helped there and when we

Came back to Paris. I then learned French.

And yeah, here in Luxembourg, I then learned Luxembourgish more intense the last two years.

And now at work, I also speak Luxembourgish.

Some of my colleagues listen, they might think that's not really Luxembourgish what I speak,

but at least I'm trying.

So you speak German, English, French, Luxembourgish. So you speak four languages.

You have three nationalities. You're almost like a spy.

No, I think I'm a good Luxembourgish, typical Luxembourgish citizen.

That sounds about right.

You mentioned your work, but I don't think we are going to talk about your work today,

because you do have at least a couple of very interesting hobbies that you do outside of work.

Well, maybe at least the first one you do also at work, or both of them, who knows,

maybe you will find out today.

One thing that really intrigued me, because just for the listeners to be transparent,

I know Peter for a few years. We used to work together at our previous company.

And it was a very nice to get to know Peter then. But then I found out about something that,

knowing Peter, I did not suspect that he is doing that in his free time. And the thing that I'm

saying is about is the stand-up comedy. You're a stand-up comedian. Maybe could

you tell us how you got into stand-up comedy? First of all that's our second

interview with you. So my first interview was when you interviewed me as my new

future manager. You're right. So now it's the second time and I'm not sure on which

occasion I was more nervous. Yeah I somehow I liked comedy, I always like

comedy and when we were living in Paris I once went to one open mic and like

with many many comedians they are in the audience and they they see the,

uh... the the other committees on stage and you think to yourself you can do

better so that was uh... my My initial motivation?

So I tried it out in Paris for a couple of times, it was in the English comedy, and it was nice, it worked.

When we moved to Luxembourg, there was not real comedy scene back then,

10 years back, but there was one guy, Joe Egan, who always had a couple of shows over the year,

once a month during the spring and summer month.

And there I also asked him. So he would bring professional comedians on stage

and I asked him if I can also perform as an amateur.

And so he allowed that. And I had then my first appearances in Luxembourg.

Then also in English, and then step by step separately, a comedy scene developed in Luxembourg.

Right now, there's the Luxembourg comedy scene, which is also a Facebook and Instagram page,

where we have every Thursday an open mic in the uptown bar.

And there are always paid shows with professionals and local comedians happening often on a weekly basis.

So I had to stop for a couple of years, but I didn't do much.

But then the last two or three years I got back into the game and I enjoy to be on stage

and I enjoy to tell stories and I enjoy if people are laughing.

And where do you get all the inspiration for the stories and for the jokes that you tell on the stage?

It's personal. There are some standard things you do always around living in Luxembourg,

being a German, having lived in Paris or abroad. Those are always some good topics to make.

The comparison between different nations and different people and that's always,

well in Luxembourg you always have an appreciative audience for this for this kind of thing.

And then it's other personal things about relationships so i mentioned i was married

i got divorced i have two kids so and there are already a lot of things you can so you play around

those topics because i i always was interested when i see or i hear a stand-up comedian i mean

the jokes they're telling about their own life i mean it's hard to believe that so many funny

things are happening in their life when I compare my boring life to their life.

And then I was always wondering how much there is truth in that stories and how much they are just

twisting the reality just to make it funny. From your perspective what's the ratio between the

truth and the fake funny stories? Yeah it's about 80, 80, 20, 80 percent is true and then you kind

of twisted it a little bit to make it a little bit more funny. But for some stories you don't

really need to twist it because it just happens like that. That's then how you.

Present it and the truth of your words to make it then more interesting and more funny.

And how often do you come up with new jokes? Do you prepare completely new material for every

stand-up that you do or you let's say come up with 20 or 30 percent of new

jokes every now and then? Yeah for the open mic you go there usually to have to

test new material so I try to come up with something new at least every two

weeks that's about two or three minutes and then see how the audience reacts and

then on an open mic you usually have around five to seven minutes on stage so

you mix it up with some new some some things you know that works to warm the

audience a little bit up and then something new to see how how it's how it falls with them. Because you had also your first solo show a couple of months

if I'm not mistaken? I mean, I don't remember the exact date,

but I was there at your solo show. When I heard about it, I was like,

oh, Peter giving his first solo show, I cannot miss it.

So I definitely went there. I enjoyed it very much.

We met some colleagues from our former work there as well.

They really enjoyed it. That was your first solo, right? How did you prepare for that?

And was there any special preparation that you did for that solo when compared to the open mic?

Yes, for this solo I had kind of 50 minutes to prepare and I tried to have a storyline throughout the whole 50 minutes.

So I had some stuff about Luxembourg, about comparison with the different countries,

then some more personal things, then I had a part about meditation in the middle to also relax the audience in a funny way.

And I also had a part where I had some PowerPoints prepared,

but trying to not have a typical PowerPoint, but to have it in a more funny way.

So those parts I then tried to mix and match to have a good storyline,

have a different mix of themes and topics, so that it's not boring to the audience,

So there's always something new coming up and make it all the way interesting.

I guess going on the stage, there was a bit of a stage fright.

I know that myself, I attend the Toastmasters from time to time,

just to learn public speaking and overcome that stage fright

when I have to speak in front of the people.

Now, of course, the reality of work has changed a bit because for example, I work from home.

So when I give presentations, I don't stand up in front of people,

real people, so to speak, because I have them on the screen.

So it is a bit different.

How was it for you? Was it, is it natural for you to be on the stage or you also had to, let's say, overcome this stage fright?

For me, it's a challenge to go on stage, but a challenge that I want to engage,

And also the comedy itself, it's for me, it's about storytelling to tell my story in a funny way.

In many ways, it's also kind of therapeutic.

So when I grew up in the Northern part of Germany, we are known for not being very talkative

and also not to talk a lot about emotions.

And this is also kind of reflected in my personality.

So then going on stage and preparing stories that helps me then to go back into myself,

and think about myself, think about my emotions, what's happened.

So you mentioned meditation, you said about expressing the emotions.

Do you do anything else except for stand-up comedy in that direction?

Yes, so since some time I'm into therapeutic coaching. So this is a program I follow since one year and it will continue for another year.

This on one side helps me to know myself better, but I also kind of feel an urge or purpose to also help other people to live a more happy and a more fulfilling life.

So this is a topic which came to me something like two years ago.

So I had at that time a relationship which was on some levels dramatic.

It didn't end well, but this relationship was really transformational for me,

because my partner at that time, she had or probably she still has some complex trauma originating from her childhood,

and that made her life very challenging.

So then once she identified that she has experienced those traumas,

she was very dedicated to understand how it happened, what it made to her and how to deal with it,

and also to maybe to heal it for her.

So because this consumed a big part of her life and I was a partner it also had a big impact

onto our relationship and I became then very interested as well in order to understand her.

But then it turns out also to it helped me to understand me and other people much more.

So you started the therapeutic coaching because of that relationship because you wanted

to help her and your relationship or your therapeutic coaching started afterwards?

I was always curious about to understand why people react in the ways they react and this.

Was the relationship with her was kind of the trigger to go deeper. And then the original

thought was not to help her, it was more to better understand her. In between the relationship fell

apart but the interest to learn more about trauma or in general about

why we act in certain ways state and then the idea or the desire grew also to then help other people. And so you're right now let's say still

studying to be a therapeutic, I will have problems pronouncing this, a therapeutic coach,

right? Yes. Can you tell us how long the program takes and what things you learn during this this program.

Yeah, maybe as an introduction, so many of our behaviors that we show and how we act,

many of those they are controlled through our unconscious mind, and mostly by the things

that we learned and experienced in our early childhood.

So I'm not saying that everybody is traumatized, but we all took over many beliefs and behaviors

from our parents or other caregivers from that time, when we were really small.

And there's a lot of good stuff.

So especially if you had a loving family with a lot of compassion.

But then along the way, there were also a lot of very unhelpful things.

And this can be some really ridiculously small things.

So me as a German, so if your caregiver was German and very particular about recycling, right?

Now that you're an adult, maybe you get angry because your partner put the paper

into the wrong recycling bin.

So that's one easy example, but it could also be more dramatic things.

So maybe you only felt loved by your father or your parents if you brought home good grades,

because only then you got some praise from them.

And that might resonate also with more people here. It's familiar to me. Yeah.

So, in this, as an effect, it might be that your belief system is then,

people will only accept and love me if I'm successful.

And then, this belief continues throughout your life, and then you wonder why you now spend 14 hours at work

and became a workaholic.

And then if you continue on this scale, it then can go up to trauma events where you had permanent emotional neglect,

which is kind of the worst thing that can happen to a child or there was physical and emotional abuse.

So in some ways we are all victims of this and it always has kind of an impact on us.

So if you're lucky, it's just that you're getting angry about the recycling.

But often there are some bigger things which we have to cope with.

And often a coping mechanism is then a kind of addiction, so I talked about being a workaholic.

But then it could also be addiction to foods, to alcohol or to drugs.

So all those things that you have learned and you are still learning through this therapy,

I think also got you the chance to learn about yourself and about the society.

Have you learned something that really impacted you, that changed your view on maybe yourself,

your friends, your colleagues at work?

Yeah, it was for me a real transformational change. So to explain, you can have a transformational change or you can have a, there's also something

like called a translational change.

So in that translational change is kind of a change in your behavior.

So you start a new diet or you decide to go running every second day.

So you work on your skills, on capabilities, and that's good, but it might not always be a lasting change.

Then a transformational change is then really a change in someone's self.

So this can change your worldview, your beliefs, even your purpose, your values, and also how you relate to the world.

So this transformational change is changed from the inside and this kind of happened to me.

For me it was a journey to discover and better understand myself.

Especially why I behave sometimes in ways that I couldn't understand before,

or also understand when I get triggered for some special behaviors.

And yeah, I learned to fully accept myself, to be compassionate with myself.

And I have now a better idea of what I want in life, what I value in life,

and where I see my purpose.

And in addition, I also see people differently.

It's a more compassionate view. So you always say, put yourself into the other person's shoes, right?

So if you get triggered by somebody else, but then if you put yourself in his or her shoes,

then and you understand where she's coming from,

how she grew up, what are her experiences, then in the end might come to the conclusion I would have reacted the same way that he or she did.

Yeah, because sometimes when you interact with the other person, you don't really know

what that person is going through, right? Maybe he or she found out about cheating husband or wife

in the morning and that's why she or he is reacting. Maybe they have some problems,

other problems in the family, maybe some sicknesses. Because my understanding is you

you're still learning to be the coach. Yes.

Once you finish your study, what is your plan? Do you plan on being a professional coach,

a part-time coach, or do you do it just as, let's say a side hobby of yours.

It would start as a side hobby and then I would see how it goes.

So if I could do it in my free time first, that would be a good approach.

So there are some guinea pigs who are willing to meet with me,

so where I also get a better feeling of how the tools that I learned,

how I can apply them and what kind of impact

they have on other people.

Could you share with us some of those tools and how a session with a therapeutic coach can look like?

Is it about sitting and talking about your feelings? Is it about you prescribing some funny medicine?

How does it look like? Yes, so people seek help

because they are not feeling happy and they feel something else, they feel maybe anxious,

they feel lost, overwhelmed, betrayed, worthless, and, and, and.

So the work here involves working with emotions. And emotions are a result from your thoughts.

And many things that we think are because of our beliefs. So I believe I must be successful in order to be loved, but I didn't get promoted, so I must be worthless.

So the work as a therapeutic coach would be to work a lot with your emotions.

At first you start to understand what is the purpose of your client, what he wants to achieve.

And then you also have some elements of a talk therapy to understand why the client came to you,

what are his thoughts, his feelings.

A lot of work in the beginning is to bring the awareness to the client about the patterns.

The client might be running about the thought patterns and understand what kind of emotions

this brings up for the client. And also where in the body the clients can feel

and experience those emotions.

So the work with the body is a big part here because often we distance yet from our body.

Many people are stressed because of their personal life, because of their work life,

and often this stress is neglected or not addressed.

But this stress is not going away, it stays in your body and then causes some illnesses,

so some diseases, you might get sick more often.

So the body plays a big part here and if you want to change an unhelpful behavior, an unhelpful thought pattern,

you cannot think yourself out of it.

So you also have to engage with your body.

And as I said before, the unconscious plays a big role, so often you don't know why you're acting in such a way, why you're thinking this, what you're thinking, which is unhelpful.

A lot of the tools then work with the unconscious.

So there's a big toolbox we can use. So after you identify the pattern of the client, of the thinking,

and to name and label this, that's also, that's already very helpful,

so that you and the client understand

what is the thought pattern and what is the pattern they are running.

Because seeing this and naming this can already be a big relief.

And seeing that you have a specific thought pattern of course doesn't mean that you have to be it.

So maybe as an example, so maybe you wanted to work out today,

but you got busy or you were too tired and then you have your inner critic who then starts talking to you,

makes you feel guilty, makes you feel bad.

And then because you feel bad, in order to feel better, you start eating chocolate.

And then after that, the inner critic comes back even worse and makes her even more guilty.

But what we then want to work with is not that you didn't work out,

but the inner critic that's talked to you.

So I want that the client gets a better handle to work with this inner critic

to calm this inner critic a little bit down.

So first of all, the awareness, to know what's the typical speech the inner critic has

is then helpful to give a tool to the client to stop this negative thinking,

think about something more positive to set an anchor so that whenever he notices that he comes back

to this unhelpful thinking, that he knows how to stop this thinking,

come to a better place,

and also be more compassionate with yourself to say it's all good, you are enough as you are.

But then when working more with the client and closer with the client, you might see that the root cause lies even deeper.

So the root cause is in your belief, in your values.

And then we would work to identify those unhelpful, then we would work to identify those beliefs.

And find the values that you would like to have instead and that are more aligned to your sense,

to your purpose in life and trying to manifest these new beliefs and this then goes more into a

transformational change. So you identify the let's say the problem and the thinking pattern

like you said, how then you can work with the person to change those thinking patterns? If you

if you can just give a couple of examples.

I guess there is a secret toolbox as well, but if maybe you can share with us,

at least a couple of tools, how, because I guess also the person needs to work

on himself and herself outside of the session, right?

Yes, so the client would also get some exercises as well in order to better understand what are his,

her beliefs and values to think about

what kind of, what things trigger them.

And also to help the client to find the positive resources in yourself.

So you have some passions you like to...

To cycle, and then that's the way how you can clear your mind, or you do some other kind of sports, or you love reading, you love teaching.

So to also discover the helpful resources you have, which then can play an important role to create new thinking patterns for yourself.

One way how you can stop negative thinking is we call that a stop process.

So you become aware of the patterns you're running. You become aware of what kind of emotion

this triggers within you.

So as an example, maybe you are anxious to give a presentation in front of people.

So you'll, and then you try to notice the thought pattern running in your head.

So maybe it is, yeah, I don't have the experience, that people will laugh at me.

And so you try to identify those thought patterns to then also understand what kind of emotions this brings up in you.

So you become anxious, and then how you feel it in your body, so maybe your breathing becomes shallow, your heart is racing.

So once you identify this, you see what it makes with you, you then say,

is this helpful for you or not?" And mostly the answer is no. So you then say,

stop to yourself, you say stop to your thinking pattern with your voice, also with a gesture,

which then also gives a signal to the body to change or to stop thinking. And instead.

You think about something more positive. So in the first step, you try to stop this thinking,

which can already be very helpful. In a second step you think about what else instead you can do,

what you can think. And here we come to the more helpful resources you have in yourself.

With a lot of compassion to yourself you just start about thinking, yes I can do this,

I have the capabilities to present and it doesn't matter what the other people think about myself.

Before you also mentioned that you work not only with the the thinking process

and the subconscious level but also you work with and engage with the body of

the client or the person that you are trying to help so this kind of engagement that the physical engagement I guess because you said engage with the

body well what what is that how can it look like what is the approach there the

The first approach is to become aware of it.

Some people there's already a dissociation between what they think and their connection

to the body and what this, respectively, what this thinking does make with the body.

So first step is to become aware of this. One helpful thing when you work with the body is also called tapping,

where you can tap on acupressure points which can help to relieve stressful feelings, anxiety.

So here we tap on different parts of the body and reiterate the issue you want to address.

We can also do hypnotic sessions.

So this is not a hypnosis my think about where you'll see people being in hypnosis on a stage

and they do crazy things.

So that's the hypnosis I talk about is a more, it's a very respectful hypnosis

where you try to access the unconscious of your client.

Because many of your behaviors, of your beliefs are stored in your unconscious.

And by going into hypnosis, you can access this a little better and give assertions to the client

which unconsciously can unlock things so that your thought patterns will also change.

Question from my personal experience, I have problems or issues with opening up,

like expressing my emotions.

And definitely if I, for example, went to a therapeutic coach, like yourself or someone

else, I definitely know that I would have problems just talking to that person.

I imagine that there are other people with the same issue. Is there something that I can do before going to a therapeutic coach to help myself open

up in front of that person?

I think the biggest step you already took is to contact a therapeutic coach.

So this already signals that there's something you want to address.

The job of the therapeutic coach is then to build rapport with you so that the client can understand he's in a safe place.

It's also fine that if in the first session we don't go deep,

not even in the second or third session, it might also be that the client doesn't feel that there's enough

rapport with the with the coach and that's that's also also fine and then.

The client might might look for for somebody else so it's it's always a very personal thing between,

between a coach and and a client the the client needs to feel safe supported and and trusted.

And do you think that building this rapport and you know let's say relationship the coaching

relationship. Is it easier to build that between a male client and a male coach

or male and female or does not really matter? I think that's the decision of

the client with whom he she feels feels more comfortable then also depends on

on the history of the client so maybe there are some issues in the past with

with male figures or female figures and then it's easier to work with somebody else.

And how long usually a session lasts?

I think a session between 45 minutes and an hour is a good way.

But I try always at the end to have a last kind of meditation session which is a guided meditation with some visualization

which is a good way to then ground the client again at the end of the session.

And maybe give some positive feelings to leave the session.

And before we finish our conversation today, is there anything else that you would like to share with the listeners of the podcast?

I think what I would like to share is that life is amazing and that you can always change.

I was very surprised about myself, how much I learned in the last two years and how much it's changed myself and my views.

I found it amazing how things can change, and it's never too late to...

To learn something, to do something, if it's comedy or do a therapeutic coaching.

The mind is incredible, so there's this concept of neuroplasticity, meaning you are always able to

change your mind. You might have some thought patterns, some pathways from your early childhood

which are very strong but you can unlearn this and you can create new pathways, more helpful

pathways all the time. Everybody can do it. Anybody has the ability to change. And that was.

Amazing to feel it for myself. And that's also one reason why I want to help other people as well.

In my background, I think I don't have a lot of emotional baggage. So my upbringing was good,

was was not perfect but I had a really loving supportive home but still there

were things that I that I needed to address and it made me much more free

and content and happier and if I can bring some of this to other people that

would be very amazing. Thank you Peter for for sharing that I think that one of

the takes from from that like you mentioned it's it's never too late no matter if you're 30 20 50 60 as long as you recognize that you want some help or

you need some help and you reach out it's it's never too late and I think also maybe sometimes the the family members you can the person can talk with

the family members about certain questions that they have about their life about the way they think and maybe the family can help also navigate that

person into contacting a coach because quite often maybe we don't know that.

There was such a possibility of meeting with a coach and having someone just to

talk to and the coach help navigate our thinking patterns so thank you Peter for

for sharing your passion today with us. Thank you for sharing your story about ending up in Luxembourg

and also doing stand-up comedy. Thank you for sitting down with me and thank you for your time.

Thank you Konrad for inviting me.