A Finnish Swede moved to Switzerland! (and now seeks a better work-life balance)

Two and a half years ago my employer asked me if I’d like to take my Nordic-focused marketing job and expand it to the thirteen countries where we have a presence. This would also mean a move to beautiful Switzerland, where our head office is located. Being single with no kids, the decision wasn’t really difficult, I think I thought all of three seconds before giving my boss the ok.

I’ve really had a blast exploring my new home country. I love to travel and being in Central Europe means that everything is just a short drive away (compared to the distances when traveling from Finland 🙂 ). Many weekends have been filled with road trips and since I’m a big foodie, I love visiting all the great markets where you can see the seasons change, the Sunday market in Divonne being my favourite. I also write a travel and food blog about my adventures, mostly as a travel diary for myself, but still has a nice crowd of readers on it. My daily life has all the necessary routines of work, sports, French lessons, etc. and in the summer I try to get out to the golf course to continue the battle against the ball…

Being a social person, I left a large network of friends and family back home, with whom I am of course still in contact, but the daily presence isn’t there anymore. Now, I have some new, local friends who are very important to make me get out of the house and to the office on time.

Moving to a new country because of your job usually means that you are very passionate about your job, and I am, and would (sometimes) even call myself a workaholic. Workaholic is such an ugly word, but I really love the products I work with and enjoy the partnership with all my European colleagues. So, the time you spend at the office gets longer.

I don’t mind working long hours, that is not a problem, but I’ve still recognized that I need to do something for a better work-life balance, for my own long term well-being and health.

Today meditation is quite trendy, “everybody” is doing it and there are even apps for it. So, meditation has been on my mind, maybe not actively, but still there, as an option in my search for balance.  So it was quite a nice coincidence when the team at Transcendental Meditation (TM) in Switzerland contacted me and asked me if I’d like to blog for them, to write about the experience, when starting to practice and living with TM. I was interested and spent some time googling their online presence to see if this would be something for me.  I was happy to see that the whole idea seems very simple and down to earth and not at all too “out there”.

Now we’ve scheduled the first part of the learning process, the introductory talk, and I’m looking forward to learning TM and blogging about it. During my Christmas break I was sitting on a beach in Bali and tried to close out the busy world and just “be”. It really wasn’t easy, my mind refused to just “be”, actually, even on vacation it was all over the place… So my instructor will have his work cut out for him, and me. 🙂

Satu Kankaansyrjä

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Learn more about the benefits of the Transcendental Meditation technique at an introductory talk with a certified TM teacher.

Sign up for the next talk nearest you on our site at: http://switzerland.tm.org/web/m/find-a-teacher