Challenge your status quo and unleash the inner genius

Jennifer Abel 

Challenge your status quo and unleash the inner genius

By Fatima Gorezi 

Jennifer Abel is an empowerment specialist and entrepreneur passionate about technology and innovation.

With a mind wide open, ready for adventures and driven by curiosity, Jennifer was always eager to follow her heart and make her aspirations a reality from a young age. After figuring out for herself how to bring dreams to life and working together with many ambitious people on making their visionary and passionate projects a reality, she wanted to do more.

Therefore she started a business around empowering people to successfully realise thrilling projects and achieve great things in life. She help them develop skills, grow as individuals, become empowered in everything they do and ultimately – to thrive!

Tell us about your childhood and upbringing. How did it help you to become who you are today and how would it reflect on your future?

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During my childhood, we moved around a lot: I grew up in Germany and the US. When I was six years old my parents got divorced. Due to the fact that my surrounding kept on changing very frequently, I got very good at adjusting to new environments rather quickly. This helped me to be very open minded and flexible. As the eldest of three children, I took on responsibility at a very early age. Being a role model, sharing my knowledge and insights was from early on very natural to me.

Who has motivated and inspired you towards success?

My parents definitely had a strong impact on me, showing us kids the possibilities we have and how to follow our aspirations despite society having its biases. I grew up with the mindset that you have to work hard if you want to get anywhere. Also artists, leaders and changemakers like Marie Forleo, Jason Brubaker, Tony Robbins, Warren Buffett or Tim Ferris, just to name a few, had a strong impact on me. They showed me what else is possible in the world and that there are no limits. Sometimes there are setbacks, but these do not mean that you are not designated to pursuit your journey successfully. They are twists, lessons, tests to check how much you really want it. Especially Marshall Rosenberg and the Dalai Lama taught me how not be too harsh on myself , love myself , take care of myself and then go change the world, break records, be great.

What is your mission in this world?

I strongly believe our purpose in this world is to be happy and create a lot of great memories. Therefore, my mission is to serve people to get into their flow so that they can create memorable experiences for themselves and their loved ones. I see myself as a catalyst creating space for people to grow personally, emotionally and spiritually. This space is equipped with consulting, coaching, training, communities, creating new solutions with a focus on ambitious women and men in corporate jobs or self-employed, who are longing to discover and realise undertakings and ventures that make their heart truly sing. Too often one is stuck in patterns and structures which are not aligned with one’s value system and aspirations. It keeps you busy, covers the basic needs and it is good. My mission is to transform good into extraordinary for those who are committed to challenge their status quo and unleash their inner genius.

You are very passionate about empowerment. Why do you believe that continual personal development is so important for everyone?

I see personal development as a subset of empowerment. I believe that each human being on this planet has the birth right of a free will. When there is no personal development and the human capabilities of reflection and learning new things are not used, the risk of being dominated and repressed is exceptionally high.

Besides, I’m of the opinion that personal development is a human need and everyone should have access to it to fully cherish being human, living in this world, creating things that matter to them. I like to compare personal development with a muscle. The context decides how much you have to train the muscle and the importance can vary. But no training entails many disadvantages, like feeling heavy, stressed or low on energy. Therefore it would make sense to have a continual muscle workout.

In your business, how do you qualify and decide which deals are the most strategic to pursue?

I work very value and vision oriented. So I have a clear picture by checking deals against it in order to qualify them. To make sure that I have enough information about the deal, I make some research to create different scenarios. A particularly big source of information is my network. It helps me to mix my perspective with some external insights to get a more holistic view on a certain topic. When that makes sense and my gut screams “Let’s go!”, then I’m 100% in.

Looking back at your path & how you got to where you are now, what’s one of the things you are most grateful for?

I’m most grateful for the people and challenges I met on the way. Having companions along the way makes the whole journey so much more fun. They support you, challenge your perspectives and approaches or just be there to give you company. Although some challenges I faced in the past were so painful and felt so unnecessary, they definitely shaped me to the woman I am today. For me, challenges have always been a growth catalyst in one way or another. They simply push you out of your comfort zone.

What is your experience from working with women – what is your opinion about their talents and skills?

I have worked with women as co-workers, supervisors and clients. Some experiences have been great and some have been very horrible. But for the majority of my professional life, I actually have worked with men due to being a consultant and coach in the IT industry.

Speaking from my very personal, professional experience what I admire most of women is their social skill and being of service. When a woman is in her true power, no matter what happens, they are ready, driven and creative to find and deliver the best solution. But when fear kicks in and there is a track record of their accomplishments being exploited and devalued, which most often comes by ego-driven colleagues or supervisors, women then tend to turn into a much more rational, cold and bitchy person. In addition to that, they project their negative experience, especially on their female peers. When that happens it is very difficult to break out of this vicious circle. Although this also happens to men, I have the feeling that for women it is harder to find their way back on their track due to the lack of positive role models, which are more congruent to a service-oriented style of working.

What are the qualities of an empowered woman? And how can women be empowered while maintaining their femininity?

I see an empowered woman as a person who is completely aligned with herself regarding her values, beliefs and aspirations, and also lives them in the outside. She is courageous enough to be herself, no matter the resistance she might experience. The tricky part is to actually figure out who you truly are, what you stand for and to be brave enough to live it fully without being restricted by society’s expectations and rules. Another part is that elements of one’s alignment develop and evolve over time. It is not a static concept. Same is with femininity, which is from my point of view very fluent and very individual. It is not a question of how feminine or masculine someone is. The more interesting question is how much of one’s self is present. To maintain one’s alignment and presence, a very powerful tool is reflection. Taking some time for one’s self to check-in on regular basis. You could do that every other week for maybe 30 minutes and ask yourself what happened the past couple of weeks. What did you feel? What were you grateful for? What would you like to be different? What do you desire? What has to happen so that you can have that in your life?