20th October 2021

More self-awareness for better life choices

After 15 years of professional experience in the financial sector, Christelle Dewaele trained in kinesiology and switched to the world of entrepreneurship. What gave her the desire to become an entrepreneur and how did she take the plunge? In this article, she explains her journey. Enjoy reading it!

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Meet Christelle

My name is Christelle Dewaele. I am a kinesiologist and I have developed a self-awareness technique called Personal Decoding.

I have a master’s in finance and a degree in kinesiology. I work to bridge the gap between the intangible world of emotions and our down-to-earth side, to effect positive change in people’s lives.

The idea of creating a business

When my children were born I had to ask myself some tough questions about my life choices and then experienced a burnout that confirmed my doubts about my career. So I spent some time getting to know myself better. What I learned was that a large part of myself was not being expressed in my life: the desire to create my own business gradually became self-evident.

The stages of business creation

1. Training and learning

My motivation for starting my kinesiology training was personal: I needed to better understand and manage my hypersensitive daughter’s emotional outbursts.

Kinesiology is a technique used to release the stresses and emotional blockages that keep us from achieving our goals, based on information transmitted through muscle tone. I learned about the impact our emotional states have on our life choices, and the importance of letting go our blockages to find lasting wellness.

Personal Decoding is a technique I developed six years ago. Once again, my reasons were personal: I wanted to get to know myself better in order to understand my burnout. My goal was to make choices for myself, and not out of convenience or fear.

This technique combines several different approaches and helps raise our awareness of our skills, talents and qualities, as well as our blockages and the ways we hold ourselves back in life. The aim is to take an individualised and flexible view so we can understand both our potential and our limits.

I was not thinking about making this my career when I was in training. I was just looking for the best ways to address the issues I was facing in my life. Because none of the approaches were able to address all my problems, I wound up combining several to create a “tailor-made” approach. This fundamental truth is often what pushes people towards entrepreneurship!

2. Structuring the business

When you gain self-confidence, you let life take you where you need to go when the time is right.

Then all you have to do is say "yes" and dare.

Later on, I had the chance to take the Fit4Entrepreneurship programme and to move forward with support from Nyuko. This was key to asking myself the right questions, deciding whether my ideas were realistic and properly structuring my project.

In addition to training sessions that relate directly to our businesses, I think it is very important to have a good understanding of entrepreneurship so we can set up a basic structure that will provide both reliability and the flexibility we need to cope with a changing environment.

A stable base ensures that our biggest dreams come true!

This led me to offer some of my services locally and some online. For this online segment, Marjolaine Gailly’s recommendations were very helpful. The support she offered matched my values of mutual support, sharing and kindness.

After that, I felt confident in my decision to switch careers and dived right in.

3. Growth and visibility

Once my business was established, I wanted to increase my visibility and that of my techniques, which are not widely known.
What helped me do that was meeting a lot of great people in my various training courses. I also got a number of recommendations from my circle of friends (my first guinea pigs!). This generated word of mouth, which is very important in a field like mine.

Little by little, I was asked to do interviews and share my experience and approach at local and online conferences, which raised my profile and awareness of my methods.

4. And now?

I divide my time between my local activities (in Leudelange and Steinfort) and online work.

I help people who are unhappy in their personal or professional lives and would like to get to know themselves better so they can make the right life choices for themselves. My goal is to give them the support they need using a structured method that takes their emotional state into account and helps them achieve wellness and self-confidence in keeping with their personality.

Christelle’s advice to future entrepreneurs

There is no challenge greater than that of entrepreneurship: you have to constantly push yourself to your limits and face your fears. But these continuing challenges help you gain self-confidence and grow. So go for it!

Christelle and her bank

I wanted a sound financial services provider. Spuerkeess is the ideal partner – I received a personal welcome and was given the right advice for my business. Today all I need is the basics, but my needs will change as my business grows. Spuerkeess will be there every step of the way.

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Nyuko has signed a partnership with Spuerkeess, in order to foster entrepreneurial spirit and strengthening the bank's position with company founders from the start of their businesses. More info in our article: https://www.spuerkeess.lu/en/blog/experts-corner/nyuko-fostering-entrepreneurial-spirit/.