Who is Stoyan Yankov
"A dreamer, action taker and passionate about living meaningful." He is a world class productivity & performance coach, a key note speaker and organiser of mastermind retreats to name a few occupations.
Stoyan comes from Bulgaria and has moved to Denmark to do his Master degree in Finances. When you think that you’ll find him in a bank or similar then you are wrong.
I would never have imagined him coming from the finance “world” when I met him. After his studies he started working in the film industry and had his own company for a few years before he moved to personal coaching and organising retreats and speaking. In our conversation he told me his path on how he came to where he is now.
I have had a blast listening to Stoyan and was saddened when we had to stop our talk due to time restrictions.
Our discussion was very deep and full of handy advices on how to craft your life, how to be creative and how to get rid of bad habits and create better ones and so much more. I am looking forward to our next interview, hopefully in person :D.
Let’s see more in details what I got out of the interview.
What a person is Stoyan. He describes himself as a white crayon as he loves simplicity, minimalistic, and clean.
One habit he has that others think is strange is his strong understanding that if he is not in bed by 21:30-22:00 his productivity will be low. He’ll be groggy and missing energy. He has figured that out for himself and is religious about his sleeping. It takes discipline to do so but the benefits are just too big for him. He can recommend the Sleep Smarter book and had a few tips on improve the sleep quality taken from it.
A secret not that many know about is from a job in the USA as a Bellman where he got stopped by the police. That episode being stopped in the middle of the night without papers and breaking the law left him in panic all night unable to sleep. Typical for Stoyan he took the experience and learned from it to be better prepared and more careful in what he is doing.
How did Stoyan get into personal growth.
- 1st Step: During his Bachelor studies in Bulgaria a class mate convinced him to read a book. He has not been reading books for years at that point and was a bit skeptical until he started reading. This book. “The monk who sold his Ferrari” made a difference in his life and he continued reading more books from Robin S. Sharma and other personal improvement authors.
- 2nd Step: The next push came when he had a bone injury from playing football (soccer). His mother decided to buy tickets for a 10 days personal and health training with Norbekov. Stoyan passed 2 levels of the method and has seen people heal from cancer and diabetes, which left him with a deep impression and learning that he has to take good care of his spine and SMILE as much as he can. Body and Mind connection.
Stoyan personal habits to stay happier, more productive and have a compass for life are:
- Try to keep a general positive outlook to life. Don’t suppress negative feelings but focus on the positive.
- He meditates about 15min keeping a straight but relaxed back. In the beginning he made the mistake to overstretch as he wanted to be perfect.
- Exercise, do Yoga or Qi Gong. Your body is a vehicle and make sure you keep it well maintained.
- Work with your spine. Keep it flexible but straight and practice sending positive energy to your different parts of the body. Power Positions.
- Work standing that helps to keep a good and healthy spine position.
To keep himself on track when things get harder:
- Passion Test
- Write down 5 things that make you most happy. Brainstorming 10-15 things; let your heart speak. Think: “When life is great and everything is perfect I am doing, I have this, I…” e.g. I am a Key-note speaker, spend every day 1 hour in nature, talk to new people regularly etc.
Evaluate everything agains everything until you have your top 5. Look at them and let them push you forward and motivate you.
- Worry Setting
- Write all the things that you worry most about down.
- Sort them into 2 categories
1) Things you can control
2) Things you cannot control
1) Come up with ideas how you can solve your worries. e.g. Avoid talking to a certain person. Or Talk to a given person about the worry you have. Take a different way to work. Go by bus instead of car etc.
2) Come up with ideas how you can look different at the problem/ worry. So to make it less bad
- Goal Setting Session/ Visioning (Andrey Iliev)
- Brainstorm any goals you want to achieve
- Brainstorm your passions
Find a combination for those.
e.g Passion: Playing football
Goal: I want to play football in the 2 Series in Germany in 3 years from now
- Wheel of Life
Stoyan uses it to find out in which area he feels best.
- Vision Board
Can be done on the computer or manually by cutting pictures out. Make a big board with all the positive motivational things you want to have in your life. How you look, feel, live, what you do etc. This board can also be done for a project.
Look at it every day and get motivated by your own passion.
- Stoyan has a lot of ideas and to keep himself grounded he learned to cut away the things that less important, and focus on only the important things.
- How to get anything done is by Consistency. You don’t need to be perfect to come far, but you need to be consistent and show up every day.
A tip to be more disciplined.
- Try for 5 days to keep the phone or other electronic device out of your bedroom. Do something analogue like meditate, journaling, reading or what else you can do in bed :-)
How did he end up acting and producing movies?
It all started in High-school when he joined an amateur weekend acting course from the creative theatre. This was a super experience, he felt all relaxed and could release tension while making a fool of himself. Several of the participants joined up and started competing in different competition. They did a lot of DIY learning doing the videos. When he came to Denmark he took his movie passion with him and worked on different projects besides studying for his Master in Finances. Both went parallel but not together. That changed when a work colleague realised that Stoyan is a film producer and not director as he thought. His friend saw also that he could use his experience together with his Master studies. Hence he combined both and made his Master Thesis on financing a movie.
After the Master degree he continued working for another 5 years in movie production with his company before he wanted to start speaking, coaching and create retreats.
So how did he end up being a personal coach and key-note speaker?
He remember the interview between Chase Jarvis and Ben Von Wong. In 2012 Ben met Chase when he was just an average photographer with now special skills. Chase asked him so to find the things he is good in and combine them to something new. 5 years later Ben is world renown for his photography because he combines his personal skills into an Avatar for his work. A package that combines his strength, assets and passion to offer something special for the customers.
Stoyan does the same and also recommends everyone to find their unique set of skills to offer a special package.
For Stoyan that would be Finance, Structured thinking, Amateur Acting, understanding of Movie making and story board combined with his passion personal Improvement.
So he came to think. "Why not!?" Using the skills he acquired to help others live their life, help them to write their own story.
Stoyan saw the connection between a movie and our life. Like all good movies there is a main character, you, which knows it or not, has a goal a vision. And during the movie different obstacles are thrown at her/him which have to be solved and mastered to reach the goal. Now the movie makers can choose to create a victim or a hero as the main character, so can you for your own life. Does life happen to you or are you creating it consciously?
Combining this insight with his tools and passion for personal improvement created Stoyan’s new Life Vision. Coaching and helping others.
Life is about learning to take more positives in, how to turn around perspectives to your advantage.
So his TIP to find your niche, your calling:
Create your Avatar: A package that combines his strength, assets and passion to offer something special for the customers.
Be yourself! What are your resources!? You have more than you know. Take a good look at what you skills are, passions and knowledge. Even things that seem to be a weakness are most of the time an advantage. Your body type, your birth country, your way of thinking, being born into a poor family, a family that travels all the time etc. All that makes you special.
Stoyan's tip to be creative:
He is most creative when he is at peace. He is at peace when he is consistent with his habits.
- Meditate
- Drink enough Water
- Physical Active
- Good Sleep
- Positive Network
He doesn’t need any specific place or things. As longs as he does his habits constantly and gets diversity he is creative. That is also why he is only working 1-2 days a week in the office. The rest he works in different places, at customers or is at retreats.
When Stoyan get's into a rot he will:
- Take a walk, or
- Call a friend for a coffee, or
- Go in the park
- Watch motivational YouTube videos, not related to the current problem but creative in content.
A side note. Nobody is perfect so this approach is not always working.
Here are links to the books, movies and quotes we talked about.
- The monk who sold his Ferrari - by Robin S. Sharma
- Eat that Frog - by Brian Tracy
- Sleep Smarter - by Shawn Stevenson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pukscMN3aKc, https://themodelhealthshow.com/21-cures-sleep-problem-pt1/
- Chase Jarvis Interview with Ben Von Wong https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3WWmQYwM2I
“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first” - Mark Twain
- The Norbekov’s Method - https://norbekovsystem.com/en/norbekov_method/
- Passion Test
- Worry setting
- Wheel of life - A Self- Assessment Tool
You can find Stoyan here:
Personal Webpage: stoyanyankov.com
LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stoyanyankov/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stoyan.stu
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stoyan_yankov/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKK2o_FzwpDgFo0_CQqh5_g/videos?view_as=subscriber
Samodiva Mastermind: http://samodivamasterminds.com
Kommentar schreiben