Welcome to my home

Note: I’m aware that Carsten Christiani is the most Christian name possible. And in a second I’m going to talk to you about Jesus, but please rest assured: none of this is about religion.

For my entire career, I have stayed below the legally permissible minimum of social media and internet presence. I just wasn’t drawn to it, and I figured I had to figure some things out for real first, building person to person and place by place.

I’m not entirely sure why that has changed now, but I do know that it’s time to share what looks true to me and send up a bit of a flare to the people who recognize what I’m talking about in what they are building.

If you bear with me, I’m gonna do my best to give you a genuine sense of who I am, why I do what I do, what I’m all about, and how we can work together. I’m choosing to make it less easily legible than I could because I’m just not interested in anything superficial these days. Whether or not this approach works for you — it’s probably doing its job ;-)

Ik Ben

Ever since I was a teenager, I’d asked my parents for a present. I wanted a statue of Jesus — but not the sad version nailed to a wooden cross. The one where he’s standing open, arms wide, blessing. Not the cheesy Rio tourist version, but one that fully embodies that radiant aliveness, that openness. My parents know me well enough to have a sense of what I was actually asking for, and for more than a decade we never could find the right one.

I was well into my twenties when they found an art piece on the island where we’ve been holidaying all my life, and that I now call home. It’s called Ik Ben. I Am. The artist is Margrit Halma. A bronze sculpture. Standing fully present, fully open, rooted. So right and so obviously what I’d really been asking for that it was a bit ridiculous when I saw it.

And this is both what I want this site to be, and what my entire life is about: Embodying this aliveness.

Most of what gets built is built from fear. I build from the other thing.

When people used to ask my ex-wife what I actually do for a living, she’d answer: “Nobody really knows :-D”

Neither do I. But what I actually do is very simple: I get very still and listen and sense what wants to move. In a person, it’s like seeing a flower missing three of its petals — the outline of what could come next for them. I put it on the table, as a question, as an idea. If their system recognizes it as a missing piece, they move toward it. Their being seizes on it, they fill it in, they make it come alive.

Same with an organization. Same with any system. The selection mechanism is simple: does this feel like a direction where there’s more aliveness? That’s it.

Some people recognize this immediately. You can see it in their eyes — in a conversation, on a walk, anywhere. Sometimes even without eye contact. That is who I work with.

Father. Partner. Human owned by two dogs — Nanuk and the late Leelou. Based in the Netherlands, Germany, and coddiwompling from project to project.

About · Work with Me · Field Notes

If any of this resonates: Book a call | [email protected] — we’ll see if a conversation wants to happen.

P.S.: All em-dashes are mine — and mine alone. Just because AI likes them, too, I’m not gonna stop using my favorite grammar tool thing.