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Chihni Lo | Expat Money & Mindset Coach

@chihnithechili

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15 yrs in 🇩🇪 | Ex-Finance → Expat Coach
Rewiring career, money & life struggles in Germany
📍 Taiwan 🇹🇼→ Berlin 🇩🇪
👇 Work with me

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I don’t know how many times I’ve fallen in and out of these two mindsets during heartbreak.

One version of me believed the pain would never end.

The other believed that if I kept showing up for myself, eventually it would.

There were days when getting out of bed felt impossible. Days when I hated waking up because I knew my life wasn’t the same anymore. I didn’t want to move forward. I couldn’t imagine feeling happy again.

But eventually I got tired of watching myself suffer without doing anything about it.

So I started therapy.
I started journaling.
I started meditating.

Not because I wanted to “get over it.”
Because I wanted my life back.

Little by little, things changed.

I started noticing the beauty in small moments.
I laughed more.
I wore bright colors again.
I stopped looking for someone else to complete me and started falling in love with the person I saw in the mirror.

And one day, without realizing it, the pain stopped being the center of my life.

If you’re in the middle of heartbreak right now, I want you to know this:

The version of you that feels broken today is not the final version of you.

We are far more resilient than we give ourselves credit for.

What’s one thing that’s helping you heal right now? ❤️

#HeartbreakHealing #GrowthMindset #DatingAdvice #EmotionalHealing #MindsetShift by @chihnithechili

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4 months ago

I never thought I would share this story publicly.

For most of my life, I carried so much anger.

Anger at my parents.
Anger at the people who bullied me.
Anger at life for making me feel different.

The truth is, underneath all that anger was a little girl who didn’t feel good enough.

So I spent years trying to fix her.

Changing myself.
Hiding myself.
Looking for love in places that could never give me what I was really looking for.

Then at 29, I was diagnosed with lymphoma.

For the first time, I was forced to ask myself a question:

“If my life ended tomorrow, would I be proud of the life I’ve lived?”

The answer was no.

That diagnosis didn’t save me.
The decision I made afterwards did.

The decision to stop running.
To forgive.
To heal.
To take responsibility for my life.
And most importantly, to make peace with myself.

We don’t get to choose where we start.

But we do get to choose who we become.

And if you’re still fighting yourself, please know this:

The relationship you have with yourself is worth saving.

#SelfAcceptance #MindsetShift #PersonalGrowth #HealingJourney #LifeLessons by @chihnithechili

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4 months ago

One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned through my coaching training is the power of a mindset shift.

Most people think coaching is about finding the perfect solution to a problem. In reality, many times the problem itself hasn’t changed by the end of the session.

What changes is how you see it.

You walk out with a fresh perspective, a calmer mind, and a deeper understanding of yourself. Suddenly, what felt impossible no longer feels so overwhelming. You realize you have more options than you thought, more resources than you gave yourself credit for, and more control than you imagined.

I’ve seen it happen in my own life over and over again.

The situation stays the same. The story changes.

And when the story changes, your actions change. Your energy changes. Your confidence changes.

That’s why I believe that when you shift your perspective, you’ve already solved a big part of the problem.

Which perspective in this video do you relate to the most? Let me know in the comments ❤️

Save this for the days when your thoughts are making life harder than it needs to be.

#mindsetshift #selfgrowth #emotionalintelligence #personaldevelopment #lifecoaching by @chihnithechili

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4 months ago

For a long time, I thought surviving was the goal here.

Get the permanent residency. Follow the rules. Don’t make mistakes at work. Don’t take up too much space.

What I didn’t notice: none of that was what kept me stuck. These five thoughts were.

None of them were facts. They were choices I kept making without realising I was making them. When that clicked, Germany didn’t suddenly get easier. I just stopped being afraid of it.

Which one are you still telling yourself? Tell me in the comments.

#expatsingermany #germanyexpat #expatmindset #expatcareer #livingingermany taken in Berlin, Germany by @chihnithechili

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8 days ago

My visa was tied to one company. So I made sure they’d never have a reason to let me go.

It took me four months, 200+ applications and 30+ interviews to get one offer. An entry-level job at a startup, with a salary that barely covered my rent. I still almost cried when I read the email.

Because my visa was tied to that job. If they let me go, my right to stay in Germany was on the line.

So I became the perfect employee. Overtime every week. Every Slack message answered within minutes. Every email, even late at night. And I kept asking for more work.

One sentence was running my life: “I need to prove I’m worth keeping.”

Then I started crying in front of my laptop for no reason. I was tired after every workday, and on weekends I had no energy for anything else. I was close to burning out.

That’s when I noticed I’d been asking one question for months: are they happy with me? I never asked the other one. Am I okay here? Do I actually like these people? What else in my life was hurting that I was too busy to notice?

So I started setting boundaries at work. And they didn’t fire me.

That’s when it hit me: most of the fear was coming from me, not from them. And even if they had let me go, that was out of my control. It would never have changed what kind of professional I am.

I don’t have to work myself into the ground to prove I’m worth keeping.

How long did it take you to get out of “visa survival mode”? Tell me in the comments.

#MindsetShift #SelfTrust #PersonalGrowth #ImposterSyndrome #ExpatInGermany taken in Berlin, Germany by @chihnithechili

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11 days ago

Who’s right, him or me. Honestly, I don‘t think either of us was.

After he said that, I immediately asked him this: think about two scenarios. Person A stays at a company for 5 to 10 years. Person B changes companies every two years. Which one has better skills at their job? He said: it depends. And that’s the whole point. It really depends on a lot of factors that never get considered. Judging with only one measurement never gives you the full picture.

Someone who‘s only had long relationships and can tell you exactly why, that’s self-awareness, not indecision. Someone who‘s had a string of short ones and can tell you exactly why, that’s self-awareness too, not a red flag.

The pattern was never the problem. Not knowing your own reasons is.

After reading all this, what‘s your opinion on this? Tell me in the comments.

#MindsetShift #SelfTrust #PersonalGrowth #RelationshipPatterns taken in Bundestag (Berlin U-Bahn) by @chihnithechili

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a month ago

You’re not undisciplined. You’re avoiding something.

It’s 11pm on a Thursday, and you already know exactly what you’re about to do. Open the app. Scroll. Feel bad about it tomorrow. Do it again anyway.

The number you calculated for this week is real. But it was never going to change anything tonight, because „you’re wasting money“ isn’t the problem you’re actually solving. Avoidance is.

Your brain doesn’t know the difference between „unfamiliar“ and „unsafe.“ So it keeps you on the phone instead of the conversation you actually need to have, about the money, the relationship, the job. The phone isn’t the problem. It’s just the easiest place to put your attention instead.

The fix isn’t willpower. It’s repetition. Do the uncomfortable thing once, and it’s still uncomfortable. Do it ten times, and your brain starts calling it survivable. Keep going, and it stops being the scary option and starts being the one you actually reach for.

You’re not stuck. You’re choosing familiar over uncertain, on repeat. Choose differently once, and you’ve already proven you can do it again.

Are you ready to face what you’ve been avoiding?

#MindsetShift #SelfTrust #PersonalGrowth #MoneyMindset, #AvoidanceHabits taken in U-Bahnhof Klosterstraße by @chihnithechili

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a month ago

When I was around 18 or 19, people started to stare at me a lot, and I found it deeply uncomfortable. I assumed it was something I wore, something I said, or something I did. Then people started to gossip about me and pull away, and it hurt. I didn’t understand what was happening, so I tried to fit in. I dimmed my light and tried to become invisible. None of it helped.

Later, I realized it had nothing to do with me. They were reacting to the attention I was getting, attention they didn’t have themselves, and somehow decided that made it my fault.

So I stopped caring what they thought and just started being myself. It was a hard road, but I’m glad I chose to stand up for myself instead.

Every slide in this carousel is a lesson I learned since choosing that path. I know a lot of you reading this think getting attention is the worst thing that could happen to you. Here’s what I want you to know: you don’t enjoy it because you never learned how to use it. You can’t take it away, so why not learn how to make it work for you instead?

#StorytellingContentChallenge #MindsetShift #SelfTrust #PersonalGrowth #PrettyPrivilege taken in Berlin, Germany by @chihnithechili

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a month ago

Managing your own money is a huge responsibility no one warns you about, and I’ve made a fair share of the mistakes most people make too.

At 38, here’s what I wish I’d known at 28.

Save this for the version of you that just started earning.

#StorytellingContentChallenge #MoneyMindset taken in Berlin, Germany by @chihnithechili

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a month ago

I’m a little ashamed to admit this as a finance professional. I wasn’t good with my own money until I turned 34.

I was struggling just to make ends meet when I started my career. Later on, I was able to build up savings, and I knew I needed to put it somewhere to grow long-term, I just didn’t know where. So I started with what I already understood, the equity market. I read financial news every day, just to get a feel for where things stood and hear what the experts thought about the outlook.

I failed a few times at first, and learned some important lessons along the way. Slowly, the portfolio started to grow, and so did my confidence in trusting my own judgment when the decisions got risky.

In four years, I built a portfolio with over 50% return.

I’m not here to teach anyone how to invest. But I do believe everyone deserves to build that same confidence in their own money decisions, and it’s never too late to start.

What money milestone do you feel like you’re ‘behind’ on? Let me know in the comments.

#StorytellingContentChallenge #MindsetShift #SelfTrust #PersonalGrowth #MoneyShame HighAchiever taken in Berlin, Germany by @chihnithechili

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a month ago

Do you remember the last time a chill conversation suddenly turned into a heated debate?

I’ve had a few, and I couldn’t stop replaying them in my head afterward, still unable to figure out what went wrong.

These are the exact principles I follow when I coach. They didn’t make hard conversations easy, but they gave me something to hold onto instead of reacting.

Now I stay regulated enough to actually listen, even when things get tense.

Save this for the next hard conversation you’re dreading.

#StorytellingContentChallenge #MindsetShift #SelfTrust #PersonalGrowth #EmotionalRegulation HighAchiever by @chihnithechili

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a month ago

I still remember that phone call vividly. I asked her, “How can you expect me to be okay after everything you did to me?” She said, “I’ve apologized again and again. What do you want from me? I can’t undo what I did.”

She was right.

I’d spent years being angry at a woman who was never given the tools to do any better. She wasn’t respected by her own family. She had nobody to count on for twenty years. Of course she was angry all the time. Of course she couldn’t talk to me nicely. Of course she barely smiled.

Then I saw the deeper truth behind my own resentment: it came from a desperate desire to be loved by her, the same way any child wants to be loved by their mother. When I acknowledged that desire, I started seeing her effort in trying to make amends. I could feel how frustrated she must have felt, and realized we didn’t have to keep living this way. All I needed to do was let go.

That mindset shift changed everything. I stopped blaming everyone and everything that ever happened to me. I realized certain things are simply beyond my control, but I have full power over how I let them affect my life.

If you’re still holding onto trauma from your past, here’s what I want you to know. It’s easier to keep blaming everyone else for what happened to you. But you’ll be missing out on the peace you could actually be living in. Is that really worth it? Let me know in the comments.

#MindsetShift #SelfTrust #PersonalGrowth #EmotionalRegulation #StorytellingContentChallenge by @chihnithechili

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a month ago