About the author
»Following your heart – in the social utopia of Sweden« is a book about learning and growing in my native country of Sweden. Writing the book has forced me to dig deep into my own roots. I grew up in a newly built middle-class area of flats in the outskirts of Uppsala, Sweden. I spent my first school years in an idyllic country side school and a few years later in a big town school. But I also got to travel early in life. I started school in Berkeley, California, USA at the age of six. Later I lived three years in Ibadan, Nigeria where I went to an International School. Finally at fifteen I spent another year in High School in Palo Alto, California, USA.
Through my entire student years I lived with the ambivalence between the scientifically rational and the humanistically intuitive. In my studies I reached the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm before realising that my interest in chemistry between people was greater than my interest in chemistry between molecules. I did not begin to resolve this ambivalence before starting my own consulting business in the area of personal growth and leadership at 28 years of age.
Today I have been a trainer and coach in leadership, pedagogy and personal growth for more than 25 years in Swedish businesses and public offices. Since 1992 I have been co-publishing the newsletter Strategies to Learn & Grow. My wife Tamara and my three children have enriched my life experiences enormously and being self-employed has enabled a family oriented life style which is otherwise difficult to manifest in Sweden today.
»Following your heart…« has become an odyssey in the area of growing as a person individually, at work and in society. An odyssey with a definite goal in the idea of becoming more human, more of who you truly are.
Jonas Himmelstrand
