You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December, 2007.
Hello Everyone,
I wish you all a Happy New Year and that your dreams and resolutions come true in 2008.
Have you made your list yet? Go inside yourself and reflect on what you have achieved 2007 - your private life, your job, for yourself - health, personal development - for others? You will discover that you have achieved so much.
Now, for 2008, prepare yourself. Set yourself the goals that are achievable. Write them down into your calendar and remind yourself of it. What is it you want to achieve 2008? What are the ways of noticing that I am on track.
Go back and revisit the stepping stone theory, find yourself stepping stones to your big goal to make sure that you are on track and that you slowly but surely achieve what you are aiming for. Make 2008 your best ever year to achieve your goals and objectives. Be even more positive. Be even more confident.
I wish you all the happiest, most successful year ahead. May all your dreams and goals come true.
Lots of Love,
Volker Ballueder
cb consulting wishes you a Happy New Year!
Another Buddhist thought of the day caught my eye:
Reality is all-encompassing: the absolute nature is one. Although we may feel separate from the original uncreated reality - whether we call it ‘God,’ ‘peak experience,’ or ‘enlightened mind’ - through awareness we can contact this essential part of ourselves. - Tarthang Tulku
I like this thought of the day. Reality is everywhere - we might not think of our “spiritual master/performance” at all times and might not be attached to it. However, if we practise awareness we can find it. Everywhere but best and clearly in ourselves!
Pure enlightenment and reality can be found by awareness of ourselves. Whatever lies within us counts!
Happy Sunday!
Reading an interesting article about Google, I came across the following line of “sustainable business” as I would call it:
“In five ways should workers and servants as the lower direction be respected by an employer: by allocating work according to aptitude, providing wages and food, looking after the sick, sharing special treats, and giving reasonable time off work.” - The Buddha
That is what I think is work in a respectful way all about:
- do not overload your employees with too much work
- give them the right pay
- care for them when they are sick
- if you get rewarded, share it amongst all
- have a good entitlement of holidays
Bearing all that in mind it is important to look after your employees. It starts with little everyday things to make people comfortable at work, not to shout at them, offering them help and be a true team player - latter one, although often praised in organisations, turns out to be a “I show the team that I am better than them” which has nothing to do with team playing.
So, can we use the Buddha teaching or any other religious teaching to create an organisation that functions better than any other by applying principles like the one above?
Dear Readers,
I will take a few days off from writing, thinking, working and wanted to wish you all a very peaceful time.
Nowadays one needs to think whether “Christmas” is allowed to be called Christmas or Festive Season, Season for Retreat, Peaceful Time - depending on the country and religion I suppose.
I spoke to a close friend this week who is Hindu and I said, so can I wish you a Merry Christmas? Of course, Volker, he said, you can. We even went to (a Christian) church last year to get a feeling what it is like.
Personally, I like that because if I was living in a foreign country where the main religion is “non-Christian” and they celebrated a special feast, I would give it a go too. To get a feel for what it is like for others.
So what do I wish you?
- I wish you all happy days with your family and friends.
- I wish you all a peaceful, stress free time
- I wish you all the goodies - presents and food - you hope for
- I wish you time to reflect and recharge your batteries
- I wish you well and,
- I wish you love!
Have a Merry Happy Peaceful Festive Time ,-)
Volker
an interfaith bird
I wrote about Alan Alda before. He is the actor of “Captain Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H” and just published his second book “Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself”.
When I started it this morning, a cold December day just before Christmas, I read the speech he gave for his daughter Eve on her graduation day. He finished with the words “Simply Love them, Love them, Love them” talking about our children.
For him, meaning in life and having children is more or less the same. There is not much more love you can give anyone else, maybe your wife, your parents, but the most love you most probably ever give to anyone would be your children. You want them to do well, you want them to do well for themselves.
And, if our meaning in life is loving our children and spread the love amongst other people, whilst writing this I am reminded of the Woodstock Hippy Festival 1969, then if we love we create a meaningful life.
What means that? It simply means that if we pass on the love to others, if we create a positive and “lovely” imprint in the greater subconscious out there, then we will get it back and receive a meaningful life.
Isn’t that what Christmas is all about?
Merry Christmas!
Hello,
Podcasting becomes more popular. Not only for my main work which focuses on optimising search engines, but also for me going to work and a lot of people out there who travel a lot and get less time to read as e.g. they have to focus on traffic, get travel sick reading etc.
So, I found some podcasts on Spirituality, got them from Eric Putkonen, whose website is http://www.awaken2life.org/. Quite interesting, tonight I listened to him saying that for him, meditation is to sit down on a busy day and let go. Not about enlightenment but purely to let go and relax in a busy and hectic environment. He does not even use breathing techniques as he likes to keep it as simple as possible.
I understand that and agree. Keep it simple - do not worry if you “mediate right or wrong” - as it is for you to understand and benefit from.
Eric’s website mentions in a quote that “we are all enlightened but some of us remember” - that gives me to think. Would that imply that we are actually all enlightened but the once who practise to find where the roots are, where we are coming from, who connect with their inner self, those are the ones that remember. So remembering is nothing else than connecting with your roots? That makes sense too.
I will write to Eric that I like his thoughts. Thanks Eric for making my journey tonight some valuable time for some valuable thoughts.
Have a good and peaceful night/day.
I read an interview with Chris Hyman this morning in the MT. Chris seems to be an achiever, clearly as a CEO of one of the top ten companies in Britain, a Formula 3 driver, only sleeps 4 hours a day, and he grew up in the belief “if you always do your best, you will be spotted“.
That is why I started “googled” him, to find out a little bit more. And I found an essay he wrote about change. So, I thought I write a few lines about change. Chris mentions in his essay that with all the innovation around us, a change process needs to happen and is inevitable. Therefore, contractors should expect it to happen, being aware of it.
That brings me back to what I wrote a few months ago about having anticipation of change making it easier to cope with. You remember that?
But coming back to “doing your best” - my old host dad whilst I was an exchange student in the US told me over 10 years ago “Volker, if you always do your best, neither you nor anyone else would blame you for what you are doing.”
So maybe it is not about doing it right or wrong - is it all about doing your best to be at the top - the top of your life not the top of the world. Maybe for some it might be the top of the world.
And, if you always give your best, would that prepare you for more change because you can anticipate more of the change and be more prepared to make things happen?
Surely something to think about at this very cold December morning.
There is a site about Buddhism that offers a Daily Mediation - http://www.amidabuddha.org/
Friday’s meditation was as follows:
You are now in control of your life. You see, the ego is never in control. The ego is controlled by wishes for comfort and convenience on the part of the body, by demands of the mind, and by outbursts of the emotions. But the higher nature controls the body and the mind and the emotions. I can say to my body, “Lie down there on that cement floor and go to sleep,” and it obeys. I can say to my mind, “Shut out everything else and concentrate on this job before you,” and it’s obedient. I can say to my emotions, “Be still, even in the face of this terrible situation,” and they are still. It’s a different way of living. The philosopher Thoreau wrote: If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps he hears a different drummer. And now you are following a different drummer–the higher nature instead of the lower. - Peace Pilgrim
The mediation says that the ego is never in control but the ego is controlled by wishes; and that it is the higher nature that actually controls the body, mind and emotions. Ergo the higher nature controls the ego, doesn’t it?
The blue part shows that it is up to you what you decide to do - the higher nature - to decide on what your body does, your mind and your emotions. Buddhist meditation is aimed at being in control as well as letting go of things. Stop hanging on to things and purify yourself. Also, control your mind, emotions and body.
If you achieve that - they say - you achieve a different pace of life. A different balance between controlling and letting go. You will get a “new drummer” who drums you into a life in which you might outperform your companions, don’t you think?
Have a good Saturday night.
Hello,
Not that I think it gets boring to write about the Diamond Cutter but I wanted to write about Gratitude today.
Jackie Headland’s newsletter triggered it. Gratitude, Thankfulness or Appreciation is a positive emotion. Jackie writes about the expanding your awareness with an attitude of gratitude and that it gives us power, perspective, appreciation, humour, optimism and hope. It opens up the good values in our life….heard that before?
Exactly. Have a positive attitude towards all living beings. Be thankful for being on this earth, being healthy and appreciative of what you are and what you have. Do not be greedy or envy others. Remember, if you envy others you might create a negative imprint.
And, if you create positive imprints you expand your awareness. You will gain power, perspective and appreciation. Humour of course, or have you ever seen a Buddhist not being happy ,-) OK, maybe that takes it too far.
Open up your good values in life, connect to the universe and have an attitude of gratitude. Then you will create positive imprints that come back to you - in a positive way.
Sleep well tonight, tomorrow might be your chance to change your attitude and make a difference.
This problem is quite interesting in a broader context:
“I cannot find a building to put a new branch location in.” - I just found an office for my new work, so I thought to drill on that as we would eventually need a bigger place.
The suggested solution by the Diamond Cutter is to make sure you help others find places to stay when they need them. That simple?
Sure, if you help and do place a small imprint in the subconscious, it grows there over time, and then it comes up to the conscious mind to make you see a corresponding lack of needed space.
I find this thought very fascinating. Whatever you plan to do you do create it for others first. If I look through essays today for a friend then, if I need help, even in 50 years time, this person or someone else would be happily help me. It is this principle of “what comes around goes around” - if you help your neighbour, they help you.
From a critical point of view I sometimes think it is all about “be good” otherwise you are bad. But, if there is a great universal subconscious out there which has all our thoughts floating about (simplified after Jung) then maybe by creating positive imprints we will reach out for the positive ones to come back to us.
For instance, we do have very noisy neighbours. What should we do? We did talk to them friendly but no change. We talked to them again - we try to be as positive as possible to help them to understand that noise in a block of flats is not acceptable. I truly hope they understood because the next steps would be more negative, e.g. getting the management of the building involved and possibly the police. Neither I nor anyone involved wants to but it might be the only way to do it. Would that create a negative imprint if one is forced to act like it?
Another thought on this is, should I be happy for them to be noisy at 3 am in the morning? I am really not sure.
Have a great week!
I was away all week to start my new job which I really like. It is a great challenge but exactly what I wanted.
Now, revisiting the Diamond Cutter I was talking about before, I would like to give an example of “Business Problem #2″ - Capital investment tend to become quickly outmoded or unreliable….
Why - because the basic functions of my new Blackberry are working fine whilst I try to install some tools and they just do not seem to be working. And I do not know why.
The answer to problem #2 is: Stop being envious…concentrate on making your own company innovative….and don’t be unhappy about the success of others.
Can I apply that to my device and my attitude? I sure can! As with so many things, the basics are working, it is good for business but I want more. Would I be more efficient, better, more reliable, do a better job? No, I would not. Full stop.
We should not look at others all the time. One of the Christian main 10 rules say “do not envy your neighbour” - get on with your own stuff and make sure you are getting your work done. Once that is done, just relax and look at the fun you can have with it. Maybe, with a relaxed mind, the solution why your device is not working, becomes even clearer……
Have a good weekend. And apologies for not writing a lot at the moment.
This Sunday Morning is miserable. Not easy to convince myself to go jogging but I need to and of course I want to ,-) So I will.
Let us talk about change. In October I got married and tomorrow I start my new job. That is a lot of change. According to “Holmes and Rahe, Scaling of life Change”, published in 1971 in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research - Marriage ranks with a scale value of 50 and change of work around 36 out of 100 (which is Death of Spouse). My old manager said the other day that he went to a conference that showed that people those days are going through 9 jobs in their first 10 years of working whilst his generation (he is about 40) is having 3 or 4 jobs in the same time. So maybe the scaling changed over the last 30 years.
But, change of jobs and getting married are not necessarily bad things, just the opposite. It is about the perception you have for change. I often talked about the “motivation towards to and away from”. E.g. if you change jobs because you were fired then your perception of change and the stress it causes is much higher. The opposite is true for a wedding. If you are looking forward to it and things are going well, the stress related to it is “positive stress” which is easier to cope with.
Then again, “positive stress” has the same physical impact on the body, e.g. increased heart rate, however it shows that if someone is very positive about a change then it is easier to cope with the “side effects”. Research suggests if you have a loved one that dies suddenly and unexpected, the effects on the sudden change are greater than if you know the person had a terminal illness and you see that person die. However, it would never change the grief and loss, it might just be easier to cope with the moment itself.
Whilst writing here I scan through the magazine “Personal Success” published by the Coaching Academy, and my eye caught an article about motivation of young people at the workplace. It seems that the “Matures (age over 62)” and “Baby Boomer (43-61)” are in charge of the “Generation X (28-42)” and Millennials (27 and under)”. The X-ers and Millennials do not necessarily see “hard work and loyalty, achieving a rank” as their primary goals for work. That just perfectly fits in with what I said earlier about changing jobs and taking longer to settle in the one that seems right. The one that gives someone freedom and room for personal development, “me time“.
The article points out that the younger generation have a lot of respect for their managers and their leadership and that they need to have the right “feel for the job” - if they do not feel that the job or manager are right, then they are not going to stay long in the job. Loyalty must be earned by good managers but once that has been done, one surely gets that commitment back from the younger generation. The change from management to coach? How can my boss guide me to where I would like to be?
All this and more details are published by Cam Marston “Motivating the “What’s in it for me?” Workforce”.
ballueder
Recent Comments