Category Archives: ethics

How to live a balanced life anywhere

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Watching the movie: “The Science of Healing with Dr. Esther Sternberg” made me smile.  Western medicine is discovering the virtues of traditional Mediterranean healthy living…

The gist is many of us know intuitively or by having lived abroad that a healthy involves a life/work balance.  That documentary approaches that topic well.  Dr. Sternberg discovers a century old way of living and it health benefit.  In other word balancing work, play, eat, enjoy and rest makes for a healthy life.

It’s interesting to see the paradigm shift currently happening.  On the one hand, there well established business 1.0 companies making a fortune on consumers not living well, eating poor food and treating ailments.  What happens when more people become vegetarians, vegan and eat organic or local produced foods?

It will be a few interesting upcoming years…

Marketing yourself… your self!

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I’ve always felt uneasy with marketing tactics as the current trend aims to show anyone as experts in any fields, regardless of reality.

The gist is according to the current market criteria, you must pick a category  and stick to it, even if down the road you change course.  But why?  In the marketing logic, once people see you as an expert and specialist, you’re on your way up.  Why is that important?  Experts get all the attention.  However, the problem remains that when experts get it wrong, the card castle crumbles down.  A current example of this is why our so-called experts and leaders in the case of our global economy and their shoddy predictions. The problem with yesterday’s marketing tactic was to bring someone up into the limelight as quickly as possible without making sure that person, or system was the “real deal”.  Marketing managers and their companies have little professional pride in what they.  If they did, they wouldn’t leave such a mess behind.

Who Do I Attract?  The very first step before gearing up your marketing suit is to do serious soul searching.  Who am I in regards to my field and why do I do the things I do?  Starting from that, it will be easier to see if your marketing message and fervor is in alignment with your true self and purpose.

The Generalist Specialist.  Current marketing trends don’t want you to label yourself as a generalist.  But what about those generalist specialists?  Your household doctor is such a person and sends you to the right specialist after examining you.  So don’t beat yourself up if you are a general specialist.

Personally, I work with people who are not satisfied with business as-is and want to beyond learned methods.  They want to think outside the box and cement the foundations of that all new business 2.0.  It’s about time, business 1.0 is over…

No need for the pervailing sense of fear in our daily lives

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If you look back on the short history of marketing and advertising over the past 5 decades, one thing stands out, the messages are getting stronger and downright brutal.  People are starting to live with a sense of impending doom and daily fear.

The gist is when we look around, there surely is very little to fear in life.  If the only fear we should fear is fear itself, then what happens behind the closed doors of corporations and governments is where the real fear is created and managed.

Show Me A Peace March!  The knee jerk reaction to fear is predictable but also, avoidable.  We don’t need to watch the news if all the news shows is violence, more violence and only that.  Real life is much more subtle and there is more positive in the world than marketers and then media shows.  So why all the upheavals?

Disaster sells.  Impending doom and fear sells.  While it is easy to see why companies abuse the message and generously court politicians, it is also very easy to see that what they are creating is unsustainable.  People all around the world are realizing something is amiss, from the courageous citizens in Arab countries to you and me.  Surely we realize politic track records over the pas decades haven’t been a success, the pharmaceutical industry hasn’t “cured” anything much and the financial wizards have driven global economies down the drain.

In the meantime, I still Ghandi said it best.  The revolution starts within, not without…  Fear is not something we need to live with every day.  An intelligent hopeful, yet realistic view of the situation is what saves the day.

Not being number 1, but understanding the real power of number 2

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There is a lot of wisdom and maturity around when we grasp the idea that number is good, but the real trick is what happens with number.

The gist is everyone wants to be number.  In a goofy kind of way, if everyone was number one, nothing would get done and nothing would happen.  The real power in number one is not so much to have the idea, trend or leading thought, but to have people who understand the value and create a movement out of it.  Simply put, number is nothing without number two, the one who recognizes the inherent value and translates it into a concrete movement.

Derek Siver at the TedxSocal had a powerful message accompanied by one of those videos that really drives the point home.

In essence, being number is where the real power lies. Often times, number one gets hit of intuition that can from anywhere, literally.  The receiver of the brilliant idea doesn’t always know how to translate it into a sustainable movement.  Case in point, look at most entrepreneurs and their lack of understanding when it is time to go or surround themselves with the right people.  That is number’s position, to seek out, understand and act upon it. In many ways, number is the thinking behind any movement.

What does it mean to be a man today?

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Picture: Nick Zart

I was stomped when asked what does it mean to be a man in today’s society.

The gist is there is no manual.  It surely can’t be the stereotype weight lifter at the gym, nor the attitude guy driving his car hand on the other side of the steering wheel.  Being a man today is much dynamic, with fuller depth and surely much deeper than meets the eye.  It has to be that inner most wisdome we have neglected over the decades.

What It Means To Be A Man Today.  A man today should be many things, including something most aren’t used to, deep, in touch with their inner wisdom and feelings.  Ancient societies provided young men rites of passage, today we have no such things but to sit down and think it through.

so What Is A Man, Then?  A man who acknowledges when wrong, one who knows with quiet confidence when right, one who uses wisdom and compassion wisely.  Most of these attributes I realized were found in Dzogchen, the purest esoteric form of Tibetan Buddhism… of all place.

Here is a passage I was reading this morning on Gyalshen: “Dzogchen practice gives us a clarity that is powerful enough to recognize that whatever emotion we experience, be it anger, depression, fear, or joy is not separate from the true nature of the mind. This recognition is wisdom.  It gives us the strength to leave things as they are. Our ability to leave things as they are reduces our subconscious attachment to the conditioning that judges or manipulates our emotions. We are accepting our feelings. We are becoming aware of what we are feeling right now, and we stop right there. We don’t allow that emotion to take over our life. We do not allow it to obscure the true nature of the mind and to become an obstacle.  ”

In other word, shouldn’t a “man” be one who accepts who he is without judgement, looks at what is front of him without preconceived notions, accepting his moods and feelings as that present moment, not more, and holding that space sacred so that what is to come happens untainted from expectations?  I’m going off on a limb here but I felt a strange sense of finding a clue in an ancient esoteric tradition about what it means to be a man.  Something worth while exploring for all those young guys without guidance.  I should know…

The green guilt, victim of fashion?

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Tap The Source

Tapping the source for better decision making

I had a strange feeling creep up on me yesterday and realized I was feeling guilty for not being more green, or at least not outwardly pursuing the green dream.

The gist is that it’s easy to fall into the erroneous belief that everything we do must have a concrete absolute and tangible green output.  After all, everything we hear and see these days is around making our life healthier, greener and less polluted.  It’s easy to feel guilty about not consecrating your life to the green factor.  In my case, it made me smile once I scrutinized that creepy thought.

We have close to no chemicals in our household, so very little toxicity is flushed out our drains into our Oceans.  I walk or ride my bicycle pretty much every day instead of using my car.  The lights are turned off at night except when needed.  That much, we are consciously aware of our environment.  As to the thought I wasn’t directly contributing to the green movement, I realized that above all, I work with people so that they can become more aware.  The rest is up to them but my fundamental belief and hope is that once awareness sinks in, it becomes harder and harder to justify a counter-productive lifestyle.

What I got out of this little mind bend is the following.  We live in a society excessively geared towards instant gratification, tuned to outward signs of being green and tangible external actions, all making us feel good about ourselves.  While there are many people who are actively contributing to the “green movement”, I strive to raise awareness, hoping it will lead to a “greener” life in each and everyone.  Funny how thoughts creep in and how little they hold in the end.

Which wolf do you feed?

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Which wolf will you feed?

What to chose

An old Cherokee told his grandson, “My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is evil. It is Anger, Jealousy, Greed, Resentment, Inferiority, Lies, & Ego. The other is good. It is Joy, Peace, Love, Hope, Humility, Kindness, Empathy, and Truth.” The boy thought & asked, “Grandfather, which wolf wins?” The old man quietly replied, “The one you feed.”

So which wolf will you feel?  Why would you chose one over the other?  Why go for joy, love, peace and happiness over its darker counterparts?

The wisdom is in the asking of questions and discovering your own mind.

A shopping mall on a Saturday, a glance at western society

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Picture, Nick Zart

Gasp… Horror!  A shopping mall experience on a Saturday afternoon getting back from India.

The gist is sometimes it sounds as if we live in isolation in the middle of a crowded society.  This incredible brain twister can be felt any tie we witness people rushing to be first in line, rummage through sales, drivers who have to be the first at a traffic light and then drive slowly.  Why?  Most of us live in seclusion, disconnected form others and share little sense of being part of a community.  So, here is my experience at a shopping mall.

We just got back from India where your sense of what is important seriously challenges your priorities.  We went off the beaten path and witnessed life in secondary cities.  What we saw were people living in conditions we would deplore back home, where their main worry was if they would have food on their plate tomorrow.  Yet, somehow, these people were incredibly warm, gentle, inviting, sincere, open to us with a small we rarely witnessed back in the West.  Now fast forward back in the west…

We went to Nordstrom the following Saturday feeling we needed some new clothes.  What we witnessed was so disturbing after coming from an environment so starch and harsh with reality.  We saw people elbowing each other in order to get to the best deals of the day.  We saw people who didn’t seem to have much spatial awareness, even less as to others around them.  It felt their endeavor to be the first one to get that deal trumped any other notions of life.  It was shocking, to say the least.

It’s not to diss our society.  We have everything we need to thrive and be happy, we are not educated to look within for happiness.  Their society, on the hand has little in terms of shared material wealth but have boat loads in terms of inner values and spiritual upbringing.  Would it be great finally using all that we have at our disposal?  Don’t we owe it to our parents who built our so-called modern and developed societies?  One of the best ways is to partner with a coach in order to dig deep within and have a better vantage view.

What’s in a title?

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Do titles restrict or give a good general view?

Titles can give the general idea but not the complete picture

The hardest thing I deal with when people ask me what I do is how to explain.

The gist is we are raised in a left brain thinking world, tough on those of us who are right brained thinkers and have been drilled in since kindergarten how to compartmentalize, rationalize, and categorize everything we encounter.  The problem is, the world isn’t black or white.  We come in infinite shades and our professional lives are more multi-faceted than a title suggests.

The problem is we do more than a title conveys, yet we need some form of communication protocol to get the conversation going.  After all, IT Consultant is very vague when one can code, be a strategist, or design systems, and can do all of the above.  When it comes to coaching, it gets even stickier.  Coaches wear many, many hats and defining oneself as a coach is restrictive at best.

I coach, I write, I consult, I strategize, I do energy work, I coach, I train, I design, I remove obstacles, I find solutions… what is the title I should use?

That is one of the best dilemma facing our society these days that grows out of a necessity based system to one of empowerment and fulfillment.  Do titles work at all in the end or are they restrictive and narrowing down what we truly do?

In the meantime, I’m working on ways to say and show whatI do instead of talking about it.  What about you?

I’m always on time until I run late

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Picture, Nick Zart

And that sums it up pretty well.  But it makes me wonder.  How come we get late when we know we must do something or be somewhere?

The gist is we don’t often live in the present.  Our life is dictated by the past and lead into the promise of the future.  This creates generations after generations of people who produce much but don’t take the time to produce their fuller selves.

Rushing is probably the biggest waste of time, energy and opportunities we can indulge in.  When we rush, we miss out on everything.  One way not to rush is to obviously take our time but before we do that, we must understand ourselves better.  We will never get everything done, if we could, there wouldn’t be much to do.

So why am I saying all this today?  Two days ago I rushed to make sure the cleaning lady had our vacuum cleaner all ready.  In the middle of my frantic movements, I forgot to put the separator filter of our Rainbow machine.  Those who know the Rainbow cleaning systems and their benefits know also how much the machine is worth, $2,000 and EVERY penny worth it, for decades to come.  She ran the machine a few hours without it letting the water that acts as a filter gush into the machine.  I have no idea if it still works.  I’m still shocked I was in such a hurry I could, maybe did ruin such a machine… and for what?

Rushing is silly, no matter how we look at it.  It’s wasted opportunities to be the best you can be.  From now on, I will make sure I’m always on time and not rush to be late.  It’s just not worth it.