Tag Archives: ethics

Are you sure you’re sure to be sure you want to do that?

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For the past two decades, the computer industry and how it is turning the Internet has been asking you: “Are you sure, that you’re sure that you want to do that?”

The gist is how sure am I from deleting a file?  Why, I clicked on the button, didn’t I?  Don’t understand what I mean?  Have you tried signing up for a an Internet service lately?  Worse yet, have you lost a password and had to retrieve it?  Then you know what I mean by the countless mouse clicking and: “Are you sure that you’re sure you want to do that?” treatment.

Apple iTunes, Leading The Way.  I’m using less and less iTunes since a while back I realized I inadvertently created 3 different accounts.  I had money on all and things got complicated when a friend gave me her iPhone.  iTunes got confused.  It asked for password and somehow, I lost all but one account, including the money in it.  I found out Apple has different  structures, iTunes, Apple and Mobile Me.  I dropped the last two and I hear iCloud will address these issues.

Social Media Sign Up Nightmare.  A while back, my business partner and I started a website which will be revealed in due time.  We tried signing up on Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn, Twitter and MySpace.  Facebook wouldn’t allow fictitious names, nor does LinkedIn.  I started a new Gmail account to bypass these non-sense but Google didn’t allow our newly registered domain generic info@ email address.  In the end, MySpace and Twitter were the easiest.  Should it really be that difficult to sign up for a free service?  Or the better question is, should I have to pay for the idiotic spammer and physhers out there making it hard for us to use our Internet?

Social media and the Internet should be open and easy to use.  The problem, as usual is that those who abuse it make it tough on us.  In the end, it’s a pretty day outside, I’ll go out and enjoy it :)

Why Wholistic?

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Kindle the ligh of spiritualityI get asked this question frequently, if not: “Don’t you mean holistic?”

The gist is yes, I do mean wholistic because you need to see life, approach it in its entirety as a whole.

So why wholistic?  If you don’t look at life in a wholistic way, then you are missing pieces…

Social media, what are you and what’s your worth?

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How to use Social Media intelligently

USing social media to listen, not just to sell

I admit, I love social media and I get it.  It’s fun, can be a great tool and of course, it’s not very well used most of the time.

The gist is social media is great.  The varieties of social media channels available cater to almost every type of businesses.  The trick is what do you want to use it for and to do what?

IBM Survey.  IBM had an interesting survey of global companies where CEOs said their biggest difficulty is information management and second, social media.  It turns out companies know how to market to the mass but not to individuals.  Companies spend a lot of money advertising to groups of people but they are not good at reaching out and hearing to individuals.

So how do you reach out to individuals?  How do you get individuals to tell you what they want?

It’s not very difficult if you offer something needed and worthwhile.  You need to compete for 5 to 10 minute attention from individuals who are overwhelmed with a hectic pace of life leaving little time to stop and think.  What makes your question or offering appealing to them?  It’s what you offer.  It can be as simple as giving them enough attention to express themselves, something they would like to see or have, something that would actually make their life easier.  Intrigue them, put out reports, let them ask, and ask back, what should the company provide them.  There is plenty to offer but the key is to offer something they need and can use.

In the meantime, social media is a fun game you can tweak to serve your broadcast platform.  It will not work if all you do is tell people to check out your site or your product.  If you don’t get personal, you won’t get much out of it and be just another sales pitch drowned in a sea of look alike.

So here are some questions to get you going; What is social media?  What does it me to use social network?  What is networking?  Why use it and to what end?  After this go talk to your coach and if you don’t have one, reach out I can help you.

The greatest session I had… today

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Tap The Source

Tapping the source for better decision making

Do you know that Smashing Pumpkin song: “Today”?  That’s a little how I feel.

The gist is breakthroughs are wonderful when they happening but what we choose to do with them is where the real work is.  In order for a breakthrough to happen a few things must be in place.  You must be aware that life has been sending you signs, most of you the time, we disregard them until they become too powerful to neglect.  See my post yesterday.

Stepping Into Your True Nature.  There is a great saying in French, chase away the natural and it will come back running to haunt you.  In my case, most of my adult life, I tried to look like the person I wasn’t.  Needless to say, that doesn’t work in the end.  When things got tough, I applied what I had been taught at school… work harder.  That doesn’t work because you will eventually collapse at some point.  If you do, the only alternative is to truly be yourself.  Once you allow yourself to be, it feels great.  The road there is more difficult.

Honoring Your Purpose.  In the end, it’s a case of honoring your purpose in life.  Trying to be what you are not in order to appease those who care about you is counter productive, for you and them.  You must be who you are deep inside, not supposed to be.

Oh, and my personal story?  Today I actually did the type of coaching I feel is the most natural.  At the request of my client, I took out my pendulum and we asked questions.  It felt genuine, comfortable and at the same time, I saw my real face and it wasn’t proud, righteous or anything like that.  It just was.  Yes, some coach would scoff at this, but other MCC will smile.

Indeed Today is the greatest, day of my life… Can’t wait for tomorrow…  The Smashing Pumpkins.

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…

Self Help, great but pople don’t think they need help…

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Self Help has been all the rage for the past few decades but a reality check still shows, most people don’t think they need help.

The gist is indeed, people understand something is amiss but the reaction is to work more, harder and earn more money.  Last I checked, money does not bring happiness automatically, you work on making money to make you happy.  A trick and feast onto itself.

Self Help, But What For?  And exactly what is meant by Self Help anyway?  We help ourselves by working and sustaining our lives on this planet, but that doesn’t offer a complete vision of what is meant by Self Help.  Self Help is really about answering those nagging life long questions that aim to answer the root core, who am I and what am I here for.

My Self Help.  We should have a phone app called My Self Help.  It would remind you to take time to meditate.  It would give you subtle cues when the day’s perpetual motions drags you down the road to more and more tasks to attend to and situations to solve.  It’s an abyss that drags us down the road to self denial.

My Self Help App would also give you something to ponder upon, such as: “Is what I am doing here and now conducive to my highest fulfillment?” but add to it, the answer doesn’t matter, awareness is key.

All in all, the greatest Self Help I know is to ask question with a constant curiosity about life, yourself and how you fit it in all.  Answers are deeply, deeply personal.

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…