personal blog
I wonder what the opposite of busy is. A busy day can either be fulfilling or exhausting, or somewhere in between. The opposite of busy leans towards the fulfilling. You are intentional about what you do and the way you show up in life creates a certain vibration. If you pay attention to what is going on inside, you can feel it. Some people near you feel it, too, since it radiates.
It’s a quality of being that has to do with inner calmness. Instead of draining energy, it energises. Even if your inside of a tornado, you are able to be at the centre of it, smile inward and say: “everything is perfect precisely the way it is now.”
Once you’ve figured something out that works, you should keep doing it. The challenge is to avoid neglect continuous testing. You can test your copy, your brand promises, your storytelling, your distribution channels, your pricing, an endless amount of thing.
What will you be testing next?
Empathy is hard. It’s hard to imagine being someone else, e.g. doing the job of a surgeon where life or death situations arise, literally. I wonder how it’s like to extend someone’s life while not being able to do so for another.
How does one make sense of it? I imagine there exists the extreme of becoming arrogant, thinking of yourself like a God whose might rises above the power of common mortal beings. And then I imagine another extreme, the one of reaching deep wisdom and connection with all other sentient beings, an insight about gratitude and the vast space of knowledge that is still to be explored.
It is inspiring to meet the second kind.
In its most distilled form, what a brand is about, is its people and its stories.
There is business networking and then there is business networking.
The straightforward kind, which follows a clear structure for how to give referrals to other members of a community and focuses on financial results, full stop.
The humanitarian kind, where money is being collected by business people and then serves a greater cause.
The mix kind where both come together.
What impacts results greatly is the level of connection and meaning the participants draw from the community, its how, what and particularly its why.
Which of these three types of business networking do you like best?
When thinking about marketing it’s easy to skip steps by immediately focusing on sales. It’s important to avoid loosing sight of certain fundamental elements of marketing.
No. 1
What’s the impact you want to have, the type of change you are seeking to make? This is your WHY.
No. 2
WHO is your audience? Notice that audience is much broader than customers. A lot of people will be part of your audience but not be customers, at least not as fast as you might like them to be.
No. 3
What’s it for? WHAT is your brand promise?
Marketing always has to do with telling a story. Based on how good of a match you have, between the worldview of your audience, the type of stories they keep telling themselves over and over again, about themselves and the world around them, and the elements of your brand story, that’s what will ultimately help you move forward.
If you show up in a thoughtful and consistent way that helps your audience with what they care about, you have a chance, the chance to earn both attention and trust, currencies that are immensely valuable in today’s world of constant distractions.
There exists an inverse relationship between what you want and its opposite. It’s important to pay attention to your desires and how they impact perception. The following excerpt frames it beautifuly.
“Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; acccepting negative experience is a positive experience. It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law” – the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. The more you desperately want to be rich, the more poor and unworthy you feel, regardless of how much money you actually make. The more you desperately want to be sexy and desired, the uglier you come to see yourself, regardless of your actual physical appearance. The more you desperately want to be happy and loved, the lonelier and more afraid you become, regardless of those who surround you. The more you want to be spiritually enlightened, the more self-centered and shallow you become in trying to get there.”
Source: read it on the internet, can’t find where this originates from. If you know, I’d appreciate a message.
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going”, is a popular saying that seems to stem from the 1950s, first mentioned in the context of American Football. How does one develop the capacity to face adversity in a positive way, to be more resilient? Here are seven aspects that can help you:
1. Pervasiveness
When faced with a challenge, let’s say an illness of the kidney, you an easily become overwhelmed by it, thinking or feeling like this is all that’s happening to you. Of course this is not the case. Whilst you might have an issue with your kidney, you can notice all the other organs that are in perfect health.
2. Permanence
Reminding yourself that whatever you’re feeling, it will probably change and not last forever.
3. Gratitude
Reminding yourself that there is a lot you can be grateful for and that not everything is bad. A daily practice of writing down three things you are grateful for can already make a huge difference.
4. Humor
Laughing is a tonic. Practice to find humor in even awkward situation.
5. Self-talk
Reflect upon your inner voice and notice what it is telling you. Are you your own worst enemy or your best friend?
6. Mindfulness
Notice how you feel and what is going on around you. Develop a mindful approach to life, an approach filled with kindness towards yourself and others. Between a trigger and your reaction there exists a space of awareness, use it.
7. Relationships
You are not alone, others can help you and you can take advantage of that. Invest in building quality relationships with family, friends, colleagues and neighbors.
It’s a different outlook on life when you see yourself as a part of the entire cosmos, rather than just an inhabitant of a village, city, country or even planet Earth. When you acknowledge that we’re all tiny parts of an enormously vast web of life. On top of this only during a short period in time, unless you believe in some form of after life.
When you look towards the sky and notice far away stars, there’s a chance for your problems to shrink.