Rimac

The fastest electric car is made by a company you have probably never heard of, Rimac Automobili. Since its inception, in 2009, the company is located, out of all places, in Croatia. Known for its soccer team and tourism, Croatia is rarely spoken of in connection to hardware technology. It is a remarkable entrepreneurial story of vision, innovation, team effort and plain old hard work, too. 

Named after its founder, Mate Rimac, the company now counts 450 people and has a number of international investors, amongst them Porsche. If this draws your attention I recommend the following article by the Financial Times. 

Individuality vs. Individualism

Photo by Alice Achterhof on Unsplash

I am currently reading a book by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté named Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. The following passage about the difference between Individuality and Individualism, from page 124, struck me as worth sharing:

“Individuality is the fruit of the process of becoming a psychologically separate being that culminates in the full flowering of one’s uniqueness. Psychologists call this process differentiation or individuation. To be an individual is to have one’s own meanings, one’s own ideas and boundaries. It is to value one’s own preferences, principles, intentions, perspectives, and goals. It is to stand in a place occupied by no other. Individualism is the philosophy that puts the rights and interests of a person ahead of the rights and interests of the community. Individuality, on the other hand, is the foundation of true community because only authentically mature individuals can fully cooperate in a way that respects and celebrates the uniqueness of others. Ironically, peer orientation may fuel individualism even as it undermines true individuality.”

We would all benefit from more individuality in the world as a prerequisite for respecting each other’s differences, for celebrating them. It would help us live diversity in the best sense of these words. 

Podcasts

Podcasts are the new blogging, so they say. If you love podcasts as much as I do you might find value in a website named Podcast Notes. It delivers notes about a series of podcasts. 

An episode I recently enjoyed was an interview of Dr. Andrew Weil, done by Tim Ferriss. Here is a link to the transcript, in case you prefer to read. Andrew Weil is a world-renowned leader and pioneer in the field of integrative medicine. There are some true gems about health in this episode. 

Here is a list of podcasts I like.
Akimbo
Bulletproof Radio
Data-Driven Health Radio
The Awesome Health Podcast
The Peter Attia Drive 
The Ready State
Parabola Podcast
The Tim Ferriss Show
Bruce Lee Podcast
The Human Experience

Let me know which ones you like by dropping me a message or posting a comment. 

The Highest-Paid YouTuber

One of the rare email newsletters that I am daily looking forward to is a newsletter by a German magazine named Der Spiegel. One of their recent newsletters contained a link to an article about the Forbes Highest -Paid YouTubers. I was surprised to find out that the number 1 was occupied by a seven year old boy named Ryan who is reviewing toys!

Between June 2017 and June 2018 he supposedly made 22 million USD and he currently has 17 million subscribers. I find this stunning as new media channels such as YouTube are opening up opportunities like these. Everyone can nowadays be a media outlet. Here is the link to his channel. The channel only exists since March 2015 and so far it has gathered 26 billion views.  

Choices

“There were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you become the plaything to circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity.”

― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

A new paradigm of management

We need a new paradigm of management, one where managers turn into leaders and change agents, managers who influence other people in a positive way. We live in a very interactive and fast paced world and we do not have the leadership and management models that work in an environment which is always changing. Our models work better for machines than for living beings. Nature is a good teacher for this, just observe how ants or termites organise themselves.

Table: Nature vs. Man made organizations

NATUREvs. MAN MADE
orderGOALcontrol
creativityDESIRED BEHAVIOURobedience
intrinsicMOTIVATIONoutside
emergeFUTUREdesign
learningBIGGEST CHALLENGEexecution

Source: Handout from “Overview of Management“, a module during my business studies which was led by Margaret Wheatley

As problems grow increasingly more complex we as a human race do not seem to understand that we are all in this together. It leads me to wonder about cooperation vs. competition. Do there exist other ways of creating a positive future for ourselves and the generations that will come after us? Management´s role today seems so much broader than most of us are used to, it has a responsibility towards society, to be the engine of positive change.

Managers can only turn into leaders if they develop themselves in regards to the following three areas:

  1. Learning: we need to learn both individually and collectively, we need to learn more about ourselves and we need to improve our understanding of how we are all interconnected, in communities of learning the development is much deeper.

  1. Letting go: today’s manager’s biggest fear is the fear of not having success, of not being able to handle it anymore; managers have a huge responsibility, instead of getting stuck in their everyday work they should learn how to let go and use more of other people’s potential.

  2. Balance & Harmony: so much depends on this aspect, personal and professional life go hand in hand.

We humans

We humans are remarkably different, e.g. in what we look like, what we think about and what we feel. We build our worldviews through nurture and nature and come to create a life so distinct from one another. Beneath all this there are a lot of similarities, though. According to Abraham Maslow,we all crave to satisfy our physiological needs, our need for safety, for love & belonging, for esteem and for self-actualization.

What is particularly fascinating is how differently we humans we can respond to the same occurrence, e.g. a serious illness. As Viktor Frankl wrote in his book Man’s Search for Meaning: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

I recently watched a documentary named Dealt. Its a story about Richard Turner, one of the world’s greatest card magicians, despite being blind! Its a magnificent story about resilience, determination and about how tenderness and vulnerability open up a path towards being more human.

Addendum, 17 December 2018: here is a link to a podcast interview with Richard, Episode 124 of The Human Experience podcast.

The loss of separateness

Books are an incredible bargain. For the price of a pizza or two you are going on a journey. It could be a journey of pure entertainment or a journey of self discovery or, best case, even both. It does not only depend on what is written in the book but a lot on what you are able to see and therefore extract from it. I am currently on such a journey while reading a book by Michael Pollan, its title being How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.

Whenever I read non-fiction I tend to make notes of passages I will probably like to revisit in the near future. This is one of those rare books in which I find such a tremendous amount of valuable passages that I will most probably just reread the entire book.

In this book Michael, most well know for his earlier books about food and agriculture, writes about psychedelics, a class of drug which can lead to a non-ordinary state of consciousness in which people have a wide range of peculiar experiences. One such experience can be the loss of separateness between oneself and everything else there is.

Here is a related footnote from page 367:

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” (Walter Sullivan, “The Einstein Papers: A Man of Many Parts,” The New York Times, March 29, 1972.)

I find this to be both beautiful and true as I have experienced such a loss of separateness myself before, e.g. during a holotropic breathwork session.