Adventure.

The old and the new economy.

Are you really listening or waiting to speak?

Educating or Schooling?

Shame.

Trust your intuition.

Your intuition is a gift. In India it is called the third eye, or the way to see with your soul.

This means you have to go inside for certain answers. Not inside your head, but inside your heart. Inside your soul. There most of the time the answer is. 

Keep on trusting your true self, it will help you to make your dream and your goals come true.

How can we make a better experiment?

Every time you are doing something new, it is an experiment. 

So, when this is true, the question should be: What will we learn from this?

Most of the time the outcome of an experiment has to be a quantitative outcome like a number of products sold, designed or developed. 

But actually when you are doing something new, the outcome should be: 
"What did we learn?"

Keep on experimenting, and by doing so, learning.

Expectations.

With a positive attitude you will always be pleasantly surprised.

Try to stop expecting things to be a certain way, so you can appreciate them for what they are.

Questions vs. Answers.

When you want to understand stuff, you have to have the courage to ask enough questions. The right questions.

As Voltaire said: " Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers ".

Life is full of unanswered questions, so keep on asking.

Take your responsibility.

If something is not right, or something needs to change in your life, take responsibility on it.

You are the only one who can make the change. 

Do not come up with the old song: "I do not have a choice". 
By saying this you relieve yourself from every responsibility. 
You let go of control over your life. 

Do not give up. Keep on caring. For you.

Open Online Courses, the education revolution.

There is a revolution happening in education. One of the revolutions is online.

More and more people do not want to take expensive, old fashioned and only directed to, or based on, the ratio courses, programs at high schools and universities.

And the learners, the students are getting the learning back to themselves. Via I-Tunes U, Wikipedia and all kind of other services they find themselves what they need to learn. And, they create their own communities online, via Facebook, Ning, Google Hangouts etc. 

Students are crafting their own learning experiences, online and offline, through projects, apprenticeships and hands-on real life projects.

The learning is going out of the traditional institutions. Towards new environments like this one's. 

Or, as a graduation speech will look like in the near future:

What is your company's purpose?

The purpose of a company needs to be outward looking. The day's of an inward purpose are over. More profit, more market share etc. does not work.

What do the customers really desire? What do they really need? What does this world really need?

And, the companies and businesspeople who are the most successful in this, are the ones who have clear and good core values themselves. And large ambitions. 

Try to ask yourself this question: " Who must we fearlessly become?"

How much of my life story do I write?

Trap: the fiction of somebody else becoming your life's story.

Stay strong. You are powerful and capable enough. 

What should we stop doing?

Do you ever ask yourself this question? It is an uncomfortable question.

Most of the time we ask ourselves what we should start doing. Immediately.

Most of the time we do stuff which takes a lot of energy and actually is not serving us, or the project we are working on. By starting something new next to that, it only becomes harder.

So, the saying: "kill your darlings" could be very fruitful to do. And hard also, because we do not like to kill our darlings. Because once they where THE new thing to do, the starters.

But by stop doing certain stuff, it also means you have more time to do the things you want to do. And maybe also something new.

A healthy Ego.

The overall idea I hear most of the time is that ego is bad. A big ego. It can damage you and the ones around you.

OK. Lets stop pretending. In the name of being humble. Everybody has a bit of an ego. And, ego's give us strength and pride. Which is not necessarily bad. Being proud on what you did accomplish is good. Ego also makes it possible for others to connect to your ideas and make it happen for themselves.

I think most of the time when ego is being discussed negatively, the discussion is actually about narcissism. Which is something else. Narcissist are roaring about heir achievements, and they are most of the time on a power trip. They do not show love for either themselves or others.

I would say: bring out the ego. It brings out confidence, and appreciation about the success of others without feeling threatened.

What is your story for tomorrow?

click here. 

The art of letting go.

Yesterday I attended a workshop Deep Democracy.

Interesting that I have a hard time to let go. Of my role as a leader or initiator. While actually the process needs of people to let go, or come along. And while doing this you need to come along, which is one of the main parts of the method, and most of the time for companies, projects ect.the way to grow.

Today I am going to give two workshops about letting go. Letting go in an educational setting. 

Curious how this will work out.

• Where do the synchronicities point you?

In our daily living-in-a-fast-lane life we tend to forget there are signpost along the way.

Try to check once in a while, preferably daily, if this is still the road to take. What other signs are there alongside the track. Every day we meet them. And everyday there are possibilities to get more synchronized with the signs.

Then the question becomes: where do the synchronicities point you to?

What is your gut telling you?

Your instinct, or gut feeling, never lies.

Listen to it.

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What is it you would do if money was no issue?

Click here.

What do you feel like doing now?

Just think about it for a while.

Or, as I heard from a friend who quit his job:

His girlfriend had put two chairs in the middle of the room. When he came home she asked him to sit on one chair, close his eyes and think about himself in his current job, workload, responsibilities. His daily life.

After a while she asked him to sit on the other chair and think about himself without his job.

Next day he quit his job.

Are you doing what you feel like doing?

• 
  

Motivation in schools.

People learn best when they are intrinsic motivated. Without fear from the outside, fear of tests or expectations of parents, friends, bosses etc.

Wanting to find out how things work. This is the starting of learning. Curiosity. 

The only external factors which have an influence are the bumps in the road along the path of learning. And, reality always has a safety net. 

Also, when you grow older, you have learned in school, in life, that not succeeding = failing. But this is not true. If you keep having that belief, you will never learn something.  

Maybe failing = succeeding, because you win you are learning. You gain.

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

(Quote by Gloria Steinem)

Sometimes you have to be pissed off first. Because we are hard learners, most of the time.

For example: you build up a relationship with a colleague, co-worker, or client. You think it is based on mutual caring about the same thing, the same project, the same company. And because you believe we care together, for the same things.

And then you are confronted with the reality. That the people you believed in are in it for a different reason. Not for sharing and bringing, but only for taking.

Then you have one power left: end it. 

Take your learning out of that experience. And approach the new situation as open as you can. With the learning of your former experience.

It will make you better. A better person.

What is your story?

The major question I try to ask myself when I am telling a story is: why to tell this specific story? What does it add for me, and the one(s) listening?

Try to ask yourself this question. It is a hard one. 

What is the belief which is burning in you to tell this story? It might be clear for yourself, but is it clear for the listener(s)? 

Because the burning belief why to tell your story is the heart of the story. And it should be.

One of my motto's in life.

Surround yourself with amazing people. 

You will become who you surround yourself with.

Be proactive about what you want. 

If you want to reach something in life, you have to move. To be active. Proactive.

Meaning that when there is a spark of wanting something in your life to appear or to happen, you have to take yourself off the couch and start moving.

Or, as I read once: Laziness and apathy are diseases.

Don't be ill. 

It will cost you nothing to dream, and everything no to.

and than: start working on them.

Lack of passion is fatal.

In the newspaper I read that almost 60% of the people going to work actually do not want to go to their work. 

60% of these people have "external" drivers, mostly financial ones, like mortgage, holiday's, a new car or something else external as a driving force to go somewhere in the morning, while honestly they do not want to go there.

I was looking around on the highway to Amsterdam and counted 10 cars, off which 6 drivers did not want to be there according the article in the newspaper. (It would save us a lot of traffic jams was my first thought)

How is it possible one is spending all, or part of his or her professional life, going somewhere they do not really want to be. Driven by an externally force.

That is why, in the end, it goes wrong with so many organisations in this world. They are driven by 60% workers who do not want to be there. 

That's why a lack of passion is fatal. Find your one reason in life what makes you cry, die or fly, and go for it. In this one precious life you have. 

It will make your and our world a far better place.

Sustainability: something for hippies.

Still I meet them. People who think that sustainability and social business is something for hippies. People with high positions in companies.

With a serious and a little pityingly face they try to express that you are like an alien according to them. Because it is for them a little ridiculous that sustainability and social business and behaviour are main drivers in your life. And in your organisation. Because that is not what business, success and career is about according to them.

Strange. Because life is about social. And about sustaining. Keeping yourself and your surrounding in the best possible shape.

Actually: like hippies. Hippies posses a core belief revolving around the values of peace and love as being essential in an increasingly globalized society.

Which values and believes will bring us, and the planet we live on, much further and in a better shape and form, than the pityingly faced conservatives. 

Start with a great idea.

It sounds obvious. Simple. Start with a great idea. 

When you start with a great idea, you already won half the battle. 

The other half is to find the right market. For that you need to tell the story. Your story. To the people who matter. Do not make it bigger than it is, do not make it smaller than it is. The story. As it is.

My idea: better to whisper your story to the right people, instead of shouting it to everyone.

The marketing part: what is your great idea? Who are your audience? What is your story? Via which channels are you going to talk (whisper) to them?