All we need is… a grandmother revolution! September 21, 2010

For those who have seen the film “Patch Adams”, starring Robin Williams, the interview below would be an added value to this amazing film. And the value of the film itself is high indeed, especially because it’s based on a real-life story.

Today I came across one interview with the film protagonist. The real person turned out to be even more fascinating than the film character (often it’s just vice versa).

Hunter Doherty “Patch” Adams, M.D. (born May 28, 1945 in Washington, D.C.) is an American physician, social activist, citizen diplomat and author. He founded the Gesundheit! Institute in 1971. Each year he organizes a group of volunteers from around the world to travel to various countries where they dress as clowns in an effort to bring humor to orphans, patients, and other people. Adams is currently based in Arlington, Virginia. In collaboration with the institute, he promotes a different health care model (i.e. one not funded by insurance policies).

In his interview to one Italian financial newspaper Patch Adams gives a genius in its simplicity answer of how to change the world to a place, full of love and compassion:

and enjoy the second part, that’s brilliant!

Only a few people really want money September 18, 2010

My boss is a talented private banker and an excellent psychologist. I learned a lot by observing his talks with job candidates in the beginning of my Human Resources Carriere. And since the idea of his business is to make money, my major task has been to find people who REALLY want to earn money. Interestingly, it turned to be a hard task!

The best two questions to ask a candidate is “Do you love money?” and ” What do you need money for?”. The first reaction always is: “yes, sure, who doesn’t?!?” and when I start asking how this love for money actually manifests in his/her life….a person suddenly realises that actually “no…not really”.

It is a paradox? I think no. In fact, most of the people just want a sufficient life standard and nothing more. A dream of becoming rich is obviously a brain-washed one: how many of us are really ready to DO something to become rich? Not many. Because it mostly means too much work, too much stress, to many other conditions which we believe we do not have… The truth is, it is not needed.

A basic income guarantee – a dream or a future reality? August 18, 2010

The idea of a basic income guarantee is getting popular. In case you have not heard about it yet, a basic income guarantee (or basic income) is a proposed system of social security, that periodically provides each citizen with a sum of money that allows the receiver to participate in society with human dignity. In contrast to income redistribution between nations themselves, the phrase basic income defines payments to individuals rather than households, groups, or nations, in order to provide for individual basic human needs. Except for citizenship, a basic income is entirely unconditional.

In Germany they speak about 500 or even 1000 € monthly unconditional income for everyone.

 What are the arguments?

One of the arguments for a basic income was articulated by the French Economist and Philosopher André Gorz:

The connection between more and better has been broken; our needs for many products and services are already more than adequately met, and many of our as-yet-unsatisfied needs will be met not by producing more, but by producing differently, producing other things, or even producing less. This is especially true as regards our needs for air, water, space, silence, beauty, time and human contact…

From the point where it takes only 1,000 hours per year or 20,000 to 30,000 hours per lifetime to create an amount of wealth equal to or greater than the amount we create at the present time in 1,600 hours per year or 40,000 to 50,000 hours in a working life, we must all be able to obtain a real income equal to or higher than our current salaries in exchange for a greatly reduced quantity of work…

Neither is it true any longer that the more each individual works, the better off everyone will be. The present crisis has stimulated technological change of an unprecedented scale and speed: ‘the micro-chip revolution’. The object and indeed the effect of this revolution has been to make rapidly increasing savings in labour, in the industrial, administrative and service sectors. Increasing production is secured in these sectors by decreasing amounts of labour. As a result, the social process of production no longer needs everyone to work in it on a full-time basis.

Children stop being communists at the age of 11, study says June 1, 2010

Many people from different countries and background told me that when they were children it was difficult for them to understand the idea of money and goods distribution. I always thought it is a good proof for my idea that capitalism as  such is a very unnatural institution.

The new study from Norway shows some interesting evidence in support of my supposition. As children progress to adolescence, their sense of fairness changes from pure equality to proportionality based on merit, study says.

The study was conducted at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH) by the research team consisting of Associate Professor Ingvild Almås, Professor Alexander W. Cappelen, Associate Professor Erik Ø. Sørensen, and Professor Bertil Tungodden.

One of the most fundamental questions in the social sciences is how morality and fairness considerations affect human behavior. Previous research has shown that adults differ greatly both in the extent to which they care about fairness considerations and in what they perceive as fair.

“This is, however, the first economic study to show how some of these differences are shaped in adolescence. In doing so, the study also sheds light on how our perceptions of fairness are affected both by the social environment and biological factors,” explains Professor Bertil Tungodden from NHH in Norway.

What is a fair inequality?
Most adults find some inequalities fair. Hence, in contrast, to young children, they do not always think of strict equality as the fair solution to a distributive problem. What explains this and how does this acceptance of inequality develop? These were motivating questions for the present study of the distributive behavior of 500 Norwegian school children 11-19 years old.

“By comparing the behavior for different age groups, we were able to established clear developmental patterns. In particular, the study shows that as children grow older, they increasingly find inequalities reflecting differences in individual achievements fair,” continues Professor Tungodden.

Just luck?
In the experiment, the children worked on a task for 45 minutes. At the end of the work session, some were lucky and received a high price on their production; others were unlucky and received a low price. Thus, there were inequalities in earnings that reflected differences in both individual production and luck.

Each participant then had to decide how to distribute the total earnings between themselves and one other participant. Hence, they had to decide which inequalities they found fair.
“Here we observed a very interesting pattern,” adds Professor Tungodden.

“While almost none of the younger children made a distinction between luck and individual production, a substantial share of the older children did so. They accepted inequalities reflecting differences in individual production, but not inequalities reflecting just luck.”

Mastery: Why people like to get better at stuff May 28, 2010

Mastery seems to be a basic need. Each human being sooner or later likes to succeed in something: either it is one of the most useless and stupid record from the Guinness book or just a karaoke singing, obviously people just  like to get better at stuff! The point is that mostly they do not gain anything from it, and possibly nobody will even ever hear about their mastery or pay for that… And yet, people do it. Why?

The interesting answer I found in the video I posted earlier was: “getting better is satisfying”. Yes! As simple as that.

Speaking in term of yoga knowledge, I find the correlation between the Mastery and Satisfaction very interesting, because these two are inborn qualified from the two “neighbouring” chakras: Nabhi and Void (both in the stomach area of the body). Normally responsible for different qualities – Nabhi for satisfaction, Void -for Mastery, in this very case they came up as interconnected and there is  probably even a deeper meaning of this combination… something like that: if you feel unsatisfied in life, try to master something, and more contentment will come to you!

LOVE, axinia

The evolution of business: The PROFIT mode dies out, the PURPOSE mode comes in! May 18, 2010

.

I think the most brilliant about this observation is that this is the NEW trend. I am sure that a couple of centuries or even decades away people have been indeed very well motivated by profit only. Now, as a clear advancement of mankind we can see the new motivation, the advanced motivation.

Let me back it up with one fo the most brilliant TED videos – “How great leaders inspire for action”, I guess it is nearly same idea, but from another view-point…

We live in a very interesting time when we can observe the transformation of the whole humanity at the highest speed!

LOVE, axinia

3 common misconceptions of work March 5, 2010

ILLUSION 1:  People tend to overestimate the role of work in their lives: the identification with a profession is often so strong that the whole personality gets squashed into that limited role.

ILLUSION 2: A job is the only mean of unfolding the beauty of personality. In reality there are so many other occupations that also do it: family, friends, hobbies…

ILLUSION 3: the greatest one – a job is the way of self-realization or so-called self-fulfillement.

These are the illusions I guess we all more or less dwell in, due to the strong conditioning of the society. However the opposite is true!

Here are some points I  gained from my observations:

• generally, most of the people have many talents/abilities, they can vary from art to technique, from language to mathematics within one and the same person.
• it is difficult to find a job where we can fulfill many of our talents at the same time.
• we often have to take one opportunity after another in order to be able to live all our talents in one life. And even one life may not be enough.
• we have to realize that there may not be ONE dream job!
• we have to realize that even getting the dream job is not reaching heaven, and finally it does not make us happy. It may contribute to our well-being, but it is not the ultimate happiness (as many people seem to believe). Neither a dream job nor a dream partner are responsible for our happiness.

And what are your observations?

P.S. In order just to add to the dream job issue: I myself have in mind several dream jobs which are totally different!  Despite the fact that I am already having the so-called dream job, I would love to do at least 3 other things later in my life:

1. life coach/job coach (helping people to find their mission and place in life)
2. director of my own private school (with a unique educational concept I worked out through years)
3. florist (flower design) or interior designer
   

I hope I will manage to live all them in this life  :)… At the same time I know that in the end of the day there is something else that matters much more for me, something which gives me the true self-fulfillment. And for you?

LOVE,

axinia

Job world: why it’s so difficult to find a really good employee? March 3, 2010

 How many excellent teachers, doctors, salesman, secretaries, IT manager, cleaners, cooks, designers do you know? I bet very, very few. It’s damn hard to find a good worker, of any kind.

Since I am in the recruitment/Human Resources field, this question puzzles me a lot: why only few people are becoming true dedicated professionals in their area? Why are so many just mediocre performers?

Can it be that mostly people are just in the wrong jobs? And if it is so then why are they not trying to find the right one? Can it be that for some people it is just not important? (this I doubt, but who knows..)

Anyone knows the answer?

LOVE, axinia (image by me)

Never jobless: my “Whiskers, Paws and Tail” strategy October 28, 2009

This post is an outcome of my over 10 years work experience. The funny thing about it is that none of my employers have ever looked at my CV. And yet I was getting very good positions. The even funnier thing is that I ended up working as a Human Resources Manger myself. All that gives me the right to claim that there is a certain strategy that makes it work, and work successfully.

I call it “Whiskers,  Paws and Tail”  strategy. There is a popular Russian cartoon “Prostokvashino” with a cute cat Matroskin who, being asked about his documents replies: “Whiskers, paws and tail are my documents!”. And that is what I mean under no need of a CV presentation: you yourself at any moment of life should be the best CV to your personality, both inside and outside. Let me list some ideas on how I see it.

1. Reliability is the most precious and important quality for an employer, no matter in which sphere –  creative, business or industrial. You should not only look reliable but actually be that. Reliable people with determined attention emit this quality naturally, and this leads to trust which is so valuable for anyone.

2. Inner and Outer Beauty: It starts with the  inner work on oneself – the perpetual unfolding of your character is essential. Not getting “better” from day by day, no. You are already perfect. It is about discovering the true beauty of your personality. The most speedy method for it I found in my meditation practice. There are many other ways as well, but this one gives the fastest results. As soon as your true perfect being will be increasingly shining through, this will make you a desirable person. Many people will want to be with you, will seek your company for any thinkable reason. Among these people there will be also some potential job-givers!

3. Be The Best Product Yourself Having this full package of precious inner Qualities + their Manifestation + Reliability you become a  kind of a PRODUCT, a highly desirable  trade mark. How will you know it works? When any decision-maker/boss/HR Manager will want you to work for him/her after a couple of minutes you have talked. And  this is not a dream!

Plastic Planet -“after seeing this film you will never drink from a plastic bottle”. September 26, 2009

I usually visit cinema once in several months, and only for some really good films. My recent discovery is a brand new film “Plastic Planet”, the poster to which claims: “after seeing this film you will never drink from a plastic bottle”.

Generally we all know plastic is bad. But HOW bad? WHAT is actually so bad about it? The film comes up as an eye-opener.

 An invistigavie documentary in Michael Moore style by an Austrian film director Werner Boote presents an up-close and personal view of the controversial and fascinating material that has found its way into every facet of our daily lives: plastic. He takes us on a journey around the globe, following plastic through its 100 years of “glorious triumph” and showing us what an unexpected impact plastic has on our world.