A friend in need is a friend indeed? There is a much better friendship test! November 5, 2013

My first personal insight on a true friendship was that the friend is not the person who helps you out in a difficult situation but the one who can enjoy your joys. Indeed I have noticed that many people are happy to help out, in some or other way if anything bad happens. However not many are able to enjoy what you enjoy. 

Recently I thought of another important friendship distinction:

A true friendship passes through the “money test”, and the false one not. How many stories we all have heard/experienced when so-called best friends, being in a business situation of making and sharing money, suddenly part and fight? How many seemingly stable and good relationships have been brocken when money came into the play?

Luckily I never experienced that, in fact just the opposite: one of my best, long-term friends is at the same time my employer and the money issue makes no impact on our wonderful relationship. But I know of many opposite cases.

Somehow or rather, money has its power spell over relatioshiops. Therefore it is the best friendship test.

LOVE, axinia

Today is Forgiveness Sunday February 13, 2010

This special day is my favorite in the Christian tradition. Having an atheistic background, I have been always deeply touched by the candid Christian Orthodox celebration of “Forgiveness Sunday”.

The last Sunday before Great Lent, is the day when Orthodox Christians remember the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. “Forgiveness Sunday” received this name from the pious custom at Vespers of asking each other’s forgiveness for discourtesy and disrespect. People do so, since in the forthcoming fast they will approach the sacrament of Penance and ask the Lord to forgive their sins, which forgiveness will be granted us only if people themselves forgive each other. “If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matt. 6.14, 15)”

Since the 90-s when religion slowly started getting its position back with the peoples of Russia, the tradition of Forgiveness Sunday came back. According to it, you can ask forgiveness of every person you meet this day, but especially people whom you might have really done some harm, or just your relatives and friends (we never know if by chance we could have hurt anyone!).

Your Blog Is Your Personal Coach! – or why to start blogging August 24, 2008

 image by katisommer

Every day thousands of people join blogosphere. Blogging is not just something new. It is the new way of living for those who choose that amazing way of expressing oneself and communicating with the world (online AND offline!). Now for those who still hesitate – to blog or not to blog? – I have put together some points that might be attractive. Why? Because blogging in may ways is the easiest and cheapest way of a personality training: YOUR BLOG IS YOUR COACH.

So what happens when you start blogging? What do you gain?

1. Determination -especially if your blog has a certain theme, you will want to keep collecting materials and posting good pieces on that. Even if it determination is not your strength, you will have to learn it. What is great about blogging in that this learning process happens naturally, in the flow. Your blog will teach you to follow your ideas determinedly!

2. Commitment – oh, that is a gold-value quality today, when more and more modern people avoid committing themselves to any serous relationships. And blogging can become very serious when you will find out one day that there are hundreds/thousands of readers waiting for your next post out there!

How to get on easy with everyone February 28, 2007

 photo phitar

Today I want to share with you one of my best communication tricks.

But first you should know that whatever tricks I am using, it is all authentic, coming from my own self and not being learned or trained. It took me some time to realise that these are actually tricks :).

My best communication trick works on the basic human quality described here. I guess, it will not work without it!

HOW DOES IT WORK?

When you meet a person, just see her/him as a child!

When you address a person, address a child in her/him.

Of cause you should not speak to a person, as you would speak to a child, but deep within you just keep this feeling of being children on the same playground.

WHY DOES IT WORK?

Addressing a child in a person, you switch on the most powerful element in us – the innocence. It is the root of every human being, and even if it is covered with all sorts of stupid things, it is still there!

Innocence works like a magnet – we all know that animals are very innocent and they act according to the magnet field of the Earth. So does our innocence, it acts like a magnet and it attracts the innocence in others to us.

I was happy to find out that this trick works with somebody else as well: a colleague of mine, a successful oil trader who is on good terms with the half of the world and one of the best communicators I know told me once that he sees all people as his classmates. That is his trick for successful negotiation – and he is just great in it!

And what I really like about it is that you are absolutely safe and comfortable in every communication – the roughest person calms down and the most arrogant one humbles down…

It can be your boss, a prime minister or a queen – when you see a child in a person, you are on the same level and they accept it!

LOVE, axinia