miércoles, 22 de octubre de 2008

Just an illusion

Why is it that unemployed people go as far as attempting suicide, and people working, dream at 10am about walking barefoot in a lost beach in Thailand?
Well, my perception about jobs changed radically after my death.
At first, my career was my life, I wanted to be CEO of the company I was working for, I dreamed about a business magazine cover with some highlight about my brightness in sales or innovation, I feared nothing, just to come short on those huge expectations I had set, loved business traveling, having breakfast in one country and dinner in other, wanted speed to satisfy client needs, strategic planning, thinking out of the box, surprising competitors with new blue oceans in the industry, and so on. An MBA was an obvious next step, then I would get a regional position and begin to climb the corporate ladder from a higher step. If my job was my life what happened If I quitted or was fired? Well, I would get another life in another company, where a new industry would have different challenges and the game would begin again.
After all the thinking in the hospital, wondering about all the things I could have lost, when I got back to my office, a lot seemed different. Although everything was in the same place, something just didn’t match.
A lot of people get sick after working 14 or 16 hours a day, not eating healthy, not getting enough sleep, and living in a continuous rush, even got divorced. It was a decision: career or family. That didn’t make sense anymore. It did when life was filled with a job, but when working is just one way to get money to use it in what you really want on your free time or on holidays, other forgotten things become a priority. Health, family, friends, knowledge, intellectual growth, resting, admiring, feeling, become priceless and win over any job issue. As my ex boss sister stated: “Work takes a lot of time”
I tried to imagine working without any pay. What kind of job would I accept for free? Not many that I know. So I realized that a career was not what I wanted in life, it’s just the means to get the money we need in this world to pay for what we really want. That’s why many think about beaches and sports while working, because the best scenario would be getting your paycheck while traveling or playing, while really living. A job it’s necessary not just for the money, but for self-esteem, for feeling useful to humanity, for making good use of what we know and what we are good at, for making the best use of our potential, but is just a mean.
Some people work in something that they would do for free, just for the emotion, or for the knowledge they get or create, that’s great, and I think it’s just for a minority, other people work in whatever they can just to pay the bills, it’s a must for the responsibilities they have with kids or debts, that must be a very hard situation, and some other people are able to choose their positions, or at least have options to choose, that’s very nice. But it would be great if everybody understand that there are a lot of priorities before their jobs. Work as hard as you can in your schedule, be as efficient as possible, be creative, supportive, give everything but keep in mind it’s your job, not your life.
There might be cycles too. Workers want to be entrepreneurs, handle their own time and skip bosses, and some entrepreneurs would like the security of a monthly check.
I know a lot of people running their own business, smaller than a previous job, but happier, or ex-workaholics with newborns changing dippers without sleep, but satisfied. There are many reasons or situations that make people understand the role of their jobs in life, but there’s a lot of people killing themselves for raising the stock price for shareholders. Is it worth sacrificing health and family for someone else to change It’s yacht? Is you decision.

martes, 7 de octubre de 2008

Luck?

I don’t have an explanation for the feeling, but clearly people, animals, places, among others, generate energies or sensations that can be perceived in different levels. I think that even animals get that sense, as dogs bark to some people and act tenderly to strangers without any visual reason.
These energies not only are so powerful that can be perceived by others, but have impact on results, are transferred and shared, and might dominate how we think and feel. I even think that a group of those energies can modify physical things or actions.
We all feel good or uncomfortable around some people, and perceive worries and sadness in places like hospitals, but is this something we can get under control? How can we receive good energy and avoid getting contaminated with bad energies?
I might think that we can generate positive or negative energies by ourselves, but we get contaminated too by energies of people around us, and the charge we have influences our days and relations.
Recently I had one of the worst years professionally speaking. Although I didn’t get any warnings or lectures from my boss, everything that could go wrong with my clients went the worst way, and what had good chances went to the basket too. I tried and tried hard for things to generate results, but was frustrating. Even almost impossible things happened for bad, and several times. At first I thought it was just bad luck, but someone told me that I was charged with bad energy and that it showed. At first I didn’t gave it a lot of thought, but a “cleaning” method was proposed and having nothing to loose, I tried.
Well, everything began to change, results were better, and personally I was feeling better too. After this, I began to pay a lot of attention to energies of people and places, whenever I felt something I didn’t like, I rather leave. I began to protect the good vibe I was accumulating, and I kept this by myself.
We might confuse sometimes energy with mood, but there’s a lot of people depressed with kind of good energy, and happy people with horrendous vibes. Although our mood might influence our energy, I believe what we think, the reason for our actions, and how satisfied we are with ourselves have a lot more impact in the result.
Given the impact our energy has on the results of everything we do, although not tangible, might be one of our most important assets we could explode.
Do you ever have asked yourself why there’s many people that begins some project with all the effort, the resources, the capabilities, and at the end they fail? I may guess that energy could be that little help to succeed or fail, depending on what you radiate. Good vibe might be the reason to get in to a rising spiral, where good things lead to better things, to nice people, and so on. Or the other way too.
Almost everybody knows about energies, but what I would like to encourage is to cultivate it, grow it, protect it, depurate it, and clean it, this despised valuable it’s changing my concept of luck.