Focus on Life™

We love routines and predictability even if we are not openly admitting it. They give us the feeling of security and being in control of issues. Still, we are only thinking that nothing changes while everything around us is in constant move and a state of flux. We just do not register incremental shifts—and therefore we are often taken by surprise with more or less radical consequences.

Business world is a good case in point about continuous change. Organisations tend to get used to their positions and organisational charts showing how the business is structured and is supposed to be run. But customers do not like to repeat things over and over again without improvements or even trying something entirely different. This creates the urge for adjustments and new ideas. If there is no demand there is no organisation either—in the long run. No matter how nice the current business unit, division, or team you are having but if it does not serve any real need anymore it must go.

Voluntary change requires a lot. You need to be active, open, sensitive, and humble for new ideas—even radical ones. In addition, boldness and courage are in great demand in order to carry out the required changes in a swift manner. Detachment is as important for a business organisation as it is for personal development. If you fall in love with your position or routines you will lose the game in the future. Sensitivity for the unknown and being constantly listening and observing are the only ways to ensure that you earn your current leadership position over and over again. Humility is the only friend of success.

Large masses tend to move very slowly first. But even icebergs melt in wrong climate. The same applies to corporations that are looking today’s world through their rose-coloured glasses of past success. They see what they want to see and even pretend not to notice the signals of change. Delaying issues do not make them to disappear—often things just get worse. Massive layoffs and organisational restructurings and turnarounds tell their story of inevitability of change—you either adjust sooner or later or you just simply disappear altogether.

How to remain dynamic and flexible without clinging too much in the past? Focus on your capabilities and competences. Everybody needs to keep learning new skills and enrich their know-how and experience, all the time. If you regard change as a fact of live that enables you to do new things and have exciting opportunities you are less likely in need of panic actions or last-minute reactions. Do you enjoy what you are doing? Are you delivering good value and the best possible quality in your job? We tend to drop the ball way before we admit it to ourselves. We are not motivated and life seems boring, because we are stuck into our routines. This should be a very good warning sign that you have snoozed. Each morning after you wake up draw either a happy or sad smiley in your calendar for a month. Check the results and count the amount of happy faces full of anticipation and excitement for the new day. If you find way too many sad faces you may need to reconsider your priorities—change is only a thought away.

We are all after happiness but seldom find it but only for a few glances or passing moments. Most of the time we are seeking to gain it via different things, people, or situations. We try to reproduce the moments and experiences we already had or we are just randomly trying to imitate someone else’s life with their choices. And all these methods fail to provide us anything but suffering and continuous seeking of happiness—they all are external to us.

Happiness is a state of mind that is independent of the circumstances or our surroundings. It is our natural state of being that we have learned to ignore while growing up. We have substituted the internal happiness for objects and desires external to us. They are conditional and related to some activities or specific points in time. What is common to all of these is that they are not present right now. They are projected to the future. This type of happiness is something that you’re always waiting for. Your constant mode is to achieve and ‘earn’ your happiness by actions or circumstances. In other words you are living in illusions filled by your expectations. Disappointments are a frequent visitor when you are dealing with your future projections based on your expected outcomes of the future situations or events. How much in control of your life you really are?

This ‘when..then’ -type of conditioning is very convincing but it is not really living. It’s about building dream castles and denying the moment. You are saying that I’m not happy right now and I’m substituting this moment for another one in the future. You are after the carrot that is always attached to the current moment—the stick stays in the future with the appealing prize as well. This takes many forms. We may prefer to work overtime and then compensate it back in the holidays. Or we are accumulating substantial wealth that we are hoping to spend after retirement. How can you enjoy your life later if you cannot do it now?

Happiness is not a destination—it is a journey. If you are not comfortable being in the journey you are suffering in the destination as well. Life is about experiencing and enjoying every moment you have. It requires that you are comfortable with uncertainty and change. We can only be happy when we have learned to accept the things that we cannot change and regard every passing moment as a gift that has some valuable lessons and experiences to give us. Only when being is enough you can be happy. As long as you need to achieve or become you are not going to find happiness. Life is about change and being in the moment—exploring the unknown.

Constant pace and action are not natural. One needs to relax and wind down as well. You cannot have music without silence. It takes a fine-tuned instrument to recognise when it is the time to blow hard and loud and when it is the time to give away and be quiet.

Peak performance is possible only when one is prepared for it, even unconsciously. Creative ideas and innovations seldom happen in the office environment. It is too predictable and ‘dull’. It is all in the mind but still the man-made landscape is often too ‘square’. Nature does not repeat itself. It creates variance and improvises over the theme.

Dynamics is possible only when you have enough variation. Mechanical performance will kick back in the long run. Getting used to the pattern and repeating oneself may sound like safe and secure, but they are also the way to become stuck and shut down from the unpredictable.

New is always something unknown. Therefore it is also uncomfortable for many. Even though you may not decide to explore and discover new boundaries you can always create variance within the familiar daily life and routines. Take a new route back to home. Do things in a different order or just stop and stare the night sky under the moonlight. Life is about living and living is about creating. You draw you canvas everyday by your actions. Each day is a fresh new start, and a new story to tell. If you are not happy about today’s story, try something else tomorrow. Don’t come up with the same old picture if it did not work out well yesterday. Routines are for machines—people do not have to live like robots. We are artists that create by living.

For a few centuries we have gotten used to a trend of centralisation in almost all aspects of our life. The centralisation of power, money, influence, businesses, professions, education, health-care, defence, and energy are only a few examples of the current way of the world. Fortunately things do not have to be this way in the future.

Clearly there are some advantages in large units and centralisation of functions. Larger production units are more feasible and can gain economies of scale, but there are also areas in which the accumulation is not based on a voluntary cooperation and freedom of expression. Coercion typically prefers to avoid free competition and transparency. It gets its power from the very subjects that are either by ignorance or by force (or a threat of violence) alienated from their powers (i.e. rights). In all the cases the structures are kept in place by the members of the society only as long as they are tolerated or the veil of ignorance has been lifted from the eyes of the many.

In the past centralisation has been relatively easy. Limited communication capabilities and high transaction costs for different members of the society to directly interact with each other supported this trend. So called middlemen were very lucrative and desirable positions to be. Still today we see many of these operational models around us: banks, traditional media, government monopolies such as post office, healthcare, education, central bank, defence, courts etc. Naturally these are also means to support the agendas of the ones who influence and prefer to have special privileges.

The technology development has changed many of the underlying paradigms in a very rapid pace. Below some examples:

Communications: Mobile phones, email, VOIP (e.g. Skype, Fring), text messages, hotspots, p2p-networks, location and instant messaging enable 24/7 communication that has a capability of reaching millions of people in a matter of seconds worldwide. Typically these means enable cheap multicast type of communication from one person to many that was previously very expensive and available to a few members of the society.

Media: Blogs and social networking, news sites, social bookmarking, multimedia services (e.g. YouTube, Flickr, podcasting, Current TV, Joost), self-publishing, search engines, and long-tail bookstores are among the ways to shape the future of the media and how it is used. New Paul Potts are discovered the minute they appear in to the radar and can gain millions of fans even from different continents. Similarly not so desirable news are brought in to the light that are kept off the main media and freedom of choice enables to pick those items that please and benefit the user.

Banking and finance: ebrokers, internet banks, p2p lending (e.g. Prosper, Zopa), fundraising (e.g. ChipIN, Fundable, GiveMeaning, EcoMiles), microfinancing , PayPal, barter, and egold makes it more cost-efficient and cheaper to obtain loans, select one’s preferred bank, investment or lending partner or even skip the middleman altogether.

Commerce: auction sites, ecommerce platforms, productivity tools, open-source software, and cheap IT solutions enable to reach new marginal customer segments that have not been available without a cost-efficient way of reaching geographically fragmented niches.

Travelling: low-cost airlines and online travel bookings have allowed mass-tourism to take a new form without arranged package-trips.

Information: free online books, databases, websites, ecourses & programmes, wikipedias, and portals have enabled the access for information sources that have previously either been physically isolated or otherwise out of reach for the many.

These were only a few examples how our society transforms and changes every minute. In some areas the changes are more gradual and the adaptation rate is slower but many sectors are realising the inevitable shift in the way people behave and interact with their environment. The choice is always with us.

We focus on growth—it’s everything. Our current economy is based on the ever-expanding growth paradigm. It does not work without it. Our monetary base grows every year. Valuations need to grow, as well as profits and revenues. The society is driven by this growth mania.

And how do we do this? By producing and consuming more, or should I say evermore, ever-expanding. And by consuming more we feed more needs to expand the business and acquire new resources to fulfil the needs of the growth. And so the cycle goes on and on—but not forever. Sole expansion is not natural, it pairs with contraction, in nature that is.

Seldom we start to question the basis of the assumptions and thinking underneath. What is the purpose of the growth and why is it needed? Some would say that it is because of money. And in many ways they are right. The fiat money system is built upon a hypothesis of ever-expanding promises of debt that are not paid back but rolled over. It requires more units of money to survive. As a result of this there are only raising prices and continuous inflation (expansion). For example US dollar has lost over 95% of its value since 1913 when the Federal Reserve was established. Does this create wealth for all the citizens using the legal tender?

But coming back to the question why the growth and what’s the purpose of it. More money does not answer the question; it only explains the way the current system is working. Actually money has nothing do with the real issue—it’s only a poor middleman that is often misunderstood to be the purpose when it can only be the means for something else. Money is used to obtain goods, services, or intangible needs such as security. We would not consume more simply because our monetary system requires so. There is something else underneath that feeds the requirements and keeps the wheels turning. And once again we are getting back to each and every one of us, individually. No company consume, buy, sell, manufacture, or invest—only people do. Structures are mere tools and vehicles for our purposes, ignore them long enough and they disappear. There is no one to blame but us. It’s not the economy, stupid—it’s us, the people!

We have bought the idea and assume that more is better. More money means something better, more consumption provides with something more and so on. Having more is the key and this having is the cause of the ever-expansion in our needs. But if you never consider why you need to have more you will never approach the real issue, you simply will act to gain more of something—forever and ever more.

Wanting is easy. Also having more is relatively easy, even though it takes its toll. But being happy has nothing to do with wanting or having. Confucius once said: “they must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.” It looks that buying happiness does not seem to work despite all the consumption and material well-being. Maybe it is time to reconsider our assumptions and beliefs that define our current growth paradigm, individually?

Is your life in distress – maybe your career, personal direction, relationships, work, or all the above? A cul-de-sac can be a major issue with no easy way out. Still, the answer might be closer than you have realised.

Our reality is the product of our own thinking. It is built upon our assumptions, beliefs, past experiences, and knowledge. In other words, we often repeat the same record over and over again, and even without noticing it. Alas, this is the reason for the unbearable difficulties and ‘impossibilities’. We are stuck.

Instead of looking into future with great distress and trying to work one’s way out, how about pausing for a while and truly looking around you? Where are you and how did you end up here? Where did you come from and why did you choose to be here now? Don’t be surprised if you just simply don’t know, or you don’t have a good answer. That’s how it often is — life just happens if we are not proactively making conscious decisions. We drift and react on daily basis; days turn into weeks and weeks into months, even years. No wonder things may start to seem and feel the same!

Understanding where you are coming from often helps to get a bigger picture of the choices and experiences leading to the current stage. But don’t take it for granted that you have to continue in a similar manner. Each moment you have a chance to make a difference and do something else. We do not have to repeat ourselves like robots —day-in and day-out. Many times the only way to realise the repetition is a major distress factor coming into our lives. It wakes us up since we simply cannot continue like nothing happened. The old record is broken — it just does not play again. We are lost.

If you acknowledge where you are coming from and definitely know that there is no way going forward it leaves at least one possibility left: the current moment. One can focus on the present moment, and try to figure out and observe the surrounding reality. After all it may not exactly be like one has thought it would be — the same old and boring as it ‘used’ to be. But since we only know what we know, it might first be a bit difficult to see something else than what we are expecting to experience. However, there is one great advantage that we haven’t used yet, and that’s exactly the discomfort factor. We know for sure that there has to be something else since things aren’t working the old way again! We have nothing to loose.

If you cannot change the circumstances, the past, and the future has not happened yet, you still have the current moment. So, you have something! And surely you have plenty of more as well. Many experiences, personal assets and resources that you have accumulated along the way in forms of developed talents, skills, knowledge, and so on. In another words you do not have to start from scratch like a newborn baby into this world. You have something to build upon. Maybe not exactly like you used to do it in the past, but perhaps even something better than before?

Getting nowhere and being just here is a great point to start to create something new. It’s very easy to change the direction and do something ‘unpredictable’. Find again the things you like to do and are passionate about. Start to live again a life that is meaningful and full of fun – just by purely being and doing things that are enjoyable. After all, why should we do things we do not like or believe in? It is just so easy to forget to enjoy our everyday life until we have almost entirely lost the track of the whole concept. Then it is time again to rediscover the joy of living and do something else. Life is not about achieving but about being in a manner that is fulfilling and content every moment. A distress can be a blessing in disguise. Carpe diem!

As long as there is something that changes, the quest is not
over. Anything that is not permanent and independent is still
becoming; it depends on its external circumstances and,
therefore, more or less reacts to these.

A constant state is independent of any outside events or
situations as well as any temporal fluctuations such as day or
night. How stable is your consciousness?

Our belief structures define who we are and how we interpret
the world. They are our point of view and allow us to view the
world through rose-colored glasses. We adjust the external
world according to our beliefs. Beliefs are our world, and they
are us. Hence they are very powerful and have a great impact
on us.

When we interact with other people, we interact with their
belief structures. If these beliefs are aligned, we feel under-
stood and the interaction is a very pleasant experience. On the
other hand, if others’ beliefs do not fit into our world, they
can threaten or distress us.

We stick to our beliefs. We lock into our bunkers, and try
to keep the base safe as long as possible. This is very impor-
tant because otherwise we are bound to change our under-
standing of our existence, which often means giving up
something and adjusting our life accordingly. We have a huge
intolerance for change and uncertainty. Questioning our con-
ventional ways of categorizing and seeing the world imposes
an immediate threat for who we believe we are and how the
world is constructed according to our understanding.

Until we give up believing and creating thought structures,
we are tied up and imprisoned by them. They bound limits to
our lives and prevent us from experiencing the external world
without filters and mental handicaps.

Our life can be compared to a project. Projects have a begin-
ning and an end. Its definition states that it is not perma-
nent—it has a definitive life span. It starts, goes on, and ends.
A project has no purpose itself—it is only the means for
something. It has a purpose and it is used as the vehicle, the
tool, for the objective. Temporal is an interesting term.
Something has an existence in time and, therefore, it has to
have a starting point and moment as well as have an ending
point and time. It is only temporal. Everything that exists in
time has its own tempo, time, and place. Nothing is perma-
nent.

Birth, living, and dying. Often the transition points are
interesting. In those points, something changes from one for-
mulation into another—a real drastic transformation hap-
pens. Still, our own life is mainly characterized by the middle
part—the continuation. We focus almost no attention on the
beginning or the end. For us, the living part is the only real
existence and we ignore the beginning and the end. But how
can we know what to do and where to go and, more impor-
tantly, where to target if we are not aware of all three charac-
teristics—the beginning, the continuation, and the end—of
temporal existence?

Have you ever looked back on your life, thought about the
incidents and situations you faced in your life? Often, the
sudden and out-of-the-blue surprises that we are at first
shocked by and terrified to overcome later turn out to be
important turning points or stepping stones to something
else. They did serve a purpose and were necessary in our pur-
suit for something else. In the very situation we did not real-
ize the bigger picture, but later on, sometimes even years later,
everything makes perfect sense. There was a red line after all.
We just did not realize it earlier.

There are a few Hollywood movies that tell the story from
the end to the beginning. The film Memento is one of these.
For the spectator, this is a very annoying experience because
the causal relationships we are so used to in our everyday life
is working in reverse. The situation and things happening are
not leading to something but are results and consequences of
something that has already happened. Therefore, it is practi-
cally impossible to “know or expect” the next phases of the
events.

Our life works this way as well. We can only track back the
events leading to this point but the next phases are not known
to us. This makes us insecure and uncertain about our future.
Anything can happen—or that’s the thinking.

We could use reverse-order logic on our life as well. We are
very confident when looking back on our lives. The sense of
security derives from knowing that finally everything turns out
to be OK (because we are here to reflect back on our memories).
Similarly, we also understand better the circumstances and may
analyze the reasons and situations that we have already lived.
But why are we so uncomfortable with our future? Why should
it all change and things become unbearable for us suddenly in
the future? Our activities in the past were necessary and led us to
many surprises. Not all of them have been negative and many of
them have actually given us something. We have learned from
our mistakes and these experiences have given us new ideas and
added new dimensions to our lives.

Look back on your life and focus on some important devel-
opments in your life. Can you claim that all the incidents and
situations in your life have been totally chaotic and range from
whatever unexpected irrational incident to another in no partic-
ular order, where putting it together makes absolutely no sense
at all? Has all of it been a pure waste of time and resources? Pure
chaos means that random events happen and each incident is
not in any way interrelated or dependent on any other occur-
rence. Chaos consists of no logic but a hidden logic is no chaos.
Reverse confidence may start to make sense.