“Life is about giving, and the rest is taken care of.”

“Nothing has any meaning except the one we give to it— everything simply is.”

“Humbleness is all it takes.”

“The impossible happens when the possible is ignored.”

“If you don’t know what to do, meditate.”

“The (future) wealth is in the people, the past is in the tangible assets.”

“Skills, knowledge, and experience build the future.”

“Life is simple—thinking is complicated.”

“Only two things: the ones you think are important, and those that are.”

“Happiness is a continuous flow of life.”

“Nothing to say, everything to realise.”

“You are what you think, say, and do.”

“Your senses know nothing, they merely register movement.”

“Only when you have done enough, you can be.”

“Complexity is easy, simplicity requires mastery.”

“Society is persons.”

“Separate money from politics and you find very little interest on public matters.”

“Poverty is a relative term. Don’t expect it to disappear from the lexicon any time soon. One can be poor or rich—it’s just a matter of definition.”

“Enjoy the moment. That’s all there is.”

“Our legal tender is based on a threat of violence, and nothing else.”

We consume a lot of our energy in thinking and feeling. The result can be either positive or negative. Worrying, stress, sloppiness, and absentmindedness are just part of the end results. And all of these can be factors embedded in your actions. They are the signals you sent to others—-most likely without realising it yourself.

Talking without meaning is very common nowadays. People just talk without considering what they are saying or promising. This has consequences in your environment as well. Trust can be lost only once. Similarly your credibility is decreased every time there is a discrepancy in your behaviour. We all know persons who are always late. You have learned to know how much the person is late in average, so you are not upset about it anymore. You simply re-evaluate the information according to your own judgment. Getting too far off the tolerance area means that the person might be entirely out of the game.

Postponing decision-making is easy. Unfortunately there never seems to be more time available in the future than now. Just ask from busy business executives—do they consider having more time available for them in 3 months time or even a year from now? I bet the answer is exactly the opposite. For the same reason you should take care of the issues as they emerge. Delaying enables you to pile a nice archive that needs to be sorted out but nothing else. Is it more fun to do things later than just think them over straight away and act accordingly? Often the immediate action takes almost the same amount of time than postponing. The difference is that only in the first case you have saved time for something else and also considered your actions as well. Over a period of time and practise a fast response can become a second nature. People seldom complain for being too quick to respond.

Efficiency means that you are good at what you’re doing. This means that you manage and are in control of the issues you’re dealing with. In other words you are supposed to be a professional that does not try, but simply acts. Therefore consider carefully your thoughts before speaking and carrying out your actions. By sending various signals you’re creating more chaos than clarity. Your credibility is only as good as your deeds. And if you are really engaged with your activities you do not have time to talk about doing something—just do it. Results are better than future promises. How much do you appreciate persons that only do maybe a half of what they have promised to do? Are you sure you’re not one of them?

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?

One person’s impossible is other person’s business as usual. What’s the difference? A point of view—the other person cannot imagine a solution based on his/her past experiences, knowledge and understanding while for the other there is no mystery because it is part of his/her everyday life (understanding). In other words the doer believes and the doubter does not.

Ask a successful entrepreneur how he managed to do it, and often you may not find specific answers. They will emphasise their vision, passion, and dedication—they believed 100 per cent what they we about to create. And more importantly, they had the strong will and confidence in themselves that they can make it to happen, no matter what. And after all, how could you know beforehand how to do things that you have not done before? If you were to do only those things that you have done earlier, you would repeat yourself. So, is there any other way to create something new?

Your thinking is based on your past knowledge. We only know what we know, and we see and hear only what we know. Worries are produced in our mind and only by our mind. It is a closed system that exists only when you are thinking (of it or something else). While you are in the middle of some intensive action, you do not have time to think. You have to act. Try to think while hitting the ball in the golf court and you certainly do not make a dream swing.

Often thinking substitutes the action, and makes the realisation of our goals more difficult. It is not that one does not need to define the goals and plan things in advance, but it is important to realise when it is the time to believe on what one is doing and start to walk the talk (or the thought). Mind can produce different scenarios endlessly. Those what-ifs and hows have only one problem–they do not match with the outside reality. Only by starting to move one can keep a bicycle stable–the same applies to our lives as well. Paralysis by analysis cumulates the worries but does not provide any remedy for the underlying issues.

A different matter is when it is a right time to consider the how-question. If you want to make something big and major, it is not very wise to start by thinking how you are going to realise it. This would only result that you are not going to vision such a grand ideas and objectives after all. The road looks very cumbersome and also the visibility is very poor. You start to doubt and very soon the great venture has been turned into a farce—and all this can happen just in your mind! A sailor does not know the weather conditions for his entire route before starting to cross the Atlantic. He certainly knows where he’s heading and why he is doing it. He even may have a clear vision how he is going to sail the route and how long it is going to take. He is confident on his skills and competences to make it to happen. The how-question does not come to halt the action. In a word he believes himself.

Many times not doing is worse than doing something. While you are not making any progress you are still doing something—being in the same spot. Circling around the same area certainly consumes lots of energy but the overall impact may not be exactly what you wanted to have. Taking the first step is often the hardest. The sooner you do it the easier the consequent paces are. And like always before in your life you will figure out how to do it after all. How you did it? -is the question you can try to answer—afterwards. Just do it!

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!

We only know what we know. Our only limitations are bound by our own thinking patterns. We do not have to become anything, only be, create.

Current science can prove a lot of this already. Quantum physics is part of the explanations and a new movie is telling about the issue very lively and in an illustrative format: What the bleep do we (k)now?. You can even buy it from Amazon (note that it is region coded to 1 (US and Canada)).