bootup
By David | January 16, 2012
Our life mission is to serve others with our unique gifts.
The world is filled with talent! We cannot do it all by ourselves — we need to connect in order to complement each other.
Introducing bootup, a curated community of people with complementary talents: artists, engineers, and business executives.
You need more than just eggs to make a complete omelette, but it surely is a good start.
Members of bootup will meet in person in public places, such as cafes, restaurants, and other places that can host enough people. They will bring their own tools for their craft, such as laptop, canvas, brushes, paper, etc. Every week, those who want will come and enjoy a few hours working on their own projects surrounded by like-minded, complementary people.
In such a safe environment, they will have the chance to meet, share, and collaborate using a universal currency: favors. A designer can quickly create simple graphics for an engineer who is developing an app. A business person can give a piece of advice to the engineer who dreams up to market her creation. An engineer can quickly develop a small piece of code that will help the business person analyze data more efficiently. And so on.
Lots of micro-collaborations, on the spot, as favors.
Collaboration is how people get to know and appreciate each other. The more they participate, the more they know, and get known in, the community. Trust cannot be bought — it is earned. Soon, they will work together on increasingly larger projects, and perhaps even start new organizations together.
Everyone in the ecosystem is equally important, including the cafe owners. We support the local economy and choose only cafes and places owned by local people — no international chains. We also intend to help them with the load-balancing of their capacity, coming as groups at the times they usually have the least amount of customers.
This community will be guided by universal principles, such as sharing and connecting. Giving more than expecting to receive. Attitude before knowledge. Essence before appearance. Admitting one cannot be good at everything, and asking for help is healthy. Trying to leave a place a little better than how we found it. Embracing positive change.
bootup is an experiment. It disrupts the status-quo. This means it can fail. This also means it can succeed, and this is the only direction we care to focus on. Our definition of success is what impact it will have on people.
Sometimes you meet one person who changes your life. Perhaps this is a platform for this kind of people to show up a little more often.
Who knows, bootup may change the way people find work, ideas, and each other. http://bootup.com.tw
If Henry Ford had asked customers what they want, he would have sold carriages with faster horses.
In the innovation business, real competition is not another company, but the status-quo… The “king” in power, so to speak.
It is far easier to imagine, build, and sell something a little cheaper, a little faster, a little smaller, a little better than an existing solution. But, by definition, it is just a little different, incremental, and doesn’t bring much change in the grand scheme of things.
A new detergent can be a little more powerful than its predecesor, but overall, it cleans our laundry pretty much the same way.
Is it far more difficult to imagine, build, and sell something radically different. How about a washing-machine that raises the temperature of the water high enough, that it doesn’t need detergent at all?
Disruptive innovation is just that — going to the root, bringing new benefits that cannot be compared with the old ways, while at the same time, shaking up entire industries. Traditionally, the incumbent “kings” choose to resist change.
Resistance always causes friction, which causes heat, which causes pain, because it is fear-based. Ask the music industry, who didn’t see the internet coming, and decided to fight for survival in the court room (they lost, and repeated the same mistake as 25 years ago with FM radio: what appeared to be a threat to their record business, turned out to be the most efficient model to reach the masses at virtually no distribution cost).
Acceptance is about taking advantage of change, rather than resisting it. Ask any improv actor. The results are, one might say, magical. In fact, they are just normal, because that is how nature works: it adapts and evolves. It’s resisting that is not natural.
This is why asking customers what they want is not the way to bring about real change. It is a way to go around fear of uncertainty, an insurance policy to justify a potential future failure if the market doesn’t respond: “But customers said they wanted it!”. Surveys don’t work for innovation, because people can say they like purple and then buy yellow.
The same way with voting for a candidate rather than another. The difference can only be incremental. And history shows that societal change is never initiated by the kings in charge, but by the people below them.
“All streams flow to the ocean, because the ocean is below them. Humility is what gives its power” — Lao Tze
Do we want disruption anyway? What is wrong with the status-quo? At the pace the world is changing, there is no choice: if something can be changed, it will be; and if we don’t do it, someone else will.
There are basic business, legal, and organizational principles to respect. This is the foundation. With that in place, the way to disrupt, is to have the curiosity to observe, and make connections. Immersing oneself with people and situations that are away from our familiar comfort zone. Caring, and having the courage to fulfill our life-mission to serve others with our unique gifts.
Real change is more difficult, thus more rewarding, as it is about connecting dots that were previously invisible.
Dear School,
I am a child, looking at my future.
You want to educate me. Perhaps I am gifted at painting. Perhaps I am destined to be an architect. Or a singer. Or an engineer. Or a farmer.
Could you show me what my talents and passions are, and then teach me only that? I would probably become very good at what I love.
Instead, no matter what I am destined to become, which you fail to help me figure out, you pressure me for years to learn every possible subject. Statistically, 95% of that will be useless to me.
You teach me to compete with my classmates and make them my enemies. In the real world, working with my peers has a name: collaboration. In love, it is called appreciation.
You exist because you offer a deal: if I do everything you tell me to do, then society will take care of me. Upon graduation, for sure, I will have a stable job, a stable house, a stable car, a stable spouse, 2.68 stable children (on average according to what you taught me in class), and a stable dog.
My entire life will be stable. Predictable. Happy.
This looks attractive. In fact, so irresistible, that for the past 150 years, you have succeeded to convince millions of people to follow the path you created.
You are very good at one thing: marketing. You know how to brand yourself. You don’t look for customers, you do the opposite, by requiring people to fill out applications. You create the illusion of value by creating artificial scarcity.
You are like God on Judgment Day, selecting those who get to cross the gates of heaven, and reject everyone else. Those who get in, then, have a feeling of exclusivity, superiority, attachment, and even evangelism as they will spread the word and defend the institution, probably for the rest of their lives.
In fact, most of them believe this is an achievement, the best thing they can do, so they don’t need to do anything else of major value thereafter. They worked so hard in their early years… They must be set for life, right?
You forgot to teach them that “achievement” doesn’t mean doing something for oneself, but doing something for others, and it’s never a one-time deal, but an ongoing process.
Then, like prison, the reward of school is to get out.
I look around, and I see millions of people who have obeyed and complied to your rules. They did everything you told them to do. As a reward, society lends them money to buy that house and that car and all the rest.
They are now forever slaves to a job they may or may not like, just so they can pay back. They have an exhausting, robotic life during the week, and you are so graceful to let them become humans again during a short period you call “weekends”.
Wait, I am also seeing millions of them losing their jobs. Their house and car are now taken away from them. They struggle just to survive, and would accept anything to keep going.
I also see millions of people who graduated recently and never got a job to being with.
What happened to your promise?
You persist at resisting change, the exact opposite of what everything in nature does. You are above me. You are above the rest of us. Heck, you are above nature. If fact, you cannot possibly change, because you are dependent on both government and corporations, which in turn, are dependent on you. This love-triangle is what made you strong… so far.
You just forgot one thing.
There are two ways to kill a monster. One way is to fight it, the other is to stop feeding it.
Dear School, you exist only because there are enough people who agree to pay a very high price: not only with their money, but worse, with their time, opportunity cost, and your dogma.
You sell them hope, which is the easiest thing to sell in the world. Ask any politician. Like a soap-opera, hope is endless. There is no need to deliver a finished product.
Society used to want us to “fit in”. Reflecting the industrial model, organizations are the machines, people are the replaceable parts. School and résumés and corporations and debt made sure this all worked together.
Now, society wants us to “stand out”, which is the exact opposite.
You know, when we buy something, there is a money-back guarantee, usually within 30 days. All respectable organizations that sell something offer this guarantee.
So let’s make a deal.
I will go to school, and pay you for years with money and time and opportunity cost. If I don’t have a job within 30-days upon graduation, then you pay me back. With interest. And with damages: I want my life back.
Pretty creative, huh? I didn’t find that one in a textbook.
What do you mean, you cannot offer a money-back guarantee? Are you afraid that too many of us claim their money back? You are a respectable organization, aren’t you? Don’t you believe in your own product?
Sorry, if you cannot offer that guarantee, there is absolutely no reason for me to buy what you are trying to sell.
In fact, talking about competition, you don’t have a monopoly anymore. Your horizontal education, where we learn a little bit of everything for years, is being replaced by vertical education. If you don’t know what that is, perhaps you didn’t get the right education yourself?
Some big bearded guy in the 19th century said that species who survive are not the most intelligent, but the ones who can best adapt. Sorry, I am saying that, how arrogant of me! You haven’t taught it to me in the classroom yet. I found it out myself.
Please continue your path. I heard that “ivy” is a plant that stays green forever. Do not change a thing. The souls you are trying to recruit are smarter than you think. This is a new generation. The only people who value your diplomas, are the ones who have the same diplomas.
Everyone else is already leaving, growing, doing meaningful work, navigating under any wind, utilizing their unique gifts to serve others, and in turn, being served by others with different gifts.
Standardize that, if you can.
I politely declined an invitation to give a speech to an “entrepreneurship club”. Their 200+ members all have a business degree.
When I asked how many were actually running a business, it turns out that only 2 people do. Everyone else is working a 9-to-5 job.
At one level, the decision may sound selfish and arrogant. Why not inspire all these people to become entrepreneurs? They are supposed to be the Masters at Administrating a Business, and they are interested in entrepreneurship in this club, aren’t they? Maybe they just need a little push, that school failed to give sell them?
At another level, though, the decision is crystal-clear.
Every one of us has a certain awareness of the world, and we need to honor that. The amount of energy required for self-improvement is so enormous and needs to be sustained for such a long time (like doing a sprint the length of a marathon) that it is daunting to most. Often, a trigger is also needed, such as a life-changing shock.
Working a 9-to-5 job in a large company, is a reflexion of a certain level of awareness, generally (but not always) based on the need for direction, and an attraction to stability. Paradoxically, this is about the most unstable choice of all, much like the worm creates a cocoon and then gets boiled alive to be taken its silk.
Large companies can be good at creating a fake sense of security and loyalty with their employees, while they often don’t hesitate to lay off thousands of people in a single day whenever the board of directors decides this is good for the stock price. This is as un-natural as can be.
Being an entrepreneur, or working next to one, is a reflection of a different level of awareness, generally (but not always) based on courage, vision, purpose, self-responsibility, going with the flow, embracing change, and accepting uncertainty. This is in alignment with the laws of nature.
Those two levels of awareness have nothing to do with intellectual abilities, and they are so far apart, that the energy required to jump from one to the other is almost beyond human capacity.
One is not better than the other. These are just different qualities of the same thing, much like ice-water is not better than liquid-water. Both are needed, for different purposes.
The best entrepreneurs in the world have dropped out of school. Indeed, knowledge, and even intelligence, are cheap commodities available to most.
On the other hand, courage, willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace, wisdom… are different qualities entirely, that are developed only through self-improvement. This isn’t taught in school because it is not logical and not standardized. It is experiential and non-linear.
A corollary is that there is nothing like running one’s own business (and being in a relationship) to challenge just about every assumption about oneself, get tested and beaten up emotionally every single day. Self-improvement is a necessity for the basic sake of survival for oneself and for those around us.
While it can be fun, rewarding, ego-tripping, self-promoting to give a speech to people we think we can positively influence, it is in fact, a battle already lost.
But… [never start a sentence with "but", teachers told us!]… But, what if, among all the people in the audience, even just one person actually resonates with what we say, and gets transformed?
Highly unlikely. Information is free and available to all, and such a person certainly doesn’t need to hear a speech in order to make that jump.
People interested in swimming, for example, can read books about swimming all they want, but they won’t have the slightest idea of what it takes to swim until they jump into the ocean. No speech, however inspiring it might be, will convince them to make the jump. Most will rationalize and find perfectly logical excuses to stay on the shore, while in fact, it is purely a question of inner, personal determination regardless of the outer environment.
Our opportunities are unlimited, but our time is limited. Selecting who we help and who we don’t help is not selfish, quite the opposite. When we speak with those who can hear us, rather than with those who can’t, we can benefit them a lot more.
We vote with who we spend our time with.
In just a few weeks, the “Occupy Wall Street” movement has spread around the world, with some cities gathering over 500,000 people on the streets.
Brave souls are successfully raising awareness about fundamental problems of society; in particular, the abuse of money as an instrument of control.
Surely, there is much to be changed. However, what is likely to happen is deeper: a global shift in consciousness. The understanding that we are, in fact, all responsible.
When we are influenced by outer appearance, we buy things we don’t need.
When we spend more than we can afford, we are in debt, and we may work any job even if we don’t like it.
When we use the stock market to gamble, we win a little, and we lose a lot.
When we drive cars, buy imported goods, or use plastics, the air gets polluted.
When we have poor eating and lifestyle habits, we get sick.
Calling banks and corporations “monsters”, then, is fighting the wrong battle. One way to kill a monster is to to fight it, but the monster has a much higher chance to win. The other way is to stop feeding it.
So-called monsters of society exist ONLY because we buy what they sell.
Monsters manipulate opinions to make us believe that we need them, while in fact it is the exact opposite. When a critical mass of people understands this, it is the beginning of the end for the monster.
Peaceful action, such as Gandhi’s or Martin Luther King Jr.’s, is the most powerful agent of change, because they stop feeding the monster.
Sun Tzu also teaches us that the moment you decide to use force, you have already lost. In physics, any force results in counter-force, back and forth, until energy runs out.
The core problem is greed. Not just on the bankers’ part, but on everyone’s.
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” –Goethe
I believe that more and more people will realize and act upon it. We will become more frugal, cherishing what we have and consuming only what we need.
We will no longer value corporate and academic “brands”, favoring personal relationships instead.
We will dismiss conventional education as it is not fulfilling its promise of job security, and will value specific, continuing, personalized education instead.
We will move our money from banks to client-owned institutions such as credit-unions.
We will select to work with people who respect us and are wise enough to recognize our unique inner qualities rather than our compliance to irrelevant standards.
We will buy and eat local foods and in-season.
The list goes on and on. In short, we will stop buying what the status-quo is selling us.
A global revolution would result is an unprecedented chaos, and a lot of pain. Any cycle goes through the highest levels of pain during two occurrences: at birth and at death. This is often the price to pay for the new to emerge.
There is nothing more powerful than someone who has nothing to lose. It is the people, not banks or corporations, that are too big to fail. And when people encounter forceful resistance, you know that the people are winning.
Video: “I am not moving”
Some of the best words ever spoken, about ignoring the status-quo, living on your own terms, and focusing on what truly matters. RIP, Steve.
Every year during the Holidays season, I write such a letter to a Senator I have the honor to know:
“Dear Mr. Senator,
Happy Holidays to you. Years ago, you have helped me. I had made a promise to myself, that in my life I would never participate in inventing or in marketing weapons of any kind.
As a science student at the time, the mandatory military service had called me to work for a year on weapon technologies, for a country that hadn’t been at war for over 60 years. With your help, and tremendous work from your team, I was able to skip it, ethically and legally.
As a result of your help, I was able to remain in the USA, start and run a company, create jobs that feed families, and build and market technologies that continue to benefit people around the world.
I will always remember what you did, after you agreed to meet me, at the time a 20-year-old kid, at your office in the Senate.
Most importantly, I will always remember a lesson I have learned from your actions: what matters is not how much or how little you help people, but that you help them at the time they need it the most.
With utmost respect and gratitude,
David”
Senator JM Rausch: http://www.gtl20.gatech.edu/historical-overview/history-makers/jean-marie-rausch
Founding and running a business is about connecting invisible dots, making decisions with incomplete information, creating something out of nothing, fighting against the most difficult obstacles, in the name of the highest good.
Introducing the Founder Squad, a mesh network of entrepreneurs who help each other with only the most difficult issues they encounter.
If it is simple and easy, we don’t touch it. If an answer can be found using a search-engine, we don’t talk about it.
Only the most difficult situations are tackled until they are solved. When everyone else has given up and left, we are still there.
Our first closed-doors, confidential, 4-hour meeting was last week. It was over-subscribed by 300%, with a growing waiting list.
The Founder Squad is not the first group entrepreneurs go to for help, it is the last.
Founder Squad: http://www.FounderSquad.com
A world-famous newspaper just started an article with this sentence:
“The economy failed to grow in the last quarter as households cut their spending, in the latest sign that the economy is stumbling.”
In other words: people are more responsible, they spend less, so this is bad for us and we are in trouble!
Mr. Journalist, who is “we”, that is in trouble?
The “economy failed to grow”, you say. Growth is an addiction. Any addiction is a disease that is so rooted inside, that it appears to be a normal condition. Sneaky as a fox.
How does growth work?
Give me a seed, I plant a tree, and when the tree has grown to bear fruits, I keep the tree and I give you back some of the fruits every year. You can eat some of these fruits, or use the seeds inside them to plant new trees. Everyone wins in a sustainable manner.
Financial markets are supposed to provide “seeds”, i.e. capital, to enterprises. When enterprises turn a profit, they pay back dividends to investors, who can keep the money or reinvest some of it into other enterprises. Everyone wins in a sustainable manner.
However, over the past few century, financial markets have turned into a giant casino. People make bets, buying low and selling high, based on criteria that have little to do with the enterprises they invest in.
Buying low and selling high requires one single thing: growth.
Their mood, actions, and even health, are dependent, minute-to-minute, on the state of the market, which itself is dependent on social pressure, opinions, emotional reactions, and a spaghetti dish of interconnected financial products that feed off each other and that even its creators cannot manage anymore. Did we mention that growth is a disease?
Infinite growth is not possible, on a finite planet.
When in doubt, look at Nature. Only She is right 100% of the time, because it is She, who we come from. Thinking we know better than Her is not only arrogant and disrespectful, it is plain naive.
What Nature does is not constant growth, but rather, constant movement. Nature is infinitely creative and adaptive, with an irresistible sense of humor.
The waste of something is nutrient to something else. Nature is a sustainable system, where every part and every connection has its role to share and benefits itself and its surroundings.
Now is the time to look at Nature and learn from it, not only in its details, but also, as a system.
The economy will no longer be about constant growth, but constant movement. Resisting Nature is like resisting the entire universe. People who resist and stick with the old model of economy-as-infinite-growth will suffer the most. Those who embrace the sustainable model, and see it as the biggest opportunity in history, will thrive the most.
The economy is now based on the fundamental laws of Nature: sharing, exchanging, healing, nurturing, leveraging, adapting, re-using… effortlessly.
The grass doesn’t try to grow, it just grows.
The fish doesn’t try to swim, it swims.
We humans shouldn’t try to force anything, but go with the flow, respect our surroundings, and bring our unique talents and gifts to them as much as they bring theirs to us.
Why is there a special label on organic foods?
What is called “organic” is just normal, it is what nature provides effortlessly. All other foods, on the other hand, involve artificial elements, such as pesticides or genetically-modified crops.
Organic farmers are at a enormous disadvantage. They don’t receive government subsidies like the artificial producers do. They also have to go through incredibly difficult and expensive tests to prove and receive certification that they are just… normal.
Reversal of justice: Guilty until proven innocent!
Do we have a label for bottled water, saying “This water is certified to be liquid”?
Who created those tests in the first place?
That’s right. In advertising, this is “Twin Campaigning”. Advertise a brand of cigarettes, and soon after, advertise a product to quit smoking!
The biggest winners of organic food are… the producers of non-organic food, who receive subsidies and can damage the environment all they want without having to go through the same difficult regulatory tests, making them even more competitive.
How about a law doing the exact opposite, imposing a label that warns consumers when the food is NOT natural?
Of course, this would encounter massive resistance from the artificial producers. Resistance is always to be expected when Truth is revealed.
With such a law, producers would be allowed to use artificial elements like they do today, but only if they label their products as “Non-Organic”.
Bottled water is liquid, by default, unless proven otherwise.
With this law, food is organic, by default, unless proven otherwise.
Alexander the Great, realizing he had conquered the entire world, began to cry, because there was nothing left to conquer.
The same way, Globalization has been a movement of never-ending expansion… until now. The entire planet has been covered, there is nowhere left to go. You can buy Coca-Cola in the middle of the Amazon rainforest.
While there will still be some mega-corporations and mega-governments, the majority of people have lost trust in them. Nobody is really listening to central organizations anymore. We are now listening to each other.
Like a pendulum, the world is now swinging the other way.
The world is becoming… Local.
Again.
We used to live in tribes, then villages, then towns, then cities, then countries. We are coming back to Local, even in larger and larger cities, all over the globe. How about calling this “Glocalization”?
Nothing special here. This is Nature. The leaves fall from the tree, which feed the worms and other creatures, which produce fertilizers, which feed the tree. Cycle completed, locally. This is the basis of life.
We are now Local, not only in distance, but also in time: Here, and Now.
We will eat food produced more and more locally.
We will help each other locally.
We will share resources, time, materials, skills, locally.
We will trade locally.
We will produce energy locally.
We will make the best of what is available locally.
The most fundamental, ground-breaking innovations will not come from mega-corporations, because their Achilles’ Heel is their fiduciary duty towards shareholders to keep growing forever. Growth cannot be infinite, on a finite planet.
On the other hand, individuals with little resources, have much to gain. Fear doesn’t get in the way. When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose.
Throughout history, real change has always been initiated by individuals, small groups, and local communities. Never by large controlling organizations, which systems have been built precisely to conserve the status-quo they created.
Trying to change large organizations is fighting the wrong battle. Just like in physics, any force causes counter-force, which only feeds the status-quo even more, distracting away from the big picture.
It is in the trenches, that you identify the real needs and solutions, rather than creating artificial needs and pushing people to buy them.
Is in the trenches, that the most fundamental and disruptive innovators are. These are also people who live fulfilling, healthy, productive lives, and have all the fun.
In an age of Globalization, the future is, in fact, Local.
Coffee shops surely know about choice! You could easily ask for a Grande Double Decaf Low Fat Sugar Free Whipped Creamed White Chocolate Caramel Espresso Eggnog Latte Americano Mocha Frappuccino, if you wanted to. A past December, a typical Holiday time for giving and gratitude, my cup had a message printed on it:
“As you put together your shopping list, leave room for at least one complete stranger. Then who knows? Maybe you’ll appear on somebody else’s list in return.”
You may ignore it, laugh at it, be touched by it. It is all about one of the universal laws of nature: Causality.
Some also call it Karma.
This law is as omnipresent and authentic as gravity. In the universe, nothing is wasted, everything is transformed. Everything is connected. No gift is ever given without being returned one way or another, sooner or later. Similarly, no debt is ever left unpaid.
Next time you can, how about giving something. Whatever: love, time, money, education, moral support… There is nothing you cannot give. Don’t do it because it will come back to you in one form or another (it always will), but do it… for no reason other than giving.
If you want to experiment a twist, how about trying the following.
The movie “Pay It Forward” depicts a 12-year-old boy who has an idea to change the world. He starts by pulling a homeless man off the streets by finding him a job. Now the man has a moral debt, but the boy tells the man to pay his debt forward to 3 other people in need, instead of paying it back to the boy.
The help has to be major, meaningful, life-changing.
I do something for you, and you have to do something for 3 other people. Then, tell these people who have just been helped that they also have to pay their debt forward, by doing something for 3 other people, and so on.
That’s 1, 3, 9, 27, 81, 243… helped people. That’s Viral-Marketing, baby! Truly exponential growth. There may be some leaks here and there, but the churn rate (percentage of people who leave the chain) is very low because people are being helped a way that is so profound they are happy to help others.
It’s one way to positively change the world on a massive scale. Start the fire, and watch the world being covered with light so strong that even occasional rains and tornadoes cannot extinguish.
Wasn’t it Jesus who said, “Better things than me you shall do”?
This concept is so universal that it transcends all religions and all belief systems: it just is, and nobody has ever denied it. Sometimes we tend to do things for us rather than for others, forgetting that we are just One, all fish swimming in the same ocean and sharing the same resources.
Next time someone does something for you, are you going to pay it… forward?
There is a natural phenomenon occurring with crabs when they are trapped in a bucket.
One of them tries to escape, and the others will do everything they can to drag the climber back down.
Then another crab tries to escape, only to find itself brought down by the others.
And so on… Until all of them die.
Some humans act a similar way, too.
Rather that trying to become better, they choose to drag others down. They may use a positive way (e.g. flattery) or a negative one (e.g. social pressure, gossip, slander) in order to convince others to stick around.
Like with the crabs, this phenomenon is best observed in times of crisis, change, or need of change.
Commonality creates the illusion of security. Sadly, history shows that the majority is usually wrong, and consensus breeds mediocrity. Positive change has always been initiated by minorities who see beyond the status-quo.
Common sense is not common…
We can love everyone unconditionally. However, “everyone” includes ourselves, too. Who we spend our time with is a choice, and it affects whether we get dragged down the bucket, or pulled up.
We used to be told:
“Don’t be an artist, because you won’t make money!”
The past 200 years or so, society has trained entire generations to be obedient, compliant, and follow strict rules.
The main reason being, industries needed cheap and replaceable people to be like cogs in a giant machine.
The entire system has been built to serve this single purpose. Governments, schools, job descriptions, resumes, etc. all are meant to produce people that can be easily described, quantified, used, and fired anytime.
Like machines, people got standardized.
The deal: “Do as you are told, and we will take care of you.”
It worked! Organizations have created huge amounts of wealth.
However, in nature there is no such thing as stability. Everything moves, everything is transformed. Being a standardized person, then, can only work for a limited time.
In the past, society wanted people to fit in.
Now that we have reached over-saturation, society wants the exact opposite: people to stand out.
To be different. To do more than what we are told. To be… artists.
Should we all learn how to paint, dance, or play music?
The artists we need to be now are creative individuals who care about making a difference.
An artist is someone who is passionate about sharing their gifts with the world, and this can be anyone who wishes to be.
The server in the restaurant, who goes out of her way to delight guests.
The engineer, who writes enormous amounts of complex code that nobody will ever see, that makes the user experience clear and easy to use.
The doctor, who spends an additional minute with her patient to connect, share feelings, and genuinely care.
The customer service rep, who listens to the angry person with empathy, and stays on the phone as long as it takes, until the customer is happy.
The entrepreneur, whose unbreakable motivation is to benefit society before her own interests, regardless of monumental obstacles.
Those artists create value by doing more than their job description, because it is the right thing to do.
This attitude also brings peace of mind and clarity of vision.
We can all be artists, and be comfortable swimming in the waters of change and uncertainty. Just like any system in Nature, it is the most efficient, sustainable, and enjoyable way.
An attractive woman, fast moving images, highly contrasted colors, tickers scrolling in multiple directions, and if that wasn’t enough, a flashy typeface reading: “Breaking News”.
That is what News on TV and other media looks like now, in a desperate effort to retain our attention. It has transformed into a weapon… of mass distraction.
Making the unimportant seem important is an exhausting task, though. Inefficient, it always ends up running out of steam, because it is fear-based.
When every single thing is called Breaking News, it is a form of crying wolf: nobody listens anymore.
We live in the attention economy. In a world of infinite noise, choices, and distractions, people and organizations are competing for attention more than anything else.
Mercedes-Benz may have 5% of the auto market, and Apple may have had 5% of the PC market, but who talks about any other auto or PC makers?
Less than 15 years ago, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. Today, Apple is larger than Microsoft, both in cash and in market cap.
Microsoft still owns over 90% of the PC market today. Totally irrelevant.
What matters in business now isn’t market-share, it’s mind-share.
One cannot please everyone, so mind-share is valuable only within a niche. The niche can be worth billions, but it is still well defined, with insiders and outsiders.
Sadly, some companies understand this too well, and swing the pendulum the other way to force their users into attention.
For example, in the social-networking space, some are making lots of money by making idiotic and addictive games.
Game mechanics, which includes discovery, rewards, and social pressure, are ways to play on people’s egos to manipulate them.
Users end up wasting entire days and nights taking care of virtual carrots and digital pigs, or dating 3D avatars rather than real people, gaining a sense of accomplishment, buying fake goods with real money.
Such type of business is clever, not wise. There are other ways to provide entertainment. If the only goal is to make money regardless of consequences, including hurting the very people who give you that money, it is inherently limited in size and in time. Ethically, might as well rob a bank.
During the Cold War, Russia and America pointed thermonuclear missiles at each other, waiting for the other to push the button. This would have destroyed the entire planet in an instant. The main reason they didn’t blow each other up, resulting in the period called “detente” (release of tension), is because they shared a common interest: their children.
Today, the same goes, not just between two nations, and not just with missiles, but in a fragmented way and with everything else.
The tension is building up to win our attention: always more contrast, more speed, more sexuality… Even food has more sugar, salt, and other flavor enhancers than ever before, to satisfy our desensitized tastes.
This, like the information displayed of the TV screen, will continue to grow, until it runs out of space. Any bubble is meant to burst.
Like permission and trust, attention is not fought. It is earned, by nourishing real value to people over time. It is not hunting, it is harvesting.
It is not force, it is power.
In this noisy environment, it is our own responsibility, or response-ability, to tell what is important from what is not, for ourselves and for our descendants.
“Believe me when I say to you, I hope the Russians love their children too”
— Sting, “Russians”, 1985
The world is not changing because of what we do, but because of what we become.
Humans have been at war for 95% of history. We humans think we are so intelligent… but we cannot even tell truth from falsehood, or we would always be at peace!
With such a track-record, who are we to think that we can improve the world with more ideas, more technology, more products, more information?
How to live together in harmony, is not a secret. In fact, masterful teachers have told us already thousands of years ago, but we are not listening. Over the centuries, we keep repeating the same mistakes, in different forms. The current state of the world is a direct reflexion of this.
We keep adding more and more stuff to the world, which is already over saturated, thinking we are so smart, convincing ourselves this is the right thing to do. But any great designer will testify that design isn’t about adding.
Design is about removing. As much as possible.
We need less, not more. Less what? Less everything. Why? Because less allows us to discern what is truly important.
Some people accumulate wealth and donate money to charities, but they don’t give a free smile to everyone they meet.
Some people obsess with what they eat, but they hurt others with what they say. What gets out of your mouth has more impact than what you put in it.
We need more heart, not more brains. In fact, intelligence often gets in the way of the heart, because the intelligence can flirt with pride, while the heart flirts with humility.
Clever is not brilliant. Knowledge is not wisdom. Passing tests is not mastering skills. Perception is not essence.
The only way to improve the world is to improve ourselves. And the only way to do that, is through Education.
The real Education of the heart and mind, that is. Not academics, which is mostly tainted by much more pride than humility. With its illusion of value created through standardized tests and artificial selectivity, academics has proven to be a monumental failure in making the world a better place.
Putting a high price on something doesn’t make it real and valuable.
In fact, most successful entrepreneurs who change the world decide to drop out of school, from T. Edison to H. Ford to B. Gates to S. Jobs and beyond. They know what to ignore, in order to focus on what is truly important.
Almost everyone now agrees that education should not only be reformed, but totally revolutionized, if we want our children to be more than addicted zombies whose best abilities are to waste 12 hours a day playing video games.
But the answer is not out there, it is within. We only need to work on ourselves at becoming more humane. Sharing. Giving. Caring. Even with a simple smile.
And no, making money by manipulating masses of people to pay for useless products and services, and then give a percentage of the profits to charity to feel good about it, doesn’t cut it.
Nor does damaging the earth and then paying some tax to be somehow forgiven — the deed has been done, and Mother Nature doesn’t care about money.
You do good at each and every step, or you don’t.
True Education, the one of the heart and mind, is the only hope, and can be delivered in many forms. If there is something that badly needs our attention, this is it, and I would argue, nothing else matters. If we get that right, everything else will naturally follow and be right as well.
Let’s take care of the roots before we touch the leaves. First things first.
Education can be in the form of Technology, if it doesn’t rob people of their precious time, but rather, heals and connects them in meaningful ways.
Education can be in the form of Entertainment. In fact, the most important information in the world has often be spread in the forms of singing, dancing, and storytelling.
Education can be in the form of Design, where students participate in projects and understand the consequences of what they do. Not only do students remember much better by doing something meaningful, but they also have tons of fun.
Education can be delivered in many other forms, too. You can educate by cooking a healthy dish or by organizing a helpful event. Regardless, whatever we do shall have an educative purpose, because this is all that matters now.
Un-learning, which is like removing the clouds that prevent the sun from shining, is part of Education. Learning the fundamentals, then, are actually quite simple if we only listen. The answers are already there.
And yet, the best of all is practice:
“How many people have I been good to, today?”
The world will become better all by itself, not because of what we do, but by virtue of what we have become.
Being Mindful means living always in the Present Moment. On the other hand, thinking in the Past and the Future causes suffering: regrets and worries, respectively.
Does it mean that we cannot have memories, and we cannot plan for the future?
No. We are just not attached to them. It is the attachment to those things that causes suffering, not those things themselves.
Staying in the Present at all times is the only real way to live, but it is not enough.
The true practice is staying in the Present while having no Discrimination and Attachment. This is Pure Awareness.
In other words, we are mindful at all times, and we constantly notice things such as people, events, and thoughts… but we do not comment on them. We just accept them. Not always easy!
We all live busy lives, so Pure Awareness allows for the practice of meditation at all times: while sitting, as well as in daily life.
In fact, sitting mediation is the single thing that helps the most in daily life because it helps to remove obstructions. The most effective meditation is in complete silence.
In turn, daily life is about interacting with other people, and is a constant test for how mindful we are, which in turn, indicate us how well we meditate.
So, silent meditation and daily life are two sides of the same coin, helping each other, at all times and in all situations.
The few Masters in this world who have reached Enlightenment have successfully trained their minds to No Discriminations and No Attachments. They have no more ego, there is no more separation, no good and no bad, no duality.
They are One with All That Is.
So you spill red wine on your white shirt, and bam! Your white shirt has a big red stain now.
That is cause-and-effect. Right?
Wrong.
In reality, there is never a “this” causing a “that”.
This is because nothing is caused by only one thing. Instead, everything is the consequence of everything else, of all that has happened throughout all of time.
Spilling red wine caused the white shirt to be red, yes.
But what caused the red wine to exist?
The white shirt is now red, because people have worked on the field to grow grapes and turn them into wine.
The white shirt is now red, because grape has grown from the ground.
The white shirt is now red, because ground exists, under fertile conditions and favorable proportions of air, light, heat, pressure, humidity.
The white shirt is now red, because planet Earth exists.
The white shirt is now red, because the sun is at a certain distance from planet Earth, allowing for ground to be fertile.
And so on.
Cause-and-effect is a linear, Newtonian, simplistic view of the world (“I push the button and the light goes on!”), but it is not correct.
The world is non-linear. It is multidimensional, connected in all directions, and throughout all of time. There is no “this” causing a “that”. There is an infinite number of finite causes and conditions throughout all of time that actualizes in a particular consequence.
That’s a little more than one cause for one effect…
The Sanskrit word “dana” can loosely be translated into the word “generosity”. Our ancestors taught us that when you give to someone,
1) There is no giver
2) There is no receiver
3) Nothing has been given
How is this possible?
This is called the Triple Emptiness and is the understanding that everything is connected. There is no separation: everything is already shared.
The concept of possession has been invented by humans, not by Nature. Do we know better than Nature, where we come from?
No matter how smart we believe we are, Nature knows best. In the ecosystem, everything has a role, and nothing is wasted. Nature’s accounting system is perfect, and infinitely more accurate than our machines. What is waste to an organism, is a nutrient to another, sooner or later, always.
Giving, receiving, and what is given are one and the same thing.
When in doubt, follow Nature, before following humans.
When we understand this, there is no limit to what we can accomplish, because there is no limit to what we can give: our time, knowledge, money, creations, work, art… anything. Serving and helping others is the essence of our purpose in this world.
What is important is not how much we help people. Instead, what is important is that we help people at the time they need it the most.
When I was a child, I wanted to learn how to swim.
My father started teaching me the basics at the public swimming pool. At first, it was in the baby pool, where the water is shallow so my feet would still touch the ground. Easy.
Soon after, he told me that he would literally throw me to the middle of the adult pool, where the water is deep, and the only way to survive was to move forward and swim. He said,
“I will swim close to you. You can call me if you need me”.
He threw me. Splash!
At first, I loosely applied what I had just learned in the baby pool but I wasn’t moving forward much. It was messy, disorganized, inefficient, I was “drinking the cup” more often than not, and I was exhausting myself.
After a few minutes of chaotically swallowing more water than air, I screamed,
“Help!”
He instantly came to my rescue and put me on the side of the pool. He then taught me about conserving energy, about knowing where I want to go, about resting.
Then we did it again a few times. I got another good share of water in my lungs, but in less than an hour, that was it.
I was jumping from the diving board, swam to the bottom of the pool for the fun of touching the ground with my fingers, came back up, swam forward, sideways, backwards, not really knowing what I was doing, but I didn’t need his help anymore.
He had showed me how to deal with fear.
A couple of years later, inspired by the movie “The Big Blue” (all-time favorite still to this day!), I was swimming with such efficiency that I could go deep without breathing for over 4 minutes straight. Just for fun.
I learned the most important things this way. Nothing was ever forced. Only inspired, self-disciplined, taking responsibility, with the reassurance that it would be OK. Sometimes I would be given this reassurance by someone else, other times I would need to find it within.
The point is this: removal of fear is the ultimate way to accomplish anything, because fear is nothing but the opposite of love.
Threatening and scaring kids to learn something is a guarantee of failure. Instead, when they are given the freedom to learn what’s important to them, knowing you will be around unconditionally if they need you, miraculously (or not), they will make it.
Love and fear are like a balancing scale: the more love, the less fear, and vice-versa.
The Little People live in a windy world.
It is so windy, they have to hold onto each other so they don’t get swept away. In a place surrounded by trees, they use ropes to stay attached to their familiar village.
Every one of them does the same: they stick together to resist the strong winds. They live in a state of fear. They have never seen anything or anyone other than Little People of the village.
They wait. And wait. And wait.
Wait for what?
One day, one of them decides that this is enough. He unties himself from the ropes and lets go.
He is immediately swept away by the strong winds, while the rest of the people shout at him:
“What are you doing, you are crazy! It is not safe out there. Come back!”
But this is a determined one. The winds carry him far away, to unknown places. He bumps into trees, he hurts himself badly. Progressively, he learns to move his arms to navigate through the strong winds.
Now far away from his village, he looks down, and sees another village of Little People. Curious, he maneuvers his arms to go see them. He catches the branch of a tree and stands there, looking.
The Little People of this new village look up and see him. They have never seen such a scene before. In a complete awe of him, they kneel down and start to worship him.
“Oh, Lord!”, they say in unison.
“Finally, You have arrived!”, they shout. “You are our Savior, our Saint, our Messiah! Please save us, oh, dear Lord!”
The little one on his branch looks at them, gently smiling, and says,
“I am not your savior… I am just like you. The only difference is, I am not afraid to let go.”
A pair of true twin brothers were born from alcoholic parents in a poor neighborhood.
The two brothers lived together for the first 20 years of their lives. They lived in the exact same conditions.
One of them became an alcoholic gangster who robs liquor-stores for a living.
The other one became a successful professional, married with two children, and a happy life.
When the twin brothers turned 40 years old, they were interviewed separately, and were asked the same question:
“How did you turn out the way you did?”
The gangster replied,
“Being raised by drunk parents in a poor neighborhood, how else could I have turned out?”
They asked the same question to the successful brother. He answered:
“Being raised by drunk parents in a poor neighborhood, how else could I have turned out?”
For every decision, I always ask myself this question:
“Will this increase my happiness and that of others?”
If yes, I go for it. If no, I don’t.
Simple as that.
This is the only criteria, and this makes life SO MUCH simpler, happier, and more fulfilled. No need to ponder a million questions which answers are hypothetical anyway. This allows to make a lot of decisions very quickly. Naturally, in most cases, these decisions turn out to be the best choices and often exceed expectations.
Happiness is about constantly giving, learning, growing, living on the edge or “on the crest of the wave”.
On the other hand, playing it safe is the most risky thing to do. Anything that doesn’t move falls down, just like a bicycle.
Making money, becoming famous, or getting a pompous title, has sense only if it brings more happiness. If it brings more problems and worries, move on.
For example, I have never invested in the stock market, and most likely never will. This kind of game is mainly about greed (“I have some money and I want some more!”) and a waste of precious creative time. It creates obsessive worries invented by others!
We often hear say, “I want a simple life.”
Life is difficult beyond measure, for everyone.
The reason life is hard is because our behaviors are not perfect, and we have lessons to learn. We make mistakes, and we need to learn from them. If we don’t work on our own weaknesses, problems will keep on coming, over and over. There is no way out except to identify, understand, and correct our mistakes. It takes diligence, patience, and discipline. But the rewards are beyond measure, too, and sooner or later, we start to “fly”.
As we grow, bigger tests are being thrown at us, because now, we can handle the smaller ones.
We could simply avoid reality and watch TV instead, but we can’t hide. We still have to learn the lessons, and they’ll be thrown at us whether we want them or not. So we might as well take life by the balls and deal with it face-on, rather than chicken out. Chickens are never successful; in fact, they get their heads cut off by the millions.
Saying “I want a simple life” without actually working towards it, is merly an excuse for being lazy. There is always something going on, always something to improve.
For example, let’s say that we commit to be kind to all people at all times, in all circumstances, with no exception. That’s a hell of a difficult challenge, because paradoxically, we will attract the worse of the worse, until we get it.
As soon as we have made such a commitment, we will encounter people and situations that will upset us one way or another. It’s a test. We will be tested many times under different situations, and those situations will be more subtle, almost invisible.
As we develop our Discernment, i.e. our ability to tell truth from falsehood, we will be tested with more and more subtle tests. Until we truly get it.
In fact, the deeper the commitment, the more difficult our life will seem to be… but only temporarily. Soon enough, little miracles start to happen on a regular basis. Incredible situations and people start to show up on their own, as if it was a reward from the universe for doing our job of self-improvement. And it is.
Making ourselves better makes the whole world better.
Everything that happens to us in life is our own responsibility, and just waiting for better times doesn’t work. In fact, worse times will come, if we don’t see the lessons and change ourselves.
Changing is the basis of life. Seasons are part of nature. Not changing, which is the most popular choice, is the recipe for disaster. It’s called Denial, and it’s reflected in the classic behaviors of Blaming and Playing the Victim.
Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, said,
“When you’re green, you grow. When you’re ripe, you rot.”
Growing is NOT about creating more abundance. That’s the easy part.
The real growing is our ability to see the world for what it really is, which is often the opposite of what it looks like.
The Tokyo Improv Troupe delights us with amazing performances. Every member is an entrepreneur or executive during the day, in tech and other industries. On the stage, they become real-time creators and actors, with no script, no pre-written lines, no preparation.
Start by giving them any situation (e.g. “imagine you are at the farmer’s market”), and off they go, creating a story, together, on the fly. It is mind-blowing to the audience, a masterful demonstration of teamwork and fast adaptation. Often, it is also hilarious because no-one knows how the story will evolve, and yet they are so good that they manage to make it work no matter what happens along the way.
Recently they let us in the secrets of improvisation, and explained how it helps them in their entrepreneurship journey, in brainstorming sessions, and life in general. As usual, the best concepts are often the simplest.
Go towards the danger
No matter what you do and how much you know, there is more unknown than certainty. You are in unchartered territory. Fear is the enemy and cannot be entirely avoided. Rather than resisting it, a wise choice is to accept and embrace it.
Failing as a sign of success
Failure is my teacher, they say. Fail with grace and humor. At least you had the guts to try. More importantly, what did you learn?
Be in the moment
Worrying about the past or the future is useless. Only the present is real. You can have a goal and know all the tricks and tactics to get there, but along the way, there will be surprises. It is how you adapt to what gets in the way that makes you reach your goals.
Listen and repeat
Listening is caring. Repeating is a demonstration of that.
Say “Yes, and…”
Go with the flow. Accept what is, and move on with it. Do not stay silent, and rather contribute to the flow.
Be positive
Who enjoys being surrounded by “No, not, never, shouldn’t, cannot…”?
Be fun to play with
The quintessence of teamwork: all members should have fun doing it together!
Make others look good
In a team, we are all in the same boat. If someone fails while clearly giving their best, let’s give them a hand by using what they just said or did, and moving on with it. What seems to be a failure might be the seed of a fantastic idea.
Of course, improv is a lot more than that. What is your experience with it?
Memorizing is clever. Improvising is brilliant.
Following rules is clever. Creating them is brilliant.
Taking is clever. Giving is brilliant.
Blaming is clever. Taking responsibility is brilliant.
Reactive is clever. Proactive is brilliant.
Compliance is clever. Innovation is brilliant.
Hesitating is clever. Courage is brilliant.
Pride is clever. Humility is brilliant.
Resistance is clever. Acceptance is brilliant.
Surprise is clever. Progression is brilliant.
Manipulating is clever. Yielding is brilliant.
Passing tests is clever. Learning skills is brilliant.
Sales is clever. Marketing is brilliant.
A long message is clever. A short message is brilliant.
The fox is clever. The migrating bird is brilliant.
The audience is clever. The artist is brilliant.
The boy is clever. The man is brilliant.
The engineer is clever. The inventor is brilliant.
Sound is clever. Silence is brilliant.
Revenge is clever. Forgiveness is brilliant.
Intelligence is clever. Wisdom is brilliant.
The brain is clever. The heart is brilliant.
Fear is clever. Love is brilliant.
Looking at history, now is easier than ever to create wealth.
Yet, it seems harder than ever to find happiness.
Have we truly made progress?
If we are not happy, it is because we run our lives in a different direction than nature intended us to. We go against the flow. We feel resistance, not always being able to pinpoint the problem.
The key to happiness is beautiful in its simplicity:
Your life purpose is to serve others with your unique gifts.
Every one of us has, at least, one gift, one talent, one set of skills, that has value to others. Therefore, all you need to do to be happy in life is to find out what this gift is, and then execute on it.
Because your gift creates value to others, you make all the money you need.
Because you are good at it, you have joy doing it.
Because you have joy doing it, you live a happy and fulfilled life.
If you believe you don’t have any gift, you are mistaken. If you believe your gift doesn’t have enough value, you can learn how to properly monetize it. If you believe you are not good enough at your gift, then educate yourself and master your art.
And if you don’t know what your gift is, start exploring now. Push your own limits. Make mistakes. Fail often. Dare to experiment, where others only settle, in the illusion of security. Don’t be afraid, for fear is the only enemy.
Finding and mastering your gift might be your most important quest.
Ask someone: ”What makes you happy?”
You might hear an answer that sounds like:
“Taking a hot bath!”
“Going to a party with my friends!”
“Getting a massage!”
“Eating a good meal!”
“Having 5,000 guests at my wedding!”
“Smoking a cigarette!”
Interesting, how often pleasure is mistaken for happiness.
So, what is happiness, really?
Not worrying about anything, is happiness.
Serving others without expecting anything in return, is happiness.
Taking responsibility, is happiness.
Seeing every problem as a chance to improve yourself, is happiness.
Not comparing yourself with others, but rather comparing yourself today with how you were yesterday, is happiness.
Accepting everything for what it is, is happiness.
Taking your time, is happiness.
Peace of mind, is happiness.
Being free, is happiness.
There is only one way to be happy, and that is by giving. You may give your time, expertise, attention, wisdom, money, consideration… anything.
Giving is the source of happiness.
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