For the New Year, these are my resolutions

I will keep living, even though my health is not so good. Life for me is more than breathing; it is creating, reflecting, helping others and building something.

I will keep my honesty, no matter what. It is too easy to lie, but I know its price; maybe it is difficult to be truthful, but I know its value.

I am doing exercises, every day. In my mind, I train my thoughts. In my body, I train my breath. In my wealth, I try my self-control. In my relationships, I train my eyes to wear “seeing-good-things glasses”.

I will keep meditating, deeply or in a light way. It is part of my routine and I keep it in my awareness.

I am serving… Service is my life; service is the most important thing in my mind, and service fills my mind with enthusiasm.

 

What are your resolutions this time?

Sincerity may help your relationship

There are probably two killers of any relationship, common to any people no matter where they live or to which culture they belong to: routine and sincerity.

Particularly it is interesting on how this high praised and needed virtue can be a relationship killer. Honesty is fundamental, but in its heavy metal version, where honest words taste like bullets and hearts are destroyed, sincerity turns to be lethal.

And yet… Well, by studying virtues, I have notice they cannot work by themselves and they need to pair in the right order. For instance, humility can make people turn losers in life, but with courage or self-esteem, it helps bosses to be effective, human oriented and very effective.

At times when lying is so common and socially accepted in many cultures I know, at least at some level, an honest person is extremely valuable. Sincerity is even more treasured, as the person will have the courage to say whatever is in his mind… with kindness.

Probably the most spiritual and kind man I know, he is able to make you realize your mistakes without really telling them. He is open and trusting, and yet he is clear about his thoughts and feelings and don’t act against them, which is the core of sincerity.

Without sincerity, a relationship will be like a cliff hanger: you are really not sure about what will happen next…

Kindness, gentleness and mercy help sincerity to become an asset to the soul, enabling the individual to break walls that prevent an open exchange and build bridges that strengthen the relationship.

Keeping good company

Whatever you do impacts other people’s lives even when either you or they don’t realize that. The same is for you… whatever others do will impact you.

This is something to have in mind, particularly if you are a person interested in your improvement, since there is always the risk that for a step you take, another person influences you to go back two steps…

I am not talking about discriminating people, but here are some tips that may be useful for an experience of companionship:

• Understand your aims and goals in relation to that person. Is it just for fun? Do I want to have a project of life with him or her?
• Be honest all the time… Whenever either of you start to be dishonest, there is something wrong there and you need to assess it. What is preventing either of us of telling the whole truth? How can we build a safe space so that we can clear things without harming anyone?
• A relationship implies lots of compromise, but there is a point when compromising hurts a person’s principles or values, or creates a sense of loss. At that point, a dialogue may help in reaching to terms that both feel comfortable with. At what extent I feel I am sacrificing something – or I know the other one is sacrificing? In which way can we avoid the feeling of loss or feeling uncomfortable?
• Sometimes values don’t match. Yes, we have to learn and this is why it is good to be around different people, but the values should be at least aligned – complementing each other, similar or enriching the other’s life. About our differences, how much aligned are our values? If they are not aligned, how can we work out that?

And to be clear: sometimes EXIT is the best way for everyone… But, as a song used to say: Go gently…

Time and success

Recently, a few lists have emerged of young people who got to be successful. By reading it, I just wondered how many are really prepared...

First of all, most of the successful people were such due to some financial attainments. Success is however a feature where harmony, happiness and peace, among other qualities, are experienced in a constant way; what about their state of mind or their family relationships? That was not taken in account.

In reality, success needs time to come to our lives, just like a fruit from a tree. In Hindi, the words have something to do with each other: success is safalta, and fruit is fal...

Yes, to reach that point of success - total, global, true success - you do need to seed right seeds. You also need to take care of the soil, sun and water, and lots of patience because even when the fruit is emerging, you still need that fruit to reach maturity. If the tree is fruitful, not only one fruit will emerge and many other people can benefit from it. Then, you sow it again...

That success as soon as you start to experience becomes an unending cycle and that is another sign of success: you don't experience it once. Maybe you can have your "peaks and valleys", but when you reach the real success your life turns into an ascending line.

How to do it? How to reach to that point of success when you feel you are on eternal holydays and yet, producing in an effective way? A few tips:

• Understand the real meaning of success. This will help you to identify it.
• Whenever you go through a "peak", that is, you feel success in some task or activity; reinvest that energy into your life. For instance, if you get a promotion in your work, use that money for more training instead of buying that new cellular phone you want, and share your experience with other people so that 
• Whenever you go through a "valley", that is, you fail in something, use that as a step towards success. For instance, check what happened and train yourself so you don't repeat the failure.
• Be honest with yourself and don't let yourself to be deceived by limited successful events.
• Meditation is very useful. It will help you to develop honesty, patience and perseverance, without which you cannot reach success.
• Value your time by making it worthwhile.
• Balance your life and especially provide yourself some reflection time.

I wish you an excellent journey on your way towards success.

Honestly...

Many years ago I was quite involved in the topic of values. I used to work on values in both ways, as a volunteer and professionally. At that time, I've met a very interesting person who worked with UNICEF. She told me something I've never forgotten: "the main challenge in relation to values is that people nowadays only learn anti-values."

And that is true. As I browse today's news, corruption and lies make the headlines. Nobody talks about people who stick to their own honesty; after all, honesty does not sell newspaper...

But honesty does create families, it strengthens friendship and it even impacts in our economy through its close cousin, trust. In fact, honesty is natural; a baby cries when is in need of some attention, there is no way the baby will fake that... The opposite, dishonesty, is learnt along the years, watching and observing others.

In an organization environment, honesty is crucial. Dishonesty can get you a customer once, but it will make you lose it forevermore. Dishonesty can avoid a reprimand by your boss, but when you share that with your co-workers, even though they congratulate you for your cleverness, you will love them as true friends; after all, if you lied to your boss, you can lie to any of them.

Even though honesty is not something that shows often in someone's curriculum, it is becoming a very valuable asset for the company. Peter Senge, in this masterpiece, The Fifth Discipline, talks about the practical effect of honesty in a company that sold computers. By sticking to that value, they saw their sales dropping - after all, other companies, using dishonesty as a tool, lied to their customers and were able to get their orders. Later, however the company started climbing and never stopped.

I am not saying you are not honest, but reality is today's people seldom are... From "white lies" to blunt corruption, honesty is living among us and inside us. It has become part of our way of life in such a way that an honest person is not fully honest... it is just that he or she is more honest than others.

OK, how can you develop honesty as a skill? First, let's understand a few of its benefits in the work environment:

• Solid relationship between co-workers, and the different levels of organization.
• Trust builds from honesty, so that the company has more loyalty from their customers.
• It is easier to deal with crisis, as everyone knows what everyone is doing and their capabilities.
• Tough decisions are less complicated as honesty provides the right environment for that to happen.

If you feel you can develop honesty in a higher level, these are some steps that can help you:

• Accept all your flaws and imperfections. As someone said, "perfection exists only in a cv". Don't try to be that right now, enjoy your present stage and don't deny any of that to yourself.
• Get someone you can really trust and always be honest with that person. No matter what, don't hide and don't pretend; that person is the best friend you have, cultivate her or his friendship.
• Any time you tell a lie, or in any other way you break your own honesty, at least be clear about that to yourself. If you don't feel the courage or don't have the time to mend whatever you did, sit down, reflect and meditate. Whenever you feel like, talk to someone about what you did, ask for advice, try and follow it.
• If you make a "heroic" honesty act, give a prize to yourself! Go and spoil yourself with some nice ice-cream, chocolate or a day at the beach.
• Generate spaces of dialogue in your company or family. In this way, little by little you will feel open about telling others what is really happening with you.
• If there is any punishment after you have been honest, talk to the person who did that later. Explain your reasons and listen to their own reasons.
• Love yourself. When you love someone, you can't even think of lying to them...

By practicing this skill, slowly it will become part of your own personality, your own personal ethics. Then, it will be as natural as breathing.

How to work BETTER, or how to be a BETTER person working?

What do you value more: to work better, or to be a better person working?

There's no doubt we need people who work better and better. At a time of crisis as it is the present one, we need people who are able to produce more with less or who can break records in sales. Most leaders I know are very concerned about that factor.

Unfortunately, not all these people are really good, in terms of their attitude or even ethics. Under the pressure of productivity, they can cheat or make false promises to their customers. Eventually, some of them are caught and they have to re-evaluate their own behaviors; others become billionaires.

What about putting ethics and attitude as a priority? It does not work necessarily to increase productivity. I remember that piece of Senge's book, where a company decides that Honesty was good enough to be their value. According to the book, a new salesman questioned that by simply putting a probable situation: if a customer wants to buy something we don't have, should we tell them that? Initially  others acted as that was a silly question: of course, you don't tell that to a client. But then the leader in charge was clear that if they put Honesty as one of their values, that is one of the things they will have to tell their customers. After a heated discussion, they finally reached to a compromise and the company did experience losses for sometime, but after that, its sales went up and up. Naturally, if their company did not have a product, possibly others didn't; customers slowly realized they were telling the truth and they started to value that.

Possibly, this is what will happen:

1. If a person starts to focus more on the self, it is possible that at the beginning his or her productivity will decrease. That will happen because of some decisions - not working after such an hour - or new courses to help them in their decision - a meditation course which proposes moments of silence during the day.
2. During that time, it is important the person talks a lot with her or his co-workers, spouses and friends in general. That means, whatever the person is doing should be very clear in his/her mind.
3. After sometime, productivity should start to increase. That will come mainly from some changes in the behaviour - punctuality, for instance - or a better attitude - helping increasing sales.
4. What if productivity is not improving? Possibly, the main answer is that the person is in the wrong place. A career research will be excellent to understand which position will be better served by a person like her, or him.

The main point here is that there is no better reward than the feeling of inner success, but its outcome should be an external success too.

So, what do you value more: to work better, or to be a better person working?