Distribution List

When I was in China, I got once a month an email from a colleague in Germany, because I was not taken away from the large distribution list. The contents of the emails were not really relevant to me, but I was happy to receive the emails from Germany, which did not happen to often.

Today I met her at a farewell party of a common colleague in Germany and I suddenly realized that I did not receive any emails from her for long time. I said to her: “I missed your regular emails.” She replied: “I changed my job a year ago and the new job does not require me to send such emails to a large audience.”

I smiled and responded: “That is pity. But could you please send out nevertheless monthly emails and put me on the distribution list, regardless of contents.”

We laughed. :-)))

My Brain on the Web

In one of my NLP training session I learnt that we do not only have one brain sitting insight the head, but also other brains, one sitting near our stomach, one sitting near our heart. They function autonomously and control a large part of our feelings, actions and thoughts.

Today I discovered that we all have at least one more brain: the brain on the web. Let me give you an example.

I was thinking if it is the right time to start my coaching business which I planned for long time. I posted to a networking community called Coaching about what is the chance to sustain to become a full time professional coach. To my surprise, more than 10 professional coaches responded to my question with highly valuable and relevant answers, suggestions and advises. More than 690 clicks on the article thread within 4 days. Today I am smarter on this topic than few days ago.

If you ask the right questions to the right target audiences on the web, I am certain that you will get the answers virtually for any cases. So is the web part of us or is the web outside us? I would argue that we do not stop ourselves by the boundary of our body. The web is part of us. And I am grateful that internet made this part of us more accessible to us and that I am more and more aware of my brain on the web. I commit to use my web brain more wisely :-) in the future.

Feeling of Importance

All human beings are looking for a feeling of importance. This is the main reason for most people working hard, getting up the corporate latter, learning a new skill, buying a bigger care, a bigger house, entering into a religion group. It is the same feeling of importance for most of the bloggers to write persistently on the internet.

So if you want to make friends in your working environment, there is only one rule you ought to follow: always rise in other people the feeling of importance and never hurt it.

Here a negative example: when a boss asked the employee about his aspiration, the employee answered: “I want to take over your job in two years.” It may sound that the employee had high ambition, but he may not make friend with his boss. Why? Because he unconsciously hurt the feeling of importance for his boss. The boss may think, do you really believe that my job is so easy to handle?

Honestly I made similar mistakes several times. And I really regret it now. It is good to rise my own feeling of importance. But there is no need to hurt feeling of importance of others at the same time.

Merci, 谢谢, Danke, Thanks

From the amazing book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne I learnt an important aspect of life I should never underestimate: the gratitude.

So I thought it is the right time for me to express my sincere thanks to you, my dear reader. You are not just some one from France, China, Germany, USA and many other countries. You are a very special person whom I feel connected with, not only through the internet, but also mentally, emotionally and spiritually, because I am a strong believer that there is no coincidence.

I am grateful that my texts have value for you, I am grateful that the internet, google, blog, Personal Computer and telecommunications made all these possible that you and me are connected in some way. Thanks also to all those countless people who work on these technologies.

Merci, 谢谢, Danke, Thanks!

Selective Memories: Improve Your Live Instantly

Years ago I learnt a method to improve my achievements. It is called success book. It tells you to write down every success during a day, big or small. That way you are much aware of your success. You can also create a love book or happiness book.

I know a woman who is very bright. She tells every small or big positive aspect of her life to everyone she likes, when she bought new shoes, new clothes, new jewelry, when she started to learn a new language or new music instrument, when she visited a new bar or restaurant, when she tried a new spa or ate a delicious cake.

On the other side when something negative happened to her, for example a car accident, she tried to remember the good side of it, e.g. the guy was nice or fortunately the cost of the repair was all covered by the insurance.

From above two examples I realize that maybe initially what happened did not really change. But if you emphasize the positive side of the reality, the positive side will have more weight to you. You select the things to remember you like. By any time of your life, it is not what you really have experienced, but what you can remember, will make up your (subjective) reality.

At the second stage however, when you get used to focus on the bright side of your life, your mood will be better, you will have higher energy level and you will have better judgment and make better decisions which will change your quality of live, improve your efficiency and increase your level of happiness.

The Italian Way, the German Way and the Chinese Way

Some one knocked at my office door and asked: “Could you please tell me where the conference room C is?” I heard the Italian accent and responded politely: “Are you coming from Italy?” He said: “Yes.” Then I smiled and said: “For Italian I will show you a long way.” He immediately understood my joke and laughed loudly.

Italians have a different work style than German. Sometimes they hold meetings up to three to five hours for an issue where German could conclude within thirty minutes. Why? My observation is that they are passionate about talking, so much that they forget the purpose of the meeting, namely resolving an issue.

Chinese need also more time than German to get things done, but for a completely different reason. Recently, I met a Chinese business woman and she started to talk about the people we know commonly. I started to talk stories over stories about these people and finally we liked each over very much. We spend three hours together and finally I forgot why I was meeting her.

Arrived at home, I called her and said: “Thanks for the meeting, but I forgot to talk my real reason for meeting you. Could you please do me a favor…?” and I told her the reason. She answered without hesitation: “Of cause, I will help you.”

Chinese need more time to talk in order to build relationship, once you establish the relationship you can actually ask everything possible or impossible.