Some quotes to start a healthy and balanced 2010

“It's kind of fun to do the impossible.”

Walt Disney

“Is the rich world aware of how four billion of the six billion live? If we were aware, we would want to help out, we'd want to get involved.”

Bill Gates

"You win some, you lose some, and some get rained out, but you gotta suit up for them all."
J. Askenberg

"If you don’t know what port you are sailing to, no wind is favourable."
Seneca

"When you shoot for the moon and you come up short, you still end up among the stars."

Les Brown

the project ...

Why? : the charity project

Occasionally, we all meet inspiring people, people who inspire because of their vision on the future, their enthusiasm, their drive, their optimism or their charisma. Those inspiring people often do things that other people don’t; they lead by example and just do what they believe is the right thing to do. One of those inspiring people that I had the luck to meet about ten years ago is Christophe Lambert.

Christophe has created Mensch Trust, a foundation that takes care of orphans in India. He created an orphanage, Saint Paul’s Home for Children’ in Uthami, a small village in between the great temple towns Kumbakonam and Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu (South India). The orphanage can host up to hundred children. Through fundraising he has been able to give those children a future. Some of the children go at the age of 18 to a university or to a nursery school.

Christophe’s never stops dreaming of a better world for those children. When one challenging dream has been realized, he starts working on his next dream. Very recently he built in the same area a field hospital that provides basic health care services for the twenty surrounding villages. Through the provision of basic health care services he is saving many people’s life in the region.

The main challenge for the field hospital is to provide permanent service during the daily power interruptions in the region. Those power breaks make it impossible to do basic surgery or doing more complex interventions. Christophe’s dream is to have the field hospital becoming self-sufficient through the usage of solar panels.

Christophe’s dream got my dream and will soon get yours as well!

By writing and selling a book I hope to be able to finance the solar panels for the field hospital since the entire profit of the book will go to charity.

How? : Web2.0 fundraising

I will also test the limits of Facebook as medium for fundraising. Starting from one Facebook friend, my thirteen year old son Henri, I’m building a virtual community through which I hope to get the message across and turn your enthusiasm into the purchase of the book. I want to test how far a “forty-something” gets by applying the principles of “the tipping point”, the fantastic book written by Malcolm Gladwell.

The “academic” question is whether Henri will be able to get me connected with whomever in the world? Hard to believe but if Gladwell’s principle is right I should get far. Everybody, wherever in the world is only six connections away from each other and if you are a friend of my son - even in the sixth degree - you should be someone with a heart otherwise you would be dead. Would Steve Jobs ever buy this book? Who knows, but I’m sure that you want to be part of this adventure! So let your creativity get loose to spread the news and start connecting the dots. As a creative mind, I’m sure you want to be part of this experience!

We, of course, will by-pass the classic distribution channels. The book will only be for sale through our website for 15euro [website is still under construction]. By by-passing the classic distribution channels we will be able to leave the entire margin to the project.


About? Resilience

As a connector and a reader of the book, you will not only be part of this adventure but you might as well get interested into ways to get balance into your hectic life. Let’s be honest, our generation lives fast and is connected in a fraction of a second to the entire world, we can work 24/7, we can travel any place for no money, we are connected from wherever with whomever. There are only a few boundaries left. Finding the right balance is probable one of the remaining challenges, that’s what the book will be all about.


When? Summer 2010

As soon as the website will be ready, in a couple of months from now, you will find the first chapter of the book on it, as a teaser. You might be disappointed about the content but if you are a friend of my son – even in the sixth degree – you will have a heart and might want to donate (by buying the book) 15€ to change the life of a child and be a pioneer in Facebook fundraising.

You cannot control the waves, you can only learn to surf them

Bjorn who is an authority in the academic field of Mindfulness and is the founder of ITAM (www.itam.be) mailed me the following quote: “You cannot control the waves, you can only learn to surf them”.

In the same mail he mentioned that he recently met a manager who had the following quote on his screensaver: “Trust is good, control is better”. This quote didn’t surprise him because in his coaching and mindfulness practice he teaches managers to loosen up. Having more trust (and less control) is one of the triggers to reduce stress at work.

In the corporate world we would love to have control on all possible variables. Being in control is necessary but we have to face the reality that the corporate world is complex and unpredictable. According to Bjorn, trying to control everything and everybody will increase the chance that you’re stressing up, leading to losing a lot of your potential.

As a manager you’ve got to learn to make the difference between situations where you can be of influence (or control) and those situations which you have to accept (or trust). This can be achieved by creating situational awareness.

In the mindfulness@work-trainingsBjorn teaches managers to increase their situational awareness. ‘We train them’, he says “to stabilize their mind and to look at situations with a beginners mind. This increases the creativity, trust and reduces the overall stress level”.

Bjorn will contribute to the book by writing a couple of chapters on Mindfulness.

What do you think?

Jacques Rogge, IOC-voorzitter over coaching

Jacques Rogge gaf een interview aan de Tijd (December 16, 2009) over de parallellen tussen sport en bedrijfsleven.

Op een bepaald moment gaat het over coaching:

“Beiden (sport en bedrijfsleven) hebben de opdracht hun pupil te ondersteunen en naar een hoger niveau te tillen ... een coach of mentor moeten eerst en vooral een goede psycholoog zijn en zich goed kunnen inleven in wie ze onder hun hoede hebben. Voorts moeten ze moreel gezag hebben en autoriteit ontlenen aan hun eigen palmares. Mentorschap/coaching is nog niet overal ingeburgerd, ik ben er voorstander van dat raden van bestuur dat ondersteunen.”

Steve Jobs (Apple) - resilience

Here we see Steve Jobs delivering his commencement speech to the graduates of Stanford University in 2005. In it he talks about getting fired from Apple in 1985, life & death

creatief omgaan met tijdsgebrek!

mooi voorbeeld van hoe je creatief kunt omgaan met tijdsgebrek: een lunch of ontbijtvergadering vervangen door een tour op de fiets!

http://www.econoshock.be/2009/baas-aan-boord/#more-6044

Project up-date

I had diner with Christophe and Sam tonight. Christophe is just back from India. His team at Mensch Trust will work out a plan/proposal for the installation of the solar panels. It will probable be most efficient to buy the solar panels locally and having them installed by the local community which is in line with the VANAKAM philosophy of engaging the local community and economy as much as possible.

We also agreed that I will get a section on the VANAKAM website which is more efficient than building my own. (www.vanakam.be).

I’m still searching for business model to sell the book through downloads. Does someone know a website on which you can download (=buy) books in PDF (i.e. not for free). I'm looking for some examples. Wondering how they manage the payments.

True positive ambitions are like water... it makes its way by itself

"True positive ambitions are like water... it makes its way by itself"

That’s the one-liner I received from Manoj, yoga-teacher in the Ghent area. I can’t get it out of my mind since.

What it means - I guess - is that if you are considering launching a true positive project (ambition, dream), you should just do it. Don’t reflect too much on it. That’s also what I do with the NMTH-project.

And of course, it might fail and of course you will meet some cynical and negative people but who cares. Don’t waste energy on them, just walk on.

And on failure: our greatest glory isn’t in never falling but in rising every time we fall.

No Mountain Too High

Why? : the charity project

Occasionally, we all meet inspiring people, people who inspire because of their vision on the future, their enthusiasm, their drive, their optimism or their charisma. Those inspiring people often do things that other people don’t; they lead by example and just do what they believe is the right thing to do. One of those inspiring people that I had the luck to meet about ten years ago is Christophe Lambert.

Christophe has created Mensch Trust, a foundation that takes care of orphans in India. He created an orphanage, Saint Paul’s Home for Children’ in Uthami, a small village in between the great temple towns Kumbakonam and Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu (South India). The orphanage can host up to hundred children. Through fundraising he has been able to give those children a future. Some of the children go at the age of 18 to a university or to a nursery school.

Christophe’s never stops dreaming of a better world for those children. When one challenging dream has been realized, he starts working on his next dream. Very recently he built in the same area a field hospital that provides basic health care services for the twenty surrounding villages. Through the provision of basic health care services he is saving many people’s life in the region.

The main challenge for the field hospital is to provide permanent service during the daily power interruptions in the region. Those power breaks make it impossible to do basic surgery or doing more complex interventions. Christophe’s dream is to have the field hospital becoming self-sufficient through the usage of solar panels.

Christophe’s dream got my dream and will soon get yours as well!

By writing and selling a book I hope to be able to finance the solar panels for the field hospital since the entire profit of the book will go to charity.


How? : Web2.0 fundraising

I will also test the limits of Facebook as medium for fundraising. Starting from one Facebook friend, my thirteen year old son Henri, I’m building a virtual community through which I hope to get the message across and turn your enthusiasm into the purchase of the book. I want to test how far a “forty-something” gets by applying the principles of “the tipping point”, the fantastic book written by Malcolm Gladwell.

The “academic” question is whether Henri will be able to get me connected with whomever in the world? Hard to believe but if Gladwell’s principle is right I should get far. Everybody, wherever in the world is only six connections away from each other and if you are a friend of my son - even in the sixth degree - you should be someone with a heart otherwise you would be dead. Would Steve Jobs ever buy this book? Who knows, but I’m sure that you want to be part of this adventure! So let your creativity get loose to spread the news and start connecting the dots. As a creative mind, I’m sure you want to be part of this experience!

We, of course, will by-pass the classic distribution channels. The book will only be for sale through our website for 15euro [website is still under construction]. By by-passing the classic distribution channels we will be able to leave the entire margin to the project.


About? Resilience

As a connector and a reader of the book, you will not only be part of this adventure but you might as well get interested into ways to get balance into your hectic life. Let’s be honest, our generation lives fast and is connected in a fraction of a second to the entire world, we can work 24/7, we can travel any place for no money, we are connected from wherever with whomever. There are only a few boundaries left. Finding the right balance is probable one of the remaining challenges, that’s what the book will be all about.


When? Summer 2010

As soon as the website will be ready, in a couple of months from now, you will find the first chapter of the book on it, as a teaser. You might be disappointed about the content but if you are a friend of my son – even in the sixth degree – you will have a heart and might want to donate (by buying the book) 15€ to change the life of a child and be a pioneer in Facebook fundraising.