So what do you do when you realise you have miserably failed at everything you attempted at in the past couple of years?
Do you give up?
Do you insist, because maybe if you try hard enough it just might actually work?
Do you continue trying to come up with new ideas that in the end are actually more of the same and give those a shot? Even though you're pretty sure you'll end up again right where you started?
When is it ok to admit "failure" and accept that you are in this position for a reason - which basically is because you chose to - and go do what you always wanted to do but were always too scared or too discouraged to?
Maybe that time has come.
Maybe now it's time to take those risks.
Maybe now it's time to live the dream.
It's time to hoist the sails and dance with the wind.
Will I crash and drown? Probably, maybe.... who knows.
But oh well, better drown swimming towards that beach then die in despair staring at the sky, waiting for the rescue that will never come.
A series of odd and emotionally intense events has happened to people close to me past few weeks, obviously impacting me in one way or another and that certainly got me to reflect again.
Just the other day I read somewhere about how 2016 marks the end of a 36-year long Sun era or cycle and that in 2017 we embark on a Saturn led journey.... I'm not sure I believe all of this astrology stuff - certainly very suspicious about it when astrologers go all psychic and try to predict the future. But this particular blog post got me thinking. It talked about the Sun cycle as one of personal light, egocentrism, the need to leave your personal mark.
Interesting huh?
If we think about the culture of social media and selfies and all that we are now indulged in, kinda makes sense.
And the text went on... The Sun is the centre of our planetary system, it gives life but also burns and blinds. All excess is destructive. As we have spent the past 36 years "training" our personal Sun, we are now at the peak of the need to be the centre of attention. We have become spoiled little children and everything offends us and invites us to fight for our "individual rights".
WOW!
Put aside the astrology and just re-read the statement above.
Sounds very much like the world we live in today.
We indulge in whatever it takes for us to find personal satisfaction. The worship of me! The value of me! An individualistic society that praises the personal success and glory. One that measures your worth in comparison to how much better, how much more likeable, how much more more and more you are than the rest. It's me before everything. My needs, my desires, my feelings, my wishes... Yeah, ok, you have those too, but you go chase that and take care of that because I have MY OWN PROBLEMS to deal with - which normally have to do with how I will make sure I cover my own needs and desires and all that. And because no one else is gonna have the interest, time nor energy to help me, also because they're trying to do the exact same thing as me. And so we close ourselves inwards to our own little universe, in which we are our own Suns, and all the planets spin around me! And we get lonely. Alone and lost. And we don't dare to reach out and look for help. That is weak, vulnerable. Who wants to be perceived as that?
We are self involved, just like everyone else is. We forget to look up and around every now and then. Until something happens. And unfortunately enough, it usually takes a tragedy to make us stop and do that.
I'm not gonna sit here and pretend I'm not guilty of the above - far from me. We are all equally flawed I believe. But just thinking about all of this and recognising these behaviours in me - well it definitely makes me want to change.
This year has been a very emotionally intense year for me. I have been trying to fight off many of my demons (as I believe I have slightly touched upon in the previous post). And the battle is far from over. I guess it's a battle for life. And I know we each have our demons and wars to fight and those won't go away with the end of some astrological cycle.
But I like to believe that as we progress through this life we do earn new tools and we can learn to use them so that each future battle becomes less painful and maybe slightly easier to win.
Tools and experiences that can and should be shared. Even if it's only for the sake of showcasing what not to do!
Not the egotistical sharing (I believe we all know what I mean by that), but in a truly caring way.
That could be difference between winning or losing the battle.
So back to the blog post about astrology...
It goes on to say that in 2017 Saturn arrives and starts to impose limits, leading to completely opposite trends than those we saw during the Sun era. The dissolution of the ego, a period of more responsibility, severity, sobriety, competence.
Whether or not we chose to believe in this, certainly wouldn't hurt if we do get a bit more of those Saturnine qualities in our lives.
If you are curious, please see the link below for the original post about the astrological cycles (in Portuguese only I'm afraid).
https://omundodegaya.wordpress.com/2016/11/10/2016-um-ano-de-terminos-fim-de-um-ciclo-de-36-anos/
Hello you! Hello me! Hello world!
Hello good ol' blog!
So Facebook with this nice little memory feature they have, brought up an entry from this blog just the other day, about my last day at the office (October 2011). I opened it, but obviously (also as previously explained in another entry on this blog) got distracted like a Labrador puppy playing with the leaves... oh wait butterfly! and only read the post now.
Needless to say I had to go back and read all the previous entries and had a little (and I mean little because I didn't write that many posts here) trip down memory lane and guess what? Felt the urge to write again.
I guess I could call this Update #276 or whatever and go through all the boring (and not so boring) details of the many things that happened over the past couple of years....
Maybe I'll do that as I get more inspired to keep writing... or maybe I won't. We'll see.
And if you are thinking that I have come back with amazing news, to tell you how together my life is and how successful I have become post my MBA... Sorry to disappoint you.
I'm not working in the corporate finance world (I did, went back and it lasted less than 12 months!). I'm not a CFO, CEO, Executive VP or anything like that in any large international company. In fact I'm very happily unemployed! :)
I'm definitely poorer and a little heavier (but working on that already! top priority! I blame my age haha) than six years ago when I started writing this.
Still single. Still no kids.
Still confused? Hell yeah!
Still unhappy? Hell NO! But have been on and off at times between then and now.
Interestingly enough feels like I have gone through a similar cycle at least two or three times in the past six years. Somehow always ending up in a similar place as to that where I had started....
How is that possible?
Not sure.
I do know it's sooooo hard to break away from old habits and things that are so hard engraved in our brains and souls, that we don't even realise until you walk that long arduous road to find yourself right back where you started, with that big silly puzzled look on your face... What the heck????
But if you also have that urge, that constant feeling of unrest inside you, it does keep creeping back up to you in ways you least expect. And gets you moving again.
Can't say I haven't been moving. I think that's what I did the most between the end of 2013 when I finished my MBA and now. At many times I had a plan. But the plan failed. So I made new plans. And those failed too. And then at one point, I was done with planning. But that also didn't work out too well! ;-)
Or maybe it all worked out in a mysterious way I still don't know.
Hoping to get that benefit of hindsight very soon to understand this all.
Again, so many things happened in these past few years. More weddings, more kids, more job promotions, more moves, even some deaths (sadly enough). And sometimes I feel like I'm the only one stuck in this vicious little cycle that my life has become. Or has it?
I have been to so many places, met so many new people.
Some friendships have ended, new beautiful ones have started. Some old ones revived!
I'M not stuck, MY MIND is stuck.
There is a HUGE difference.
EUREKA!
And when I discovered that and learned how to free my mind and started allowing it to follow me.... That's when the real move begins!
So welcome to a new cycle! But with the same good ol' me! :D
A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of having John McGeaghie, VP Sales from Evernote come to our Technology & Innovation class to have a chat with us.
Following that session we were asked to write our reactions about Evernote.
Being the savvy IT person that I am - obviously I had never heard of this Evernote thing before.
So I thought I'd install the app in my computer & phone, give it some weeks and then write this post about my impressions.
Well, for all of you who also don't know what Evernote is, here is a quick nice little intro.
Sounds pretty cool doesn't it?
That's what I thought initially, but truth be said I couldn't bring myself to use it.
And it's not because the app is not user friendly nor its features are good. But for the purpose of sharing my documents between my different devices my Dropbox does that perfectly well for me.
Also my iCloud is great in keeping my calendars, emails, contacts & so forth all organised and shared. And for my to do's lists the reminders program which is also in the cloud works out just fine.
So to me putting and organising my things into Evernote just seems like additional work.
I guess the notebook is a great way to keep your things organised, but particularly for me, that am not fully digital yet, this is double work. Because it would mean transferring things from one place into Evernote and honestly the likelihood of me remembering to go to Evernote to search for these things in the future is close to nil.
I guess though this is a characteristic of my "generation", which is in transit between the paper & digital world. I guess I'm still attached to the coloured post its, and my moleskin notebook. I suspect people that have gone more digital than me might find this amazing.
There is one feature that I really liked though which is the web clipper.
Every time I found a link that I liked and I wanted to remember it or keep it somewhere the only way I knew of keeping it was adding it to my bookmarks. But most of the time I didn't want to bookmark the page but that particular content in it, so for this I found Evernote Clipper to be a great solution.
Another feature, which I understood is a fairly new app they just launched, is the Evernote Hello.
This to me was innovative and awesome! I can think of how much time and effort I could have saved if I had this before!!!!
I remember going to meetings and then after each meeting I had to take 5 minutes or so, so write down behind people's business cards, where and when I met them, what we talked about maybe, so that I would remember that person in the future. This app does that for you in a brilliant way.
I suspect this app might become one of my best friends in the near future! :)
The only issue for me - and that is a problem I have not only with Evernote but other digital solutions - is to remember to use them!!! I still resort to the pen & paper before anything else.
And truth be said this Technology & Innovation class has been great for me in the sense that it has opened my mind to many trends and things I needed to catch up with and was completely clueless about. But still sometimes it's difficult to step away from what you are used to.
I'm trying... But going 150% digital for people like me, it's definitely a process that doesn't happen overnight.
This time we have been asked to analyse the online presence of a company.
Given their controversial launch campaign for the Class A in Brazil, I decided to talk about Mercedes Benz Brasil.
Their website is quite classic. Sensible, simple and straight forward: http://www.mercedes-benz.com.br
They get more innovative when it comes to the specific product websites.
The video went viral and caused a huge polemic discussion in the web, through blogs and other social media.
If you watched the video, you'll notice the commercial uses a "funk style" song that for some reason (God knows why???) became really popular in Brazil. The lyrics of this song, as usual don't really say anything.... But it talks about the new "steering wheel dance" that makes you spin from one side to the other (passinho do volante, girando prum lado, girando pro outro). And the tag line that starts with the letter A (Aaaahhhh lelek lek lek...). As some of you already know, the funk comes from the favelas in Rio and if you watch the original video of the song you can clearly see that.
So the immediate question that comes to mind is...
WHY WOULD MERCEDES WANT TO ASSOCIATE THEMSELVES WITH THIS????
Mercedes is a high-end brand. The Class A is their "popular" car, but it costs almost R$100,000 which is much more expensive than the real "popular" cars which will cost you about half that.
So their target audience is obviously not the people that listen to funk music (safe some exceptions and I don't even want to go down that road...)
The comments you see on the web go from compliments to Mercedes for being so outrageous (very few) to the marketing director is an idiot and should be fired and the Class A will now become the car of the drug dealers and the most stolen car in Brazil.
Mercedes did a really good job in responding to these comments and staying on top of everything that was coming out in this discussion. They have a really good presence and this made their interaction with the public (customer base) much closer and intenser.
And they didn't let it last long....
On the 5th of April they made another post on their Facebook page:
It says:
"Surprised? You didn't expect this! Nor did you expect a car like this Mercedes Benz.
New Class A. The letter that came from the will to innovate.
Check out now the launch campaign in Brazil"
And you click and it takes you to the Class A website and before you can even see the website, the real commercial video comes on:
Now, more in line with what the Mercedes brand wants to portray.
And completely aligned with the international image of the car. As you can see from their German add:
And the American Add, with pilot Nico Rosberg:
But... if they had come out straight away with this add. They could have put it in the prime time on TV and not even half the people would be talking about it.
So congratulations to Mercedes Benz Brasil for brilliantly using their social media channels to get the public's attention to the launch of their new car in the market.
Hats off!!!
So I went back and read all the old entries in this blog - also to see if there was nothing too embarrassing to share with my classmates and professor.
And I read my first post, how this blog started... and I realised that
OMG!!!! I GAVE IN TOO!!!!
Now I'm the one off doing an MBA!!!!
The irony of life!
But there are some observations that I need to make. And the most important one is that the reason I had in mind for doing an MBA back then was completely different to the reason that drove to me start this MBA I'm in right now. Too hard to explain but those of you who know me well enough will know what I mean ;-)
Either way I couldn't help but feel a little disappointment when a I realised that all the effort and all the things I did to try to break away from the convention and the vicious circle - lead me right back to it.
Good thing is that I know deep down inside that is not the case. And I did break away. But it's still ironic nevertheless.
Just recently I applied for a summer internship back in the banking world. Hold! I'm not doing it, I'm doing something a lot more exciting!!!! But the fact that I even applied made me realise it's REALLY EASY to fall back into that comfort zone if we don't watch ourselves.
So basically this post is to remind myself that I need to watch out for that. I didn't go through all that I did to go back to where I was. That's an easy temptation and trap to fall into. I need to remember to be strong and resist. Because as I now know, there is a lot more out there to be explored. And if I go back, I'll miss out!
So in our last class we got to watch this nice little video:
And it does raise the question? Is Google some evil kind of organisation, trying to come up with a master plan to rule the world?
And some people really believe it to be the case... And go overboard!!!!
But I ask you, what has Google done to you personally?
How has it affected your life?
Do you feel out of control in your life? Like your privacy has been breached and everyone knows everything about you?
I personally love Google.
I remember the days back in school when I had to go through books and books of the Barsa Encyclopedia to look for information to do a paper. What a nightmare that was...
And I remember how excited I got when I had access to Encarta! Remember that?
Now doing research was so much easier and even more fun.
Not to talk about ways of communicating. I lived in China, as some of you may already know, between 1993 and 1997. Keeping in touch with my friends back in Brazil through regular mail was soooooo difficult. But then emails came along. And ICQ!!!! How I loved that chat!!!
And life was so much simpler....
And here we are today.
Anything we want, all we have to do is open the computer and go to Google.
They help you find the information you need for a research, they help you plan your holiday, they help you find your way (I'M THE BIGGEST FAN OF GOOGLE MAPS!!!! Can't live without it anymore!), help you find the pretty pictures I posted above on this post, etc etc etc.
Help you share your pictures, your lives, your stories.
Get real time information about everything, everywhere.
So what if they have my info too?
And so what if they're using it to customise my searches?
Even better! Takes me less time to find what I want!!!!
Today we have an overload of information and access to things. Sometimes looking for something simple on the web takes you ages.
If these guys are coming up with tools to make my life more simple and more practical, than great! I'm all in for that.
And as for privacy????
Well, what is privacy to start with? And people are so fast to jump at this. But has anyone ever really bothered to read the privacy policy of anything?
I looked into Google's. http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/
And you know what? Sounds perfectly legit to me!
Plus, how many people are we in the world again? Almost 7 billion right? Why would Google care so much about my info out of these 7 other billion people in the world? I'm just a regular person, with a regular life... What's so interesting about that?
And if that's how they do business, well then so be it.
There are so many other companies manufacturing arms & weapons, polluting the environment, making so much harm to the world. Why are we not bashing them for destroying the planet we are living in?
But instead we're calling evil a company that interferes with our virtual realities....
Are we living in the real world still? Or some kind of Matrix?
And so what if they're monopolistic? Aren't the oil companies a bit like that too?
Have you heard of any wars caused by Google?
How about wars caused by oil?????
And let's be honest with ourselves here. If you really want something private, keep it away from the internet!!!!
Sometimes I think people forget that there is still something called HUMAN INTERACTION!
You wanna tell your friend a secret? Don't email it to them!
Invite them out and tell them in person over a coffee.
THERE IS A LIFE OUTSIDE THE WWW. AWAY FROM EMAILS. AWAY FROM FACEBOOK. AND AWAY FROM MOBILE PHONES!
Don't forget that! :)
That's where you keep what is you feel should be private.
Take advantage of this amazing era of abundance of knowledge and embrace it! It's called progress!
Share with the world what you want to share! And keep your secrets to yourself! In your heart and in your mind.
Don't be a hypocrite! Go back to the beginning of this post and check how these people that are so strongly bashing Google doing so.... through the very tools they criticise.... huh?
And I leave you with this last video I saw which cracked me up!!!
Till next time! :-P
