Words for Life and Personal Growth

Typically, the first prerequisite for a sound job application is a well-redacted and organized Résumé (a document closely related to the Curriculum Vitae, but the latter focuses more on education, publications, and other accomplishments). A shining résumé can move you to the first places of a list comprising perhaps hundreds of prospects. Therefore, your résumé should list your germane abilities according to the job you are applying to… remark those abilities that would guarantee a star performance in the job. Remember that you are the ultimate responsible for highlighting your attributes to constitute a valid option to integrate the new team that the company is forming. However, a good résumé is not a guarantee of success, but it indeed is our presentation letter, and it may be the deciding factor in the employer’s final decission. Often the résumé is processed by the employers in order to select a group of applicants for interviewing them. Thereby, our résumé has to grab the employer’s attention positively. Our résumé has to be professionally elaborated, and reflect clearly, concisely and attractively the information about our academic and professional achievements. A résumé is our marketing letter… and our first goal has to be that the recruiters or prospective employers can’t put down our résumé.

Let’s see how recruiters or prospective employers will not put down our résumé.

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Recently, a friend of mine sent me a book: “The 7 Pillars of Health” by Dr. Don Colbert (Thank you Jesus!). Because of my little vacation, I had found no time to read the book. He enjoyed the book a lot, and wanted to share his joy with me. Well, I have to say that the book by Dr. Colbert is pretty interesting. Further, I also have to say that it’s the first book authored by Dr. Colbert that I’ve read. And it’s an easy reading. The book presents a “biblical cure”, based on our approach to eating and living. Basically, Colbert asks “What would Jesus eat?” He answers that according to biblical sources, Jesus preferred whole grain bread, wheat, barley, wine, lamb and fish. Besides, the book includes a program Dr. Colbert developed for detoxing through 28 days of fasting, rejecting proteins from animal sources, and solely intaking water, fruits, grains and vegetables.

This way, The Seven Pillars of Health collects several sound habits focused on achieving a longer and healthier life. Esentially, the key points are:

1.- Drink plenty of water (ionized alkaline filtered.) Considering that the human body is composed by about 65% of water, we have to renew it continually, drinking between 2 and 3 liters a day. I’d take this recommendation with a bit of salt, because not everyone reacts positively to an increase in fluid intaking… some people have reported swelling, edema and increases in blood pressure after starting to drink more water than necessary.

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After publishing my friend’s message and commenting on her intentions to take a vacations trip, I somehow wished to take a little vacation too. As I have no ties to prevent it, I adhered to my wish. I took a few days trip to eastern Venezuela, totally disconnected from the Internet and the current rush of technology. Over there, I met up with a longtime friend and her family… It had been ages since I saw them last, so it was good to finally catch up, and we all had a good time and a lot of stories to tell. Thank God, they’re OK, in general. All of her kids have grown up nicely, already graduated, and have married. Except for the eldest daughter, who has a health problem. A few years ago, she was diagnosed with diabetes, and that fact did lead to many drastic changes in her lifestyle. Of course, now she follows healthier food and exercise habits, which is totally recommendable (and mandatory!). However, there are some changes which are too excessive and harmful, in my opinion. Despite her disease is medically controlled, and shes does not feel any physical problem (on the contrary, she externally reveals a spectacular health condition), her courage and joy have fallen considerably. She used to be a playful and lively girl, but now she decided to give up parties, to go shopping with her friends, love… and everything joyful, simply because she is afraid of suffering a sudden, unexpected diabetic complication or coma, amidst the happiness of the reunion. She would become a disturbance… others would see her weak and in panic, prey to fear. And she does not want to go through that. She is concerned about what might happen, and what her friends could say. In a sense, she fears rejection.

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A well respected landowner required the services of a woodcutter. Soon, a burly man volunteered for the job. The landowner explained that, in order to get approved to the job, any candidate should axe down, in a single day, a leafy and huge cedar that was in front of his house. Faced with the daunting task, the woodcutter replied: “For Gods, maybe. But I don’t believe this chore to be humanly possible, so I retreat.” A second woodcutter arrived asking for the job, but once he heard the condition, it seemed to him that the landowner had become crazy. Like this, many other woodcutters rejected the job. But one burning morning, other lumberer applied for the job. It seemed that the cedar was too large for his slight and somewhat dandified figure. The condition was the same, but this woodcutter’s response was: “Sure, Good Lord, I can chop down this tree, but I beg you the permission to start working not today, but tomorrow at dawn… that way, I’ll have enough time to open the trunks and put them to dry before the sun hides his face.” This response, firm and self-confident, convinced the landowner of this man’s suitability for working in his estate.

“The job is yours, but don’t dare touch a single leaf of this quaint tree with your axe… this is a lovely tree, whose shade gives shelter to my kids and peace to my family. You’ve passed the test.”

And so the years passed by, and the landowner never regretted of hiring the woodcutter. During all those years of strenuous work the woodcutter had not returned to his village, and had not seen his family. That’s why the landowner decided it was time for the woodcutter to rest and to return to his village. As a token of gratitude, a big farewell party was held for the woodcutter. It was a prize to the woodcutter’s fidelity and good performance. On that day, the woodcutter recalled many joyful things he had lived in the estate. His boss’ family presented him with a lot of objects and gold as gifts. He received plenty of gifts. Collected so many that he required one horse and two mules to carry his gifts. When he departed, he was accompanied to the outskirts of the estate by two pawns. They were talking about the best path that our woodcutter should take to reach his destination faster. The two pawns were of the view that the trail was the shortest path.

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Yesterday, a reader from Margarita Island, Venezuela, sent me a very positive and lovely feedback about my article “Looking for True Happiness“. She loved the succinct discussion involving economy’s views, a theme she feels is often neglected from essays on happiness. Thanks. I’d like to share with the other readers of Life, Money & Development a very personal approach to happiness, courtesy of Mrs. Paula Marcenaro. In her email, she refers that life was really harsh for her after her parents’ death, when she was 14… that was some years ago, as she is now a shining and exquisite 60+ woman She had to work very hard in order to achieve her teaching degree and to bring up her six daughters. But now, she is very, very happy. All of her six girls are professionals, holders of high academic degrees. Nevertheless, she always kept her self-confidence. Self-confidence and an unbreakable faith in a better tomorrow allowed her to improve and achieve her goals. Self-confidence allowed her to endure others’ unkind critics, envy, and general problems.

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Let’s continue with our condensed Meditation Gems series. Today we’ll discuss appearances, an ancient concern. As far back as Aesop’s fable, The Ant and the Chrysalis, the moral “Appearances are deceptive” is present. We have to acknowledge that self-confidence relies greatly on how we see ourselves. Whether this inner perception represents the stairway to a broader and successful vision of life, or is the path to ruin, depends solely upon ourselves. The things we think about and the things we do define our true identity. People afraid of failures skip from one idea to another almost endlessly, and thereby rarely get hold of success. Facing the hard circumstances of the real world, our fears would recommend to step back in order to avoid (possible) injuries. Self-confidence provides the fuel to fight these fears. The world belongs to brave people. Nevertheless, being brave does not mean to live recklessly, as self-confidence also allows us to realize our limits as imperfect human beings. The key word is balance. For self-confidence, bravery must join forces with humility. Being afraid of failure opens the door to appearances, but being unaware of failure leads to frustration. When the required balance is disrupted, desperate for filling up the void, we tend to recur to a harmful resource: appearances. With appearances we try to fill up the gap in our souls, related to our need for faking our limitations and guising them as “intentional” patterns in our life.

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The Net is full to bursting of sites about how to make money online. But what we really need to know about making money is this: Making money is not easy and All we need to make money is common sense and a well-planned approach to work. But those two points are a secret to no one. Nevertheless, it’s very frequent to find websites and blogs bragging about how much money their owners are making. And they are earning a lot with just an Internet connection, a deluxe Apple laptop, and some coconut water in a paradisiac island. You may win up to 250K, monthly! You can be as rich as them! You only have to follow their techniques, and of course, to buy their books and videos to learn how to be a successful “entrepreneur”. Utterly nonsense. Thanks to the Net, to be a “guru” is easier than ever. I’m no “guru”, so bear with me.

I do strongly believe that blogging is about living (in the net, that is), not about bragging. These undoubtedly clever guys nourish from the naivety of some people. For them, it’s a perverted kind of pleasure to read about “how to make tons of money online.” They say: “Look! This guy is making so much money with just a web page!.” Their natural reaction, of course, is “I can do better!.” Some have quit their jobs to pursue the role of “entrepreneur”. To have the motivation to improve is nice and all, but it’s even nicer to have a clear and down-to-earth mindset. We can win money. Yes. We can. We have all the required abilities. But we’d be better off if we take every net’s thing with a bit of salt. Building self-confidence demands taking risks… but illusory, unattainable goals knock-off self-confidence atrociously.

Being an entrepreneur requires a clear vision about the business we want to undertake. Being an entrepreneur needs courage and accepting risk. But above all, being an entrepreneur requires good capacities for planning and self-discipline. Entrepreneurs have the abilities for being their own bosses. And not everyone is prepared for that. And it also requires courage to be able to accept our current limitations. But if you believe in yourself, you can overcome any of these obstacles.

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It is very difficult, although not impossible, to win a race if we have to start down in a hole. However, this is the precise handicap which a lot of people face during their search for happiness. Because of such handicap, climbing out of the hole and arriving to at least the starting line represents an exhausting endeavor. Apparently, this is not logical… this is not how life should be. But truth be told, we can only start from the position we are right now, and we can only use the resources available to us right now. In order to achieve happiness we have to shut off perturbing messages, such as “I cannot”, “I’m going to lose”, “Maybe tomorrow is a better day”, and so further. We have to put all these miscreant ideas aside from our mind, to remove these slimy sentences which do not contribute to our goals. It’s easier for us to attribute the responsibility of our failures and defeats to others… those who taught us, for instance. Some people like to attribute to their parents and teachers an alleged fraud… everything bad has been their fault, not ours. They hold on to the past. They are losers. On the contrary, winners focus on overcoming each obstacle that rises until accomplishing their goals. Winners want to be happy and to bring happiness to all the people around them, sharing the love, their views on life, and perhaps, their goals.

Some serious studies demonstrate that people from developed countries are not necessarily the happiest ones. A lot of nationals and residents of such countries manifest to feel unhappier than those of some developing or poorer countries. In this sense, let’s recall the Easterlin paradox, based on a study by professor and economist Richard Easterlin: Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? published in 1974, while he was with the University of Pennsylvania. Basically, the paradox states that economic growth does not necessarily lead to more satisfaction. It’s obvious that people in poor countries become happier once they can afford basic necessities. But the important idea behind Easterlin paradox is that absolute income does not matter as much as relative income does. In other words, how much you make compared with others around you is what really matters. To put it in today’s terms, owning an iPod doesn’t make you happier, because you then want an iPod Touch

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We are used to recur to the time parameter to assess all of our activities. Worse yet, time assesses our own reality. We love to classify life in an orthodox fashion: past, present and future, unyielding frames we can’t live without. Indeed, as humans, we love to classify things, especially when classifying makes us feel special or protected. We classify things as living or not living. Above all, though, we love to classify things according to time. Thanks to this parameter, everything becomes an event. And we are continually struggling to link events, to establish logical relations of cause-effect between them. If we think this over, we’d note our predilection for going to the ends of classification. To classify, after all, is a proof of intelligence.

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We are already accustomed to financial media regularly releasing statistical reports and rankings of the people that lead and have accumulated an important allotment of the world’s money. For instance, Forbes magazine published its annual Japanese ranking a few days ago. For most of us, it’d be wonderful, impressive, and even magical, to someday read our names in such lists. A lot of people only dream of being there. But reality often reveals otherwise. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of luck, or inherited fortunes. But we’ll disregard such cases, as uninteresting for analysis. The norm is that becoming rich requires plenty of sacrifices, and above all, extraordinary efforts. It’s not easy. However, it’s not impossible to reach such goal. Powerful souls set exceptional goals.

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