Teach a man to fish

Hunting is all about the kill, while gathering or farming requires nurturing over time to yield the bounty. In his book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, Jared Diamond studied why some cultures today are highly advanced and others are still living very primitive. One of the key factors he found was the difference between how they ate. A hunter for example ‘works today, eats today,’ which points to short-term thinking. On the other hand, a farmer can grow a crop that can last him a whole year or more, which requires more nurturing but also provides more long-term resources.

When setting goals, you want to set both short-term and long-term goals. A short-term goal is a goal that is designed to be completed in a short period of time, typically, between a few weeks and six months Long-term goals can be anything ranging from a year to ten or even twenty years. They may be vague, but that is exactly what long-term goals are meant to be – to serve as a vision for your future.

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Take responsibility

As we near the end of the calendar year we’ll see many people setting goals both sales and personal goals for the New Year. Are your goals financial, physical, educational or career? Setting goals gives you both a long-term vision and a short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge and helps you to organise your time and resources so that you can make the most of your life. I think that they will abandon them within a couple of weeks, as most goals and resolutions are intentions and intentions don’t equal behaviours or achievements. Every one of us are in our current situation right now as a result of our life choices, behaviours, and habits.


By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and you'll see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. You will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognise your own ability and competence in achieving the goals that you've set. Contact me via e-mail when you ready to take responsibility and fulfil your goals like top-level athletes, successful businesspeople, and high achievers.

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The mind is a rollercoaster

How do you become good at concentrating?
I think that you can’t focus or concentrate on something that you don’t understand, therefore, one should start by understanding the mind. To be concentrated is to be able to keep your awareness on one thing for an extended period of time. The mind is the most powerful tool in the world and one of the first things I learned when I moved to Copenhagen was the workings of the mind. This was because once you know how the mind works you can control it, and once you can control it - you can focus it. The best way to practice concentrating is by doing one thing at a time throughout the day.

What’s the best way to develop concentration?
I think the best way to develop concentration is to bring that practice into our everyday lives. Whenever you feel that your mind is drifting away, bring it back and focus your with your undivided attention on the person, event or activity. When you can concentrate then you’re able to focus all your energy into a single given point. Life is a manifestation of where your energy is flowing. And if you can’t concentrate your energy, the things that you want to manifest in your life will become very challenging. Keep bringing awareness back and keep focused, learn to concentrate by doing one thing at a time. Make this practise an essential  part of your day. 

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Going against the grain

Advertising has been around for millions of years old and nowadays people use advertising as a heuristic for knowing whom to trust. I think that innovation tends to happen around the edges as if you design for the middle market you’ll end up in an overcrowded field. We don’t get an endorphin rush from mid-market retail. The people who successfully innovate are the people who actually understand that there is a margin and there is an extravagant treat.

By modelling social science on physics, we think that being scientific means that there is a right answer and a wrong answer. In marketing, the rules of the game aren’t constant, and you can re-write them, for example, by changing the context you can change what good means. The first assumption of science is that magic is impossible, which is absolutely true in physics but not true in psychology. Magic is possible in psychology, for example, you can make something worth 10 times as much simply by tweaking with the brain and not the thing itself.  

The way to solve a problem may be trivial and silly, and our attempts in business to make ourselves look serious and important by always talking about higher order may also make us look stupid. Sometimes all you have to do is implement a very small “butterfly effect change” and actually you can. Big inputs can have small effects and small inputs can have big effects, that’s why human behaviour, I mean complex behaviour is not like high-school science.

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Hope is not a strategy

Who’s in the drivers seat?
Some people go through the day with their fingers crossed and there are other people who are blaming others for their current life situation. My advice is to grow up and take some responsibility:

·      If you wish to be successful, study success.

·      If you wish to be happy, study happiness.

·      If you wish to be wealthy, study wealth.

I think that the only way you can change your economic, social, and spiritual life is through study. You may not be able to do all that you find out, but you should find out all you can do.

“Hope is not a strategy.
Luck is not a factor.
Fear is not an option.”

— James Cameron

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The magnificent obsession

In general, leaders expect to influence how people think and behave at work, but they feel ill equipped to understand and actively manage how employees feel and express their emotions at work. I love sitting down with experts, people who have dedicated their lives to understanding more about human behaviour and the dynamics of how the mind works. Contact me if you feel stuck and you are trying to figure out your life purpose.

The Holocaust survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl stated in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” that a person can withstand just about anything as long as they have a purpose to strive for. I have found that people who have purpose in their lives, have something to go for. Purpose is the thing that pushes us into the future, some people are always pulled back by their past and some people are always pulled aside by distractions. I think that when you have a list high purposes in your life it will push you towards the future. The clearer the purpose, the stronger the desire to fulfil and achieve your purpose.

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Survival of the fittest

In the western world we have been conditioned to look out for ourselves and we are judged on individual performance. When for example, we do well in exams or in our work, we are rewarded with awards, promotions and increased wages. People may be rated individually, but what can we do to align and more in the same direction? How can we connect and collaborate on a level where we are looking at that common mission?

As you know I am a huge football fan, so it makes sense to use a football team analogy. A football team consists of a goalkeeper, defenders, midfielders and attackers, they are all doing their jobs in different ways but at the end of the game, they all want the same outcome - to outscore their opponents and win the match. You can do things differently, you can have different skills but you are moving in the same direction and that is the way we want to behave when we are part of a team. What I try to do is get everybody to work towards the organisation's common mission. My work revolves around growing your influence and building trust with your colleagues. Contact me via e-mail for a meeting or a team building workshop.

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