“We humans have an uncanny ability to reframe our thoughts and choose to find meaning in our scars. Thousands of survivors we have interviewed talk about growing stronger after a catastrophe. But they made healthy choices along the way; it was no accident that they rediscovered joy after debilitating loss.
…. It takes a village to survive emergencies, with help from the private sector, social sector and public sector. No single government agency or sector can do it all. We need our neighbors and civil society to come through for us. It is always a mistake to wait passively for bureaucracies and government agencies to “save” us.
How often do you have a bad day at work? A few times a month? More?
I think a few times a month is normal, but anything more than that - e.g. long drawn-out periods of negativity and tail-chasing is clearly not a good place to be.
But we’ve all been there. Oh yes, we have.
Borrowing a page from graphic designers, here’s a simple, effective method I’ve stumbled upon to escape that hell: create your own inspiration board.
By this I mean a page/space where you keep track of the most inspiring people, things, places, ideas, moments you’ve experienced over the past year or so.
Here’s an excerpt from a book review (’Against Happiness’ by Eric Wilson) in today’s WSJ:
“We must cherish our melancholy, he says, and absorb the insights it provides. We must let our trembling soul feel what it must feel: insecurity, finitude, shock, turbulence, anxiety and grief. In this way we will experience the true beauty of the world, with all its raging indifference. The world does not exist to give us a hedonic buzz. Life is not worth living because of all the units of pleasure it can contain but because of the opportunities for insight and transcendence it supplies.”
Very a propos on the heels of Fashion Week in New York…
Photo credit: IBC, detail of Trembled Blossoms short by Miuccia Prada
I’ve written about Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in previous posts on this blog, in part because I believe self-actualization is the ultimate value proposition for consumers (at least consumers in developed markets).
What could be better than realizing your true potential?
Maslow talks about human beings - aka your consumers, your kids, your friends, your colleagues. His principles can be applied to each group. (I think marketers sometimes forget that their “target consumers” are in fact humans with a beating heart).
Anyway, Chip Conley, who I’m pretty sure I met in my last life as a cosmetics entrepreneur, has now written a book on the subject called ‘Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow’, which sounds like it might be an interesting read based on this interview over at Good Experience Live.
Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
“The main idea [of the book] is that we’re all humans in the workplace - whether employees, customers, or investors - and those companies that succeed and become peak performers touch us as people in the workplace, by focusing on higher needs, as opposed to base needs.”
A friend recently lent me a book called ‘Wabi-Sabi, for Arists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers’.
It’s a quick read and it offers a refreshing counter-point to our overly consumptive, design-driven world.
The term wabi-sabi refers to a Japanese aesthetic that has long been associated with the tea ceremony:
“Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional.”
The author feels wabi-sabi’s pull and ventures out to try and define its elusive aesthetic and culture:
“Wabi-sabi - deep, multi-dimensional, elusive - appeared the perfect antidote to the pervasively slick, saccharine, corporate style of beauty that I felt was desensitizing America.”
If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed by big brands, new stores, new products, slick email offers and too much fashion, take a wabi-sabi dip. It feels good.
Back in April when I launched the blog I had a category called “de-luxing” or “de-stuffing”, I forget which.
This goes back to last summer when I read a series of articles on positive psychology, or ways to achieve happiness.
The articles seemed to suggest that achieving happiness had something to do with letting go of our manic fixation with getting ahead and acquiring “stuff”.
After all, how fulfilling is another pair of Manolos or the latest Marc Jacobs bag, if the essentials are in place?
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Entrepreneurship, Self-actualization | Tagged: alignment, giving, government, happiness, purpose, social resp., values, worldview | 
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