Go baby, Go— Issue #13
Although I mentioned the Downshifting I admit that I still can not fully embrace this belief.
There are times when I keep thinking about my professional career as a speedrun against myself.
I often think that I started too late, that I spent too much time before I started planning my future, not that I did not even think about it as a teenager, but I probably had a wrong idea.
The society in which we live, the school system that we attend, our parents they do not encourage us to become ambitious, they do not encourage us to be hungry.
In the old continent, in Italy more than elsewhere, a correspective to the “American dream” does not exist.
Before the age of 19, like other hundreds of my peers, I worked as a barman and after graduation I dreamed of moving to an English-speaking country, Australia or the United Kingdom, with the aim of continuing this profession and improving both written and spoken English.
In July 2012, unfortunately, or fortunately depending on one’s viewpoint, a few days after graduation, I had a serious car accident that forced me bedriddne for several months during which I had the opportunity to expand my ambitions and partake the profession I abide today.
During this gray period I discovered a book that, although still being criticized, has allowed me to shape the ideas, I’m talking about The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, the undisputed literary success that has sold millions of copies in the United States and around the world.
The secret that is mentioned in the book, regardless of its fairy-tale inspired and at the same time Hollywood aspects, is the Law of Attraction which is divided into three main points: asking, believing and receiving.
Whoever applies this “law” must ask: that is to clearly define objective, what is desired and how to obtain it.
Subsequently, one must believe: that is, to maintain the focus on one’s objective, to define which are the actions that will allow one to reach it and to pursue it in a constant way.
Finally, the last point is to receive: to develope a sense of gratitude for the things we have received, for the people we frequent and for the world at large.
The main source of the theories exposed in the book is the philosophical movement called New Thought — in particular Wallace Wattles’s precepts.
Wattles was a US writer who lived between the late 1800s and early 1900s and heavily abided as an exponent of the New Thought movement.
Wattles was deeply convinced that wealth and abundance were human rights.
He wrote and practiced some techniques such as positive attitude and creative visualization, techniques of which we find traces, albeit in a more romanticized way, in Byrne’s book.
The term positive mental attitude, in fact, indicates a school of thought claiming that individuals who substitute their negative thoughts, who present themselves every day in the face of problems, fears or mistaken beliefs, face their lives in better way thanks to such positive thoughts.
It allows them to get used to always finding positive aspects and a solution to everyday problems, living life with greater optimism.
For such a reason, it is often linked to oriental beliefs such as Buddhism or Confucianism.
Choose a job you love, and you will not have to work even one day of your life — Confucius
Creative visualization is a technique professed by the movement which consists in imagining and visualizing in our own mind the things we want to happen, endeavoring to experience the same sensations and emotions as if they were actually happening.
It relies on a capacity that is obvious and visible in all children, that is imagination, but that adults, over time, neglect it.
The New Tought indicate that to live your life to the fullest and achieve your goals you need to visualize every day what you want.
This thought, according to the movement, does not seem to be unrealistic or irrational, because it is logical to think that for something to happen it is necessary to desire it in first person, believe that it will happen, focus on the actions that will make it happen and be optimistic, thanking for what we have, thanking to have the opportunity to realize our dreams.
According to Wattles, the ultimate goal of every individual’s life is evolution.
Being rich, following what he writes on his texts, is more of a right because no individual can develop a talent to the maximum if he does not have enough money.
In fact, in order to develop our own faculties, we need to use different tools and the society in which we live is organized in such a way that we need money to procure and use them.
Being rich does not coincide with being satisfied: nobody should be content with little, but we should all have everything we need to live a fulfilled life.
There is therefore nothing bad in wanting to enrich our own wealth — according to Wattles, it is configured in desiring a full and prosperous life, worthy of praise.
We can say that entrepreneurs take the so-called business risk in order to create value and wealth for their economic activity, and therefore to enrich themselves.
According to Eric Ries, entrepreneurs are everywhere.
We live in a historical moment where our fingers have enormous power; we live in the age of communication where we all have enormous power of speech and opinion, where through the internet we can learn like never before today, in which we can disclose our messages, our ideas.
Nowadays there are more and more entrepreneurs practicing than at any other time in history; anyone can rent production equipment, access distribution and reach its customers by investing a very low amount of capital in comparison to the past.
Go baby, go :)
Among the many questions that for millennia the philosophers of the past time have asked one has a greater relevance: what is the purpose of life?
I personally believe that the purpose of life and happiness are two strongly linked concepts.
Of course, I can not fully answer that question, I think I do not know enough to figure out what the purpose is in my life yet.
However, I think it is important, especially during young age, to try to define one’s own answer, when it is still to be built, when the most important steps have yet to be carried out.
When we have not yet decided on our ideal profession, we have not yet bought a home, we have not yet started a family.
I think that in the first years of our life it is right to undress from prejudices and preconceptions and even abandon the teachings and the advice received from the scholastic course, by friends, by parents, to make new hypotheses, explore new ways of thinking, so as to find our ideal path.
The society in which we live teaches us some common rules — there is the dogma that we must study, find a job, start a family and wait for retirement.
Still, such rules can not be applied to all individuals, because they are generic instructions while each of us follows unique behavioral patterns and needing matrixes, which no one can give him but who must find by himself.
I simply think that the best way to use the first years of our life is to discover the things that make us happy and cultivate them and at the same time discover the things that make us unhappy and away from them, it will be a banality, often out of pride or specific situations are not easy to implement, but it is necessary to strive to do so.
You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure — Charlie Chaplin
Photos by Fab Lentz, Nick Fewings, Jungwoo Hong, Alex Block.
