Tag Archives: Giving

Self analysis, question 53

Today’s question, “When others offer you free, unsolicited advice, do you accept it without question, or analyze their motive?, is something that is often in my mind. And right now I am thinking of some advice, or actually help, that someone offered me yesterday. And it was not fully unsolicited, but I didn’t like the advice as it was not an answer to the help I asked for.

So yes, often, or maybe always, advice or opinions given are probably more in the interest of the person giving the advice or help than the one asking for it or needing it.

And I guess I am more vulnerable to advice and opinion than I think, so I will think more about the reasons behind advice or opinions given.

Fake it

I still don’t feel like writing here anymore, so what was in my mind today was what to do with that. And the answer ‘fake it’ came to me, although of course that is not a solution in the end.

And the ‘fake it’ I encountered at least two times, once when I read or heard about a priest who did not believe anymore in God. And he was advised to just ‘fake it’ (in order to keep his job etc.).

And I also heard it in a movie. Forgot the name, but it was a spy movie with Al Pacino as one of the main characters.

Anyhow, I can’t keep faking it, so I have to find some kind of solution to keep writing here.

And the best thing is to achieve success, as that is what the site is all about in the end.

Waiting

Today I waited a lot, for all kinds of things. Or actually I didn’t even wait so long in most cases, but it kind of felt like waiting, as waiting is quite common in The Philippines.

But it made me think as mostly I am the person who is waiting for other people, because I want or need something from them. And that often just feels unfair, as it seems there are people who other people wait for, like the person I waited quite a long time for tonight (and the situation that made me decide to write this article).

And as somehow I am not the person who people follow, the person who inspires other people, I was pondering what is really going on here, like why this person I decided to wait for doesn’t seem to have to wait for other people, or not as many times as I.

On the other side there is something like going the extra mile, as if I want something I may have to wait for someone, where other people might decide to leave (and not get what they want).

Still, I am wondering a lot how I would induce people to follow me, e.g. to help me make the DoctorsConnect project come true. As I felt left alone by most of the current team tonight. And as the leader according to Napoleon Hill that would be my mistake.

Inspiration from death

I am a bit in a mixed mood today as it is the day one of my sisters is being buried and I decided I cannot attend. Main reason is budget, but somehow I also don’t want to attend as I don’t really see the reason to take on a 24 hour journey to attend a half day ceremony or so. And I guess I would have made an exception if my mam had asked me to come, but she didn’t. Ah, and also being fifty one years old life and death, especially death, is not that a big issue anymore, as people just die and I even almost died myself around five years ago. And most people who died were relatively old, like my grandparents and my dad, the people closest to me who died. And my sister was a special child with also body problems, so somehow it was already a miracle that she lived for almost fifty years.

The death of my sister made me thing yesterday though, as it brought me back to my youth, my very young years, about which my parents said I was very close with Janneke, my sister. So I was looking for a photo I remember of her and me, but I couldn’t find it. But I kept thinking about ‘life’, how we as people, as human beings are being born, live, and then die. So I thought about my sister, about what she had given to the world, as somehow people with disabilities appear so, well useless, not contributing. On the contrary, they take a lot of care, like my sister was in an institution for mentally handicapped people, so there are a lot of people needed an available to care for her. And yes, they need to be paid. And in The Netherlands that is all arranged by the government, and my sister even got an allowance from the social security department in The Netherlands. And then today I got an e-mail with the content, the preparation for the church and funeral ceremonies. And the staff who had taken care of Janneke all had made some kind of poem. And then I remembered the below photo they had sent me earlier, from the internal memo about Janneke’s death. And especially that photo reminded me of how she was, with such an enormous, I don’t know how to say in English properly, happiness. Like how she could shine, as you may see in below photo.

Janneke

And then I read the poems that the staff had made. And they all mentioned how much Janneke had given, and not, as one would expect, how much she had ‘taken’, consumed, used. And no, I am not really the type of person who thinks like that. I am more the material and career guy, even though I have big dreams and talk and write (and do) about valuing humans more, valuing humans above organizations and material things.

So yes, when thinking about those things, reading the poems, seeing the joy in the photo and remembering how Janneke was, I just know that a human is just very special, even if he or she is born without the ability to contribute to the material and such.

Denied

Alternative for Kickstarter

Well, it seems I can’t post my project on Kickstarter because I’m a resident of The Philippines, so I’ll just post here what I just entered: Makes me think if I really did the right thing backing someone on Kickstarter. So it’s okay to receive my money and letting me enter my whole project, but not to give something to me just because of my location.

Short description

It is about time Inspiration for Success comes alive, yes, with photos’, so a decent simple camera would be very welcome.

Description

I have been working on the site Inspiration for Success for more than one and a half year now. One of the things I want to change in the world is to honor effort directly instead of indirectly, meaning I want to ‘receive’ things or money or whatever directly and not e.g. through advertisements or affiliate links. Until now that means I have not received anything related to the site, except support from previous team members, some e-mails from people liking my quotes, visitors to the site, a lot of experience writing and thinking and more material things. As I want to enhance the site with photo’s as I often write about my own experiences, I need a camera, which I don’t have and for which I don’t have the budget. My asking for it through a text in the right widget did not give any result yet, so I encountered Kickstarter just now and thought this may be the way to receive my camera so I can enhance the site with photo’s and of course also enjoy making photo’s in general of course and for my web development business..

Risks and challenges

There are no real risks involved, but it may be a challenge to put profiles and photo’s of 76 people in the site as I cannot fully predict how much time that would take. And a challenge would be to find and put at least one photo for each post after I get the camera, a challenge I am deliberating right now.

Give and receive

Well, I wanted to receive EUR 750.00 for a decent camera with two ‘give backs’:

  1. A maximum of 75 ‘givers’ being honored on a page in his site (minimum donation EUR 10.00).
  2. One ‘giver’ to be honored in the right widget where my current camera request resides (minimum donation EUR 100.00).