Inspiration

Be a Voice, Not an Echo

February 21, 2020 by Ani Leave a Comment

These days I am trying to get some downtime. When I get home from work I need to turn off the notifications, unplug from the internet and different apps and do my best to switch off my constantly thinking brain…It is not working that well so far and I am still experimenting.

One of the things I am exploring are cheap and dumb TV series and reality shows. And today I watched videos on Youtube featuring the best bits from The Voice audition.

Not only it did not turn off my brain, but those video compilations brought a chain of different thoughts and I ended up typing this post… (watching The Voice is now successfully crossed off my “brain switch off” experiment list).

The first thing I thought of was how stressful and even humiliating that might feel. Standing there, singing and looking at the backs of jurys’ chairs and being at their mercy… Doing your best to impress with your voice and performance.

Those singer wanna be-s are trying to prove themselves. Justify their right to sing. Seek permission and acknowledgment. Get verified. Be accepted…

Will they like it? Will they turn? What will they decide?…

You don’t even know who are you competing with… were the ones before you better?

Then I realised… hey, that’s exactly what happens in life too… we all are trying to impress someone. At a job interview, our boss, that girl in the pub, our friends… we all have people who we’d like to turn around and accept us.

And then, just like all those singers, we fall into the competition trap. The trap, where there will almost always be someone who is (slightly) better. And then just like in life some of the competitors are way better than the jury that chooses.

And probably that is not fair at all…but then life is not fair either…

Have you noticed who in the Voice does best?

Who are those who get the “wow” from the audience? The standing ovations, the admired looks, and the dropped jaws?

Yup… those who are waaaay better than everyone else. Waaay better than everyone before and after them… than the jury… than most of the singers we keep hearing on Spotify… than anything we’ve listened to lately…

In life, it is the same… if you’re THAT good in whatever you do, no one will care if you’ve got a diploma or not and the potential employers will be on the stage trying to impress you so you choose them……

but then if you are THAT good, probably you won’t need an employer either. You’ll just go ahead and do your own thing in your own terms.

When you are THAT good — you won’t have a competition.

Your only competition will be the better version of yourself.

Have you noticed what many on that Voice stage do wrong?

Nope, it has nothing to do with the voice pitch, how they sing or how they move on stage. In fact, it has nothing to do with music or singing at all.

They chose the wrong as we call in marketing “target audience”. What I mean is they are trying to impress the wrong people. They focus on the jury… and what they should do instead is…get under the skin of the main audience…

Because if they manage to provoke their tears and have them mesmerized it would not matter what will the jury do. Even if they do not turn around the singer has already won. Jury’s reaction will be already irrelevant at that point!

So be true to yourself, don’t even get into competing with others, be amazingly good at what you love doing and wow the right people… and then you’ll have others compete for you!

Ode to all misfits

January 8, 2020 by Ani Leave a Comment

Just like in that famous song, I was born in the USSR.

Yup… I am THAT old and yup… that country no longer exists.

The Soviet culture had strong imprint in many people’s mentality and lifestyle. If you were born in those years too but in any capitalistic country, then I am sure you think that things back in the Soviet Union were way worse than they were. To be fair that is exactly what we thought about your country too…

But that is not what I was going to write about.

Among many different memories from my childhood I remember what I disliked most… standardization. We all were raised to think alike, to behave alike and to look alike. There were very few choices and we all could do nothing but chose among that scarce variety only.

Well, USSR was extreme case… but even later, when I ended up living in different countries, I realized that the whole concept was very similar, simply the scale was different.

And that brings me to the main topic of today – the “weirdo”s and misfits.

No matter where one lives being different is not always easy. One ends up bumping into walls of misunderstanding, the feeling of not being appreciated and the backlash of criticism. One is considered to be “crazy”, “a creep”, “a weirdo”, etc…

Even my mum, who I know loves me, in many different occasions described me as “very original”. In reality she did mean crazy, but since she’s always been very “politically correct” that’s how she phrased it. And to be honest I wasn’t even THAT different… simply I did not look at life the way others around me did. My only issue was: I did voice my opinion and it was not a popular one… that’s all.

And although I myself have never been extremely differ or as mum put it “original”, I always admired those who were. To me all those “misfits”, “creeps” and “werdo-s” were extraordinary. They always intrigued me. They were the ones who have chosen “the road less travelled by and that by itself made me envy their courage.

If one does things the way things have always been done one will get the same outcomes as always. If we keep doing things as they have been made just because that is the “right” way – we will never come up with different and in most cases better ways.

Do you think innovation and creative ideas can come from ordinary and common people?

Yes?

Then think again!

This is the ode to all who’re questioning the society norms and challenging the status quo. The ones, who are not afraid to be themselves and tap into their superpower. Their superpower of weirdness that many perceive as weakness… To all those who prefer to make their own path and not to drive the highway…

People obsessed with their ideas and dreams…

To all those who change our world one step at a time, one dream at a time, one idea at a time…

Cheers to misfits and all those crazy ones, who think they can change the world.

It always seems impossible until it’s done

January 8, 2020 by Ani Leave a Comment

Today I wanna talk about something that crossed my mind a few times yesterday. I mean if you have similar thoughts a few times a day provoked by completely different things, it’s worth writing about, right?

These days everything rotates around the World Cup so the initial thoughts came from football… after the Croatia vs England match. Since London was the place where I finally was able to find myself and feel happy there was no question about who I rooted for… and we lost. But that’s irrelevant at this point.

After the match, I watched a very short interview with Modric. He mentioned English journalists and said

they underestimated Croatia tonight and that was a huge mistake

I realised that not only English journalists underestimated them. They had so many doubters… so many people who were sure they would lose. Now for the finals, it’s the same… almost everyone believes France will crash them…

How many times you’ve been in Croatia’s place? How many times people who were around you did not believe in you? How many times they were certain you would not make it? How many times they were hoping that you would not make it, so they could turn to you and say “I told you so…”?

And what do you do then?…

All of the above thoughts led me to recall the flea experiment. Have you heard of it?

For those who haven’t let me tell about it.

So scientists placed a number of fleas in a glass jar. Obviously they jumped out of it… So scientists placed a glass lid over the top. Fleas kept hitting the glass and falling back to the bottom of the jar. It took a while, but eventually, the fleas, conditioned to the presence of the glass lid, began jumping slightly below the glass lid so they would not hit it. That is when the scientists removed the glass lid…

Do you know what happened?

The fleas had learned to limit themselves from jumping beyond the height of the lid. So now even when the lid was removed they still believed they could not escape from the jar and kept jumping just below where the glass lid was before.

Here look:

That’s all it takes… and unfortunately the same happens with people. We tend to believe the limitations others artificially impose on us.

Often we are told that we can’t make it because

“no one was able to do it before”

Complete bullshit!

As Mandela once told

It always seems impossible until it’s done

And when it’s done… there’s someone who did it first, right?

Usually, those first people are those who did not lower the hight to jump at even when the glass lid was on. The first people are those who don’t look for people to believe in them in order to try. They try and fail… and then learn how to do it better and try again… and fail again probably. But they don’t give up and they don’t care if all the others around them have either discouraged them or tried too and gave up.

Because after all that matters is not who believes in you but what YOU believe in. If you believe that you can do it then most probably you really can.

After all, it took Edison 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb.

But guess what? The 1001th bulb was the one that changed the world.

And when it happens, when you get where you wanted to be, when your goal is no longer an impossible dream and when you make the impossible real you will look back at all those with the limited believes and be the one this time who’ll say “I told you so!”

So I don’t care if France plays better and I don’t care what others think Croatia’s chances are… I will be rooting for the later tomorrow!

As for you… don’t set limits – especially don’t let others set them for you!

Pair of Sergio Rossi

January 8, 2020 by Ani Leave a Comment

When she was graduating from the business uni she had a dream.

A dream of working in a big international bank… no, not like a PA or any other “beautiful female” role, but a real one. High level and respectable role that men were competing for…

Brainwashed by the society full of feminists, careerists and materialists, she was determined to get to the top.
In 10 years time she imagined herself in expensive suit, getting out of her expensive car and hurting the pavement hitting it with the high sharp heels with each step.

That’s what she wanted and that’s what she was going to get. Because she never gave up and always ended up where she wanted to be.

Maybe later than she hoped, but sooner or later she always reached her goals.
And there she was now, doing just that – getting out of her expensive car and rocking her Sergio Rossi pair.
But unlike she imagined, she did not keep her head high and look fresh.
Why?
Because now she already knew that the society full of feminists, careerists and materialists while brainwashing the ones like her was telling only one side of the story and was hiding the most important one.

They did not tell what it would cost her…

The whole problem was that she paid much more than the price of those shoes. Shoes that not only cost her way too much but were also pretty uncomfortable.

They did not cost her what was written on the price tag… they cost her losing the sense of who she was, they cost her a big piece of her soul and … happiness.

She got where she thought she wanted to be and it took her more or less the 10 years she imagines it would take…
But what she did not imagine was what else it would take and how she would feel.

It took her years of running in a rat race, climbing the career ladder, competing with others non-stop and making sacrifices… she thought she was getting closer to her dream and once she gets there she would be happy.

But life had another plan…

Life had decided to grant her her dream… so she can see that she will be unhappy once it’s reached.
And there she was – unhappy and lost.

Single, because the guy was getting on the way between her and her dream…
Paying the shrink to talk to, because she had no time for friends and they were no longer around…
And a fat bank account that she could not spend, because the things she wanted and had lost forever could not be bought with money…

Her heels were hitting the pavement as if the asphalt was the one to blame…

Meanwhile a young girl passed her by and looked at her Sergio Rossi pair with admiration.

The young girl had the same dream as herself 10 years ago…
She too was brainwashed by the society full of soulless materialists.

Tell your stories

January 8, 2020 by Ani Leave a Comment

All of us have a story to tell. At least one. Our life story.

Some of us have many stories to tell. So many that we can’t choose which one to start writing…

Many of us have different unfinished books. Books that we started years ago and never managed to complete.

Why some of us never manage to fulfill our dreams of having a book with our name on it? What gets on the way?

What is missing?

What do we think that we need for that?

1. We need permission

We are waiting for that wishful time when an “authority” will tell us that we can write and we should become a writer.

We have been waiting for those words from our teachers, from different writing groups, friends…

We desperately need someone to tell us that we are good.

But you know what?

All those people might not be the readers who will be reading your future books. Their opinion might not have any significance. And if you put importance on what they think you may end up never starting that great book of yours.

No one has to permit you to write but yourself. So forget everyone. Recall your story and start writing!

2. We need perfection

Whatever we write does not seem to be good enough. After typing a few lines we go back and read what we’ve written.

Then we make a tragic face and hit the delete button.

We strive for perfection, which is good but not at this stage.

Keep in mind that we are writing our first draft. The one, which most probably no one will see at the end.

Forget about everything, open up and write as if you’re writing just for yourself. No one’s drafts are perfect and will never be.

So relax and keep typing.

3. We need to imagine the whole story in our mind

Many of us think that we need to have the whole story from start to finish in our minds before starting writing.

Well, that’s the ideal situation, but is not always the case.

You might never imagine the whole story until you start writing it.

Enjoy the process of following your characters and letting the story lead you while you write. You never know where it will lead you.

And that’s the whole magic of it.

4. We need the muse

Many of us wait for the inspiration to come and make us write.

We are waiting for the muse, which will hold our hand and write the best story we could possibly write.

We wait and hope.

Sometimes it happens, but often it doesn’t. We may end up waiting for weeks, months and even years.

But you know what? The inspiration and the muse often join us during the process and not before. Give them a chance and start writing.

5. We need the right time

Often we are waiting for the perfect time to start something.

In our case; to start writing.

But you know what? There is no such prefect time. There will always be different duties and routine tasks that will come your way.

Life will always happen.

There will always be “more important” and “more serious” things to do instead of writing.

So don’t wait for the right time, because it will never come. You have to create that time yourself. And you have to make writing “the most important” if you want to become a writer.

After all, writers write.

They don’t plan to write. They don’t spend time thinking about what to write. They don’t wait for the perfect moment. They don’t depend on the muse.

They simply put their butt on the chair, switch on their computer or take the pen and start writing.

They put one word after the other. They create a sentence. Then another one… Then a paragraph appears.

And at some point, they end up with their first book and eventually their first reader!

So what are you waiting for?

There is nothing you need to have to write except the desire to do so.

Those singer wanna be-s are trying to prove themselves. Justify their right to sing. Seek permission and acknowledgment. Get verified. Be accepted…

Have you noticed who in the Voice does best?

When you are THAT good — you won’t have a competition.

Have you noticed what many on that Voice stage do wrong?

So be true to yourself, don’t even get into competing with others, be amazingly good at what you love doing and wow the right people… and then you’ll have others compete for you!

All of us have a story to tell. At least one. Our life story.

What do we think that we need for that?

1. We need permission

No one has to permit you to write but yourself. So forget everyone. Recall your story and start writing!

2. We need perfection

Then we make a tragic face and hit the delete button.

So relax and keep typing.

3. We need to imagine the whole story in our mind

You might never imagine the whole story until you start writing it.

And that’s the whole magic of it.

4. We need the muse

5. We need the right time

Often we are waiting for the perfect time to start something.

Life will always happen.

After all, writers write.

So what are you waiting for?

Would you like me to help your tech project with marketing?