2012 end

2012 Was a burdensome year, 

important people coming closer, important people going far away. 2 big countries. Dreams falling apart, dreams coming true. Learning at the top, absorbing experiences day by day and trying to digest all of them to the right extent.

This is the only, second, post for the year 2012, and eventually it is coming at the end of this year.

Some reflection come to my mind after 12 months, after reading one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. They are all about this generation, our generation of young. They try to teach us to be miserable, to be looser, not to trust ourselves but why?

Today what most Italians miss is space. A physical, but also mental space, which represents possibilities and future hopes. 

For decades, this feeling of openness has been the engine of our growth and the urge to think positive.

Today we use to say: there is not the future of once upon a time anymore. 

This is not just a "lapsus" it is the sentiment, it is what we really think. 

But again why? Which are the basis to say so?

Indeed there are very controversial truth which goes totally against our way of thinking:

The infant mortality rate has dropped to the point where many foreign analysts suggest that Italy is now "the safest place in the world to give birth to a child." Health care is guaranteed for all. Much less people die on the roads. There are fewer murders, and are overall less committed crimes of blood.

Disease - it is a fact - are treated in a much more targeted and effective way than before.

We all live, or almost all, in apartments adapted to our needs, with health services and connected to the mains. We are a literate country, and we certainly do much less effort than what our fathers and our mothers did, and before them the previous generation, accustomed to conquer every inch of their well-being at the cost of hard work and sacrifices.

Isn't it a perfect framework? In part, yes, but be careful: the progression "ad infinitum" curve of our prosperity marked a reversal in the last twenty years, and young people no longer invest in their future because they are gripped by a deep discouragement, to resignation that is transmitted endemic, or by inheritance.


Fathers are inducing their children not to believe too much in their ability to avoid the disappointment that inevitably follow when we have to contend with the reality of a country that has stopped believing in them.

My personal point of view is that tripped by the unconscious tends to common sense, can emerge a widespread feeling, a subtle uneasiness, a way of thinking that becomes immediately clear and puts us in front of our own way of reading the real .

This means that we are unconsciously destroying our future possibility just because the common sense bring us to think that we have got less opportunities than our predecessors.

Isn't it witless? 

Wish every wonderful person Italian or not Italian to have a wonderful, open, full of opportunity and full of cleverness 2013!

Are we sometimes transitioning somewhere or somehow?

When engaged in a transition, what is the best way to stay balanced in what we give and receive, protect space and time for rest, and find sources of nourishment that restore our reserves? Alongside social and community resilience, the more personally resilient we are, the more we are able to face, and respond to the challenges of our times. If resilience refers to ‘bounce-back-ability’, then someone with a resilient body, heart and mind will be able to feel whatever feelings arise in response to challenges and stressful situations, and ‘bounce back’, returning to a normal state of well-being.

The less personally resilient we are, the more challenges overwhelms us and we find ourselves struggling with physical exhaustion, losing sleep, isolation or inability to cope with relationships, mental stress or loss of meaning, to name just a few. As our resilience diminishes, the pathway back to healthy functioning takes longer, and in extreme cases of burnout it can take months or even years for a person to fully recharge.

Some simple factors that are known to increase levels of resilience include:

having basic needs met; being financially resourced

eating a healthy diet and taking regular exercise; spending time in nature

feeling seen and appreciated for what we are

feeling connected – to a partner, family, friends, colleagues and the community, and knowing that people will treat us with respect and care

feeling able to effect change and make a difference.

The Transition process itself helps with many of these – working to achieve positive personal outcomes; making friends and building a sense of local community – these all support the personal resilience of whose are going through a transition process/moment. And yet, many people involved will have felt, or known someone who felt, overstretched, stressed or exhausted partly by their transition.

Two key features of any resilient person, are feedback loops and tight coupling (can either be best-friendship or partner). Applying this to ourselves, there are always signs that we are going beyond our natural coping capacity. These will be different for different people, but common ones include:

feeling tired

losing sleep

being unable to switch off

feeling overwhelmed by new requests for responses to challenges

being irritable or snappy with people we are close to L

feeling depressed, hopeless or overwhelmed by sadness in ways that seem disproportionate to what’s happening

feeling isolated or cutting off from friends or colleagues

feeling guilty or resentful, that we are doing too much or not enough.

It’s common in our culture to override these warning signs, and we can often be praised as being heroic in keeping going in spite of them. In this we repeat the pattern of our wider culture: ignoring the warning signs of changes, degradation and exhaustion of physical and mental resources and speeding up in response, rather than slowing and changing what we do.

Training for personal resilience???

The basic principles for personal resilience are that we learn best by a combination of receiving information that helps us understand more deeply challenges and solutions, self reflection, listening to and hearing other’s experience and sharing our own stories and experiences.

An understanding of the physiology of stress and what happens to us when stress overwhelms our capacity to resource ourselves will come just when probably it is too late… why??

The things that best restore, nourish and replenish our energy during this period will be specific to each of us. Spending time discovering what really works for us is time well invested. The list might include fun activities, or doing things or being with people that are nothing to do with Transition! Time spent in nature, listening to music or being creative, or turning off the constant flow of emails and switching off from ‘mental’ activities, give the rational left brain a rest and nourish feelings of connection and flow. Physical exercise helps the brain as well as the rest of the body. For some, it’s time alone that is most refreshing and restorative.

As we give more attention to the feedback from our bodies, hearts and minds we more easily respond by attending to what is needed – rest, exercise, food, company, having a change of scene or pace, whatever is called for. The repeated act of noticing our behavior in stressful situations also increases our ability to choose our response and not get caught in habitual stressful reactions, some of which may be old patterns learned long ago and no longer useful or relevant.

Readiness for Change...

Are you an employee ready to change? Employees are more open to support change if they are ready to make changes. This means that they believe in the changes, have the time and energy to invest in the changes, and your organization is ready to support the changes.

Once, a Manager sent an email asking about how his staff felt about starting a continuous improvement process. The immediate response from several who have real world experience, was that the organization was not ready for such a process. They’re right. The company is making the transition from tactical to strategic and that is taking up all of the available energy.

You can assess the readiness of your organization to participate in change, too. How..???

Answer questions such as these. What is the level of trust within your organization? Do people feel generally positive about their work environment. Do you have a history of open communication? Do you share financial information?

These factors have a tremendous impact on people’s acceptance of and willingness to change. If you can start building this positive and supportive environment prior to the change, you have a great head start on the change implementation.

People in general feel very disturbed and scared from changes in their life and as a job in a company for most of us take over 40% of our lives, the right way to implement changes should be starting with awarness of the employees.

But how to raise the awarnesses of employees?? What I have learn until now in my experience are the followings tips:

- Spreading the group charter of corporate behavior, do it through manuals, informations, communications and adapt every single message it is coming from top to down and viceversa to them.

- Compliance Education, there are a lot of things which we do in our routine but we even don't know why we do them... imagine when it comes to change those routine with other brand new routine... People that doesnt't know about the meaning of the previous should adapt to the new... it sounds very funny, but in most of the corporation today it is like this. If you wanna mke differently, be sure that the level of education is kept high.

- Dialogue level, how much intense is the dialogue between the people in the herarchy?? Coaching, Mentorship, Counseling and Climate initiative are in place?

At the end of the day we can call all those basic steps I have mentioned, Total Quality Management....

I've got white hair...

Have you ever watched someone try to cover up white hair by dyeing it? Or maybe you wonder why your granddad has a full head of silver hair when in old pictures it used to be dark brown? Getting gray, silver, or white hair is a natural part of growing older, and here's why.

Each hair on our heads is made up of two parts:

· a shaft - the colored part we see growing out of our heads

· a root - the bottom part, which keeps the hair anchored under the scalp

The root of every strand of hair is surrounded by a tube of tissue under the skin that is called the hair follicle. Each hair follicle contains a certain number of pigment cells. These pigment cells continuously produce a chemical called melanin that gives the growing shaft of hair its color of brown, blonde, red, and anything in between.

Melanin is the same stuff that makes our skin's color fair or darker. It also helps determine whether a person will burn or tan in the sun. The dark or light color of someone's hair depends on how much melanin each hair contains.

As we get older, the pigment cells in our hair follicles gradually die. When there are fewer pigment cells in a hair follicle, that strand of hair will no longer contain as much melanin and will become a more transparent color - like gray, silver, or white - as it grows. As people continue to get older, fewer pigment cells will be around to produce melanin. Eventually, the hair will look completely gray.

People can get gray hair at any age. Some people go gray at a young age - as early as when they are in high school or college - whereas others may be in their 30s or 40s before they see that first gray hair. How early we get gray hair is determined by our genes. This means that most of us will start having gray hairs around the same age that our parents or grandparents first did.

Gray hair is more noticeable in people with darker hair because it stands out, but people with naturally lighter hair are just as likely to go gray. From the time a person notices a few gray hairs, it may take more than 10 years for all of that person's hair to turn White (nice I still have timeJ).

Some people think that a big shock or trauma can turn a person's hair white or gray overnight, but scientists don't really believe that this happens.

My first 6 white hair are there let’s see how this process of change will run inside me to turn all of them into white ….

I make up my mind...

Life is about change, change happen suddenly, you don't plan them and you don't need to plan them... they are caused by you, by your choice and by some internal process of your mind such as:

Ambition

Fuels our aspirations to Make our hopes and desires a reality, Ambition is a wonderful thing. How can we manage change without it?

The art to aspire to our dreams and goals is to be ambitious. To put the effort in and to make our aspirations a reality in our lives. To have ambitions is one of the joys of life. And one of the challenges, too. And one of the catalysts of change in our life. Support that platform of hope with concerted effort and determination and what will be beyond our capabilities?

We all have our aspirations in life. Some are small, others are middling, others are large. Some we can live without, others are essential to our existence. Some help us to grow and develop, others inhibit us and our actions. Some desires lead us astray, while others lead us onto greater things and enhance our self development.

Because of all this I also understood that if I have some aims I don't have to play life, instead play games be serious about this chance concentrate as if it was the night's last dance!

Love

Wikipedia says:"Love is the emotion of strong affection and personal attachement; The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from generic pleasure ("I loved that meal") to intense interpersonal attraction . "Love" can also refer specifically to the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love, to the sexual love of eros, to the emotional closeness of familial love, or to the platonic love that defines friendship."

Because of all this diverse interpretations and meanings, and also for the complexity of feelings involved, in my opinion it's quite impossible to define what love is, when it comes etc...

The only thing that i understood is that we just wake up one day and we start to think differently about people, relationships and other issues just like you make up your mind after a nice coffee at the bar or a tea at the lounge.

Responsibilities

Normally it happen that we have certain obbligation connected to specific situations, and we also normally define people who fullfill those obbligations "moral" or "consistent" do you agree?

But we don't consider how and at what level responsibilities modify our lives and so they finally effect positively or negatively Change!

Finally besides those 3 important pieces of the "Change Puzzle" today I feel to be more close to Aristotele tradition" which define personal development as a category of phronesid or practical wisdom, where the practice of virtues (arête) leads to eudaimonia, commonly translated as "happiness" but more accurately understood as “human flourishing” or “living well"....

This means that we want to change... YES... to live well!

I probably understood to wich generation i belong...

In the past 6 month I was reading a lot about Gen Y and other related content... I also subscribed to some online update around the topic and I was compulsively try to understan wheter I belong to Gen Y or not....

Somenthing changed in the last few days... you know this kind of ancestral research end up in a new concept... there is another generation wich exist and I probably belong to this:

Generation C

But what is this Generation C?

They are called also "digital natives"... just reading this I discovered I'm not part of it :)

I'm not digitally savvy at all...haha... people who know me knows!

I have also another important thought: why we should separate people on the base of generations?

isn't it something that create divisions? isn't it something discriminating?

The answer for me it's easy... this world is full of discriminations and generations division is just a small drop on the sea.

Today we see that several revolutions are happening around us because of discrimination; discrimination in the last centuries was taking on the places of other important things like love, equality, sharing, learning etc...

What if we stop to talk about Generations? And we just accept that we belong to one unique world, to one unique generation?

We always want to have our freedom, to realize our dream, to feel part of something big... but what if we just start to think that in achieving all this we are not taking care of what we uncosciously deny to other people around us?

I think that at the end there is one truth: People that live in the way they like and people that don't....

Who is the victim and who is the executioner?

The virdict it's our's.

Gen Y at work...

This small video sounds useful and interesting to understand a bit more about how to deal with Generation Y people at work...