michelscholte-blog

[michelscholte-blog]

Inspiring speech by Robert Kennedy, pointing at the limitations of taking GDP as measure for national welfare.

[michelscholte-blog]

"Here are my four steps to break through that fear and self-doubt:

1. Take a No-Excuses Approach

Although, some may call them “reasons”, people stop themselves all the time by using excuses. The opportunity they want so badly finally shows up, and they make excuses so as not to go forward. The biggest excuses I hear are “I don’t have enough money,” “I don’t have enough time, “I’m too busy”, “I don’t want to travel,” and the list goes on.

They use these excuses as their trap door, their escape route.

Let me ask you this—when pressed in a life or death situation, would you find the time or money? If someone you loved was trapped in a building, would you stop trying to rescue them if the front door was locked? No, of course not. You’d try the back door, then the windows, and every other possible way, right?

To achieve success, you’ve got to be willing to take the same approach with your business. Successful people are those who take a No-Excuses Approach and are willing to do what others won’t.

So, how badly do you want it? You either have excuses or you have results. Which do you choose?

2. Feel the Fear—But Do It Anyway

The ego creates fear to keep you small. For example, fear of rejection, fear of overwhelm, fear of humiliation, fear of making mistakes, fear of losing it all, fear of the unknown, and on and on it goes. The list is huge.

All entrepreneurs I know experience fear. What separates those who are successful and those who allow fear to hold them back is the willingness to actin spite of the fear. The best way to get over fear is to walk directly into it. It takes courage but you know what? Walking into fear is never as bad as you think it’s going to be. Instead, you’ll find it liberating.

3. Be Willing to Stretch Beyond Your Comfort Zone

Most people avoid discomfort like the plague.  If you want to get to the next level of your business, you’ve got to be comfortable being uncomfortable—just for a short time. Yes, it’s a little scary at first but let’s face it, it’s not going to kill you.

The question is—are you willing? Are you willing to trade short-term discomfort for long-term success? If so, are you willing to go where you have to go? Are you willing to talk to who you have to talk to? Are you willing to move for what you want? Are you willing to do what you haven’t done? Are you willing to stretch beyond your comfort zone?

Yes? Then I’ve got great news–that is when the money and opportunities show up.

4. Take Decisive Action

You can’t just wish for something. You’ve got to take action. Action is an issue of personal responsibility. It’s where you acknowledge that you are solely responsible for the choices in your life and you accept that you cannot blame others for the choices you have made. Time and time again our inner self-doubt makes us question everything and keeps us from taking action when the solution shows up. This all boils down to one thing and one thing only. In plain English it’s called self-sabotage.

Widening your perspective around success starts with a decision. Once you make a decision to succeed, it’s time to commit to doing whatever it takes to make it happen.

It comes down to taking bold and decisive action toward what you say you want in your business or your life. It’s about saying YES to what’s possible for you. Saying YES to the opportunities that are divinely given to you—and then taking action. Your business, your life, your income will never be the same. I promise you that.

Back to entrepreneur, Rebekah who I mentioned in my introduction—her fear of failure and her desire to conquer that self doubt actually wound up being a driving force for success in her business. And it can for you, too."

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This picture was taken by Floris Scheplitz @ Imagetree on May 8 2012, when I presented True Price at the Floriade 2012, in Almelo, during the FoodFirst Conference. 

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Seriously, since I have joined Triodos Bank more than 6 years ago, I´ve felt hope. It has been my wallet carrying Triodos´ pay card..

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Great analysis about the servant nature of markets, and the communicative role prices play, based on an audio recording by Ken Webster. If the prices are true, then the true strength of markets is unleashed. The analysis is part a Wikispace dedicated to the circular economy, managed by the brilliant Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

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Join the Open Data for Development Camp 2012 on June 29, in Amsterdam. Movers from the Open for Change movement gahter in co-working spaces AmLab (Amsterdam) and NaiLab (Nairobi). I would have loved to be there, but will be in Sweden. Open data could really bolster sharing lessons learned from worst and scale up best practices for sustainable development. Ambitions of True Price are driven on open data as well, so I will be tracking the outcomes of the gathering online. https://twitter.com/am_lab 

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Sustainability at Unilever - The Value Chain (by Unilever)

Notice that the usage accounts for 68% of the environmental impact (1.31minute). Nicely stated and visualised ambition to to use a collaborative multi-stakeholder approach to mittigate the impact. And nice how the relation between individual action and collective outcomes is explained. 

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[IN DUTCH] Retrieved from vusociologie.nl/. On this video I explain why I chose to study Sociology at the VU University Amsterdam. I consider Sociology as the fishing rod, and applied social sciences as fish, like communication sciences, marketing, human resources, business administration and political sciences. The sociological vision allows you to have a deep and considerate analysis about the social world, and accounts for the complexities involved in reaching social change, both at the individual as at the system level. I also explain how I participated in the interdisciplinary honours programme, for instance taking courses at the Royal Arts Academy in The Hague and filosophy of Eastern and Western Thoughts. I have to admit that I do consider philosophers, economists, historians and artists as the most inspiring thinkers about the social world, like Plato, Socrates, Kuhn, Popper, Smith, Nash, Nietzche, Mondriaan, Klimt and Schiele. And I consider Math as the purest and most elegant science, that gives you a logical framework that can be really useful for analyzing many social challenges. Nonetheless, I would recommend Sociology to any student starting at the university and interested in social change.

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Most probably my favourite spoken self-help like inspirational video on the internet. 

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Made this one in 2002.

[michelscholte-blog]

Snow and imagination

Do you know why children love snow? Because it gives them the freedom for imagination. Snowy landscapes are full of undiscovered places, that you can invent, where you can become an adventurer, Marco Polo, Vasco da Gama.

For many adults and elderly, snow hurts. Because the whiteness takes a away the structures and patterns we recognize. It takes away the taken for granted. It's painfull to imagine when you are used to something, because you have to let it go. Pain is symbolised by the slippery scenes and broken bones. 

For some adults and older people snow is liberating and adventurous, because the new landscape leaves them space for imagination, and an escape from the pressing daily routines. The fresh whiteness shows no differentiation and makes everyone one.

I guess ways of walking, have not become wrong, but the balance between your equilibrium and the surface has shifted. Strong shoes and skates can make you move.

[michelscholte-blog]

Beauty

Beauty is an endless struggle to find truthful patterns, and disappointment of limitations of the physical, and canvas and paint. Abstraction takes effort, because it needs an escape from daily discursive routines. Abstraction has no defined end, and is thus and endless effort, or a struggle.

And it is a disappointing struggle, because the physical, and canvas and paint will simply never express fundamental truths, like a frozen snapshot will never capture love in a warm wedding.

Funnily, this ambiguity is an experience in itself: the physical gives me disappointment, the struggle gives me hope to find truth. The beauty of colors brings me closer to the hope side, because colors do not seem physical? A flawed attempt with canvas and paint to capture truth, suddenly becomes truth itself.

[michelscholte-blog]

Apple - How Jobs challenged Newton

Thoughts of connectedness can be mesmerizing, like scrolling out of Street View for the first time, starting from the rooftop of your parents house, discovering patterns between rooftops and neighbourhoods, all the way up to continents. Then you realize that there is no gravity, no up, that the apple will not fall down from the screen of your MacBook, you realize that the laws of physics do not work, and that therefore there is no material basis for difference between people.

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Postofficers get lost in translation

6 hours ago via Mobile · 

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence. - Charles Bukowski

Like ·  · Unfollow post

and 41 others like this.

 So try to be stupid sometimes, then there will be no problem!

6 hours ago · Like ·  1

 Mooi, weet ik tot welke categorie ik hoor. #fullofconfidence

4 hours ago via Mobile · Like

 Hmm niet veel twijfel over deze post aan de 'likes' te zien :-)

3 hours ago via Mobile · Like ·  1

Michel Scholte 

Are you sure mister Bukowski? If doubt is constant, then doubt is sure. Ergo it depends on the dimension you allow your imagination. That in itself is a reason, to not be doubtful, but to recognize that what can feel as confidence, is actually not sure. But funnily also, that insecurity is not sure and vice versa. And even if you can describe this with very precise and plausible combinations of words, and verify it with thoughts or experiments, then still you cannot describe how it all begins and ends. And if you really try hard, and get physical – physical in the nerdy way, which is exciting also – and end up? in concluding that ending and emergence is a repetition and recombination of parts, then the question arises? how many parts there are in one part and how the hell these parts got together. Mister, there seems to be no fundamental material premise to legitimize the suggestion of difference between people, ironically understood. The closest you can get is a feeling of intuition, based on the multiplication of time and space captured in a similar bloody physical metaphor. The circle is continues endlessly, for as far as a continuous circle is a tautology. It represents the continuous flow, that thing, that makes it bloody hard to grasp how things emerge, but at the same time make the world turn, people die, children grow, trees blossom.  I rest my case by feeling the excitement I get from the materialisation of this imagination right now, the black bits in white light. And the thought that it falls down on your wall, like a drop on a waterfall. This mesmerizing thought of sharing my imagination with others, who seem to also like to share, and scroll, like me, like me! on Facebook. I seem to feel excitement from sharing, and being liked, and being, and expressing love. A problematic world is a world out of balance, a world with intelligent and stupid, with black and white - and no colors. Mister Bukowsky, replace stupid ones by strugglers, and speak for yourself! And oh, do not believe in nothing, do believe. Believe in endless diversity of colors.

3 hours ago · Like ·  1

Appreciate the post Mister Scholte, puts the statement into perspective :)8 minutes ago via Mobile · Unlike ·  1

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The challenge for our generation is (...) to come to terms to reform our economics, before we are forced to. 

Nick Parker, Cleantech.com

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Although we consciously stick under the radar, sometimes our, and in paricular Lynn's early efforts, are picked up by mass media. She has introduced the concept of True Price on national television in December 2011 and her efforts were discussed on the website of the Dutch national newspaper De Volkskrant yesterday. So far, even before we have launched, True Price can share it's first two sucesses in the Netherlands:

True Price has been listed as first priority of the input document of the Dutch Platform RIO+20. The priority list (in Dutch) serves as an inspiration for the Dutch delegation participating in the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, coming June. Read the Zero Draft of Outcome Document here.

True Price has been adopted by the FoodCourt as the second priority. The statement  (in Dutch) serves as an inspiration for a sustainable urban foodsystem. Judges of the court were director of the Dutch Horticultural Board and former minister of Development Cooperation, Agnes van Ardenne, Thijs Cuijpers, director of the Dutch Federation of Agriculture and Horticulture and journalist and author  Tracy Metz. 

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“Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.”

Øystein Dahle, former Vice President of Exxon for Norway and the North Sea:

Book Bytes - 109: Getting the Market to Tell the Truth | EPI