Zlati’s Favourite things – September

1. Why we can’t get over ourselves? – If you have ever faced challenge understanding other people, how they think and why they do what they do, one of the main reasons for that is your “excessive egocentrism” and before you claim that you actually understand others quite well and you are not in fact egocentric at all, let me tell you, I thought so too, before I read the article. It helped me realise how self-conscious I am, how biased my knowledge and perspective of the world is and why this distorts my understanding of others. It is impressive to discover how unique our perception of the world is and precisely that perspective makes it so easy for us to see opportunities where no one else could and at the same time it is extremely hard to explain that to others in order to show them how amazing our ideas are (any entrepreneurs that can relate to that?)

2. As Systems Collapse, Citizens Rise – One of the most present topics through the last month was the refugee crisis in Europe and how do we deal with it. I am not questioning any political opinion here, what I am doing is looking at it from a distance – it is evident that established systems collapse and curent governance is not prepared to deal with them in an efficient and constructive way. There is chaos in Europe and the Middle East and however tragic that is, in the dance between chaos and order new solutions are born. When reality shakes up our organised and beautiful lives, we are forced to change. Otto Scharmer talks about it in his article As Systems Collapse, Citizens Rise. A beautiful coverage of the events hapening at the frontline is the reflections of Steve Ryman who volunteers in Vienna and Belgrade and gave me insights on the reality beyond media through his blog.

Looking at the larger perspective, I was impressed by two other articles that paint a less popular understanding of how we treat humanity, the reasons behind the Syrian war and the kind of world we are currently creating. Read The Next Genocide and Climate Change Helped Spark Syrian War

3. Why Are We Trying to Fix Our Kids When We Should Be Trying to Fix the System? – This article comes here not to criticise one approach to successfull education versus other but as a reminder that when we are ttrying to tackle an issue as big as education, we are sometimes prone to focus on a single approach and believe that this is the best there is. In this case – “Growth Mindset” the belief that everyone has the capacity to learn and develop and the belief that we should change the way children think of themselves and everything will be better. Children and their thinking is just one aspect of the education system and limiting solutions to only one element holds the risk of ignoring the influence and the relationships with the whole.

4. Awe, Forgivness and Taking Pictures Daily – My monthly dose of lights and insights about some of the keys to happiness – awe, generosity, forgiveness and appreciation. All of those are actions of experiencing the world in its wholeness, beauty and abundance. Recording it and sharing the gift of this experience with others are two practices that make us truly happy. We are able to forgive ourselves and others only when we are able to appreciate the whole being with its imperfections and its strengths. Amazement and taking a moment to be curious and discover the truly awesome things in life gives us the opportunity to feel more powerful, to feel the generousity of life to us and to be more generous ourselves. By the way, let’s put the ‘awe’ back in ‘awesome’!

5. What do you do Exactly? – I will just put this one here, because  it just truly resonated with me and my current state in life, being back in the Netherlands and searching for the one-word definition of who I am and what I do as profession… not quite there yet…

Comment and tell me what do you call yourself and which of the topics I have been thinking about this month were  present fo you too!

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