My First Time Rogaining – Reality

The 5^th May 2012 was a sunny day in Molėtai district, Lithuania. At noon, half a thousand runners and enthusiasts were gathered to the starting area of the 9^th European Rogaining Championships 2012. 198 teams of 2-3 people from 12 countries, including me and my dad (the team “Karibu” from Estonia), began their 24-hour adventures…

 

Background Information

For those who are not familiar with the matter: rogaining is a sort of long distance orienteering, and involves both route planning and navigation between checkpoints using a map and compass. Within the 24 hours time limit, every team has to go thorough as many checkpoints as it possibly can. Ca. 2 hours before the start, participants are handed out a specially prepared orienteering map with all checkpoints on it; this 2 hours is then used for final preparations, and for deciding the exact route, and what points to take and what to leave. All teams start together at the same time, but every team has its own way to go.

Preparation

It was my first time rogaining ever, although I had taken numerous long walks before. So in my mental preparations I mostly relied to my previous experiences. My dad had been rogaining several times; he gave me suggestions about the food, footwear and the other equipment. One week before the event I tried to work less (which, in fact, did not happen very well), and sleep more and better in order to be physically ready (I was pretty successful in the later.). Of course, I had also done some running all the winter, as well as a bit longer distances earlier in spring; however, this classifies as recreational sport rather than training.

 

Our strategy was simple. We knew that our strength is endurance, and our weakness is slower pace when compared to the runners. Therefore it was important to keep moving, no matter whether it is the day or the night, or lunch time or breakfast. The other important thing was to be precise, i.e. not to rush but go straight to the checkpoint by using compass, reading steps etc.

In the event info it was informed that sunset will be at 20:01 and the end of civil twilight at 21:46; the civil twilight was told to begin around 03:00 and sunrise at 04:29.

We expected the night to be much less productive as it is dark and we are sleepy; so we planned that during the first 10 hours we should move at a pace of five km per hour, in the night at a pace of three km per hour and then (if still able to do so) speed up a bit in the next morning. We also planned the most difficult check points to the first day, while the night would be in the roads and open areas. The map (see the Figure) was easy in the sense that it was more-less possible to design this kind of ideal route.

The map of the 9th European Rogaining Championships 2012 in Molėtai district, Lithuania; The dark red line on the map marks the route of our team called “Karibu”. The red triangle indicates start / finish. The red arrow shows which way we were taking the route. Red dots are the drinking points.

In every three hours there was foreseen a meal: carbohydrates for quick energy (chocolate, muesli bar, banana, tried fruits and the like) -> proteins for lasting longer (ham or turkey, no fat) -> carbohydrates quick energy etc. One more thing that we had to take into account, were the drinking points were we could fill our bottles with water. There were four of them on the route. At the start I took 0.5 litres with me – not much, but on the other hand, you have to carry every excessive gram or millilitre all the twenty-four hours.

 

It is easy to plan on the paper while you are fresh and rather well-rested (although the night before was in the car). But it may easily turn out to be completely different when it comes to reality and to executing the plan…

 

The Big Twenty-Four Hours

The start was given at 12:00. I hit the go-button of my stopwatch and so we run. Indeed, it was an excellent illustration of the herd instinct that humans have: despite that ahead of us was 24 hours, the pace during the first hour was as if it were a normal orienteering, 7-8 kilometres maybe.

That was not quite what we had planned (at least not quite what I had understood – I had rather prepared for a long walk), but there was no time to complain. So I followed the “herd” and reached the first checkpoint five and half minutes after the start. The run went on, and after the first hour and seven checkpoints we were two minutes ahead of our (in my opinion, aggressive) planned time schedule. Now I commented that in my opinion this was by far faster than 5 kilometres per hour; my dad replied that it wasn’t but only seemed because we were in the forest and it is expectedly more difficult in these conditions than walking on an “euro” hiking route. “It’s still a championship,” he added. Well, that wasn’t very encouraging. My main concern was that I did not know if I can last up to the end (ok, I had a strong feeling that I can, but no experience).

The second hour was almost as crazy as the first one, except one brief moment when we went through a wonderful open area. It was full spring, the dandelions were blooming and the birds were singing; there was a bird watching tower yonder. I had hoped to keep my feet dry at least at the beginning. Apparently this did not happen: we had to cross a swampy area already now. The good thing was that the water was warm and getting feet wet was refreshing in an otherwise hot day. “Just trying to keep positive,” I noticed. Ironically, by the end of the second hour we had missed about ten minutes from our initial time schedule.

During the third hour there were two good things to wait for: the first drinking point and the lunch time. As my throat was trying by that time, I felt motivated to pass the coming two points as soon as possible. On the other hand, I tried to retain a pace that would enable me to last long. In other words, I tried to avoid running with a speed that would cause me to breathing hard; from my previous running experience I knew that this would be a morally destroying factor. The first drinking point wasn’t disappointing: there was even a toilet transported into the forest. My dad told that the water tastes like the lake water, but anyway it was good enough to quench our thirst. During the lunch time we continued walking on a moderate pace. The banana and the muesli bar tasted better than normally. However, due to these two slowdowns, we had lost more than 20 minutes by the end of the third hour.

I do not remember anything special from the fourth hour. As we had rebuilt our energy levels, we regained some ten minutes of our initial time schedule.

There was a second drinking point foreseen by the end of the fourth hour / beginning of the fifth hour. The downside was that by the time when we reached it, there was no water left. My dad noted that this is something that the organisers often get wrong: people need more water than the organisers think. Ok, we drank our own water and hoped that we will not run out of it before the next drinking point which was far away.

My dad said that there usually is a crisis moment between the fourth and the sixth hour. He also noted that although we have been in the forest only for four hours, it seems like forever – so many impressions, memories etc. I did agree with the second part, but replied to the first one that I’d prefer to skip the crisis. However, this was the time. Two times I felt that maybe I cannot deliver what I wanted. I suppressed these feelings before they started to possess me. After all, last year we walked 76+ kilometres and we haven’t done this much yet. I’m physically better prepared, I can do it. Self-suggestion helps, it does.

I had concerns about the point no. 74 – I thought that perhaps we should skip it and instead take points 57 and 76 next morning (a surprising concern for a tourist like me, btw.). The reason was that the map showed lots of climbing between the points 40 and 74 (at the beginning, we had planned to take the point no.40 before the point no. 74); climbing means spending lots of energy, and thus excessive climbing should be avoided wherever possible. Then we found that the initial plan needed some correction: instead of going from point no. 77 to point no. 40 and then to point no. 74, we can take the point no. 74 first and after that go to the point no. 40. This resulted in a time saving of ten minutes, i.e. by the end of the fifth hour we had regained some ten minutes when compared to the initial time schedule.

We found the next three checkpoints nicely despite that two of them were located in the swamp. The way to the point 97 seemed a long one. We had to go through a garden and I wondered if the organisers had a special permit by the landlords. A lonely dog made a single “bow-wow” for everyone passing by. Now it was time for a supper. The ham tasted great with the only minus that it made thirsty. The water supply was limited as we had had no chance to fulfil our bottles in the second drinking point.

Point no. 64 was so close on the map, 1.5 kilometres maybe, but we had to go at least five kilometres around the lake before actually reaching it. The God had simply decided to place a lake in between. Anyway, by the end of the seventh hour we had regained approximately five minutes thanks to the good road.

The eighth hour was even luckier: we reached the final point two minutes ahead of the schedule. Sure, it was again thanks to the good road.

It gradually started to get dark while we still had the most rewarding points ahead. Somehow we missed the right way to the point no. 93 and had to turn back after having gone through another swampy area. I proposed that we might skip this point as it was clearly unsuitable for a night time. “Come on – it makes nine points,” my dad replied, and so we went back. I happened to fall into a beaver’s hole on the way; however I was lucky – it was a slight startle and nothing more. After some searching, we found the checkpoint; it was a moment to be proud about ourselves. The good news was that there was no need to go through this terrible swampy area once again in order to reach the next checkpoint (which I had assumed when opposing going back).

 

During our journey through the most rewarding checkpoints we saw no one with the reflectors. “Strange that no one except us seems to like walking in the swap during the night time,” I noted a bit ironically. Whatever, we took all the planned checkpoints, and after having fully exhausted our water supply, finally reached the third drinking point. The good news was that there actually was water. We filled our bottles and went on more happily. (How good are you feeling after a glass of water in the office? It’s nothing special, but in the dark forest when having run out of all your water supply, it’s something very special.)

 

Differently from the initial expectations, the night wasn’t that difficult at all. In fact, I had even been waiting for it because of the coolness that it would bring, and because of the slower pace that we had planned for the night time. I did not feel sleepy at all – in that sense the mental preparation proved to be good. The bad news was that we had mistaken in the planning: some sections of the road were five kilometres per hour, not three. Whoops… we had to move faster. I felt well enough for doing it on a good terrain.

 

Then another “Whoops”: the checkpoint no. 94 wasn’t very well located for a night time… Luckily, we reached it anyway.

It was still dark at 3:18 a.m. in the morning of 6^th May 2012 when we arrived to our next checkpoint, numbered 63. On our way, we met two Russian guys that were looking for water. One of them was in a pretty good standing, while the other one seemed to be exhausted indeed. “There is only a small number of equal couples,” my dad commented.

 

The last six hours proved to be difficult ones: some 18 kilometres when your feet are “burning”, i.e. full of blisters. The first good news on this painful road was an excellent drinking point: this time there was not only water, but also some sort of the other drink. The second encouraging aspect was meeting the limping challengers on our way. “And they are still moving towards the next checkpoint,” I adjusted a famous Estonian poem by Juhan Liiv (“Ta lendab mesipuu poole”) to the current situation.

Altogether, we gathered 306 checking points out of the 391 possible, i.e. 78.3%. From a bird’s flight, our road was 73.2 kilometres; assuming a reasonable coefficient of 1.3 that we needed for some searching mistakes as well as for going around the lakes, our run/walk was nicely above 90 kilometres. (At the time of writing, I’m still waiting for the final results. For me, those even don’t matter that much: the most important fact is that I actually did it!) As expected, the first day was the most productive: approximately 60% of the points taken and 50% of the distance that we made through.

 

Later

I did not believe that my feet can be cured within one day: immediately after our adventure, I was limping like a… I don’t know who, but the fourth floor seemed to be located awfully high. By the evening of May 7^th, I could walk almost normally once again. Ok, I was a bit slow due to the “burning” feet, but the people on the street might think that I’m walking slowly simply because of the heavy bags that I’m carrying.

A Rainy Day around Interlaken

3 May 2011. Here I am, in Switzerland in Interlaken, a small town situated between the two lakes, Brienzersee and Thuner See. Yesterday I just arrived from Lauterbrunnen (mere 12 kilometres away) where I did lots of walking and climbing in those wonderful Swiss Alps. Before flying to London tomorrow, I have one more day left in this area. Using it for taking one more walk and climbing to Harder Kulm would be great.

My approximate walking route

Harder Kulm is not very high in absolute terms: just 1 322 meters above the sea level. However, climbing it means going uphill more than 700 meters as Interlaken itself is on the level of 567 meters. There is a nice walk from Interlaken to Ringgenberg, and then continuing from Ringgenbberg to Harder Kulm (effective hiking time according to the hiking map is 5:30 h). Another walk brings the hiker from Harder Kulm back to Interlaken (effective hiking time is another 2:30 h).

I leave my hostel at around 8:30 am. Damn, Harder Kulm is in clouds! 30 minutes later when I have arrived to Interlaken Ost (my hostel is in Interlaken West) it starts raining. I find a roof and a place to sit, take out a book and decide to read while waiting a bit. Perhaps the rain will stop.

Well, it starts raining even more. One hour later I have enough from waiting. I do some re-packing and set myself going anyway. I’m not sure of how far I will walk, but at least up to Ringgenberg the path is rather good. On the right side there is a river connecting the two lakes between which Interlaken is situated.

There are not many people hanging around in Ringgenberg. No wonder, it’s Wednesday and not yet a summer season. After all, “normal” tourists and holiday-makers cannot be supposed to walk with such weather.

The way forward from Ringgenberg goes uphill. I don’t know how many times during this trip I have found myself wondering how houses are not falling down from these steep ascents. When climbing, I’m still thinking if the decision to come to the mountains with rain was a good idea. Generally it’s not recommended at least as one may easily slip on wet stones. Obstinate as I am, I continue climbing. The path gets narrower, but at least for the beginning it doesn’t seem very dangerous.

Soon, when looking back, I see Ringgenberg, Bönigen and Interlaken as on palm – this despite that the rain doesn’t contribute to the view. I take a picture and go forward. Now there is a bit relatively flat land, an easy walk in the meantime. The mountain walk alternates with short treks on gravelled path. In some places there are signs indicating falling rocks.

It’s cloudy up here and I’m outright in the clouds. So for a while I feel myself pretty miserable. At least the rain has almost stopped (a weak comfort when the leaves of the trees are wet). I try to be careful and look at where I’m stepping. The streams of the water crossing the path make going forward more challenging to say at least. “There is no one calling for help if I should fall,” I’m thinking. So far I haven’t seen any other hikers today.

Then something else attracts my full attention: some 10-15 meters in front of me an animal is crossing the path. And this animal very much looks like a big cat. “A lynx,” I’m guessing. Honestly, it’s somewhat scaring. You never know how a lynx may react if it should suddenly see you. For every case I keep quiet and go back a few steps.

After having waited for a minute or so, I continue my walk. If the trail is supposed to take 5:30 h plus 2:30 h, I don’t have much time to waste. My hiking map is not very precise as it’s actually not a map at all but a simplified copy of the real map that I got for free from tourist information. I mess something up and am not completely sure whether I am where I ought to be. Fortunately it’s difficult to get completely lost here: it’s only possible to choose a path that either goes up or down. Harder Kulm clearly is up. Also there are everywhere yellow signposts which indicate directions.

Here and there are excellent grilling places equipped with tables and seats, as well as a fireplace. And the views – even today they are fantastic. I imagine, on sunny summer days they could be breath taking. So if you should come to Interlaken, don’t forget to take a matchbox and other picnic or grilling stuff with you.

A fully equipped picnic site on the way up to Harder Kulm

Finally a sign shows that it’s only 40 minutes walking to Harder Kulm. I’m proud of myself that I have managed all the way so far and climb the last 100 meters with relative ease (although feeling terribly hungry already).

Up here is a café and a spacious terrace for making a break and enjoying the views to the surrounding area. It should be pointed out that one doesn’t certainly need to climb two and half hours for getting to this place. People who like more comfort or are in relative hurry for some reason, can go up with a train which certainly is quite an experience in its own.

A view to Interlaken on a rainy day

When I take a look to my watch, I see that I have been considerably faster than planned: so far the walk has taken less than four hours instead of the expected five and half. Maybe I have made a shortcut somewhere, I don’t know. But as I start feeling cold a bit, I don’t stay for long and decide to cover the rest of the track with no major stops on the way.

Going down is not much easier than was going up. In some places the descending is quite steep. “Down, down, down,” I’m repeating to myself, and “Easy, easy, easy.” I’m already dreaming of a cup of hot chocolate once back in the hostel.

Almost unexpectedly I appear in Interlaken. The path ends suddenly. A staircase leads the hiker to one of the main roads of the town. An elderly couple sees me coming – soaked to the skin but obviously happy. They look at me and the sign that points up to Harder Kulm, and seem to ask in their thoughts: “From where is she coming? Really from there?”

Approximately half an hour later I’m back in my hostel. And I’m fully enjoying the hot chocolate that I definitely deserve, as well as the feeling of being tired physically.

A Different New Year’s Eve

This time I decided to welcome the New Year differently than usually: I was running from 2010 to 2011. I started 17 minutes before the midnight and finished 22 minutes after midnight. Honestly, it was a little difficult to get started. But it was a fantastic run: at the beginning people coming on wished me happy end of 2010, and at the end I received lots of New Year’s greetings, in fact more than I have received ever-never before. It was a run in snow and under the lights of fireworks. My recommendation and Happy New Year to you as well!

For my country it is an important New Year’s Eve in a different respect: it is a big changeover night as Estonia is joining euro area. Many-many people are spending the night at work to make it happen and everything functioning properly. Many more are ready to get up and running as soon as something unexpected should happen. Good luck and many thanks to them! Respect; it’s not just one night – it’s at least one year of hard work.

The Way We Measure and Target Growth

In my posts, articles and analyses I often argue and demonstrate that the way of money creation and banking is not sustainable even if forgetting about the new, creative instruments and all the off-balance sheet vehicles that modern financial industry has invented. But it turns out that we are reaping what we are sowing (surprise-surprise!). What we want is more-less stable economic growth; paradoxically, how we target and measure it is bound to produce unsustainable results.

World GDP in 2009 was approximately 58.2 trillion US dollars. Let’s say we think that 4% is a nice stable annual growth rate that we should set as a target. This means that in dollar terms GDP in 2010 should be 60.5 trillion US dollars (58.2 trillion US dollars plus 4%), up by 2.3 trillions. Ok, in reality global economic growth will be higher in 2010, but let’s use 4% as an example. In 2011 the targeted World GDP should already be 62.9 trillion US dollars (60.5 trillion US dollars plus 4%), up by 2.4 trillions. What we see is that despite of a stable growth rate, in nominal terms the economic growth is expected to be bigger and bigger. This is further illustrated in the figure below which shows the targeted World GDP growth up to the year 2050.

Like magic, instead of a stable 4% annual growth we have an unsustainable exponential path. If this is what we want, then our monetary system needs to provide enough money for enabling it. Naturally, it is unsustainable too. But perhaps we should rethink the way we define, measure and target growth and success?

Why Financial Regulatory Reforms are about to fail

In the aftermath of the Financial Crisis 2007-2009 financial regulators, governments and international governing bodies are not just sitting and waiting. Lots of the ways to regulate the greedy, too irresponsibly and carelessly behaved financial sector are being discussed and implemented. For example, on July 21, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 201 (see the White House’s Wall Street Reform Page here or FED announcement here). At its 12 September 2010 meeting, the Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision, the oversight body of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, announced a substantial strengthening of existing capital requirements and is also introducing the new liquidity requirements (see the announcement here). On 15 September 2010, the European Commission adopted a proposal for a regulation on short selling and certain aspects of Credit Default Swaps (see press release here). With these and other reforms, several new agencies and supervising bodies are being created, and the mandates of the existing ones revised; new co-operation agreements are born. While the most apparent issues at least seem to be addressed, the reforms are still about to fail. Why?

First, the whole thing has gone far too complex and, also thanks to the regulatory reforms, is going even more complex. And I’m not only talking about the innovative instruments like Credit Default Swaps (CDSs), Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs) or CDOs-squared or –cubed. I’m even not keeping that much in mind complex financial schemes and structures like all the securitisation and Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs). Instead, the paradox is that also the arguably simple but big enough retail banks are implementing (and investors and regulators expect them to implement – because of lowering the required capital and the complex environment where they operate respectively) complex models for assessing the risks of their business, for calculating their capital need, for pricing credits to the customers, for measuring their profitability etc. But estimating things like correlations, the size of the possible asset bubble and the true risk level have proven to be very tricky. The new liquidity requirements, countercyclical capital buffers, forward-looking provisioning principle and other “improvements” in the regulations will not make the life easier. It is supposed that the managements and supervisory bodies of the financial institutions are responsible for the implementation and validity of the firm-wide risk measurement and control systems – but how could they possibly confirm the validity of their risk models, if even their risk experts with PhDs are going mad with all the complex formulas and extremely sensitive model parameters? Furthermore, if the firms by themselves don’t actually know their risks, what leads us to think that the supervisors do?

Secondly, there is far too much bureaucracy. It is clear that a lot of supervision is needed for containing such powerful and complex institutions as the current big banks, especially taking into account that the later have clear motivations to circumvent regulations. Furthermore, supervisors need to have sufficient amount of qualified resources to understand all the newly engineered products and their systemic effects, as well as develop regulatory guidelines that would keep pace with the industry practices. Introduction of the new regulatory reforms only adds new supervisory bodies, committees and institutes who all are engaged with the work of designing and enforcing new restrictions to the financial sector, and supervising the fulfilment of all the existing, modified and new rules. Increased need for the co-ordination of all the supervisory activities only adds to the need for public sector resources. As a result, there is a considerable risk that all this ends up in regulators arguing with each other, burdening financial institutions with endless and ever changing reporting requirements and stress testing exercises none of which really adds notable value, and finally, replacing market failure with the regulatory failure. The provocative question here would be: who pays for all that?

Thirdly, finance is on the path of continuing taking away brains from the rest of economy. Why? Well, that should be obvious: it would not be possible to maintain such a complex system and all the needed supervision without talented people.

Fourth, it is prescribed into the current formula that finance shall remain a profitable and a well-paid sector. Otherwise people and capital would escape. Why should sensible people continue to work on complex financial engineering or risk modelling the social value of which no one really understands if they weren’t paid well enough? Why should any sensible fund manager continue to manage the money of pension funds, if he/she could make much more money on his/her own? Capital finds more profitable sectors even much more easily. These are arguments that keep the hands of governments bound (beside the argument, that credit will be more expensive for the customers, of course).

The fifth, sad thing is that despite of all the efforts, the mechanisms of financial crises remain. At best, the next crisis or a few of them will not be as severe as the one we just saw. These mechanisms include but are likely to be not limited to:

* creating debt without creating money e.g. via different kinds of refinancing and debt restructuring activities where interest is added to the principal, as well as a result of the creation and use of highly profitable but fundamentally flawed financial instruments and –structures;

* self reinforcing, first vigorous and then vicious circles that lead the economy and prices far from equilibrium, the typical credit and asset price cycles such as the one that we just saw in the mortgage prices;

* regulatory cycles where we first see tightening of regulations, which at some point will be replaced by the regulation erosion (given all the complexity and bureaucracy, it’s not difficult to imagine the arguments for abandoning regulations and starting to trust market powers more again) and finally ends again up in the bail outs.

To conclude, I believe that the current approach of closing the holes in the current regulatory frameworks is not enough for securing long term financial stability and a financial system that would be for the society. We need rather significant structural changes into the monetary and financial systems. At the same time, it is easy to understand that the challenge is big. We need to find courage for doing what is right rather than what is easy (and more profitable in short run).

My Summer Trip 2010

One of the goals that I had set for myself at the beginning of this year was to make at least one trip with the duration of at least one month during the year 2010. This goal is achieved by now. The detailed description of my trip can be found from the attached document below.

During the trip I stopped briefly in Athena, but mainly visited South Africa and stayed for a week in Scotland. All together, it was a great-great experience that definitely expanded my comfort zone and was rich of emotions. I will not tell more here, but allow you to immediately go to the small book illustrated with some pictures:

Go to the PDF document describing my Summer Trip 2010

Power of human mind

Napoleon Hill

I’m holding “Think and Grow Rich” in my hand, a book that was twenty-five years in making and that is based on the Napoleon Hill’s famous philosophy of the “laws of success”; a book that conveys the experience of more than five hundred men of great wealth, who began at scratch, with nothing to give in return for riches except thoughts, ideas and organized plans. The trick is that although the entire book is about riches, success and great examples, the secret of all the riches is nowhere literally disclosed in the book – although it is clearly said that there IS a secret. Why? Because if one is ready, one gets it, it is implied. The secret came in two parts, and one needs to have one part in his/her possession already.

I can’t say that I have got the big “ah-ha” so far. However, one thing is sure – it has to do something with human mind, and with the fact that human mind is very powerful, by far more powerful than we normally use to think. Here are just a few points that I have picked up from the book, clearly referring to it:

* “Success comes to those who become success conscious.”

* “More gold has been mined from the brains of men than has ever been taken from the earth.”

* “There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.”

* “One of the main weaknesses of mankind is the average man’s familiarity with the word “impossible”.”

* “All achievement, no matter what may be its nature or its purpose, must begin with an intense, burning desire for something definite.”

* “There is a difference between wishing for a thing and being ready to achieve it. No one is ready for a thing until he believes he can acquire it.”

* “It has been said that man can create anything which he can imagine. Man’s only limitation within reason lies in his development and use of imagination.”

* “There is one weakness in people for which there is no remedy. It is the universal weakness of lack of ambition.”

To put the philosophy in my own words:

First, you need to desire something. Not just wish, but desire so much that it becomes an obsession and everything else is of less importance. It has to be mixed with strong emotions like love and faith. It has to find a way into your subconscious mind – or be fed into your subconscious mind by yourself via auto-suggestion.

This burning desire and firm belief that you CAN get what you want, are those that guide you forward, guide you to acquire the specialized knowledge you need, to imagine what you want to be the result and how to achieve it, create organized plans, take a definite decision to make the first step, remain persistently onto your way – despite of all the drawbacks and temporary defeats. Furthermore, they lead to the attraction of other great minds, powerful thoughts and brilliant ideas.

When you now stop for a while and think about what you just read from the last two paragraphs, and perhaps read them once again, you see that things are in a simple and very logical order. If you aren’t rich and/or successful right now, perhaps you just haven’t desired it strong enough? Or you have allowed the skeptics or the basic fears (like fear of poverty, fear of criticism, fear of loss of love etc) to irritate and frighten you?

Remember: human mind is very powerful – and I’ll do my best to prove it to myself. Thereby I acknowledge that my knowledge is limited and may not provide all the explanations straight away.

Just stop for a while

From Monday to Friday, I find myself running, running, running, organising things, following tight time schedules and deadlines, sitting on meetings, and keeping up with latest news. My mind is occupied with the thinking of how to get this or that done, one or another issue addressed, bugs fixed, e-mails more-less replied, phone calls answered etc. etc. And when I’m not running, gathering and acquiring new information or doing something else that qualifies as productive type of activity, I’m probably sleeping. This sounds pretty crazy.

But there are a few things that I have started to prioritise by far higher than the daily hassle. One of those is just stopping for a while, and decoding for myself what’s going on around me, and what role I and the others play or are supposed to play in it. It’s about understanding the logic of systems and processes, but not only. It’s also about asking the Big Why? and pursuing to find an answer to this sometimes ground-breaking question. It’s about finding out what really matters, and what just looks like or is made to look like as urgent and important.

There are a few good reasons for me doing this, no matter what happens in the outside world.

* First, I’m still learning, and collecting experiences and ideas for the future. Organising my feelings, impressions and thoughts, rewording with my own words what I have seen, heard or read, and writing down or recording the reflections, are great ways to do this more effectively and systematically.

* Secondly, when I’m mentally prepared and well balanced, I do not get confused by all the nervousness and hustle around me, or even totally misled. This enables me to stay focused and achieve what I want to. The reality, however, is that in today’s environment you may easily lose your path. Therefore knowledgeably taking time for recovering and rethinking has become perhaps more important than ever before.

* The third reason is that only the true understanding can give me the ability and courage to use my own judgement, to act and not to be acted upon, and to do what I deem right.

* And last but not least, I believe that you really need to find a point in what you do. Only that way you can express the very best of yourself, inspire the others, and be satisfied with yourself and people around you. As at the end it’s all about humanity and relationships just stop and think about that for a moment.

Finally, if you haven’t had a chance to do this so far, I recommend you to watch these two videos:

* Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address, and

* Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.

From both of them, I found confirmation to what I’ve said above.

It’s up to us

Fix yourself

Haven’t you noted that the most of our problems are rooted in our thinking, and that the majority of our troubles come from our past and current choices? If that’s true, aren’t we then in the position and even responsible for improving our lives in case we don’t want to wake up in the mornings, feel stress and/or are fed up of the same things every day? Basically, it’s up to us.

I know it’s not that simple when it comes to concrete life situations. Usually there are no lasting quick-fixes or one size fits all solutions. It may sound scaring that there is only one person who really can help you – yourself. It’s scaring because it puts responsibility to you. Let’s explain this more, let’s explore the most common sources of problems and troubles.

Our lives tend to be complicated by our own attitudes and the things that we do or don’t do. Below you find just a small collection of the most common examples. Are some or all of them valid for you? Well, then you probably know from where to start…

We don’t want to acknowledge our own fallibility and incompleteness. Instead, we tend to think that there are only two opinions: My Opinion and Wrong Opinion. This means, that we are not ready to really listen and accept other viewpoints. What do you think will somebody then talk with us about them? I guess not. It would be a waste of time. Nobody can add to the glass that is full already. So, we have just effectively isolated ourselves into our little boxes.

We don’t really want to go beyond our comfort zone. Instead, we resist changes and prefer known to the unknown. We give up to our fears. This not only significantly limits our future choices, but the current comfort zone also tends to become narrower. At the end of the day we will find ourselves at the mercy of the others.

We try to make ourselves shine more via keeping the others down and letting them seem less important or perhaps unimportant at all. What’s the outcome? We have the others not respecting us. As a next step, we start to hate them and they start to hate us. We end up in having to do everything by ourselves and clearly, we are lacking time for that. Let’s just hope, this is not going to make us crazy.

We focus to envying others, and what things and opportunities they have, instead of living and improving our own lives. We remain to be jealous for always and this clearly cannot add to our life quality.

For us, it is more important what the others are thinking about us than who we really are. We try to show that non-functioning solutions are working, and end up in making quick fixes and fighting fires instead of building something longer lasting.

We choose to do what is easy rather than what is right. By that, we go into conflict with ourselves and our own personal values (which may not be clearly articulated, but still exist).

What could be the solution? For the beginning, just try the opposite to the above. Start from challenging and revising your own attitudes. Remember that stimuli are what they are but it is our own freedom to choose how we react to them. And this freedom is determined by self-awareness, imagination, conscience and independent will.

My takeaways from Avatar

The Avatar movie

Yesterday I watched 3D version of Avatar – a long-waited, very popular and generally positively commented movie. I didn’t have to disappoint; for me, over a long time this was once again a real cinema-experience. What everyone exactly sees in this movie (as well as in other movies) is of course individual. Here is a summary of my takeaways.

The first thing I registered was the clarity by which the consequences of putting profits first were addressed. Basically it is said that this leads to destroying our own living environment on the Earth and thereafter to destroying the living environment of those in other planets (if we should find life outside the Earth).

Secondly, it was highlighted that only a very small part of humanity really tries to understand the others and attempts to see the world through their eyes. The other people only see their own targets or (perhaps even worse) remain indifferent. This is closely linked to the third point – that one can’t learn anything when his/her glass is full. Instead, one should keep his/her class empty and eyes open.

Fourth, note how much bad Jake Sully actually first made by just doing his job – forwarding information and knowledge to the Earth people (who were about to attack Na’vi people based on this information). Note also what a power is contained in knowledge.

The fifth thing is that at some point you need to choose for which side you are – for those that you originally belong to and who hired you (for Earth people in Jake’s case), or for the ones that do the right thing according to your best understanding (the Na’vi people in Jake’s case).

Sixth, it is well captured that systems start to broke down from inside, not because of outside forces (Jake and some other people in his side are traitors from the perspective of the human leaders).

The seventh point is that true love and fighting for right things make you much stronger and much more powerful than you ever could have imagined before.

So, go and see the movie by yourself if you haven’t done it already – and think what you find from it.