Though it would be a great movie title, this is not the title of a badly produced low budget Hollywood movie. Mind peelers, they come in all forms and shapes. Usually they try to avoid showing their stiff corporate background with quasi nonchalant clothes and try to make you feel they’re one of you. But on average they do a really bad job at that.
Mind peelers are mostly attracted by emerging markets which they, by definition, don’t understand. It starts with an email in which a mind peeler will mostly use the strategy of elevating your achievements, experience and personal skills to divine levels. This followed by a list of they’re personal achievements and a statement on how serious they are about the Indonesian market.
After 8 months of extreme extravagance, partying and many holidays it was time to get back to real life. Even though I could be sipping a Mojito in Bali right now I found that I just NEED to do something. Without a goal I tend to spiral out of control, probably out of sheer boredom.
In my defence, in the 8 months of indulgence, besides doing two investments, I just didn’t see any opportunity where I wanted to invest my money and energy in. Up until I met the guys from the Ambient Digital Group in Vietnam, who are a great bunch of guys. So straight after I saw there product I had the classical light-bulb-moment, thinking YEAH, THIS I GOTTA DO.
I guess the last months I was kinda numbed compared to the rest of my life. Starting something new isn’t easy, no matter what I might have accomplished in the past. Success is nothing but a snapshot of the moment. Today one can be considered successful and the next day you’re old news.
Success made me a bit lazy and somehow I expected things to happen all by themselves, solely based on what I’ve accomplished in the past. Obviously it doesn’t work like that. What someone did in the past is pretty much irrelevant. What are you doing now? That’s the only thing that matters.
Weird that I’ve gotta realize that again after a live full of highs-and-lows and always making things happen. So back to basics, kick myself in the ass and start building again. No one will make it happen for me and ideas are worth nothing if they’re not turned into action.
I’m generally a person with a positive outlook on the future. Maybe that’s because I, and with me I guess lots of others, choose to close my eyes or look the other way. Our generation is even more effective like the previous generation draining our earth. The worst thing is that maybe unlike the previous generation we actually know and realize the consequences of our behaviour. This picture symbolizes that in the most visual way possible. Draining our earth, killing all wildlife and leaving our kids with a wasteland.
My daughter is 6 years old and I rather don’t think about the world she will be living in 20 years from now. Also I see no other way of explaining what we’re doing with our earth other than saying human beings are a self-destructive species driven by greed and power.
The worst of all is that I actually gave up hope that great people with great initiatives to save our earth can actually make a difference. The power of money and greed is just too strong. I know, pretty dark and pessimistic thoughts, even maybe out of character.
I guess everybody and especially parents around the world were shocked and grieved when hearing about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut The shooting is one of the worst mass shootings in US history and one of many in the recent years. Reading about the shooting, seeing the pictures, it seems to become even more hard or I should say impossible to comprehend.
But amidst all this drama, human suffering and grieve one thing becomes even more clear than before, something has to seriously change in the US when it comes to the (lack of) regulation of firearms. The Land of the Free. The Land of Opportunity. The Land of countless great inventions. But also the land with the worst statistics on casualties on firearms. The Land with the most imprisoned people per capita in the world.
Already a long time I want to write a personal post about life, money and things that matter. But while struggling to find the right words I found that the Dalai Lama hits the nail on its head much better than I could ever do. Something to think about during Christmas, happy holidays!
Lately I’m in a philosophical mood. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I just closed another chapter in my life and while starting a new one my mind is still processing the experiences from the previous one. Maybe it’s just because I’m getting older. Whatever the reason is, I tend to think about life more, about the world around me and how I fit in.
As entrepreneur and workaholic I tend to be occupied with one thing, business. Though nothing wrong with that by itself I tend to forget the things around me. The simple things that make life beautiful. The sunrise, my wife, my family and the miracles on this planet we take for granted. Though from time to time I try to change myself I seem to fall for the same trap over and over again.
Today I read the sad story of Diego Mendieta, a Paraguayan striker who, till last season, played soccer for Persis. He was hospitalized about 10 days ago, some say he suffered from Typhoid, other sources say it was Cytomegalovirus (CMV). Jakarta Casual and Inilah tell the sad background story of the passing away of Diego Mendieta. Diego Mendieta was apparently still waiting for 4 months salary (around $12.000) and thus wasn’t able to pay the hospital bills. After moving from hospital to hospital he ended up in a government hospital, having lost 17 kg according to Persis fans on Twitter.
Diego’s only had one dying wish:
I don’t ask for my full salary.
I just want a plane ticket,
so I can go home.
See my mom
and die in my own country….
His dying wish was never granted and at age 31 Diego Mendieta died in a government hospital in Indonesia, far away from his mother, his wife and his 3 children.
Around 4-5 years ago one of my working companies went bankrupt and around the same time my (ex-)wife decided to divorce me. I think that was the hardest period in my life so far and obviously the bankruptcy had less of an impact on my life than being separated from my daughter. Yep, it was a tough period in which I felt like a total and utter failure but not so much because of my company going bankrupt.
Obviously I’m not gonna write about my divorce but I do know that a bankruptcy by itself can have a big impact on someones life and can be really hard by itself. It was actually today that I realised I never shared anything about my experiences with going bankrupt. While in the US it’s mostly considered part of becoming a mature entrepreneur, in Holland people rather don’t talk about it out of shame. Well, let me tell you that if you’re an entrepreneur chances are you will go bankrupt once and there’s no shame in that, at all. You’ve tried and failed, NEXT!
This is all easy said in retrospect, but if you’re in the middle of a bankruptcy things can get really nasty and if you’re doing the wrong things it can have a severe impact on the rest of you’re life. So I would like to share my experience and hope you will never need them but if you go bankrupt I hope this will help a bit.
I come from a lower-middle class family in which every month my parents  had the challenge to make it to the end of the month financially. We weren’t rich but we had a good life, food was on the table, we lived in a nice neighborhood and I enjoyed a decent education. My father was an army guy for basically his whole life and he was proud of that, even though his long life dream was to be a farmer. To make/save some extra money he worked his ass of in his ridiculously large garden he rented from a farmer, but he loved it. Every now and then when there was a lack of rain the kids had to help out in the garden and to be honest, we both hated that. I had nothing with gardening and thought I could spend my time better than carrying around 15 liter water cans. But it learned me the concept of working.
When you’re born as a nickel you will never become a dime
My father used to tell me “When you’re born as as nickel you can never become a dime” and  he advised me to choose for certainty by following his footsteps in joining the army. I guess this was a fundamental difference inopinion. I refused to believe what he said was true, I refused to believe that my life path was already roughly set. Looking at the era in which my father grew up I can understand why he said that, but I lived in a different world where I saw opportunities all around me.
Though it would be a great movie title, this is not the title of a badly produced low budget Hollywood movie. Mind peelers, they come in all forms and shapes. Usually they try to avoid showing their stiff corporate background with quasi nonchalant clothes and try to make you feel they’re one of you. But on average they do a really bad job at that.
