Fear of losing my job

It is a crazy thought but I realized already a couple of occasions that I feared to loose the job I just started with! There are very subtile triggers that I can pinpoint as a couse of the thoughts leading eventually to this fear.

The first occasion I can remember is a discussion about my brand new job with my brother in law. He said that having a job is really nice but with a contract for 6 months the security is limited. He advised me to continue working on my network of business relations just in case. Although this is very common sense and I already came to the same conclusion myself it planted  a seed of fear in myself. My mind started to work out all kind of scenario’s that eventually could lead to loosing my job after these six months. Within the same context Other people gave me all kind of advices like having to make myself absolutely indispensable by planning ahead of these six months. I always did the opposite since I never believed in the effectiveness of people being indispensable for a company/organisation. In order to achieve this you need to keep things for yourself compromising effective communication and collaboration thus productivity of a team within a company.

Nevertheless the fears come in and I had a hell of a job dealing with these fears by doing SF on them each time they popped up in my mind. These fears were all fed by a much bigger underlaying fear, the fear of not being able to earn (enough) money for myself and my family. The fact that having a job should be enough to get rid of this fear you would say. But as long as the trigger or source of the specific fear is not taken away, the fear will come back, even if conditions are changed and there is apparently no reason anymore for that fear to exist.

Besides the fact fears are influencing one’s life and one’s decisions dramatically we tend to push away the fears we have. Not so long ago I was convinced not to have that many fears in my life until I started to dig into the pool of my memories and experiences to discover I had been a master in stowing away many fears. I also tried to get rid of fears by changing the situation and taking away the condition of the fear to exist. No success! The mind always manages to create new conditions for the fear to exist. The only effective way to get rid of my fears is to face them, work on the underlaying triggers and stop all related thoughts and patterns using the tools of Desteni.

Time is money, money is time

It is now more than a month ago that I left my home in Italy to go to the Netherlands to look for a job. It is over a month now that I am working hard to get work, not only by doing many job applications but also working on myself since being without a job, living in someone else’s house without being able to tell for how long implies also that you have to face yourself.

Reality can hit hard and I need all my energy to keep myself standing and go through everyday’s life. Life in my conditions is at the same time boring and nerve wrecking. Since you have no job you tend to feel useless and even a burden to those that offer you help. The odd part of all this is that it can change suddenly into another situation. At least that is what the mind suggests. The mind keeps saying that as soon as I have a job everything will be ok. This is only partially true since life will go on with or without job. That what gets different is the way you can organize yourself with or without money.

Nevertheless, getting a job will be an important step in the process of getting back into the system. I am very well aware that becoming an employee will limit my freedom, but what freedom is it when you have the time to do anything you like without having the money to do so. There is no freedom in our society. We are all enslaved to money and if we do not have it we simply will die (or in developed countries live a very limited life without many opportunities to change that situation).

In a movie I watched today there was a sentence that says: “If you are with the system you will be rewarded, if you oppose it you will be punished”. That is exactly what I see when looking back to my own life. I refused to adapt to the system and was therefore expelled from it in a slow process that ended into the situation I am in now, left with no money and fighting to get back into the system just to be able to survive.

It took quite some time to try to get loose from the system and now I see that getting back into it is not an immediate process either. I have to be patient and it is quite challenging to patiently walk the path back since the lack of money (= time) is a high pressure factor. I need to buy time (ask for money) directly or indirectly for every day that goes by. This adds up to the debt I am so trying to avoid but which is so nicely fitting into the monetary system of our planet.

This brings me to the next point, is resisting the fact to have debt not again me fighting the system? Am I supposed to go along with it and accept I have debts I will never be able to pay back? Does it make sense to try to pay back your debt when you know the actual money system is designed to make it impossible to pay it back? Governments are trying to get rid of debt by moving it to the people and very few are aware of the fact this is narrowing more and more our possibilities and making us more dependent and controllable by these governments.

Having said this, it is with an uneasy feeling that I am getting my position back into society. Life will not get easier for anyone with the difference I have already walked through experiences that allow me to see things for what they are and to act accordingly as much as I can in the moment, breath by breath. Therefore I see my whole experience I lived over the last couple of years as something very useful and in no way a waste of time (or money).

Tomorrow is a milestone day since I will know if the day after tomorrow will be one of still searching for a job or making a next step forward and while having a new job taking care of finding a place to live with my family and organize everything so I can move my family from Italy to the Netherlands and live again as a united family.

PS. Many friends and family members are crossing their fingers for tomorrow… I am sure it will help (lol). And the fun part is, do they really know why they are crossing their fingers? What is their real starting point?

Trying to be invisible

Ever since I am staying at my brother in law’s place I am feeling welcome but not always at ease. I started to investigate why. There are many factors playing a role here. I’ve been offered a place to stay in the center of a city giving me more opportunities while searching for a new job. It is now already the 26th day of my staying here and I have no job yet. There is one serious job opportunity and I just had a job interview, soon to be followed by athe next round. I applied for several jobs and got just a few replies back. Though times to get a job and in my case extra challenging due to my age (45) and the effects of the economic recession. So, it is hard working and trying to spot the right opportunities.

The fact I still do not have a job and the fact time is racing makes me feel uneasy once in a while. Until when am I welcome in this house? Are they already fed up by my presence? Oh, I wished it was all over and I could live again with my family. Not that I really miss them since I speak to them every day over Skype, it is the uneasy feeling of not being able to tell how log this situation is going to last. Everybody around me ‘hopes’ I will find a job soon and tell me they will cross their fingers (hoping they would not face the same situation themselves some time in future?).

This feeling of uneasiness is mainly generated by myself because I have an ideal picture and I see I am not fitting into it. I am sometimes trying to convince myself that I am in a bad situation and that I should be ashamed of it. But it is nothing more than a consequential outflow of what I have created myself and there is no other way out of it than walking this process step by step. So I stop blaming myself and will focus on getting the most out of the situation I am actually living in, step by step, breath by breath.

Today, while traveling back from my brother’s place, I was thinking how I could delay my arrival at my brother in law’s house as much as possible in order not to be a nuisance during the weekend. This was confirming my feeling of not wanting to be there, thus not wanting to face a consequential outflow of my own actions. The solution is very simple and straight forward. I will have to discuss the length of my stay and the conditions so everybody can agree on it and no false expectations or back chats are created. I tend to postpone this point of discussion until I know the outcome of the interview, and it certainly makes sense to do so. What scares me is the idea I am not getting the job. This will mean that there is again no clarity in the length of my stay. Every day that passes is making the equation more critical since we are running out of money and it is already money that was given to us to help us in our situation.

So it is very important to keep my feet on the ground, stay focussed and direct all I can in finding any kind of job that will generate some income and help us out of this situation. Interestingly enough it is still difficult when there is a job opportunity. Am I going to accept a low wage job that just generates some money but not enough to support my family or do I wait until I have a decent job that will give me a decent income? Needless to think out scenario’s here but I am tempted to do it. If a situation like this manifests I will have to deal with it in the best way possible using my common sense.

The mind is always trying to plan ahead or better to work out all kind of possible scenario’s so it can fuck me up with my fears. It is strange not to be tempted into these scenario thinking since it feels so empty. But that is just a feeling. Better focus on being here in the moment and act as one as self in every breath. I am regularly tempted not to allow me to focus on my process and convince myself that I should put every single second in efforts that might lead to a job. Happily enough, working on my process is going to make my search for a job more effective and this blog is part of that process.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to feel less than my brother in law just because of my situation and my incapability of being clear about the length of my stay in his house.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to let my mind convince me into all kind of scenario’s instead of focussing myself in being here and now, breath by breath.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself to be distracted by thoughts about my possible future without considering real facts and so building up energies that are of any use in improving my actual situation.

I forgive myself that I accept and allow myself that I accept to become scared of the consequential outflow of my own actions instead of keeping the mind clear and walk the point effectively.

Everything seems new to me

it is now more than two weeks ago that I arrived in the Netherlands to dedicate 100% of my time in finding a new job, and ever since I am here I experience many things as if I never lived in this country before.

Yes, there are things that changed over time like the chip card used for public transportation. But many things did not change over the last 6 years and nevertheless I experience them as new. Actually it is a kind of awkward experience that I need to ask how the most elementary things work. Today I helped my brother in law to dispose of paper and glass bottles. We had to drive to a nearby collection point and I was surprised and at the same time I vaguely remembered that glass here is separated by color.

In many ways my living again in this country is showing me how 6 years can wipe out a lot of things. Actually, wipe out is not the proper way to describe it, it is more suppressing. I have been suppressing typical Dutch ways of doing and systems in order to accept the systems in the country I wanted so badly to be as good or even better that the country I left. Now, bit by bit I am returning into a civilization that is a lot more effective in many ways.

I had to come to the conclusion that some things I am experiencing these day I never had seen or recognized or lived before. it is as if I have been incapable of living fully my life in this country during the 22 years that precede my emigration to Italy. It all started with a painful integration in 1985 and I apparently never got over the shock. I stayed in my mind and kept saying to myself that one day I will return to the country where I have been able to live in a pleasant way. What I did not consider was that in that same year I left my home to live on my own in a country I only knew from my summer holidays.

So, it is actually fascinating to really live now in this country and see all the things around me as if I am a baby and need to learn everything from scratch. It is for me a great opportunity to make a new start and not bring with me any burden that is generated by my mind in the form of memories or experiences. I really enjoy the way I can be when interacting with people. I see that my attitude open and without any expectation or opinion is producing very nice and valuable moments. This is a great plus when in a position of searching for a job and having to properly explain my skills and added values.

Even though I am separated from my family I am really enjoying this period and although it is a stressful situation where I have limited time to make an income I am, day by day, deciding in the moment, with the tools and information I have at disposal, what I can do best to get the most out of situation.

Self esteem

The main focus I have right now in my life is to find a job as quickly as possible. That is quite a task, especially if you are already 45 years old and people around you tell you there is very little interest for people my age. A couple of days ago I met someone that was able to provide me with some contacts and give me an update of how things are going in the specific business I am focussing at. He told me that in the many companies he’s seen he noticed that there is a strong reluctance in hiring people of a certain age because managers are afraid these ‘older’ people are not so influenceable and flexible as their younger counterparts. He even said companies prefer to hire younger, unexperienced people than more experienced, older people just for the sake of avoiding resistance or strong influence in case of decision making processes.

Although I know I am not very young anymore, I tend to see my age as an added value, and this story was not very nice to hear but certainly reflecting the truth. The result of this is that the normal way of applying for a job will probably not lead to success very rapidly, what I need is to be recommended by someone who trusts me to be a right candidate for a specific job. Although age discrimination is forbidden by law, the reality is just showing that if you when you apply for a job when are over 40 you will hardly even get an answer or not even a confirmation they received your message.

I experienced that these reality checks tend to shake me, to swing me between being confident in finding a decent jog again and not being able to earn a living. On top of this there is some pressure caused by the fact I have practically no income while I am working full time on finding a job, a situation that is causing me and my family to depend on others financially until I can take care of myself again. So, on one side I try to as less of a burden as possible for those that are facilitating my searching activities and on the other hand I need to express as a self confident person when contacting possible recruiters.

I am am getting a lot of help from old friends and family, which is very reassuring and comforting but at the end I will be the one that need to do it and take the opportunities that are given to me. I see that on this point I have changed compared to the past. I was much more picky on what people tended to offer me as nice opportunities. Now I am able to evaluate in common sense the offer and give immediate feedback in order to avoid false hope for the me and the others involved.

Another experience I had recently was while editing my resumé. I decided to insert the recommendations on the resumé I am sending around to people helping me in making connections. While inserting these recommendations I started reading them and was almost overwhelmed by a feeling of happiness, as if I was longing for these positive comments about me in a working context with others. Although I know very well what my skills are, I clearly longed for confirmation. As if I needed to boost my self esteem in order to feel good about myself and get energy from it to go on.

Thanks to the fact I am in my Desteni I Process I know this is a swing between polarities and I am definitely aware of this mechanism and managing to avoid these swings since they are not real but only happening in my mind. It seems very boring but there is no need to feed my self esteem positively in order to feel better and be able to do things I might not have done while being in a state of low self esteem and feeling powerless. Although very tempting it is in my own interest to remain stable in all ways. In being stable I will be able to be productive and ready for any situation all the time.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take energy from the positive feeling I got when reading the recommendations of former colleagues and employers.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to look at others that have a job wondering why it is possible they have a job and I do not. This is self pity and jealousy that is not helping me, therefore I stop this and bring myself back to self, here and now.

 

Did I reach my goals in my life?

A friend of mine suggested me to write my blog about the question if I managed to reach the goals I had when I was age 18. My first reaction was that it did not sound as an interesting topic. But looking better at it I decided to have a try.

To be honest I do not recall very specific idea’ s I might have had at that age. I was actually in a kind of crisis. I just doubled the last year of my high school and was supposed to move from Italy to Holland to start a study at a Professional School.

The general idea I had was to study until I had a diploma and then look for a job that might give me a decent income, just like my father. I never had a real clue of what actually the work of my father consisted in. He was in management and at the time I had very little fantasies about being a manager. I wanted to do practical stuff and technical stuff.

The first years after high school in Holland were a nightmare. I started with the Horticultural School where I found out that the students were to my opinion very narrow minded on almost anything. They considered me as a “Mafioso” since I came from Italy. After two years I decided to stop. I started working and to finish my missing High School year doing a evening school. After one year I decided to use my own money to go to a private school for Hospitality Business. I managed to do two years in just one with very nice grades.

The ‘black years’ had a huge impact on me. I developed the “Colitis Ulcerosa” Illness that lasted for several of years. Funny enough the illness started within the first year I moved to the Netherlands and stopped in the year after I found a good job at IKEA. Stability in my life cased me to have a healthier body.

My inherited restlessness caused me to quit my job at IKEA since I started to get bored, at least that was what I gave myself as an excuse to quit and change, seeking for a more challenging job. I tasted the world of MLM for a while (see my  previous blog) and finally I found a nice job at a Hewlett Packard Call center. I was happy with the fact I could use my technical skills combined with my knowledge of several languages.

No surprise that after a while (it took seven years this time) I decided to work for a small company specializing in what I was already doing a lot for HP, Training people on printers, sales and technical. Here my career stopped because the small company could not afford me any longer and did not renew my contract. Since then I am self employed.

In all these years I was trying to picture a perfect career that would allow me to use my skills and allow me to earn a nice salary. I pretty soon found out that knowing several languages is not necessarily something that allows you to make a nice living. There is a bigger chance you can make money by knowing two languages and you did your studies on University as a translator than knowing at least 5 of them on a high level and doing a support agent job in a call center. I remember that I felt abused quite regularly because people not knowing languages very easily asked you for your services never understanding how intense and difficult translating can be, resulting in low rewards for the work you were doing.

I actually never stopped defining and redefining what my ideal job should be. Even if I have a clear idea about my skills it is still difficult to translate that into an ideal job. OK, there is no perfect job. Even after becoming self employed, a step that should have allowed me to pick the jobs that suited my skills best, I learned that making money was the first and the last criteria when accepting a job. Nothing else. Until today, every minute I am working on a project for a customer, the main drive is to satisfy the customer in order to get paid. I can put a lot of sills and creativity in my work, but always limited by money in some way (e.g. the customers budget limiting me to focus on basics with no added value that might benefit the whole).

Back to the question of my friend. She added if I was satisfied with what I managed to make of my goals. The question kind of embarrassed me. I am not very often asking myself if I am satisfied. Not on that level. I am still trying to make a living in a society I almost tried to escape from. I have still a hard time fitting in in the way many others do, performing their tasks within their jobs without asking themselves if the work they do (or try not to do or as little as possible) is contributing to something other than their monthly salary.

In a certain way I am satisfied if I look to what I have learned. I have become very flexible and able to quickly fit in in many different types of jobs, both technical, management, commercial, and even handcrafts. Although I tend to say that I am not drive by satisfaction, I must admit that it is not true. Looking back, at the completion of a job/task I am always trying to find the point of satisfaction for the work I did. But what is being satisfied doing with me? Nothing more than satisfying my EGO! There is nothing practical in being satisfied! It does not serve any other purpose than feeding your EGO.

So, lets’s skip this whole satisfaction thing and do our tasks, work, job with one simple goal: The best interest of all. So everybody benefits from it, you and me included.

My relationship with money

Since I am struggling with time without seeing real improvement in the way I manage to perform all the tasks I plan to do I started to look at the the causes.

The first cause is obvious, making a schedule that is too tight to be real. Why I am doing it? Because I wish I could do everything I plan. Why this drive to do as much work next to my other family and home related tasks? Money!

I am taking as much work as I possibly can (or hope to be able to manage) in order to make enough money to make a living out of it. Most jobs or projects I work on are time consuming because they need research, preparation or are just a lot of work for little money. And I do not feel I have the choice not to consider these ‘lesser’ jobs because of my need for money.

Apparently there is something structurally wrong here. I should make a MC on this since the money issue is teasing me for quite a while. Let’s go back in time. The first time I had to deal with a lack of money was when I decided to leave my job at IKEA in order to dive into the promising business of selling water filters for a Company called NSA. It was not a normal business, it was a MLM organization. After a couple of meetings I was convinced by my brother who got involved and managed to convince me to follow his example. Why did I decide to participate, to invest money first buying products I never managed to sell and to find myself jobless and broke after a couple of months? During the meetings of NSA the main topic was about making money, large amounts of money. So the answer is: Greed!

As I saw that I did not have the right living style to meet large numbers of people and talk them into MLM I was not able to grow my network, I started looking for another job that brought me back into a situation of stable income again.

Strangely enough and although I had a stable income, it seemed I never managed to have the money I needed to keep up with the facts of life. SInce I met my partner S. everything seemed to speed up and within a short time we got married, bought our first home. A couple of years later we bought a larger home since our second child was on it;s way, together with a larger (second hand) car. If I looked at others around me I always wondered how they managed to have a brand new car, all kind of equipment and could afford nice trips abroad at least twice a year. I was practically jealous without knowing it.

To make things even more complex and because of not wanting to see my real situation that was not very stable income wise (I was self employed by then) we decided to more to Italy to escape from a series of things we should have addressed properly instead of running away from them.

Financial misfortunes added up when we had a buyer for our house that was not able to pay even if he already signed, we started a lawsuit, won it but never got a single penny, we only spent a lot of money for the lawyer. In Italy the foreseen amount of work was quickly becoming less and less and I had to move myself into other area’s of activities in order to make some money.

I realize I am still in the process of stabilizing myself. I still do not manage to have a stable income and the economical situation is not making it easy to find a job that takes care of that. I am now in a better situation then last year when, for the second time in my working life my contract was suddenly terminated because the company had to decrease costs. Now again the company I do part time work for is not making that much money, leaving very little for the last one that joined the club: me.

I need to investigate the mechanisms behind these jobs that all tend to end prematurely. Sometimes there is a voice in my head that says: “What if you never quit your job at IKEA? Maybe you still worked for that company.” and again: “You decided to leave HP to join a small company in the hope to have a more challenging working life and make more money”.  Either it was an end of contract or a personal choice that caused me to change jobs. What has my real motivation been in the occasions I decided to quit and what did I manifest when I found myself without a job? Was it only money? At the time, for me the motivation was often that I got bored in a job and needed to change in order to stay ‘awake’.

A couple of years ago I would not have been able to even start considering these points. Now, with the tools of Desteni, I am able to face myself and to systematically work to the very starting point, the origin of thoughts and facts that lead to where I am now. Only by knowing yourself in complete honesty will allow me to become stable and expand myself  being here, now, breathing.

The solution to my money issues? An Equal money system!

Beware of the EGO

Although I am very aware of what is happening in terms of the ego from my own perspective and the difficulties I already have in dealing with it myself, it becomes even more challenging when you have to deal with someone else’s ego.

A couple of days ago I had a meeting with my colleagues. The main point on the agenda was the feedback from the accountant on the business financial situation. We discussed the figures and saw a positive trend. We even talked about distribution of extra’s in November. This was clearly a polarity since within seconds, when the topic changed to the actual figures of customer conversions there was apparently an issue. We had very little conversions the last month and in order to keep the business running the way the accountant pointed out we needed to make more money.

The cause of the lack of conversions was quickly found. Me. Since I am the sales manager and responsible for the first contact with potential customers I had to be the cause why only five conversions were generated out of 88 registrations. I was surprised by this conclusion but as a system started to doubt myself immediately. Have I done everything I could to convert as much as possible? Did I spoil occasions to convert. Was I paying too little attention to potential customers? Have I been not convincing enough to talk new customers into our services?

All these questions where amplified by opinions about the way I do my job. My colleagues have no idea how I perform since we do not see each other very often since I work from home most of the time and tend to limit the calls to customers the few occasions I am in the office to dedicate my time to other issues we have to address as a team. We agreed that we should see each other more often and to analyse more in depth the reasons for the low conversion rate in April.

Only later I asked myself why we did not speak about the previous months. March had been the best month ever in terms of turnover. Apparently there is a reason why everything focuses on April. A day later I received a mail from the business owner proposing to take back partially the sales work alternating customer contacts with me. He proposed to see who was able to make the most conversions and if I managed to do 5 in May he will take back all the doubt he expressed about my performance as a sales manager.

Since I felt fucked by this and was not going to agree with the terms I had my back chat shooting all kind of possible discussions in high speed in my mind and my ego trying to suggest I should become angry and tell the fucker to shut up with his stupid allegations of me not doing my job properly. While writing this I still feel some adrenaline going through my veins… a typical reaction of me against unfair situations and feeling unable to do something about it.

Later on the day we discussed the whole matter again and reached an agreement that is kind of acceptable for all. The big challenge however, besides the real fact we need to address the low conversion rate, is to tackle the starting point that consequently manifested into this time consuming discussion instead of being just a fact we had to address professionally. My focus is now to bring the whole back to just the fact and to separately deal with the ego and back chat part since this is a perfect situation to analyse in order to understand myself better.

I also see I can be a living example in this and will discuss the situation with both colleagues to see if I can create some awareness on what really are the trigger points and the consequences of allegations, accusations and idea’s based on nothing else than thoughts that are expressed to another in words. Another interesting point is the polarity I saw clearly when talking about the business’ future. There is a growth (hurray) BUT in order to keep this growth we need to keep working hard (bummer) and not make any wrong decision (That is what the accountant said). This apparently caused some fear and consequently a quick analysis of the actual situation (and not the whole picture) causing some panic, a search for a cause to justify why the results are not what they are expected to be.

The blind run of China

A while ago I decided to watch a couple of video’s I found in the articles of a alternative news channel. The first one was a documentary that showed a study of the actual situation in China, discussing the very fast growth and the consequences of this evolution China is going through.

What struck me were just a couple of things that repeated itself constantly during the 45 minutes long documentary. At a certain point I was clearly seeing that the motivation, the drive of an enormous country like China was greed! Not that it really surprises me since everything happening now in the whole world is among others things based on greed. But it is mind blowing if you are faced with the outflow of just a couple of simple things like greed, jealousy, hope in the perspective of an enormous country like China.

In order to give a couple of perspectives or different point of views, different people were interviewed throughout the documentary. A former farmer working in the construction business, a taxi driver, a car sales man and a real estate business owner (the largest real estate business of China and therefore the largest of the world). to make the picture complete two economists gave their comments on the situation. These last two men agreed on the fact the country was growing very rapidly and that there was a growing group of people growing richer rapidly leaving the poor people behind. Not very long ago everybody was poor, now a few are getting rich.

The amazing thing is that everybody seems to pursuit the same thing, the poor and the rich: more wealth. Poor people dream of buying nice cars, owning a own house and working less for more money, rich people try to get as much as possible off the price of the luxury car they are buying. I saw childlike happiness in the eyes of an adult that just bought a new car for almost 80.000 euro. Even more shocking was the comment that this specific car dealer just sold 200 cars like this one in a month time.

According to the economists China is a hard working country with a corrupt government that is making an enormous amount of money stimulating the real estate business since it makes money on selling the land and retrieving taxes on the sales. This maybe explains why there are brand new but almost empty cities in China. Just for speculation. People buy houses as an investment hoping the prices will go up so they can sell with profit. It is so blind! Money as the only drive, nothing else matters. And this can be applied to all layers of the population, the real estate man making money just for the fun of making more money, the car sales man needs money to make it possible for his son to study abroad, the taxi driver sees a potential increase in the amount of people needing his services so he can earn more money and the construction worker to have money for a more decent life.

Not one of these persons seems to be concerned with the world as a whole, they are just focusing on what is best for them personally. The government is not doing anything different and pursues the line of greed and power making as much possible money out of the rapid growth the country is going through. China is running towards self destruction and apparently nobody is noticing. It is time to wake up and become aware of the consequences our actions and thoughts have on our planet. It is time to stop supporting this abuse of ourselves and others and it is time to stand for equality. Only by taking our responsibility for everything we think and do we can start to move the world to a system that is best for all.

I already guessed in a certain way China was going into this direction. Seeing the documentary caused me to feel the situation on my skin and make me wonder how it ever would be possible to make the people in a country this big and all so busy in desperately pursuing this capitalistic ideal. The only thing I can do is to be one vote for world equality and by supporting the Equal Money System to make this world into a better world for everybody.

The beauty of being self employed

Nice statement, but is it reality? Not for me. I thought I could reach a certain level of independence by becoming a self employed worker. The reality was different. Instead of working for one boss you start working for several contemporarily. I used to tell people that I was happy and never wanted to work for a boss anymore. fantastic bullshit! Instead of having one boss that more or less takes care of you as en employee the self employed man has to take care of himself. He has to ask high prices in order to pay his taxes and bills and still have a living. Especially in a time of economic recession you are a luxury product. Loyalty goes to the employee and not to an external consultant.

When my last contract as an employee ended I told myself that becoming a self employed consultant was the only way of developing my career and skills in the direction I wanted to go. On the other hand I told people I had been forced into that situation and had no choice other than becoming self employed to continue doing the kind of work I was doing.

The reality was that being employed by a company or self employed does not make a real difference. At he end you are working in order to survive by making money. As an employee you get your money every month, as a self employed person you have invoices that are payed after 60 to 90 days, bills to pay and taxes for who knows what. And worse of all, if you ran out of work as an employee you are entitled to get some money from the state, as a self employed you need to have some kind of expensive insurance that will help you through tough times. It is as if it is commonly accepted that self employed people do not need help since they are their own boss.

It’s true, most of the times I don’t have anybody telling me when and how I should do my work.  It is sometimes very difficult to find out or understand what you should do to please your client. And if the client is happy you will get paid. The risk is all yours. However, I’ve seen over the years that when you do your work in a honest way a lot of people at the end will come back to you. But it is a slow process that can take years. It is also a non very profitable approach, I have a lot of happy customers, I do a lot of work but I have barely enough money to live. What am I doing wrong?

A very important point was me understanding that I’ve been separating myself from society over the years, creating an unsustainable situation (see post of 20/1). Now I understand better the mechanisms in society and are fitting back into it making sure to act as much as I can in the interest of all and therefore myself. In a society that is profit driven it is a challenge to stick to this principle and keep on standing for it. But if you do you’ll see it works.

In my daily practice I see that when having to close a commercial deal I am not allowing myself to use deceptive words, false promises, making the other more special than myself or have fear of not going to close the deal because I could not convince the other that I am making the best offer for the best product. I had people that clearly were not understanding what was happening because the process was not as they were used to, but at the end and sometimes a little later, they come back and allow the deal to be sealed with sustainable conditions for both parties.

My experiences of every day makes me stand for equality. Every day I experience the consequences of what I accepted and allowed. Therefore I take, step by step, breath by breath, my responsibility by walking my process of self forgiveness.