Category: Good vibes

Are all our efforts worth? Yes

In a life full of personal and professional commitments like my life and that of millions of people in the world, it often happen to feel lost in the apparent disorientation of a negative answer to the question in the subject.

Yet everything we do brings consequences in the people around us. Consequences positive or negative, but anyway we leave a mark even if we do not think about it. Often we do not understand that that extra word or that smile left on the face at that moment has brought positive consequences to the people who we were close that day.

Of course we can affect people’s lives also in the negative but, apart from rare cases where we really have responsibilities, I believe that anything negative can be compensated when we leave a positive mark such as mentioned above.

When we find ourselves overloaded with responsibilities, deadlines and commitments it seems that everything around us is negative but it is enough just to pass the moment of difficulty and then things improve. As in a scale, the plate sometimes hangs from one side sometimes from the other but you can easily find a way to balance it.

In my life I experience this condition of despair sometimes but I realize that I have to just look a bit further to find all the elements that can show me that there are so many good gifts around me.

The family, understood as those ties carried forward in good and evil by a life and that anyway represent the testimony that we can go on and overcome every negative moment.

The world around us, understood as the nature and the people we can observe everywhere we turn and we should always thank Life every day for. We take for granted the act of having all this around us every day just because we have not experienced losing ourselves in the desert or at sea and risking not to see it again.

The positive gestures of people towards us. Maybe we think that they are due but we should appreciate them more without considering them due. It would be like making a positive recharge!

The health. Sometimes taken from the frenzy of life we forget how incredibly important a gift is the health that is given to us every day. Around us people get sick, even our dearest loved ones, and we can not but take advantage of what we have more than them, trying to balance the moments of despair thinking that things could also go (much) worse should we been ill.

In general, from my experience of the last 5 years I must say that I thank Life for what it has brought me, either positive and (perceived) negative experiences, ,as they have shaped my character making it probably more aware, open to new and able to not give up in front of negative moments.

In the future I will talk about my experience with religion and how this also contributes to the flow of thoughts referred to in these reflections of mine.

In conclusion, therefore, in answer to the question of the title, Yes, I really believe that Life, with all the difficulties and efforts that we must profuse every day, it is worthwhile to always be lived enjoying every moment.

Paolo

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London City view from northern suburbs

An helping hand in the storm

In these notes I want to talk about the positive experiences that have happened to me in the last few years when someone has believed in me even in the most difficult times.

When you are over 40 and you have a career made up of routine work you naturally tend to consider the stability of work and the financial security that it entails, without thinking that this could stop at any moment. You think that by now the risk phase has passed and you can maintain such a stability for a long time, probably up to retirement age.

It is common in human nature to forget that everything is temporary, from health to financial resources, to the success achieved. Everything can really collapse quickly, just as an earthquake destroys within a few seconds everything that has been built sometimes in hundreds of years.

But what has to remain also in the hardest times are the values ​​with which one has lived and the personal relationships that have been built over time. If everything collapses around us, we remain here, with our unique values ​​and with what we have “sown” over time, and that sooner or later will be returned to us in the form of appreciation and support and sometimes, even unthinkably, new ways will open up because of that.

I am not referring only to the principle of reciprocity for which we tend to give back to someone what we have received, but in general to the fact that systematically practicing the habit of helping creates the conditions for which we will be returned sooner or later what we gave.

In general, everyone would do better to have a Plan B that contemplates the actions to be taken if things were to stop abruptly. It is not just a matter of stipulating a life insurance policy but of already contemplating the possibility that one finds oneself suddenly on the ground, mentally preparing oneself.

Needless to say, I speak from experience of what happened in the last years when I unexpectedly received a concrete support from those who believed in me in the most difficult moments. I do not say that I had previously practiced widely this theory of free help but I must say that, if my career has been able to continue and start even more satisfactory, all this is due to extraordinary people who believed in the “Paolo-person” even before “Paolo-professional” and from whom I have certainly received much more than what I’ve been able to return so far.

And since then I have a sense of debt that leads me to try to support people who are in difficulty, both in the working envirnomnet and not.

The image I have is like that of the castaway to whom a helping hand is stretched to be pulled aboard the lifeboat during the storm. It is this hand that I believe everyone should continue to lean out of the lifeboat of their lives to collect the “castaways” that we meet every day. Not only professional castaways, but also those shipwrecked in their soul.

We can really have a positive influence on people’s lives without even doing anything extraordinary,  just by giving them listening, trust and hope in their moments of troubles. And it’s nothing extraordinary, but it becomes so because in the world it is very rare to find all of this.

And I am sure that life can have an even truer sense as many times as we put our lifeboat at sea to meet our shipwrecked. The mere fact of doing it will change ourselves first.

Ah, do not forget to bring the oars if the boat’s engine breaks!

Paolo

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