Yesterday was the airing of the highly controversial show “De grote donorshow” (The big donor show) on the BNN network in the Netherlands. The show was about three candidates, patients suffering from kidney failure, contesting for one of the kidneys of a dying woman. The audience at home was able to give advice through text messaging in an
Idols-kind-of-way. Pretty macabre TV-show, right? It would have been if it were real. Thankfully it was a hoax, and more a publicity stunt and a cry for action to our government to do something about the donor registration in the Netherlands. There was no donor (the woman was an actress), and the patients knew that beforehand.

The publicity they got was overwhelming. No less than 85 international news crews were at the show, and all the news shows and talk shows this evening on Dutch television had this show as a subject. Our politicians discussed it all week, and condemned the unethical nature of it. It lead to a great deal of questions in our Tweede Kamer (our house of representatives).

Dealing with an uncertain future
What struck me in the show, besides the issue at hand, was the enormous difference in vision of the future of the three patients. All three were bound to daily dialysis,
so they are severely limited as they depend on these machines for their life. Life expectancy for patients with kidney failure is also an unknown, and they handled this in a very different way.

One of the patients did not really think about the future. She seemed to think about it as a concept, something that might be. The future was today, maybe next week. She seemed to be very present, and very aware of everything she experienced, and had hopes for a better health. One of the other patients however was very ambitious. He had big plans, and regarded the future as a time where he would achieve great things. His kidney condition was something that was holding him back, but it did not stop him in making plans and believing in them. The third candidate was very much focussed on experiencing things, now and in the future. She would drink a lot (not alcoholic beverages) when she would get a new kidney (in her condition she was only allowed to drink half a liter
a day). And she would instantly travel to Australia (great country!) to experience life there.

Lessons learned
All of these strategies have their beauty. They were somewhat extreme in nature, but when you’re facing an uncertain future with a shorter than average life expectancy, what can you expect? One of the techniques to learn what values are most important to you, is a visit to your own funeral. For most of us this is a shocking and (hopefully) enlightening
experience, for them it’s a reality. I learned the following lessons from them:

1. Value what you have now
2. Always make plans and believe in them
3. Don’t procrastinate! Plan, Do, Experience.

And the last moment of the show, before they announced the real nature of it, reminded me of a scene in the movie Sophie’s choice. The “dying woman” had to choose between two people to give one kidney. Making a choice between life and death…

The founder of BNN, Bart de Graaff was a patient with kidney failure. He died on May 25, 2002 aged 35. Only 5 years after his second kidney transplant.

Every couple of weeks I receive a little gem in my inbox. It’s an e-mail titled “Warrior of The Light” written by the Brazilian author Paulo Coelho. He tells wonderful stories in his mails. In the last one I found the following story, that I would like to share with you:

Here where I stand

After having won many archery competitions, the town champion sought out the Zen master.

“I am the best of all,” he said. “I did not learn religion, I did not look for help from the monks, and I have been considered the best archer in the whole region. I heard that some time ago you were the best archer in the area, so I ask you: did you have to become a monk to learn to shoot arrows?

“No,” answered the Zen master.

But the champion was not satisfied: he took out an arrow, placed it in his bow, fired, and hit a cherry at a considerable distance. He smiled, as if to say: “You could have saved your time and just dedicated yourself to technique.” And he said: “I doubt if you can do the same.”

Without demonstrating the least concern, the master took his bow and began to walk towards a nearby mountain. On the way there was an abyss that could only be crossed by an old rotting rope bridge that was almost falling down: with the utmost calm, the Zen master went to the middle of the bridge, took his bow, placed an arrow, aimed at a tree on the other side of the gulch, and hit the target.

“Now it’s your turn,” he said gently to the young man as he walked back to safe ground. In trepidation, looking at the abyss below him, the young man went to the indicated spot and fired an arrow, but it landed very far from the target.

“That’s what one gets from discipline and practicing meditation,” concluded the master when the young man re-appeared at his side. “You can be very skilled with the instrument you have chosen to earn a living, but it’s all useless if you can’t manage to master the mind that uses the instrument.”

Paulo Coelho makes me think. He gives me another perspective that I use to put things in perspective. He writes about spirituality in a down-to-earth way about everyday people in unusual situations. If you like this story, visit his site and read the archives. You can subscribe to his mailinglist (he has an RSS feed as well, but somehow it shows up empty in Google Reader). He has written a great number of books as well, amongst others The Alchemist, The Fifth Mountain, The Zahir and The Pilgrimage.

Related post:

• Seven powerful ways how the Alchemist can change your life

For those of you who haven’t heard of Richard Branson before, he is an exceptional entrepreneur and the founder of the Virgin group of companies. Business life for Richard Branson started at the age of 17 when he started to publish a magazine Student. He aimed high: he chased down Mick Jagger, John Lennon and the likes to get interviews, he phoned major companies to sell advertisements, and he targeted a nationwide audience. It took a year or so to take off, but he succeeded. Student magazine eventually lead to a music record mail ordering business, music shops, a studio and eventually the Virgin Music record label.

Richard did not stop there, Virgin Music has reinvented itself over and over. At first is was a record label with a hippy image (Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells was the big breakthrough), but after signing the Sex Pistols this image changed. After this Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Janet Jackson, The Rolling Stones and many many others were signed by Virgin. In the meantime though Richard got a bit “bored” as he lost the challenge in the game of contracting another pop group. So he started an airline to compete against British Airways. To cut a long story short, he succeeded in running it successful, despite the dirty tricks from BA and despite the fact that he “lost” Virgin Music in the process. Nowadays, Virgin has a wide variety of companies, and they target markets where customers are getting a raw deal, or where there is a market dominance by one or two players.

Last week I finished his autobiography Losing My Virginity. It’s a recommended read, his story is a remarkable one, that I find very inspirational. In his book Richard tells about his life from the very start, including the successes, the screw-ups, the record attempts, his marriages, having children, losing a child, buying an island, battling BA and banks and so on.

My interest in life comes from …

Richard repeats several times that his life’s motto is to “Live life to the full”. Somewhere in the book, when he describes an argument between some of the key people at Virgin he states the following: “My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.”. This is true for him from a business perspective (starting in a business and competing heads-on with BA or Coca Cola definitely comply to that), but also from a personal perspective (doing several record attempts at crossing the Atlantic by boat and balloon).

The record attempts are dangerous, and several times Richard thought he was going to die in the attempt. Becoming a father did not stop him in doing these record attempts, however he started writing goodbye notes to his wife and children as if he was about to die. Thinking you are about to die, or preparing yourself for the possibility are very emotional experiences. They make you focus on what’s important, and to what legacy you want to leave. As an exercise this is very powerful, and you don’t need the record attempts to do the exercise. Visualizing your funeral, or writing your will or writing a goodbye note to your spouse and children will focus you on what’s important.

Fun is at the core of …

If you read the book, you’ll find that Richard Branson works a lot! You can just imagine him being at the phone for hours and hours, no matter what location he is in. Apparently he misses out on lots of fun activities while he does that. However in the book there’s a passage where he describes his feelings about work. This is just after he sold Virgin Music to EMI:
“Times had changed and we had 500 million pounds in the bank. But I didn’t believe in leaving it there. At this point I could of course have retired and concentrated my energies on learning how to paint water colours or how to beat my mum at golf. People asked me: ‘Why don’t you have some fun now?’ but they were missing the point. As far as I was concerned, this was fun. Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been key to everything I’ve done from the outset. More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin’s success.”

And later in an interview in a magazine I found the following quote:
“Look, if you can indulge in your passion, life will be far more interesting than if you’re just working. You’ll work harder at it, and you’ll know more about it, but first you must go out and educate yourself on whatever it is that you’ve decided to do, know more about kite surfing than anyone else. That’s where the work comes in, but if you’re doing things you’re passionate about, that will come naturally.”

This is so true. Find your passion and indulge in it. Make the most of it, and you will be able to earn a living doing it. You may not see it right away, but I believe this to be true.

Lists, lists and some more lists

Running a single company is a challenge, running a group of companies might look like an unachievable challenge (remember: Richard likes it that way). To get through the day, you got to have a productivity system, right? As with most successful systems, Richard Branson’s system is simple. He takes notes in a standard notebook, and writes everything down. He states that he worked his way through a bookcase full of them. And there’s this quote in his book as well:
“I have always lived my life by making lists: lists of people to call, lists of ideas, lists of companies to start, lists of people who can make things happen. Each day I work through these lists and it is that sequence of calls that propels me forward.”

Simply lists. That’s what it all boils down to, well including the discipline to work through them of course. But that’s where the passion comes in again, work on the right stuff, and working through the lists gets fun! And basically GTD is all about lists as well.

Hmm, a list of companies to start, hadn’t thought of that one before…

A couple of days ago I received an e-mail from Anneli from Sweden (quoted with permission):

Hi!
On your “about”-page you state that you are “inspired by People.”
I think you should write “inspired by MEN” as you don’t seem to get inspiration from the other sex.
Or do some rethinking.
With greetings from Sweden
Anneli

The e-mail puzzled me at first (I thought I used bad English…as it’s not my native language), but when I looked at my about page it hit me! All the people in the list were men, not a single woman was to be found there. Point taken!

I don’t consider myself male-biased, so I thought I’d add a couple of women I find inspirational to the list… but none came to mind at first. I walked over to my bookshelf to help me remember. But again, not many books were written by women, and the ones that were, well just didn’t classify. Back at my computer I was getting worried that I in fact was male-biased when it comes to getting inspired, without knowing it.

The list of people who inspire me is not really big (yet). I have a high standard when it comes down to this. Don’t get me wrong, I learn from a lot of people (I try to learn from everybody) however inspiration is on a different level. I haven’t rationalized it; it’s more of an emotional thing for me. But now I’m thinking on the subject, the elements that make a difference for me are originality in thinking, humor, an adventurous attitude towards life, a respectful people-oriented attitude and of course the feel of authenticity in their success.

Now looking at the list, I decided to take out David Allen. I learned a lot from David Allen, and his excellent books, but inspired…sorry David, not yet. I added Majora Carter, whose passion and energy for her work I admire. She also has an excellent talk at TED (watched it three times). One woman on the list… onward to see if I can find more.

Inputs I used:

• Google (variety of search terms)
• Amazon (biographies of inspirational women)
• Blogs (posts about inspirational women)

Google came up with some interesting stuff to read, and some possible candidates. Amazon came up with very little biographies about women, yet they did not quite meet my criteria (sorry Anna Nicole). I remembered that Tom Peters is writing a lot about the rising success and importance of women, and I found a couple of good posts and links. But I didn’t know any of these people, or their work, and it was hard to get to know them from these links. I did stumble upon JK Rowling and Oprah Winfrey (I feel I should’ve come up with them without the searching…). They might be inspirational.

For JK Rowling, I didn’t really know her. I knew about her story, and I like her books. I found her (50 minute) biography on YouTube. It contains a lot of inspirational quotes. I love how she tells about her inspired thought when she made up Harry Potter in the train. And I love the metaphor in the entrance to platform 9 ¾: “Anyone who ran at the barrier with enough confidence would be able to break through…” As for Oprah…well that’s Oprah, however at times she’s somewhat “over the top” for me. Her Wikipedia page is impressive.

Anyway, it took me a while to find women that inspire me. The media didn’t help as I found this male-bias to be very widespread. Who do you consider to be inspirational women? Why do they inspire you? I’d love to get to know more inspirational women…

About a month ago I learned about TED by reading a post by Guy Kawasaki on his excellent blog. TED (an acronym for Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an event that takes place once a year, and it provides a platform for “inspired talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers”.

I want to draw your attention to the talk by Dan Gilbert, about “What makes us happy”. I believe that happiness can be found in being authentic in life, and doing stuff that is congruent with my values and ambitions. Dan Gilbert talks about a concept called synthetic happiness, and sheds a light on another form of happiness. I wonder if there’s a difference in the emotional experience of synthetic and natural happiness. Synthetic sounds so “fake” to me.

I encourage you to browse through the talks. Some of them are really good, and the quality of the videos is good as well.