As the year draws to an end and I'm reading an awesome book on Gratitude (and practicing some ideas in it), I realized there are so many books on personal development and inspiration I've come across this year. Some you may have heard of, others may be quite old already, but to me, these books came ...
How Whiplash helped me get over myself
I saw "Whiplash" a week ago, and something stuck with me. If you haven't seen the movie yet, you should. Despite JK Simmons being the beacon of acting (he won an Oscar for it), it's a movie about an eternal fight for recognition and coming of age. Also, it's a story about how NOT to coach. But that's ...
A different perspective on reality
I was doing a quick peer coaching (15 minutes "flash" coaching) yesterday evening, and something popped in my mind, so brilliant (excuse my modesty, it always gets in the way) that I thought I should share this with you. Jackie, the woman I was coaching, is returning to work next week, after 2 months of leave ...
1 year of Life Toolkit! Best posts & Coaching challenge
So one year of blogging passed away, quite fast. What happened during this time? Looking back... - I started blogging like crazy, read all I could on SEO and social network promoting, then decided I should just let my readers unfold as they come. And that's how I got to this steady, smallish base of you ...
Slowing Down – How To
This is part 3 of a series of 3 blog posts on how slowing down can actually improve effectiveness and productivity. This focuses on practical aspects. The first one's called "Are you living your life too fast?" and the second is "Benefits of SLOW living". How to slow down? I'm a fairly fast person. Multitasking is my ...
Benefits of SLOW living
This is part 2 of a series of 3 blog posts on Slow Living. You'll find Part One here. I believe that being fast becomes more of a curse than a blessing. We're impatient. We lose focus. We forget what is important. Productivity has increased exponentially in the past century. However, working time has also increased. Paradoxically, isn't ...
Are you living too fast?
This is part 1 of a series of 3 blog posts on The Slow Movement, aimed to raise your awareness that doing things slower increases your effectiveness and enjoyment. I came across a mind-blowing talk by Carl Honore, author of "In Praise of Slowness" recently. The kind of idea that simply "fits the puzzle". We ...
The century of individualism
You know the world is full of infinite possibilities. Your parents told you "you can be anything you want". Or, if your parents did not tell us so, you quickly found that out from books, magazines or motivational movies. You quickly realized that in order to succeed you have to be unique. You explored how marketing comes up ...
Pen and Paper – Tools of the Trade
This post is dedicated to organizing tools. Time Management, yes! I've always said I'm a person of the pen and paper tools. Apart from Calendar and email, I've never used electronic planning devices. I have Evernote, Money Manager and a few other apps installed on my smartphone, but hardly ever use them. Luckily, my Google Calendar ...
Goal Setting – Magic Fairy exercise
This is a response to an exercise launched by Dragos Roua on his blog, yesterday. Don't worry, it's more than a "tag", so keep reading. Dragos pointed out that in the bedouin and magic fairy story, unless you really know what you want, you'll end up transformed in a toilet. Quite similar to Johnny Bravo saying ...
Appreciating the little things
This is a Saturday afternoon post, written while I drown in a puff, sipping tea. I realized, lately, that this might be the happiest time of my life so far. Or, is it so, because I think it is? Do you know what I mean? How many times have you read the lines "happiness is what you ...
My tips on Blogging
While I don't consider myself even half an expert on blogging, I spend quite a bit of my free time with it. Below is an interview with some tips, taken by someone who's more knowledgeable than me, Codrut Turcanu, a fellow Romanian blogger and affiliate marketer. When, how and why did you get started with blogging @ ...
Put your thoughts in the bucket. No, really.
Buckets is one of the most interesting concepts of time management I ran across. I found it with David Allen, Marc Mc Guinness (still think his little e-book on Time Management for Creative People is the best short read on time management you can find online), and, yes, even Jack Nicholson. What's a Bucket? A bucket is, essentially, ...
What to learn from an Action Movie Trailer
Did you watch the Oscar ceremony? I didn't. Heard they awarded some war movie. It's interesting, how they keep making all these dramas about war, but after all this time, nobody realizes that it's bad and should be stopped. Maybe we're unable to see clearly what's in front of our eyes. Or maybe it's a bit ...
Idea of the week – The Last Lecture
I'm putting a whole book as Idea of the Week here, because the book is absolutely overwhelming. I heard about Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" a few months ago. His story is simple: Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon who delivered a sum of his life's learnings in an hour's speech and a book called "The ...
