SUCESSO - SUCCESS - ERFOLG

Those who have followed me for sometime have noticed that my journey through this year has been very busy. Because I had the opportunity to get in touch with some many different people in so many different settings and situations I wanted to talk about success. This is a word which I have misinterpreted for many years, meaning that I had a complete distorted notion of what success really means. By being in touch with many different people, from many different nationalities and backgrounds, what came to my mind is that success is actually a very broad concept. It depends on how you were raised, among what kind of people and what you have been told to fight for. I think it is interesting to start dividing the world in two, so ocidental and oriental. The symbol of success in the ocident are the rich countries. So success is deeply linked to economic power and wealth abundance. 

Interestingly, I had the opportunity in a very short period to be in touch with two of the most famous "physical" representations of that: famous cities located in the richest country on the planet, USA. I was recently for the first time since more than 20 years in the heart of this kind of mindset: New York City and Las Vegas. To be honest, I was very impressed at first. Huge buildings, lights and big screens everywhere and an infinite range of choices of things to do, from places to eat to places to party. Honestly, I tried it out. It was fun, but after I was finished, the impression was that something in the people there was missing. Their brains where so busy in trying to find something "cool" to do that paradoxically, in my opinion, they were just complete lost where to go. Should I buy? Should I eat? Should I gamble? Should I party? Should I get drunk, smoke and forget about my regular life? That was the impression I had while I was talking randomly to people around those places. And the more I saw people coming back and forth through the streets, casinos, clubs or whatever place created to make you feel satisfied, the more I could see that our society is nowadays a never-ending  representation of the non-stop to be happy culture. 

I realized after coming back that my brain was so accelerated that it took me a week or so to get back to my normal speed of thought. The link I want to make with success is this: in this kind of environment, the more you have/do/experience in your outer life, the greater level of success you have in life. I felt sad to see that I somehow was always trapped in such kind of thinking. This is the success type that in my view most of the people are driven to.  Money earning success is what most of us are going through right now. Unfortunately I did not have any experience on the oriental world. But the far east we go, the more it seems that this mindset goes towards a decreased speed of thought and a greater self awareness realization of life with less need of outer achievements. I had also the opportunity to be at London and Monaco this year. Two of the most expensive cities in the world, and very well known by their high standards of living. To be honest, I felt much more linked to these places, even though the money issue was also very evident. However, in those two places there was a kind of slower speed. The food was not served in a hurry, in huge amounts of everything in the portions. Even the McDonalds were slower, more peaceful somehow (I could not afford to eat high class everyday!). The point is, even though the amount of financial success was as high as in America, the people seem to care more about their own self awareness. By standing in front of the Monaco's casino or at Piccadilly square in London, I could feel a bit of less stress about doing everything that exists to be fullfilled and happy. 

The speed of thought was significantly slower than in America, and even though those people were also very wealthy, they were having a good time in a more intimate and personal level. I could feel through the places a sort of "happy feeling" that was more calm and focused into the moment, with no need for hurry.  So, in those places, even though the success was also money-linked, people  managed to be able to slow down their minds and enjoy life from a different perspective. The most east I went was Poland. The polish are very easy-going people. I made good connections by talking to random people on the streets. They are not considered  a rich country in Europe. However, perhaps because of that, their focus was more towards small things. They were not contaminated by the excess of options you have in a rich culture. But, it was clear to me that they were very happy having cheap vodka and walking through historical medieval streets in the cities I visited, Torun and Gdansk. I might be a bit contradictory with this essay, because as a brazilian I was very influenced by the "american dream", and this actually made me choose to live there as a teenager in 1994/95. But now, 20 years later, and after this experience there, I can say that success does not relate at any level with the amount of things you have or do. It has to do with how you can learn to live without having to do it and still be happy and fulfilled. I am convinced that this kind of mindset will have to change. The capitalism structure make people act like zumbis, and their freewill ends up biased by the system, which  makes them a sort of slaves. Slaves of the system itself. Of course the world leaders know that very well, and manipulate our expectations to hypnotize our minds towards a behaviour that reinforces the survival of this cycle. I am also a victim of this, and I do not think I will be ever free of this system, where success is linked to financial achievement and things you can pay with physical money. I do wish that our new generations will be able to form a society that will bring new horizons to this anomaly that our people live today. Again, this is a personal opinion and I am not trying to sell that we are wrong in doing what we do. I am just suggesting that our way of living can be a bit different and the priorities towards the success may be perhaps in small and simple circumstances. I would like to have comments on this, and generate discussion. If you have something to add/criticize/comment, please do so. I think that is through the sharing of our ideas and beliefs that we will be able to build a better place to live, where success may be redefined and where we will be able to have it through different ways in our lives.

RELATIVIDADE - RELATIVITY - RELATIVITAET

Hello dear blog readers. Here comes one more of my reflections. I decided to use a very famous word from Einstein , relativity to give me space to brainstorm it in any direction, not only on the physics-science side of it. So be open to no standard interpretation concepts. I have experienced relativity in my life. That is why I want to give my own individual feel and tell that yes, everything you have/experience/get/lose in your life has its own relative value/significance/purpose. What I mean by that is that we can have different interpretations at different moments for the same things. Example: sometimes you meet someone and this person makes you think one way. He/she gives an opinion about a specific subject and you start to believe or not on that. Let's assume in this case you have believed in some new theory. You were convinced that this was a good way to explain or give background in regards to something you did not know before. However, as time went by, you started to challenge this. You started to notice that even though it made sense it did not work in every situation. Or it would work according to a certain choice you make. That's when the concept of relativity come into place. By constant motion in terms of intelectual self talk or learning one can figure out that something which was a complete true at one moment becomes a lie after sometime. How cool is that? I believe that this relativity of which I am talking about has to do with our adaptive nature. In practical terminology, how we can by our own choice turn something supposed to be 100% true into something meaningless. I think that the humans have this great ability to make everything relative when it does not make sense anymore, of if it does not fit into your collection of beliefs. That once said, it is obvious that Einstein used this to explain time, by clearly saying that depending on the speed you travel the time perception changes. I would like to add a more easy to grasp concept into that. I dare to hypothesize that this happens even though we are not still able to travel through any human-made machine near speed of light. However we can travel into our minds in a limitless speed. This has deep implications. It means that your perception can be altered by the speed your thoughts travel inside your own brain. Want an example? Think about the last holidays you had. The one you loved the most perhaps. Now, try to remember the 2 weeks before you were actually at that trip. How fast was the time going? Very slow, right? You were waiting and waiting and the clock just seemed to be frozen or slowed down. But finally, the time to go to the airport came and as soon as you stepped  through the check-in hall door, this speed of time perception just changed. Suddenly you were looking the watch wishing it to stop, so that you did not need to come back anymore, to your regular life. And those two weeks which were endless became  instantenous pieces of moments, and before you had time to blink your eyes, you were already back home. How come? If time is a constant physical dimension, always going forward at a constant speed, how come you could not feel it steady? Did time change? Or did you change? If your travel speed at any moment did not reach the near speed-of-light speed, it is impossible to assume that this was a physics related effect, macroscopically speaking. So, by logic conclusion, the only plausible hypothesis is that the speed of your thoughts (which turned into emotions) have a deep connection with this anomaly. For me, though, this is just an effect of our own brains playing  a joke to us. It is obvious that a life without novelty, challenge or strong emotions (in this case very positive), is perceived at different speed rates. Maybe, this has to do with the speed of thoughts "traffic" in the brain. Maybe, because the momentum of the basal normal day particles dislocations in our neuronal synapses were altered from the baseline rate, the perception just followed this disbalance, giving you a shortened time frame understanding, although you have measured it as the same length (in your wrist watch e.g.)  in comparison with the previous 2 weeks. The point is, the more movement you put into your life, mentally speaking, the faster it will go. For me this sounds great, and I am very happy to realize that this year for me was "instantaneous". I made so many new things, traveled so much, made so many new discoveries, met so many new cool people, that it is impossible to compare with times when I was bored or not in deep touch with my most profound values. And I am getting afraid (but at the same time blessed) to feel like my life is going to unfold pretty "fast", in mind time scale. It is a good and pleasant feeling, to discover you can steer your destiny and make it a sequence of "instantaneous" moments. It means, you live but you don't feel the time frame of your life sequence, making it possible to conclude that the presence into the NOW becomes your greatest tool to pursue towards a "relativity-linked life", meaning, a very fast, exciting, emotional, engaging life. I have recalled my whole year today, while laying down on my bed in the morning, and the only thing I could conclude is that I had a great year. Because, in the end I could not feel it, timely speaking. I still have many cool moments coming, and they will be as "light flashes" ending up that I can tell was the most exciting time/year of my life. I am sharing this experience, to assure that anyone, at any condition can reach this kind of experience. I am planning to continue with that, and as long I have the full control of my destiny, this can be a lot of fun to achieve. I kindly ask to all people who took the time to read this, to rethink your goals and what is the most important in life. I am not the perfect example or anything, I am just a normal, passionate guy searching for my own answers. I only want to bring people I like with. Wish to all, a great weekend. We are close to Christmas, 2016 is almost there and these times are a good opportunity to bring those issues to discussion in order to improve our future life experiences.