Category Archives: Visible stories

What is your Why?

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What is your why?
We all have a secret engine. It may be the fire in our hearts lit by a wondrous smile, or the sparkle of a new day, the uneasy warmth of doing something new, the hope of achieving something we only dreamed about, or just finishing a project, a new venture.

Why do you get up in the morning? To start all over, to rewind, to redo and to make it better. Time is what we really own. Time is what we really have to define Better. Time shapeshifts in what we make of it and in the colors of our feelings.

A Romanian folk tale tells the story of a brave king, one eye smiling and the other crying. We keep on doing the daily grind, one eye crying, and one eye laughing at the Why in our hearts. Our Why is the craving for doing something we and others will love.

Success is not something handed to us. But we can hand ourselves a bit of happiness at forgetting our daily pet peeves and shaping the time in something lovable. Love but attracts other types of love.

“I want no vacation – no surcease from my labors. If people would select a life work compatible with their temperaments, the sum total of happiness would be immeasurably increased in the world.”  – Nikola Tesla

Spring is the season of goodwill. I contribute to the sum total of happiness with my (other) work of being the follower of seasons and the keeper of springs. For I have never found a love that pure as in the tree flowers whose scent quietly clings like stardust to the early twilights of March.

 

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Art by Blenda Tyvoll.

Dreamers and doers

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“The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.” – Nolan Bushnell

Yes, you will have to do a lot of things which are borderline between imagining, weaving your (business) plan and really implementing your idea and your strategy of creating value.
Because this is all about – helping and solving problems. Entrepreneurship is all about doing and working, which is not that unfathomable. We all do the heavy lifting, we all have exerting routines…Knowing what to do and how to do it is the conundrum. As sometimes we are not given the time for the Trial and Error, we have only Error and but a moment to make amends.
We are pilferers of experience and growth hackers. Our job is not to do our job, but know what to do next.

And craft a good plan with poised goals.
The plan should be realistic and thorough. I and plans mix like oil and water as I repel routines and like the spark of new things which renders me a little shallow. But then I thought, what if my life depends on my thoroughness? This made me make a very good plan with all the questions attached and answered.

Beneath the obvious goals of my business, I have another one: to change something in the people I get to know. For the better and for the happier, with a piece of advice, with answers, with some words they do not know and need. After all, happiness is what we crave. Inspiration may never cease and I have had good source in Seth Godin‘s words: “Who do you want your customers to become?”

Everything starts with an idea which can translate into purpose, project and product with a little help from tiny beautiful things – words. Dream about your story, but not too hard. Fight your way into new things and enterprises but don’t take yourself too seriously. As “life is not about how you survived the storm… it is about how you danced in the rain.” – Regina Brett

Art by Michael Cheval.

Iulia Halatz
She says: “Be the one who cares, make words so disruptive that they create new worlds, hopes and dreams. Even if we are unhappy dinosaurs and find shelter in an Iron Tale or ruminate about feeling too much, whilst declaring colorless apparel, we should take power and strength from our stories.”
Her published poems can be found in The Sudden Denouement Anthology Volume I.

Engleza de joi/ Respite

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Respite = a short break or escape from something difficult or unpleasant.

“I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death.” –Ernest Hemingway

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Art by Marianne von Werefkin – Russian-German-Swiss Expressionist painter (1860-1938).

Romania is my country

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Romania is my country and the sweet hills covered in vineyards are my home place.
The balmy moonlit vineyards can keep a heart from breaking.

Here, in Romania, Beauty follows you everywhere. When you think you’ve lost it, it’s there breathing magic on your neck, tugging at your sleeve with a gorgeous sunset, misty mountains, bluish lakes, Shire-like emerald hills, fortresses that once kept invaders at bay…

I illustrate with a stunning movie about my country, showing Romania as it is: fresh, sophisticated, rough, ancient, modern, mesmerizing, wild, misterious … in one word, AMAZING.
https://mohamadkarbi.com/romania/

Let’s Fly …Romania! Produced by Anthony Brzeski.

Courtesy of Let’s Fly! [PRODUCTION].

What made you turn to entrepreneurship?

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Freedom. Freedom of choice. Freedom of speech. Freedom of ideas. Freedom of doing what you love. Freedom of enchanting your followers and clients. (Aren’t they the same?) Freedom of finding solutions outside the known path. Freedom of smiling after a successful business meeting. Freedom of alleviating pain. Freedom of being a dreamer and showing people your dreams. Freedom of imagination.

Building anything is never easy. I have been building my body since the last years of the last century. Still I am not enthralled but I believe in my lorryfull of resilience…

When you start your business you (should) start by touching people’s lives. Sometimes, if you are terribly lucky, you touch their hearts. Our hearts are in desperate need of being touched, aren’t they?
In the end everything boils down to showing people your own heart. Even if sometimes this feels like nakedness. Trust your gut and move on. Show them the unique problem-solving magic of your business and what will empower them to do. Make them aware of your efforts and your vision. Make them trust your mission and enjoy the ride.

Never fear of being wrong as you will be oftentimes right in learning a new lesson. Each day passing…

 

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Art by Christian Schloe.

 

Corfiot entrapment

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Romania is my country and Corfu is my home island.

I am caught in the magic of the island of cypresses, millennia-old olive trees and nymphs. The satyrs are not scarce either, they just resumed human form. If my words escape you, I would like to say that Greeks are very handsome and “warm”.

I want to relocate in a very small cottage on a mountain side, overlooking the sea and palm trees rustling merrily in the lazy salty breeze.

My single worry was to get up early (at 6 A.M. or so) to still catch the stars and then, the sun. And later, after happy hours of basking in its mellow warmth, watch it jumping into the waves on the way to the other realm.

October in Corfu is like late beautiful spring in Romania. Balmy air, birds chirping, tons of colors and fragrances heralding another spring. The one starting in November!

“Gradually the magic of the island (Corfu)  settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen.”
― Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

I illustrate with my photos: the waning moon at dawn & later, the waxing moon at dusk; the clearest water that I can look into till my eyes turn blue & one stunning sunset; a romantic ship in the Kerkyra harbour & the highest peak – the Pantokrator.

Do business in Equilibrium – part 2

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Life is irregular and we need to do business in Equilibrium to simplify and even the rough facets of human interaction.

Sometimes you feel like you have crossed oceans and seas to find the one-of-a-kind orange tree adorned with gold leaves. Or maybe you have found the magic lettuce from the Bear’s garden*.
You are prepared to offer it to your customers, still they are not pleased and want more.

They want More because Less is what they do not understand: the core of your business, the “elusive” thing without which your product does not exist: Your MISSION statement.

Your mission appeals to the mindset of people.
Your mission creates connections.
Your mission creates promises you HAVE to keep.
Empty your heart of misgivings and fulfill your promises by following your business pattern and delivery system.
And keep an eye on the money.
Running a business is like running a show. It is either good or bad. In the beginning it is usually bad. So don’t sweat about it. But make it good in time…Make it so good that your first business show now appears to have been held for the Eskimos, a hundred years back.

“The past is a foreign country.” – L.P. Hartley

*Source of inspiration – The Story of Harap Alb – A Romanian folk tale by Ion Creangă.

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Art by Rene Magritte.

Cruelty is not a shield but a system of betrayal

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We are all Arya Stark and deft shape-shifters dancing on stories in order to survive. We are but one step into cruelty every minute on the way to achieving our goals.
Cruelty is not a shield but a system of betrayal.
We betray our shattered feelings and broken image of ourselves reflected in mirrors that don’t belong to us.
We betray our inability to live up to our vision and our words.
We give in to our doubts: “What if I am wrong, what if they don’t like me, what if I am not enough?” We betray our powerlessness of being happy in our own world. We surrender to an odd country we never dreamed about.

We betray our transcendent fear of living in a blur devoid of bounties we wouldn’t dare take with our own hands.

And we forget that “Anything can happen in a world that holds such beauty”- Peter S. Beagle.

Art by Christian Schloe.

Engleza de joi/ Tremendous

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Tremendous = very great in amount or level, or extremely good:

There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love.”
–Erich Fromm

 

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Art by Christian Schloe.