“Uncovering our Greatness” is a monthly column on becoming a great human being and has two opinions on the subject from eastern and western parts of the world namely Dr Amit Nagpal from India and Michael Thallium from Spain.
Dr Amit Nagpal is a Personal Branding Consultant & Deepest Passion Coach. He is based in New Delhi, India and specializes in personal branding with a holistic touch. His philosophy is, "Enlarge as a Human Being, Excel as a Social Media Being and Evolve as a Personal Brand"
The word ‘generosity’ reminds me immediately of my paternal grandfather. I would observe his generosity, day in and day out, as a child. He was certainly a role model and a strong influence on me. Sometimes he would make me wonder, “Does abundance make us generous or does generosity invite abundance in our lives? Or is it a virtuous cycle.” The most important lesson he taught me was to donate without a desire for fame/credit. He reminds me of the Bible quote, “But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” The more purity we have in our generosity, the more aligned we are to the abundance of the Universe.
Generosity does not mean being generous with money only. We can give our time, energy and share our gifts passionately and generously. But whatever we give (even if it is little), should be with pure intentions, not to get something out of it in return. We can also be generous with gratitude, encouragement and appreciation for others.
I strongly believe, “Generally we tend to be passionate when we talk about ourselves and lack passion when talking about others. It needs to be the other way round. We should talk passionately about others and humbly about self.” It is not a lesson we are going to learn overnight, but as long as we are genuinely trying and making conscious efforts, it is good enough.
It is important that one continuously and consciously grows as a person and casts the shadow of inner abundance outside. More than attracting what we think, we attract in our lives, what we are. The sooner we learn this crucial lesson, the more we can grow. We must pray every day:
“I am unconditional love and I attract unconditional love.
I am immense positivity and I attract immense positivity.I am abundance and I attract abundance in every sphere from everywhere.”
Generosity is something to aspire for throughout our lives. I had once posted on Facebook, “When you become a little more mindful, you become a little more soulful. When you become a little more soulful, you become a little more mindful. Little by little, the journey must go on.”
Enlarge, Excel and Evolve!!! I keep repeating my 3E approach to personal branding and my conscience keeps questioning me, “Are you walking the talk? Have you Enlarged, Excelled and Evolved today? Have you become a little less selfish and little more giving?” And the questions and answer continues every day.
But when it comes to words, I prefer to be a miser and rather avoid being generous.
Michael Thallium is a global and greatness coach based in Spain. Michael has spent many years of his life traveling around many countries and continents, sailing the seas, flying the skies all over the world. Since 2008 he is dedicated to his passions namely coaching, language & communication and music.
I would say my dear Indian colleague Dr Amit Nagpal is quite generous, that is what I feel since we started collaborating and writing this series of articles on how to become a great human being. However, my award on generosity goes to my parents. I think all of us have someone in our lives who has been generous to us, and experiencing that can lead you to being generous towards other people. So, generosity is something you can learn the same way you can learn the opposite, too.
The Latin word generosus means “of noble birth, noble, excellent in kind, of superior quality.” Generosus was related to the verb genero, which means, “to beget, produce, bring to life, generate”. So, generosity is the quality of being generous, that is, of being kind, understanding and not selfish. Following the Wikipedia, “generosity is the habit of giving without expecting anything in return. It can involve offering time, assets or talents to aid someone in need.”
Almost 800 years ago, in his question CXVII Of Liberality, Thomas Aquinas talked about the concepts of generosity and liberality. The liberality is to distribute material goods generously without expecting any reward. This word is etymologically related to other words such as liberal, liberty and the old term largesse (largess in American English). This last word, largesse, means being “generous” materially speaking.
The difference between generosity and liberality is similar to the one between the verbs ‘to be’ and ‘to have’. You are generous by putting decorum (who you are) before usefulness and interest. In other words, you can be liberal when you share your material goods (what you have) with others.
The spirit of generosity makes us great. We can all program our giving, either what we have or who we are. Kindness is free and we all can start by giving good service to others. Of course, if we are not narrow minded, if we are not “stingy”, in other words, if we think abundantly, we can put our generosity into practice moment by moment. And here empathy plays an important role. By having empathy we can create more opportunities and be more active listeners, stop judging others and start giving the benefit of doubt to people. Many years ago, I learnt from Stephen R. Covey about the win/win mentality. Yes, let everyone win! Share information! Give your time! The first person you have to be generous with is… Yourself! And remember, when you sinergise or work with others, share the credit!
Researching on the internet, I recently came across with Anese Cavanaugh. She believes that “generosity is an accelerator for someone already buzzing high, and a quick funk buster for someone moving slowly. When things are tough, getting folks involved in the spirit of generosity will help amp them up in a positive way.”
I started by saying that Dr Amit Nagpal is a generous person. You can see the result of his generosity in his recently published book “The 7 Joys of Life”, where I had the honor to collaborate.
Think of this question: Who are you being generous with today?
Ballaculish, Scotland. Picture taken by Michael Thallium
Back in 1935, Martin Heidegger said on his “Introduction to Metaphysics”:
“At a time when the farthermost corner of the globe has been conquered by technology and opened to economic exploitation; when any incident whatever, regardless of where or when it occurs, can be communicated to the rest of the world at any desired speed… when time has ceased to be anything other than velocity, instantaneousness, and simultaneity, and time as history has vanished from the lives of all peoples; when a boxer is regarded as a nation’s great man; when mass meetings attended by millions are looked on as a triumph – then, yes then, through all this turmoil, a question still haunts us like a specter: What for? – Whither? – And what then?”
Today I just wanted to draw your attention to a very important question in coaching: What for?
Have a great day by doing or producing something, by experiencing something or loving someone, or by facing an inevitable and fatal fate with an attitude of firmness.
HALLUCINATIONS are very startling and frightening: you suddenly see, or hear or smell something — something that is not there. Your immediate, bewildered feeling is, what is going on? Where is this coming from? The hallucination is convincingly real, produced by the same neural pathways as actual perception, and yet no one else seems to see it. And then you are forced to the conclusion that something — something unprecedented — is happening in your own brain or mind. Are you going insane, getting detmentia, having a stroke?
In other cultures, hallucinations have been regarded as gifts from the gods or the Muses, but in modern times they seem to carry an ominous significance in the public (and also the medical) mind, as portents of severe mental or neurological disorders. Having hallucinations is a fearful secret for many people — millions of people — never to be mentioned, hardly to be acknowledged to oneself, and yet far from uncommon. The vast majority are benign — and, indeed, in many circumstances, perfectly normal. Most of us have experienced them from time to time, during a fever or with the sensory monotony of a desert or empty road, or sometimes, seemingly, out of the blue.
Many of us, as we lie in bed with closed eyes, awaiting sleep, have so-called hypnagogic hallucinations — geometric patterns, or faces, sometimes landscapes. Such patterns or scenes may…
“Uncovering our Greatness” is a monthly column on becoming a great human being and has two opinions on the subject from eastern and western parts of the world namely Dr Amit Nagpal from India and Michael Thallium from Spain.
Dr Amit Nagpal is a Personal Branding Consultant & Global Success Coach. He is based in New Delhi, India and specializes in personal branding with a holistic touch. His philosophy is, "Enlarge as a Human Being, Excel as a Social Media Being and Evolve into a Personal Brand(ed) Being.
First of all, let us remember that we all are creative (and forget the misconception that only some of us are creative), but we are creative in different ways. Some people are creative with words, some with sounds, some with images and some with integrating all of them.
Learning Styles and Creativity
To understand our creativity type, it is useful to understand our predominant learning style. There are 3 types of major learning styles viz. visual, auditory and kinesthetic (details given below).
Visual learning style involves the use of sight or observation for eg drawing, diagrams, demonstrations, displays and so on.
Auditory learning style involves the use of listening or speech.
Kinesthetic learning involves some sort of physical experience – touching, holding, doing and feeling experiences.
Where the hell has my creativity gone?
Once we have understood our learning style, we will also realize the likely areas of creativity for us to develop. Our creativity often gets suppressed or killed in the rat race due to clouded thinking created by pressures. Here is my story about how I lost and regained my creativity.
There are mainly 2 schools of thought in religions/spirituality. One school of thought says that human beings were made by God is his/her image. God being the creator, we have creative powers too (though we are very often using them in destructive ways). The other school of thought says there is no God as such and there are different levels of consciousness (and God manifests itself in all life forms). According to this school, the higher the level of your consciousness, the more creative you will become (or more divine you will become).
So let your creative expression come out, let your imagination go wild and just remember what Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Michael Thallium is a global and greatness coach based in Spain. Michael has spent many years of his life traveling around many countries and continents, sailing the seas, flying the skies all over the world. Since 2008 he is dedicated to his passions namely coaching, language & communication and music.
I would say we all create since we are born. And I do believe it is impossible to live without creating: just the very act of living, of being, is creative. However, I am not going to focus on that kind of creativity we all have, but on that creativity which is acknowledged by others. Let me explain it! I consider myself quite a creative person, and as long as it helps me feel better, it is worth it. Nothing to say about it! But many times my creativity only serves me, not others. And if it doesn’t serve others, then it will rarely be acknowledged. Either you like it or not, we all live in a society and, unless you are an anchorite or a hermit, we all need others’ acknowledgement to some extent. So, this kind of creativity I am talking about consists of three elements: imagination, innovation and service. This kind of creativity involves others, not only you.
You can be very imaginative, but if you do not add innovation, you will remain in a world of fantasy and, most probably, you will be there alone; and if you are imaginative and innovative but you do not serve others, then no one will know about your creativity. I would like to remind you that the patent offices in different countries are full of inventions which have no use for most of people and, therefore, no one pays attention to them.
So, does it mean that painting, writing, playing music or doing any other thing just for the sake of it it is no use? Of course not. What I mean is that when we add the “service” element to our creativity, we are communicating with others and we have more possibilities to show our greatness and, even more important, help others discover theirs. In the end, this is what is all about: becoming greater human beings.
We can have a world full of creative people, but if their creativity has no use, that is, if it does not serve others, then we are mere collectors of loads of creative things and that’s it. As I said at the beginning of this article, we cannot live without creating. However, what I did not say was that we are creative but, unfortunately, we are not aware of it most of the time. Our awareness about our creativity is very low sometimes. And just the fact of increasing that “creative awareness” would make us much greater. Have you ever thought about all those things you do on a daily basis? How would they change if you would jump over the bar of your limitations and be creatively aware of them? Imagine you are a high jumper who wants to beat a record, where would you set the bar of creativity?
On Monday 15th October 2012 at Teatro Real and on Wednesday 17th at Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, the Symphony Turangalila by Olivier Messiaen will be performed by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid conducted by Ingo Metzmacher. The soloists will be my friend Ananda Sukarlan on the piano and Valérie Hartmann on Martenot waves.
September has passed, and it’s been a super-busy month, although it seems like I was enjoying life. The month opened with my concert with the Nusantara Symphony Orchestra in Jakarta, and joining my friend, the conductor Addie MS we performed Yazeed Djamin’s masterpiece, “Variation on the song Sepasang Mata Bola” as well as the short “Warsaw Concerto” by Richard Addinsell. The theme Sepasang Mata Bola is from an old song by the late popular songwriter Ismail Marzuki, written during the war years. Yazeed managed to elaborate that song into a 23-minute sort of piano concerto, which is not easy, considering that the tune itself is so complete in itself. I was even told that Ismail Marzuki couldn’t read n write notes, so obviously he didn’t think of melodic motifs and all those “intellectual” ways of writing music. In fact, that’s the thing that he did best: writing beautiful lyrics and long, winding tunes. For him it was as simple as opening the tap. I wish I could do that, without all those musical knowledge I acquired from my education that only served to raise the level of procrastination and anxiety of doing (artistic) things. Beethoven could write a whole symphony by playing around with a motif as silly as 3 short notes and 1 long note, but try to give him a very long & memorable tune like Ismail Marzuki’s, see if he could elaborate it for a symphony without any problems. Remember, young composers: the simpler and shorter the motif, the easier and bigger possibilities it has to elaborate. __________________________________________________________________ Where am I? Oh yes, superbusy September. After that performance I went back home directly to Spain the day after, since I had to write the music for the film “Hari Ini Pasti Menang” (”Today we shall win”) by the director Andibachtiar Yusuf. Mostly the music is for orchestra, and I received help from my friends at Institut Musik Indonesia to do it with the computer program Reason 5. It sounds 90% like a real orchestra, and to make it even more real, I am using a few real, human musicians too to mix it with the sounds produced by the software. Writing for orchestra of course takes at least 5-10 times the time to write than for, say, piano solo, so around 20 minutes of orchestral music of this film was done during last month. The rest are for some solo and chamber music, and I am also playing some piano parts (and solo) in the soundtrack. Thanks to Nia and Sammy from IMI for helping with all those computer gadgets. I am sending Sammy my music through computer, and he converted to sounds and sends it back to me. ______________________________________________________________________ And during the second half of September I also started practising that gigantic, mammoth, overblown piece, Turangalila Symphony of Olivier Messiaen. It is a work for piano, ondes martenot and (very) big orchestra that lasts for 1,5 hours, in 10 movements. The piano part itself is 140 pages. I don’t know whether this, or Ferruccio Busoni’s Piano Concerto is the longest in the repertory of piano and orchestra. I have performed Turangalila several times, not every year, and I always remember the most important thing to do before going on stage : go to the toilet. You’d be stuck on stage for 1,5 hours. I have also done something even heavier : performing “20 visions on the child Jesus” by the same composer. Yeah, that’s 20 movements and it’s for … piano solo !! I’ve done it several times too, but that was until around 7 or 8 years ago. So, no rests at all, no orchestra playing while you rest your poor fingers during that 1,5 hours. Messiaen was a kind of 20th century Bach, who wrote everything “dedicated to the glory of God” and that we, the poor musicians playing his music should do anything to reach that superhuman level of virtuosity to be nearer to God, I guess. Anyway, I still have less than 2 weeks, since the concert is scheduled for the 15th of October in the beautiful Royal Opera House just in the garden of the Royal Palace (imagine having an opera house with a capacity of 2000+ in your garden!), and repeated on the 17th at the National Auditorium .
Is innovation just a matter of leading technologies and industries? No. Innovation is also changing ways of thinking. In order to promote the use of electric vehicles in Móstoles, Spain, we recorded the following video at Talleres Clemente, a Renault dealer:
