Chapter 8 : Pursuit of Happiness

Hello guys! As I'm writing this I've just finished my eight hour working day and yet another school assignment so apologies in advance if there are some typos, misspellings etc. because I'm very fuzzy at this point. But hard work always pays off, that motivates to get me through all of these school assignments by the deadlines and getting my heavy bum to work every week. And a few prizes for my toil are coming next week in forms of a gig and cruise to the lovely western neighbor Sweden. Work hard, play hard as the crappy song says.

Damn, this is some serious background image stuff.

Digital business course contained a lot of law issues this week. Very crucial stuff but personally my interests and law issues have a quite of a distance between them so paying attention for a whole lecture was once again a bit difficult. Maybe some additional group work or illustrative examples could little bit ''spice up'' the lectures? Traditional lectures are a good way to adduce all the necessary things in detail but something to help students get more involved to the teaching process could help the actual learning process as well.

Speaking of involving, we filmed a video for NoBot Oy which was a task given to us on last Friday when I was in the Netherlands. We had to reflect our thoughts in a form of a video about caring and involving in workplace. Very important issue to deal with in today's work life because I've heard from my fiends about their horrible bosses (good movie by the way) who don't seem to care at all about their employees and that also affects on the general atmosphere in workplace. It's hard to get into the group where everybody are crestfallen and instead of getting praises and credit for their work, they get a shitload of complaints for every single mistake. It pisses me off, even writing about this makes me furious and feel bad for my friends to have that kind of experiences from work life. Everyone make mistakes and it's part of the whole process to eventually learn from them. Do these so called ''leaders'' think that Steve Jobs for example didn't make any mistake in his way to the top? Please... Just noticed by the way that the image I posted on above is quite illustrative what comes to this subject. Good background image stuff indeed, goes with everything.

I can fortunately say that I've always had good bosses and team leaders wherever I have worked in. Maybe the best example to tell you guys about, are my experiences from Celectus Oy. The company is all about selling. Its main agenda is to provide sales know-how services and train the best salesmen in Finland. I was part of a sales team in metropolitan area which provided the best energy solutions for customers and companies. We were competing in Leijonaliiga which was like a regular sports league type platform to compete in selling against other localities. We played ''matches'' against other teams from different localities and the team who had more sales at the end of the day was the winner and earned a certain amount of points that helped them in the league table. After 3 month ''regular season'' came the playoffs which culminated to the finals that were held in some trade fair which happened to be on at that time. In a nutshell, Leijonaliiga made sales job ten times more interesting.

It's self-evident that in that kind of job you have to have a good superior who can lead the team as well as the individuals in it. My two team leaders had such a big impact and influence on me which will probably carry on ahead in the future. They genuinely cared about me, not only as an employee but as a person, as individual human-being. That alone made me feel that okay, these guys really want to get to know me and get the best out of me. Because they knew me as a person even at some level, they knew how to train me individually by concentrating to my strengths and bolster my weaknesses. We also had training as a team and we all got to know each other well and were like old buddies among ourselves. This is what caring and involving is all about. I'll put our NoBot video and Leijonaliiga's video (some free marketing for my old employer company, you're welcome) here in below.

On Thursday we had a second lecture about law issues and also a very compelling presentation about marketing research. But what really stood out for me the most was a brief speech by our lecturer Anna who talked about finding and creating your happiness. Nice thoughts which sure got me thinking about how I've managed to create my happiness and what are the cornerstones in building it. There was also something about the positive thinking leading to positive things which I mentioned in my previous post too but I started to wonder in a little bit deeper level on that and some other things about happiness. Does it work for everyone, thinking positively and positive things just come one after another as an outcome? Though I believe that there is a obvious connection between them, does it even work for me? At least not always. I might wake up to a sunny day and think positively from the very first glance towards the sunlight but then a few minutes later a car drives by and splashes water onto me. Yeah, really positive feeling about that too. Maybe not the best example but maybe you get the point. We have billions of people in this planet and it's quite obvious that some things work better for others. And maybe that is what Anna meant by saying ''you create your happiness''. Only you know what makes you happy, hell, even it's to think negatively about everything then go for it. Better die happy than bitter about not reaching the happiness. Pursuits of happiness, there are many and finding them may take from a few years to a few decades but I believe that when you reach the complete happiness, that will be the most wonderful thing in the world with no comparison. And it might come already on next day, just open your mind to even the smallest things in life and let the flow carry you wherever it will.

So deep... But hey, what can you do? See ya next week with new deep thoughts!