Alexandra Karlovic

Unconfirmed author writes about life

It was in 1994, I was dating a Colombian man and had the chance to meet Gabriel Garcia Marquez at the place where his family and him were living in Paris.

It is very intimidating to meet a Nobel Prize, especially a monster of litterature such a Gabo. We had a nice lunch and an interesting conversation. I can't say I agreed with his political views but the writer always takes my breath away.

In 2000, as his cancer was worsening rumor had he had written a poem "the puppet" that had been published in a Peruvian newspaper and spoke about life. The poem was soon to be published by other newspapers and eventually turned out to be the work of a Mexican ventriloquist and not of Gabo.

Be it from one or the other, to this day I don't know what to think. All I can say is that the text its beautiful and is worth reading whoever has written it !

Aristotle is still with us ...

The year has started and we find ourselves doing some things exactly the same way we used to. As Einstein put it, expecting a different result by doing the same thing over and over again is called insanity !

So what are you going to do differently this year ?

Here are some ideas: will you be more kind? will you live more in the present? will be you be more of service to others? will you spend your time differently? will you forgive more and ask for forgiveness? will you be more grateful? more creative ?

Decide what are the standards you want to live by in 2008, make few decisions, decisions you can keep and practice all year long until it becomes a habit !

I believe it is Aristotle who said that Excellence comes from repeating good habits over and over ...

You want to be excellent ? You want to be remarkable ? Well you can, decide, commit and then repeat and repeat until it sticks !

I got rid of my expectations!

What you think you will get out of a training is rarely what you really get out. I did not have any specific expectations for that training, except maybe to learn additional tools that I can use in my coachings.

Well, it caught me by surprise. I didn’t see it coming and bang, it hit me. I can’t remember Jean-Pierre exact words, he said something about not having expectations.

WOW, what a breakthrough! Of course I had heard this already, but I never fully understood it, in other words I hadn’t been ripe enough to integrate this thought.

Since the workshop, I have decided not to have any expectations anymore. What a relief! Doing the best I can has never made more sense to me than now.

The music in you ...

                            

Interesting Friday … I had been training for two days managers of a big multinational company on management skills. Wonderful two days, with people eager to learn and improve, what better audience could one have?!

We worked on team missions and how to make them inspiring … It was interesting to see how some people have direct access to their emotions and how some, more than others, can easily put emotional juice in their words and others not. Cultural? Gender issue (the trainees were a majority of men)? Generations?

On Friday night, I went with my friend Anabelle to the Jazz marathon in Brussels. We started off with a Bossa Nova concert (Cacamba), headed towards a Funk concert (Be-Funk) passed a world jazz band (Beda) and ended in a Samba concert (Agua de beber). All along, I kept thinking about the trainings that I give (communication & negotiation and management skills) and how I push my trainees to express themselves, and unleash their emotional juice … and I wondered … do musicians have easier access to their emotions, does listening to music facilitate access to our emotions?