How to improve your geography knowledge

"The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything." 

Albert Einstein

I have been keen about geography since I was a child. Indeed my natural curiosity and my strong desire to learn everything comes primarily from my childhood enthusiasm about geography.

I did not wait to attend my primary school. I started to watch the sky, the sun, the moon ad the stars when I was 4 years old and even before. I asked lots of questions to my parents and also to my uncles.

At the end of my high school cycle, my essay was about astronomic geography. I knew everything about earth and moon rotational movements, latitude, longitude, azimuth, the hemispheres, the seasons and so on.

So I believe that if you have never had a true and sincere passion about geography, it will be a bit more difficult to improve your geography skills and general knowledge.

Unfortunately in these days there are not so many jobs requiring geography skills, unless you are trying to become a skipper! Modern jobs are related mostly to finance and to information technology of course.

Recently, during my New Zealand trips, I watched and observed so many times the sky and the position of the sun, the moon and the different constellations, both from the southern and from the northern emisphere.

Each time to me was a moment of meditation and reflection. About our humanity. Our place in the Universe. Our life. Our emotions.

I strongly believe that we are all connected in different ways. The day by day problems of a Maori sheep- shearer are exactly the same of an ordinary workman living in Europe or America. The have the same needs: air, water, food, a shelter and Love!

I love geography, and you know why? Because it remember to us that we are all one. No matter where you live, no matter what you are doing to live, no matter your race, your opinions, your wealth.

In other words I think that to improve one's geography knowledge does not mean to be able to remember which is the capital of every nation on the planet earth or the name of the main rivers, deserts, mountains, volcanoes, forests, lakes and so on.

I think that the best way to improve your geography knowledge is to travel, to talk with local people, to exchange thoughts and ideas with them, to observe other cultures behaviours, to value our differences, rather than to be afraid of them.

Back from New Zealand!

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

Dyer Pass - Canterbury - South Island - New Zealand, September 2009

Where I have been during the last 3 years? In Aotearoa, or in "The Island of the Long White Cloud" of course! 

I am in Europe at the moment but I decided to travel the World these years.

I am preparing a specific blog in Italian and English about my New Zealand travels.

I met many young and less young people both native and international ones during my NZ trips. 

I exchanged lots of ideas and feelings about all my fields of interest and more.

What I learnt during my travels about how to improve one's self? Many things, that is for sure!

The most important travel I made in my life was in the fall of year 2009. 

I have been in New Zealand for almost 3 months that time and precisely I was in Christchurch, just before the 2 big earthquakes!

Unfortunately now it has been reported from some friends of mine that Christchurch is still suffering the consequences of those terrible events, but I am confident that the people of Christchurch will arise again soon in all their splendor!

Here is a list of 14 things I learnt during this wonderful travel from my travel notes:

What I learnt during my 2009 New Zealand trip?

1. Tolerance (people, situations...)

2. Time Management (but also take and enjoy my time...)

3. A lot of things that have not to be taken for granted exist!

4. Enjoy every second of your life!

5. Walk and observe everything like an earthling! (What is an earthling?)

6. See at things differently!

7. Adapt, adapt, adapt yourself...

8. Become more concise when thinking, speaking, writing...

9. Don't resist, flow instead with everyday events and/or inconvenient...

10. Don't renounce to tend toward the perfection, never!

11. Listen to yourself (your body, your thoughts, your emotions...)

12. Relax and take it easy!!!!!! 

13. Use clothes pegs!!!!! (Wind, wind, wind....)

14. Never feel ashamed to appear too honest!!!!!

Read more on my Blogs!

Thanks for visit.

How Positive Thinking Has Well Worked For My Success

"Every thought we think is creating our future"

Louise Hay

I love Louise Hay quotes and especially this one above.

There is nothing more true than that! We really create our future through our thoughts, both in the positive and in the negative sense, and we do that every day, with no awareness.

Louise Hay and Dr.Wayne Dyer have always been my best gurus!

In 1995 I experimented a big transformation in my life, reading and digesting more than a hundred books in 6 months, (self-help, psychological, philosophical, etc,) after a self-confidence personal crisis and after my father death.

That period was one of most difficult ones of my life.

I did not only reading books, but also I did exercises, affirmations, yoga and meditation, breath work and especially mirror work, that I find very effective

In the same period I was engaged in a big formation project en favour of an Italian famous business group.

My role was first to design and then to conduct an economical and financial training course for 114 managers, from all management areas, such as accounting, finance, marketing, operations, research and development, and so on.

I am talking about a big Italian industrial group, located in Rimini and Cesena, Emilia Romagna Region.

I have used most of Louise Hay suggestions, both to alleviate my emotional discomforts and to acquire self-confidence and philological preparation for that important engagement of my professional life.

I had at the end of the course, the best acknowledgements and recognitions from all 114 managers and from the managing director too.

Positive Thinking has worked not only in this case, but also suddendly in my career, during many other different situations.

Positive Thinking, if you really work seriously, might give you a lot of great benefits.

You become more confident, your energies act in your favour and not against you! A lot of synchronicities appear, etc.

Thank to Miss Louise Hay, I regularly put in practice day by day many different and usefull techniques according to Positive Thinking Theory of Luise Hay.

The Independent Learner LifeStyle (Second Part)

"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself."

Galileo Galilei

Although no one disputes the contribution of teachers and fellow learners, formal learning has been possible by learners working independently since Sir Isaac Pittman began teaching shorthand by postal correspondance in 1840.

Independent learners have long been ignored by classroom instructors and professors who prefer to believe that they are necessary for learning.

Independent learners have been spurned by institutions that want to apply cost-effective batch-manufacturing techniques to education.

Learning indepedence may be in the nature of a person or it may result from special needs, such as achieving certification ny a certain date while not being able to take time off from tavel and other job duties to learn with cohorts.

Though truly indepedente learners will probably never be a majority, they are a crucial segment of learners.

And independent learners, because they learn for their own reasons, are more likely to apply what they learn.

Independent learning presages the era of consumer control of e-learning.

Until now, most of the decisions about the form and content of e-learning were made by those who knew best, that is, the producers of e-learning.

That was appropriate. Only the producers knew waht the technlogy could do.

Independent learners will revolutionize e-learning.

They will provide of tools and learning content with complete, detailed specifications of what they want.

They will report a million bugs and make a billion informed suggestions.

Economics will be guided by what people want and are willing to pay for rather than what someone convinced a venture capitalist would sell.

Independent learners must be able to spontaneously create and engage in learning events.

Independent learners crave valid assesments that are independent of how learning was accomplished.

Educational institutions and professional organizations can assist independent learners by helping them document their learning and obtain credentials attesting to their knowledge and skills.

The Independent Learner LyfeStyle (First Part)

"The true basis of education is the study of the human mind -- infant, adolescent and
adult."

Sri Aurobindo

Independent learners, also known as life-long learners or self-directed learners, know how to teach themselves whatever they want to know without enrolling in a class, ort at least know when and if a class is really necessary.

They can create a plan for their learning, seek out the resources and figure out how to master the material.

Every brain, that is every learner, is unique and no two are prepared to learn the same thing at the same time in the same way.

Most great philosophical traditions, including those embodied in Gandhi, Tagore, Aurobindo and Krishnamurti, recognize a spiritual component to learning, teaching that knowledge is more than a way to get a job or score well on a standardized test.

It is impossible to measure the success of self-learning with tests, grades, and scores.

These individuals are free to blossom in their own ways and do anecdotal evidence abounds about happy and successful learners who have travelled a non traditional path to their own personal success.

One way to strengthen and enlarge your skills is to look beyond scholarly sources.

The world of truth seeking, discovery, understanding, invention, and creation transcends the limited ways of knowing that most of us have been taught.

One of the advantages of being an independent learner is not being constrained, by training or peer pressure, to one single mode of inquiry.

Some inquiries are conducted best through solitary research and reflection; others thrive on interchange with peers.

Some draw principally from books and other written materials; others need gradual maturing over years, sometimes decades.

Self-learners often combine skills used by different kind of professionals, as the reference librarian, the university scholar, the investigative reporter and the detective, when they are searching information.

Respect And You Will Be Respected

"Respect yourself and others will respect you"

Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

It is important to respect other people opinion, especially when it is different from yours!

However, it is also important that you respect yourself; I mean you need to appear strongly convinced of what you affirm in front of others.

Self-learning does not mean that you should not interact with other people.

Self-learning involves only independent point of view but also it requires a great sense of respect and discipline.

It is also important to show your ethical values.

We reform and develop our values throughout our lives under the influence of friends, schools, and other institutional affiliations.

I would only to point out the centrality of ethical values about individual and professional effectiveness-specifically, honesty, trust, respect, and fairness.

Become Who You Ever Dreamed To Be

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.”

Buddha quotes (Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.)

We put too often aside our dreams. We are busy too much every day.

Life gives nearby us and we do not realize there that when we were children we had a dream.

We exactly knew what we would have liked to do in our life, but we have forgotten him.

We are too much concentrated whether to gratify the others, deserve our place, be approved in the society, or simply to look for approval.

Even if we already have much money, we think only to have more of it. That child that was instead you was more essay of you!

To him it didn't interest the money, it didn't interest the power, it perhaps had some ambitions, but he or she knew the only way of realizing his or her own dreams it was to wish them and to realize them in concrete.

Listen to that child that was you. If you will know how to grant then his or her needs what you have always dreamed will become.

You cannot be wrong, sure!

The Art of Experimenting Things

"Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under the observation in life"

Marcus Aurelius

Why experimenting? Because this is by far the best way to learn something.

Experimenting has been and is still my most preferred activity.

I have experimented things in the following areas:

• Computer Programming Languages and Databases
• Telecommunications and Internet Protocols
• Business Management Techniques
• E-Learning Methods
• Self-Improvement theories
• Self-concept and self-esteem psychology
• Human Relationships Study
• Digital Electronics
• Financial Derivatives on Line Trading
• Web Marketing
• Eastern Philosophies

I find the best way to improve our education is combining formal education with live experience, but this works only for those matters we are interested about.

If you are not concerned about the topic you will have problems to keep new information, you need to be active in the learning process.

A Self-learner need to talk about his or her ideas to somebody else, a self-learner usually prefers to solve problems rather than follow instructions to be carried out.

A Self-learner need to gain experience from seeing what happens in his or her experiments.

When I was in primary school, I was forced (like anybody) to know poetry by heart, I hated to do that! I have never considered this as a creative task!

Also, I always disagree whit those who believe the more one is able to memorize the more he or she is intelligent!

We have invented computers just to do that! (I mean merely to store information).

We are not stupid! I think that the more you can solve problems knowing where to find information when needed, the more you best use your brainpower!

Unluckily this idea is uncommon in my country formal education.

This is a one of the reasons why I was forced to become autodidactic, that is a self-learner!

Do Not Follow The Crowd

"If you wait for opportunities to occur, you will be one of the crowds."

Edward de Bono

It is important to point out that our need to conform is strongly rooted in ourselves since our origin.

Luckily in the history of humankind there always had been some individuals like Albert Einstein, Galileo Galilei, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison and many others who did not think as the crowd.

Many of us believe that those special individuals were genius, not ordinary people, and that is true.

I would not to say that everyone should become necessarily a genius, but it is important, on my opinion, to study the biography of these great minds.

I mean that we can look at the way those extraordinary people thought and acted, then we can try to insert some new ideas into our own context.

I did that many times in my life and every time I learned something that subsequently, I put into practice with great results.

I have noticed that those genius and inventors had a special characteristic in common: not only they were standing out of the crowd, but also they were free from critiques of their contemporary.

This particular feature has always fascinated me.

I agree it is not so easy to act as a nonconformist but I am also convinced that if you believe in something you feel to be right and in the same time it does not hurt anyone else rights, you should do it!

Is Your Job The Right One?

"Learn to think in positive affirmations. Affirmations are any statements you make. Too often we think in negative affirmations. Negative affirmations only create more of what you say you don't want. Saying, I hate my job, will get you nowhere. Declaring, I now accept a wonderful new job, will open the channels in your consciousness to create that."

Louise Hay

If you are passionate about your job and if it makes you happy, what I am going to say probably does not concerns you.

I would not to bother anyone, but I have always thought about the following fact:

if you feel eager or even frustrated and if you have troubles interacting with your colleagues and with your entourage, probably your current job is not the right one.

Have you ever considered that someone else could do your inconvenient and hated job cheerfully?

I mean that someone else maybe most adaptive and who has fewer ambitions is losing his opportunity while you are occupying this role.

I would not say that you are going wrong, only that you could improve your job anytime if you want.

Many in the workforce are experiencing a nagging, growing sense of being too driven, with little or no time for family, important relationships or other personal values.

Maybe what you need is a greater sense of fulfillment and spiritual growth in what you are doing.

Maybe you are looking for community and meaning in your job.

Then you are examining different choices and opportunities keeping in mind your education, your potential and aims and your past job experiences.

I am firmly convinced that every one of us has the right in the long-term to approach him to the ideal and ever dreamed occupation.

If you do the right job, you are more happy and other people too! It works better both for you and for others.

It is finally a win-win situation.

Build Your Own Lifeline

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."

Mahatma Gandhi

If you want to improve yourself you need to understand who are you and what are your deeper aims.

To do this you have first to summarize the big events of your life.

I know it; it is very difficult and uneasy to put the face in our past.

Nevertheless, if you are able to do this, you will benefit from this experience and to define your objectives will become easier.

When I achieved my Master Degree (MBA) in Switzerland, I was 32 and I was coming out from one of my bigger emotional losses.

Exactly at this turning point of my life, I was able to know myself deep inside and to answer my big questions.

I took a piece of paper and I wrote in these three columns: Age/Phase, Big Events and Feelings.

Then, line by line, I wrote in on instinct all my precedent experiences from age of 18 until 32.

This was the main event of my life! I was light up!

Finally, all became clear in my mind: who I was, what was most important for me at that moment, which were my top priorities, and so on...

It is most frequent to achieve this task during our crisis and most critical phases, rather than during our normal life trends.

A Lifeline can be helpful to value ourselves now and to be more confident and aware in current and future transitions.

We cannot change the past. However, we have choices about how we let it influence and inspire our future.

Know Yourself

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will
not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius
will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the
world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone
are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve
the problems of the human race”

Calvin Coolidge,American 30th President of the United States, 1872-1933

Know Yourself!

The greatest ideal that one can intend is his or her own improvement.

We do not have other purpose in the life that to become what we potentially are.

We am too often an agglomeration of external influences, a building painted to the outside and dyed of more attractive colors, but we don't know what there is to the inside.

Without the knowledge of ourselves, we can never reach any stable and lasting objective.

However, be careful! When you start a self-improvement process or simply you try to change your own habits, a conflict appears in your mind.

This because the mind it will look for in all the ways of escapes both to the control that to the job needed by the techniques to which you has not gotten used.

That is why many fail or they easily find the excuses that do not have time to sufficiency to study or to improve themselves!

It needs therefore to be aware the first challenge that attends us and that we have to overcome it is our same mind and our habits.

Take Action Now

"All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move."

Benjamin Franklin

I know: decision making it is not an easy task! Nevertheless, it is up to you to start to improve your skills and job position.

First you need motivation and free time.

If you are not sure about your wishes, then you need a plan.

Do you have enough money? If you have money, you can inscribe yourself to a time management course either on line or in your region.

Then you need to clarify your main goal: is it to make more money, to reach a better job position, to improve your family safety?

Whatever is your main goal, you need motivation, free time and a plan.

At this point, you can take action and do it. Go on line and search for "self-improvement" or "career planning" terms.

Go to your preferred library and relax, something is going to happens.

I think that motivation, inspiration and self-confidence are the secret weapons to begin any complex task.

Where To Begin?

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

German dramatist, novelist, poet, & scientist (1749 - 1832)

Where To Begin?

This is a great question, but it's crucial too! How not to be overwhelmed by tons of information?

Well, I will tell you the truth: there is not a point of departure! The question should be: When to begin?

It does not matter where, but when: when you are ready and inspired.

If you are confident enough and sure of what you want you will feel relaxed and on top of things.

Of course you need to know what are you searching for which is your goal and purpose.

The main obstacle I always face when I start a research is my impatience!

It is not easy to find the right information you need, especially at the beginning.

You need to create your own trusted information sources list, systematically.

Learn to tease the universal from the particular.

It seems like there is no end to information, but knowledge is an entirely different thing, and the glut of information is merely panoply of essays at knowledge.

Let yourself be a dilettante until something grabs you, and then ride that out for what it's worth.

Be a participant, not a consumer, and trust your own judgments on that front.

Why Independent Learning Is So Important

"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that's your own self."
Aldous Huxley, Author

Hi there everyone! My name is Maurizio, I'm a self-learner since I exist.I am not a radical neither a protester, maybe I am substantially a nonconformist, and I prefer a "self-made" man.

Despite my formal education, I spent about 25 years of my life learning and experimenting always by me.

My experience can give you evidence the best long-term investment is to invest in your education and knowledge.

Nevertheless, why Independent Learning and Self-Learning are on my opinion so important?

Because they could help you to reach your goals much faster and in the same time they carry out your oneness!

I'm not talking about philosophy; I'm talking about career improvement and self-improvement.

Thomas Edison, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Abigail Adams, Benjamin Franklin, the Wright Brothers, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, and Margaret Mead are only a few of those who have learned without school.

Independent Learners learn what they want to learn, when they want to learn, and in the way they want to learn.

Most learning has always been independent but not most formal education.

Now e-learning is emancipating learners who want formal education, on their own terms.

How To Overcome That Sense Of Insecurity

“The opposite of security is insecurity, and the only way to overcome insecurity is to take risks.”

Theodore Forstmann

I experimented a feeling of insecurity many times in my early adolescence and especially during the college periods.

Do you know why? Because I had a very caricatured image of myself these days.

I did not really know myself so it was very difficult to build optimal relations with men and women.

The problem with my shyness taken a big part of my first 30 years cause I never feel ready to start successfully relationship both of sentimental and professional type
But there was an exact turning point in my life, exactly when I was forced to speech en public during my Master to present the breefing of my work group.

At this point I decided to play my role and to take my responsibilities until the end of the game.

Making the effort, I realized something good and unexpected was going to originate from my interior.

For the first time in my life I was able to change my caricatured image in a completely different image, an image of successful professional, an image of successful man, able to communicate well to the others and also I was finally well appreciated.

That was the first time I had to admit to myself that our potential is like a one hundred levels skyscraper of which we have decided to only live the first floor, while the 99 others are still not liveable!

Obviously this is a metaphor to say that many times we prefer not to take any risk and then to rest into our mediocrity.

It does not matter if the first time we feel clumsy and ungainly, this is normal, but more important thing is to put our effort on and to take some risks!

This simple act is an extraordinary gesture; it can really make the difference in our lives!

So take you risk and go! That sense of insecurity will vanish soon!

Time Is Not Always Related To Money

"Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things."

Jesse Jackson

Time is money. Right? Wrong!

Time is money only if you have opportunities, knowledge and correct thoughts, otherwise nothing cannot be done!

There are people that have a lot of time but they don't have money, for example the prisoners.

There are rich people with so much leisure time to their disposition, but don't know what to do! They annoy!

There are then very worn-out people, who never have time for anybody neither for them, same, and unbelievable but true, they don't have enough money or they would like more always of it.

Why there are so many differences in the way according to which the live have people, do you have ever thought about this?

It is evident that time = money is not a correct equation, if not in very approximate way.

What does it miss? The thoughts. The way according to which we use our mind is fundamental.

Thousand times I proved this to myself, at first hand!

That's why I insist so much on the thoughts. Without the mastery of the own thoughts there is no real personal growth, even if you read all the books of the world.

If you want to improve yourself not only you need more knowledge to acquire, but also you will have above all to integrate it with your thoughts and your beliefs, before putting new knowledge in practice!

How To Face Toward Your Fears

"Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do."

Pope John XXIII

If you knew to be able to face any situation, would you have something to fear?

Obviously no.

The fear is the technique used by the nature to prepare to defend you to you from the danger.

You dread when you anticipate a loss or a pain.

You are afraid of what you believe must be fears.

But if you have trust in your ability to face every situation, here that automatically you minimize the fear.

Your safety not comes from what you have, but from knowing to be able to face any eventualities.

You can begin to minimize your fears facing them.

Once established of which you are afraid, therefore you act in the best way to eliminate the threats that your fears provoke.

To act on the fear is much better than living feeling oneself incapable and impotent.
The main four fears that sabotage your ability to use the optimal thought are: the fear of the failure, of the refusal, of the success and of the pain.

Remember: to act and to face toward your fears is the only way to dissipate them.

How A Positive Thinker Looks On Negative Factors

“People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong...Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?”

Thich Nhat Hanh

Cars are furnished of "negative indicators" sets really in front of the driver to tell him when the battery doesn't load, when the motor is heating too much, when the pressure of the oil is too much low, and so on.

To ignore these negative indicators can ruin your auto, nevertheless there is no necessity to excessively be stunned if someone of these negative signals ignites: you don't have to do anything else other than to stop you at a station of service or at a garage, and to set remedy to the drawbacks.

A negative signal doesn't mean but the car it is not good; all the autos heat too much sometimes.

This despite the driver of the car doesn't continually owe and exclusively to be careful to the dashboard: this could be disastrous.

He/she has to stop his/her attention on the windscreen, he/she has to look where he/she is going and above all has to watch out for his/her destination, to where he/she wants to go.

He/she simply has to give every now and then a look to the negative indicators and when him ago, no it has to settle neither to delay on them.

He/she quickly has to look again in front of itself and to focus himself/herself on his/her positive purpose and that is on the where he/she wants to go.

Auto-observation a precious tool

"It is the theory that decides what can be observed."

Albert Einstein

The only ways through which someone can help you it is call into question your ideas.

If you are ready to listen and if you are ready to be called into question, something you can do, but nobody can help you.

Which are the most important things in absolute? It is auto-observation.

Nobody can give you a hand, in this. Nobody can furnish you a method. Nobody can show you a technique.

In the moment in which a technique is learned, you again become programmed.

But the auto-observation - that is to look at him same - it is important.

It doesn't mean to be absorbed in his/her own thoughts to be worry of oneself.

It is not of this that I am talking about: I am talking about the auto-observation. But what is it really?

It means to observe all of this that is inside us and around us, up to the most extreme point, and to observe as if it happened to somebody else.

In other words this means that is not personalized that that it happens us, it means to look at the things as if some bond was not had with them.

In this way you will have reached a great ability of "separation" from your anxieties and from your worries and this give you the power not to identify you with them.