#33.- Home cooking

A chef showing the Galician octopus and her husband
playing the bagpipes

Today is the Winter Feast in my town, Santa Maria de Palautordera. One of the most appreciated activities is a show of Home Cooking.
Today we have reached the 27th edition of it! That means BIG WORDS! At this moment this activity can be considered as a "modern" tradition.
More than 40 chefs have cooked their best specialities for the rest of the town. People have tasted new meals or food that people know but prepared for other man o woman.
It's beautiful to see how the generational change is made in this kind of activities. Young girls and boys help their parents to serve dishes or cook. This is a good sign of the work is doing well.
The dining room has been completely full. There wasn't space enough for anything more. It's wonderful see how this kind of "rural" activity has a place, despite the pressure of other activities like cinema, restaurants, weekend getaway, sports, ...
Although the activity is commonly catalan, it's wonderful to see how foreign people living in the town for years participates too. Today I've seen 4 morocco couples, 1 italian and 1 brazilian.

Good work, organizators!

#32.- Prune time

Usually, winter is the prune time. Prune is a way to prepare the trees for the next season and giving them the opportunity to produce more fruits. Usually, when we prune something, we remove all these parts  that are bad, or are not modelled as we want.

Applying these concepts to our personal or professional life, pruning, is a way to make our bag lightweight, enabling us to walk faster o giving space to put new things on the bag.

In an speech that I've received today, this is called "unlearning". For me this is a new, powerful and frightening (because it is unknow for me) concept.

I've participated in an experiment where I've learned that sometimes is better not knowing something than knowing it. But if you know it, your mental model block you from learning new things. In these cases is necessary unlearn, and this is not easy, because that means loose something that you have.

Good News are that psychologists are studying how to help people to do this process easier and enabling oneself to go further, minimizing the pain of doing that.

If you don't prune fruit trees on winter, year after year, the tree maybe produces more fruits, but, for sure, smaller and weaker.

Then, start to unlearn to leverage you to new horizonts!

#31.- Winning prizes

What's happening? says the mantis.

Today is day of celebration! These three photos that I presented in a contest have won a prize:

• The town through the window (Third prize)
• What's happening? - says the mantis (Special mention prize)
• Dandelions (Special mention prize)

In someway is reward for an appreciated work. But, the best reward is being the author of these prized photos and the time that I spent taking them, specially the photos series of the mantis.

Is nice to be recognized. Is a way to say "your work counts!", although this work had been done in your free time. 

The town through the window

Dandelions

#38.- Cooking for my workmates

I work at InfoJobs. It's a unique and fantastic company, completely different from any other company that I've ever known: the general manager gifts meditation books to the people, we have the joy room where we receive relaxation, meditation and yoga classes, we have the Santa Arroba fest (an incredible outdoor company day), the play station where people play after lunch, we have fresh fruit every Tuesday, flowers for mothers who have children, and a long and astonishing etc.
But there is something that overcomes all what I've written before: THE PEOPLE. Without the people that works here, InfoJobs would be four walls. Great professionals and good people, innovative, creative, commited, generous. able to do what nobody else is able to do and with the desire of being better every day, professional and personally
A proof of what I say is that sometimes people bring home made cakes or cookies for their workmates for any reason. For me, this simple action makes the team stronger and means that after the work, people think in their mates.
If you want, today you can taste "pasta seca". Pick it up in the innovation corner (in the sixth floor, beside the joy room).
Have a nice day!

#30.- Proposals for the new year

Usually before start the New Year, people sets long lists of proposals for the New Year: stop smoke, going to the gym and stop paying for nothing, take english classes, and an incredible long etc.

I could do the same, but I don't smoke, I don't go to the gym (but I go to excursions often) and I take English classes every friday. For this reason this year I want to set a different proposal.

We're immerse in a big economical crisis (at least is what media tries to convince). I believe that this crisis is moral, etical, cultural and energetic. Hearing all the day bad news makes difficult don't fall in the pesimism. The daily News can turn one self crazy... and the worst is that can convince everybody that this is normal.

For this reason this year I will try to focus on the positive aspects of everything. I will redouble my efforts to do that. This not easy, and requieres a bit of training and the hability to see the things from another point of view, usually "faced" to the vast majority.

But people needs new leaders with a positive discourse, who motive, who generates the inquietude of waking up every morning to build something amazing, a more fair world, who leverages their creativity, potentential, etc...

Let me give an example: here at Spain, the goverment have started to cut the  expenses, because we have been spending more than we could have  spent. Ok, then what we need to do is adjust or equilibrate the spending (adjust vs cut). The good new is that every month the difference between the incomes and the expenses should be less. If we have done the things well, that should be the result. And althought the challenge is big... getting these results would be hopeful. We need another way of communication!

This can be applied to our work. Yes, some companies are in "economical crisis", but I believe that companies are in creative and lack of entusiasm crisis.

Companies are not creative by themselves. Companies are nothing. Companies are a noun given to a group of people that work together. And here is the key point: each of us!

If each of us treats of give the best of one self, if each answer is preceded by an smile, if instead of focusing on defects we focus on oportunities, if we look to build a better and fair world, if we avoid the especulation, .... we could change this situation. And this is something that can start by oneself.

Some key words are important for this year:

* Challenges vs Problems.
* Community vs individual.
* Do more with less: an oportunity to redefine paradigms.
* Choose each word that you use in a communication to use positive words.
* Smile, be educated and respectful more than ever.
* Share, communicate and act in a network.
* Feel proud of leave a better world for your descendants.
* Learn from your errors, and explain it to avoid others commit the same errors.
* Listen your body and give yourself time to listen it: ofte it give signals about which option choose everytime you are in a crossroad.
* Reinvent, renew and rebirth yourself. Everyone of us is able to adapt to these continuous and changing circumstances. The normal is change. We have been changing along the history. The abnormal is don't change.


That's my proposal.

Which is you New Years Proposal? Share it!