Mauro Libi Entrepreneur

Do you remember playing the word association game? What is the first thing that comes to mind in response to 'creativity?' For most people it is probably 'art' or something similar, it is probably never 'business.' Creativity is not simply the preserve of the artist. It is something built into everyone, even the businessperson! Thinking creatively is a powerful business tool that can help  businesses  exploit new opportunities and solve problems, all of which can result in improved profitability. Mike Waddell of Adsidia offers tips on creative thinking as a tool to help you generate new thinking in your business. Edward de Bono, of 'lateral thinking' and 'Six Thinking Hats' fame, observed that the human mind is a very efficient pattern making and matching system. The problem is that our minds are lazy. This means that we tend to force fit new scenarios to old patterns instead of making new ones. De Bono called this 'cliché thinki...

A typical day at work may not be what you would want a typical day to be. Just the way that last sentence is worded makes it sound negative.  There is an old joke about a mom waking her son up one morning to go to school.  The son tells his mom that he doesn't want to go to school.  He tells his mom that all the teachers  hate him and the kids make fun of him and that he hates going to school. His mom tells him "Son, you are forty two years old, you are the principle of the school and you have to go ."   Your typical morning may have so many problems presented to you. Everyone in the office may be so stressed out. The problems may seem so overwhelming that you push it off for another day. Meanwhile stress builds up. All the employees feel depressed and negative. No one feels like the  ignored problems can be solved.  For a business to succeed, you and your workers have to first want to show up to work. You want every employee including your...

There  has always been a debate about the benefits of positive thinking and or positive attitude. Some believe that it is just an internal good feeling that in reality do not benefit a person at all. Well, the students at Harvard university seem to disagree with that critique of positive thinking. Harvard’s Positive Psychology 1504, taught by professor Tal Ben-Shahar (PhD), will enter the history books as the most popular course in the history of Harvard University. A course taught at Harvard on the effects of Positive attitude and it is Harvard's most popular course ever given. This course is about the psychological aspects of life fulfillment and flourishing, by teaching about empathy, friendship, love, achievement, creativity, spirituality, happiness, and humor. Tal Ben-Shahar received his PHD in Organizational Psychology.  In 2011, Ben-Shahar joined Angus Ridgway to confound Potentialife, a leadership development program that uses science to help organizations devel...

Keeping a positive attitude at the work place is very important for the success and survival of the company. One bad apple (employee) can bring down the spirits and enthusiasm of the entire work force, so it is very important to recognize a bad attitude or an employee with depression. Here are some facts. At any one time, 1 employee in 20 is experiencing depression. In 1989, depression cost the nation  more than $17 billion due to time lost from work. There is no way to estimate the total cost of lost productivity. Clinical depression affects the total person―body, feelings, thoughts and behaviors―and comes in various forms. Some people have a single bout of depression; others suffer recurrent episodes. Still others experience the severs mood swings of bipolar disorder―sometimes called manic-depressive illness―with moods alternating between depressive lows and manic highs. A company that can quickly pick up when an employee has depression can save itself a...

A good leader is one who has the ability to do great things. he is very successful at what he does, he may even be the best at what he does. He also knows that he is the best. he believes in his own abilities to succeed and he is a just loaded with positive energy. His attitude toward himself and his attitude toward his job are so positive that everyone around him feels this positive energy and they also feel positive that he will shine at what he does and they know what an asset he is to the company. Despite all of his wonderful successes and his record breaking wins he is just okey, good at best. he is not a great leader and he will not make a great manager. A great manager is a person that not only has everything we already spoke about but he teaches his coworkers and his employees how to fell like winners also. A good leader has positive energy. A really great leader knows how to transfer that energy to others. Imagine a football coach that is truly great at what he does, ...

There are times when we feel like giving up. It seems like nothing is going our way and that the situation is bleak if not hopeless. It is times like these, it is important to stay positive.  Abraham Lincoln was a chronic depressive. He suffered from depression his whole life. If you see his early life you can understand why. He was born into poverty. He lost eight elections. He failed twice in business. He also suffered a nervous breakdown.  Yet despite all his loses, he never quite. He saw himself as a winner and was always positive. Imagine that, a chronic depressive who had a positive attitude.  After losing a senate race, Abraham Lincoln commented,"The path was worn and slippery. My foot slipped from under me, knocking the other one out of the way, but I recovered and said to myself. It is a slip and not a fall."  After this race, Mr Lincoln went on to become our greatest president.  Abraham Lincoln had his own half cup- half empty s...

Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you are right.” Henry ford believed in the power of positive thinking. He believed that your thinking and your attitude affected the outcome. if you had negative thinking and did not believe that you would succeed then you would end off in failure. When you think positively, you will almost always find more solutions. When you are optimistic, you believe there is a solution to be found, and you free your mind to devise those solutions. Pessimism can lead to hopelessness and failure. “Don't find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain”   was another quote from Henry Ford. When Henry Ford wanted to start his automobile company he met with at least two failures and he lost his investors. They had lost their faith in him, but he did not lose his faith in himself. He had learned from his mistakes and was on his way to amazing success. “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off yo...

Some things are just a bad idea and were not meant to be. Being positive and having a positive attitude and positive thinking does not mean that you believe that every idea that you ever will have is a correct one. Some times having confidence in yourself means that you know when to quite. It is being self assured and strong enough to quit when you have failed at a task. Sony technologies, we all will agree is a very successful company. Akio Morita, who was the founder of Sony knew that he would succeed. He started his company making a rice cooker, that was terrible, It burned the rice and was a total failure. He gave up on this idea quickly and admitted his mistake. Never be afraid to cut your losses and move on from an objectively bad idea or situation. Have the confidence that a bad idea or several bad ideas or failures does not make you a failure. A positive person moves on and learns from his mistakes to eventually find his win. Akio Morita had a saying, "If you never...

Christian Lawson wrote a book called , 'Your forces and how to use them". “Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Look at the sunny side of everything & and make your optimism come true. Think only of the best, work only for the best. Forget the mistakes of the past & press on the greater achievements of the future. Give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. Live in the faith that the whole world is on your side as long as you are true to the best that is in you.”  He was a African American pastor and he believed that you had to have a positive view of yourself and everything that you did in life had to come from a positive perspective. You had to change your mind sent to one of total positivity to be successful. he believed that you had a certain power that came from being self confident. even if you are at the bottom and down on your luck, you have to tell yourself, that you...

At the age of ten Colonel Sanders was fired from a job and told by his boss,"Your not worth a doggone boy". Back then, the belief was that telling s child the truth about how inadequate they were would give them incentive to settle for a lesser job or skill, which matched their lack of a talent. His mother would tell him,"I am afraid that you are just no good. I guess I will never be able to count on you".  For most of his life, the Colonel worked low skilled jobs. He never believed that he could amount to much. He even had one job where he cleaned cigaret ashtrays. At the age of sixty five he worked twelve hours a day pumping gas. But his perception changed. He would eat fried chicken at restaurants and it always tastes like toothpaste to him. He believed that he had the best recipe. He believed that he had what it took to sell the most and best fried chicken he believed in himself. He developed a very positive attitude.  It was not easy. He went to 1009 ...

A young reader of my blogs said that in his personal experience, he understood that success was only a word was in the dictionary, and apparently - according to their perception-had only a linguistic meaning. He also told me that he found it "interesting" that I considered my father as "a successful man". Secret-of-success1 Certainly there are many people who have the same perception of the success that the young reader. For years they have perceived the victory as something that does not exist and have not received information about the true nature of success, as individuals, as entrepreneurs and as a society. Since I'm not an expert in these matters, I just dedicate myself to write my opinion on such issues, I suggest you review the dictionary definition of success, exactly as the young man says. In the dictionary of the Spanish language it says that success is a word of Latin origin on exitus meaning ("Exit"), and the concept refers to th...

“Shared value offers corporations the opportunity to utilize their skills, resources, and management capability to lead social progress in ways that even the best-intentioned governmental and social sector organizations can rarely match.” the above quote is from Mark Kramer. A company like Nestlé, which pioneered the shared value movement, insists that it has been creating shared value since its precursor company was founded in 1866. Many companies would argue the same—and with some justification. years ago it was called corporate responsibility. Mark Kramer and Michael Porter advocated  the radical idea that companies that tackle social problems. They wanted a corporate revolution with the rallying call for companies to be "We all want to change the world". Mark Kramer acts as a consultant helping corporations create shared value initiative for their company. He believes as his quote above says that corporations can create better social change than any government. T...

Do you remember playing the word association game? What is the first thing that comes to mind in response to 'creativity?' For most people it is probably 'art' or something similar, it is probably never 'business.' Creativity is not simply the preserve of the artist. It is something built into everyone, even the businessperson! Thinking creatively is a powerful business tool that can help businesses exploit new opportunities and solve problems, all of which can result in improved profitability. Mike Waddell of Adsidia offers tips on creative thinking as a tool to help you generate new thinking in your business. Edward de Bono, of 'lateral thinking' and 'Six Thinking Hats' fame, observed that the human mind is a very efficient pattern making and matching system. The problem is that our minds are lazy. This means that we tend to force fit new scenarios to old patterns instead of making new ones. De Bono called this 'cliché thi...

Reality is in the eye of the beholder. That is an old saying. You may love your spouse very much but unless they feel that love or perceive you as living them, then your reality is not the same as theirs. Their reality is what they sense. Another example, you know yourself to be a very caring patient about your company, your products and for your customers. But their reality may be that they do not feel that you really care, they do not sense that you would be there for them.  As a result, you may lose the sale from your customer, your boss may fire you or you get passed up for a promotion that you really deserve. In many of these cases it is all about your attitude. If you feel positive about yourself, other people will also. If you have a negative attitude then the people around you will fell that negativity and in turn be negative towards you.  There is an old story from India. Two shoe salesmen goes to India to sell shoes. The first salesman sees that no one wears sh...

Norman Vincent Pearl in the 1950's wrote a book on positive thinking effects on your life in so many ways. He claimed that it would bring one more happiness and more success. He wrote that you could not be successful unless you believed that you had the ability to succeed. That positive thought created positive results.  The belief of positive thinking was met with a lot of controversy. Many believed that it was a type of self hypnosis. They believed that if a situation was bad or negative then you had a bad situation and that thinking positive was being delusional. They believed that you have to accept the facts for what they are. Thinking positive will not change anything.  Norman Vincent Pearl was not the first to believe that positive thinking can make real changes. Thousand of years ago in India, The Sulta of the Golden Light believed that negative thought was the delusion. There was the belief that bad health, poverty, misery, affliction, abuse, ill will and all things...

This was written in India around the year 400CE. This sutra is a very basic, very practical way of dealing with negative thoughts.  There is an analogy  given of a ship surrounded by water. The water is all negative. While you are on the ship, the ocean  is scary. It can sink your ship and kill everyone on board.  The waves can be deadly. many of the crew get sea sick. You just want arrive at your destination. The ocean water is all negative. But without this water, how would you get to your destination. Your goal is reached by thinking of the ocean as a positive, as the vehicle to achieving your goals and arriving at you intended conclusion.  In the everyday battle to control our minds and stay on the path of yoga, there are days when it is easy to feel the bliss that is our true nature and there are days when that sense of joy is completely buried and on the verge of suffocation.  We have to deal with the darkness by focusing more intently on the lig...