Inspire Series X Muhammad Ali

Born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Muhammad Ali reigned as a boxing champion in the ring but as an inspiration to many outside the ring. With a height of 1,91 m Ali is known for his unorthodox method of boxing: instead of holding his hands high to block punches, he literally floated around in the ring diverting punches. Next to becoming a Sunni Muslim, one of his character traits that he was very outspoken concerning religion, human rights and was very opinionated. 
He always believed that he was the greatest boxer alive and commended attention in that way and became bigger then life. He took risks by not listing to go to Vietnam and overcame all the struggles to regain his world championship title. Since he retired from boxing, his life is about devoting himself to humanitarian endeavors around the world supporting education efforts of all kinds, promotion adoption and encouraging people to respect and better understand one another. Being a champion in the ring as he still is outside of the ring.

I hated every minute of training, but I said, "Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion."
Muhammad Ali

Learning to be a Satisficer

Another day at Seats2Meet 030: today was one of the coolest and most awakening interviews I had in a long time. I had the pleasure to meet Kim van Velzen which is the general manager of the CDEF Holding which the concept of Seats2Meet belongs to. 
Officially it was an interview and with interviews for job positions a person has expectations. I had several great experiences with working at Seats2Meet and having a crowd of people around me which are, for the most part, open for conversation. However, the position which I am interested in was already occupied so this led me to a conversation (during the interview) about expectation management. 


Let's say you visit a great restaurant and you have a wonderful dinner. Even the person serving you is utmost attentive and kind an during the dinner you look to your significant other and say that you really enjoy being here and this must be a great place to work. The association between having a pleasurable experience somewhere leads to the assumption that it also must be a great place to work. This can be the case, but experiencing one thing and actually working at the place where you had the experience can be quite different. In my case of today: i will have to prove myself again from scratch which I am always interested in and can start fresh in an exciting organization.


What happened was: I projected my pleasurable experiences on my focus of potentially working there. I made this inference due to positive associations and experiences. During my days of moving towards my graduation I think a lot of what my next step is and how important that choice is because it might affect my whole career. For one part, this is true because choices involve other choices but the modern marketplace is a conspiracy to confuse, to trick the mind that believing that every choices (how small they might be) are actually extremely significant. I know people who actually others that they already should be a millionaire because they are approaching 30, the thing is: i am not kidding!


I personally believe that when everybody does the thing that they love or are naturally good at, which can be the same thing or not, a lot of people would be happier.
Rather then always focusing on maximizing, i would rather set criteria for adequacy, rather then to identify an optimal solution.
Most of the time we do not know the outcomes of our undertakings in life, we can rarely evaluate all outcomes with adequate precision.


What I gained from this cool conversation was a good lesson in expectation management, some personal insights and this blog which will remind to always be myself during any conversation. In the meantime, I’m going to continue my quest for self-improvement, reminding myself to be less of a maximizer and more of a satisficer

Inspire Series

Today I sat down for a minute in one of the buildings of the Erasmus University, overlooking the whole campus while enjoying a nice Espresso. Actually I am pretty lucky that all my hard work got me so far that I can sit here, almost as a graduate, and overthink how I got so far. I was reminded of an MBA-student, in his thirties, who left Nigeria to come to Rotterdam and get his MBA in Business Administration. As the world becomes a global village, he is a nice example of how one can pack up and head in a whole new direction. This moment led me to the idea of also sharing the stories, encounters and conversations I have with people who inspire, achieve and work hard and from whose endevaours I draw lessons from.

Sir Ken Robinson

I will post these stories, pictures, random encounters and inspirational moments under the Inspire Series. This will also include encounters while I travel and pictures or can be a story of a personal hero of mine.

On to the next one!