Arnold Beekes

  How can you reduce stress and follow your dreams while replacing job security You don’t know how you are being conditioned to live someone else’s life. Hardly anyone knows how our (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual) capabilities are intentionally being suppressed and why we are not taught how to live life. You feel stressed, powerless and unfulfilled in a world where others are pulling the strings. When you know how you can escape from this conditioning, you’ll be amazed at what you can do, and experience a huge growth in health, happiness and freedom. Would you like to learn the secrets of this conditioning? Would you like to follow your own dreams instead of the dreams of others? Would you rather be an explorer than a marionette? Approximately the first twenty years of your life, parents and education are pressing you to conform. Conformity to culture, to orders from folks higher in the hierarchy, and to the way to dress, are just some examples. No...

  Approximately the first twenty years of your life, parents and education are pressing you to conform. Conformity to culture, to orders from folks higher in the hierarchy, and to the way to dress, are just some examples. Not all conformity is bad. Generally speaking I support conformity to laws and being polite (and kind) to other people. This conformity leads to group thinking and to copying others. The dominant force is sameness. Look respectively at high school students, members of a sports team, or employees of a government institution, they all look the same. The best practices approach in business has resulted in companies that are only different from competitors in name. The products and prices are similar. What is the real difference between Burger King and McDonalds, or between Air France and British Airways? Except for a bit of marketing, they are the same.  Standardization has infiltrated many aspects of doing business. That is why full-scale automation...

As you know, we are creatures of habit. From the moment we get out of bed until we get back to sleep again, we are doing the same things over and over again. This is a good thing, to a certain extent. For example, it would not be good if we would not know how to brush our teeth every morning. From a business perspective, those habits could rather limit our learning. It sounds like a cliché, but it is a reality that change is happening at a very fast pace. So, if you keep on doing the same things over and over again, you might be loosing the game quite quickly, because sudden events will surprise you. At the same time you might be missing out on some opportunities, just because your old/current work style is not opening up to the new developments. For instance, I did speak with an executive who did mention the need to increase the awareness for his products, without having a marketing budget. Besides the traditional word of mouth approach and networking, he had no other appr...

Here is my new article:  What to do after college? Young people should stop looking for jobs and, instead, be innovators!

   More and more research (positive psychology; happiness) indicates that giving a compliment is very important for the wellbeing, as well as the performance of employees. A compliment makes you feel good (yes, that is true for everyone!) and that will help you to more easily solve problems, be nicer to customers and/or come up with new ideas. So, why are we not giving that many compliments then? The reason might be our culture , in which we are trained to focus on the weaknesses, mistakes and faults, rather than focusing on the strengths. We are afraid that people will become lazy when we give them compliments, or maybe that they will start asking for a raise.  Again, this is not true. In most cases, employees give a higher value to a positive and motivating environment than to just their salaries. Therefor we need to practice to give compliments (at work and at home). And we also need to be careful if we criticize someone.   A decade of resea...

  All the digital tools are really becoming an addiction. They look like a digital extension of our bodies. Everywhere, people are constantly glued to their screens, whether it is on the bike, during meetings and presentations, in coffee shops or while watching TV. In combination with the frantic pace of our society, that looks like a normal thing to do. At the same time it is also crucial to disconnect regularly to give our minds and intellects the time: -  To digest -  To understand -  To connect -  To reflect -  To give it a place -  To get ideas The way to do this is to create space with time and/or place. You can fix daily intervals where you will switch off the digital devices. You can also decide to not use your digital ‘friends’ in certain spaces, e.g. the kitchen, sleeping room, the garden. Yesterday I did watch a documentary about Ricardo Semler, one of the most interesting iconoclasts of our time. H...

Many people are hoping (and expecting) that ‘things’ will return back to normal. This means to them that the economic crisis will end and that we will grow again, that there will be new jobs and that the stock price will increase. This also means that they just have to wait and be patient. This perspective allows then not to change their own behaviors. This sounds like the definition of insanity: “doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results”. So, let me awaken you (if needed). Things will not return back to normal. There is a huge transformation under way, which impact will be felt even more in the coming year. Education, government, healthcare are among the areas, which will be impacted, and urgently need innovation. The only way to cope with these changes is to continuously learn, adapt and act in a new, more sustainable way. However, if you still think of old institutions (schools, training-organizations, universities) tha...