Facing Crisis With A Positive Outlook
How we should react when economy slows down.
When the global financial market is in turmoil the first thing most people think of doing is holding onto things and cutting expenditure. And they automatically assume (because the newspapers tell them) that everyone is acting that way.
Everyone ISN`T responding in that manner. There are many people and many ventures that flourish, whether the economy is down or not. And if you are wondering why it is so, the solution is available there where it is often likely to be overlooked. It will be a good idea to search for the answer together.
When a ‘down’ current comes, no matter what it is, the most effective solution is to rise above it. When we go with the down current we sink with the tide and have to wait, suffocating, until the tide changes.
The truth is that when we know how to steer ourselves and be our own masters, we will able to stay afloat or swim against the current, come what may. Let us see how we can manage it.
‘Go-getters’ or ‘Go-givers’
Consider a situation where we want much more – fatter profit, a salary boost, lengthier holidays, better freedom, and better prospects.
When we yearn for a thing, our response is to try to get it. By that yardstick everybody is a ‘Go-getter’. And a ‘go-getter’ is understood as a dynamic, enterprising person with leadership qualities. Such an attitude is a prime requirement for succeeding in life as we understand it. Nevertheless, there is an innate conundrum. When these approaches are put into practice, there are certain unanticipated, though unavoidable upshots.
Because after ‘getting’ and ‘having’ it what tends to follow is ‘losing’ it. We either lose it physically or we lose interest in what it was we got.
And when we are tired of one thing we concentrate on getting something new. And these fresh cravings never end. The more we go in search of newer things, the wider the chain of desire that makes us continuously yearn for things. It simply becomes an addiction!
Why don’t we turn our ‘getting’ into contributing?
You’ve probably noticed that giving always creates a great feeling. And it comes from gratitude rather than from fear or greed. We can continue to give more and receive more on our now, ever-fulfilling journey.
Our abundant and providing attitude creates abundant and providing clients and team mates while our cost awareness and ‘getting approach’ would draw towards us only similar clients and team mates. And those are the type of people we would not like to be friends with!
Creative capitalism
Most enterprises are conscious of this now. Companies have now started providing for others in myriad ways. A complete change has come over as companies understand how the idea of giving is crucial to their business. In an article in TIME Magazine in July 2008, it was Bill Gates who coined the word ‘Creative Capitalism.’
He said: “Doing good might be the tipping point that leads people to choose one product over another.”
The gist of what Bill Gates is saying is that when an enterprise is associated with the idea of providing in any manner, that enterprise and its products become more appealing to clients. It carves out a niche for itself far above that of others.
Creative Capitalism is about rising above what we reluctantly settle for to reach what we truly aspire to. When we can capitalise on our ideas and imagination in a way that benefits and nurtures the wider community and network; we stop wasting our resources, efforts and talents in trying to temporarily win. We start creating the real win for ourselves and for the sustainability of our global economy.
The appeal of effective giving
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the phrase that’s often used to describe giving back at a corporate level. It’s becoming almost a required part of corporate business practice. Yet when it’s done out of a sense of obligation or with the intent to just make ourselves look good, people eventually get what it is. It still is a temporary strategy.
Business ventures and people who ‘donate’ become popular. The zeal and sincerity that prods them to act is recognized by the people with whom they interact. This response is on top of what is spun by way of the company’s public relation efforts.
What would be the result if part of the amount that is meant for marketing is diverted towards charity?
From the act of giving rises something that transcends us. The act of contributing results in revelation. And this revelation ensues only when it reverberates across those whom we want to arouse. And we are aroused when we become part of the happening totally. We cannot be satisfied with the narratives that are passed on to us. Those tales have to be lived in. in the end it is human nature to yearn for the satisfaction of making our own donation – to our kith and kin and organizations and society.
Transaction-based giving makes it happen automatically
The ability to give just got so much easier too, thanks to an initiative (some would say a ‘movement’) called Buy1GIVE1 (Buy One Give One). Buy1GIVE1 is the home of transaction-based giving. Transaction-based giving changes everything. Let’s use some imagination to see why.
How would you like the scenario whereby every time you have a coke at a nearby eatery, a needy child in Africa gets clean water at least for a single day?
Or a different scenario where with every subscription to a journal that you would like to read, a sapling gets planted somewhere where it was badly needed? Or whenever you ate out, someone routinely got fed out of its profit?
Or supposing you are undergoing some training. How wonderful it would be if another eager student far away is also getting the necessary training as a corollary (believe it or not, the training does not cost the training institute more than 60 cents a day).
Where a motivational speaker at a conference is connected with a charity, part of his income might go to helping kids who have speech problems due to facial defects. It will be a matter of great satisfaction for the participants at the conference to know that their very participation is helping a deserving cause.
Imagine the perfect scenario where transaction-based giving can be applied in one’s own special manner to correspond with the available products and services to include every member of the group and customers. It is possible.
The economy where all benefits
As of now, enterprises all across the world are realising the power of transaction-based giving. TESCO, one of the better known supermarket chains of UK, has correlated its sales in such a way that when someone buys a pair of school trousers from them, a child in Kenya gets a school uniform.
Mineral Water Company Volvic also rolled out their transaction-based giving program successfully last year. For every 1 litre of Volvic people buy, Volvic gives funds to build wells in Africa in a program they call Buy1 GIVE 10 (since every 1 litre sold essentially creates a flow of 10 litres in the well.
Small to medium sized companies are now starting to take leadership in expanding this global giving movement through Creative Capitalism. Buy1GIVE1 (www.b1g1.com), a Singapore-based Social Enterprise came up with a mechanism that has turned this transaction-based giving into something every one of us can be involved in.
Buy1GIVE1 is the abode of the most powerful transaction-based giving in the world because it ties up any enterprise of any size to any worthy cause in the world. It is creating an international community of entrepreneurial givers and for SME`s, Buy1GIVE1 correlates enterprises, their buyers AND causes in an unsurpassable way. The system has been so perfected that it is automated.
You can enrol yourself as a citizen of this marvel of universal giving by simply getting a Buy1GIVE1 `VISA` directly from the Buy1GIVE1 site at www.b1g1.com. And if you are an entrepreneur, you can become a B1G1 Business through making an online application and choosing the requirement for which you would like to donate and your product or service through which you would prefer to do it to initiate the giving. Buy1GIVE1 forwards the whole of the donation to their international Worthy Cause Partners (with more than 528 projects to choose) making the giving entirely satisfactory.
Are you aware?
* Half the world-nearly three billion people-live on less than two dollars a day.
* Even when the new millennium dawned there were still almost a billion people who were illiterate.
* Poverty and malnutrition robs the lives of 20 children every minute, 30,000 every day, and 210,000 children every week, as per UNICEF records.
* A mere 12 percent of the world’s population uses 85 percent of its water; and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World.
* About a billion people have no access to minimum health care facilities.
* 63,000 square miles of rainforests are destroyed each year.
Figures From Global Issues
Buy1GIVE1 Businesses- scrutinize these examples
* Buy1BUILD1 (www.sunsplashhomes.com, www.arkgroup.com.au)
* Instruction to Instruction (www.kipmcgrath.com.au)
* Medical practice providing healthcare (www.primanora.com)
* Telephone card helping in communication (www.ultimatecomms.com)
* Relaxation to healing (www.meditate.com.au)
* Weight loss to kids’ meals (www.bodychain.com)
* Blind installation to lighting up schools (www.blindscouture.com.au)
* Socks for protecting feet from frostbite (www.socksforhappypeople.com)
* Learning to educating social organizers (www.b1g1forcoaches.com)
* And for full details, just log on to www.b1g1.com.
Finding what we are looking for-Nature gives us the clue
So let’s let us return to the starting point-turbulent economics and managing to get what we need. The needs are in fact not all that knotty. They are just a group of three words that begin with the letter S – strong bonds, solidarity and society.
When we can pool resources and not segregate and when we can divine a proper way to augment what every one has got and not cut down from what each has got, we understand that there is a veritable cornucopia of sources to be had in the world. And when we bond, jot just with our physical persona, but with our intrinsic selves, we discern something completely fascinating -that we’re all ONE. Then we comprehend how uncomplicated it is to form a universal community from something as ordinary as giving.
And the truth is there in all its glory in nature.
In earth’s natural workshop, beautiful butterflies fertilize flowers and help to produce gardens that continue generation after generation. It was there even before recorded history.
Failures are said to be stepping stones to success. In the same way we can turn setbacks into advantages. In reality we should be thankful for the current situation that is helping us to move ahead.
And when you choose to start giving today, you will feel so much better despite the economic challenges. And when you feel better you will discover a renewal of hope and you will remember all tides change and the down will soon be up. Giving today is the one thing that you can do to change everything.
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