Weekly choice: about honesty, memory and many many kisses

The Right Way to Answer “What’s Your Greatest Weakness?”

David Reese from Harvard Business Review shares his concerns about the new generation of young inspired business men and women who just finished career school programs. In this interesting and amusing post he demonstrate what how a business interview should be more than how it is being taught.

“Thomas Jefferson once said that “honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom”. Though truth-telling abounds in grade school platitudes, it seems scarcer the older we get. But this decline in honesty — let’s call it dishonesty — isn’t necessarily innate. Dishonesty can be taught. In my experience, I’ve noticed that, of all culprits, college career centers are exceptional traffickers of such miseducation. In the process, they’re hurting their brightest students’ chances of making it in the world of startups by convincing them to give dishonest answers to tough interview questions.

What is your greatest weakness? Even if you’ve only had just one professional interview in your life, then you’ve probably still been asked some version of this question. Do you remember how you answered? Did you say that you work too hard? That you have perfectionist tendencies? Or that you’re too passionate? Be honest. “

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/01/the-right-way-to-answer-whats-your-greatest-weakness/

.

RSA Animate – The Power of Networks

The animated series of RSA is simply sublime. It is an amusing and active way to learn about important concepts in our society. “In this RSA Animate, Manuel Lima, senior UX design lead at Microsoft Bing, explores the power of network visualization to help navigate our complex modern world. This link is taken from a lecture given by Manuel Lima as part of the RSA’s free public events program.”

http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-the-power-of-networks

.

It’s Okay To Be Smart!

Sometimes students get the wrong message from their classmates: that it is not cool to be smart in science. But biologist Joe Hanson has a more positive signal that he likes to send to kids – in fact the name of his popular science show on YouTube (via PBS Digital Studios) says it all: “It’s Okay to Be Smart.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mD-ia6ng0A

.

TED of the week!

“Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus studies memories. More precisely, she studies false memories, when people either remember things that didn’t happen or remember them differently from the way they really were. It’s more common than you might think, and Loftus shares some startling stories and statistics, and raises some important ethical questions we should all remember to consider.”

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_loftus_the_fiction_of_memory.html

.

Song Of The Week! Bésame Mucho…

“Bésame Mucho” (Kiss me a lot) is a song written in 1940 by Mexican songwriter Consuelo Velázquez. It is one of the most famous boleros, and was recognized in 1999 as the most sung and recorded Mexican song in the world. According to Velázquez herself, she wrote this song even though she had never been kissed before at the time, and kissing as she heard was considered a sin.

She was inspired by the piano piece “Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor” from the 1911 suite Goyescas by Spanish composer Enrique Granados. It is incredible how so many people around the world are attracted to this song. Probably one of the reasons is exactly that, the innocence it portrays. The listener is facing pure and natural first desire of a kiss, of a touch, of emotion, taking you back to your first tender kiss.

There are slight differences in the wording at the end of the chorus, regarding the words perderte después (to lose you afterwards). Considering that Velázquez may have been fifteen years old when she wrote the lyrics, this sentence reflects inexperience and innocence. Indeed, a video from “TV Mexicana”shows Consuelo Velázquez playing the piano while the singer sings perderte después. Many interpretations use perderte otra vez (lose you once again) instead of the original. Emilio Tuero was the first to record the song, but the Lucho Gatica version made the song famous. Covered by the Beatles both on stage and in the studio, they included the song in their setlist during the band’s audition for Decca Records, their first EMI recording session and the Get Back sessions. A performance from the Get Back sessions was included in the documentary film Let It Be, while one from the EMI audition appeared on the Anthology 1 compilation. They sang their rendition of the song with English lyrics that do not correspond to the original Spanish ones. As for the land of pizza and love, the song was recorded in 2006, by the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli for his album Amore (watch below).

Weekly choice, by peers

Never give up, Harvard Business Review

“I’ve always repeated the mantra “never, never, never, never give up.” These words of Winston Churchill’s have rallied me for years; they are a core tenet of our family motto, and hang, framed, on the wall just inside the front door of our home. But I’ve started to wonder if not giving up is sufficient.  (…)Dreaming is at the heart of disruption.  Whether we want to disrupt an industry or our personal status quo, in order to make that terrifying leap from one learning curve to the next, we must dream.  The good news is that the causal mechanism for achieving our dreams is always, always, always showing up:  and as we show up, our future will too.”

http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/always-always-always-show-up/

.

R (Relationship) related

“His love for himself is so strong he does not need to gain the acceptance of others by trying to be something he is not. His strength is not physical so much as it is in the clarity of his mind and emotions. These are character strengths that a woman not only admires, but feels safe with. (…)When a man is distant emotionally or physically from her it may bring up feelings of loneliness, or fear of a break up. Seeking this type of emotional safety can lead to emotional drama.(…) By discouraging him to do other things she is increasing their time together. It is possible the man ends up feeling guilty for having done the “wrong” thing that caused her to be upset. (…)A woman can choose to wait for a man with the character and integrity that she respects and wants. But as she waits she should prepare herself as well. Being with a man of integrity will not be like being with other men. He will be seeking a partner that will treat him with the same level of unconditional love with which he treats himself. If she brings her judgments, fears, and emotional reactions to the relationship, he may decide that he would rather be with someone else.”

http://www.pathwaytohappiness.com/relationship_safety.htm

.

Embracing uncertainty

“We talked a lot about embracing uncertainty, especially because all of us were surrounded by doubt and fear as graduation loomed closer and our futures were seemingly blank. I learned not to interpret the future as empty, but as open, full of possibilities, full of opportunities waiting for me to be the key player. We often interpret the unknown as bad or scary, but it is all in the viewer’s perception. Just as you can choose to see the glass half full instead of empty, so can you choose to view the future as brimming with possibilities instead of emptiness.”

http://tinybuddha.com/blog/embracing-uncertainty-the-future-is-open-not-empty/

.

TED’s best for the week:

How do we learn to embrace our vulnerabilities and imperfections so that we can engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness? How do we cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection that we need to recognize that we are enough – that we are worthy of love, belonging, and joy?

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

“Vulnerability pushed, I pushed back. I lost the fight, but probably won my life back.”

.

Book of the week!

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

Thomas Mann – The Magic Mountain

While combining opposed principles: intellect and sensibility, spirit and nature, intrinsic and extrinsic, the main character of this novel succeeds to gain important cognition about the essence of life. “Death is just a moment in life and nothing more” says Hans Castorp paradoxically, in a near death experience. Thus, spiritual education, abundance of mythological allusions and ironical inversions accompany this masterpiece of realistic yet grotesque narration. As we see in the selected quotes below:

“Passionate—that means to live for the sake of living. But one knows that you all live for sake of experience. Passion, that is self-forgetfulness. But what you all want is self-enrichment.”

“Who then was the orthodox, who the freethinker? Where lay the true position, the true state of man? Should he descend into the all-consuming all-equalizing chaos, that ascetic-libertine state; or should he take his stand on the “Critical-Subjective,” where empty bombast and a bourgeois strictness of morals contradicted each other? Ah, the principles and points of view constantly did that; it became so hard for Hans Castorp’s civilian responsibility to distinguish between opposed positions, or even to keep the premises apart from each other and clear in his mind, that the temptation grew well-nigh irresistible to plunge head foremost into Naphtha’s “morally chaotic All.”

Here’s a short clip, part of a movie that was made based on the book (from 1982):

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xjhjp7_hans-castorp-s-dream-in-thomas-mann-s-the-magic-mountain-1982-film_shortfilms

.

Person of the week!

The Canadian Alice Munro, wizard of short stories, Nobel Prize Laureate 2013!

“In twenty years I’ve never had a day when I didn’t have to think about someone else’s needs. And this means the writing has to be fitted around it.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlsF_ZLpNHY

“Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind… When a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her.”

― Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness