Every coin has two sides

The greatest statement of truth I've ever heard. I want to be short on this one, but I hope you get the idea.

I was reading the story about Richard Branson, and I got this from the book I'm currently reading (hoping to finish it by the end  of today) called linchpin by Seth Godin, and goes on like this. 

In one any given day, Mr. Branson was waiting on the airport for his plane. suddenly the announcement comes that the flight would be delayed and it would take much longer to him to get to his destination. Many people started complaining and he had an idea. He went to another counter, found a manager or something, found out about a private flight company, asked how much it would cost to hire a plane to his destination. He took care of his business, made up a sign saying that would cost them "X$" to flight with him. They bought the idea and his ticket (because he made some profit out of it) was free. That's how he had the idea to start his company, Virgin. 

Surely some people just wanted to blame somebody and complaint for the rest of the day, be sad and whinny, grumpy and loose the day. But He saw the other side of the coin.

Generally, success is on the other side of the coin. it's on the creative side of the coin. It's on the positive side of the coin!

From now one, promise yourself that you will always look on both sides of the coin and will consciously choose the positive, creative, leader side! Good luck

Plan B should be Plan F (for failed)

 How many of us have ever heard this: "you gotta have a plan B" or "you gotta have a back up plan"? So what is a Plan B or a back up plan? Before you post your answer, let me say this:

- If you jump from an airplane to parachute, is there a plan B? No, The parachute either opens or you are dead.

 - If you're climbing the Everest, what is the plan B? Climb half way up and come back because it's too cold? Really? No one is going to respect you for climbing half way up, even though it's a big deal already. There is no such a thing as plan B when it comes to climbing the Everest or Parachuting from an airplane.

So why is it that we convince ourselves that we can have a plan B for our lives?

You dreamed about being an engineer, but just because you didn't get into Engineering college twice you gave up and settle for something else you're not even happy doing it. The daily worries of paying the bills, keeping a status quo, pleasing everybody else but you have obscured your vision so you don't see what you're doing to yourself.

Our system is designed to fail people. We teach our kids to obey orders and not to think, we teach them to comply and not to challenge, we teach them to fit in and not to shine! What have we done?

Well, I say "Stuff the Plan B"! If you really have a dream and don't want to be frustrated, don't settle for anything less than that! If you know you're called to something and have settled down for something different, get up and change!

There is this story, that I don't even know if it's true and I'm not even sure if the characters and places are real, or I messed them up, but the essence is the same, here we go:

There was once this brave Warrior who was in charge of a fairly big army. They were about to take over an Island. They planned everything and had all ready to go. Once the troops got on the sea shore (for they were coming through the sea in several boats), once everybody had gone off to the battle, the commander saw form the top of the boat, right before he came down to join his fellow warriors, that the enemy's army was much more powerful and much greater in numbers. In seconds he had this brilliant insight and asked one of his warriors to burn down all the ships, all of them. Without any question, he did and there was no ship left in a matter of minutes.

They went off to the battle and won. It was an amazing battle, a few warriors died on duty, but ultimately they won.

When asked by his subordinates why he had burnt down the ships he replied: I did it so you wouldn't have anywhere else to go other then into the battle. Had I not done that, some of you could have decided to return and we would have even less power and certainly die.

Conclusion:

1) Sometimes what it feels and look ludicrous is the most intelligible thing to do.

2) If you have a plan B, there is not much challenge in fighting for Plan A

3) When fighting for your dreams, adopt the philosophy: Kill or die. If you fail, learn the lesson and start again, but don't divide your strength into two different plans.

Hope you have something to think about after you've read this. Please leave your comments if you want to.

Peace

Re-starting.

Hello, to all of you who are reading. I'm glad to have you here.

My name is Pedro, I'm 27, father of a wonderful daughter and husband of a wonderful woman. This is my blog. For moths, or almost years, I've heard that a blog should offer content to people.I've had this one here for a while, but it was never a regular thing. I would write every now and then. But one of these days I had this click in my mind. So the story changed!

I decided to make this regular now, and as I have not invented anything, what I'm prepared to do is "to share what I learn". What I do for living teaches me a lot of things. I pastor a church full of young people. We are starting, but even in the beginning I can learn a lot.  One of the things that I already learn is that every one of us have a purpose in life, a calling, something you're really good at and it gives you pleasure to do that. You should do that one thing everyday, forever, because that's how you will contribute to add value to this world.

The other thing that I learned myself was this: I know almost nothing, and the I can't know everything, not even when I reach my old age. But what i can do is learn form those who are more experienced, and reading is an awesome method. So from now on, this is not only a promise, or a challenge, but a public challenge, and here it is: I'm going to read at least 2 books per month, preferably about leadership. And with that comes my commitment with communicating what I'm learning: I'm going to publish what I learn from these books that I'm reading as often as I feel like. I would love to say daily, but there are just some days you don't want to do anything, so, I promise it will be regular and you will learn a little bit.

Why am I doing this? Because I have this desire to change the world, to help people and I know I can't do it alone. So, buckle up and enjoy the ride!

At the moment I'm reading "linchpin" by Seth Godin. So many lessons in this one book. I'm publish one of them soon! So interesting that I used part of the book to start a series of messages in the church. Really awesome!

Well, I hope you get something out of this, I can, but it's only up to you... When you you go get something out of it, DO something with it!

All the best
Pedro

Our monetary system as it is

This morning I was thinking about our monetary system...

In the beginning there was no money. We shared things among each other. We developed, evaluated and adapted. Then there wAs exchanging of goods. Again we changed, we developed, we adapted. Then after many trials and systems we ended up with what we call money...

Initially it was a piece of metal, then it became a paper bill, now it has become a plastic card. Isn't it strange that we define the value of our assets in a plastic card? How about what's really valuable? Untangle things like, security, life style, family and etc... Well, financially speaking only, what about minerals, the riches of this world???

To get even worst, I started thinking about how the system works. As soon as we came up with this idea of money someone invented the BANK. What was the bank for? To have a safe place to store your money if you had a lot, for a small fee every period. That was it... The concept of borrowing money was far away from our thoughts, but some smart guy thought: " well, this money is sitting here months and months and not doing anything, so I'll pay this people "interest" if they allow me to get rich using their money"!

That's what it is folks? They pay you 5% or 6% per yer and they lend your money, not theirs, to someone else who doesn't have enough, charge them horrendous interests, about 15% to 20% per yer in developed countries, or about 200% on the third world countries, expect people to be unable to make their repayments, charge them even more, get hundreds more return on the investment than you did and they give you a ridiculous amount. Isn't it funny?

Now imagine if we all came to our senses once more, and decided to cut the crap out of our lives! No more loans, no more credit cards, no more hire purchases, nothing! If you have cash you buy it, if you don't, save some more and buy it later! Do you know what would happen? Things would get cheaper! As simple as that! It's a chain of consequences, you stop borrowing money, the banks will go broke, then the business won't have any way to get more money but cash from customers, so we can bargain for a fair value for goods, if they can't make the price, they will go broke, someone else is gonna start the same type of business really soon (just like there has always been supermarkets around), and we can buy from them.

If you are worried about the basics like food and water, the same applies. Fair trade, fair payments, no more rip offs from big companies ruling the world of money! Think about it!

I've started already by trying not to use any credit card anymore! How about you?

True Christianity

Hi to all of you out there. Hope all of you are doing great, and if you're not, don't worry, that too shall come to past.



What I have to write today may not have much to do with the title, but I couldn't think of anything better. Here we go:



I was walking down the road this morning before I had hit the gym and on my way back home I noticed that some people took the time to greet me... Without being partial, trust me, it's not my intention to judge anyone. Anyway, some of them were greeting me and I noticed that majority of them live in our local community, are barely formally educated and some of them were not what we call the Elite society.

Why do I say this? Because I realized that the more humble people are, the more opened to conversation they are. The more "educated" you are, the less you want to get involved. Normal people have a sense of being needed, they want to be greeted, they want to receive a smile, they want someone to talk to them. So what? (you might be thinking). If we learn this, we will learn why we aren't reaching out to many people yet... Simply because we don't talk to them. We go to the gym, supermarket, anywhere really, have our Ipods on, music playing, not really caring for the world around us. We live in a world where we think it's all about "ME". No it's not. and the quicker you get this, the better your own life will become. That's it, just a brief comment for today. Thanks for reading. See you all next time. Pedro

Welcome to our lives

Hey Folks. Its been a long time since I've written anything here. Actually it's been almost 5 months! God, how time goes fast. Well, there is a reason for it, I'm not sure if you are interested in knowing it, but there is... Anyway, let's skip this part.

I've been studying and thinking more than I should (I believe) recently, and I think that because of that, I've come up with some really intriguing ideas. I'll start by just filling you in since august.

That's me playing my favorite game!I Love this game
because this is where amazing happens!

To start with, Help 2 save was an non profit organization (a start up that didn't even make it out of the paper) and it's now on hold and I don't believe it will come live any soon. Why? Because it was the right idea but in the wrong time and place. I'll keep doing what God called me to do which is preaching the word and helping people and if one day He decides to take that project out of the drawer, He will let me know. So that's what happened in 5 months, A lot of confusion and SHAZAM, here I am again.

But what I want to talk about today is about this idea or interpretation I had yesterday. Really, honestly I consider myself a nobody compared to the guys out there blogging and sharing their knowledge in this area. The world of Christianity is so up to date and technological that I saw that in the Catalyst conference 2010 they brought amazing leaders from churches around America and they brought Seth Godin ( one of the most famous marketing gurus of our days) too. WOW man, that's what I'm talking about: Practical advise. How I wish I could be there, but anyway, that's not the point. The point is: There are many great leaders who offer their content, podcasts, materials for free and we can study and grow and almost have a mentorship going on virtually. I'm so amazed by that! I watch podcasts from Andy Stanley, Craig Groeshel, Mark Driscoll, Rick Warren, I'm on their FB page to check what's going on and etc because it's free and that equips me with knowledge I would never be able to put my hands in.

After a reasonable time listening and learning, I've noticed (mainly because some people are telling me this) that I'm changing, and that's good. So last night, about 2:30am God kind of gave me an interpretation of what "church life" should be like. I say it was God because I know it wasn't the Devil and I also know I'm not that smart, so by an elimination process, that's gotta be God. If you are one of those boring fundamentalists looking for a rational explanation on everything that is supposed to be supernatural, I'm sorry, I don't have one, so you have a choice: read the article or not... your call. Here we go:

"Being, doing and growing the church as the body of Christ should be like an specific game. A game of repetition. It's not a game of perfect moves. It's not about how perfect you can do it on the first time or any given time, but how willing you are to repeat it over and over and win the adversary by getting him tired... Let me put it this way: A MMA (mixed martial arts) fight, boxe, or any kind of fight really is a game of perfection. You start the fight building up to the final moment where you submit your adversary and he gives up. You try different things all the time and different strategies, and it may look like your loosing the fight until the last minute, but if you engage the right move, the perfect move in the last 10 seconds and knock your adversary out or put him to submission, you will win. It doesn't matter if he had scored 100 point and you had scored nothing. He may have hit you repeatedly over and over with the same punch, but that didn't win the fight because you applied the right move, with perfection at the end. And it had to be perfect, otherwise, he could have resisted and not submitted or simply escaped. Another game of final decision moments would be chess. You can have all strategy in the world but the game result is defined by one peace: the King. you loose your King you are dead. it doesn't matter how many towers or horses you have on the plate, you have lost the game if you jeopardize your King.

Now here comes the beauty of this: The game that I love the most, for me the most beautiful game on earth, the game of basketball, is a game of repetition. It's not a game of one perfect move. You can Dunk, fly, shoot and hoop form the middle of the court... If you don't repeat the right moves more frequently than your adversary, you will loose. I've seen incredible athletes with Super ultra godly skills playing this game, and I've been watching this game since I was 5 or 6, since Magic Johnson, John Stockton, Larry Bird, Dr J, the master of all Michael Jordan and recently Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, Josh Smith and the list goes on forever. You can shoot a hoop upside down form behind the 3 point line with less than a second to the buzzer, hit the shoot and loose the game... Why? Because the other team repeated the baskets more than you during the game... I remember when I was a young player and my coach would always say, that the games are won by the basics and not by the dunks. Free throws can win a game. As young boys we wanted to dunk the ball and we spent hours practicing the most beautiful dunk but the reality is, they don't win games, the basics do. Of course there are strategies, of course there are right and wrong moves, but what dictates the rhythm of the game isn't beauty and perfection of the moves, but how many times more you score the basket over your adversary"(Pedro) Well friends, for years I have been one of those who think being, doing and growing the church was a game like MMA or Chess. That we had to apply the right move at the right time and everything would be fine. But, for my awakening, it is not. Our adversary has been there much longer that we have and He has seen amazing things we have tried to do, no surprise for him at all. Church life is like the game of basketball. We need to score the basket everyday, day by day, repeating the moves. We've got an instruction book that contains pretty much everything. It has the strategies, it has the tactics, it even contains the mistakes made by the founders of the game.

Sure we can innovate, and use technology in our favor, but remember that in this game, we are not inventing anything, we are just trying different moves. The essence of the game can't be changed. I love technology, I do. I am all for it. I preach from my Ipad sometimes, I study with my Ipad, I read more on computer screens and Ipad screen and Iphone screens than in anything else, I know about the news around the world by push notifications. I'm all for twitter and Facebook. That's where our generation is and where we need to tackle our adversary. It's a new battle field, but the battle is the same, only the field has changed from what it was in the past. the main goal of the game is still helping people to know Jesus as their Savior so they can have eternal life and the devil will loose the game! We already know the right moves, now we just need to adapt them to this new field of technology, social networks, interactivity and etc.

Well, to conclude let me share this with you: I still remember watching the NBA games and during the commercials there would be promotional ads about NBA and at the end of that commercial with some cool songs, the NBA logo would appear with the saying: "I love this game". Now time has gone by and they have change it to "Where amazing happens". I have decided to put them all together and I ended up with this: BCC (Being THE church of Christ): I love this game BECAUSE this is where AMAZING happens!
Peace be with you.
Pedro Nascimento

What the heck happened

I hope I can make this short, lets see

Today I spent almost the whole day talking with a friend about our world and how we ended up here. It seems to me it all comes down to money. Think about it.

In the beginnings there was no money but there was a lady a form of capitalism, or at least exchangeism (if the word applies or exists) I had rice, you had vegetables, we exchange them, we are happy the economy flows. Some kind of smart guy invented what we currently call money or currency. Until here its fine, atlas it would a be a form of unity to use for commerce. Then at some point humanity figured out that the world was bigger than what they thought and start to conquer other lands by war! WHY?...

Brief pause... Why do I want more? Why just Rome was not sufficient for them? Why did they had to take over more land to make more money? At the end they all died and they have nothing with them now wherever they are at.

To get worst, one of them called Colombos found a place he decided to call America which in a near future would become the new center of the world. Well, from then on you know what happened: another idiot decided to make money virtual! What was unexisted, become real and now has become virtual. All the debts we had that we had no control over were added to another big one after 1929 for God knows what reason and now because Us owes money to China and China owes money to US i have to work 40hours a week to pay bills I didn't
Ask for. What the heck happened?

Let's get some fun examples.
Water: water is free, it rains, it flows in the river, evaporates and it rains again. In the past, we coulees use a big wheel in the river and and live off that. But now, with modern society we have to pay for electricity. I agree that we all love comfort, but the reality is: after the project of constructing the energy factory (electricity providers) is done, there is not much to be paid is it? All right, there are people's salary but why do we pay them? We could set up volunteers in our society to give 2 days of their month to run the buttons and we would be sweet! Energy free. Isn't that great? What about the other sources
Ike the sun and the wind? You may say: "but it costs to develop that" and I say: why? If it's going to be better for everyone, why does it cost? Do you see where I'm coming from? It all comes down to money.

Let's try something completely different:t he church
What about a church that needs no money for itself? "that's impossible" one may say. Well, what about a service in a public park? No rent, no electricity, no mortgage, no salaries to be paid... Then all the money you bring in, regardless if you believe in the tithe or you rather call it a voluntary financial offer, can be used for the purpose it was supposed to be: to help those in need. Imagine all of those church buildings that seat 2000 people and have 100 staff working during the week...they have a big weight in the shoulders of the members and surprisingly enough people are happy to pay for it, ohhhhh my God.

Don't tell me it wouldn't work because Moses led millions of people with no rent, no paid staff apart from the levites (bear in mind there was no money, just food and supplements) no mortgage, no microphones, no worship band with thousands of dollars in instruments, nothing like that, and with no technology like we have nowadays.

I would be happy to try that one of these days...

We work to pay bills that we make because we can't live without them. Think about buying your house. You could never afford to pay a house outright if you didn't borrow the money from the bank. Why? Because they make money from our debt, that's what it is. Try this, if everyone in the country withdrew their money for one month form the bank, all of them would cease to exist because they wouldn't be able to make money.

Well, this talk goes on and on but we have a choice.
Choice one: I'm leaving in a month to a desert island and will start a new country with no debts, not high taxes and only volunteers contributions, join me if you want on www.iwantabetterlife.com... Hahahhaa of course I'm kidding, even the desert islands belong to some government I don't know why but I'm sure I'll get in trouble if I try to figure it out or try to posses it.
Choice 2: we can start doing something about and showing the world we are not dumb and we want to have a better life now. We can't beat the system but we can definitely learn how to benefit from it. We can start being wise with our money, the hard worked one we make every week. We can stop giving money away for organizations that don't need and learn to use the money to help those who need, maybe someone that don't have money to pay the bus fair, or help someone with their groceries, or maybe walk into the service in the park one day with 20k in your Pocket to share among those who need a little more. We can learn that giving money to church doesn't make sense if the church is doing church instead of being the church. We can learn that the church is not the building, we ARE the church.

We can stop working for ridiculous wages and at the same time borrowing money to buy a car we can't afford to drive. Wake up people, you are the one being deceived here, not me, not the bank. Remember, you can't give what's not yours. No wonder why millions of people want to help the poor but they themselves need more help to learn to use their money

Well, that's it for now. I know I'm probably one of the fees who pays attention to this, most pf the people live their lives deceived and don't even care about it.

God bless you and see you next time