Do you want to learn a foreign language? Just make a new mistake every day

Learning a new language and using it every day is an experience that can enrich your days and open your mind. But it also has drawbacks or it can be painful.

One of the worst problems is not understanding. Missing a nuance, a joke, a word. Needing time to get to the point. Feeling left out.
In a word, feeling stupid. Really, painfully, hopelessly stupid. Someone not worth talking to.

[Even when you feel down 
because of misunderstandings and broken communication...
Life can still be beautiful.
Sunrise at Ostkreuz, Berlin]

It is a legitimate feeling, even if totally unjustified, and, after a while, it may become a useful alarm bell which, at best, you learn to live with and to manage. To use it to improve your language skills and to better understand yourself and the people around you. 

'Position, Promotion, Placement and Price' are the famous four P of traditional marketing. How many of them do you need in your relationships?

Position, Promotion, Placement and Price.
You know them for sure: they are the famous - and sometimes infamous - 'Four P' that have ruled traditional marketing in the last century in practically all Western countries.

People into marketing, and people not into it but forced to deal with it anyway, should also read and cherish  that seminal marketing book about the fifth P that Seth Godin published back in 2005:

[Purple cover of one of the many different edition of Purple Cow
How cool is that!?]

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable (Paperback)
by Seth Godin
Penguin, 2005
160 pp., ISBN 978-0141016405

What's a purple cow, besides a mainstream cow painted in lilac for some Milka chocolate advertising campaigns?

[Seth Godin playing with the funny special promotional packaging of his book

Purple cow milk is, of course, delicious... and dairy free!]

Take the common cow, a ruminant with coat colors varying from red to black to brown and to white with colored points...

Cultural differences in the workplace? A questionnaire needs your thoughts and ideas!

If I have to think about some of my favorite movies about the workplace, I could say I have seen just one movie over and over again, even if that's not actually true.
I have seen a lot of movies, but finding similarities among them is not that complicated, since most of them...

• were made in the Eighties;
• are romantic comedies or at least comedies;
• have amazing female characters;
• show horrible clothes, haircuts, and styles.

Just a couple of titles? Well, Working Girl and Nine to Five for sure.

[Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford
in Working Girl (1988) by Mike Nichols]

But today I don't want just to talk about movies. Today I'd like to invite you to fill out a questionnaire. What kind of questionnaire?

Purple hair & fashion girls: The gorgeous world of freelance illustrator and photographer Kris Atomic

Kristina Mordokhovitch aka Kris Atomic is a very talented artist and freelance illustrator/wedding photographer based in Brighton.

Her work is lovable, original and quite impressive:

[The girl with the Purple kimono

Image credit: Kris Atomic]

The doll-like girls of her illustration & sketchbook works are absolutely funny, sweet and innocent but cool and somehow naughty at the same time.
If they also have purple hair or purple shoes, or cotton candy hair with a white blouse that Marlene Dietrich would definitely pull off, like the young lady you can see below, what else I am supposed to say?

Three words in four languages for my 2011, because failure is just the beginning

A new year is about to start, and it is going to be kind of unique.

Probably not an easy one, and yet for sure a cathartic one.

[My Kim Novak in Purple]

2010 has been tough and, from the outside, one could think that I've experienced failure every single day for the whole year, while living in a different country, in a different culture, in a different language.

But. But even if I have been sometimes overwhelmed by fears, sadness, or just millions of cultural misunderstandings, I kept going. No matter what.
Maybe sometimes not so fast or not so confidently as I would have wanted, but I kept going anyway.  And that's what matters.

In Chris Brogan's style, my three words for 2011 are going to be:

#1. Courage (Mut, courage, coraggio)
#2. Perseverance (Entschlossenheit, détermination, determinazione)
#3. Quality (Qualität, qualité, qualità)

Tags: Three words for one year, Self-awareness, Self-mastery, Emotional intelligence, Perseverance

What to read next:

Coaching, reloaded - Coaching question of the day #79. - Setting goals like a she-devil

Visiting the blog for the first time? Aloha!

Where to start, if you are new