Can Making Dreams Come True Be As Easy As Brushing Our Teeth

On February 16, 2010, In business, By Masami Sato

Can’t making dreams come true be just as easy? Can’t we free ourselves of our doubts? Is it not possible? How can we do it in a way so that it looks as easy as brushing our teeth? This is an excerpt form the book named ONE by Masami Sato and it shows how it can be done step-by-step, getting one ready to start walking towards one’s dreams today.

Every one of us has dreams. But every one does not have faith in themselves to have and live those dreams in their own lifetime. In reality, the secret of having such assurance is simple. The reason for our doubting it so much is also clear.

We can now start by asking ourselves the first question..

Why do we not do the things we want to do?

Often, our thinking stops our actions. Often the more we think about it, the less we usually are committed to achieve what we originally wanted to do. Often the more we think about something, we come up with a greater number of reasons for not doing it.

Then is it possible that one can be certain that one will definitely accomplish what one wants to do in his life?

Sure, absolutely! To start with, let us look at the power of habits

If we are scheduled to go to a meeting tomorrow night, we wouldn’t spend lots of time thinking whether we can get there or not. We wouldn’t be concerned about the chance of having a car accident and missing the appointment. Just like when we are walking to the bathroom, we wouldn’t worry that the toilet might be broken!

We have so much more certainty about these types of ‘normal’ actions we take every day. They’re habits.

But, we doubt our dreams

Most interestingly, there are plenty of things we are not equally sure about. Particularly the things that we really want to in life – our Dreams!

So, what is the secret for the assurance that we will realize our dreams?

First: Simply make it a daily habit!

We can begin with being more assured about our actions to fulfil our desires – the type of dreams that really nurtures our life.

As for example, if your dream is to be a factor in improving society, and it is an important desire in your life, it will be possible for you to play that role and contribute to society. It can easily be made one of your daily habits.

Second: Make it as important (and as easy) as brushing our teeth

Making a dream come true can be just like cleaning the teeth. It gives a very uncomfortable feeling if teeth are not brushed for a long time, isn’t it? Nobody spends hours thinking which brand of toothpaste to use or postpone brushing till there is some specific need to show clean teeth. We feel ill at ease with teeth that are not clean. So we just clean them. It is as simple as that.

Back to our example, if giving is our utmost desire, then we need to ask ourselves these questions: What if giving actually was as important as brushing our teeth? What if it makes us feel good? And what if it kept our life healthy?

No matter whether we have a lot or very little just now, we can definitely start giving it and sharing it with others today. No matter how seemingly unbelievable it is to fulfil our dreams, we can start proceeding towards them today. We should view it as something crucial, a priority issue that we should practice every day! Then we would feel unhappy if we don’t do it. Just like brushing our teeth.

and Third: Give first, then we will get

When we start giving before we even have what we hope to get – that which we dream of – we are sending out a powerful message to ourselves which tells us, ‘there is enough, and more will come.’ It allows us to feel the joy today – the joy of giving.

If you want to be rich, be generous. And you’ll be blessed with abundance. If you want to be superbly intelligent, don’t be afraid to teach others. And you’ll know more. If you want to give, just give selflessly. Do not attach any expectation of return. Just let go. And joy will automatically be rewarded to you. The simple joy of giving.

So do not be afraid to share and give what you have, for it will not hinder you from achieving your purpose, whatever it is. It will only make you achieve your dreams quicker. And your journey there will be full of joy.

But are not habits smaller, in comparison with our BIG dreams?

Just do it, don’t worry about the ‘scale’

Because anything can take place in life. We might get started in a pretty simple way. And these simple things might lead us to another act, and form there to another. Our confidence in our simple actions and executing them one by one constantly takes us forward. But if we feel that it is unfeasible to do something now because it is simply unachievable, it is unlikely to ever happen.

The secret to achieve your dreams has always been here, and will always be here. The people who create miracles, inspirations, and the real sense of joy, already know this. They are always using it.

Visions and miracles do not happen accidentally. We choose to create them.

So, would you probably start going towards your dreams today?

Contents are excerpted with minor modification from ONE, a book written by Masami Sato. To get a free copy of ONE, visit www.B1G1.com and start sharing the joy of giving. Feel free to use or republish the content of the above article, fully or partially, as long as it is preserved in its original content, with proper attribution to Masami Sato and www.B1G1.com.

Find out more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your business using Cause Marketing.

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Secrets About Giving

On February 16, 2010, In business, By Masami Sato

The secret to get what you want is revealed. Simply by giving. The reasons are explained using the classic philosophical question: “Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?” The chicken and the egg, which forms the circle of life, serves as a profound analogy to giving and getting what we want: the circle of joy. The concept is explained in the clear and refreshing voice of Masami Sato, the author of ONE Book.

As human beings, most of us have yearnings for different kinds of things. And of course, the fundamental principles of economics tell us that while needs are unlimited, resources are not. This makes us think that the more resources we have, the more yearnings we would be able to satisfy. As such we tend to safeguard our resources. We would then feel that giving away these resources or splitting it between many would lessen the portion that can be used to get what we desire. This is the conventional win-lose strategy that is being played out.

Then, is it true?

And if the answer is “no” what then? What if it actually goes against the secret of getting more? What if the secret to earn more is simple – just by managing to give more?

A person can get a thing by the simple act of giving. In the same way that he can get eggs by breeding chicks. In the most simple way. Naturally. Spontaneously. And it is a fully satisfying joyful sensation.

First, let us start with a small comparison to explain things.

Chicken and Egg: the Cosmic Circle of Life

Many a philosopher has come out with this question from the beginning of time, “Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?”

The answer to this endless discussion is simple: It actually doesn’t matter because both chickens and eggs are here now. But if we want to have more great outcomes, we can choose to start somewhere.

Giving and Receiving: the Circle of Joy

What happens, if we pose a different question? “Which comes first, giving or receiving?”

Again, if we want to have greater results, we can choose to start somewhere. Giving something to others is surely so much easier than trying to get it first!

What happens when we try to get it first?

If we want to have something, naturally we try to get it. And we try to hold on to it after getting it. This is very natural to do-it makes sense intellectually.

But the actual result of ‘trying to get’ is mostly not ample and actual long term benefits.

For example, hoping to see others happy is not at all about deriving joy from them, or manipulating them to become happy. It is about how much happiness we can give them and thereby share with them. Full stop.

So where do we start to get what we want?

By starting from the other end of the circle- by giving generously!

When we give first before we actually fully have what we really want – what we dream of – we send a very powerful message to ourselves that says, “there is enough, and more will come”. It allows us to experience the joy today – the joy of giving.

We only need to give out the love generously to others. It simply comes back to us. Giving love is the only way to be generously loved. When we acknowledge everyone for the great things they do and the great qualities they have, again it comes back to us. Others acknowledge us because we acknowledge them.

In the same manner, if we want to have plenty in our life materially, financially, and mentally, we have to share in full measure with others, what we want.

Some are ready to give more physical things like time. Others opt to give what they can spare financially, like money. Those who give more (time, money, compassion, love, thoughts) have these things in abundance because it is the surplus. And surplus is the natural law of life.

Just keep in mind the rule of the game

Rule one: never hope to get anything in return when a thing is given.

When we have the conviction that giving has got as its inherent part, ‘getting’ something back, we become upset when do not see the return immediately. We may even feel a slight dissatisfaction towards the receiver of our gift. And surely, nurturing a bad feeling for someone is not a proper thing to do! So we can experience the real happiness of giving when we are doing something with the knowledge that we are doing it only for ourselves – we are doing it for our own happiness!

Losing to succeed, giving to receive.

In the beginning it may look as if we are losing. However, at some stage we recognize that taking things without giving is not an acceptable life pattern. And we have been aware of it all throughout. That is why tithing has been a normal part of the lives of many people who were leaders. And they did not do it with any fanfare so it was not done to gain popularity. It was done because it was a way of life.

Look around yourself. ‘Lesser’ creatures do it naturally. The bumblebees take the honey of the flowers and in return pollinate the flowers, thereby making them bloom. They do it in accordance with the laws of nature. They do not do it as a part of any law of justice. That is why they create permanence, without even making an attempt to do so.

Giving is just being who we are, it is just like having; not greater or lesser. No difficulty, no conditions attached, just releasing oneself.

The essence of getting more can be stated in two steps: Give first, and do not expect to get anything in return.

When we let go and give generously, what we want will be delivered to us. Naturally.

Find out more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your business using Cause Marketing.

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Step aside old BOGO and meet the new BOGO

On February 16, 2010, In business, By David Anttony

Definitions of some English words can change quite rapidly these days. In the recent past the meaning of words was often very fixed. Today the meaning can change in the blink of an eye. With faster and newer ways to exchange ideas such as Twitter and with wider and more culturally, socially and educationally dissimilar groups connecting together – words are put back on the anvil of evolution and changed into something new and more reflective of current life.

There’s a significant global movement happening where consumers are asking business to take care of the things they care about such as the less fortunate in society and the environment. The request is mainly tacit and despite it being an ironic request it by far indicates still that we are in a time of vast change. Consumers these days want their cake and eat it. They not only want cheap products, they also want the environment to be preserved and they want workers to be well looked after.

There may not seem an answer to this complex puzzle and yet one actually exists. It exists in the reforging of a simple single word – GET. Today there is a new movement of people wanting to get but give at the same time and they are reforging its meaning into the word GIVE.

Every day I receive a notice from Google Alerts for two words – B1G1 and BOGO. It tells me all the new places that these words are being used on the Internet. I can now see that the new meaning of these words is coming alive ‘poco a poco’ [Italian: poco, little + a, by + poco, little].

The B1G1 and BOGO acronyms both stand for Buy One GET One free. You buy one and you get given an extra one for free.

If you look on Wikipedia you will find these definitions for BOGO (there isn’t a definition yet for B1G1 – there will be soon when I write one!):

* An acronym in the retail industry that stands for Buy One Get One. For example, you could say “Buy 1 DVD, Get 1 FREE!

* An acronym in slang British that stands for Britons Of Greek Origin or Greek Britons.

* Bogo, Cebu, a city in central Philippines.

* Norway, a village in Norway.

* Norway, a village in Norway.

* The mascot of the ITESM CEM.

* BogoMips, an unscientific measurement of CPU speed

* Bogosort, an ineffective sorting algorithm

BOGO light

There is a business in the USA called SunLight Solar founded by Mark Bent. He has created a special torch that not only is an amazing and sturdy solar-powered light; his company also gives a free torch to those in need in developing nations for each one bought. If you look on their website you will learn about their “BOGOlight”.

“The BoGo – our Buy one/Give one – program has successfully provided lights to many, many thousands of people in the developing world, changing lives because of your purchase and participation.” – BOGOlight.com

Mark Bent turned the acronym upside down when he started to use the word as part of his product name. For him now and the thousands who buy his lights, BOGO now means Buy One GIVE One. Each person gets to give a light every time they buy one for themselves. So now with each sale, people who do not have the luxury of electricity can harness the power of the sun to support their lives.

There are many other well known and many less well know businesses doing Buy One Give One giving, or transaction-based giving as its becoming known. Some of the famous companies are OLPC – One-Laptop-Per-Child and TOM’S Shoes. Some of the less well-known ones (in the US at least) are based in Oceania and the UK – Earthstar Publishing, Maple Muesli, Blinds Couture, Figure 8 Body Chains, Sunsplash Homes, Honestly Women magazine and Thavibu Gallery based in Thailand are just a small handful of these special businesses that are leading the Buy One Give One movement.

Many Buy One Give One businesses are coming together under the single brand banner of Buy1GIVE1; a Singaporean based social enterprise which is becoming the home of transaction based giving. Any business can now choose to be part of Buy One Give One giving with ease. It’s like a CSR ‘plug-in’ to allow a business to start giving from each and every sale today – starting from just one cent. It is now not even a matter of giving an equivalent product to someone else. Instead it is about giving to a charity project that is in resonance with a company’s business activity. For example a magazine publisher cannot support the planting of a tree every time they sell a subscription, a restaurant can feed a child for each meal sold, a TV store can gift a cataract blind person with the gift of sight (Get Vision-Give Vision), and a builder or property developer can build a budget home for those in need who have lost their homes in a disaster (Buy1BUILD1) – the list is only limited by imagination.

There is something very special happening these days as more and more people are switching to giving and what are known as ‘citizen brands’ as a part of their everyday experience. In the 2008 Goodpurpose study of global consumer attitudes it reveals that almost 68% of consumers would choose to remain loyal to a brand during an economic downturn if it supports a good cause. And 71% say that when they think about the economic downturn, they have either given the same or more time and money to good causes. This study also highlighted some other key points as well such as:

* 52% of consumers globally are more likely to recommend a brand to others when it supports a good charity cause over one that doesn’t.

* 52% of consumers globally are more likely to tell others of a brand when it supports a good charity cause over one that doesn’t.

* Consumers are now voicing a clear desire for marketers to associate their brands to social causes. 42% say that if two products or services were of a similar quality and price, commitment to a cause outranks factors like innovation, design and brand loyalty when selecting one brand over another.

Turning Getting into Giving

In the minds of consumers, Buy One GIVE One is expected to replace Buy One GET One as the new global giving movement led by Buy1GIVE1 spreads. Certainly with the massive sales results and consumer demand shown for companies like BOGOlights, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and TOMS Shoes, this tide will continue to spread and grow.

I did a Google search on the 25 topmost key words connected with the keyword BOGO as an experiment to see what would show up. The results were interesting so I have displayed them below. You may notice that right now the word Give doesn’t show up. It will be interested to do this test again in twelve months time to see what changes. Consumers are now driving change and yes they want to receive free gifts (traditional B1G1/BOGO) but equally they also want to give to others or see others being given to.

Keyword results:

Free, photography, blogging, discount, networking, African, boots, groups, music, dallas, togo themes, wallpapers, buy, applications, skins, values, coupon, gift, sharing, shopping, pics, join, prose

Transactional or transaction based giving

Buy One Give One giving is transactional – every time you buy something, you give something. In the case of SunNight Solar, TOMS Shoes and OLPC they happen to give physical products of the same nature for everyone sold. However, in most cases, Buy1GIVE1 associated businesses give a charitable contribution from each sale. Giving can start from just a one-cent contribution per sales transaction and go up to thousands of dollars in the case of Buy1BUILD1. At 1cent any business in the world can afford to give from each sale especially when they also know 100% of the contribution goes to the cause.

The amount of money that is contributed isn’t the focus with Buy1GIVE1 transaction based giving. The focus instead is on the story and sharing the simple joy of giving. After all, if you think that 1c isn’t a lot to give and would not make much of a difference think again.

Coffee consumption has spread globally and Brazil is by far the largest coffee producer in the world producing on average 28% of all coffee grown. In 2006 Brazil grew enough coffee to brew 216,400,000,000 (216 billion 400 million) espresso coffees! If we were to make this calculation across global production amounts then we get an amazing number for the daily global consumption of around 2,117,416,830 (2 billion 117 million) cups of coffee – wow! The figures are not easy to find but if we guessed that around 40% of the world’s coffee is purchased in coffee shops then we would find that 846 million 966,732 cups are sold commercially each day globally – almost 900 million. This would equate to about’5 million cups in the US alone seeing they purchase around 21% of the world’s coffee.

Now imagine that for every cup of coffee sold a child was given clean drinking water from its own well. It costs just 1cent per person per day to do this. Any coffee shop could afford to contribute this amount from the sale of a cup of coffee. Instead of clean water a coffee shop could contribute for the education of coffee farmers’ children, costing from 23cents per child per day. The options and stories are unlimited as well as the potential difference that Buy One Give One transactional giving can make to the lives of many.

Transactional giving is the story of the thousand-mile journey starting with that first single step. Digging a well costs a few thousand dollars so it’s a big barrier for communities in developing nations. However if you break the cost down it only takes the sale of a cup of coffee to give clean water to a single person for a day1. This is the power of transactional giving. It is like the compound interest of giving – a little turns into a lot very quickly.

Of course any company can do transaction-based giving with any of its products or services and do it on their own as some are like TESCO in the UK giving school uniforms to kids in Africa in partnership with Save the Children. And yet if companies choose to join together under a commonly recognised banner/brand they can have a powerful effect. The ripple that a single company creates is added to that of another and the ripple grows into a tidal wave of giving. This is the power of giving and doing things together.

The final power of Buy One Give One transaction based giving is that everyone wins – the consumer wins – at no extra cost to themselves they have made a difference through their purchasing choices – the business wins in so many ways – and the worthy cause or charity wins because they can now receive small amounts from many sources all aggregated and paid as a lump sum from a single source if done through the Buy1GIVE1 service.

A new start – a new world – new thinking

If you check Wikipedia today you should find that a new definition has been added for BOGO. It is time for a change. A change from focusing on GETTING to focusing on GIVING. The subtlety in the words that we use so often point to a deeper underlying meaning. I added this small addition to Wikipedia, “… an acronym in the marketing industry that stands for Buy One GIVE One.”

Imagine a world where every time you buy you are giving a gift forward to someone in greater need than you. This is the magic of transactional giving – seamless and simple.

This is the world I want to be part of.

Just remember – you don’t ‘get’ giving till you get giving.

References:

http://www.coffeepoet.com/2007/09/

http://www.dep.org.uk/globalexpress/13/page1.htm

http://www.tesco.com/greenerliving/what_we_are_doing/ethical_clothing.page

http://www.scfnw.org.uk/site/article183.html

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee

http://www.goodpurposecommunity.com/

http://www.dep.org.uk/globalexpress/13/page1.htm

Footnotes: 1 Calculated by taking the average cost to dig a well, dividing it by its average expected life without major maintenance divided by the number of people in the community benefiting from the well on a daily basis.

Discover more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your business using Cause Marketing.

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Quotes From Masami Sato’s Book : ONE – Sharing The Joy Of Giving

On January 27, 2010, In business, By Masami Sato

Part One of Three

This collection of beautiful quotes that will inspire you to awaken your curiosity about the mystery of life is excerpted from “ONE”, a book by Masami Sato, the founder of Buy1GIVE which is a global giving organisation sharing the joy of giving. The quotes in this first edition include topics that are profoundly related to our everyday lives, such as mystery, judgment and connection. This article is the first part of the 3 “ONE Book Life-Changing Quotes Series”.

On transforming judgment

“Judgment often has very little relation to reality.”

“Actions and words don’t always accurately reflect who we are. Every single one of us has had the experience of wanting to undo what we did or said.”

On the mystery of life

“It’s very, very clear that we don’t need to know all of the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of life to keep living on this planet.”

“There are so many things we don’t understand in life. In spite of that lack of understanding though, we often enjoy experiencing those things.”

“Seeing is important but trying to figure out everything isn’t necessary.”

“The scientists are not here to reveal the ‘truth’ because we are here to seek it forever. They are actually here to complicate the game (of life) so that we can have more questions and enjoy the game longer.”

Connection

“Connection is the core of everything. That’s what life is. Connection.”

“Every single thing we do is to satisfy the need for connection.”

“We cannot feel unhappy when we are feeling totally connected. It’s impossible!”

“We are designed to constantly seek ways to connect to each other and to a greater purpose.”

“‘solutions’ coming from fear and doubt may not be the most effective ways. We end up feeling more and more disconnected from each other.”

“We can only truly celebrate the victory with others when we win together. Then we feel connected.”

“This is the game called ONE. The aim of the game is to ‘connect’! We keep connecting until we all become ONE.

Find out more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your business using Cause Marketing.

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