Category Archives: Personal Development

Life, Personal Development

Persistence and Sustainability

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Recently, the above letter went viral on the internet. According to this letter, Einstein had applied for a doctorate in physics at Bern University and he was rejected since the university committee found his theory to be more artistic than actually physical. I don’t want to disappoint anybody, but it is very likely that this document is fake. It does not really make much sense for a Swiss German institute to write back to a German in English, and there are many grammar mistakes which do not lend credibility to authorship by someone at the University of Bern.

Even if it is very likely a fake document, it could be genuine. Many people are rejected in many different aspects of life since the people who evaluate them might be inferior to the applicant. And unfortunately, we lose a lot of talent due to this inefficient selection process.

The key here is the persistence of the applicant. It does not matter how good you are, as it is still very likely that you will get rejected at some point on your life journey. On this journey, no matter what happens, you have to keep a growth mindset and continue to develop yourself while trying to reach your target. By the way, rejection is a confirmation that you are trying for something. If you haven’t been rejected so far, then there is a problem with your mindset.

If failure is one of the key components of success, persistence is definitely also another component of the equation. People like to put people into different folders and label them, just like classifying computer files. For instance, someone may have been a clerk in a bank for many years, and so many people think this person cannot be a good software programmer. Actually the person can be!

If the person is willing to, he/she can be a much better software programmer than many programmers.

This rigid classification makes career transitions very difficult and it costs the global economy billions (maybe trillions) of dollars since we cannot get the best out of people. I see more and more people spending thousands of dollars on MBA degrees just to make a shift in their career. Apparently being filled with theories for two years enables you to make that transition more easily. This is just another form of labelling. An MBA makes the transition easier. Persistence is good, but it is not enough by itself. Sustainability is also important.

Once you reach your goal, you must continue to perform over and over again. This is real success! In Turkey, we say ‘Start like a Turk, finish like a German!’ The logic behind the saying is that, like all Mediterranean people, Turks are hot blooded and enthusiastic at the start, but sometimes it can be difficult for them to finish the job they have started, whereas Germans start slowly but surely and finish off a job within the given time frame.

To sum up, I would not trust all the documents circulating on the internet, and I would pursue my ambitions no matter what people think and no matter how difficult they are. Most importantly, once you have reached your goals, it is important to stay there!

P.S: If you are a clerk and want to switch to software programming, it is far more possible now than ever. Try to have a look at edx.org where you can enroll yourself in a lot of Harvard, MIT, and Berkeley courses for free.

All the best from Singapore.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan

Life, Personal Development

Lying: Values and Burdened Souls

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Humans lie… It is a fact.

Sometimes we lie just to make sure somebody feels comfortable. We call these lies white lies. For instance, if one of your relatives got cancer and you learned the result without him knowing, you may not want him to know the results.

But humans lie most of the time to get a short-sighted result such as to earn money, to manipulate, etc.

For whatever reason, lying is a very destructive action. Not only for the people involved, but also for the whole society.

When you lie, you are actually destroying a lot of human values. When you destroy common human values, you are actually harming your own soul very badly.

What happens when you harm your soul?

When your soul is harmed badly, you are a walking dead in the 21st century. Since you know what kind of a personality you are since you cannot lie to yourself, you feel irritated by yourself.

And then these kinds of people try to forget the harm of their soul so they may do some silly teenager type of stuff!

Your soul is permanent, whereas anything that you do to forget is temporary.

It should be great to carry such as a burdened soul! Also, no profit or short-term gain can justify your action of lying.

Today, even every big organisation has a set of values.

These values are set, because every organisation is like a human. They are also creatures that are alive and values are needed for everyone!

Since they are alive, they have their own soul.

Even why my wife is asking why I’m writing all this.

I am writing because I see a lot of burdened souls and they do not have any justification to become so burdened!

Finally, a person can be quite competent in his job/skills, but if he does not have the right attitude, I would always give the chance to the incompetent person since he can improve, but he will come with a pure soul!

Some nice quote from different authors on the subject:

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.”
― S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders

“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
― Abraham Lincoln

All the best.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan

 

Life, Personal Development

Book Review: A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Enlightenment

 

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I was travelling for a wedding to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem a couple of weeks ago and my mentor and a good friend, Avi Liran, was so kind to arrange some meetings for me while I was there.

Lenny Ravich was my first meeting and, to be honest, I failed to do some research on him before I met him.

Lenny Ravich is a US–born, 70-something young person who is energetic and funny. Apparently, he wrote a book that Avi liked so much that he contacted him and that’s how their relationship started.

Lenny gifted his book to me during our meeting and that’s how I read his marvellous book.

The name of the book is Something funny happened on the way to Enlightenment. His book sold tremendously well in Israel and worldwide.

There are some points that I don’t agree with, such as in order to be funny he thinks a person has to have had a screwed up childhood, but mainly the book is a great eye opener.

It talks about happiness.

Lenny refuses to make himself feel bad by taking serious things more seriously. It takes courage to laugh, especially at yourself, and even more skill to get others to laugh with you at themselves.

Lenny summarized life as a formula, E + R = O. 

E is the event, R is our Response and O is the outcome. 

Events occur and our responses design the outcomes. The event may not be avoidable, but the response is our own production so it can altered and therefore the outcome as well.

I will continue by sharing some of my favourite quotations from the book.

“One way to deal with some of the pain from the past, anger, fears and misfortunes of the past is to find the humour in things and then to laugh at them.”

I accept, it is not easy. But it does not mean it is not possible. We should let our bad feelings go to be healthy and to move forward. Having this kind of mindset is also an important part of success.

“No matter how we look at it, life is one huge, on-going improvisation. None of us gets an orientation manual when we’re born, telling us how to handle every situation that might cross our path throughout our lifetime. Nor can our parents prepare us for every conceivable occurrence.” 

I experience this with teenagers. They expect to find a mentor or their parents to lead their life. Everybody’s life is different and their interests and talents are also different.

Of course, one should utilise other people’s experiences, but you have to create your own manual for your very own life. And that manual will be and should be different than everyone else’s!

Because you are unique!

“Feeling vindictive and unforgiving is a huge waste of time. I have found that love, optimism, and laughter are the most potent tools available to mankind.” 

I happened to fall into this trap.

I came across a sociopath in my life, and I wasted some time. Actually, not only time, but I also felt sorry for him and at some point I felt very unforgiving to him. Now, I understand it is waste of time.

Now, I just laugh off my experiences with him!

“Who is rich? The one who is happy with what he has.”

Definitely!

The desire to attain more material things makes everyone unhappy!

“Poor is the person who believes totally in his mission.” 

Titles, zeros in the bank accounts, and power are easy tools that can poison us and inflate our egos.

It is not hard to become a “bastard”, but by being a bastard you are doing the greatest harm to yourself since you are making yourself very unhappy. As my friend Avi says, “Delight people and operate on a delight system, not on a jerk system.”

Even though it was such a short meeting (it was only 45 minutes), it was nice to meet you, Lenny Ravich!

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All the best,

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan

Life, Personal Development

Book Review: Focus by Daniel Goleman

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I have to admit that I didn’t start reading this book on purpose. It just happened to be in our house, since my wife has read it. I know that Daniel Goleman has another great book called Emotional Intelligence, but I haven’t had a chance to read that book, either.

So, coincidence created the opportunity to read Focus, since I have some time during my gardening leave. (Yes, I am on gardening leave since I am changing my employer. I will continue to be based in Singapore.)

Daniel Goleman starts the book by defining the anatomy of attention and he states boldly that it is important for a child to interact with people to develop the social and emotional circuitry of a child’s brain.

Deep thinking demands sustaining a focused mind, and there are many distractions going on around us every second. For instance, the writer gives the example of Carl Gauss, an eighteenth and nineteenth century mathematician, who worked on proving a theorem for four years with no solution. Then, one day, the answer came to him “as a sudden flash of light.”

The writer discusses self-awareness as a very important feature that leads to success, since you are aware of your weaknesses and you can build a team according to these facts. In addition, overloading the attention shrinks mental control, and we start forgetting the names of people or other valuable information.

Marketers know how to mobilize our brains so that we make some unconscious choices when buying a product. For example, I got a phone call from my favourite football club, Besiktas, yesterday and the voice on the other end of the phone played with my feelings about Besiktas so skilfully that I happened to buy USD 500 worth of Besiktas merchandise just in ten minutes!

The writer discusses that people who are extremely adept at mental tasks that demand cognitive control and active working memory can struggle with creative insights, a point with which I absolutely agree.

He argues that accounts of discoveries tell of them happening during a walk or a bath, on a long ride or vacation. Darwin and Gandhi used to walk a lot to think, and I have been using the same method for more than 20 years now, which has worked for me quite nicely.

Walking clears your mind and focuses you in the present. It is a kind of a meditation.

I would like to share some of my favourite quotes from the book, with my own comments.

“Don’t let the voice of others’ opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”

Some people can be manipulative and they can be jealous of you. You should always follow your own ideas, even if they turn out to be wrong. Once you make your own mistakes, you can learn from them.

“Self-awareness seems to diminish with promotions up the organisation’s ladder.”

When you are moving up the career ladder, the number of genuine people becomes fewer and fewer, so it is hard to obtain healthy feedback.

“The brain is the last organ of the body to mature anatomically, continuing to grow and shape itself into our twenties.”

“The better their self-control in childhood, the better the Dunedin kids were doing in their thirties. They had sounder health, were more successful financially, and were law-abiding citizens.”

“Those at the top never stop learning; if at any point they start coasting and stop such smart practice, too much of their game becomes bottom up and their skills plateau.”

Never stop learning! If you believe your job is not demanding enough, I always think you should change it. When the learning stops, it is like the music stops and time starts going very slowly. You will always be in that kind of situation from time to time, and it is important to recognise it and to be able to make the change.

“Higher vagal tone, which can result from mindfulness and other meditations, leads to greater flexibility in many ways. People are better able to manage both their attention and their emotions. In the social realm, they can more easily create positive relationships and have effective interactions.”

“Global economic data shows that once a country reaches a modest level of income—there is zero connection between happiness and wealth.”

Absolutely. After a certain amount of income, the rest is for our greed and to feed the soul’s sin.

“Exploration means we disengage from a current focus to search for new possibilities, and allows flexibility, discovery, and innovation. Exploitation takes sustained focus on what you’re already doing, so you can refine efficiencies and improve performance.”

“Being in survival mode narrows our focus.”

“Ambitious revenue targets or growth goals are not a gauge of an organisation’s health—and if they are achieved at a cost to other basics, the long term downsides, like losing star employees, can outweigh short term successes as those costs lead to later failures.”

“People’s grades and the prestige of schools they went to had little or nothing to do with their actual effectiveness.”

 I hope you enjoy Focus at some point after reading this short review.

All the best from Turkey.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan

Personal Development

Growth Mindset

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The definition of the growth mindset for me is the state of openness to continuous development. Because it is continuous, the growth mindset is easier said than done and it is a process that starts when you born and lasts up until you die.

You will never be able to fully catch up with growth. You will try, read and develop yourself up to a very high standard but these efforts still will be insufficient. You will admire the power of the universe because a lot of things are still unknown and you still don’t know everything.

I have argued for long time that this mentality should be taught in the universities, not an abstract course itself. It does not really matter what you study; it matters how you develop yourself to update your operating system.

One of the biggest selling points of smartphones is simple: They get frequent operating system updates that enable the phones to develop themselves continuously. Otherwise you would need to change them much more frequently, and your current handset would be useless more quickly.

Just like humans.

If one believes that he knows everything and that there is nothing to learn and nobody to get to know, the probability of becoming useless in the very near future increases significantly. And there are many people around like this, even in the high levels.

You should exclude these people from your circle because they can be poisonous.

If, after graduating from university, you still don’t have this mentality, you simply don’t have it. You can survive, but you will survive just like any other breathing animal on the planet.

As you may recall, my book review on Homo sapiens mentioned that Homo sapiens start developing because they confess that ‘we don’t know’.

When one believe that he knows everything, he is excluding himself from the outside world and new updates.

The growth mindset opens you for the world of opportunities, and we are living in our narrow world which some of us think is very big.

It is not, especially nowadays.

I wrote these sentences from beloved and cold London. It is always good to be back to London.

All the best.

Sukru Haskan
@sukru_haskan

Economics, History, Personal Development, Technology

Book Review: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

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A couple of months back, I published my next five books to read and one of them was Sapiens. Since this week marked Chinese New Year (Gong Xi Fa Cai!), it was a great opportunity to read Sapiens over the four-day break. I will share some of the author’s own sentences with my own comments and I hope that you find it interesting enough to read the whole book.

The author, Yuval Harari, divided the book into four different parts according to humankind’s developments: the cognitive revolution, the agricultural revolution, the unification of humankind, and the scientific revolution.

“The cognitive revolution kick-started history about 70,000 years ago. The agricultural revolution sped it up about 12,000 years ago. The scientific revolution, which got under way only 500 years.”

The author argues that prehistoric humans were insignificant animals with no more impact than gorillas, fireflies and jellyfish, and our closest living relatives include chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans. Legends, myths, gods and religions appeared for the first time with the cognitive revolution.

The transition to agriculture began around 9500–8500 BC in the hill country of south-eastern Turkey, western Iran and the Levant. Yuval believes that the agricultural revolution was history’s biggest fraud since the average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and received a worse diet in return.

He names this fraud as the luxury trap by stating that, “The pursuit of an easier life resulted in much hardship, and not for the last time. It happens to us today. How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are 35? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away.”

He rightly argues throughout the book that worries about the future became major players in the theatre of the human mind.

“So why study history? Unlike physics or economics, history is not a means of making accurate predictions. We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we imagine.”

So true… Everything is happening because of a series of past events and it is important to evaluate the reasons and continue our lives accordingly.

The scientific revolution started with human beings accepting the Latin injunction ignoramus, in other words “We don’t know”. This is still a huge problem in many countries as people think they know everything. Instead, when you accept that you don’t know enough, it opens the door to investigate, observe and learn.

He explains the necessities of holding societies together in quite a comprehensive way and explains why scientific revolution took place in Europe rather than anywhere else.

“In 1500, annual per capita production averaged $550, while today every man, woman and child produces, on the average, $8,800 a year.” 

The scientific revolution has definitely increased our productivity, but has it really improved the overall satisfaction of our lives as well? The book also discusses this point in quite a nice way as well.

“Each year the US population spends more money on diets than the amount needed to feed all the hungry people in the rest of the world. Obesity is a double victory for consumerism. Instead of eating little, which will lead to economic contraction, people eat too much and then buy diet products – contributing to economic growth twice over.”

This is another sad fact of our age. Because our distribution of goods and services channels are not well developed (or maybe we don’t want to develop?) whilst many people suffer from famine, some other people battle against obesity.

He argues that there will not be a large-scale war in the future, which I don’t really agree with. He puts forward the argument that the economical benefits of peace are so great that countries will avoid a large-scale war. Even though the economic benefits of peace along with social benefits are huge, these benefits are being shared by only fraction of the world’s population. Due to this fact, I personally expect a large-scale war to arise from low income people if these issues are not addressed immediately.

He finishes his book with a question: “Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?”

Overall, the book enlightens us about the series of past events that took place in the history of the humankind and it helps us to think why certain institutions, beliefs and behaviour exist in our lives.

I rate this book 5/5 and recommend you to read it as well. Yuval Harari also has a website where you can watch his videos and even subscribe to his public courses.

All the best from Singapore.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan

Life, Personal Development

Inspire, Trust, and Do Business!

Interaction plays an important part in our lives. We interact with friends, colleagues, strangers and family members. Each interaction creates good and bad feelings in us and, most importantly, each interaction has social or business impact on us.

Since it is important to interact, how can we make each interaction efficient in our social and business lives?

We human beings are strange and unique creatures and we like to interact with people that we like. We always try to find common points with the people with whom we interact. Finding a common point is a good ice breaker when you meet a stranger.

Through my life experience, I have found that I like to interact with people that I get inspired by. A person that pushes me to think differently and helps to enhance my vision always manages to gain priority in my life. Interestingly, when I look back and think, I chose my friends and my best colleagues through this inspiration channel.

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How can you inspire a person?

You may use your status in the community, such as the CEO of XXX, or your financial strength, such as being one of the thousand richest in the world, but this is not really influential in the long term. Given that status in the community and financial strength can be lost in a day, they are not really a permanent inspirational asset in a human being.

Is it a coincidence that many rich people are left alone when they suddenly become poor? Or that a retired Prime Minister or a high level business executive starts living an ordinary life?

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I believe that a permanently inspirational character exists when you have a vision and continual viable ideas that you can share with people. I don’t mean that you have to be a scientist or an innovator; most importantly you have to have a strong ability to make good observations of people, understand developments in economics and politics or other types of social sciences, and implement these new ideas into people’s lives while taking into consideration the history and other aspects of your counterparty.

Easily said. But once you have all these skills, you are a candidate for a good leader, a mentor and a friend for everyone. I believe that acquiring these skills requires a tremendous amount of energy and motivation and a desire to update yourself constantly. A lot of people want to achieve this, but since it is long journey, many of us turn back while we are still quite close to the start.

When you inspire people, it is much easier to build trust. You don’t really have to work on building trust, since a person inspired by you will be much open to listening more to you and will be more willing to spend time with you.

And once the trust is built, it is very easy to do business with those people.

Instead of inspiring and building trust, if you want to jump to a conclusion (in business), it is very likely that you will fail. Even if you don’t, it will not be a very long term relationship.

A good leader or mentor should be able to inspire their subordinates with their vision and way of living—otherwise that leader is just an ordinary leader, and most likely he will be left alone once he gives up his status in the community. And a good friend should be able to show you new ways of looking at things while having a good time.

A lot of people are advising that you split your social and business circles, which I strongly oppose. Conversely, combine your social and business circles!

It will definitely create more synergy, as one plus one sometimes does not equal two. In addition, doing business within your social circle is a good test to see how much your friends are inspired by you.

All the best from Singapore.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter:@sukru_haskan

Economics, Life, Personal Development

The Psychology of Excessive Luxury Brands Purchase

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Why do people buy an excessive number of luxury brands and spend so much money on these items? Not only rich people, but amazingly poor people save money to buy a branded handbag or a pair of boats.

For instance, I happen to know a lady who earns $1,500 per month and bought a bag for $5,000. Why?

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Since I believe one of the biggest social problems this century is improper distribution of goods and services, I have observed the buying patterns of different nationalities for many years.

Many of us want to feel ourselves special. No matter whether you are rich, poor, young or old, you want to be treated as someone special. It is a basic psychological state of human beings. In addition, many people want to prove to the outside world that they are different and important.

This pattern of behaviour mainly occurs when an individual is not really fully satisfied with their friends, their work, their own intellectual capacity or even how they spend their life. On top of that, if that individual feels that they are lagging behind their peers, many could choose to reduce the gap by showing off through luxury brands, luxury holidays or material stuff such as cars.

Actually, much of our surroundings is just a sense of feeling, and everything is psychological.

Of course, there are reasons behind this pattern of behaviour.

  • If a person suddenly gets rich and if they come from an underprivileged background, they may tend to exaggerate to get attention. All of a sudden, something (money) has become the only thing to get attention. Before, there was nothing to differentiate them, and they think now they have everything (money!) to get attention.
  • When they are not sure how long their wealth will hold out and they want to make the most of it by showing off. This happens mainly in emerging market economies, where governments choose some people to get rich. In other words, these people have not really achieved anything: they are simply chosen, and sadly they are unaware of it.
  • Everybody tries to establish a social status in their community. Whether you are rich or poor, you want to be respected. Here is my explanation as to why a poor person who should not buy that $5000 bag buys that bag—because they think they will be treated like rich people. They actually think that they are closing the gap between themselves and others! Actually, they are opening the gap even further by becoming poorer.
  • Last but not least, another reason is these people do not have anything better to do for themselves—and, more importantly, for their communities. Since intellectual capacity/ability is built over years, it takes time. As human beings, we take the easy route to earn respect.

I find distinct similarities between people who try to feel good and gain status through excessive buying of luxury goods and people who get married to very beautiful ladies with no education and proper life, or to fat ugly gentlemen with a lot of money.

In the end, the relationship is very artificial and does not survive in the long term.

Moreover, an institution such as marriage should create happiness, but in the end, this type of relationship only creates miserable and unhappy lives.

I personally adore those people who are respected in their communities for their knowledge and their own unique characteristics rather than for what they own. A family friend in London taught me several years ago that my wealth should not be my car and what I wear, but it should be my own intellectual capacity.

A Turkish foundation, Darussafaka, is currently running an excellent advertisement on Turkish TV channels. The title is “You can still survive without it”. A lady goes to a shop and likes a bag; a businessman goes to another shop and likes a pen; but they both say “I can still survive without it”. Then the ad continues that you can survive without many things, but not without the proper education of our children.

I want to make it clear that this article is not about criticizing any type of behaviour or a certain type of person. It is solely written according to my own personal observations. It is purely an attempt to produce an amateur socio-economic article.

In addition, I too occasionally enjoy buying some branded clothes and shoes—hopefully, though, not excessively.

I hope this article leads you to contemplate whether you overspend on luxury brands and perhaps encourages you to channel some of that spending into education or the other basic needs of the many.

All the best from Singapore.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan

Economics, Life, Personal Development, Singapore

Social Mobility

 

If you are born in the Western world rather than Africa today, it is likely that you will not suffer famine in your lifetime. If you are born in England, your life expectancy will be higher than someone born in Mali. If you are born into a family where both your parents have university degrees, it is very likely that you will have access to higher education as well.

Small differences in life such as your place of birth, nationality, your name and your family make huge differences to how your life is lived.

It is very clear that not everybody is born with the same kind of opportunities and prospects. It is the balance of nature—and it is not very fair.

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Social mobility is a big challenge for every country today. A book written by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett concludes that more equal societies almost always do better than others. Their study discovers that there is an inverse relationship between income inequality and intergenerational mobility. Countries with less income inequality, such as Denmark, Sweden and Finland, have some of the greatest mobility, whereas countries with high income inequality, such as Chile and Brazil, have some of the lowest social mobility.

So much talent is wasted because they haven’t been given enough opportunity to show what they can achieve.

For example, George Soros would have been one of the wasted talents, but he was lucky enough to receive an education at LSE.

He subsequently tried his luck in securing employment in England, but was offered only simple jobs rather than his dream investment banking job. Because he did not come from a certain family or circle, he could not establish his dream in England, and so flew to the US to accomplish his dreams.

Today he is one of the greatest philanthropists.

Given that we cannot completely eliminate these inequalities, how can we help the underprivileged to move up the ladder?

No matter what, we have to subsidise education. Children who come from poor families have to make it to good schools if they have the right attitude and skills. Without allowing underprivileged kids access to education, it is almost impossible to speak about social mobility.

I think Singapore is a very good example. Everyone can go to a public school and the monthly fee varies from free to six Singapore dollars if you are a Singaporean citizen. More importantly, Singapore is one of the best countries for your child to be educated, according to the latest PISA results.

There is no guarantee that all kids can make it—but the probability of climbing the ladder significantly increases with a good education.

The legendary investor, Jim Rogers, lives in Singapore with his family and he chose for his daughter to study at a public school rather than a private school.

Social mobility is not only something that helps people climb the ladder, but it is also an insurance against rises in crime and is a bodyguard for a peaceful world.

It is not easy to subsidise a good level of education for everyone and it is very costly, but it is not more costly than the cost of rising crime, of unhappy communities and of pessimistic futures.

Finally, no matter how smart you are, if you are financially well off, it is very likely that you will take it easy. Social mobility is also good for innovation, competition and the promotion of growth.

Hamdi Ulukaya, owner of Chobani yoghurts, is a recent good example of social mobility. A Turkish citizen of Kurdish descent, he was lucky enough to study at Ankara University and lucky enough to go to the US for his English studies. He took a major risk in acquiring a large, defunct yoghurt factory in New York.

Ulukaya’s net worth is USD 1.4 billion as of 2014 and he has pledged USD 700 million to refugees of the Syrian civil war.

It is hard to prove, but I believe people whom you help to move up social ladder tend to help other people as well—just like George Soros and Hamdi Ulukaya.

All the best from Singapore.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan

Life, Personal Development

What is success to you?

When you are a fresh graduate from a university, you are young and ambitious.

You definitely want to be successful, but many of new graduates do not have an idea of what their passions are and this fact makes it harder for them to be successful.

In my own and plain explanation, success is an ability to achieve your dreams and it starts with setting your own objectives.

success

An article published on Harvard Business Review by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams explains it perfectly with a great example.

“A corporate lawyer may work for a highly respected firm and have a lavish compensation package, but if her career falls short of her dream to become a Supreme Court justice, for instance, or if practicing law seems merely a good way to make a living and doesn’t provide an intellectual buzz, she won’t feel successful.”

Success has different meanings to all of us. Success is a continuous journey which includes failure. Richard St. John from Canada explains success as a process of passion, work, focus, push, ideas, improve, serve and persist.

Many people defines success as a bank account with many zeros. Whilst it may be a conclusion of a success, it is not really a mean and it should not be.

From my own experience, people with an ultimate target to have a bank account with many zeros do fail. In other words, they become unsuccessful as passion is not in place in the first instance.

Remember Richard St. John’s ladder of success?

It does start with passion and money is not involved in any part of the process.

And these are the last words of Steve Jobs…

“I reached the pinnacle of success in the business world.
In others’ eyes, my life is an epitome of success.

However, aside from work, I have little joy. In the end, wealth is only a fact of life that I am accustomed to.

At this moment, lying on the sick bed and recalling my whole life, I realize that all the recognition and wealth that I took so much pride in, have paled and become meaningless in the face of impending death.

In the darkness, I look at the green lights from the life supporting machines and hear the humming mechanical sounds, I can feel the breath of god of death drawing closer…

Now I know, when we have accumulated sufficient wealth to last our lifetime, we should pursue other matters that are unrelated to wealth…
Should be something that is more important:

Perhaps relationships, perhaps art, perhaps a dream from younger days…
Non-stop pursuing of wealth will only turn a person into a twisted being, just like me.”

Who could argue that Steve Jobs was an unsuccessful person? I think he is successful and innovative but does it really matter what i think?

What matters most is what your self perception is…

My own humble explanation of success is to be a purposeful creature during our life span with adding value to many people’s lives.

Moreover, generating innovative ideas and helping to improve living standards of many cannot be more satisfactory than anything else.

All the best from Singapore.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan