The start of a new movement

Lately I've been working on a completely new and innovative project. It's called Tientjes, or in English "Ten Bucks".

We've noticed that coaching and counselling, psychological help, help in starting up your own business or creating your own website is are services that are expensive. Prohibitively so.

Personally this has meant that it's been difficult for me to find clients for my online coaching business. Not because there aren't many people out there who suffer from the long term effects and affects of Childhood Sexual Abuse, but because they can't afford to hire a counsellor to help them through the healing.

That all is about to change. Ten Bucks aims to be a movement towards making these types of services (and many others) available to the average Joe. Shooting for a market of lower to middle incomes, we aim to provide services and challenge people to provide their own. Get a lawyer for Ten bucks, an artist to design your logo, build your website for Ten bucks an hour (or per page, up to the provider to make that decision).

The best part is that people who are now working menial jobs, barely getting by, working their tail off for a boss can use the services of Ten bucks to break out of their poverty and to follow their dream.

Far from being a rekindling of the American Dream, which appears to be geared towards rampant consumerism, this is all about producing your own dream, living your own passion on the scale you want. Do you want to be as big as Disney? We'll help you get started. Do you want to be a professional service provider, good at what you do and proud to be independent? We'll help you get started. Do you just want to put your skills to work on a small scale? We'll help you get started. It's what your dream is all about that counts.

Everything at Ten bucks, as you might have guessed by now, costs Ten bucks. The three initiators are accomplished professional coaches and trainers. Instead of going for the big bucks we go for Ten bucks. We feel that even if our services costs only Ten bucks we can make a decent living and have a lot of fun for our money.

We're in the process of writing our business plan and already we're dreaming about the possibility of going international. Big dreams, not of making big money, but of making the Ten bucks movement big enough to have a coach on every streetcorner, teaching people how to make the most of their dream.

Heroes: becoming inspiring individuals

In my last post I speak about the true heroes, those unsung heroes that help an old lady cross the street, pick up that bit of garbage and light a candle in someone's darkness. Today's blog is an attempt to empower people to go out and be a hero.

In response to my last post my girlfriend told me she's been a hero today. Across the street from her there's a supermarket that always has a lot of empty beercans lying around. Some presumably homeless people hang out there and leave their can's lying around. Today she walked past it as she always does on the way to doing the groceries, and instead of just passing them by, she went and picked them up and put them in the garbage bin. I'm proud to have inspired such an act of heroism.

Calling it heroism may seem overdone, but I believe it is the right and proper term. It takes courage and determination to change your own behavior. It means you have to change your own perception, refuse to think of problems as unsolveable and to be committed to making a difference in the world. Calling it heroism may however makes the task at hand seem difficult. As if you have to do something really special and unique to be a hero.

A hero, in my definition is someone who doesn't let an opportunity to make a difference go unnoticed. They pay attention to what is going on around them and help whenever they can. My girlfriend in the above example has probably walked past those cans a dozen times at least, perhaps even hundreds of times. However, today she saw them in a different light and made a choice to do something about it.

This kind of behavior is different and gets noticed, and when it does it's contagious. I remember one night at Carnaval, walking from the trainstation to my girlfriends home. In the south of our country Carnaval is celebrated with as much joy and noise as it is in Rio, and my girlfriend lives in the south. It was quite a new experience for me, all these people all dressed up, walking from bar to bar, singing and having a good time. I noticed however that some vandal had pushed a number of bicycles over, so that they lay in the road. The inebriated crowd was walking by them, but I could see that it was only a matter of time before they'd be falling over them or maybe treading on them, either breaking their necks or breaking the bicycles.

So my girlfriend and I picked up the first bike we saw and leaned it against the buildings on the side. There were at least 7 bikes that were similarly thrown about and it looked like a daunting task when a man in a pigsuit cheered at us. He told us: "I saw you put that bike upright! Good going ladies, that's what the world needs, people who care". He helped us lean the rest of the bikes against buildings and lampposts and told us about Carnaval in years gone by when of course "everything was better and people really cared". We made his night and he made ours.

That's the random acts of kindness that I believe are truely heroic. And aside from making a difference they also make you feel good about yourself! It's fun to look at the world and look for small ways in which you can improve it, right here and right now. So I propose we start a movement: the RAK-movement. RAK meaning: Random Acts of Kindness. It's easy and anyone can do it. But just to get you started and to inspire others: let's keep a tRAK-record. Let me know what RAK you did today!


If you like this post, you may also enjoy:
On being human: The case for mediocrity