What makes my life better

As Ernest Hemingway said: “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” And that’s, to my mind, the way every person should follow. It is how I try to live, always improving and getting better. Sure thing, it is a difficult path to go through, as not many people can easily admit own weaknesses and strengths. Therefore, to be pretty honest with myself and the reader, I’ve decided to ask opinions of my close people to evaluate all my good and bad sides . I guess that people who surround me and with whom I interact every day can say much more about me than I do. And I really appreciate that, as it is your family and friends who tend to make you better and support across-the-board. So, having a great deal of chat with them, I’ve concluded that good and integral qualities of my nature are positive attitude, thoughtfulness for other people, and cheerfulness. While my unconcerned attitude to life can be considered as my drawback.

To my mind, one of the best characteristics I possess is my positive and cheerful attitude to life. As Eileen Caddy (a great Scottish spiritual leader and writer) once said: “Live and work but do not forget to play, to have fun in life and really enjoy it.” She was pretty right in that and I whole-heartedly believe in that statement. I try to live fully and experience everything – have fun, be crazy and unpredictable. If I screw up – then I will have a chance to learn from my mistakes. Neither I try to be someone else or be perfect. I just enjoy what I do, doing what I really want, with the people I really love. I’m open to everything around me: I’m an outgoing person, thus enjoy meeting new people, and I like to take a risk and experiment with anything new if it ameliorates my lifestyle. Hence, I have a lot of hobbies and pursuits – to revel in going to some new places on my vacation, reading new and fascinating books, watching fabulous movies, etc. My great passion is sport and active way of live. I often practice different kinds of sport, adore going camping, and consequently boating, horse riding, cycling.

As you may see, I like to have fun and enjoy every moment of my life. That, most likely, creates an impression of a carefree person. However, that is not so. Despite my desire to lead such saturated and funny way of life, I still realize the importance of what I do. So, what is really important in my life then? First of all, it is my family and friends –I take care of these people with all my love and responsibility. Moreover, I can say that I have that kind of caring and understanding approach to many other people. That’s why, currently, I’m...

Above all, educational sector is a system. It is a system that is meant to make money. No wonder educational institutions are responsible for a significant share of the nation-wide GNI (Gross National Income).

Every university is a cash-machine and if you are going to school, you have to be smart about it. Not only financially (not getting yourself into a 50-year loan) but also cognitively. “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education,” Mark Twain said. He didn’t advocate self-education, neither am I doing so. He merely pointed to the simple truth that classroom education does not provide all the learning experience you need. It complements and adds to the thing you need most – real-world experience.


There is much more to education that what can be learned in school. In fact, the most valuable lessons can be learnt only outside of classroom. “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand,” Confucius said.

We are all highly unique individuals and a highly uniform curriculum that has not changed much over the past hundred years cannot be good. How come it is still the teacher who decides what the assignment is going to be? The teacher can decide on the complexity of the task but why not let the student choose what to work on? Why force the student to read Aristotle if the student prefers to read Plato? Even though our cognitive processes are similar, we are unique to the extent that we deserve to have the right to work on the topic that interests us most.

Because the curriculum is so inflexible, an argument has been existing for a while now that the educational system is outdated. Many claim it restricts the ability to think creatively and …

I quit smoking about two years ago and I still have memories about how everyone was trying to encourage me to quit. Every day I had to hear about how harmful smoking was. Me friends kept telling me that there were certain hidden effects of smoking that I hadn’t yet realized and that would kick in few years down the road. After hearing things like that I kept making promises to myself that I would indeed quit. And I did for some time, but apparently my mind didn’t beat my body: I kept coming back to smoking. Is this familiar to you?

I often see smokers around me in the office, in the streets and even on TV. What I understood from my own experience is that the worst you can do is force a person to quit smoking. Doing so does exactly the opposite and creates a desire to be rebellious.

As I have mentioned before, I do not smoke now and my quitting process started one day with the visit to the doctor. She mentioned that there are people whose organisms are much more resistant to smoking, but the others, like me, are slowly killing themselves. She showed me the picture of my lungs and said that she could not stop me and that it was only my decision. At this moment my journey started. I did not quit right away, but every cigarette reminded me of the picture of my lungs and slowly started to hold a feeling of abomination for cigarettes until the day I woke up and realized that I will never smoke again!

I will not...

Different definitions could be found for the meaning and concept of life, should you start searching the web or library bookshelves. In fact, life is everything that is given to us to enjoy, get sad, be satisfied, happy or unhappy about. All of us (the majority of us) value our life incredibly, but in spite of that, we sometimes cannot see the evident facts that put our life at risk. One of the remarkable talents of people is to be able to overestimate their talents and capabilities so that to forget about caution and attention. First example that comes to my mind is drunk driving!

Drunk person driving a car does not really mean that they do not value their lives. Most likely they are simply narrow-minded and believe that they are in control of the situation. When you sit in the driver’s seat and start the engine while under the effect of alcohol, you risk not just your own life, which is, one could argue, your own possession. You also put at risk lives of those who are driving next to you, and, what is even more important, those who are sitting in the back seat. It is frightening to realize that very often those who accompany drunk drivers are not more than ten or twelve years old. Sometime later they will sit in the driving seat believing that they are in control of the situation as their parents were. The question is...

It is not a secret that education is becoming more and more important, especially for the professionals with some experience, who would like to boost their career or develop additional skills that could bring them to new sector of economy. Some people would even say innovation and education are the most expensive currencies of nowadays economy and if we would like to become competitive on the educational market, it is crucial to go through college education to open the doors for further personal and professional development.

Looking at other aspects of our lives, we can see that education also brings us individual satisfaction, as while now we can find new interesting aspects in any type of job we are doing, time will make this job more common and even tedious. College degree is always the way to widen your horizons and create new opportunities in all aspects of your life. Globalization of economy and social elements of relationships open up access to a lot of challenging interesting experiences, such as traveling, international career and cultural exposure. Almost all of them, however, will not be possible without strong and relevant educational background.

Education is not only about career and opportunities, it is, first of all, the...

Recycling is a relatively new concept in our daily lives. Ten years ago recycling was implemented on industrial level and was strongly promoted by governmental and local authorities. Today recycling obsession came to our daily lives and while in some countries recycling policy is not yet strict and uncompromised, in the others it is already enforced and becomes a legal requirement for all the households. When I looked at the ranking of the countries with the highest recycling rates, top two countries that appeared on the list were Belgium and the United Kingdom. Living in the country, where we just start to learn about the benefits of the recycling, I was very surprised by the techniques and tools developed to increase and optimise recycling and facilitate people to become more “environmentally friendly” in their actions.

In Belgium all the people are obliged to separate the garbage in three categories: plastics, food and glass. In the UK government provided its population with special garbage recycling areas that have special section for plastic, food, glass, shoes, hand bags and even clothes. These areas are extremely convenient and promote recycling system all over the country.

For many organizations recycling is becoming one of the...

Why would the person, not directly involved in the situation, sit in the office and decide for you whether I can give or accept help from another individual. Or why, in contrary, would I not be able to choose what to do with my own body? As for me, these limitations are ridiculous and contradict with the concept of democracy and liberal rights. Life is the most sacred possession of an individual and if he can help someone else to save or prolong his or her stay in this life, why not do it? And why limit them from doing so?

I strongly believe that even among my audience...

Promotional campaigns and advertisements shout out loud about the growing number of kids that were left by their parents and look for new home. Financial and controlling departments shout about numerous requirements that a family has to meet before it will be able to adopt a child. Workload is piling up on the tables of clerks, kids getting older, growing up in the orphanages and potential parents give up on trying, as they cannot see the end in the documentation and credibility check processes.

Can we solve the problem this way?...

People are very different, but we are similar in some fundamental aspects. Saying that I think about main motivators that make us be involved in some of the happenings and activities. For example, recent wild fires in Russia turned international media upside down and made a lot people look at the effects of global warming from extreme and new angle – real threat. People have a tendency to perceive things through personal experience and this personal experience is, perhaps, major driving force of progress.

We have spent enough time looking at the coming global warming and trying to predict nature’s behaviour. Only this year, people started to be involved and affected by actual events. Flooding and snow in Latin America and Asia, extreme hot weather in Central Europe – at least one third of the world has touched some of the dangers and consequences of it. And apart from the same question that we have been asking ourselves for the last decade: “What is next?” international media now gave a kick off to the new concern: What will be our response to the nature?

At some point of time we started to believe that…

I am proud of our progress concerning improvement of the environment. The most dangerous emissions have virtually disappeared and water quality, especially in the Great Lakes, has greatly improved.

Of course, persistent problems with the disappearance of the habitat, ineffective regulations and new pollutions require innovative policy tools. Some easy solutions may have already been implemented. We must address insensitive and inefficient public lands’ management, high regulatory costs and unintended consequences of environmental mandates. We must have a new environmentalism for the 21st century.

You can count on me when I say that my environmental vision sees a safer and cleaner world. Many times crisis entrepreneurs create hysteria in order to drive their policies and increase their own budgets. The resources might be limited so we must get the most of our money. We must have the most environmental benefit at the least cost.

Distant bureaucrats cannot manage local environments with sensitivity and efficiency.

I must let you know that...