TED Community » Nico Driessen

About Me

CHANGE YOUR THINKING AND YOU WILL CHANGE THE WORLD. I got kicked out of high school because I knew a lot more than my teachers and it was like being released from doing hard time. At age 18 I started a career as civil servant, at 20 my career ended. I was under the impression that I was supposed to give service to the general public, apparently it was not so and I was released again. I always forgot to mention that I have no qualifications at all and by skillfully manipulating the job interviewers they always forgot to ask, so I got myself what other people consider as " a very good job " a couple of times. By throwing away 5 great opportunities for a career I brought my poor parents to the brink of insanity, only when I started my own business they could stop holding their breath. I did not realise it, but I became a change agent, people think that I am rather intelligent and take calculated risks, but in fact I accidently come in a situation that is %&#$&@$# and make the best of it. I had absolutely no idea how other people do it and it was very dificult to find information( there was no internet in those days ) so I just did it my way. In the early 80's I had a farm, together with a good friend. Farming was done biological as it turned out to be, we just planted some seeds and waited to see what would happen, OK, every now and than we removed some weeds, but that was about all we knew about the subject. Word spread that the both of us were nice people and we welcomed visitors from Holland who wanted to stay for a holiday. They liked the peace and beauty of the mountains, taking care of the animals and all that. Anyway, one fine day a 32 year old man came to us and he told us that he was a mental case, a fruit cake and absolutely mad since he was 14, going in and out of the mental hospital and he would completely understand it that we didn't want anything to do with him, he would go away and blablabla. I told him that he could stay for a couple of weeks, under the condition that he would stop convincing us that he was useless and that he would do some odd jobs when he was in the mood. He was the best worker I ever had, he loved to do something worthwile and to be accepted as he was, without being judged and being told to change this and that behaviour. The end of the story is that I arranged for 3 more of this kind of people, they loved working for food and lodging and they believed that I was a very nice person for letting them stay, the truth is ofcourse that I gave them pocket money and made profit and that I could afford to do only the cores I loved myself and let them do the rest. After staying 2 or 3 years they found their mental stability and returned to Holland, were all of them are still having a satisfying life. A friend of us spent his holiday at our farm, he is a rather famous psychology teacher at the university and he was impressed by the results that I achieved, he never realised that I had no system at all accept letting it be and he became very enthousiastic and started to promote the concept. Today there are a lot of farmers in Holland who work with this concept and it is my spiritual child. Since that time I love to do my business according to the principle of Tao ; doing by not doing. Now I am a specialist in inspiring people and being a leader who stimulates workers to do things their way, instead of being a control freak who wants to control every detail, in fact by controling his workers every minute. The outcome is that workers actually love to work for me and give me a nice return on the confidence that I invested in them. Unfortunately I received a cripling blow, my company in Sri Lanka was devastated in 2004 by the tsunami, I had a very dificult period trying to get back on my feet, but thanks to the inner strenght I developed I am back in business again. I am so very convinced of the benefits, that I can not stop telling people about it. CHANGE YOUR THINKING AND YOU WILL CHANGE THE WORLD.