Love the word Zeitgeist, says it all. The Year in Review of Google is always one to watch.

Time to start making my own Zeitgeist. My own little SWOT. My own little lessons learned. Hope you do the same.

I can only advise to do it very BLACK and WHITE. Shock yourself and wake up.

How are the kids doing, does my wife still love me, what went wrong, what did I learn, how can I improve, what did I achieve, what does the world look like, who are my heroes, how are my real friends doing, any new ones on the horizon, any bastards who tried to tackle me?

The biggest themes of 2010 for me were:

• I love my life, I love my wife, I love my 3 kids, I love my family, I love my job, I love the people I work with in all the Hercules countries. I will do everything in my power to keep it that way.
• Europe is not doing well at all. The US a little better, but still. Doesn’t look like things will improve drastically in the next 10 years. The Middle East and The Far East are moving in the right direction at the speed of light. I think the future for our children is there, but I could be wrong of course.
• If you want to run a global company, Belgium is definitely not the place to be. “Sorry I’m from Belgium” is a phrase I used very often this year. There’s no entrepreneural spirit, no capital (sorry, Belgians save 15% a year but don’t spend anything), no believers, no leaders, no government (sorry, 58 ministers and stuff who discuss how to distribute money they won’t have anymore in another way), no vision, no sane unions, no-body who cares anyway, no-body protesting, no nothing.
• Some people realise this and try to change things. Others evolve further in the “it wasn’t me, it’s the others”-culture and eat some more waffles to feel great. They watch “The smartest human being” every night to pick their next leader. That should keep them quiet for a while. Just like in the Roman Empire, “panem et circumcenses”. More and more people lose their civic virtue.  The problem is that the crowd is always right…that’s why I don’t think things will change rapidly.

BUT, if you can sell something in Belgium, you can sell it anywhere in the world 🙂 AND, if you can cope with this absurd country you will survive nearly anything. Inshallah!

Everything taken into account I’m extremely positive. I’m even up to something exciting. I will probably blog about it in the next weeks and months.

Merry Christmas everybody! It’s ok to start crying while watching the next video. Hallelujah!