Dear Reader,
I recently came across this quote by John Stuart Mill, and I was reminded of this simple hard-earned truth. "Ask yourself if you are happy and you will cease to be so. Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way."
This insight came to me from my own experience of building Odetta, in which I had managed to design our company and my life around flexible freedom. However, with so much unstructured time and focus on optimizing my own happiness, I found myself asking some pretty profound existential questions, and I know that I was not at my best. As soon as I shifted my attention back to the Odettians with a focus on something larger than my own happiness or lifestyle design, joy and flow slowly returned. I realized I was happiest when I could connect each small task with a sense of service.
Spiritual writer Elkhart Tolle says that if the process itself does not bring you happiness along the way, the end result will not either. Behind this idea is the concept of karmic action, which is the unconscious perpetuation of unhappiness. So many of us have been nourished on the idea of some future state of happiness when in reality all we ever have is now.
May you find happiness both by the way and along the way,
❤
Katharine
|
|
|
Hottest Use Case at Odetta: Candidate Sourcing
|
|
|
|
Recruiting talent is the BOTTLENECK in tech right now. Executive search firm fees have increased 30% and many are now asking for equity as part of their compensation. Odetta has been tasked to help People Ops and Recruiting at tech companies with candidate sourcing. We are crawling the web for relevant candidates and filling the top of the funnel for such candidates to save the internal teams time and money.
|
|
|
Heart-Warming Reply to Our Cold Email: How Can I Help?
|
|
|
|
We send a lot of emails every week into the ether with a hope to be useful and/or inspire a response. Last month, we received this wonderful reply to our cold email.
"Dear Odetta, I am the only child of an Indian mother who stayed home to raise me, despite having a college degree. The world is a poorer place for the human capital that she did not bring to the workplace. My commitment to her, and to all the women like her in the emerging world, is to pay that forward. Of all the hands dealt by geographic and cultural fate, none is more challenging - or more full of promise for the future of humanity - than the one held by women in the developing world. How can I help?"
|
|
|
Odettian Quote From Our Newest Recruit
|
|
|
|
|
“I want to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to Odetta on enabling us women to come together, with shared interests and similar concerns, on this platform that offers diverse culture and plethora of chances to empower ourselves, to become a part of this social group that helps us become so much more familiar with our own core selves. I have had previous job roles where, despite their repeated efforts, I still felt this gap that disabled us to connect with our mentors/managers, that did not let us fully express ourselves because of this strict unaddressed aura that most workplaces seem to have. Odetta is truly something remarkable. It's so much more than a "business"; it is family.
Two days into being an Odettian, I already feel the urge to work so hard for my company and take it to new heights that Odetta can feel proud of its newest recruits. I promise to bring to my workplace my best efforts, sincerest hard work for Odetta and take ownership of the responsibilities endorsed to me as an Odettian. Lastly, I'd very very sincerely like to thank Odetta for coming up with this platform that empowers me in multiple ways and gives my confidence a boost to be a part of such enriching culture. I'm just so grateful and humbled to join Odetta.”
|
|
|
|
“The unconscious assumption behind all such action is that success is a future event and that the end justifies the means. But the end and the means are one. And if the means did not contribute to human happiness, neither will the end. The outcome, which is inseparable from the actions that led to it, is already contaminated by those actions and so will create further unhappiness. This is karmic action, which is the unconscious perpetuation of unhappiness.”
—Elkhart Tolle, Spiritual Author of “A New Earth”
|
|
|
|
|
