#rembe

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Gina Rembe gave a lecture on ‘How to be a good human and not lose your sanity in the process’.

Gina has worked in Wellington and internationally, currently for Life Hack & Enspiral. Her experiences have helped her decide to do work that is socially beneficial and is genuinely rewarding, rather than following blind instruction or chasing financial gain through manipulative corporate ventures.

She advises that you don’t learn everything at uni- life is it’s own education, and you learn a lot in the real world. Don’t get blinkered by what you ‘should’ do, society has a lot of structures in place that you didn’t put there. Do what makes you happy, and what makes you a good human.

Good For Nothing is a social enterprise that operates on the basis that there are more important things in life than money, and just because one concept is less commercially viable than another doesn’t mean it should just be swept under the rug- if there’s a social benefit in it, this organisation provides resources and support to do ‘good’ for ‘nothing’ (ie free).

Gina shared some of her experiences working for big London agencies that cared little for her efforts and handed out endless meaningless tasks. ‘Don’t work so hard that you lose yourself in the process.’ There will always be more work to do, but it’s not the most fulfilling thing in life- the only person that will measure your success by your effort is yourself, so don’t be too harsh a critic.

An inspirational forum for Gina is DoLectures.com, a 20 minute speaker format that presents inspirational speakers in isolated locations, forcing a removal from the distractions of ‘the daily grind’ to look at our efforts from an outside perspective.

Enspiral proclaims itself to be ‘more people working on stuff that matters’. Collaborating resources, skills, finances etc to help socially progressive ideas get off the ground. On their website it states ‘Enspiral is a virtual and physical network of companies and professionals working together to create a thriving society.Powerful things take place when like minded people connect. We've seen this repeatedly: conversations spark ideas, which become projects that grow into world changing ventures.’ Enspiral doesn’t really have a governance structure- everyone is equal, and contributes what they can.

In regard to working in a team, Gina recommends trusting one another as key to succeeding. “Trust breeds magic” -John Henry. In collaborative work you can’t just say you want to collaborate. You have to commit to a team culture. Be kind to yourself and to others. Everyone comes from different circumstances, and can contribute different amounts. Take time to get to know someone before you criticise their work ethic- they could be caring for a sick relative, working full time, and studying, when maybe you’ve only got the study to think about.

Real world takeaways:

The work starts before the work starts. Work on building a collaborative team before working on the project at hand.

Collaboration takes commitment.