Every now and then, when I surf around the web, I see an positive, perky post at social networks or blog. People share the good things and moments in their life, everything seems to be just too perfect, at least for my taste. If I read them at all I can't help but being just a little bit annoyed. I wonder if they only share how perfect their lives seems to be. Don't they have moments where lives just suck, they are hesitant or they simply feel miserable? I am a firm believer that life balances itself. I believe there is no courage without the fear, there is no happiness without the misery, there are no gains without the pains!
The past week for me was kind of summarized things for me. I started the week feeling a bit lost in this new chapter in my life. I wasn't sure if I had the right priorities in my life. Was I doing the right things, meeting the right people, had the right message or was I just wasting my time with meaningless meetings?
But then a chain of events have started happening. They did not just happened out of the blue. I would like believe that when people meet with similar, sometimes identical, intentions and/or emotions magic happens.
Let me go thru these meetings one by one;
Last December (year of 2014) I met a new colleague, a professional public speaker/motivator, during Christmas Party. We exchanged a few necessary polite phrases and briefly told each other what we do and talk about. A few weeks ago, beginning of February he contact me and asked to meet over a cup of coffee. This Wednesday, the 18th, I met him and we talked intensively. When he told me more about himself and his intentions I was blown away not only what he wanted to do but also how similar our background stories were. Here I was sitting with this guy from Sweden and almost listening to myself. He wanted to arrange a whole day event at a school, the 31st of August 2015, where 10-20 maybe 30 public speakers, motivators would be there to share their experiences to the students. The purpose was to help the students to change their point of view, the way they think, the way they perceive the world around them. The idea was to hopefully them to think there was hope and it was up to them to take the chance. So we went from idea to action. We called-to-action in our FB-group page already a number of colleagues told us they also would like to be part of this. I was so energized!
The day after my energizing meeting with my friend I got to have lunch with my best friend. I had the feeling that we don't get to meet so often so I made a list of things that I would like to ask, say and share during this encounter. So when we finally met and took a bit of food and sat down. We started talking which soon turned into laughters. I got to tell my best friend how much I appreciated the company and how our friendship enriched my life. I was/am and always will be thankful to have had the chance to met a person that I can proudly call a true friend of mine. I wish everyone had a friendship where your friend is also your witness, your conscious. I was smiling the rest of the day, the rest of the week, I still am smiling.
I also got to pay quick visit to a couple of friends to pick up presents for the "school visit" I will be doing when I am in Tanzania. My friends took time and money from their lives to buy notebooks, pencils and pen sharpeners. I am blessed to have friends like them...
So yesterday, Friday the 20th of February, started like an ordinary day. I met a newly found friend and hopefully a future partner about diversity, it was time for another lunch with another good friend of mine. He had a lot of ideas but most importantly questions. He intentionally pushed me to for more focused and sharp answers, we agreed to meet in a few weeks to continue to work on my offerings in my new life.
After lunch, we had the 2nd meeting with "Diversity Awareness Jury", I am going to tell you more about this in a later post. Here I was among people I admire, I look up to. I looked around the table and the meeting was intensive. Many ideas, discussions and laughters and many of them just recently met. We have a long list things to do and I was filled with hope. We managed to book a new date for the next meeting and I took off to another meeting with a CEO whom have showed character and passion for diversity. We discussed intensively for an hour and agreed to meet again. We both were in an agreement that we could do more together.
In my car, during my drive home, Friday afternoon, I realized how much of a luck bastard I was. I was pleased with my priorities. I was doing the right things, meeting the right people and my message was getting more sharpened, more focused. To top all of these, recently we initiated an activity to find 60+ job opportunities.
If you've read this far, yet another positive and perky post, I would like to remind you that I am firm believer that life balances out itself. In a few days I am going to embark a journey, to climb Mt Kilimanjaro, at 5896 meters, Uhuru Peak. It's going to be tough and even at times painful. No pain no gain, right?
