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Tag: happy

The TED talk all women should see

I try to start my workday with a TED talk. I wish I could say I do this daily, but sometimes I can’t. I usually do it when my work energy level is low or when I feel I need motivation to go with the work routine. Today I came across with “Why do ambitious women have flat heads?” by Dame Stephanie Shirley. The title was enough to call my attention since sometimes when the talk’s title is too predictable, I might just pass it. But this one wasn’t and I’m glad I clicked it.

Dame Stephanie Shirley had it rough. She was one of the Jewish kids saved by being sent to families in northern England during the Second World War . She grew up in an era where women’s only objective was to get married and have kids. There were scarce work opportunities for them. I work in the software industry. Women in the 60’s didn’t just pursuit that area at all. But one woman did it. And this terrific woman showed nothing is impossible. Yes, there was a programming market in that era, believe it or not. If you want to know exactly how it worked, then you have to check the video.

Stephanie Shirley went through all the fights my generation didn’t have too. My generation won’t suffer that gender discrimination again. We have it easy. And what are we doing with our lives? We don’t aim high enough. We don’t dream big enough. We don’t do the fights for the next generations.

I invite you to watch the following TED talk (only 13 minutes of your time but worth your life change).

[ted id=2223]

July 5, 2016
Weirdness: Embracing it…
I always describe myself as “weird”. People around me hear “bicho raro” an expression in Spanish that would mean something like “weird bug.” Some friends are fast to point out that I’m not weird but “unique”. I appreciate their good intetions, but I actually don’t feel bad about being weird. I love being weird. I embrace my weirdness.

So what do I mean by being weird? I thought it would be to check up the exact definition of the word:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/weird says: involving or suggesting the supernatural; unearthly or uncanny. fantastic; bizarre.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/weird says: Strikingly odd or unusual, especially in an unsettling way; strange. Suggestive of the supernatural.

But I like the definition of the Merriam-Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weird :
1. of, relating to, or caused by witchcraft or the supernatural : magical
2. 2: of strange or extraordinary character: odd, fantastic
And I’m almost sure the latter is the best reputable source as well.

When reading the first two definitions, one would see why people react to the word “weird” as a bad adjective. This word for them describes something not very nice – an “unsettling” word. The expression “weirdo” is a commonly expression used to tag people in a despicable way. However, I insist on relying on the Merriam-Webster definition: “supernatural, extraordinary, fantastic, unusual… etc.” In this interpretation, I love the word; it describes how my usual perspective towards life is.

I always like to believe I don’t fit social standards as normally other people do. I love going against the trends and against the expected behaviors. Even the way I dress, reflects in some way, who I am as a person. And if people expect you to celebrate a holiday, I do exactly the opposite. But for me this weirdness is not about being stubborn or trying to make a point, it’s only about behaving according to my feelings and without regard to social expectations. For me being weird is nice. It’s about expressing myself in the most extraordinary fashion, living my life defying any social foolish conceptions. It would be nice for a change people wouldn’t chastise or try to fix weird people.
February 16, 2016
Crazy starts of year

The first post of this year! 🙂 I couldn’t be happier. Isn’t it funny how some numbers in the date can affect your life perspective goal wise? If we think of this well enough, years, months, dates, etc. are only numbers. We really don’t need the first of january of each year to assess our life objectives, but we’re human influenced by numbers, and our nature, and society partly, makes us reset every beginning of each year, restart our goals, focus, and start fresh.

The last days of the year have been surreal, with some (not serious) health problems, a minor surgery, and medical rest, but enough for me to assess how much I take care of myself physically.

2015 has been all about my book and writing as priority number one, and this year it will continue to be. But I’ll have to work this year on a forgotten goal: exercise and good eating habits. I have been telling myself that the latter were not priorities at all. That exercise would only take me time away from my writing objectives. That life was too short to not eat what I like. But I confess that a lot of lazy writeless time has gone through 2015 that could have been used for physical activity. And that not eating well has its consequences no matter the age…

In addition, I’ve been assessing other aspects as well. I’m not for vanity and long is the time that I indulged myself in taking care of my looks. In the name of saving for my trips, I’ve left many self-care aspects forgotten. I don’t mean to spend now tons of money on hairdressers and related stuff, but once in a while won’t do bad. So 2016 has to bring a little bit more of pampering, exercise, and good eating habits in my life. I won’t have another life to look fresh and radiant, will I?

I hope to find better balance this year. I hope to strive through writing even more. But more than anything, I hope to seize each day! Carpe Diem!

January 4, 2016
I don’t give up

And I’m back. I’ve missed my blog so much. All this time I haven’t been able to write it because of an extra job. It finished and I’m ready to continue. I must confess it was hard, hard to stay ok these weeks because I was at the point of exhaustion and burnout. And many things in my life were left in a standby.

When you put so much hope into something, into a new career chance, it’s very hard to accept that at the end you didn’t get your chance. But life is like this. And I’m so grateful I had this opportunity because I’ve learnt I’m stronger that I think. I’ve learnt I can achieve everything, even if it doesn’t turn out like I always want. I’ve learnt that I can be as strong as steel and hardworking as million people together, and the most important thing I’ve learnt is that “I don’t give up”. I’m willing to accept those words are no longer part of my vocabulary.

I’ve learnt life is better when you learn things the hard way. It makes you tougher and ready for the next challenges. But mostly, I’ve learnt that this blog should never be left aside. I’m thankful for all the people I shared this blog with. I’m thankful that I have a way to connect to them. I’m thankful that my words are read.

December 3, 2015
Oh men! we´d better achieve our dreams or….

Image source: blog.princetontutorial.com

Oh men, If I thought I would had a weekend like the previous one, years ago, I would have laughed really hard. I´ve always envisioned myself writing a novel in the late years of my life. I would say “SOMEDAY I will write a book, when I´m retired, and have time, and blah blah…”, but then one day I just decided to say that is BS! I will accomplish this dream “RIGHT NOW RIGHT HERE”, not in the near future, or someday when I´m in a retirement house, but NOW, when I have a day job and almost no time. I made the right decision…

For the past months, I´ve been trying to write my first novel. I started writing short stories first but when I got what I thought an interesting idea for a novel, I decided to give it a go. I decided I was going to put ‘writing´ as number one in my priorities list. No more “extra activities” that would drive me away from it. I would write everyday, if possible, until I actually made a habit of it.

Then, to not bore you anymore with the process to achieve this goal, I started to research about the process of writing books, how to build up characters, plots, etc. So much material about it, you wouldn´t believe me.

Image source: www.arcolatheatre.com

Finally, I decided to enroll myself in the Writer´s Digest bootcamp: Agent One-on-One: First ten pages, which basically focused in the first ten pages of a novel. We got a video tutorial from Ms. Paula Munier of Talcott Notch Literary Agency, who was brilliant, the cleverest person I´ve ever listened to. She gave excellent advice of what Agents were looking for and what she expected to find in the first pages of a novel. She also talked about all clichés, and all the times she got to reject queries from writers. I was “Oh my, I´ve never going to make it!” I did some research about her clients, looked in the web for their books, and believe me , those were quality material, beautiful books, written so amazingly that I was “I don’t stand a chance, English is not even my native language! I´ve never going to be at that level” But I was already registered in the course, with 200 $us invested, which here in my country is a LOT of money.

Image source: www.trinitylgbt.com

So to shorten things, Paula Munier was assigned as the agent who would review my pages (out of five agents in the bootcamp). I was thrilled, maybe she was the toughest one, but the one I´ve imagined myself working with. I sent my pages, expecting to receive a critique that would say “this is not good, you really have to improve, you should consider changing careers, or are you sure you want to be a writer?” I was already mentally preparing myself for that, telling me that I would try not to take it so bad, that I would improve, that this was just a course, and that I was there to learn and to improve.

What I got was: “Nice work, Easy and Fun to read, Engaging premise, Likable hero, Colorful cast of characters, Unique great style” and I was … My god I was stunned.

Of course she also described the parts where I could improve, like improving the flow of the scenes, avoiding overwriting, American grammar and punctuation (the British influence of course), and some issues with my second scene. But nonetheless, I was thrilled.

Image source: www.kariwolfe.com

And true, there is still a lot to improve, but it is all about the HARD WORK, and nothing else. If you want to write, you have to do it all the time. You have to read millions of books, if you want to improve your craft. It´s hard work and nothing else. Revision after revision and craziness along the way of course! I usually find myself about to go nuts when I get into one of those hard “revision” sessions, like I would dream with characters and get traumatized with grammar rules. But it is worth it.

In the end, we don´t get a second life, we only have this one, we´d better make the best of it. That means we only have NOW and THIS LIFE to make our dreams come true. We’d better devote ourselves and work our asses off to achieve our dreams, or else when are we going to do it? There is no other way around.

Believe in your dreams and just work the hell out of yourself to make them come true!

August 25, 2014
BUSY LIVES ARE THE BEST!!!

Image source: www.stevewiens.com

So this last month has been chaotic for me… Yep, I know, I haven’t written anything here in this period of time… What was I doing? Well just creating an online virtual store, working full time as tech writer, preparing a bachelorette party, translating some documents and the list could go for ages…

But actually, this has been a very, VERY good month; it was all chaos but very fulfilling. I may not have achieved something big and I may be in diapers with the online virtual store, but still, things are getting accomplished little by little.

And I even found that I want to start other projects as well, I can´t help it, I´m a constant project machine… I never get bored; there is no easy weekend or peaceful resting time… Yesterday, for example, I decided to give me a break, I switched off the computer at around 7:00 pm and decided to turn on the TV to catch a movie and just do nothing. I caught a very nice one: “Valentine´s Day” (I´m not that romantic but anyway…), but whenever there were commercial breaks I would find myself without knowing what to do…. How funny is that?… I usually watch TV while the laptop is on, or I have my tablet or cell phone near me to check stuff at the same time… I felt like I was not being productive enough with my time…. Is that lame? I really don´t know, and it wasn´t like I was disconnecting myself from the electronic world, I was in front of a good piece of electronic device: the TV!!!

Anyway, I finally got it, I LOVE multi-tasking, I LOVE being busy; I feel that I have the chance to do so many things in one day. And this is not about dependence on technology, I really enjoy doing other physical activities such as sports, dance and shopping (come on I´m a girl, who cannot love shopping?). So I guess that just watching TV was too “easy and so simple” for me…

So get the chance to BUSY YOURSELF, enjoy every day at the very BEST, do as MANY THINGS as you can, go to bed feeling exhausted but feeling that you made THE MOST OF YOUR DAY… life is so short… do you want to let it go WITHOUT DOING MUCH?

Image source: antdagamertv.blogspot.com

August 19, 2013
The reasons of being lonely….

Image source: micuadernitoverde.blogspot.com

The last posts I´ve been writing about inspirational and self-improvement topics, or at least that´s what I was trying to do, and I actually have managed to evade the “happy loner” topic for a time…

I´ve always told myself what a happy loner I am , and I am, really, but sometimes I can´t help but to question myself “why I am a loner”. I actually get this question many times from people that surround me. I´m 32 and most people that I know are either married, getting married or in a happy relationship. Don´t take me wrong, I´m not against of relationships, but in some way I feel that I´m not ready yet….as silly as it sounds.

I´m so focused in achieving the life of my dreams, of doing the things that I´ve always wanted to do, that I actually feel that I couldn´t do good in a relationship. I would have to achieve at least a part of the goals that I´m trying to achieve right now. It´s like needing to find myself before sharing my life with another being….

For instance, I´m not ready yet to settle down and form a family. I want to do so many things for myself before I get to this part. I know, you may be saying, but you actually can do many of this stuff while you are in a relationship and you don´t have to sacrifice one thing for the other… well the thing is that I would actually need to find somebody who could fit in my life style…. and that´s a little hard…

And what is my life style? Well, I´m working to get a working -nomad-traveling life style, I haven´t got there yet but I´m on my way to do so, that would mean that, at least, this person would have to have that same kind of free spirit… am I wrong? I haven´t met anybody like that in my social environment yet…

Su just patience, I tell myself, just enjoy the moment that I have, and take advantage of the many things that I can do while I´m in this “loner state”, after all, one has to get the most of every moment in life, right?

What do you think? Maybe some advice would be nice 🙂

July 23, 2013
How late is it to change paths?

Image source: jenifferbarnett.edublogs.org

Well I studied Industrial Engineering, did a Master degree on Environmental Studies, worked on a couple of companies in the production, planning and logistics area, did some consulting on Quality Management Systems, Good Manufacturing Practices, Industrial Safety. Before that, I worked in the Purchases department of another company, did some work on external trade and even took some courses on Customs regulations in my country. I also worked on project management in a software development company and even occupied a position as “E-commerce sales analyst” ah… and I also sold cars in a car dealer shop. And I could be going on for a couple more paragraphs on the many things I did and studied in approximately 8 years. I´ve changed jobs so many times that I actually hate to fill in Resumes just because I can´t remember already many things… On the other side, I´ve seen many people who graduated with me from the University getting stable jobs and promotions and now earning good money.

I also went on the entrepreneur side and I´m still going on it as I like it (and I see it as my main income source). But now I have settled down a little bit, I have managed to find a job that gives me some sort of “peace of conscience”, one job that doesn´t make me want to run away as fast possible from it. I´m not looking anymore for other job opportunities in the newspaper. I´m ok where I´m, like I mentioned in a previous post, I work in Software Development Company as a Technical Writer. This is completely different from my previous job experience and educational background, but I like it, I actually like the “writer” part more than anything, and I think that I´m on the way to something good and bigger yet, but most important, I´m on the correct path…. I always knew since I was very young that this was the path… but I guess I wasn´t brave enough to look for it… I was too worried thinking on what the family and friends would think… since all the people I knew where studying these complex careers like engineerings and that stuff and getting jobs and working their ass off it…

So is it too late for this change? Of course not! I´m actually grateful that I´m still young to do this change, I knew deeply that I wanted to this change but I always thought that I was going to do it later, in the future, you know after I got married and raised kids and that regular things that we think is what we must only strive for…

Of course, I would have liked to have this change before the 8 years or maybe I would have liked to have chosen a different career after school… but I wouldn´t have had the experiences that have allowed me to mature and see things the way I see them now. I can´t go in the past, but I´m lucky to have reached this point in life where I definitely know where I want to head… many people live their lives without knowing it and some of them know it but won´t do anything (for me the saddest thing that could happen).

So I´m reinventing myself, I don´t care anymore what are my degrees and post-degrees and my previous job experiences were, because none of those things make me happy. What I care is that I have a new chance now I´m willing to go with all for it!

So how about you? Do you think that it´s too late to change careers or paths?

July 18, 2013
How brave are you?

This post is going to be a little bit different from others…

Some time ago there was an incident in a city near mine; some guy was killed on the streets through gunshot in the middle of the day in a not so dangerous neighborhood due to some “business settlement vendetta”. The incident was on all the local news and a security video from the street showed exactly what happened. The guy could have been saved, because you can see how the assailant starts shooting from the other side of the street first, the victim goes down to the floor without being hit first and then runs to the car of a woman and begs for her to let him in. The woman got scared and pressed on the accelerator of her car as fast as she could and disappeared. A couple of seconds later, the shooter arrived to where the guy was laying and shot him to death.

Would you have done the same thing as the woman? Would you have let the guy inside the car to save him? I’ve always said that I would have tried to help him, opened the door and then accelerated as fast as I could. Maybe I would have gotten myself into trouble. I imagine myself already in a persecution, with the guy in the car, and the bad guys’ cars trying to intercept me. Then, I hear some close friends saying that the woman did the best, and I can’t help but to imagine that If I were the woman I would feel so guilty that I could have saved one life, and that I was so “chicken” that I left the poor guy to die.

I don’t know, I would have had to be there, in the “moment”, in the “situation”, maybe given the time I would have reacted equally to the woman, maybe I would have paralyzed or maybe I would have gotten the “guts” to save him. I’ve always considered myself more courageous than the average, but I’ve never been in situations where I could actually prove myself how brave am I.

But apart from this type of “hero braveness”, how courageous or brave am I in my ordinary life? Because there is another type of “courageousness”, the one that make us go through our believes, no matter the difficulties we may found on the road, the one that makes us continue and gather our strengths to defeat our most simple fears.

Was I ever fearful of leaving my routine, leaving jobs, leaving cities, leaving countries, changing my paths, or changing everything around me? Luckily I can answer that with a No. And I know maybe I may not be the most courageous person in the world but I know that I’m brave enough to face my fears, risks, changes and the unknown…

And you, how brave are you? I think we must always make this analysis….

Until next post…

Image source: taraburner.com

July 14, 2013
HOW HARD IS IT TO BE PERSISTENT?
So, PERSISTENCE, what is the definition of PERSISTENCE?

The Oxford dictionary says

“the fact of continuing in an opinion or course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition”

Well, we can understand this meaning, it is simple, and everybody knows it, but can we understand it well enough to apply it in our lives?

Since I remember, I use to make plans for improving my life; I would make things like these ones:
1. Make a written, signed contract where I compromise myself with improving in all aspects: losing weight, going to the gym, learning mandarin or Italian (whatever was I felt I needed to learn at that time), read 3 books per month, learn this or that, etc.I would get to do this for a couple of days, maybe a week and then I would get weaker and I would just forget it.
2. I would also do more detailed plans, I would write my resolutions in a paper, make detailed plans to achieve them and even set daily goals. I would buy a diary or notebook, just specifically for this purpose. I would start with all my enthusiasm and then the same would happen, I would forget it or just get consumed with the daily routine.
So this is the summary of the dozens of times that I have tried different approaches. Some methods would work better than others, but always at the end I was swallowed with the everyday routine.

Image source: www.empowernetwork.com

At this very moment, I´m with one method, I have a little notebook at work where I write the hours of the day and try to assess every hour I let pass, so I just put a happy or sad face next to it when I feel an hour has been productive or not. Until now, it´s been lasting more than any method. But, I must admit it, there are hours, even days, where I forget about this thing and I find myself filling hours with sad faces trying to remember what I had done before. I hope this method lasts….

But, besides this, I have actually realized the following: I´ve been persisting in improving my life, trying different methods but with the same idea: improving. So I have accused myself many times of not being persistent enough and it´s is true, in some ways… after all, the most difficult thing to achieve in life for me has being persistence.

But the idea is to persist right? And I have persisted in figuring it out these methods, even when they didn´t work, I would look for another one… little step by little step, mistake by mistake, and at the end NEVER SURRENDER…

And more than anything never stop persisting in trying to achieve our dreams, no matter how our methods are, but never give up on our dreams, never forget them….

I would like to finish with this quote:

“If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of Persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked seventy times and get up off the floor saying, Here comes Seventy One!”

DeVos, Richard

Image source: www.empowernetwork.com
July 8, 2013