The butterfly effect

‘Sometimes a small event can change the course of our lives’ Jean-Jacques Cousteau

My INSPIRE campaign is growing and I am happy to see so many inspirational people have responded to my appeal and are giving me amazing stories to share with you! My guest today is Alina, my friend from university, who recently left her job in marketing in favour of making a difference in the community.

I’ve known Alina since my first day at Uni. We both got admitted to the newly formed section of ‘Communication Sciences’, part of the Journalism School of the University of Bucharest, and thought that a career in PR or advertising was promising enough glamour not to question whether it was the right choice or not (at least I didn't!). A few years and even a common employer later (Alina and I both worked for the same company at some point in different locations), we both seem to be looking for something else.

Alina is now part of a community foundation which she had a vision of whilst on holiday and whose projects are aimed at restoring the community spirit in Bucharest and helping to implement projects benefitting the local communities. Alina’s inspirational story gave me the goose bumps and I am going to say that although it is relevant in so many ways (which I am not going to list or will spoil you the pleasure of reading her interview), I would like to highlight one in particular:  it's awakened in me the longing for the community spirit, something anyone who’s chosen to live in a big city has silently agreed to give up on… But Alina is the living proof this is something we can all change…

Interview with Alina Kasprovschi

Founder of Bucharest Community Foundation

We all grow up thinking we'll become famous or amazing people. When you were a little girl, what was your dream? 'When I was soul-searching for my future profession, a couple of years ago, I kept on going back to my childhood. There must be some truth to my childhood dreams, I was thinking. If I look deep down enough, I will find my true meaning, it must me something from when I was a little girl… Either there was nothing in there, or I didn’t search deep down enough: the truth is I cannot remember “wanting to become something when I grow up”. I think I was just there, having fun, organising block parties, negotiating our way with the neighbours… I was too immersed into the present to be really looking forward for the future. There is one thing I remember and that lasted – my mercifulness. I used to love animals, and I still do – I used to rescue a lot of them, and I still am. Other than that – blank. '

What is your dream today? 'Now, my dream “when I grow up” is to be able to blend doing good* with having fun, both at a large scale. I have accomplished the former part, with me opening a community foundation. I am still struggling for the latter…'

Tell us your story. How did you decide to turn your career around, when did it happen? 
'I was reading this book, the memoirs of Jean-Jacques Cousteau. And there is one paragraph at the beginning of the book, just when he does his first sea dive and meets what will later become his mission in life – the discovery and protection of the oceans. As he puts it: “sometimes, a small event can change the course of our lives, if we are lucky enough to notice it and brave enough to give up our previous preoccupations and run into something new. It is exactly what happened to me that summer day, at Mourillon, when I started to see into the sea”. And as I was reading it, I realised I was running into something new of the same sort, as well.Good ideas come when you are vacationing, you know. You leave the mind wander a bit, off the to-do and projects list, and the mind does the rest of the work. It was the summer of 2008, I was lying on a beach in Costa Rica and I had this vision of what I wanted to do with my life. What attracted me was to build a hub where I could put into contact people that want to do good in the community and projects that need their help. This would satisfy two of my great needs – to do good and to work intensively with people. It was a very fragile idea and I didn’t know how to further develop it. What made things more complicated – I was badly indebted with some consumer credits and I was successfully working for a multinational. Not easy to leave a safe life to go into the unknown of community development.
So then I decided that this is a project I should run in my free time, as a hobby, and I should be “mature” enough to keep my corporate job. My job at the time offered me quite some satisfaction – civilised environment, nice people, lots of money, lots of travels, diverse projects… But from one point onwards, questions kept on coming to me: what is the purpose of my work, who does this serve, what will I leave behind if I die tomorrow? So I kept this dream alive – of creating a community hub.
Two years later, time came for me to have a baby. Just as I was in my first day of pre-maternity leave, a couple of weeks before I gave birth, I noticed an online announcement. An Association was looking for groups of people interested in developing community foundations in their cities. The Association would provide consultancy and a start-up grant for chosen groups. So I applied, because suddenly I saw how my idea could be turned into reality. They accepted the application and, just as I was in the maternity, with my son two days old, I started working for the development of the Bucharest Community Foundation. It would take me another one year and a half to legally launch it – but that was the starting point.
I call them twins – my son, Toma, and the Foundation.'

Alina's 'other baby'

You are also a 'full time' mother and wife. Are you a better mother and a wife because of it, because you are doing something you love and strongly believe in? 'Any mother has multi-tasking in her “job description”. This is something I learnt the hard way, by working part time from home until very recently. It required me waking up really early in the morning to work and practically focusing all my attention only on motherhood and the foundation for a long period of time. I believe it is well worth it. First, for myself, because I am doing what I want and get pleasure out of it. Secondly, by working for the foundation, I am passing on values to my son, such as learning to be part of a community, in a respectful and active manner. I am sure that, even if the money is by far not so good as in the corporate world, these values are a better heritage to pass on.'

As it is the case with many start-ups, the financial aspect is always the most difficult to deal with. Do you feel you needed and benefitted from the support of your family to plunge into your project full speed? 'Fortunately, the Romanian law allows the mother to have a two-year maternity leave, paid with a percentage of the previous year’s salary. This allowed me to have a certain financial stability and also got me slowly accustomed to having less money than in the past. Of course, the support (including financial) of my family was very helpful. Gone are the days when I lived off my way-above-average salary, with all the accompanying advantages. But I learnt to live with less material satisfactions… '

Tell us how working in the charity sector makes you feel? 'A community foundation is not exactly a charity. We are a hub, a consultant, between people or organizations who want to get involved into the community and projects that need them. What a community foundation does is raise resources from the community and finance projects that the community determines are relevant. We do not do our own projects, just the frameworks for involvement and monitoring – but we do support others to have their projects grown and finalized.
First of all, working for a foundation requires entrepreneurial skills, which have been dormant in my corporate life. So it took a lot of struggle (and it still does) to come to understand how it works. From things as mundane as building your own PowerPoint template – when I had worked with pre-determined templates all my life – to things as complicated as working with the Board of Directors or managing the cash flow. It is a difficult feeling – not being always skilled enough or experienced enough, and having to learn at a fast pace.
But secondly, I have this extraordinary feeling. When we manage to finalize a project or convince someone to donate for a cause – that indeed my dream I had on the Playa Conchal in Costa Rica is coming true. And this is an amazing feeling!'

Do you consider yourself happy? What are the key things in your life which make you happy? 'I am a strong believer in the idea of community. During the past two years, I started growing this holistic approach, that we cannot thrive as individuals if the community around us is not working. And I was lucky enough to meet and help at the development of two great communities, which reinforced my ideas. Therefore, I am happy as long as I am part of a community that shares my values, interests and lifestyle. Fortunately, with my maternity and change of career, this is now entirely possible. So, yes, I am happy.
This happens, however, when I remind myself to stop and look for a while – because in the rest of the time I am busy busy busy! (note to self – if all else fail, remember to add in the to-do list: stop and appreciate your life as it is :)'

Do you think that our happiness can be influenced in any way by external factors or is it all 'an inside job'? Can we blame the world for our failures? 'I believe that happiness is mostly in inside job. Maybe except for some really dramatic circumstances that we cannot control – a war, an accident – it is entirely our job to become and stay happy.
My journey in searching my meaning and future profession started a little earlier that mentioned above. It was in 2007 and I was running in a state of major unhappiness and frustration in my life. Nothing seemed to work and it looked to me like things could only get worse. And I was lucky enough to go to this personal development workshop that opened my eyes on my life. I discovered there how much WE are responsible for our lives, not some outside entity. And to what extent we can change the state of being at all times, with some proper training.
At the course, we had this extraordinary teacher – he is called Johnny Tenn and is a British coach. Once, as we were in the middle of serious breakthroughs and very excited, he told us, “Extraordinary accomplishment! Now you need to do one more little thing: work on this every day of your life. Train this like a muscle. The day you stop training is the day you go back to your old ways.”
So now I have increasingly learnt how to observe and change my state of wellbeing. I have made huge progress – from not being aware at all to being aware some 5% of my time (not much, but I have a long life ahead to learn!)'

What advice would you give people who are thinking about getting into the charity sector? 'In order to be successful, charity people should be a blend of big souls and fine entrepreneurs. It definitely cannot work without having a huge heart. But you would go bankrupt so fast, it will make your head spin, if you do not manage it on business principles.

And there is this advice I would give to anybody who cares about my two cents: work on yourself. Do whatever kind of soul-searching, personal development activity that suits you. Try more to find those who suit you. There is so much inside us that we don’t know about, that affects the way we live! And if we don’t know about it, then we cannot change it, and end up wrongly blaming the government, our parents, spouses or the global warming for our failures.'

Who/what inspired you?  'They say that when you are inspired by somebody, there are some of his qualities that you carry inside, as well. Of course, in order not to flatter ourselves unnecessarily, I should all – to a smaller extent. So here are the list of people who inspire me today. I can only hope I have at least 10% of their qualities…

Bono – for his unique blend of being an artist, a humanitarian and an entrepreneur. Steve Jobs, for his focus and perfectionism. Richard Branson, for his adventure-seeking. And one of our Board members, Stanislav Georgiev, who is a bank CFO, a marathon runner, a great family man and a strong supporter of the community. '

What is your next ‘dream’?
'I dream about building the foundation so that it brings a big impact on the inhabitants of Bucharest – they become naturally involved in their community. I dream about being a good foundation leader and mother in the same time. I dream about increasing my time management skills so well, that it allows me to get involved in everything that interests me. And yes, I must admit – I dream about my next vacation, due in June! '

All I can add is: Stay inspired!

*In Romanian, to be ‘selfless’,  ‘to help others’ is translated by ‘to do good’, which doesn’t mean ‘to thrive’, to be ‘good at something’ as it may be interpreted, but it has a more overarching sense of spreading ‘goodness’ by helping others. I thought it was appropriate to keep it as is: ’ to do good’

El tango

“El tango es un sentimiento triste que se baila” ('The tango is a sad feeling which you dance') -  Enrique Santos Discepolo, Argentinian tango and milonga composer

I am nurturing a dream about learning how to tango, wrap myself in a fiery red dress, put on fishnet stockings and strappy dance shoes and walk the streets of Buenos Aires in search for the dance of my life. For some reason, despite the fact I've never set foot in Buenos Aires (yet!), I know without a doubt is somewhere I must go. As if some sort of unfinished business from a previous life calls for me there. And now I know why...

I am firm believer in the invisible connection between things in life. Having found a deal at a hotel in Bournemouth which included a week-end of tango made me think that I may be getting a step closer to the vision of me dancing the tango in Buenos Aires. I was closer to the truth than I expected because I finally learnt a thing or two about tango.

All I really knew about tango before this week-end was that it is a difficult dance. And passionate. The rest I tried to figure out by watching other people dance but couldn't figured out the pattern. What were the rules, I kept asking myself?... But then I found out there are no rules. 

The tango is a dance where the man leads and woman follows, in a sensual embrace. The tango is all about trust and now I know what everyone means by tango being a difficult dance. I am not comfortable with letting go and trusting myself into somebody else's hands. In all honesty, especially when it comes to men... I like to know what's coming, be in control, do my steps, perhaps even nudge my dancing partner a bit when I think he's falling behind. Not in tango though. In tango you have to close your eyes and take a leap of faith, accept the lead and let yourself be taken on a journey. 

I guess there's only one man I could dance the tango with: the kind that I could entrust myself to share the saddest feeling in the world with.

 

Follow your dreams

When it comes to dreams, there should be no right or wrong.

As some of you know, I did a charity trekking last year in Ethiopia, raising money for Transaid, a London based small charity running vital projects in many countries in Africa. This was only possible because I raised £3,000 pounds. All from donations from people I know, friends, relatives, work colleagues, people I’ve just met. People who made it possible. And if it wasn’t for these people, I wouldn’t have trekked the Simien Mountains, I wouldn’t have contributed to life saving projects and I probably would not have been inspired. I am a lucky person for having had such an amazing support from the people in my life, but  if the help came from a different source, I would not have hesitated in accepting it.

And here I am now, reading about the ‘Experience of a lifetime’ project of Reckitt Benckiser, and thinking this is worth sharing. Because it is time for INSPIRE and if five people have been voted to embark on the adventure of their lives and raise money for Save the Children charity, then this is INSPIRING. The first one, Khaled, 32, from Algeria, has started his adventures and when he’s back from Peru (he chose to do the famous Inca trail to Machu Picchu and who can blame him?) I am hoping to be able to contact him and get him to share a few thoughts with us. Perhaps a few inspiring words to make us look for our own opportunities to make our own dreams come true. There’s nothing wrong with wining a competition, if that’s what it takes to get inspired.

When I wrote about the experience of my own trek, I ended the post like so: ‘I knew I was never going to be same after this. I knew I wanted to do even more... As much as I could...’

And hopefully I am doing this now, with my INSPIRE campaign and, along with that, by having the satisfaction of knowing I am helping to raise money for Save the Children.

If you want to contribute too, go on to Experience of a Lifetime website and help raise money for Save the Children too. You’ll see how J

Stay inspired!

Hell Girl’s been busy crafting The Destiny of Shaitan

Meet my first INSPIRE guest: Laxmi Hariharan, the author of Kindle best-selling fantasy novel
The Destiny of Shaitan

As promised a few posts ago, it’s time to get inspired. The INSPIRE campaign I have launched should do exactly what it says: inspire people. And what better way to do that than hearing from those who have been there - in the same place you are standing right now, not sure which way to go and how to go about it -  and took their chance, made a bet on their dream, closed their eyes and let the wheel spin. Because, as Laxmi says, ‘Else I couldn’t live with myself’.

Laxmi Hariharan is the author of Kindle best-selling fantasy novel The Destiny of Shaitan. A technophile who is fascinated with sword play, she also likes smoking cigars, swigging chai and keeping secrets. Having lived in Bombay, Hong Kong and London, she has a fifteen year career in international media marketing with blue chip brands such as MTV Networks. She believes that she is Hell Girl reborn.

I met Laxmi about 5 years ago. She was a senior marketer in a company I had just joined and I can vividly remember how her presence used to fill the space around the office: she was all life, and joy and laughter. I admired her deeply both as a professional and as a person and tried to keep in touch as much as London City life allows it. Recently, I found out she has written a book and I immediately told myself she would be the ideal person to interview for INSPIRE. Perhaps you all know by now I am also an ‘aspiring’ writer (I hate the word ‘aspiring’ but can’t think of another term to say it better) and it felt only natural to contact Laxmi and ask her kindly to be my INSPIRE person. She open heartedly accepted and here is what she told me about her journey.

We all grow up thinking we'll become famous or amazing people. When you were a little girl, what was your dream? Sounds like a cliché but I have a vivid recollection of being awestruck by the mango tree outside my window which inspired me to write my first poem when I was five years old. And at the end of it the simple truth was that I was a writer. I knew I would write books. My first born The Destiny of Shaitan just took longer from conception to delivery. Almost nine years.

What is your dream today? Does this still match up with the dream from childhood? On a flight from New York to London, a few years on the 11th of September (I always seem to fly in or out of NY on September 11) I wrote down ten things I wanted to do before I died. Top of that was getting my first novel out while I was young enough to enjoy it. And I am just relieved I did it. Else I couldn’t live with myself.

Tell us your story. What is your secret to being able to do what you want to do? I still balance the creative with the commercial. The commercial pays the bills and frees up mind space to be creative. Balance is the key I think to doing everything you want in life. It may be boring but it’s true.

Tell us how being a writer makes you feel?
We are one. As in I am the writer is the story. Does that make sense?

Do you think that our happiness can be influenced in any way by external factors or is it all 'an inside job'? Can we blame the world for our failures? I do believe in destiny. Hence as a teenager I was obsessed with changing the lines on my palm to make it into the type of life I wanted. I am still trying :)

What advice would you give people who are thinking about becoming writers? Just do it!

Who/what inspired you? I grew up in Bombay hearing ancient Indian legends and stories from my grandmother. And then I arrived in Hong Kong - which became my metier, my love, my trust. My heart raced from the time I landed there to the time I left. Filled with the most bizarre of people who must have stepped right off the next few planets I thought, it forced me to really put pen to paper. I started writing about what would happen if someone landed in such a futuristic city and had strange encounters with life forms there. And that character became to be Tiina in The Destiny of Shaitan. The rest followed.

Some of the films which inspired Laxmi when she created The Destiny of Shaitan universe

What is your next dream? To get my next novel The Seven Islands out next year. Tall order. But I am stubborn.

Wish you best of luck, Laxmi, with your ‘second born’ and thank you for being such an inspiration. May your journey continue to be amazing!

You can find Laxmi’s novel The Destiny Of Shaitan on Amazon. Please click through the link below and buy your own Kindle copy: you’ll be transported to a universe which you won’t want to leave!  

Click here to buy your own copy!

Hope you enjoyed reading about Laxmi and if you want to ask any questions, don’t be afraid. You can reach Laxmi here:

https://twitter.com/#!/laxmi

http://www.facebook.com/laxmihariharanauthor

www.laxmihariharan.com

http://www.pinterest.com/laxmihariharan

Next time we’ll be talking to someone who gave up a promising career in marketing in favour of making a difference for the less fortunate. Until then, stay inspired!

Food for thought

Last week a man wrapped himself in gas canisters (?) and took hostages the people from an office not far from mine. We hardly even knew something was happening until we started seeing more people than usual on the street, police everywhere and general mayhem. Soon we were notified that someone took some hostages in an nearby office and that we were in no direct threat so we were encouraged to stay away from the windows and carry on with our normal work.

Which we did. As if nothing happened. In fact I had some guests in one of the meeting rooms, people from our sister agency and their clients. I went in to let them know there was a hostage situation nearby and they might have troubles getting a taxi. They thanked me for the information and continued with their meeting as if nothing happened.

I stood perplexed. A few buildings away some people were in danger of losing their lives and the people in that meeting room didn't care. It was a scary thought especially as I had just realised that I probably reacted the same way. Some people were in danger of losing their lives only a hundred metres away and what was my first concern? To make sure the people in the meeting room get a taxi!?

It made me think about what life in a big city does to us. I never questioned it, I always knew I had to live in a big city but what's the price I have to pay? My own sensitivity reduced to a very thin, almost invisible layer? When exactly have we all become desensitised, when did we stop caring? Does it really have to hit us in the face to start thinking about anything other than ourselves? To be honest, if I was one of the people taken hostage, I would find some comfort in knowing that people stopped for a second from whatever it was that they were doing and thought about me. Of course, there isn't much any of us could have done in the situation, it was after all a police job. But just to stop and consider, remember we are still all human and life is not all about the marketing plan, sales targets, conference calls and whatever else. When facing death, we'd wish we had considered that before it was too late.

Fortunately, nobody died that day. My guests made it to the airport on time and everything went back to normal. It just got me thinking. We ought to feel more, really...

Stay inspired! 

People like us



PEOPLE LIKE US

 by Robert Bly

'There are more like us. All over the world
There are confused people, who can't remember
The name of their dog when they wake up, and people
Who love God but can't remember where

He was when they went to sleep. It's
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle
Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time

To save the house. And the second-story man
Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,
And he's lonely, and they talk, and the thief
Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,

You can wander into the wrong classroom,
And hear great poems lovingly spoken
By the wrong professor. And you find your soul,
And greatness has a defender, and even in death you're safe.'

As part of my new INSPIRE campaign, I have approached a few of the people I know who have turned their lives around and had the courage to take the plunge and set out in the pursuit of their dreams.

In his book, 'Authentic Happiness', Martin Seligman, the pioneer of positive psychology, offers amongst other solutions for finding more happiness,  the suggestion that people are happiest when they’re using their signature strengths. Seligman says that if we discover a calling, something that links to a greater good, which utilizes our signature strengths, we tend to be happy.

With this in mind, I am going to ask my friends a few questions the answers to which I hope will charge me, keep me going in the quest for my dream. Some of them dedicated time to becoming photographers, others have written books, some have decided to invest their lives in the greater good and now do charity work, while others went on to turn a hobby into a way of living.

Almost every person I know has a dream, of doing something other than what they are doing. But only some of us wake up one day and decide they can't postpone the dream any longer. And they are people like us, like you and me...

I hope their stories will get you where you want to be. Stay inspired!

Note: Collage made with pictures of friends. I hope they don't mind I've used them, but if they do, I will remove the image...Just let me know.

Inspire

My motivational collage
(sourced via bing images and created with photovisi)

A few days ago I decided to turn my life around. I am not sure when and how it became totally clear to me that this was it! The decision I've been postponing for the whole of my life was finally made. I wasn't going to sit around anymore, complain about men, weather, people on the tube, lack of motivation or whatever else; I was going to take active part in creating the life I want for myself. And I know it's going to be a long and hard journey but I am finally ready to embrace the change and deal with all the obstacles, the set-backs, the disappointments, the rejections, the fear...

Because not doing so it's something I won't be able to live with. I have reached the point when I am clear about how a meaningless life would made me feel. I've been through that already, I've experienced the lows of denying my true nature, trying to be who I'm not, trying to pursue for myself other people's dreams, blending in, looking for comfort, being scared! Like when I was on top of the mountain looking down with the fear of being rejected by the slope, for not being good enough. The only thing I am scared about is not to do what I now set out to do.

I am not entirely sure where this new found energy came from but I suspect there was a series of factors that brought it along. The Hunger Games, the dumping, the cold and the rain, the need for something greater, the reminder of who I used to be...

I used to be the teenager who wrote poetry and secretly 'admirehated' Mircea Eliade for training himself sleep only 4 hours a night when just a highscool pupil so he can read and write more, the teenager who was consuming some of the world's greatest literature with no or little interest in going out and partying with her peers, the teenager who had very big dreams and was regularly writing in her diary 'I don't want to die with a mediocre soul'. And it suddenly occurred to me that I don't know what happened to that teenager. She tried too hard to save herself the pain of failure and became just like everybody else.

And here I was, reclaiming my teenage self and deciding that fear was no longer an option. I took a few deep breaths and closed my eyes. The problem with becoming your true self is selecting which individual activity you are going to pursue. And after letting some of the options dance in a circle inside my head, I eventually saw them aligning into what seemed to be a word. I concentrated to try and read the word and smiled when I finally could make it out. It was INSPIRE!

Therefore, everything I will ever do from now will be to inspire and be inspired. My whole life will revolve around inspire and with your help we will inspire each other. I am planning to ask a few of my friends who have proved to be an inspiration themselves to give us some insights to share with us all so we can be inspired and inspire others.

So this is the first step. Making the decision. The rest will naturally follow.

Stay inspired!