…to dream new dreams.
When I was 23, I sat in front of my boss during a job interview and told her that my dream was to launch the Philippine edition of Seventeen magazine.
It was my bible when I was a teenager, when I would devour the wisdom on every page—even if I wasn’t blond, blue-eyed or even American. It showed me how much fun life could be…and that the world didn’t just revolve around boys and makeup. I thought its message of empowering teens and opening up to possibilities was a message that Filipino girls would welcome.
At 26 (barely three years after that interview), I was standing on a stage, in front of a sea of teen girls, receiving flowers of congratulations for launching Seventeen in the Philippines.
I stayed in that company for a long time, rejoicing each time a new magazine was launched.
But as I approached 40, I knew that there was a bigger dream that was calling to me which was to launch my own business, to take what I had learned in the corporate world and make something of my own.
So that’s what I’m doing now…and if I’m lucky, I can do this for the next 20 years.
…to not have a passion.
A client sits in front of me, tears in her eyes, telling me: “I have no passion.”
I tell her gently that it’s okay, that there’s a gift in trying out different things, in following your curiosity. I tell her that it doesn’t make her less of a person nor does it make her life less interesting.
And then I direct her to this video, to see the joy in not being tied to just one thing. It’s okay that we’re not all Steve Jobs.
…to take your eyes off the goal.
Sometimes we hang on too hard. We want what we want so badly that we just keep hustling so we can get there. We become intensely attached to the outcome, to the results.
But these words from Marianne Williamson (from the book The Gift of Change) always give me pause:
“Often it’s better to live in a question until the answer emerges; to be okay with not knowing until wisdom comes; to take a backseat and just listen until you genuinely have something to say. Sometimes it is our silence that testifies to our strength.
Our entire being—intellectual, emotional, psychological, and spiritual—can relax into a more miracle-receptive mode. When we relax into the arms of God, the mind opens to greater insight and the heart to deeper love.”
