To be or not to be confident

A week ago I wouldn't have believed where a new pair of black shoes can get me. But then second hand store happened and the International Women's Day of today was around the corner. That combination was enough to inspire me to wake up at 6 am and to go for a mission.

Yesterday morning I headed to the university to start the day with something else than studying. I had little butterflies in my stomach when changing the shoes. Everybody must be looking at me (like they wouldn't have more important things to do).

Where could I find a quiet place to have a photo shoot? Well, my dear, you decided to come to the university, it might be a challenge. This is how living on the edge excites me even in every-day life. Luckily it was the holiday week, so the corridors were rather empty, even on a Finnish level.

I am tall. High heels of any height make me a little taller. This hasn't been the easiest thing to digest and has made me hear comments for this feature of mine. "You don't even need to wear high heels to look like a model" or "good luck with finding a man taller than you".

Nowadays I can laugh along the comments. But being in the "size of a model" has not always felt like a compliment. I really didn't know how to take it, because on the other hand, model career was typically associated with "waste of brain". So I probably thanked and said something about not planning to become a model. I didn't feel pretty, nor I didn't want to be stupid.

I was totally not comfortable with how I looked, and I guess I was not alone with that among all the other teenagers. If I remember correctly, most of the time I didn't care, but then there were those moments when I wished I would have been anyone else in the world, and if I just could have had a face of someone else.

Walking down to the university corridors with my high heels, the distances felt longer and the echo from the walls louder than ever before. That one thing I didn't take into consideration with the emptiness.

The two main feelings when walking around were "pleaase don't look for too long" and "wuaaah I feel so powerful". One kind of experience of empirical science - to analyse people's reaction is my way of coping with uncomfortable situations. Feel free to use!

The strategy of empirical science thinking is actually pretty recently implemented. Before my coping hints have included for example dancing, taking classes of acting, and picking up every opportunity to travel that I was offered. Those gave me the possibility of having a moment as that someone else in practice, and bit by bit thought me how to enjoy moments with new people, strangers. Through those strategies I was also able to start broadening my thinking with anyone I met.

Changes in how do you see yourself won't happen overnight, that's for sure. It takes time, but in my opinion you can have an effect on the meaningfulness of the years that will pass anyway. Now, I don't have a career of a model, but that doesn't stop me from getting excited of spending a regular day in a gala skirt.

Today being the International Women's day, I thought it to be a good reason to celebrate where I have gotten so far. Also, what would be a better time to encourage, share stories or to complain together with everyone else who is on a same journey?

For all of you, and as a reminder for myself, always be courageous, and dare to take that one step higher of which you have been dreaming. Sometimes all it takes, is to literally pull on those high heels only to walk around the university.

And it might start with just a small thought, you don't always need to plan an adventure a year in advance. Why not doing it tomorrow as the first thing when you wake up?

My #BalanceForBetter pose

What can one person do?

I recently encountered one of the biggest disappointments of my life. This happened after twice taking part in an application process, where you truly need to believe in your own capabilities, find the connection between your strengths and the required contribution and have great love towards the community around you. Your why, how and what need to be made crystal-clear not only for yourself, but also communicated to the others. Once those have been discovered, only thing you can do is to give your best and have confidence in being able to take it to the very end. And then you have to trust in the knowledge and understanding of the decision-makers.

  

During the two and a half years working in an organisation that I deeply love, this hasn’t anyway been the only disappointment. The problems in my own volunteering project led to resigning from the cooperation with the local community, and one year ago I was disappointed in myself of making a ridiculous mistake of choosing a wrong email address as a recipient. I do believe that all the faced disappointments have had their lessons, and so made me a stronger version of myself. But I cannot deny the fact, that they wouldn’t have made me feel small and incapable of making an impact.

In a world of over 7 billion inhabitants it’s not surprising to feel powerless. The harsh truth is that you won’t be understood by everyone you meet, and there might also be people who are not ready to question the things they have always seen to be right. However, you can on some level decide, whether these people will make you to surrender or to be a champion. And even in cases where you would lose on paper, you might still have created an impact.

Putting yourself out there for the opportunities requires a lot of courage and trust. Sometimes it asks for adapting an attitude of even if they would say you cannot, you just need to show them what you are made of. Sometimes, the results will show in a slight change in the ways of working, lighting up the spark in someone’s eyes, or planting a seed of a better future. And if you see the relevance of these little things, they’ll be your reasons why all the disappointments are worth encountering.

Ironically, for me the experience of getting rejected from the position, made me reflect on my capabilities on two ways. Firstly, it really made me feel just a small human being with limited affecting possibilities. Secondly, I have never felt so powerful after losing something. I think indeed, that it was a loss, but what it also meant, was a tank full of confidence boost. I realized, that I’m really capable of big things. And I don’t say it to make myself to feel happier or more satisfied with the loss, I say it because that’s how I decided to move forward from the disappointment. And because going through this was my way of not ending up regretting not to have tried it out fully.

In the end, not all the impact will be achieved by winning. When I’m next time asking myself, what can one person do, I have one more situation reminding me of the power of an individual. The power to be humble and fierce at the same time. And I believe, the source of that power is in daring to stand up, taking the opportunities and walking them through with confidence, by choosing a road towards the things you value.

P.S. Disappointments in life rarely come without opening new doors. Soon after these news I got an invitation to an interview, for which there is now space in my calendar. ;)

After that summer nothing felt anything

In one coaching meeting some time ago I was asked to make a resume of failure. The instructions told that I should collect the top three mistakes of my life to a list. That list would then be put into form of resume, like the ones you do for a job interview, and then you could be proud of your errors. Embrace the failure and so on.

I remember, how in that moment I couldn't come up with any severe mistakes to make a list with. But being given a task and being me, I ended up with a list of few things I wish I would have done better. Too bad I couldn't find the list today. (Only a huge pile of other super necessary notes from my past two years that I have lived in my apartment.) However, I remember the feeling while doing that exercise. I felt like lacking something.

Lately, I have been thinking of what do I want to do in the future, and what kind of a person I would like to be, that stuff which everyone is thinking of once in a while. I'm not here to tell you that I would have found an answer, nor I'm here to say that I would be sad about that. What I have found, are new opportunities, new preferences, new things which I have learnt that I actually appreciate in life more than I ever thought before. Maybe I will find a job related to writing, maybe I'll create a career as a mentor, maybe one day I'll find myself teaching people about things I think I have experience in. Maybe it will be none of those.

This summer I worked as a tour guide for two student groups. We had a different cultural background, busy schedule to fulfill and a lot of laughter for weird sentences we made each other to pronounce. We saw a lot of places, we got lost and were hungry. We met many inspiring people, we walked in the rain and we struggled to understand each others at the times. Pretty much everything I could ask for my summer job to be like.

Both of the two groups visited Stockholm, and during the first day in there both times, I had my breaking down point. The first time we realized that we didn't have any local currency in pocket, no working paying cards, and a need to get to the city center after finding something to eat. The second time the first day hit even harder. We had more people, bigger amounts of money needed, and again no working cards - neither for paying the public transportation cards nor opening the hotel doors. And after all of this, Stockholm was a city I really fell in love with.

Today I had a perfectly long meeting, enough to realize how bad I f*cked up. For having slipped through my fingers some minimum requirements, the ship I am responsible for, had started to sink. Given the great opportunity to try out my wings, in an environment which doesn't judge when you fail, I had disappointed the people who had trusted me. For not requiring enough from other people, I was now the one who could receive nothing but severe requirements. In that moment I knew, that even though in the future this failure would hopefully feel as important as tiny shit of a fly, this would be the biggest failure of my life so far. I still wonder, how they trusted me again, though.

On the way back home, the setting for self-pity was perfect: dark roads were wet and it was raining so that my pants got wet and glasses blurry. This was how everything could end. This was something which would never have happened, if I wouldn't have started. This was what I was doing voluntarily, and what I could end at any given moment. And the world would keep spinning, like it would if I wouldn't exist.

Cycling alone in dark, getting wet from the rain, what I did, was that I almost started laughing. Embrace the failure and so on. It all felt so comic. There I was, grieving for my hard little life, like it would be so much easier for everyone else, or for me if I would have made some different choices. Well, no one knows if it would, but if nothing feels anything, who cares anyway.

The next feeling after the random laughter moment was surprisingly pride. Now I would have something for my resume of failure. Yeah, what an achievement of life, don't you agree. But in that moment I realized, how falling in love always requires starting, how it strengthens with enough struggles and continues only as long as the destination is still close to your heart and worth fighting that battle.

What I want to remember from this, is the power of starting and the power of finishing. Without the first one there is no other.

Ymmärtää ja tulla ymmärretyksi

Mitä merkitsee nyt ja tässä

Ikuisuutta etsimässä

Tiedätkö se tunteen

Vaunut kun asemalla lepää hetken

Joku saapuu, toiseen kaipuu

Sisään astuessa tarttuu

Kovaääniset ei pelkää ilmoittaa

Ei suuntaa raide kaksi pohjolaan

Kuin huomaamatta lipuen

Samalla ankarasti tapahtuen

Jatkuu raiteilla tuo kulku

Ja kuten on kaukaa tähän tultu

Ei pysähdyttäessä mikään muutu

*Astuu ulos, nousee sisään

Päättääkin tänään kulkevansa itään

What it means to have it now and here

A moment when infinity is near

Can you recognize a certain feeling

On the station between arriving and leaving

One stepping out, one stepping in

And so begins the longing

Loudspeakers work with no feelings

Only being asked to tell the bearing

Everything happens imperceptibly

Though at the same time very certainly

Now on will be as until now

The job of train is to go and not ask how

Changing the direction would affect tomorrow

*But one steps out and then in again

Today East is the new beginning

Mitä on rohkeus?

Maailma on helpommin saavutettavissa kuin koskaan. Tietoa on tarjolla paljon enemmän kuin on mahdollista sisäistää. Mahdollisuus ottaa selvää on tuotu kotisohvalle. Tehtäväksi jää enää tilaisuuteen tarttuminen. Miksi ympäröivä maailma on niin helppo jättää elämään omaa elämäänsä? Miksi tuttuihin ja turvallisiin ympyröihin on välillä liian helppo sulkeutua? Nämä ympyränsä löytäneet ovat onnellisessa asemassa, mutta niistä ulos uskaltautuvat voivat saavuttaa vielä paljon enemmän.

Lähtemällä olen ottanut jo ensimmäisen askeleen, mutta se ei yksin riitä. Teitä pitkin voi kulkea omiin kenkiinsä tuijottaen, maisemia ihastellen tai tähtiin tähyillen, mutta haastavinta ja antoisinta on kohtaaminen. Myönnän olleeni mukana pohtimassa, miten aupparit löysivät toisensa ennen Facebookia. Tunnen ylpeyttä saadessani mainita, että nyt olen ollut todistamassa tämän ihmeen tapahtumista.

Kohtaaminen tapahtuu kasvotusten. Ristiriitaista on se, että internetin kautta kontaktien löytäminen tuntuu luontevammalta kuin oikeassa elämässä keskustelun aloittaminen oikeasti lähellä olevien ihmisten kanssa. Small talk on täällä luontevaa. Luulen, että se on hyväksi. Eräänä päivänä leikkipaikan reunalla tehty keskustelunavaus on johtanut uskomattomiin kulttuurienkohtaamiskeskusteluihin. Poistu omalta mukavuusalueelta ja elämä alkaa, minulle sanottiin. Tee se todella, sanoisin nyt itsekin. Jälkeenpäin tulet katumaan ehkä rohkeuden keräämiseen kulunutta aikaa, mutta joskus uroteot vaativat sitä.