More struggles…

There is a new struggle in my life. I am spending a lot of time working on my project and learning intellectual stuff but I do not spend much time working on the other areas of my life.

Talking to one of my mentors about the ‘wheel of life’ I discovered that I mostly work on the 2 areas mentioned above, my social life is non-existence, spiritual life is also going bad, not spending as much time taking care of my family and physical life and doing nothing to take care of myself financially…

Apart from that last week I was feeling really bad. I think it was due to lack of sleep so I need to start sleeping more.

And I am over committing myself to do stuff but I do not really have the time to do the things I should be doing and then they all overlap and things get messed up. Or at least they did today…

Finally, ballet has always been my passion since I was about 7 years old. 7 and a half years later I just took the decision of dropping it because I think my physical condition is not appropriate for dancing ballet and I want to improve it before I continue to dance. Unfortunately ever since I took this decision every time I am alone and I listen to music I can’t stop myself from imagining ballet choreographies, no matter the type of music. On the other hand I think it is better to stop until my physical condition improves. Unfortunately I am not making this easy for myself and neither is anyone else… Everyone is just judging me and making fake assumptions including my mom and brothers.

Those are my main struggles right now…

Kids these days

I recently came across a video titled Kids These Days by Ryan Porter and I thought the video was really good. After watching it I started exploring more of his work and I watched his TED talk and read his book.

An interesting idea he mentions in both the TED talk and the book is that people would make their own lunch instead of having other people making their lunch for them and complaining because they do not like it. Also he mentions how there are people who make their own lunch and still do not like it. As silly as the last sentence may sound, that happens in life. Your lunch is your life…

Here is the video of Kids These Days:

 

January 23: milestone reached

Today I reached another milestone: I was featured on an interview on IdeaMensch. It is the first time an interview about me is published so is really cool! From that I learned the importance of a platform when you are trying to get reach. I could get a lot more people reading my interview due to the platform than I get in all my blogs together (no kidding).

 

Here is the link for the interview: www.ideamensch.com/maria-teresa 

Lessons from Jan. 14- Jan. 20

Sorry that I took so long on posting the lessons for this week. I thought I had posted them from my iPod but I can’t see them posted on the website…

That week was a really amazing week. I had the opportunity to be 2 days with Michael Strong and Magatte Wade and the rest of the week I was at Acton and at UFM. Anyways here are my lessons learned for that week:

Jan. 14: There are many words we use a lot but we do not really understand. I learned this during a dialogue with Michael Strong titled “Understanding Understanding”

Jan. 15: When you are an entrepreneur no one will have the answers for you because what you are doing is something that has never been done. That was something that really stood out from one of Magatte’s conferences.

Jan. 16: Your body language reflects your personality. We were doing some body language exercises and it was really easy to determine what kind of personality we were interpreting just with the body language.

Jan. 17: it is important to keep in mind time differences when you have to meet a deadline. I was working with someone else who lives in another country that is around 8 hours ahead of my country so the deadline was also earlier than I thought.

Jan. 18: There is more in soccer than just kicking a ball. I am not a fan of soccer but we had sharing my mastery this week and the person who presented is really good at it so I learned a lot about that. It was harder than I thought.

Jan. 19: A person can change a lot in just a month specially by being spending a lot of time acting according to another culture.

Jan. 20: You can learn a lot more from a book when you really question what the author says instead of just reading and immediately agree or disagree.

January 12: milestone reached

First milestone of the year!!! Wondering what it was???

The first milestone of the year was that I got accepted to the M121 fellowship. It is not official yet… It will be announced on Jan. 15 but I am really exited about that. The idea hasn’t finished sinking in but I know this is yet another step to the beginning of something great.

I’ll keep you updated on how things turn out and what other things happen during this year =D

I am also thinking about other thing that in case it happens it will be another great milestone although it is really unlikely to happen due to traveling expenses… Might be one of my struggles right now.

Lessons from Jan. 7 – Jan. 13

This week was an amazing week. I got back to Acton Academy and to dancing ballet and I reached the first milestone for this year. My life has been busy lately… Between ‘school’, working on my project, dancing, blogging, planning, taking other classes, and doing all the stuff I need to do on a daily basis I barely have time (and most of the time I do not have time to many of the above…)

Here are some lessons I learned during the week:

Jan. 7: I learned that time flies… A lot of things can happen in a short period of time but that is not the only thing. If you don’t spend your time wisely it is your fault, life won’t wait for you… And also, enjoy what you have, you might have less time left of that than you think.

Jan. 8: I learned you can literally waste your life doing tests and nothing else… Didn’t waste my whole life but I did waste my whole day. Test don’t work, get over them people! They are no proof of what you know.

Jan. 9: I learned how much many feelings you are able to feel if you concentrate on feeling instead of just moving through life. Also, I think ballet dancers love pain 😛 (not really but that was my first thought after today’s class)

Jan. 10: I learned that there is no limit to the amount of questions you can come up with about a topic in particular. You just have to think about them.

Jan. 11: You can kill 11 million people by lying (not that I am interested on that… We had a socratic dialogue on that topic)

Jan. 12: I learned how to play bowl.

Jan. 13: I learned about normal distribution and ‘black swans’. Also that ‘berraca’ means “she is absolutely amazing” in Colombian

December 31: milestone reached

On December 31 I reached another milestone (the last milestone of 2012 😮 ) and it wasn’t just the end of a year. Today it was the launch of the first prototype of my website: Makeducation. This day is officially the start… I have still a ton of things to work on, this is just the first step but taking the first step is one of the most important parts (in my oppinion).

Here is the link for the website: www.makeducation.com

 

Questions

There are a lot of questions to think about when you are starting your journey… I particularly have been asked a lot of them plus I found even more in the book I mentioned at the beginning. I think it is good to think about these questions and to keep them handy so I decided to start posting them in a new category: food for thought.

The first questions I have are questions that someone asked me via email (they are in Spanish)

Here they are (translations are on parenthesis bellow each question)

1. Por qué es importante este proyecto para tu experiencia de vida?

(Why is this project [Makeducation] important for your life experience?)

2. Cuales son tus Talentos, Pasiones, Que te dicta tu consciencia y Cuales son las oportunidades e injusticias que más mueven tu corazón en el mundo?

(What are your talents, passions, what does your conscience dictates and which are the oportunities and injuntices that move your heart in the world?)

3. Imagínate qué ya hiciste mucho dinero ($10 millones), que todo el mundo te reconoce como una gran logradora, que todos hablan y piensan muy bien de Ti. Ahora, a que le dedicarías el resto de tu vida? 

(Imagine that you already made a lot of money (10 million dollars), that all the world recognizes you as a big achiever, everyone talks and things great about you. Now, what would you do for the rest of your life?)

Si resulta que este proyecto es parte de la respuesta de las anteriores preguntas, entonces:

(If this project is part of the answer of the previous questions, then: )

1. Como se relaciona Learn to Be y Learn to Do a tu hipótesis de maximización de capacidad cerebral y transferencia de conocimiento?

(how do learn to be and learn to do relate to your hipotesis of maximizating brain capability and knowledge transfer?)

2. Que herramientas necesitas para lograr hacer el primer prototipo de tu proyecto? Cuales no tienes todavía?

(what tools do you need to be able to make the first prototype of your project? Which are you lacking?)

Just do it, Laura Deming.

Here is more inspiration.

This video is Laura Deming’s talk at TEDxYouth@Tallinn. As some of you might have already read I contacted Laura a couple of months ago… She has been a great inspiration and a great mentor for me and I think this video also has a great potential to inspire people to follow their passions and change the world.

Here is something she said in the conference:

“Find your passion and pusue it, I strongly believe that this is the way to live your life. […] The world around you was built by people just like you, and you can change it, and you can influence it. And once you realize that, you’ll never be the same.”

Of course there are people who say that it does not apply to them since Laura is extraordinary which means the set of rules for her life does not apply to normal people… Always making up excuses 😛 but what I think is that she is an ordinary person but what makes her able to do extraordinary things is her passion, determination and hard work.

 

 

Lessons from Dec. 31 – Jan. 6

During this week I started to catch up in some things in which I was falling behind, like blogging, reading, scheduling and doing translations for TED. I also spent 3 days at UFM which is a college here in Guatemala. Here are some of the things I learned during the first week of the year:

Dec. 31: I learned that it is really easy for people to use as an excuse that some persons can do great things just because they are genius and when those persons say that you can change the world the easiest excuse is just to say that it does not apply since they are different.

Jan. 1: it is amazing how much your life can change in a year and the most amazing thing is that those changes are up to you and yor attitude, nothing else.

Jan. 2: it is easy to get angry at people because of something totally unrelated to them, just because they happen to be there when you are angry. It has happened to me many times but it wasn’t me the one who was angry this time so I did notice it now.

Jan. 3: when you have no distractions you finish what you have to do in much less time. Also the importance of self discipline.

Jan. 4: There are too many things to do and plan for a trip, specially if it is someone else’s trip and it has to do with working…

Jan. 5: the attitude you have in life will determine the course of it. When you have a goal you have to work really hard to get to it, no excuses (even if you do have ‘good’ ones) and then nothing can stop you, not even a terminal disease.

Jan. 6: the importance of making sure you understand what people are trying to communicate. If you understand something that the person didn’t say and you don’t ask if that is what he/she meant then you can cause a problem (some times small other times you are not so lucky)