This is my story

Esta es mi Historia

My adventure started in Barcelona where I was born

As a child I was pure energy, excitement and curiosity. And it never stopped! I had a bit of a mischievous creativity that the grown-ups were already confused about … When I was 3 years old, I ran away from home one night to go out to play in the park across the street, alone. Obviously my parents almost had a heart attack! But no matter how much shenanigans I did and punish me, I was still just as stubborn, creative, and independent. If something characterized me, it was my passion for life and not being told what I could or could not do.

 

At the age of 7, life brought me a lesson that marked a before and after in my life and in my family. It was my first great life lesson. I started having very bad headaches and a scan revealed a large spot on my corpus callosum. So they had to put me in the hospital for a long time to find out what I had. Unable to move, I discovered a passion for Comics and ponies. (I guess they were my window to the outside world). Over the months they discovered that I had had 3 strokes and the prognosis was not good… I was literally on the brink of death. Luckily my parents stirred heaven and earth to find a solution and discovered that at the Karolinska Hospital (Stockholm) there was a novel treatment that could save my life. So it was. After 10 years of coming and going in hospitals, I was discharged and I began to have a normal life again. Of course, after this direct encounter with physical death, I lost a part of my innocence by experiencing the fragility of life.

 

 

Despite this, I continued with my crazy ideas and I graduated in Audiovisual Communication after two years studying Journalism. As soon as I had the title in my hand, I bought a one-way ticket to London to take the TOEFL exam and go to Los Angeles to become the best Steven Spielberg assistant he have ever had. Or so I thought…! What was going to be a few months turned into 7 years, a career in Post Production and a love relationship. Wow! Life gave me a much less glamorous but much more enriching plan.

Everyone knows that in this life what begins must end. And that’s what happened in 2013: my time in London ended with a broken heart, my identity lost and my professional career stranded. It was time to go. This was my second great life lesson, the most important of my life, as it gave me the experience of spiritual death.

Although my parents asked me to return to Barcelona, ​​I knew that it was not my time to return yet. So full of sadness, anger and pain I went to live in Hanoi, Vietnam. I realized that I needed to heal myself inside so I could be myself again. I left everything behind again: my culture, my career, my friends, my family … my life. And I volunteered at a children’s hospital and an orphanage thinking that giving to others could help them. But it wasn’t like that: I received so much more than I ever could have imagined. I let go of everything that tied me and drowned me to find myself and be happy. I traveled through more than 8 countries, I discovered courage, the adventure of leaving the comfort zone, the personal growth and the ancient knowledge that Asia hides. Everything bad from 2013 became the greatest gift that life had given me.

After 6 months of personal re-discovery and healing I returned to Barcelona, ​​full of energy and desire to eat the world. My professional career, which was stagnant, took a leap upward. I fell in love and out of love several times, I kept traveling to distant places and I discovered Emotional Intelligence.

And that’s when my third and (for now) last great lesson in 2020 appeared: My rebirth. After finishing my Master in Management Development, Emotional Intelligence and Coaching and the COVID-19 pandemic, I realized that I needed to change the direction of my professional career so that I was more aligned with the person I had transformed into. After many wanderings I decided to become a Professional Coach with Agility and leave behind 15 years of experience in the Audiovisual world, keeping the learning and tools that it has given me to help companies and people to communicate better, achieve their objectives and accompany them to leave. your comfort zone without fear.

 

“Only he who has lived fear,
can help others to overcome it. “

Have you found your compass?

“Live your life by a compass, not a clock” Dr Stephen R. Covey.

It all began at age 17, when I had to make the biggest decision of my life: choose my career path.
The question “Who do you want to be when you grow up?” always was unsettling for me. Mainly because I couldn’t visualise myself doing the same thing for the rest of my life. I have always been the sort of restless, curious and impatient kid, hence the idea of becoming just one thing wasn’t natural to me. I wanted to be a psychologist, a palaeontologist, a journalist or a business woman. Yet, the time had come for me to choose.

I was at my school class trying to fill up a little blue paper with the career path that I will be on for the rest of my life. I remember the pressure and how conscious I was that my life was going to be changed forever.

 

 

Somehow I ended up becoming a producer in the advertising industry. Nearly two decades later I am looking back at it and I can say I made the right choice. I LOVE my job. I love the versatility, energy and creativity it has. However, I know I ended there by pure luck and as a result of society’s pressure to become someone and do something. Not because I had a clear idea of where my passion and mission resided. And that’s precisely something that has always been at the back of my mind ever since that day in school when I was 17.

We are so busy going with the flow and on surviving mode to make ends meet, that we forget what it is we really want and what we are really good at. The main two things that intrinsically motivate, empower and make us unique. It doesn’t help that we are living in a very volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous time (VUCA) where it’s really hard to maintain the same situations and conditions our older generations had, or to predict what will be. We are also facing a new reality of constant change that keeps us searching for new ventures. We go as fast as we can, doing as much as we can, without questioning why we do it or if we are doing it right. We are racing like hamsters on a wheel… we are on a clock.

The clock is blind. It puts quantity and speed at front without prioritising or doing any value judgement. It doesn’t have a destination and when we are at it for a long time, we get used to it. If we want to change it, it creates fear and even trauma. That’s when the anxious questions start to pop up: “What now?”, “What am I going to do?”, “What do I want?”, “Who am I?”… It’s painful, uncomfortable and confusing.
Neuroscience knows how hard it is to fight change. We are literally programmed to save energy and change consumes too much of it. But change is necessary in order to grow.

When we get to the point where we ask ourselves the uncomfortable questions, we start slowing down the clock to find a new focus and direction. We start looking for our compass.

Like Dr. Covey said “We value the clock for its speed and efficiency. The clock has its place, efficiency has its place – after effectiveness. The symbol of effectiveness is the compass—a sense of direction, purpose, vision, perspective, and balance.” The compass is the opposite to the clock. It prioritises quality and direction, it gives us information and feedback on what we need to do and how to do it. Purpose, efficiency, direction and focus arises.
I believe both are natural and healthy when they are used at the right time and for the right reasons. Nowadays we are more naturally drawn to the clock because we don’t have to think and we just do. It’s natural to get trapped there when you don’t have a clear compass.
The tricky part comes when we want to lead others, but we are on the clock. It’s not going to work. In order to lead others, we must start with ourselves. That means we must find our compass first, set a clear goal and go for it. How many companies are lead by speed and quantity but not purpose and quality? Where is the focus of the leaders? If they haven’t found a compass and are running with a clock, the company and the team will do the same. It all starts with the leaders. It starts with you.

 

 

I exchanged my compass a few years ago for the clock. It wasn’t until this year that I realised that and started to switch my focus and relearning what my passion and my mission truly are. It means to say goodbye to certain things in order to make space for the new ones that will enrich my life. I had to pause for a while to look inside and find myself again. It is scary and uncertain, but also extremely rewarding. I am feeling connected, fulfilled and happy again. And that is priceless.
So my question to you is: Do you lead yourself? What do you want? Do you focus your life by the clock or by a compass? And your company?
It’s time to change focus.
It’s time to find your compass, redefine what’s your purpose to get up and get it!