What if you let your life unfold according to its natural flow? Have you ever noticed, in hindsight that things don’t always turn out the way you want them to, or when you want them to, but they always work out in the end? When I take a look at my life I certainly do.
- It had been my life’s dream ever since I was twelve to spend a year in the US as an exchange student. You could see my disappointment when I arrived at the airport and there was no host family to pick me up. I spend my first few weeks in school asking around if someone knew a family I could stay with. Never could I have imagined ending up with the Kubacki’s, vacating in the Virgin Islands and going to Notre Dame football games. If my exchange organization’s representative never would have messed up, I never would have taken the initiative to go look for a family myself and I wouldn’t have lived the American Dream like I did.
- When I got to University I wasn’t enrolled for International Business like I was set out to, so I had to pick Economics instead. Within a month I realized I was never going to pass the quantitative methods classes, so I switched to Law, which I utterly failed after my Freshman year. I ended up getting a Bachelor’s in European Studies, passing my GMAT exam and graduating with a Master’s in International Business anyways.
Who would have thought? But the story continued in my professional life.
- At the beginning of my professional career I always wanted to work for Nike, until one day I received an e-mail, they were hiring. Forty-eight hours or so later I was hired and I ended up spending the next seven years at the company.
- While working for Nike I always imagined working at WHQ. The night before I left for Portland, to seek out job opportunities, this girl left the company and I could take her place.
Of course these are the short versions of the stories. There was a lot more to it, but in hind sight it all worked out. Amazing, isn’t it?
And even though life is not always easy, maybe Steve Jobs was right and the dots will connect in your future.
- When I had to decide to leave the US and Nike, I worried about how to get all my stuff back to the other side of the ocean, and how to break the lease of my car and my apartment. I didn’t know where to get the money or how to make the arrangements. But then Nike offered to pay for my relocation and I had enough money in my 401K saved to pay for other expenses. Problem solved.
I can go on like this for a while, but you get the picture. You can strive and try to control your environment, but there are powers at stake in the Universe, in nature, bigger than your own little self. And sometimes the outcome is beyond your imagination. Don’t worry too much about how you are going to get there, just have a clear picture of your dream in mind, and respond to what is handed to you along the way. That is ‘Surfing Life’.
The Surf of Life 