About Motivation

So this is interesting. I came across this video last week, and ironically, the video is titled: need some motivation? The thing is, if you listen to the overarching theme of the video, the message is that motivation comes from within. A video cannot give you motivation, a book cannot give you motivation, a song cannot give you motivation. Motivation is a choice. Yes, a book/song/video can inspire you and give you a little push, but motivation is not external, it does not depend on a person, a situation, context, etc.

It’s like when you’re in school and you have a teacher that you don’t like, and then you come home not motivated about school, and don’t want to learn. That is biggest and dumbest excuse you can have. You choose if you want to learn, not the teacher. He/she cannot dictate your level of motivation, no one can. So I love this video, watch it, just don’t pay attention to the tittle (which I would rename: a little reminder about motivation).

About the Journey

This week I had the pleasure of listening to a P&G executive in one of my MBA classes. This executive was in P&G for 23 years, 20 of which he was stationed in Europe running operations overseas. He spoke about his experience, and there is one thing I felt it applied to me: what his 23-year-abroad journey was all about.

It’s been almost 8 months since I arrived in the US. They have been really intense months, lots of work, challenges and sacrifices. The question that came to my mind after the class was: what my this journey about? Is about me getting an MBA? Is it about changing or furthering my career? What is it really about? In answering that question, I feel I can totally relate to P&G’s vision of his own journey: it is about the journey that your family goes through, the moments and growth that together we experience, the memories we collect, the challenges we face, and how close we’re able to become in facing those challenges.

I once was asked what teamwork mean to me. I responded with an example. If I had the opportunity to climb the everest, I would much rather do it with people I care about than by myself. There is no fun in going at it alone. The real joy would come in reaching the summit with your friends, and by doing so, creating that very special bond that enriches and fills up life. So here’s a lesson for you Sofi and Daniel: most of the times (if not always) is not about the destination, is about the journey.

About Effort

Not long ago I watched a documentary called Earth, produced by the BBC. What profoundly called my attention was that it showcased a principle of life that affects every single living being on this planet, whether it is an insect, plant, animal or human being. If it’s alive on this earth, it is highly likely that this principle governs its life some way or another. And even thought this might be a basic idea, it sometimes gets lost in our busy and rapid-pased lives.

This principle of life is the effort and sacrifice that all living beings have to invest in order to survive. Some trees in certain types of forests fight for years to rise and get sunlight. Every year, the emperor penguins must withstand a long and cold winter for four months without any sunshine, protecting an egg between their legs in order to preserve the species. Elephants must travel thousands of kilometers to get to the delta during the rain season ir order to get water. They go for weeks without a drop, bringing their cubs almost to the point of dehydration. As the female polar bear finishes its hibernation period, it must transform its last fat reserves into milk to feed her cubs, and travel as fast as she can to hunt seals before she and her cubs die. And the list goes on and on. Every species on this planet must fight its battles to live and survive.

It seems to me that life is designed this way. But what it’s even more interesting is that the ideal life in our times is the one where this element is removed, where pleasure and fun take over and the law of the minimum effort is the norm. It seems that for some people, the ideal future is one where they do not have to put any effort at all.

The one simple message I have for you, Sofi and Daniel, is that sacrifice is a principle of life, and as such, it is completely pointless to imagine a future without the need to put in the work and get your hands dirty. It is also useless to imagine that any dimension of life (family, work, intellectual, individual or spiritual) can be healthy without discipline and effort. There is also no sustainable social system that can be based on handouts. As Aristotle said, Excellence is never an accident. Achievement is always based on a profound resolve and intention to do something.

Images, photos, advertisements and messages about an effortless life of pleasure and enjoyment are just that. Hard work is the only vehicle to survive, to achieve your dreams and to truly be fulfilled as an individual.

About Crazy Weeks

So kids (Sofi and Daniel), there will be crazy weeks in your lives. Crazy weeks where there is no time to eat much, no time to sleep much, no time to watch TV or movies, or do sports. No time to rest, or to hang out with friends, or read a nice book. There are some weeks in life that are just crazy, where you have so much stuff to do that you wonder “how on earth am I going to get through this?” I promise you, you will face such weeks, many many times. Actually, I this is one of those weeks for me. I have slept very little, and I’ve felt that the days just pass me by so fast, and I don’t have time to do all I need to do. So let me give you some advice on how to face such weeks.

First, be intense and feel the urgency. If you have to hurry, run, don’t walk. Sometimes people make the mistake of not understanding they need to hurry! They need to eat faster, walk faster, read faster, and finish work faster, so they can get everything done. They just go at the same speed as always no matter what the circumstances are. If you have little time, then you have to pick up the pace and run to get everything done. At one point you will be able to rest, but until you get there, run.

Second, at some point, drop everything you’re doing, no matter how important it is, and focus on what’s really important. Today I was going through a really difficult homework for one of my classes, and I get this text from my wife saying: kids are going nuts, really tired. She was just venting, but I picked my stuff and head home. I put you (Daniel) to sleep, took you (Sofi) out to get some lunch and gave your mom a window to rest, have a bath and relax. I came back with lunch so she wouldn’t have to cook, took out the garbage, and made sure she had relaxed a little bit. Then I went back to school in a hurry to keep studying. That is actually the most important thing I did all day, and it took me 45 minutes. So know when to stop and balance things out.

Third, stress goes away when you get stuff done. So lots of people procrastinate starting an important task because they’re stressed, anxious, or they just froze in face of a difficult task. Well, let me tell you that the stress and anxiety will go away when you actually start working on what’s making you stressed and anxious in the first place. Sometimes it’s like trying to send a rocket to space: you have to put a lot of effort at the beginning, but once you start, I assure you things will get easier and you’ll get some momentum to help you out.

Finally, know where your energy comes from. Whenever I need to recharge, I just go to you, play around with you, dance to some funny song on YouTube, or take you out to the park. If you feel you have no energy left, identify what you love the most, and go spend some time doing that.

About Fighting

A few months ago I came across the story about a man from Spain who was famous for doing ice climbing. He became famous after his tragic death: he had reached the top of an ice wall, but then the ice wall crumbled dragging him down because he was still attached to the pins inserted in the ice. The 40 minute documentary about him is very powerful, specifically when he shares his philosophy about life. I want to share with you, Sofi and Daniel, a few things that I really liked about what he said. The main ideas are summarized in the next three paragraphs.

In the words of Pau Escale: There are things in life that will make me fight. The death of my mother is something that has pushed me to fight. It has made me realized not why death is important, but why life is. I woke up and it’s like someone hit me in the head and told me: hey, you have these many days left, you need to make them count.

People die every day, and everyone knows that. Then, how is it possible that people don’t take advantage of their lives? How is it that if you like doing something, you don’t do it to your maximum ability, to an extreme? I can’t allow doing that to myself. I love myself too much that I can’t sit down and watch how life passes me by.

When people look back at their lives, they should feel happy. Their hearts should start beating so strong that their knees bend, not from pain but from happiness. They should think, my gosh, I have fought all my life, I have gotten up early, I have sacrificed so much, but it has been worth it. Why? Because if I die, I want to die of happiness, not of age. I want to die of happiness.

Sofi and Daniel, what do the words “I lived” mean to you? To me, they’re a synonym of “I fought”. Not fight in a negative antagonistic way. It means you went after what you wanted, after your dreams. And usually when you do that, you find obstacles that you need to overcome. You need to fight to achieve your career goals. It takes effort, it takes sacrifice. You need to fight to keep a family and marriage together. You need to fight to stay close to God and keep the Spirit within you. But that is what living means, it means you fight for what you want, for what is good for you, and for the people you love.

So if I say: start living your life, what I’m really saying is start fighting. I took me a while to understand that, but there you go.

About Memory Apps

At some point in time, every parent feels the need to start creating a blog, journal, or digital space to organize their memories. The internet is full of different options to do this and I would like to review some pros an cons of some of them. In this specific post, I will review four applications: The Family Post, Shutterfly, Smilebox and Seahorse. Note that the memory space just getting started, and there are many attempts to solve this problem. My personal opinion is that there’s still no platform that provides a complete solution for parents, but there are some that are worth mentioning.

The Family Post. The Family Post.com is basically a website where you can create your family online site. It allows you to create family albums, upload photos, videos, message boards, send family newsletters, print merchandise with your photos, keep a family calendar and directory, and it provides you a whole range of design templates. The Good? It gives you many options to keep your family informed. The Bad? No mobile version or app and its a subscription (about US$100 per year for unlimited space), so if you don’t pay, your website will be probably taken down, and you wonder what will happen to all your photos. Additionally, there could be things you might want to share only with one of your kids, but that option is not available. Lastly, how will my kids receive this information? If something happens, and I stop paying subscription, how will they know this is there for them?

Shutterfly. The scrapbooking giant also has services to preserve memories. They offer to archive your memories in a DVD for a fixed price of US$10, but they send you the DVD, they don’t keep storage it for you. So I really don’t know what the big deal is. All bad, nothing really good about this service.

Smilebox. This service is focused more on creative messaging. You upload photos and videos, and you select templates to send messages to the people you love. It’s definitely a great way to express your love for someone, but it is really focused in the now and not in the future. There are no functions to create journals for an specific individual, or to store photos for your children’s futures and generations.

Seahorse. I think Seahorse is a pretty cool app. What it does is it allows you to create shared photo albums. So for example, if you took a vacation together with family or friends, you can create an album and everyone can upload their photos, creating a more complete memory of that vacation. The not so good thing about this app is that sometimes you want to share more private things, and you want them to be directed to your children, and the app is not really built for that. Another not so good thing is that its a subscription based app, US$1 per month, so its not really thinking about what will happen in the long term with your memories.

In the next post I will be revising other applications and solutions that parents can use to keep their memories safe so their generations can receive them.

About Joy

So here is the thing. It usually takes a long time for someone to realize where true joy comes from. In fact, I think some people leave this world not finding it at all. I believe one of the most important lessons we can give our kids is to teach them how to find joy, and to do that, we need to have found it ourselves first. I guess that’s the tough part because life gives us many options that look like joy but they’re just useless imitations. So if my kids ever get to read this, I want them to know where I have found joy so far at my 32 years old. So I’ll be talking to Sofi and Daniel now.

First, I have found joy with you. I came home from school the other day, at around 5pm, and you where watching tv. As soon as I walked in the door, you jumped out of the couch and run towards me yelling daddy! daddy! I dropped my back pack, got on my knees and held you in a really tight hug for like about 30 seconds. There is nothing in this world that can come close to that moment. There is no car, no job, no house, no amount of money that can replicate those feelings. The love and connection that I feel with you, and that you can feel with your kids one day, is one of the single most precious relationships that you will be able to find in life.

Second, I have found joy with your mom. So your mom and I love going to the movies. I lost count years ago, but I could say we’ve gone together to the movies more than 100 times, easy. Although to us, is a lot more than going to the movies. Is the talk before we get there while we’re in the car, holding hands in the theater, grabbing a bite after, choosing what popcorn we want, commenting on the movie and whatever implications it has in real life, etc. They are small and simple but very rich moments that make life worth living, and write a unique story with someone you love.

Third would have to be family. When your grandpa Nelson passed away, one of the things my sister (your aunt) told me is that at the end, life is build up of moments, and you have to appreciate and take care of every moment you have with you brother, parents, aunts and cousins, etc. Life is made to be lived with each other, and not by ourselves. And immense joy will come out of those relationships.

And finally, and probably the most important one: God. This is a very intangible relationship, but very real. So you know we go to general conference. Let me tell you that the feeling of peace and joy that comes when I’m sitting there listening to the tabernacle choir is priceless. The comfort and love that I’ve felt from God at different times in my life has brought tears to my eyes like nothing I’ve experienced before. I have asked things in prayer and I have received answers, as clear you can read this words now. This relationship will be a major source of joy if you take care of it and nurture it.

Make no mistake, you are in this life to find joy, you are in this life to be happy. That is the purpose of your existence. Learn from my experiences and go to the right sources to look for it.

About a Legacy

I’m in sort of a mission. About one month before starting the MBA program my dad had his second open heart operation and sadly he passed away. It was an extremely painful moment of which I’m progressively recovering. One of the first things I did during the week after he passed was gather all of his notebooks, agendas and talks I could find. I actually went down to the garage and spent hours trying to recover every significant element that could give me quality information about who he was. That’s not to say I didn’t know him, but I felt the need to keep getting to know him, to keep engaging with him, even though he’s not here with me anymore. Am I the only person that has felt that need? If you’ve lost someone, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

I believe there are different categories of things we can leave on this world after we’re gone. Material things is one of them (house, car, cash, etc). But I deeply believe that spiritual things are by far the most important legacy we can leave to our children and generations. Life expectancy in the US is 80 years. What does a person learn in 79,8 years of life? Is any of that learning worth passing on to children and future generations? I’m currently 32 years old, and I have learned some deep and impactful lessons in my life that have taught me how to really find happiness. Is any of that worth passing on to my kids?

My dad was a thinker. He loved contemplating life, the universe and the principles that makes us happy. I ended up with about 10 notebooks full of thoughts and experiences, plus about 20 talks he gave at church, plus a number of other elements that I can use to connect with him. I guess I’m a lucky person for having that in my life. But I also want Sofia and Daniel (my kids) to have the same luck in their lives. I will not be with them forever, but I can trust that I can still influence their lives somehow if I just write my thoughts, my experiences and the wisdom life gives you as you go through this mortal experience.

I’m talking about more than a simple Journal. I’m talking about a Legacy that I can use to be in their lives, to be with them and them with me. If you watched interstellar, you can remember a scene where Ann Hathaway’s character was trying to make the argument to go to one specific planet when all the data available was pointing in another direction. In a completely emotional and out-of-context plea, she says: “Love is the one thing that transcends time and space.” I actually believe in that. I still love my dad and think of him every single day. He left me his Legacy to connect with him whenever I want.

And this, this is also a Dad’s Legacy.