A
lot of you know I spent some time in Thailand earlier this year. It was
a dope trip. It was weird. It was beautiful. Had amazing food! I sweat
through every shirt I brought with me. Saw some stunningly beautiful
temples. Hung out with monks and ladyboys. I met some beautiful,
amazing people. I shared meals, drinks, and hugs with strangers. It was a
phenomenal time.
One
of the people that I met that had the most impact on me was a gentleman
named Andy that was the epitome of lovely. Just an overall warm,
charming, intelligent, generous guy. Andy was traveling for business and
little bit of pleasure. He’s a 40-something entrepreneur living one of
the most fabulous lives of anyone I know. Andy and I talked for hours
about traveling, life, similar experiences, our varied
experiences-everything. Meeting him was a highlight of my trip. He
dropped gem after gem on me. That’s the thing that I love about talking
with people with more life experience than me. There’s always that sense
of ease, and wisdom, and trust. They trust in themselves and they trust
that things will ultimately work out. The conversation naturally turned
to “what do you do?” so we talked about my service industry experience
and my starting a coaching business. This guy has done everything. I
mean it-he came from humble, working class beginnings. He’s been a cook,
ultimately becoming a chef, he was into visual art at some point, he
was a restaurant manager, he studied international business and
hospitality. The dude has done everything. NOW he gets paid to travel
and help airlines and restaurants design their ideal hospitality
experiences for their guests.
Word,
Andy? You get paid to ask companies how they want their guests to feel
when they’re greeted? But that’s exactly what he does. Restaurants and
airlines all over Asia and Europe hire Andy to coach them on how to
create an ideal experience for their guests, generally making the ship
look good and run smoothly. There were a lot of take-aways from my
conversation with Andy but the biggest one is this-who/what we are and all of the experiences that we’ve had are valuable.
If we can connect the dots and see how our experiences fit together, we
can create something meaningful, exciting, and useful from it. There’s
value in all of our experience(s) no matter how much you think, or
somebody else thinks, it’s bullshit. I could easily bitch about being in
the restaurant industry for 4 years now, or I could shift that
perspective to realize that there are companies abroad that find my
experience valuable and are actively seeking it out. It’s up to me to
give meaning and value to my experiences. Looking at Andy, because he’s
been a chef and a manager and has a background in art, he’s able to tell
you what works for food pairings, how to run a tight ship, and what
looks good aesthetically. He’s using everything that he’s done.
Second major take-away from our chat, It’s ok to switch tracks. Andy
told himself that it’s ok to follow his passions. He developed himself.
He never stopped seeking knowledge. He never stopped being curious. He
took risks. Clearly, risk yielded great reward as he is now running a
business and using every bit of those varied experiences to help his
clients.
The third take-away is to listen. Listen
to yourself, primarily. Get into a still space and listen to that inner
voice and what’s calling you. Not what your mama wants to you to do or
what your cousin is doing-tap into what’s most important for you.
Additionally, listen to people that have done what you want to do, and that have been where you want to go. They
know how to do it. So quite simply, shut up. Sometimes you have to shut
up, put that ego to the side, stop acting like you have it all figured
out, and listen to the experiences of someone that’s doing it. By all
means, there’s a flip side to that coin and people can be discouraging,
but that’s when you get to tell them to shut up. ;-)
With
that being said, I leave you with this final word: Don’t forsake your
journey. All that you are and all that you’ve done is valuable. My
challenge to you is to think about how you can connect those dots
together and create something that highlights the best of you and the
best of what you’ve done. And if you’re struggling with that, hire me so
I can do it for you ;-)
Hopefully
you found this useful. If you want to hear more from me, become a
follower on my facebook page “coach eric nyc.” You can subscribe to my
blog at coachericnyc.blogspot.com. and you can check out my website at
coachericnyc.com. Happy monday y’all!
