Dreams to Reality

Last year one of the large themes we had at Skimbaco Lifestyle was Live a Little and I had a weekly feature of ways to enjoy life in a small way. Join us this year making our big dreams reality. 2013 is all about allowing yourself to dream big, make plans to achieve the big dreams, and have guts and strength to go after the big dreams. One of the things I have learned in my journey making my dreams reality is that sometimes you have to forget about your pride. I’m going to tell you a long story of something I have always been embarrassed of, even though now I realize I could be proud of myself for being able to put my pride aside when focusing in making my big dreams come true. I encourage you to look at the big picture and think of the long term benefits of things and yes, even sacrificing the “enjoy now” every now and then. Sounds almost “anti-skimbacoish” to abandon the carpe diem, but let me explain.

Don’t let your pride hold you down

I met my husband in Germany in 1997 and he had to go back to the United States after us dating only for one month. It was very obvious for both of us that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together since day one, but being young and from the opposite sides of the world, it sort of seemed impossible how we could make this work. Remember that this was 1997 – no Skype calls, we sent love letters via regular mail. Let’s just say that if long distance dating isn’t fun nowadays, it really sucked 15 years ago. I was absolutely determined to leave for the US for the first time in my life and I needed to save enough money for the flights and to live there for 3 months. My savings were gone with my adventure in Germany, and I decided to leave Germany to go back to Finland in hopes of getting a better paying job. I was young, but I had been building my resume since I was 15 years old, and it was very impressive for my age; advertising, business-to-business PR, consumer PR and even working in technology field, and in retail for companies like Mulberry. I had worked through the entire college and gotten my first PR job straight out of high school and I was very proud of it all. I was proud, period. However, when I went back to Finland, I didn’t move back to the city, the living cost would have just eaten my salary, so I moved back to my small hometown to live in my grandmother’s house. Many saw me as a failure coming back after being gone for a few years. My plane landed on a Saturday, and on Sunday I was having a dinner with my family, including my sister’s boyfriend, and I announced I was ready to work anywhere and do anything to save up the money in three months. My sister’s boyfriend said his mom was a manager in a shampoo factory… a phone call later, I had a job, and I started working in a shampoo factory the next day bottling shampoo.

Cinderella-story in the making?

I only worked in the shampoo factory for two weeks until I received a job in a local hotel. It was only a few steps up. In the hotel I worked as a marketing secretary. Before starting my shift at 8AM I often had been cleaning rooms already an hour. After 4PM I went back to cleaning rooms. On Friday and Saturday nights I was a bartender in the hotel nightclub. I worked during Christmas, I took the New Year’s Eve shift. It was the toughest three months of my life until then, and not just for the work. It was because I had to completely swallow my pride and be willing to work in a place I had very little interest working in. And not just work – but be so good at anything I did that they let me take on additional jobs within the company. It ended up being a great experience nevertheless, and I even took the hotel in a national travel fair and got great press for them in a national newspaper, something they had never done before. Like said – I completely swallowed my pride to take the job, but I did my job in a way I was able to live that moment to the fullest and be proud of my performance. The important thing here is… I didn’t want to get too comfortable where I was and I never lost focus why I was doing it all, although three months was a long time of also listening my family and friends telling me how crazy I was throwing my life away and chasing dreams that would never come true – or many begging me just to stay where I was. When after the three months the hotel offered me a permanent position and asked if I could stay, I said no, and boarded on my flight to NYC instead.

Join us!

Join us this year in making your dreams into reality. This year our team is inspired dreaming big dreams, and systematically finding new solutions how we can make big dreams into reality by implementing small changes in our every day lives. We are not just dreamers, we are doers. Join us. You can also subscribe to my secret email where I give even more insight how I am igniting change not just in my life, but also yours. from dreams to reality, live life to the fullest