Reflecting Forward

To say the least, I have procrastinated horribly at updating regularly. I believe this is because when I started this endeavor, the vision of what I thought it would be, is completely different than what the journey has become. I took the time recently to read back through my first blog posts, and to be quite honest have wanted to delete them and start over. However, if I were to do that the story would not be authentic, so with much embrace they will remain. I started with some stories of individuals doing amazing things to do much good in this world, and somehow faulted into blogs of self reflection. The truth is, eleven months ago I was naive. I had a picture in my head of how I thought this process would progress and a vision of what the road would look like. The truth is, I am still naive. The only difference is, I believe I have learned to embrace it.

Part of the beautiful thing about life is that we can not predict it nor control it. Part of my hesitation in following my passions was, one, the fear of failing, and two, the fear that the reality would be different than the dream that I had created in my head. Well, lucky for me, within the past eleven months, both have happened. I have failed several times as far as how to accomplish simple business related tasks, but am thankful because through each failure I have been able to utilize it as an opportunity to turn the failure into a success. Secondly, I am learning to let go of any expectations that I might have created, because although the dream and reality share commonalities, they are never the same and the reality is never happens in the way that we have imagined.

This past week I had the opportunity to speak at the 3rd Annual Medical and Wellness Tourism Congress at the Hyatt in Los Angeles.  On September 22nd, 23rd, and 24th, about 2,000+ medical and wellness professionals from around the world came together to network, to share information, and to build relationships to expand in the arena of medical and welness tourism. Speaking in front of people regarding particular world issues is something that I had pictured myself doing, however, I quite honestly pictured the path being more of a struggle. I guess I pictured a few failures before people became willing to listen and be receptive to the information that I  have to share. Much different than the image I had created, it has been a beautiful and heart-warming experience to see the connections that have been built off of a twenty minute presentation regarding cause-related marketing.

As my email box continues to grow with encouragement from individuals from the Medical and Wellness Tourism Congress, or individuals that have heard about the cause after the event from someone who attended event, I look forward to the new conversations of progression. And as a reflection forward, choose to embrace the un-dreamed journey in order (or in many cases disorder) to provide knowledge about particular situations of people in poverty and work to integrate ways that current and upcoming challenges can subside and be resolved through passion, talent,  and creativity.