Outside my boxes – Act III

 

So here is the last post about my sabbatical and I’m already feeling nostalgic… This one is about different kind of trips, the ones I did from a classroom or a screen.

With my companions of free time and curiosity I jumped into all sort of new subjects. And what surprised me was that the more I opened myself to new ideas, new possibilities, the more I wanted to know, the more curious I was, and the list of new courses to do, books to read and films to see only increased. Today, even after all the knowledge acquired in the last months, I can say I feel more ignorant than before the sabbatical, and more eager to keep learning and exploring.

Short course of Philosophy of Time and Space in Cambridge: This one was to please my nerdy side, as I used to love Physics when I was in school but ended up pursuing a completely different route in college. It was a weekend course in this gorgeous castle talking about relativity theory and time travel.  I think I didn’t really understand more than 10% of the course’s programme but it was totally worth it. I felt inspired by this academic paradise town, and by discussing themes that are not subject to opinions but supported by theorems and equations. And the best part: to finally be able to understand (just don’t ask me to explain it) that eventually, some day, it would be possible to travel to the future, but never to the past! So sorry, McFly…

Coaching training course in London: A friend of mind offered me the chance to become an accredited coach and, since trying new sides of me was the sabbatical mantra, I couldn’t say no. It was truly a gift. I think anybody who leads teams and cares about having a positive impact on others should do some coaching training. What really inspired me was its main principle: the idea that often the answer to what you are looking for is inside you, because, in most of the cases, you are the best person to know what’s best for you. The job of a coach, therefore, is more of a facilitator, that helps you to get more clarity about what you want to achieve, why, and how. It gave me a completely new perspective on how to support someone or teams when guiding them to achieve their objectives. It’s not always about advising, telling what to do or sharing how we would do it in their shoes. The thought that sometimes the best answer to our worries could be inside of us, and that all we have to do is listen carefully, is a human super-power I was happy to discover.

I’ve been intrigued about the impact that the connected world is having on our everyday lives way before the sabbatical. I learned in a digital workshop that the proliferation of the internet is one of the biggest milestones in mankind’s communication history. Firstly, there was the language, then the writing, followed by the invention of printing, which enabled the distribution of information and knowledge to many. Now we are living its fourth milestone: the internet.

The internet not only allows the “massification” of content distribution, but also its production; if you exist online you are also a source of content, and that makes a huge difference in the quality and variety of information that we are now exposed. And the implications are huge. It affects basic everyday decisions, such as how to get from A to B, to the definition of many industries that had to reinvent themselves, such is the case of music, travelling or paid television. I’m also completely convinced that what we are seeing today is just the tip of the iceberg. There is much more to come, but that’s subject for another post. Now what I want to share is what I decided to do with all this overwhelming availability of information during my sabbatical: I decided to dive in the fascinating world of the online documentaries and courses.

Documentaries exist way before online channels like Netflix or Youtube. The main difference is that these new channels enable the distribution of a bigger variety of independent productions that, in the world of a few powerful, and probably risk-adverse broadcasters, we wouldn’t have access to. The flip side is the amount of options available so I decided, initially, to go for the ones that touched those subjects that were like little bugs in the back of my mind, having a nap, that before the sabbatical I was too comfortable to wake them up. And three of them touched me in a way that forced me to rethink some of my habits. They brought me more than just new content, they gave me a new level of consciousness, because they were able to reconnect me with some of my fundamental values:

 True Cost, about some despicable practices behind the affordable prices of some fast fashion brands.

 

 

 Fed Up, about the food industry and how some of its practices have resulted in the un-healthy and over-weighted population that we now face in most of the western world

 

 

 Cowspiracy, reveals the uncomfortable truth about one of the biggest sources of pollution and environmental destruction, the livestock and animal agriculture; the big elephant, or better to say, the big cow in the room that nobody wants to talk about.

 

My two biggest sources of online courses are edx.org and coursera.org. Both offering courses from top universities, easy to follow, sometimes even directly from classrooms, and the best, if you don’t care about getting a final certificate, for free! Imagine what it is to attend a lecture directly from the M.I.T. to your computer screen no matter where you physically are! Isn’t that incredible? The problem, again, is the variety. Many interesting courses! So I ended up flirting with all sort of topics, from Shakespeare to Economics, and still have a huge list of new courses I want to attend.

The ones that inspired me the most were the ones that used this channel to propose new theories, new ways of thinking that aim to improve our lives looking at business and systems from a completely new perspective. In this sense, my top ones were Transforming Business, Society and Self with U. Lab and New Models of Business in Society .

And here is another big effect of the sabbatical: it gave me permission to be more aware of the main challenges we are currently face in the world. And I’m talking about consciousness rather than knowledge. Maybe I didn’t know about the scary statistics on climate change or slavery work in our society, but I knew all that existed. The big difference is that now I’m open to read that data and ask myself : “do I want to be part of this?” and if the answer is no, “what am I going to do about it?”. “Nothing” is also an option and that’s fine. But at least now I’m more conscious about the effect of my everyday decisions in the world around me.

Now the sabbatical is over and it has left me with more than just the feeling of a great time. There are concrete consequences that the new me will have to deal with. Mostly new habits that I hope will stay with me forever, because they are a better response to my true values, to my beliefs. They represent the respect I re-gained in these past months for the environment, nature, animals, the planet and most importantly, for myself. Now I consciously look differently at:

what I eat : I quit eating every kind of meat with the exception of seafood, and my goal is to become a vegan in the near future. I’m also trying to avoid processed food and sugars.

what I shop : I think I never shopped so little, and it wasn’t just because I was on a sabbatical and needed to be careful with my savings. I simply didn’t feel like shopping. I somehow managed to fill my days with so many other pleasures that the idea of entering a Zara shop made me want to cry. I’m also more discerning about what I buy, whether it was produced in an ethical way and its effect on the environment. I want to make sure the money I spend, specially on things that are not filling any basic need, goes to business that do good to society.

what I watch : I have always loved cinema, but I realised I’ve been stuck in the same sort of Hollywood blockbuster plots for too long, films that at the end don’t leave me anything, don’t make me want to talk about them, don’t make me cry, nor laugh, don’t surprise me, nor provoke me. They just feel like remakes of the same stories with different castings and locations, and I guess I simply got bored of them. As a result I had to do a bigger effort than simply going to the nearest Cinemark, so I ended up digging in the fabulous world of alternative cinemas and discovering a broader spectrum of great films, that I’m keen to keep as a new habit. Flip side is the pop corn. Why we can’t find good pop corns in alternative cinemas?! Is pop corn too pop?

what I care : I can’t really say that I feel more connected with the world and more aware of the mess in which we are if I’m not willing to do something about it. So I started my first volunteering work. Feel ashamed I never did anything like this before, but can’t do anything about the past, can I?

what I do for living : This for sure is and will be a huge topic for this blog. With everything I’ve been through, I can’t escape asking myself whether I’m proud, or not, of what I do for living. I think this is probably one of the most important questions we should ask ourselves, because our jobs should be the place where we deposit our main talents, and it is where we spend most of our active lives. If you were born, like me, in the privileged part of society that had the opportunity of great education, the minimum you could do is working on something that makes you proud. And being proud shouldn’t be just about having an important position or earning lots of money, but in which way your work is contributing to a better society, to a better world. I saw this great quote on Facebook the other day, that parents rather than asking their children what they want to be when they grow up, they should ask them what kind of problems they want to solve. I thought that was spot on, and I’m keen to embrace that question myself in the months ahead.

So this is it. What an amazing period. Which was much bigger than what I managed to describe on this blog. I feel I missed to mention so many other important events, such as the quality time with family and friends in London, Santiago, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, NY, Miami, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Donegal; other wonderful places I visited like L.A., Rome, Bordeaux, Lake District; the fabulous trips with my acting group to Normandy and to the gorgeous Ile d’Yeu; and simply having more the time to relish the variety of leisure and cultural alternatives that exist every day in the amazing city where I live.

Now I’m excited about what’s next for me, about finding out what this new me will do when rejoining the Matrix. But I’m also fearful of the temptations of the easy roads to my old habits and my old beliefs. Specially the ones I didn’t consciously choose, the ones that got stuck on me as I became an adult and wanted to mingle with the society around me. That’s the reason for this blog. A sort of an open commitment to never let go again the curiosity I regained about myself and the world around me. Now I’m outside the boxes. And it’s nice to meet me again.