REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND WHAT IT MEANS TO LIVE FULLY…

So In 2017, I started looking for work – again. I built a portfolio (a great friend helped me), had 2 interviews and the second interview gave me a full-time job as an Instructional Designer with Novaconcept, an elearning company in Montreal. I was ecstatic. G., the president and senior ID, is an emphatic, competent and easy-going leader who built his company from scratch to a 1-million a-year-in-sales, nice little enterprise, and who enjoys it still, every day. I loved it there, worked for a year: great boss, great team, great work.

Remember D., the bully-boss? She was working in the company next to Nova, on the same floor, in fall 2017. The day I saw her again, my heart started pounding and all the memories came back to me, but I smiled and said hello; she acted surprised but very acted in a civil and elegant way. I knew then that Elena from 2010 was no more. I became a different Elena, who could hold her ground and step up when people abuse of their power. I felt it.  And as Destiny wants it, once you feel such a thing, life will put you to the test.

Always be ready for a life lesson; they never end, so better embrace the position of apprentice as soon as possible.

 In that one year at Nova, I had a conflict with a colleague. He was a brilliant designer who was always unhappy, frustrated, irritated and with whom I had to interact daily because we worked closely on the same projects. Talking to him was an ordeal for me. Someone was always to blame for things he had to fix; I didn’t do my job well by not shielding him well enough from the client’s comments, he was overwhelmed with work, etc. So one day I took all the courage I had in me and faced him. I remember saying, among other things: start by being grateful for this job, for living in such a beautiful city, for having amazing colleagues. We will always have problems to solve, fires to put out and clients to please, and we can do it all together but we have to start by being nice to each other. We did have two more conversations after that, and I noticed he stopped complaining so much when I was around. I don’t know if he hated me after that or not, but what I saw is that he started being more careful about expressing his frustrations. It was the first time in my whole life when I talked to someone about how they made me feel. It was liberating to be able to do that.

We will always have problems to solve, fires to put out and clients to please, and we can do it all together but we have to start by being nice to each other.

I had always been an angry, reserved, passive-aggressive young lady who never knew how to express her anger. Close to my 40s, I learned how to do that. I see now how I change little by little and I regard anger as just an emotion that tells me that something is wrong and my values are not being respected. I consider that one year of work at Nova as my fist mindful working experience. I started asking myself at the end of every week: am I happy at work? Am I doing ok? Is this where I want to be?

When you start living and working mindfully, you can’t anymore just say: I don’t know why this happened. Yes, you do. Ask yourself. All the answers are within you.

I designed two beautiful projects with two grateful and collaborative clients, after which for about four months I had no work to do, so I started panicking: no work meant that any day, my employer could have said: I have to let you go Elena, sorry. So I took control and sent out two CVs, after which I was hired at Pardeux, another elearning company.