Yesterday I went to the December Latin women luncheon. I had not been to them in months and wanted to promote the giving machines with those ladies. I explained to them that the only machine in all of Asia is in the Philippines. I sat with some women my age and I loved it. I usually sit by women who could be my daughters with little kids but this time I went to talk to Lucy. She is a woman who sells pearls at the Bazaar. I asked her how she started doing that and she said. In Spanish “well, you can have what you want, not all at once.”
She explained: “We all have dreams and hopefully we’ve all set goals to help us achieve those dreams. But too often people become discouraged when they can’t achieve their goals as fast as they’d like and as a result they begin to give up on their dreams. Don’t get discouraged along the journey. Instead recognize that you can have what you want, just not all at once. So be willing to keep putting one foot in front of the other, even when it feels like you are barely moving at all, just keep taking one step at a time toward accomplishing your goals and eventually, when the time is right, you will achieve your dream. Just keep moving forward.
The reality of life is that most things end up taking twice as long as we’d planned on and most projects end up costing twice as much as we thought they would. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t doable! And frankly if you had known how hard it was going to be to achieve your goal and you’d understood how long it was really going to take you to achieve it, you most likely wouldn’t have tried to do it! So maybe it’s a good thing that we go into our goals a bit naïve about how hard it’s going to be to achieve them. After all, ignorance is bliss starting out and by the time you realize how difficult it’s going to be you have put in so much work already that you aren’t about to give up now.”
That’s exactly what happened to Lucy. She started a company selling pearls because she loves to sell things. She is from Ecuador and moved to the Philippines to be close to her son who married a Filipina. She was bored and wanted to do something so she started bringing things from Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador to sell at Bazaars in the Philippines and slowly she started to sell things she brought from Hong Kong and little by little her business grew. It didn’t happen overnight but it changed from a hobby to an actual business. She pays all import taxes and still makes money. Lucy is a hard worker. We need to work hard to achieve our goals and we need to go through a period that requires some sacrifice in- order- to truly appreciate our dreams when we finally achieve them.
Lucy does not sell cheap pearls. They are of very good quality and she is very good at selling because you can trust her. She has her loyal clientele who only buy from her. There are women who pay $25,000 for her salt water pearls. Amazing!
I also met a gal who is moving back to Panama after 30 years. Her husband has been an expat in Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and as we talked, I found out that she used to live in Colonia Escalon close to my mom’s house. What a small world. I wished I had known her before because she is moving. I would have invited her to dinner but that is the life of ex-pats.
Con amor,
Vero
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