Ask Others, Trust Yourself by Elisa Balabram

I missed the semifinal World Cup game Brazil vs Germany yesterday afternoon. I was commuting and checking in disbelief the score on an app on my phone. By the time I got home, it was half time, and by then there was no point in watching it anymore. (I’m happy to see many positive messages starting to pop up, as it relates to our personal and spiritual growth, during “good” and “bad” times, but this article is not about the World Cup.)

On my way home as I followed the game, I thought how nice it would be if the box of chocolate my mother had mailed to me last week would have arrived. It would at least be something good to balance the events of that afternoon. I imagined two scenarios: either there would be a delivery note in my mailbox for me to pick it up, or as it happened once before, the postman would have left the box there for me, even without a signature.

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I had the opportunity to visit Finland for the first time, to attend a conference in Lappeenranta. It was a wonderful experience, I learned from the conference, and I also had some personal experiences that I will always cherish. Here are the evening experiences that made the trip even more special, as I followed my intuition:

The day I arrived, there was a dinner outside with the conference attendees, followed by an opportunity to go to the sauna, and then jump on the cold lake, and back to the sauna. I had read the program, suggesting that we could bring a swimming suit if we wanted to experience it, and I did. I was a little insecure about it, since I had never done it before. It turns out that several people had done it and knew what to do. I trusted myself and asked as many questions as I could think of to one of the conference attendees who was leading us to the sauna, and who had done it before. Even though we had just met, I asked all the questions I could think of, as it was the only way for me to gather courage to do it.

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