How to be found on the lost island. Or keep on walking.

After my experience in Rio I had one day of working on my blog, connecting with people who help me to get my challenges done and focused very much on getting things done! The results were very satisfying and since a girl from the hostel explained me that she was going to a beautiful island, called Ilha Grande, I thought about rewarding myself.

Ebony promoted in beautiful words how great it would be to stay on the island and what awesome beaches you can find over there. I was already in and decided to leave next morning, taking the bus for 3 hours, then the ferry for 1 hour and then spending the night on the island. Well that said my alarm went off on the next day at 4. I jumped into the taxi knowing just the name of the bus line and the approximate name of the city where the ferry would leave. To be honest I had no clue where I could end up.

When I came to the bus station I found out that my debut card was not working (as I experienced it now several times) but luckily the machine at the bus counter could read it for no good reason. I was happy and took off to Angra dos Reis. During my bus ride I was caught by the environment and really amazed by the richness of the Brazilian nature. I loved it. At that time I had already been thinking about moving to Rio de Janeiro. That city combines for me nature, a metropolitan and an energetic hub.

Arriving in Angra, I figured out that even though I got stressed to be on time (the boats leave very seldomly to the island) I had 2 hours to change money, get to the harbor, find the right boat and buy the ticket. The taxi driver that took me to the center spoke English amazingly well. I was really astonished after all my experience in Brazil. And even more than that he explained me that he had a girlfriend from Austria. Better said Graz. How funny was that.

I didn't like the city though. Don't know anything was kind of disturbing me. When I tried to exchange money I knew why. There was no bank offering this service and I was forced to exchange it in the only exchange office. I was pissed. This guy ripped me off just because there was no other possibility for exchanging. Was that business 3.0 ala Angra?? Well I really thought long about doing it and in the end I even decided to exchange all of it in order to be safe. (A week later I got the same rate in Sao Paulo - as well taking advantage of not having any alternative.)

Why do I need to be safe? I did not really feel the trust in myself of coming along without having enough money in my pocket. How weird is that? What confidence do I show in order to accomplish my life? No worries. I decided to put more pain on me in order to find a place to stay without paying. Well to be honest I strongly believed in sleeping outside. Even though it was raining the whole time. I would save my money since this I was nervous of making it to the end of the month. How courageous.

On the boat I figured it out that I was in the same situation like coming to Rio. I didn't book any place, did not know where to stay. I even didn't know the name of the village in that we landed. Though I was pretty much ok with that since I had in mind to enjoy a great rainy day on an island. It was not a beach day, so I hiked on a tourist path through the island to a natural pool and further more to a small water fall. It was really amazing and powerful. After those stressful days before my departure and my emotional roller coaster after arriving in Rio I was pleased to experience some peace and a great nature.

I walked around some hours through the woods always on the search for snakes and monkeys but I was not lucky. Resting in the waterfall and watching some other tourists, mainly Brazilians, meant also to forget about time and my return to the the village that name I didn't know. After getting thirstier and recognizing that even on this beautiful island night time meant darkness I decided to walk back in order get close to the village and sleep on the beach. Well that was my plan. I followed the trail and shortly after that I figured out that I did not know where I was or how big the island would be... There we go. After hours of walking in my flip flops and slipping over this moody earth path I was getting frustrated and pissed. 

Still remembering what I asked myself back than: 'Isn't it better sometimes to plan such a trip? Do I always have to prove myself in order to find a flexible solution? Did I prevent myself from miracles if I plan things?' And so on. I was really pissed. Then finally I found a house but since it said in big letters that it was forbidden to enter. I did not even try. Something inside me told me to move on and hike back to see if I maybe went somewhere on a wrong path. And I was right. There was another trail leading to the other side of the island.

I followed that one till I took the wrong direction for another time. At that time I came out of a very impressive beach with inviting houses and nice properties... Asking for the way they understood that I want to rent a taxi boat... Well after feeling that had been ripped off I refused and was getting back angrily to some other way. Which led to an amazing beach. When I came there I was so taken by the garden full of different trees and plants. The very clean beach with white sand and those impressive houses and properties!!! Woooooooooooooooooow. When I entered there I was like being in my dream of running a high end recreational resort for people with burn out and who want to fulfill their dreams.

I even spotted a small roof under which I could spend my night. Smiling and happily I went to a person who was standing in front of the impressive beach house and asked for the way. He could not speak any English so I turned around and was frustrated again. After some steps I heard somebody calling me in English so I turned around and I saw a young girl running after me. My first thought was like: 'What a cute daughter!' :) I really believed that she was the gardeners (in my point of view owner) daughter.

She asked me if she could help and introduced herself as 'Julia'. Can you imagine that? Being lost on a lonely paradise island and meeting a gorgeous girl that speaks perfectly English that is offering you water with a big smile? I shook myself to wake up. Well didn't work out. I was very happy to get some water and talking to her in English after this long trail was a big release.

Julia also showed me around the property which was a 7star resort and included a soccer field, a sauna, a helicopter landing space and so on and so on. It was just amazing. I learned that she was not the daughter but the executive who built up the whole place there. Wooooooooooooow. That was all like a dream. A dream that is still going on and that offered a meeting with the Austrian princess some Brazilian movie stars... Let's see what this will lead to! Stay tuned and share your experience with getting lost and finding something more beautiful!

new social challenge

Take the 100€ I borrowed you in fall and pay it forward as social investments. I would suggest you divide it / 10. Then look for 10 (small) social challanges, were you can invest 10 € each with the aim, that each 10 € get min 100 € through the wise investment. Tell us some stories about that.

Status Quo: for my challenges

1,5 weeks after coming to Brazil there is time for a short summary. how are my challenges going on?

I got started pretty well. The launch of an optimized homepage and meetings which I planned are getting on slow whereas the contribution of people who show up right at the spot is just amazing.

Still need to get conclusions about that.

Management innovation challenge
The promised contact to Ricardo Semler disappeared and the person who wanted to use this challenge to start business relationship to me is somehow troubled.
But I will meet with a personal friend of Ricardo next Tuesday and the more I learn about him the more I am sure that he is the right person to talk to.
A creative way of financing this challenge is still needed.

Social business challenge
I got to know to local partners who would coordinate the project are identified. The opportunity occurred that we could do this also in Sao Paulo! Cool.
The contact to 'Mobile School' needs established and strengthened, since I didn't get an answer yet.
A sponsor is still needed.

busuu.com language challenge
This challenge gives me the greatest creeps.:))  I shot awesome and fun material for a social media campaign. My learning progress is not build up in the online platform yet. I really need to do that in order to get my credits done.
I sense a huge market potential since people even in the touristic sector are not able to communicate in English. If you consider that there will be the Olympic Games and the soccer world cup coming up you can imagine how important that will be.
It is hard to get into enterprises since it is short before Christmas and people told me that in January corporate activities will be very low. It is the main holiday time and between Christmas and carnival. I need to find a very creative solution for that! So time might be challenging but there might not be any need for stress.

Yesterday I started with Aikido lessons in preparation for the Caipoera challenge and it gave me a very cool feeling. Over Christmas I will train with Julia, caipoera and Portuguese. So, I am satisfied, still some things need to be figured out but I keep my very positive spirit from Ilha Grande. Let's play.

new Challenge!!! Spread out €100.-

Take the 100€ I borrowed you in fall and pay it forward as social investments. I would suggest you divide it / 10. Then look for 10 (small) social challenges, were you can invest 10 € each with the aim, that each 10 € get min 100 € through the wise investment. Tell us some stories about that. (Johannes Frühmann,Frühmann GmbH)

Riding a rollercoaster or why a nail could be an investment of €100.-

After having a bloody intense working weekend and a surprising momome (Monday Morning Meeting) with the playmakers I jumped on the plane in order to head on to Rio de Janeiro. My journey would begin and my game would be tested.

In Madrid I experienced the first micro wonder meeting a funky group of Spanish. Those guys partied wild, (some pix will follow soon) and learned me some very important Spanish terms. Listen girls, now  I know to survive in Spain!! :))
Since my plane left at noon of the next day I needed to survive another couple of hours in Madrid. So I went to a 24 hours copy shop to work at 4 am.

After writing some emails and following up on the playmakers projects I met Bernhard Niesner from busuu. I am deeply impressed by him. He is another flowrider!!! Discussing some opportunities of social media tools, campaigns and gaming dynamics was real fun and I felt terrible to move on to plane. Though I left for one of the best flights ever. Nearly empty plane, friendly staff, double portion of the meals and a lovely girl teaching me Portuguese!!

what a great experience. So it was also not a big issue that the movie collection was lame (eat, pray, love was giving me some nice time but the rest.... :))

Coming to the airport was kind of a mix of my feelings. First of all there was this intense feeling of sexuality and lust for life which is welcoming you in Brazil. Then I realized that I didn't inform anybody of my arrival nor that I checked out where I am going to stay for the next couple of days. Of course I had no map, no directions and it was 1 am in the morning.

My first way was to Copacabana to go to the beach and enjoy the silent sea with my whole luggage. (The other day I learned that is a common place for getting robbed.)  I felt miserable. Why was it that I was always taking the hardest way in order to prove myself. I liked the challenge of getting along and trusting in the good that will happen, but do I have to dare my faith all the time???

When I stopped putting myself down and I decided to go for a welcome drink to a bar at the Copacabana.
Filipe the barkeeper and Renata, a very lovely Brazilian girl made this night a pleasant experience and in the end I was happy to get connected with a beautiful Braziliera and having met somebody who was selling SAP products, lived in Europe and might boost busuu.com. Let's see if something like this turns out...

I took a taxi and ended up in one of the most gorgeous hostels in town. However on the next day I woke up and was still a bit freaking out. I was there alone, no real contacts, limited money resources, I still need to sell one challenge and I just have 1,5 months to find a 500 person company to sell busuu. What the fuck... :)) I checked my emails. In order make the pain even more painful... I found out that the HP was still not running properly and that I didn't manage to align the 'Challenge.Me' team in order to have properly working work flow. Nobody did anything because nobody was clear what was needed. As you can imagine I was really down.

Under the impression of our long working sessions and the long flight without any sleep for two days I was also very exhausted. Fortunately some people from the hostel, Maya and Manuel, asked me to join to see the city. I agreed which was a good decision. Low in energy and having the feeling of failing was not a great state of getting work done. Besides that I needed get myself established in the city and get acclimatized. So I joined them to get to know the way to the Metro and after checking out the largest church I have ever seen (for 20.000 persons) we split up and I went to the beach. On the way there I was so tired that I decided to go to a park and sleep there on a bench for a while.

When I woke up I realized that I was not the only one using that great location to rest, sleep or meet. There was a very special atmosphere in the park. Some people next to him studied Portuguese, were making jokes and enjoying a great deal of their time. A homeless tried to communicate with me and I felt really sorry not having the opportunity to get his jokes. He seemed to be very funny and nice.

After a while he gave up to tell me his joke and I really had an insight. I had taken €100.- in cash with me in order to buy sun glasses and shorts since I was really out of any cool swimming equipment. Suddenly I had the feeling, that I should give this money to this guy, Magno, as I learned later on.

Well you should know that I normally I really don't do this and I am not a person who is running around playing Mother Theresa. Not at all, especially the last days showed what a selfish person I am. But somehow with all my low energy and despite the knowledge that I needed to take care of what and how much I spend, I had such a strong feeling of giving him the money. I liked the idea that he would need to find a way of getting it exchanged and finding solutions in order not to get ripped. But there was so much fear in me. What if I would need the money later on? Would I do that just to calm down my feelings? What would the people around think about me?

All of a sudden a couple next to us which studied Portuguese stood up and I needed to take some actions if I would do it. Well to make a long story short. I finally went to them asked them if they could translate. This was a start of a beautiful story. I told Magno, that I would see a great potential in him as a business person (what I really did since he was collecting tins and easily connecting with other people) and I would like him to give this money in order to start his own business. He promised me to write me an email in one year in order to tell me about his progress. I still don't know if he can write....
Dionne, who came from the UK, started to tell amazing stories and even more astonishing, her friend who works in a restaurant close by agreed to help Magno in the future!!! Wow all of a sudden there was a real community involvement going on!!!! So cool. That was even more worth than €100.-

I would like to share one of the stories of Dionne. She told me about this guy who was living on the street. He had nothing. No education, no family, no hope. Then he decided to build a house and he started with one nail. He changed this nail with something else and by just exchanging goods and without any money involved he managed to build a house.
Well to tell you something about serendipity, after I left the park I look on the street and found....  a nail. What a wired experienced and I started to laugh that people around just would smile and greet with their amazing way of enjoying life.

That experience really made my day but it was not over yet! I went to the beach and had one of my best days. I met Wera from Sweden, who lives in Rio on and off. She just came back from Sweden and showed that is really possible to life my dream of staying 6 months at the beach and the rest of the time in the mountains. I was so lifted up by our conversations. These conversations, her admirable sense for enjoying the beauty of nature and life. So I took the decision right at Ipanema to move to Rio. I am in love with this city, with the people there and its great nature. It is such a great location!

And after coming home I read my emails I figured out that everything was going ok, with omission and faith in life. Sandra Ghitescu, follow her great blog, put it so perfectly well that I would like to share her email with you.

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 2:45 PM, Sandra Ghitescu wrote:

hey again babe,

a little concerned that nobody has yet answered your emails than me...

i understand this last request you have for me, i understand i must wait for nico to put something together and make it funky. i wait.

in the meanwhile, i suggest a big meditation for you.

go to a sacred space - a place with amazing nature, a church...

set a clear intention for the meditation. ask to be connected to Spirit, the Source, God. set yourself as a channel, a clear, clean and beautiful channel, to receive God's words. close your eyes and relax, tie a silver thread to your coccis (last bone of the spine) so as not to get lost during your travel. ask for a guide, a power animal to take you on this journey. let yourself travel and receive guidance from your Guide, the Angels and God.

fear, worry and misunderstanding arise when your personality/ fears/ ego/ personal history starts interfering with the Grand Design. Ask to be strongly reconnected to the Grand Design, and nurture that connection each day from now on. it will tell you everything you need, including how to make the homepage and how to be more easy to understand for people.

as you come back from the mediation following the silver thread, ask Guide, Angels, Universe to help you integrate and embody what you have learned/ received. feel how all the information is encoded in your body, help you body be clean to receive it, help it be strong to keep it.

don't forget to thank for the gifts :)

over the next days, use totems and symbols to make sure you are connected even in the toughest times.

i will do the same.

this is not about you, me, other people, social media, a homepage, this project. this is about what the Universe needs us for. this is the common ground for all the people in this story. if we respect this and stay connected to it, everything will do itself. as Diana says, "let God work" :)

i'm sending you all my love,

sandra.

With the right energy we can really accomplish great things. We do not have to search in the outer world but inside us.
I felt so empowered and full of life till I was just acting so selfish since I felt so unbeatable.... But that is the story of the next blog entry. Stay tuned and share some micro wonders with us!

2 new challenges!!!

- Find the startup hubs of Rio, get in there and help 2 startups (really help, not just talk to them)
- Hit a kids diabetes ward in Rio and entertain the poor guys and gals with a game or 2 (need to learn Portugese for this one, so hurry up with that one! ;))  Fredrik Debong (StartEurope)

new challenge!

Challenge for Pippo: to learn capoiera in 1 month, make a show in front of 50 people, tape it and put it on web. I dare you with 500 euro :) (Dragos Nicolaescu, http://www.visionaryconsultants.ro/)

let yourself loose! you deserve it.

today i experienced real beauty. yes but separates - yes and finds synergies.

often we we have the choice on how we would like to move on and what context is best for us. that needs maturity and also alignment with our free inner child. what fits today, does not have to fit tomorrow or fitted yesterday. those steps need to be made without being affected emotionally. what makes it hard. life is motion, mentally, intellectually, or emotionally.

if you fly you are aware of the fact that you are flying when you experience some turbulence, otherwise it feels like sitting in the couch. those times are also the exciting ones but just experiencing those turbulant times would not do good to many. especially in those times we need to be stable inside. if we are not we are fucked up. though searching in the outside for this stability also means to stick with past success patterns and images that might not apply in the present. we need some turbulence, meaning you need to leave your comfort zone.
at those moments we are experiencing life. at those moments we are experiencing creative problem solving abilities that we would have never known before. at those moments there is no pressure no loosing no failure no winning just room for forgiveness and development. it is materializing your dreams and co creating a common future. evolutionary business. things fall into places and serendipity appears. that is magic and needs to be acknowledged in the future.

that dynamics can also be applied in the development of a team. forming a team that is not based on needs, confronting each other with fears and focusing on it's strengths is a great challenge. our goal of being a team member is to take over ownership and to create a safe environment, in which you have the opportunity to fail. together we need to support each other to hold away our kryptonite and boosting our superpowers. strong individuals coming together creates turbulent times and amazing ways to learn, experience and massive self-fulfillment opportunities. still opportunities yet. maturity needs the strengths to meet person every day as a new person.

our personal problems are shown by relationships.
we face our inner troubles in relationships because we are seeing ourselves in others and attract other people right on time to challenge us. we all act as mirrors for our friends, partners and stakeholders. what we accuse the other is actually inside us. brought up in interactions. that is a normal situation and can be used to learn. if we understand a single activity and its consequences from the eyes of other people we get insights in our patterns and personality.

appreciating a relationship and not escaping the relationship by living a dangerous and fake safe life is not really supported by our society and our expectations how most of us want to be integrated in our economic and social life.