The 6 Elements of Joy

[Music]

three weeks ago

a friend called me and asked me if i had

watched the netflix show

called narcos and i said yes

why and he said well i don’t want you to

feel offended

but i didn’t know how crazy things were

in colombia during those years

and i thought to myself yes those

were really really bad years but i

remember having a joyful

childhood so i guess we just learned to

live with it

nowadays colombia is amazing so i

recommend you to go and visit

but anyway in high school i picked

psychology as my career of choice

however my parents had a different plan

for me

as a lot of hispanic parents they want

their kids to be doctors

engineers or lawyers so they gave me

three options civil engineering

industrial engineering

or business they owned a construction

company

and being the oldest kid in the family

they had all their hopes

in me to continue managing the business

my younger brother

was recovering from years of epilepsy

and my sister

was still a kid so

i have to confess that i was pretty

upset with the giving options

and i picked civil engineering just

because i had no

idea what it was about so i went to

university for

civil engineering and i ended up liking

and having a blast the thing was

that six months before my graduation

my parents had to close their business

because at the time

the narcos were doing money laundering

through construction

and my parents couldn’t compete anymore

what did i do i got married

and got a job obviously a year later my

husband and i

decided to go to grad school and we

wanted to do it

overseas because we thought that would

give us an edge

when we go back home to get a better job

but the problem was that none of us

spoke english

so the options now wrote to spain

but even though the program was in spain

it was in english

because it was the international mba so

we still needed to learn

english at the time jaime’s sister was

living in new york city and she invited

us to live with her

so let me tell you i love new york city

but in my opinion it’s not the best

place to learn english

because everybody speaks everything but

english

or at least everybody spoke to us in

spanish

and that forced us to speak

in english between the two of us and

even fight in english

and that was tough so after a year of

studying english our savings were little

and we didn’t have money now to go to

spain and start again

but we didn’t want to go back to

colombia without our masters so at the

time i had a friend who was living in

manchester new hampshire

and she suggested us to apply to

southern new hampshire university for

our masters

so we did and jaime went first when he

started classes

i decided to look for a job in

engineering

i needed to look for a company that

sponsored me and i also needed to put my

resume together

the problem was that my english was

still massive menos

and i didn’t know any technical words in

english

and at the time there was not such a

thing as google

so what i did is i went with heimet to

his university

and sat in their computer lab with an

spanish

english dictionary and put my resume

together

i remember vividly during that time

that one night we had just played

hyman’s tuition

and we had no money left and we just sat

down on the floor

pray and gave thanks for everything we

had experienced

and just put ourselves in god’s hands

the crazy thing is that the next day

henry got paid 200 for a tutoring

session he had done at his

school and that same day later

i got a call from a company that wanted

to interview me in boston

so i went to this interview and there

were two guys

one was very opposed to what my

expertise could provide

and the other one was very welcoming

arguing that

numbers were numbers here or in any

part of the world i left the interview

feeling

hopeful but mostly grateful because i

finally had had the opportunity to talk

to a civil engineer in this country

two weeks passed and i didn’t hear from

them so i assume

i didn’t get the job so i decided to

call the welcoming guy

and i said look i know i didn’t get the

job

but i would love it if you could help me

improve my resume

so what he said sure come here and i

help you

and surprisingly he changed my whole

resume

but but to my surprise he offered me a

job

two days later and they even sponsor my

work visa

i just couldn’t believe it on my first

day of work

i was very nervous because i didn’t know

how these big tough guys were gonna

react

to a petite latina woman with a strong

accent

they turned out to be great but at this

job

i not only learned about how

construction works here

but i also faced the reality of being

the only woman

wherever i went and that was not an easy

task for sure

but i still went with it a couple of

years later my husband and i felt more

established

and we decided to start a family and we

tried for

six years unsuccessfully and then we

went for ibf

and after a painful emotional and

physical process

we got pregnant with our bella becoming

a mom

working in the construction industry

turned out to be a little bit

challenging

when you work in a male dominated

industry and in the field

you don’t really get a lot of

flexibility but again i still went with

two years later i went to bobson college

for my mba

with emphasis in entrepreneurship and

isabella got twin sisters

while all of this was happening i kept

getting compliments about

my jewelry and having the bulk of

entrepreneurship in my mind

i thought i’m gonna start a fashion

business however

i didn’t want it to be one more jewelry

business

so i went back to colombia and i talked

to the artisans that made my jewelry

and i was moved by their stories

i felt privileged to have the life that

i had had

and i felt that i needed to do something

and that’s when i

founded artifactus a sustainable and

ethical

jewellery business that offers

unexpected pieces of jewelry

made out of orange peel and seeds and we

support

vulnerable artisan women for whom this

is their primary source of income

and help reduce the waste of 15 million

tons of orange peel

that get discarded every year i’ve been

with that in fact to six years and i’m

happy to share that we are in a hundred

retailers nationwide

and keep growing however i always

thought

that i needed to do something go back to

engineering i knew there was so many

opportunities in the construction

industry

but i didn’t want to start a company

only for my own financial benefit

i wanted to benefit others too i’ve

always been inclined to

for-profit social entrepreneurship

and that’s when my husband and i decided

to join forces

we wanted to leverage his expertise and

technology

and my experience in the construction

industry and we recently founded

merge tech a mobile application that

connects

on businesses with prime contractors

bringing transparency and quality

to the construction industry so when i

was invited

to make this talk about joy i thought to

myself

i don’t have much to share i have lived

an extraordinary

ordinary life with challenges as all of

us do

however i was able to identify

that throughout all those challenging

years

there were six common elements that

brought joy to my life

and those are personal growth

gratitude authenticity

discipline positive relationships

and purpose personal growth

it takes courage to move from your

comfort zone

to your fear zone but fear is an

important

step move us forward a part of

full of opportunities it is in our

control

or in our power to see it as a positive

or negative thing for instance we can

see stress

as anxiety or as excitement

so don’t be afraid to

leave your comfort zone and move to a

world full of

personal growth i can assure you

that even if you don’t achieve the goals

you set up to achieve you will get to

know

yourself your resiliency your fragility

and your efficacy and in my opinion

trying is the best way to grow in life

gratitude being graceful gives you joy

because it just makes you realize what

you have right

we have a daily routine at home

before we go to bed and after we say our

prayers

each of us give thanks to for whatever

we feel thankful for

we are teaching the girls to be thankful

even if we don’t get all we want and i

look

forward to that moment every day because

i love

hearing what they have to say and it

just gives me so much joy

authenticity being authentic is simply

being yourself

evolving all those social pressures

in my opinion being an immigrant health

may be

my authentic self it is obvious that i’m

different in this culture

i just need to say a word and people can

notice it

it was not easy at the beginning but i

have learned that i’m worthy of love

even with my perfect imperfections so

love yourself accept

others be thoughtful

and be open to be vulnerable i’m sure