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It has been almost two months since I met Vaopele Tiatia, a
graphic designer living in Utah, but from Hawaii. Vao was seated next to me on a flight to
Hawaii.
This was the second trip Vao and his wife would be making in
less than as many months. Vao’s business
had not been as robust as he needed and on his first trip he was returning home
to help a family member and recharge his spirit. On that first flight, he saw an advertisement
for a shirt design contest. Although Vao’s graphic work was generally web based, his real dream was to design
clothing. By the end of the flight he
had a design in mind and committed to himself to enter the contest.Well, enter he did, and win he did! Part of the prize was a trip for two to Hawaii! It was on that winning return trip that I met Vao. I was struck by his natural sense of joy, his story of persistence, and how he spontaneously stepped into opportunity when it was presented.
Here is the follow up story. On that return trip to pick up his prize money and award Vao and his wife decided that they would relocate. They chose to move to Las Vegas! This move is a major change, a major risk and the potential for a major shift in Vao’s life and life work. Part of the risk is Vao will be creating a clothing company using his winning design. This is a plan that was not obvious to him just 5 months ago.
I have told parts of Vao’s story since I meet him, yet it was in re-reading the chapter ChangeYour Mind in Richard Rohr’s book The Naked Now that prompted me to revisit Vao. Rohr writes, “Once you accept ongoing change as a central program for yourself, you tend to continue growing throughout all of your life…The ego and the false self hate change more than anything else in the world, and the mind is their primary control tower…Once you know that the one thing the ego-hates more than anything else is change, it makes perfect sense why most people hunker down into mere survival.” (pages 89-90)
Vao is clearly not most people. Good luck my friend.
Andrea. T. Goeglein, PhD
https://twitter.com/DrSuccess
DrSuccess@ServingSuccess.com
http://www.movingpeopletoaction.com/services/mpta-radio/216-serving-success
