Inspiring Journey Video with Malinda Van Rooij

Video Transcription:

I decided to go into broad options because I was afraid of really really choosing I think because then if you choose one thing there is 99 other things that you don’t choose. And that thought to me was terrifying so I always decided to choose as broad as possible. When you would of told me ten years ago that I would be doing the role that I am doing now I would of just think no, that’s impossible. But, I really believe it’s part of a trail that I call following your curiosity. So there’s a lot of people that will say you know you need to follow, find your passion and then follow that one passion. And that has kept me, has helped, kept me captive basically for so many years because I was like oh my God, I don’t know that one true thing that’s my passion and what I want to do. Therefore, I was afraid to choose anything and sort of stuck in “let me just not choose”. Let’s keep it as wide as possible so I’d leave options open, but basically to not choose is also to choose.

If you follow you curiosity and you just have some sort of faith and trust that it will lead you where you need to be then there’s this room to finally let go. There’s room to develop yourself in different ways. You don’t necessarily have to follow this one path of passion in order for you to just wake up one day and think I’m, I think I’m right where I want to be. That was also not a big part of my decisions anyway. I was choosing what I thought others would think was best. You know, I was basing my decisions on other people mainly and I didn’t really take the time to discover who am I and what belongs to me and I didn’t have the courage to stand up for who I was. So eventually if you continue doing that, because I was always working hard studying, working, having a relationship, a dog, a household, you know, doing everything. But, then at some point you get so stuck, Iike it’s really like burn out. There’s this writer and he wrote about unique, you are responsible for everything that you feel, think, experience you, only you. And I was so angry when I read this because I felt more like a victim. Life was happening to me. So it hurt, you know, because I was like, well it’s not my fault that this and this happened and it’s not about anybody’s fault, but you got yourself into the position. If you don’t like your life as it is right now then you should look at yourself in the mirror because only you can change it.

Also, I got the courage to understand okay maybe there is no one certain passion that I have to follow until the end. Maybe I am just not like that and that’s okay you know. I’ve seen so many inspiring, motivational speakers or and you know at some point I heard this great speech from Elizabeth Gilbert which was really comforting and it was about this following your curiosity and the flight of the hummingbird. It was comforting like to know okay so there’s basically also people who are hummingbirds and go from flower to flower, from tree to tree, from field to field and they take ideas here and they bring it on to their next experience and they basically cross, but not pollinate the world with ideas so that’s also great. And you get this sort of comfort with who you are and then you can start really, get the courage to follow your curiosity and just see what comes in my path and have faith that it will eventually lead to a better place.

Malinda van Rooij is a CRM Business Analyst from VISUfarma, ‘the eye health company’.

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