When the project started I had a conversation with Mariano and he pitched me this amazing idea about starting a longboarding business. He sold it to me so well, that I didn't want to do anything else. Every idea I had was just “another” idea and not something that I truly believed in. I was doing presentations just for the sake of doing them and not really creating what we in the IA call “beautiful work.” For that reason I decided to drive home instead of having my driver take me as usual. All my life I've had a passion for speed and cars but until this year I hadn't appreciated their true beauty and their calming effect. I had seen thousands of times in movies how after a breakup or a problem in the office the protagonist got in his car just to get it out of his system, so I decided to try it. It was in that drive home that out of sheer coincidence I left my iPhone on shuffle and the song “Best friend” by Nickelback started to play.
As the song started I didn't pay attention but then I let the lyrics hit me and had a moment of true reflection. It was the second verse of the song that made me reflect. It went something like this: “If today was your last day. And tomorrow was too late. Could you say goodbye to yesterday?” Rather dramatic you might be thinking, or cheesy maybe? However, once those lines got inside of me I perceived how dumb and incorrect I had been. I had misunderstood the main purpose of the task given and let my emotions cloud me. Instead of focusing on learning and understanding the requirements to start a business; I was fighting a battle with myself that I had no chance of winning. As the song says “if tomorrow was too late” would I have been proud with myself? Absolutely not, I would have hated myself for not doing my best even though I loved Mariano’s idea. That short and simple line that seemed completely unrelated to business is what changed my week, and most importantly got me back to being back to the me I have created for the past year.
I once again understood the importance of working to your maximum potential every time even if you don't love it 100%. This lesson is not only important for my immediate future (school and university) but also thinking in the long run when I get a job after university. The odds are that I won't be my own boss, at least as soon as I graduate. So I need to understand that although I won't love every task given to me by my superiors, I still have to work on it and love it as my baby. Only that way will I create work that I am truly passionate about and get the results I want. Thanks to that immaculate semester changing moment that I finally understood the meaning of our unit “Get Over Yourself.” I have finally seen what those three words put together represent. They are not there to tell us what to do, but instead there are there to make us improve on a day-to-day basis and not become complacent with ourselves. Although, we might have achieved excellence before that is not enough. We have to keep pushing ourselves to become even better.