Please enjoy a beautiful and very personal journey that was shared with me earlier this year. I hope that it might inspire you.
My message to its author: Your journey is truly one of accomplishment, encouragement, and inspiration. I commend you on your achievements and thank you for inspiring us with your journey. It takes a courageous and generous person, to make themselves vulnerable and risk criticism and ridicule, for thinking and performing outside the box…for stepping above from what is normal and expected, to exceed the expectations that have been set before. Please, take a moment to imagine the possibilities in store for you and for all those who you inspire with your kindness...as it has only just begun. My deepest gratitude, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for sharing.
The original text was presented to me in Portuguese. It has been translated here:
“Hello Victoria, good evening. I am here to share with you and your followers what happened to me after I started watching your videos and practicing Yoga, or rather ... playing Yoga as you prefer to mention in your texts ... I really do agree playing fits much better because we have fun when playing some game, and the feeling of practicing Yoga is the same as playing a game that we like very much. Without further ado, I am here to say that playing Yoga, doing good, seeking empathy for people, trying to put oneself in another's place more often to understand certain things - which are not always explicit, but implicit - are factors which prove that only feeling what the other feels is how we understand certain attitudes and behaviors that we sometimes see or witness in people.
When you introduced me to Yoga and your work of practicing kindness without expecting anything in return, I had just come out of a 5-year relationship, living day after day with no prospects of life or future, I felt so asleep (that's the best description), I did not feel the goings-on anymore, I had lost the will to do the things that I liked to do most like: traveling, going out, going to the movies, just as I did not feel like even going out from home, to see the light of day, I was too lazy and unwilling for anything to get me off the couch and out from in front of the TV.
I remember that I had just accepted a job opportunity at a new company. I think it was only a month before, but I still felt lost, due to the fact that after leaving the last company, where I worked for 13 years, and having been unemployed for a year, I was feeling like a fish out of water. I said that it was difficult times. I did not feel like going out. I did not feel like getting up from the sofa. I no longer recognized myself physically, since I had gained more than 10 kilos (22 pounds) in the last few years...no clothes fit me and that alone made me even sadder. After I started in this company, even though it was not my dream job, I tried to adapt. After about a month, I met you and your work, and I started watching your videos and practicing your teachings. And so the days went by and I felt a change in my way of thinking, acting, feeling ... I started to think twice before doing or saying something that could hurt people. I started to exercise and practice good. I started to be kinder to people, to apologize and to thank people more for everything and I saw that it was good. I started to deliver more than to expect to receive, I felt very good about it and I was doing more and more. The feelings of anger, sadness, and discouragement were fading, reducing every day, and then I felt better, more light, joyful, happy...clearly all this was tied to God, because I felt Him very close, supporting me and encouraging me to improve and to evolve ... and that's what I did.
It was when God blessed me with another job (in a company that I had worked for many years ago, where I started my career, a company for which I always had a very special affection, since I had already been very happy there) and that motivated me even more to take care of me and the people around me, as well as to exert more gratitude, for I felt and feel that even though I do not expect a return of my good deeds, the return comes, and it comes very fast.
Ahhhh, I can not forget to mention that along with it all I was losing weight, really! In addition to feeling better internally, I started to feel better externally as well, since I began to reeducate my diet and, uniting the practice of yoga and its incentives, I managed to lose a total of approximately 13 kilos (28.6 pounds), without the need of academies and starvation diets, none of this was necessary, for I just re-educated my eating habits, played yoga, and believed it was possible with determination and perseverance.
Today I feel like a free woman, accomplished, within the possible of course, happy and very cheerful ... I joke about everything, I feel great pleasure in making people smile, doing good, offering, giving, realizing dreams, even more simplified... I love seeing people well. I look in the mirror and I like what I see and I like to see what I have become as a person, I feel happy for it. I love people, it's a daily learning experience to deal with people, and I've done everything to continue to practice good and to try to get other people to sample a little of what I've sampled, because I'm sure they'll love living like this. And, believe me, I loved to have discovered yoga and to experience the good that made me practice good for people ...it is addictive. I feel so good in doing good that sometimes I feel that I am happier than the very person who was impacted by it, I think that the return is even greater for those who practice good, than for those who receive it.
Victoria, I have no words to thank you for what your teachings and your videos have done for me. Today I feel like a better person and you have a great participation in it ... thank you very much. I hope you can continue to impact people with your work and may God bless you greatly for that.
Anyway ...
Today I feel good, willing, motivated and I am loving the new job ... Everything that happened to me to lose weight, to improve my point of view about people and my own attitudes, are only paying me good results, because the practice of the good impacts people positively and how I work with sales, goals, motivation, challenges, a team, this has only helped me to succeed with practicing good. I have felt a good reception including from my fellow managers. Even though I am new to the company after only 3 months, I have assumed some added responsibilities, as I am always willing to help them. And what has happened is that one talks to the other and I've received more phone calls and messages asking for help...wow...but I love it!”
