Huri and Matt

I believe in Magic

A Cup of Yoga Please!

Posted on October 27, 2024 by I believe in Magic Life Coaching 0

This week was tough. I was part of a four-day workshop at the office, which meant a total of 12–15 hours of driving. We also had new colleagues in town to help us learn a new product. During all of this, I found myself challenged by a colleague’s approach. It was especially disappointing since he’s someone I’ve trusted and worked well with in the past.

The situation reminded me of Tuckman’s stages of team development, and I kept telling myself it’s normal—we’re likely in the “storming” phase. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling of disappointment. At 41, with over 20 years of experience, I was surprised and frustrated by how overwhelmed I felt. Part of me was disappointed in myself, wondering why this was affecting me so deeply.

I talked to my husband about it, and he listened patiently. But by Saturday, I was still holding onto those feelings. One of my new colleagues even texted, saying, “It was nice to meet you in person! Remember to stay relaxed, even when some people in the office challenge you too much.” I appreciated his words, but it made me feel even more disheartened.

I felt on the verge of tears and decided to go to the gym, dropping the kids at the gym daycare so I could have some “me time.” I joined a HIIT class and was about to take a shower when I spotted my yoga teacher. A wave of relief washed over me. I told her I was done for the day but needed her motivation and positive energy, so I joined her Surrender Yin Yoga class.

That one hour felt like a gift. It gave me time to reflect on my thoughts, disappointments, and gratitude for taking a moment to exercise, meditate, and reconnect with myself. She reminded us that every moment is part of the healing process and encouraged us to have a beginner’s mind.

Afterward, I felt renewed, and a few realizations came to me:

• I’ll check in with a trusted colleague for his perspective on Monday.

• Next time I feel challenged, I’ll remember to pause, breathe, and even excuse myself to take a five-minute break.

• I won’t let anyone occupy space in my mind, especially if they’re being rude. Instead, I’ll brush it off and focus on the bigger picture.

Finally, I reminded myself to ask, “Will this matter one year from now?”

I booked next week’s yoga session because I need yoga as much as I need my coffee—and I don’t need unpleasant situations to force me into self-care. This experience helped me refocus on my goals and remember that even experienced professionals sometimes feel overwhelmed. I’ve also started Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty & Stress by Yale, to better manage my feelings in these situations because, ultimately, I know I can’t change or control others.

If you have tips for navigating similar situations, please share. I know this won’t be the last challenge, and I’m open to building more coping mechanisms. ☺️

The Little Things

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Blog I believe in Magic 0

Life is all about the little things that we think don’t matter or have no impact on our lives, the little things that make us grow apart from our partners, families, and friends. I’m not sure how many of us are aware that these little things that we don’t pay attention to make a ripple effect on other aspects of our lives.

Years ago, I read a news article about a couple who divorced, and their reason was they kept arguing about how to squeeze the toothpaste. To be honest, at that time, I didn’t believe it because it wasn’t a big enough reason to get a divorce. Looking back now, I understand it better. Most likely, this was one of the little problems which created a ripple effect on their marriage. Their actual problem was a lack of respect for each other.

There should be an easy way to create awareness about what matters to us and to the people we love so that these small things don’t take over our lives and change it forever. Here are several steps I think may help us to use these little things to our benefit.

First, we should know ourselves and communicate about the things we can tolerate or not. For example, when I get upset even for little things, I prefer to talk over it right away. However, my husband prefers to wait to talk about it.

Second, we should talk about the problems we face regardless of how small they seem. If we avoid talking, even these small things add up and create big conflicts. The problem with communication is, most of the time, we don’t openly communicate with each other. For example, one of our good friends never tells us clearly what bothers him when we travel together or get together. We always find ourselves playing a guessing game while trying to understand what he meant each time. I guess, according to him, he is being nice and doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but for us, it is very frustrating trying to guess what he is trying to say. When we wanted to ask questions, he became arrogant, so sometimes, we even avoid him to save ourselves from his arrogance.

Third, we should not take anything personally. Everyone has a different understanding of the situations based on their upbringings and experiences. So, when we interact with each other, we may interpret things differently and may get defensive. So, to prevent this situation at work and in our personal lives, we need to understand our differences and not overreact when we have different understandings of the same situations. Anais Nin explains it simply, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are”.

If we use small things to strengthen our relationship with our loved ones, that is good. However, most of the time, it is the opposite because some of these small things like the way we talk, or our attitude became part of our lives. So, we may not even be aware of our behaviors and how we come across. Our goal should contribute to our happiness by creating awareness of our reactions. Life is all about small things, and we can have a positive ripple effect on our experiences and strengthen our relationships.

Miswanting: why we don’t know what we really want

Posted on June 8, 2020 by Blog I believe in Magic 0

I have four sisters. We have been raised by the same mom and dad until we left the home for our university education. However, we have totally different personalities. Surprisingly, when I met my husband, I was amazed that we had quite similar outlook on life, life style, and attitude towards life. Even though we were from different countries, and we had very different family lives, we got along very well. We also had to make several adjustments to make our life better together.

Last year, we took a two-week vacation to Asia. It took us almost a day to arrive to Singapore from Michigan. I lived in China before, and it was my dream to go back to see other Asian countries with my husband. Our trip started well, but when we traveled to Bali and Thailand, we felt tired of the locals’ attitude towards tourists.  They were chasing us to sell things. There were so many motorcycles, and it was overly crowded by locals and young tourists. Needless to say, we couldn’t enjoy nature as much as we planned because of the traffic, motorcycles, and crowded people. Also, unfortunately, all the prices were set for the tourists, so we were disappointed to pay unfair prices for taxis, food and hotels. After our vacation, my husband told me that he couldn’t consider our trip as a vacation because he was more tired than before our trip. According to him, vacation means relaxing by the pool, reading and doing fun activities.

I knew we had different expectations from our vacations, but I never understood people who check in a hotel and spend the entire week there. However, I promised my husband that I would plan his type of vacation for the Thanksgiving break. So, we booked a hotel in Orlando, which had pools, tennis courts, walking paths, restaurants and a gym. Also, we did not rent a car to prevent us leaving the hotel. I had no idea how it would turn out. I was planning to relax and hoping that my husband would be happy with this vacation.

Little did I know how much we would enjoy our vacation. The hotel was located by the beautiful lake. We rented mountain bikes every morning for 1 hour. We enjoyed the pools even though it was cooler than I preferred. They had small hot tubs, so that helped us to feel better. We walked around, and we just enjoyed nature. Before this vacation, I could consider this type of vacation as boring; however, it was beautiful and pleasant.  Before I took this vacation, I always wanted to go to new places and try to discover something new. It was a misconception that I was thinking what vacation should be. Before we took this vacation, I was thinking that I was doing a favor for my husband, but it taught me something new. I learned that I can enjoy quiet, calm, relaxing vacations, and I do not have to go across the world to consider it as a vacation.

Trying new things is always good, especially learning from each other without any judgement. Most would agree that we learn something new each day from each other, specifically from our partners. To make our life happier, we should have a positive approach to each other’s expectations. We never know; maybe, our way of doing things can be just a habit.  When we try new things, we can have better experiences and see things differently. As James Russell Lowell states beautifully, “A wise man travels to discover himself.”

2020 is Just Around the Corner

Posted on December 8, 2019 by Blog I believe in Magic 0

Don’t you want to stop the time sometimes? I certainly do. In a few weeks, we will welcome 2020, but I feel like I am not ready yet. I haven’t achieved most of my 2019 goals, and another year is just around the corner already.

Last year this time, my husband and I had created our yearly goals, and back in June, we reviewed them. Reviewing what we had planned helped us to stay on track. However, since then we did a very poor job to see what we have done so far, and what else we need to do by the end of the year. Normally, I would carry over the unfinished goals to my next year’s resolutions, but this year I will change my approach and deep dive my 2019 experiences.

Overall, I had a pleasant year. Regardless of my accomplishments and failures, I have learned a lot. So, this year during the Christmas break, I will review what I have done and what I could have done better, instead of making new plans and start preparing my new year resolutions. My goal is to see my shortfalls, my strengths, and my trends while I am evaluating my year overall.

In 2019, one of my greatest accomplishments was living in our organized and beautiful little condo. We sold some of our furniture and did not replace them. We are trying to learn to have less and feel more. We are hoping that being minimalist will help us to clear our minds and our environment. We still have many opportunities to improve and 2019 was a great start.

Moreover, my husband and I celebrated our first year of marriage. We have continued traveling within the US, Asia, and Europe. Our trips helped us to realize how fortunate we are, and also, made us aware that the way we live our life is beautiful. And another year passed we did not make any new friends, because we like being on our own. If we meet honest, real, and nice people we would become friends. We have not, and we are totally happy in our little world.
Finally, we started to do daily meditation and practice yoga. We are still learning. So far, I’m feeling happy about the outcome. In addition to that, we started to run. I can run perfectly fine until 3 km, and I ran around 4 km a few weeks ago. We biked several times. We also had a chance to do mountain biking which was so much fun.

Continue reading…

Aston Villa Love

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Blog I believe in Magic 0

Aston Villa Love

The people with whom we spend a lot of time have a huge impact on our life. So many of us sometimes end up doing things that we would initially think we would never do. The main reason for that is the people with whom we surround ourselves influence us and shape our life.

For example, I never thought that I would wake up at 6 am to watch a soccer game on a Saturday morning. How did this happen? The simple answer is that I married a soccer-lover husband. However, it took me 3 years to love watching soccer. I used to judge my husband each time he watched soccer games. I would say to him that he was wasting his time because the players were the ones who made millions, and he was the one who felt sad when they lost the game. Of course, he did not listen to me and kept supporting his team, Aston Villa. At that time, the only thing I knew about the Aston Villa was their famous claret and blue colors.

At the beginning of last year, Aston villa kept losing the games and their dream to go on to the premier league was about to fade. They sacked their coach. So, I found myself repeatedly asking my husband who would be new coach, and whose fault were the bad results. Later on, they hired a new coach, Dean smith.  During the forming stage, they lost some games and they won some games. And finally, our dream came true; they managed to win the last 10 games of the championship and promoted to the premier league. It was clear that soccer was growing on me.

Unexpectedly, I started to watch their games with my husband, and I even have several favorite players. I must admit that, I feel very stressed while watching games especially when we play poorly against stronger teams. However, it makes me forget about everything during that 90mins. Many other stronger teams, which were already in the premier league, have very good players, and have more experience than us, but we are doing our best and playing pretty well. However, we lost many games and we are close to the relegation zone. We still have many games to play until the end of season, and I am very hopeful from our future.

 

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Getting Ready For MBA

Posted on October 4, 2019 by I believe in Magic 0

If English is your second language,  the first step will be to pass your TOEFL test. Your reading, listening, speaking and writing skills will be tested.

I will be taking TOEFL exam soon. My goal is to at least score 110 🙂

Reading (Score of: 0–30)

Listening (Score of: 0–30)

Speaking (Score of: 0–30)

Writing (Score of: 0–30)

1-Write essay responses based on reading and listening tasks

2- Independent Writing support an opinion in writing

 

 

 

The Game Changers (2018)

Posted on September 21, 2019 by Blog I believe in Magic 0

The Game Changers (2018)

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book which motivated you and changed the way you live your life? If not, The Game Changer could be the one. It is a documentary about the successful athletes whose health and recovery processes were improved when they became vegan.

The film includes many positive doctor reviews from reputable universities such as Harvard and Yale. It also presents experimental studies conducted on some of the athletes. Some of these studies show drastic changes in athletes’ blood tests shortly after becoming vegan. One athlete, Derek Morgan, was a footballer for the Titans. When he became vegan, his job performance improved, and he recovered faster from pain after the games. 

I would never have known about the movie if one of my friends had not mentioned it. Unfortunately, the movie was only showing for a day. Surprisingly, the movie theater was almost full. It pleased me to know that there are many people out there who are aware of the importance of being vegan.

My take-aways from the movie are the following:

  • Our friends shape our lifestyle. My friend Margaret enlightened me about the importance of a vegan lifestyle. She brought me a book on the subject and recommended other eye-opening movies, such as a The Magic Pill and The Devil We Know.
  • The film also reinforced for me how little we know about nutrition. Also, if we do not do our research, we will never gain a different perspective. 
  • It also reminded me of the extent to which marketing, commercials, and fake news can impact our lives in a negative way. When you watch the movie, you will see how many doctors and nutrition experts still advise that we eat meat and milk products every day. 
  • The best part of the documentary was that it made me believe that we have the ability to control our life and health. We can heal ourselves from within by beginning to eat right

It is worth the watch. The film is only 1 hour and 30 minutes, and to be honest I could watch more. I believe that it will give you the chance to review your own eating habits. It may even guide you to become vegan.

 

The First Step is Setting Goals

Posted on July 18, 2019 by Blog I believe in Magic 0

Do you have written goals? I am asking if you have written goals rather than goals because if they are not written, they will not go beyond wishes. Forbes magazine had an article called ‘Neuroscience Explains Why You Need to Write Down Your Goals If You Actually Want to Achieve Them’. It explains in detail the importance of writing your goals.

There are hundreds of books and articles about setting goals, but still, it is not part of our lives. There are many reasons for it. First, we have not been taught what goal setting means by our teachers or parents. Second, most of us still do not believe that setting goals makes a difference in our lives, and do not even try. So, this leaves very few people who set goals and achieve them. The research results vary from study to study, which indicates the number of people who are setting and reaching their goals are less than 10%. For example, the University of Scranton’s research suggests that just 8 percent of people achieve their New Year’s goals.

I consider myself one of the lucky people who started to set goals and achieve them at an early age. I always loved writing my goals and plans, since I was a little girl. Sometimes, my elder sister would read them and made fun of me all day. Most of the time, I would feel embarrassed, because even when I was a little girl, I had big dreams and many future plans.  So, these would provide enough material to my sister to tease me. I have not changed, and I keep setting weekly, monthly, and yearly goals. I achieved most of my goals eventually. I believe that writing them again and again, without getting tired helped me a lot.

If you haven’t tried yet, you can easily start applying it to your life right now. It is worth trying. The simplest way to set a goal is by writing your dreams in a notebook, on a paper or anywhere you can periodically review. The only recommendation I could give is to write truly what your heart desires.

Another way to create your list of goals is by using a method called SMART.  It is an acronym of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound, which gives you brief guidance for wording your goals.

Another key point is that setting open ended goals do not take you where you want to be. For example, ‘I want to lose weight’ can be one of my goals, but if we word it by using the SMART method, we can have a clear vision and direction. So, the SMART version could be ‘I want to lose 10 pounds by July 1st, 2019’.

Also, I’ve just started to use a gap analysis method. Since I am an engineer, I wanted to use a method that related to my work 😊.  I am hoping that will help me to achieve my goals faster.  It is quite simple as well. Define your current status, dream about where you want to be, and then, take all the necessary actions that can help you to get there.

Here is the simple version of one of my recent goals, and moving forward, I can’t wait to share the results.

For the cost of a cup of coffee you can save thousands over the years!

Posted on June 24, 2019 by I believe in Magic 0

For the cost of a cup of coffee you can save thousands over the years!

We all know that we need to save money for our future. We never know when we may need some extra money. For example, I am a money saver. I took after my grandmother and I am so grateful to God that it is in my genes. Since I was a little kid, I used to save my chocolates and candies. I never remember eating them on the same day. If my parents gave us 2 pieces of chocolate, I would save the second piece for another day. Sadly, my younger sister would know it and would steal it from where I had hidden it. I would be so upset, but still continue saving everything I had and tried to find better hiding places.  I was saving my chocolates and candies because I did not know when I would get more.

I have not changed a bit.  I save In the same way today, because I can’t predict the future and we all should. Not to mention the economic unknowns and fluctuations, and the circumstances we may face, we need to save more than ever. It is not only that we may need some money, but also to have a decent life, to feel secure with our finances, it is necessary.

On the other hand, saving by itself is not an answer. Most of us do not know how to spend our money wisely. Many of us, including me, do not have a budget plan. We just spend our money according to our mood. For example, if we do not feel like cooking, we eat out, or when we see something new or trendy, we buy it without thinking.  We also have our upbringings that influence our approach to money. Even though I know the value of money, I still sometimes overspend.

Above all, new technological developments, online shopping opportunities and paying with the credit card is not really helping us. For example, we do not carry cash anymore.  Most of us use credit cards and we are not aware of the amount we spent. The credit card transaction or payment methods are exactly the same when you spend $1 or $100. We spend little by little and at the end of the month, all our income pays our credit card debts.

In the past, when we used to pay with cash, we would end up counting while paying which would give us some warning and make us think again before we purchase anything. I’m not saying that everyone is spending their money and not saving, but things can get better. We can get better results with some minor changes.  So, I decided to use a program called Account Patrol ‘https://www.accountpatrol.com/’ where you get notifications about your spending, the amount of money you have in your account, your out-flow and in-flow, and credit card updates.  It has a nice dashboard that can give you a big picture of your financial status. It is really eye-opening and very helpful. You can see the trends, categories, daily, weekly, monthly spending, and utility bill reminders. Furthermore, Account patrol sends you e-mails and text messages periodically. Another benefit of having this program is if there is any suspicious credit card transaction, it warns you and sends an alert.

It motivates to see my spending and savings in a graphical form. It summarizes and categorizes the expenses, and creates more awareness for me about where my money goes.

So far, I love using this website. I heard that its app is coming out in September. I believe that it will improve my financial status and I feel better when I am paying my credit card bills.

I highly recommend this website to anyone who wants to benefit from this amazing tool. The website also gives you a chance to try it for 30 days for free. And later on, it is only $5 a month; the same price as a cup of coffee.

How we met

Posted on February 17, 2019 by I believe in Magic 0

After a 2016 filled with travel, Matt’s last work assignment of a 10 week stint was to Rogersville, Tennessee. He had been invited by Yeliz (who would turn out to become his future sister in-law) who was program manager for a new project to be launched in the Rogersville plant. Having worked with Yeliz on a couple of topics with

About Me

Namaste and Laugh: There’s No Shame in the Fall

I’m a Project Manager with a deep passion for both professional and personal growth. Designing and building the next generation of vehicles is incredibly rewarding, but it comes with its challenges—especially for someone as emotionally invested as I am!

Professional

Huri Bagdat Larner, PMP, CQE