The wonderful power of Opening up

Good Morning every one!

Let me tell you about a recent experience and how Opening up during a lunch with one of my work colleague,  opened up a whole new world to me. A world which encourages me to let go, surrender and be in the moment of deep and conscious sharing

It was just last week, when a work colleague came to visit my team and since I had no lunch appointment I asked her if she wanted to join me for lunch. She said “yes let’s go, I am actually starving”

So off I went with that beautiful, very stylist Italian lady living in Germany. I always enjoy her typical way of speaking; using her hands to express herself, and her Italian accent when she speaks English, always transports me to a sunny place somewhere close to the sea.

Off we went to our company restaurant for lunch. Sitting at the table, we started our conversation with the usual small talk:

“How are you?
How is work? etc…”

The kind of questions you typically use to do small talk, what we in French call ” du blablabla ” in English talk for nothing!

Being an introvert, I realized that I just don’t like small talk anymore. simply because, like Dr. Laurie Helgoe,   Ph. D. , a clinical psychologist, educator and author, explains it: “it’s not because I dislike people. I hate the small talk because I hate the barrier it creates between people”

So I decided to go for a deeper conversation, being mindful and respectful of her feelings, I asked her for permission to do so:

“Me: Do you mind if I ask you an open and frank question?
she: No, sure go ahead
me: How did you end up living, alone, in Germany coming from Italy?”

So we started to talk about travel. How she loves to travel. I shared my recent one week trip to Tel Aviv, all by myself and what an experience this has been and how much I learned about myself during that week. She often travels alone (well taking her three dogs with her). I told her my story about my marriage, and the situation I was going trough. She told  me how she went through a divorce, had to go back and find herself: rewire, reset, reboot: After a while, she found herself on a magical journey. We spoke about how she met her current partner. She shared she would have never pictured herself with a Germany guy, and guess what: her new partner is German!

She told me a couple of funny stories about what happened to her during her travels, and how the universe always had her back. Once driving to Portugal, she found herself stuck with her brand new car ( which broke down in the middle of nowhere, close to Bordeaux), and with her 3 dogs – in that car on a hot summer day – and how she then ended up in a 5 start hotel, for a very very affordable price.

Our one hour lunch just flew by. Our conversation gave me so much energy that I thought I had to share this with you.

If I hadn’t opened up on that day, I would have never met this beautiful soul, nor heard some of her amazing stories and she got a chance to show me how the universe is always here to help and support her.

So I met this beautiful colleague of mine by simply Opening up, showing her who I was, sharing my inner self, putting down my own barriers, and expressing my vulnerability and my emotions. I realized that by meeting at the same level  I got so much more out of our 60 minutes conversation, so much more which opened up a whole new world to me.

Have you ever had the same experience?
Have you opened up to someone who ended up giving you so much more than you expected?

Be curious, be courageous, be bold and be yourself!