"Believing is to see life with other eyes"
I’m known as the “Trade Girl” since I started a challenge of living during 1 year, 11 days, 11 hours and 1 minute with 1111 euros, in 2011. Trying to be someone healthier, sustainable, economic and ecologic, soon I discovered that what I really wished for was to be more human and also happier. When we have a fixed job, from 9 to 5, with lifetime contract, without possibilities of growing in the career, we think that’s the place we want to stay for the rest of our lives.
I was 35 years old when I decided to quit my job and live in a simpler way, more authentic with less consumerist and with less money dependence. Working to get a lot of money with the aim to spend it all in the end of the month wasn’t challenging and motivating for an Aries person like me!
Whenever I felt inside me the path was to live freely in a simple, genuine way with less money, looks like all doors opened up, possibilities of trading with people was something very easy. From the simplest trades of food and clothing with friends and friends of friends, soon I started trading with big companies like gyms, supermarkets, vets, dentists and even with CP (Train Company in Portugal), where I used to work few hours for exchange and I’d get my month train ticket. Besides trading with people and companies I decided to meet 11 sustainable communities in Portugal. A little bit everywhere in Portugal there are small freedom niches that we never thought would be possible here. Liberator!!! It was a liberator experience and no doubt, very enriching because of the quantity of new things I’ve learnt, folks I met and especially because of the “click” inside me: to think everything is possible. Like Walt Disney used to say “If you can dream, you can do it.”
From all things I have learnt, from all the roles I took, I saved tips of ecology, economy, health and mainly a new way of thinking… Money by itself cannot be prisoner, because in the very deep of us we have skills and knowledge that we can use as our “trade coin” for our daily needs. In the other hand, I also have learnt that money, in a society where money is the “trade coin”, turn us prisoners and makes it hard for sustainability. Of course having a little bit of both worlds would be the ideal!
This challenge became a project called Believe in Portugal, where values are sharing, altruism and trust. Also where we believe that our country (and the World) have a lot of potential for being sustainable, human and happy! With this project born more then 40 Trade Fairs in all Portugal, 2 trade shops, 1 trade house, 1 TV Show, and 1 book called Belivro (livro=book): read and and be 111% happy. This book was made and “sold” with trades. The only book in the World like this!
It’s been 4 years since this “half crazy half healthy” idea started… I began to feel it gradually, doing trades just because was like an obligation to trade and wasn’t fun anymore, turned out a bit prisoner in a selecting options way. Currently I decided to go back to work for money, at least for some money. And the other part trading. It’s incredible how trades came to my life in such a fast way and they are here to stay.
“Pois, porque trocar e partilhar é o que está a dar!” (this sentence rhymes in portuguese. It means something like: Because trading and sharing is cool! – Does anyone has a better translation for this?)
Say Hi to Andresa:
Interested in the book? (in portuguese) Check out this link and you can take a look at her wish list here.
No comments:
Post a Comment
What's in your mind? Express yourself :)