Gabrovo Innovation Camp 2016 in my heart: Gabriela Grigorova
(Stories from my Journal of a Lifetime)
A day without a dream is a lost one. A person without a motivation is just somebody out there in the crowd. But there is what people say: If you are lost, you can always find the way back home.
Innovations are not just to be found, they are to be discovered for a reason. And this reason happened in Gabrovo. Believe it or not, just a small town in the middle of Bulgaria, could actually change your perspective for a lifetime. Adventures come, because each one of us is eagerly waiting for them. Opportunities are those factors that lead our minds and bodies every minute. But we are those that create, change and provide them to the rest of the world. If you share, you are brave. If you listen, you are even braver. But if you could manage to do both, you are stronger than you think you are.
Memories are to be created for a life-time. Those moments, which we tender, are the ones that we keep deep and safe in our hearts. What I do like about photographs is that they could capture a moment, unfortunately gone forever, and impossible to be reproduced. Photographs capture memories and we transform them into a useful source to obtain motivation and inspiration.
Gabrovo Innovation Camp was more than a source, it was a beginning. And I am not talking about „Once upon a time stories“with happy endings, but a real book of superheroes with limitless imagination.
My name is Gabriela, and my superpower is to create, achieve, pursue and transform. But in Gabrovo Innovation Camp I wrote another chapter of my book called: Gabrovo Innovation Camp in my heart. Let me tell you a story you would remember:
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else, is the greatest accomplishment that I achieved during my three days in the Camp.
The Perfect Decision:
I hardly believe that I would miss a chance to apply to be a participant in Gabrovo Innovation Camp. And I knew it that I would be chosen to participate. Everything from then on is just a story to be told. The perfect decision led me to a change. And as usual, my greatest self was an artistic smile that always saw the world smiling back at me.
Say hello to goodbye:
Success is always traveling with me on my way to a specific destination. But this time I decided to place it in Gabrovo. The heart of Bulgaria, for now. People, talks, smiles, eyes and laugh scattered around the room. Interesting personalities, beautiful thoughts, smart ideas and art intelligence were viewed as an even realizing that we needed to make a compromise with ourselves in an undiscovered and unknown way. Hearts were filled with joy, passion, determination and words of pleasure and modification. A night was coming to its end, but minds continued to walk around the rooms till the end.
You might be lost, but you will find yourself:
This is what we were told. To be lost does not mean that you do not exist, but it means that you need to activate your senses to feel the change and to let it happen. Step one from our adventure was made. Walking down the road of dreams, we were chasing letters and we managed to catch a few, so we created the innovations. Plans are not to be followed, but to be completed. Goals are not to be achieved, but to be kept for a long-term period of time. Priorities are not to be set, but to be persistent. How can we manage to have all of that? Easiness is the answer and a little time. If you have time to ask questions, then you are the richest person in the world. But if you have even more time to listen to the answers and to be brave enough to say either „yes“ or „no“, then you need only one more thing and that lies in your heart. Be patient enough and you will find the answer at the end.
How can you agree to be the one that you are meant to be? How could you possibly turn your superpower into an innovation? What is your biggest strength or what is it supposed to be? Is it discovered or is it still lying on the ground? Would it knock on your door or you need to catch it like a star? Could you easily say „yes“ to something that you believe is not true? Or could you escape and never come back? What if all of this was possible to be answered, what would you do then? Where would you go? What would you follow? Innovations are those that would lead you throughout the way. People would be your support and I would be your hero. Even if you do not know what you are actually capable of, you would see that you are more than you think you are. And even in those times when you are lost and could not find your way back where you want to be, even then your superpower will save you from not taking an empty bus back home, where your true and only heart belongs.
You would not even imagine what was next:
Answers are to be changed. We grow in time to trust the future to our answers. It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. However, the core to a situation of disconnection lies in the answers. We are the only ones that were able to interact and find an eventual solution. Hours of preparation, mutual recognition, empty roads and no people. Just minds and silhouettes that were talking to each other with or without a reason. But there was still something missing. A part of ourselves was torn apart and still undiscovered. How were we supposed to find it? Where were we looking for? Towards the right or to the left? Somewhere in the sky, over the rainbow or somewhere where we see trees of green, red roses too, we see them bloom for us and for you and we think to ourselves what a wonderful world.
We saw friends shaking hands, saying: @Hey, how do you do, but in the end we all say we @superhero YOU. We saw changes, we saw smiles and we absolutely faced the colors of a mile. A mile of changes, a mile of cries, and a happy color of plenty of goodbyes.
We mesmerized the days as they passed by and we walked as happy as a million smiles.
We won a prize of changes, and lots of friends that we would keep till the very first end of our final goodbye.
We do not say hello, we do not say goodbye, because Gabrovo Innovation Camp will be our small paradise.
Now you finally know what belongs to your heart. It starts with G and end with bye, but it is called Gabrovo, the city of plenty of smiles.
Gabriela Grigorova
October/08/2016
Written with a smile.