Own your happiness. Awaken and bring joy from inside. You have it inside … the message that I saw  in words of our Awakin Call speaker Natasha Rockstrom flashed like a lightning creating silver line around the clouds…
 

Natasha:

“One of the most powerful changes that I had seen was when people own their own happiness and when they were able to awaken inside themselves, for themselves.”

“I had seen that mostly in children. Even today for example when I watch my daughter, it's just unbelievable ability that she has in her and she was born with this. It's something that I have seen from when she was an innocent baby. Whatever is happening to her moment to moment, it's she that has the power to laugh and smile and greet every single moment with happiness. And she chooses that so effortlessly.”

“The amount of control children have in their life is really minimal, especially when they are few days or few weeks old. But you start to see that they are actually the ones that have the easiest time to awaken and bring that joy inside of them. Look at children. They always have a smile. They always have the laughter that is just bubbling underneath the surface.”
 

What led Natasha to this?

How is Natasha being the change that is close to her heart? A change that is - people awaken joy from inside...

It's a fascinating and insightful conversation our moderator Audrey and host Kozo had with our Awakin call speaker Natasha Rockstorm.

A landmark in the journey and conversation, I think is this question that Natasha brought up for herself while explaining her passion and mission ...
 

Natasha:

“How could we create experiences or platform for people to come together and connect and awaken that joy inside of them or awaken that happiness and realize that they had the choice all along?”
 

How did it start? Nurturing Seeds ... :)

Growing up Natasha developed an open mindset to diversity and range of thoughts and opinions…


 

“When I was in Oman I was always living as an expat and my school for example had 60 different nationalities. It was very common for me to show up to school and you would be surprised what the kid next to you was wearing, or the language that they were speaking and the funny foods that we all had at school. It was just merging of cultures.”
 

Nurturing time and inspiring space form her Indian roots and time with grandma …
 

“It was nothing that she would teach us with her words. It's the memory of how she moved in her life. Just watching her go about her day and interacting with people around her. The way that she actually showed up in her life is something that I remember till today. The way she used to drink her tea so patiently. The way she used to softly speak to everyone around her. She always had space in her life. She always had time and she was one of the most patient beings that I have ever known. So, she is someone who continues to be a source of inspiration for me.”
 

Time at ashrams in India at young age …
 

Natasha:

“It was being in that energy where a group of people are coming together to explore, what is the purpose of life? What is it that drives us every day? Who are we? How can we practice living from love? How can we practice living from the sense of service?”
 

“I think those memories really stayed with me today as I move in my adult life and making decisions of how I wanted to show up in my life and what I could have to offer. “
 

Journey of Discovery

 

Natasha:

"It's funny because I started out as a very ambitious young teenager writing out purpose statement for myself that was really something that was going to take several years for me to accomplish. When I was 16 years old someone asked me," What are you going to be when you grow up, if you ever grow up?" I just turned around and said," I know exactly. I have written out these 20 pages of who I'm going to be."
 

On her first meditation course, Vipasana, and how it sparked shift in her life …
 

"I realized that I had to tear up this 20 page or this novel that had been following me around my whole life, the purpose statement, because it had no meaning anymore. Because it was describing all these things around me as opposed to what was inside of me. I started to discover more and more that until I really knew where my inner purpose lied or what my inner world was going to look like. How I was going to actually wake up every day and nurture that garden inside of me. I really didn't know what I was going to do outside. That was when I was living in Dubai in 2009 induced to quit my job. I was working in corporate finance and I was volunteering on the side and involved in charity work from a very young age. I knew that things really had to change and this disconnection of a part of me being in service and where another part of me was showing up at work every day in a very financially driven setting was really not how I wanted to live."
 

   
About selling everything she had at the time, and buying one-way ticket to Europe...


 

"It was almost, in a way taking a step into everything I feared. What would happen if I didn't have a job or what would happen if I didn't know what my plan was? I just had a hotel booking for the next 10 days and landed up in Europe. I then spent 3 years traveling across 14 moves in 3 continents and really asking that question, what was my purpose?"

...

"I think at the time it was such a strong desire that arose in me. And I just really needed to show up and be surrounded in spaces where I felt that my heart was opening up."
 

How it lasted for years ...
 

I didn't want to rush in to another solution. That was just another way of giving myself an identification of who I was, and quickly answer that question, and fall into that sense of security … only later to find that, no I haven't really gone deep enough. So I think it was really a day-to-day journey and I just let myself say, "I'm not going to make any decisions. I'm going to leave the door and see where it goes."
 

Power and guidance with inner compass…
 

Natasha:

"I had this very simple measure that I would ask myself in those days. Is my energy going up or down? That may sound really simple but, it was really shifting my focus onto the quality of the energy that was inside of me. I really was watching that as I was participating in whatever activities I was doing on the outside. And I started to see when I was surrounded by these amazing leaders, change makers, how I used to feel on the inside. I started discovering that I really wanted to walk that path."
 

Natasha has told a number of intriguing stories and shared quite a few experiences from her journey across the globe. You are ablle read them all in the call transcript or listen to it all in the recorded conversation available from the Awakin call page of Natasha Rockstrom.

One idea from Natasha that resonated so well during the call was that quality of work requires it all - compassion, depth of relationships and alignment of values. ... it is way beyond than simply a financial transaction.


Initiative in Dubai - InjoyGiving.com




Leveraging power of the internet to connect people, and to create opportunities to awaken joy from inside ...

Natasha:

I think technology gives us the ability to create these many-to-many connections to really have this ripple effect to go further and deeper. It almost allows the organic-ness of things to happen in a very different way than when we don't have these online networks that connect us. So we started out by getting deep into the technology and how that could leverage this idea.


But 2 years on now, I think the best way to describe ourselves is, we want to explore how small and random acts of giving and even large and intentional acts create change. Whether it is a smile or whether it is a simple hug or more intentional, where you may want to volunteer your time, or you may want to offer your space for community event or several other ways where you may intentionally want to buy a gift and actually celebrate someone in your life in that way. So it's really to design from the very small to random to very large and more intentional acts of giving, all the while speaking from the space of ...

... This act of giving is allowing me to choose happiness right now. Because through that I am realizing that I am very complete and I am very full as a human being. There is so much that I have, and I am grateful for it. And these things automatically happen when our attention goes to giving ...

We get so excited to think of a perfect way to surprise somebody, or to shower somebody with kindness, and the way it shifts the energy within us and we start to realize that the more acts of giving we do, the more natural it is. We really feel like we are living the way we should be. The fear starts to disappear from our lives. The anxiety starts to disappear. When we are in a moment of celebration, which is around many acts of giving, time disappears. There is no yesterday and there is no tomorrow, when we are singing and when we are dancing, in that very experience, we've lost time and we feel the sense that everything is just complete.


Be it that it lasts few minutes, or moments or few hours, I think continuously experiencing these acts of giving, and the celebration of the inner transformations that those create for us ... I think it keeps giving us that anchoring ... and helps us come back to that space where we can awaken happiness, more intentionally in our own lives.
 

Journey of Inner Transformation While Awakening Joy to Others...

Natasha on the shift from doing to being...
 

What has really started to be my day-to-day reality is working or moving from the space of emergence, where it is more of simply holding the space by being love and allowing whatever is happening around me to move and almost not even respond to it but almost just absorb it. And whatever comes of that absorption is really just natural and is not even thought through. It is without plan. It's really been interesting to practice and experience.
 

How would the shift from doing to being work while dealing with a business situation? Here a touching story Natasha told us on the Awakin call ....
 

"I recently was having a conversation with our investor who dropped by the office. This was just a couple of days ago and he came by and it was a bit of surprise, as we weren't expecting him.

He came to where I was sitting and said," How are you?"

Immediately I could hear my thoughts going, "What should I be talking about or what should I be saying in this moment?"

I know that when I reflected afterward, who I was may be weeks ago and months ago, I would have launched into a conversation immediately about defending our position as a business and talking about our strategy and unfolding what the projections were.

I really checked in with myself at that moment and checked into how I was feeling my body.

I told myself, "Ok. If I was going to show up in this moment of love, I have experienced what my body is when I feel love. So I am now going to bring my body into that experience of feeling love and sit with that in that space."

I felt a shift in just the way my body was sitting, in the way my face felt and on the inside.

It's interesting that I just sat there and smiled silently and our investor said, "You know, I've gotten all these reports and it doesn't seem like we are at the milestones that we are supposed to be at, but I really just wanted to stop by today to tell you that, I feel that things are going the way that they should. And I really want you to know that I believe that the changes you have been making, the life will find a way for things to work out. And I am honoring the commitment that I have, to the business. I just wanted to say that I really love you guys and I believe in what you are doing."

And I was just blown away. Tears just started to swell up in my eyes. I just sat there because I really had no words."
 

DEVEN'S NOTE:

Kindness, compassion, spirit of giving simply feels right - it is so nurturing - it is so human - we are hardwired to experience it.

I saw big advantage of meditation, self-reflection - especially the shift Natasha mentioned after doing her first Vipasana meditation.How empowering example of aligning to the voice from inside using meditation and self-reflection.

Trusting the emergence, and embracing possibilities, and being in moments as they unfold ...I wish I could do that everyday of my life. But, then again, I got my powerful lesson while writing this ... I saw a way to make just that happen ... that is ... seek opportunities to give, reach out and see how to put smile on faces of others ... how powerful key unlocking abundance from inside... and along the way awakening joy... :)