I thought i could use this opportunity to talk a little bit about myself since we covered in the last post that the personal connection is important.
The best would be to start from the beginning. The earliest memories were from kindergarden. I was a fat kid, realy loved to eat, still do. My parents lived in a small village not far away from the main city of Croatia, Zagreb.
I was pretty normal, went to school, I had great grades and was considered smart, I engaged in a lot of extra hours with the professors to learn more. My parents raised me to be religious(christianity), I went to church every sunday, prayed every night, didnt feel happy though. I guess i was a positive person because my parents were easy going people, and they still are, but they were very demanding and expected from me alot. During elementary school i already felt like an outsider, like i didnt belong; not in the class but anywere at all. Back then i had no sence of self. I did what i was told by my parents and my professors, was considered to be a geek and weakling by the other children, the tippical nice guy problems.
I had a few friends, one best friend that was eaven geekier than me. Sorry D. you know its true ;)
We went to church together, played basketball, videogames etc.
In my free time I watched TV a lot, around 6-8 hours everyday. My favorite program was CartoonNetwork and while I was watching it I learned English fluently. Than a storm hit our satelite dish and I was left only with german channels, so I started watching those and learned German fluently.
Sounds impressive but realy isn't when you consider how many people learn foreign languages from TV shows, in Croatia a lot of girls learned Spanish from shows like Esmeralda.
As I learned later Croatian is difficult for foreigners but for Croats learning a new language is actualy not so difficult. Most people nowdays learn English through computer games and shows and movies and knowing English is now considered a basic skill, alsow it is considered that you have to know to some extent to get a somewhat serious job.
Next is high school
Since the village was small and I hade excelente grades, knew 2 foreign languages by the time i was in the last grade of elementary school and was generaly considered smart my parents sent me to the main city of Croatia, Zagreb. I went to a language gymnasium where i specialised in german. We had half our courses in German plus 2 extra hours of German with a lector from Germany that didnt eaven speak Croatian. So my German got realy good and by the time i finished hight school i received a DSD diploma for the level C1 speaking skills so almost the highest available(C2).
The thing is that most kids at that perticular class were very bright, had great grades and almost all of them knew German fluently, so I was back to avarage again. That didnt bother me much, actualy I quite liked the fact that I could speak so much German.
This is actualy the point at eich i began ny evolution, I was sepperated from my parents,i lived with my grandma alone but was still under strict controle everyday. Ofcourse that drove me mad, still does and as any teenager i started to revolt. My form of it was to turn into a mettalhead, wearing all black, long hair, Metallica, drinking,smoking, talking back and all the usual stuff. Although i made a lot of new friends and expanded my social circle through takeing up dancing lessons and going out more, I still felt like i didnt belong. Maby it was because of the specific music or the fact that i wasnt from Zagreb, but it was rather the fact that my social skills were still underdeveloped. But throught these 4 years a lot changed for me and i experienced a lot, learned a lot and had a lot of fun. The highschool wasnta problem for me, actualy it was kind of boring wich demotivated me and instead of being the best my grades dropped to about the higher avarage.
One of the most influential happenings in these 4 years where my girlfriends. I never had "the talk" with anybody and wasnt much of a Casanova by nature until then, so i kinda had to go through it all with babysteps. I had a few makeouts and 2 relationships and a whole lot of missed opportunities. The last relationship ended by me being dumped on the last day of school party. That hurt me a lot so since i knew not to wich colledge i should go to, what kind of job interested me and what i should do the whole summer; these times were rough for me because i felt like i was at some crossroad in my life sithouth any orientation.
Alcohol was a common friend during that summer, but i didnt have much time because the time to choose was getting shorter and shorter. My best gues was to go to study German and maby become a teacher or a translator, but at the time i didnt care. So my father sat me down and I won't forget what he told me, he sai since I already knew german that it made no sece to study it for a few year, he rather suggested that i should choose something else and use German as a bonus to the job.
I thought about it and i liked the idea, so i decided to study management in tourism and the hotel industry. The colledge i chose was a privat one wich in Croatia usualy means: "Im half-retarded and my family has a lot of money so i will pass". And there are a few of those private colledges that worked that way, fortunately our dean had a different idea, he was a very well red man sho had traveled the world and was in tourism for many years, he wrote around thirty books and he always encouraged us and entertained us with his stories about other culturey and countries. Ofcourse eaven in our colledge there were those sho wated to get their papers with money, but i thought that this colledge was a great opportunity since Croatia is very famous for its hospitality, cleanliness and untouched nature. To find a job was going to be easy i thought to myself.
By that time I was going out of my dark phase and started to open up to new things, one of them was a night club where found work douring weekends in the nightshift washing dishes. I made 500 Kuna every week, thats about 75 dollars(with the dollar to the kuna being 6.5 to 1). Makeing a bit of cash was ok for me, but i was still very unhappy from that summer. I wanted my pain to end and my life to go on in a more bright direction. A major event there: I made a friend that was in the Game movement. As i watched him get a lot of women i thought to myself thats the solution to happynes. I picked up all the materials that i could get kn the subject and started learning, and useing these methods. For those who are not familliar with that movement it is a book about real pick-up artists sho went around and learned how to get good with women and i wanted to be just like them. For the first time in my life i was learning something that i wanted to learn for myself and not spmething that was forces on me by my parents or school or society; i was so excited!
After a while i felt completely with myself, gained a lot of confidence, felt relaxed around women, gained more experience and had a lot of fun.
But after a while I found out as all of you are already thinking; that that is not everything to life and it isnt the only source of happiness nor is it the most important one. It gave me a great perspective in life and through that process i learned about humans, relationships and psyhology. So i was feeling great but still not completely happy.
Since a lot was going on and I still wasnt happy i thought to myself maby money was the solution. Everybody wants it and everybody is working for it there must be something there. I was a bit jealeous of my friends who had a lot of money i saitched from game to self help.
Again a new era of learning and absorbing new materials began and i did as much as i could to learn how to maks money, how to make a career, i learned a lot about motivation and people and what they are capable of.
I felt happy again, the goal was right infront of me, my skills were developing my self awarenes increased, my personality developed and i had a general idea of how things worked and i continued to work on myself for some time. I did a few more jobs for a quick buck during those 2 years, then i got a job in the Croatian automotive club and worked in a call centar for 12 hours a day, 4000 kuna per month. It was a summer job and it was realy rough listening to people needing help on the roads as their cars broke down or they got lost, you can imagine their frustation level. That wasn't eaven close to my dream job at that time because i saw a lot of people on stage talking about the great things in life and how to achieve them. I was moved by the amount of good these people could do so i wanted to do something like that. Standing infront of an audience and talking to them how they can make their lives better. Great isnt it? I knew that speaking live somewhere requires a lot of prerequisites to be handeled but i was determined to get a nice respectable job with a high pay and a enviroment where i could learn and expand and i wated to wear a black suite because i thought of suits always to be cool, and the black remained from the mettal phase.
I accepted this job because i made a stupid mistake and it cost my father a lot of money to correct it so i wanted to make it up to him and give him that money back.
Another turnigpoint in my life then was the end of that summer; i was about one month away from ending the summer job contract with the Croatian automotive club when i heard that a new big hotel was about to open in Zagreb. Naturaly my interests were awakened
I applied and got the job right away. That surprised a lot of people because the job wasnt easy to get. There were around 2500 people applying for the same position as me. Ofcourse to me it wanst that chalangeing because kf the selfimprovement i learnd how to write CVs, how a job interview looked and what i will be asked. From the game period i knew how to leave a positive impresion and win over the hearths of people and those 2 together i got the job....
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