Achieved Your 3 All-Time Goals? Here’s What To Do Next

The simple guidelines to fulfill your heart with happiness.

I’ve written a book, have two beautiful daughters, and am about to achieve my final goal.

What now?

In my country, Portugal, there is a saying that if you write a book, you have children, and you plant a tree, you’ve reached your all-time life goals.

I will accomplish that achievement this week.

1. Any Man Can Become a Father — A Special Man Becomes a Dad

I was 28 years old when my eldest daughter was born.

Alice is 14 years old, and Leonor is 10. They are the main reason why my heart is full of good vibes.

Being a patient father, who always tries to talk with his daughters without shouting has made them peaceful children.

Her mother is the opposite and that is perfect for me; she always gets routines to speed up.

She’s hyper-organized and a hard worker. Their mother is idolized by the girls.

A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take — Cardinal Mermillod

Their father is always that calm and mindful person, who has made the girls slow down a little bit and reflect on how the small achievements were accomplished.

Always responding to the immense questions with another answer, made them think about what were they talking about, and reflect on that.

Making, always, words as important as acts.

Now, I have two small women beside me. Two friends to talk to, to laugh with, to share new discoveries, to cry about the loss of close friends, to party, to take long walks through the mountains.

Warm, authoritative, and responsive parenting is usually crucial in building resilience. Parents who develop open, participative communication, problem-centered coping, confidence, and flexibility tend to manage stress well and help their families to do the same.- David Utting (J. Rowntree Foundation)

A very interesting review about parenting by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to inform its own Parenting Research and Development program caught my attention.

One interesting piece of information shared was that young children’s relationships with their mothers typically affects their development more than father-child relationships, but teenagers’ relationships with their fathers appear especially important to their development and achievement in school.

It means that I’m starting to be more needed by my daughters as they are entering their adolescence.

I think of myself as a guiding light to Alice and Leonor.

I just have to show them the smartest way to be happy and fulfilled.

The rest of the path must be designed by them. They were and always will be the rudders of their own lives.

With my big hands always under them, to smooth the falls.

2. If You Really Want to Know Yourself Start Writing a Book

When I was 21 years old, and at university, there was this girl.

Every time she passed by me she smiled and for the next minutes, I would be trying to find my heart because she had melted it completely.

In 2001 I was just a kid, but that girl was my first big passion. My mind was somehow strange because I never felt that type of emotion before. Until my best friend told me that I was completely in love.

I thought to myself so this is how people fall in love, hey?

We get stupidly nervous, we sweat and we look like a geek, but we fly.

And my mind was flying like never before.

More than 20 years later, I remember this time with nostalgia and longing. I remember my head was exploding with ideas. So many ideas, that I had to start writing them on a piece of paper.

That piece of paper transformed into a notebook full of words.

A story, too.

A novel about a surfer and a girl. They meet in Brasil and the chemistry was so strong that they went on an extraordinary adventure. Henrique was the surfer. Vera was the girl. She was exactly like the girl from the university, of course.

And the surfer was a little like me (a lot like me). So it was the perfect story for the moment.

Our lives sometimes are ironic, because some months later, I was still working on my first book, and I finally met the girl from the university.

We got along very quickly and started talking to each other without being able to stop. It reminds me of that fabulous movie “Before Sunrise” with Ethan Hawke. Where he and a typical French girl spend all day, all night with a nonstop lovely conversation. One of my all-time favorites.

Some weeks later we were dating.

I was dating this amazing girl, but also dating the girl from my book. They were the same, but as I kept writing, I was feeling that the girl from the book was not exactly the same as the real one.

In my mind, I was creating characters differently from the real person. I can’t explain to you why it happened, but my imagination was forcing me to get these characters a different path.

I was dating the girl and finishing the book.

How extraordinary could that be?

Finally, things didn’t work out between the two of us, but we remained friends for many long years. Unfortunately, she passed away in a car crash several years ago. My heart was broken with that loss.

Only the character now survives. She is still in my book. From time to time I go see her. She’s still beautiful and somehow I think I’m still in love with her…

For me, writing is a blessing.

We enter so many worlds. Our mind is always surprising us with things we didn’t expect. It’s somehow strange because words come from inside of us but somehow, we the writer, have this sensation that someone else is there playing with our minds.

3. The Best Time to Plant a Tree Is 20 Years Ago

I am a proud father.

I wrote a book.

I had not planted a tree.

Of course, I planted some trees in the kindergarten. Who didn’t?

Yet, I’m a trail runner. I do ultra-marathons in high mountains. I love Mother Nature. So, planting one tree, for me, was not enough.

If you watch the documentary with Leonardo DiCaprio “The Eleventh Hour”, you would think one tree wouldn’t be enough. Not even a little bit.

Fortunately, one day I was searching on YouTube about a race in the mountains, and suddenly a documentary on syntropic agriculture by Ernst Gotsch appeared on my computer screen.

I was completely in love with the concept. That was exactly what I thought humanity should start doing to fight global warming.

I just didn’t expect that someone like Ernst Gotsch did do it for the last 40 years in a completely dry and exhausted forest in Brazil. Yet he did.

That was my dream. To build something like Fazenda da Toca in Brazil.

That day came a month ago. A friend of mine called me and said he would like to show me something he thought I would like.

It was a 20 minutes drive to the place he wanted to show me. It was in a small mountain near my home town. A place where I usually go for a run. However, this place was in an area I have never been to before.

When we arrived, there it was.

Approximately 1 hectare of plowed land, with a fantastic stone house that is over 100 years old.

My mind was blown.

That place was more than I expected it to be. It was affordable, so I didn’t hesitate. We called the owner and I made the deal at that exact moment.

Right now I’m in conversations with an architect friend of mine, and with a company who will study the land and build a report on the best way to make the most of its potential.

So many ideas are in my head right now. I feel like a young kid before going to his first concert.

I’m absolutely sure this project is going to be a successful one.

You know why?

Because I am surrounded by people who love me and care for what I believe in.

It’s probably the best feeling you could wish for at this point.

Follow Your Dreams Because They Know the Way

I’m not going to write you some words about how to follow your dreams. That argument is worn and overused.

I just wanted to share with you my happiness. My genuine happiness about my all-time goals in life.

I hope it inspires you, somehow, to find a little piece of happiness in your heart too.

I think I have found this sensation of fulfillment because I’m surrounded by beautiful people that love me, and I love them.

In ‘The Eleventh Hour’, you’ll find someone at the end of the film, talking about love.

Talking about unconditional love.

If you have the patience to hear him, you’ll know what I am talking about.

I really believe we, as human beings, can do remarkable things, but first, we have to offer generosity to the world around us and to Mother Nature.

Like Sira M. said in one of my favorite articles:

Don’t focus on convincing others of “How cool you are.” Be genuinely interested in others, and stop for a moment to appreciate their strengths. Learn to praise sincerely.