I suffer bullying from my partners: they call me “the king of goals”. “Here comes Saulo with another goal”, “Did we hit Saulo’s goal?”, and so on. Little do they know that I was much worse.
There was a time when I had goals for everything: I want to be a director before I am 30, have three children, the first being 35 years old, I want to earn X reais a year.
I had everything planned and going well, but suddenly something started to grow in me, a dream: I wanted to see the world.
Dreams are naughty, the more you think about them, the more they grow. Until one fine day, it got bigger than my short-term goals. It was on New Year’s Eve that I convinced Renata, my girlfriend to this day, to leave our happy and promising jobs and go around the world.
I had to postpone goals and think about the biggest dream. I’m headstrong, we plan the entire trip for a year.
I had goals of what I should see in each city in the 23 countries we visited.
Of course, after 3 months of traveling we were exhausted.
This life of checklists would not work.
We changed and let everything loose and light on the trip.
After visiting so many places and peoples, we learned that what really matters is the people and not the landscapes.
In the midst of so many different cultures, we came to understand that there are many ways to walk through life.
My goals no longer counted as the only formula for success.
We learned that success can perhaps be measured in laughter, health and
friends that we have, in the family we cultivate, or, in short, in the happiness we have.
And there is no parameter more personal than happiness, maybe there are almost 8 billion different ways to be happy… without prejudices, without judgments…
This passage in my life helped me a lot to pursue one more dream, to undertake.
As on the trip around the world, I come very well accompanied by Forli, Toni and Léo, my partners, who understand that there is still “I’m learning to reduce this pressure of goals” and enjoy more the trails and trails along the way.
Co-creating monkey-land has been transformative, inspiring and, above all, a reason for great happiness and learning.
Slowly I understand that goals are milestones along the road, but the compass is the dream. It’s been quite a journey indeed.
Saulo Sanches is a founding partner of Monkeyland
