I was recently invited as an inspirational speaker at a successful educational event for young adults in Malmö organized by Brightful (big thanks to the amazing founder, Fatime Nedzipovska, in one the picture together with me below).

I spoke about my international career so far at several multinational companies, how to go from having a dream to actually fulfilling it, tips on how to maintain a positive mindset when facing difficulties, simple strategies for successful networking, and about the importance of carefully selecting your “digital tattoos” since our online and offline personas are intertwined as one important package in a job application situation.

The core of my presentation lied in the fact that the Internet, as a main rule, never forgets. However, since our brains are wired to forget the majority of our daily impressions, a discrepancy hard to handle in a modern society is created. We are simply not wired to deal with the perpetual stigmatized memory of the Internet. In addition, many people are not aware of the effect social media usage has on our brains, and, consequently, on the way we think about ourselves and the society. We need to start reflecting on the false confidence created from the amount of ‘likes’ we get on social media platforms, which is backed up biochemically by the release of the addictive ‘happiness hormone’ dopamine in our brains: every time we get one we feel good, and we want more.

Do you know who you truly are deep inside and what you want in life without this external validation and constant input from other sources than yourself? In order to (re)discover your true passions and (re)connect with your inner compass a.k.a. intuition, incorporating the habit of digital detox once in a while is vital.

This topic resonated with many of the young attendants, who experience very few moments separated from their digital devices and perhaps haven’t thought about the potential consequences of their online behavior. They had lots of curious and brilliant questions for me afterward. I understood that the seriousness of my message had reached them when one girl anxiously revealed to me that she regretted having posted a sexy nude picture of herself on a social media website and now worried about her “Right to Be Forgotten” online — or forever having to face the consequences of this “digital tattoo” of hers and risk being rejected when applying for jobs in the future.

Most memorable was the girl who came up to me on the stage afterward and gave me the following very sweet compliment: “When you enter the room, it lights up. You move confidently with such grace and speak inspiringly with such power and passion. What you have achieved in life in combination with who you seem to be as a person makes me think of Wonder Woman. You really inspire me to work hard to achieve my goal of becoming a police officer. I have never had anyone to look up to before, but now I do — you are my role model!” What she didn’t think of was that being able to say these nice words to a stranger like me speaks volumes for her as a person. 

A quote I read to myself every day comes from Buddha: “You are what you think. All that you are arises from your thoughts. With your thoughts you make the world”. I believe it’s critical to show and inspire the next generation of young thinkers that a positive mindset is of huge importance for achieving one’s dreams. And in order to find out what our dreams are, we sometimes have to shut our phones off and still our minds. In stillness, creativity flows! Dream big! Dream limitless! If you don’t believe in yourself, why would you expect anyone else to believe in you?