Reach Out and Touch Someone

I would like to introduce Teresa, one of the newest members of the Upside community and our first representative of the Philippines. Welcome Teresa!

Teresa and Joh checking out the Upside to the Downturn website from across the globe

Continuing on the theme of Sharon’s column last week about our inherently human wish for “someone with skin on”, I’d like to share with you how Teresa and I recently met. It beautifully illustrates this week’s theme of reaching out and touching someone.

I returned a few days ago from a business trip and found that my home Internet connection was down. I was not a happy camper. I had a lot of work to do and was not up for the anticipated aggravation I imagined, i.e. spending a long time on the phone with my service provider and possibly some offshore customer service representative.

Much to my surprise, my call was almost immediately answered by a very friendly and welcoming female voice. I felt my insides relax, knowing that all would be well. The customer service rep did some internal checks and then patiently walked me through the necessary steps to restore my service. Much to my delight, things moved along quickly and efficiently.

While passing the time, I asked where she was located and how the local weather was. Based on the quality of our interaction, I assumed (which we all know is often not a good strategy) that she would be talking about another location in Canada, possibly not far from where I am located. She said she was in the Philippines and that her name was Teresa.

In order to fully figure out my connection problem, she requested that I give her remote access to my computer. I allowed this and found it an odd experience to watch the cursor move randomly around on my screen (while my hands were idle at my side).

When she was able to get the Internet working again, it defaulted to the Upside home page. I mentioned that this was the work I do and shared a sentence or two about the Upside goals and vision. There was silence at her end as she quickly read and absorbed the essence of the website. She then said: “This is beautiful and exactly what I need right now!”

We ended up talking a little about her life and aspirations and I reflected back to her my sense of the positive impression I had of her. She expressed gratitude for this unanticipated, personal time together on the telephone and promised to take a further look at the site and to consider writing something for the blog.

Much to my surprise, I awoke the next morning to her very beautiful and touching post, which in part reads:

“I think it was a coincidence that a person that I don’t even know would give me a way to learn to appreciate life more. I, we, here in the Philippines might not be that lucky to have all the things that other people have financially, but I think we are all the same and we have the same creator… I would say with this website I will learn more, that I can use the ideas and experiences others write about on this website. I guess what I will first start to do to maintain optimism in these times is to continue reading from this site; to learn, explore and communicate with different kinds of people having the same experiences and struggles that I’m going thru in life… Thank you to all. I hope I am very much welcomed here…”

I’m remembering an old AT&T advertisement that talked about subscribing to their long distance plan in order to “Reach Out and Touch Someone”. At the time, my associations about the ad campaign were simply about the telephone company making more money. I now realize how powerful and simple it can be to reach out and, in the immediacy of the moment, touch and be touched by a complete stranger in the most unexpected ways.

Thank you, Teresa, for turning a “business call” into an unanticipated, pleasant opportunity for us to meet and enrich each others’ day!

How about you: Are you ready to reach out and touch — or be touched by — someone you’ve never met?

Being touched by music

As a special treat, here is a short video of Diana Ross singing “Reach Out and Touch Somebody’s Hand”. It includes some beautiful background visuals. Enjoy!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-7qCG2_aaA]

Tagged as: coaching, downturn, economy, lifestyle, recession, upside, wellbeing