As has become tradition, in these last days of the year I'm here to share some reflections and lessons learned from 2024 that I've personally taken away, and that we've taken away as a team. I also love seeing how my thoughts evolve and how I'm growing alongside Pueblos Remotos. I had a general idea of how I wanted to approach this last post of the year, but reading the previous ones I've written around this time has inspired me even more, and I've decided to focus on the need to pause, which I'll elaborate on in the following sections.
To give you some context and show you where I'm starting from, I'll start by sharing my reflections from previous years, so you can follow my reasoning and my evolution as a person:
- Year 2021 (Remote Villages is born as a project) – And you, do you put passion into life?
- Year 2022 (we continue to bet on Connected Rurality) – And you, do you live with purpose?
- Year 2023 (we founded Pueblos Remotos SL) – And you, how much are you planning?
You might be wondering why I want to talk about stopping this year when you've surely seen on our social media, and if you follow our newsletter , that we literally haven't stopped. Well, that's precisely why. Because we don't stop, and if we don't stop, we lose perspective, we can't find new inspiration, we just drown, we run out of air. Below, I'll tell you about the three moments in these last few weeks that inspired me to write this post.
Managing polarities, doing nothing, and changing your mindset
1) María Guerrero's workshop at the Geyser Forum
On November 7th, during the 9th Geyser Forum, I participated in a workshop led by María Guerrero entitled "Between Opposites: Managing Polarities for Change ." We were specifically working on the polarity between Profitability vs. Sustainability, and I realized many things we were ignoring by trying to keep swimming against the current. I desperately needed this exercise to open my eyes and realize we were running out of air. My own conclusion was:
"We need to stop to inhale again."
Here's a blog post written by María herself, where she explains better and in more detail what we covered during the workshop. In her own words: "This dynamic of forced diversification is common in social enterprises. We live amidst tensions of values. However, these tensions aren't problems to be solved: they're dynamics to be managed."
2) Podcast with psychologist Patricia Ramírez
Realfooding podcast , hosted by Carlos Ríos, and I found his conversation with psychologist Patricia Ramírez . They discussed many interesting topics, such as the difference between stress and anxiety, the importance of staying calm, busy life syndrome, productivity, values, and love in parallel. Perhaps what resonated most with me was when she said:
"The brain needs a break. We have to give the brain 15 minutes a day of doing nothing. We don't know how to simply observe, without doing anything."
And how right he is! It seems like if we're not productive, we're wasting time, but it's the opposite. The more rest we give our brains, the more creative we'll be, the faster we'll be able to find solutions, and we won't end up mentally exhausted scrolling through social media.
I'll leave the chapter here in case you want to listen to it.
3) Coaching session with Miguel Quintana
With the year drawing to a close and the number of important decisions we had to make this December 2024, we asked our advisor , Miguel Quintana , for a session to get him up to speed and help us break out of our rut. As entrepreneurs, our minds do two things: (i) constantly dwell on everything that went wrong and (ii) continually see opportunities to start another line of business, change a process, or acquire another client. Our minds literally never stop.
"To change our mindset, we have to stop, stop thinking like entrepreneurs, and focus on achieving financial stability by answering this question: What would we do if Pueblos Remotos didn't exist?"
Therefore, the first thing Miguel did was invite us to be grateful for everything we have today and write it down. Afterwards, we analyzed together the possible scenarios for 2025 and decided what best suited our current reality. Without going into too much detail, to sum it up: if we aren't profitable, Pueblos Remotos cannot exist.
When is the right time to oxygenate?
When you're caught up in the rat race, in the daily grind, implementing projects while simultaneously trying to land new ones by writing proposals and managing a team, you don't even have time to breathe. And this is serious, because nothing is more urgent than breathing and drinking water.
Just as I was halfway through writing this reflective blog post, I met up for breakfast with my dear friend David Alayón , a school friend and entrepreneur whom I greatly admire. I see him at most once or twice a year, but our conversations go far beyond mere superficiality, and I always come away with new insights or concepts to ponder.
While reflecting with him on this theme of never stopping, he used a word that I liked much more, and with his permission, I'm going to borrow it and use it myself: Oxygenate. It's no longer enough to stop or disconnect; we have to OXYGENATE.
As social entrepreneurs, we're always more concerned with the beneficiaries of our projects—our clients or our team—than with ourselves. We shoulder everything, often at the expense of our own health. So much so that we're frequently the last to get paid (or don't get paid at all). But then, where do we draw the line? How long will we keep swimming against the tide? How many strokes do we have left?
David also told me about the writer Byung-Chul Han and his books: The Burnout Society and The Contemplative Life. From the latter, I'm left with the following quote:
"No one is ever more active than when they are doing nothing, no one is ever less alone than when they are with themselves."
Sometimes life stops you even if you don't want it to
If we ignore all the signals our body and our surroundings send us, and silence our instincts, life itself will stop us. Sometimes, we have to reach burnout to say, "That's it! I can't take it anymore!" Other times, it's an illness that forces you off the roller coaster even if you don't want to. The sad thing is that this is happening at increasingly younger ages.
If we start talking about misfortunes, we could fill several books, especially when the media makes a point of keeping them constantly in mind. The thing is, I want to end this blog post on a cheerful and hopeful note because that's how I feel right now, even though the second half of the year has been difficult.
Often, we ourselves decide to take a break, to get away from it all, to dedicate ourselves to our hobbies, or simply to live with less, less pressure, less exposure, and more peace and quiet. Less is more, and there's no need to keep running without oxygen.
In my case, this year is ending with a wonderful gift from life that will require me to stop and dedicate myself to other things that will be much more important. I want to share with you that I'm creating life! I'm pregnant! For me, it's a blessing. They say babies come with a loaf of bread under their arm and arrive at the moment we need them because I'm sure I'm going to learn much more from her than she will from me. I don't know how long I'll be able to "do nothing," but my work life will have to stop for a while, and I'm going to focus on recharging, both for her and for me.
To wrap things up, I'll tell you that during our team feedback sessions, we always dedicate a little time to reflecting on our "bad luck" and the things we could have done better. Knowing the changes that awaited us and seeing how several projects were falling through… we asked ourselves, "Maybe we should have stopped sooner?" Maybe so, but we can't go back in time. The important thing is that we do it, even if it takes us a while to make the decision, but that we get off the treadmill and stop. Better late than never letting the ship sink. This doesn't mean that Pueblos Remotos is coming to a complete halt, but we are going to slow down, focus on the profitability of what we do, and take all the necessary steps to stay afloat for many more years.
"And you, what are you going to do to oxygenate during 2025?"
