Listen to Your Heart
Meanings Over Milestones 
by Polina Volkova
There are so many thoughts fighting in my head about what the most important lesson is I could teach my children. How can you choose when you want to pour all the information into them to avoid them making the same mistakes you made? Unfortunately, we can’t just press a magic button and download an antivirus that protects our children from everything. It’s our karma to watch them make wrong choices from time to time and remember how we, too, were warned about the same things by our parents, and how it flew in one ear and escaped from the other. We all thought we knew better, before we realised that we really never knew anything at all. Only your own life experience can teach you that.
I guess what I really want them to learn is how to listen to their heart and passion they hold within them, whatever it may be. Funnily enough, that was the first song by Roxette that I sang during my adult singing lesson. I felt so silly going to sing in my thirties, but it felt wonderful. I didn’t end up with a platinum-selling album but loved every minute. The truth is we don’t have to be amazing at what we love – we just need to love doing it. Too often as adults we forget how to enjoy feeling good just for the sake of it.
My mum always scared me that if I didn’t study well, I would end up working at the post office – that was the epitome of an awful life according to her. And I feel that opinion is so flawed. We have so many misconceptions and stereotypes of what a miserable life is. What is “hell on earth” for one person is another person’s dream. What if you love to deliver post, work individually and have an active lifestyle? Then working there would be perfect for you. We don’t have to be successful and wealthy to be happy. And we can also be miserable while extremely successful. I want my children to do what makes them happy – driver, chef, dancer or entrepreneur.
Happiness is a journey, not a destination and it’s okay to change direction and stop from time to time. I’m forty this year and I still haven’t worked out what I want to do, but I have progressed to NOT doing what I don’t enjoy doing as life is too short for that. What drives me as a person is helping people. It makes me truly happy like a little child that sees a cake or a balloon. When I was in a philosophy class in college in my twenties, the teacher asked us, “Is it a selfish thing to help people when you’re doing it only to feel good about yourself?” I still haven’t worked out that riddle, but what I do know is society is a better place if people are getting their kicks from helping people.
In fact, I also listened to my heart when we started our little family – we had no security, family back up or stability, but we did have the burning desire to make it work. And here we are, ten years into our marriage, moving between four continents and two kids later, still listening to the whisper in our hearts (when the kids are quiet enough to let us hear it).
Polina Volkova was born in USSR and is a wife to Jose and mother to two Russian Colombian boys, Elmer and Ivan. She was one of the first Russian students in an English boarding school in 1992 where she learned all the ways not to parent. Polina originally studied/worked in marketing and since having kids has developed her luxury brand and become a designer clothes reseller with her “fashion divas” eBay boutique. She is passionate about sustainability, preserving nature, nutrition and parenting. She dreams of rescuing a dog or cat once the other creatures at her home are older and wiser.
Listen to Your Heart
by Polina Volkova
There are so many thoughts fighting in my head about what the most important lesson is I could teach my children. How can you choose when you want to pour all the information into them to avoid them making the same mistakes you made? Unfortunately, we can’t just press a magic button and download an antivirus that protects our children from everything. It’s our karma to watch them make wrong choices from time to time and remember how we, too, were warned about the same things by our parents, and how it flew in one ear and escaped from the other. We all thought we knew better, before we realised that we really never knew anything at all. Only your own life experience can teach you that.
I guess what I really want them to learn is how to listen to their heart and passion they hold within them, whatever it may be. Funnily enough, that was the first song by Roxette that I sang during my adult singing lesson. I felt so silly going to sing in my thirties, but it felt wonderful. I didn’t end up with a platinum-selling album but loved every minute. The truth is we don’t have to be amazing at what we love – we just need to love doing it. Too often as adults we forget how to enjoy feeling good just for the sake of it.
My mum always scared me that if I didn’t study well, I would end up working at the post office – that was the epitome of an awful life according to her. And I feel that opinion is so flawed. We have so many misconceptions and stereotypes of what a miserable life is. What is “hell on earth” for one person is another person’s dream. What if you love to deliver post, work individually and have an active lifestyle? Then working there would be perfect for you. We don’t have to be successful and wealthy to be happy. And we can also be miserable while extremely successful. I want my children to do what makes them happy – driver, chef, dancer or entrepreneur.
Happiness is a journey, not a destination and it’s okay to change direction and stop from time to time. I’m forty this year and I still haven’t worked out what I want to do, but I have progressed to NOT doing what I don’t enjoy doing as life is too short for that. What drives me as a person is helping people. It makes me truly happy like a little child that sees a cake or a balloon. When I was in a philosophy class in college in my twenties, the teacher asked us, “Is it a selfish thing to help people when you’re doing it only to feel good about yourself?” I still haven’t worked out that riddle, but what I do know is society is a better place if people are getting their kicks from helping people.
In fact, I also listened to my heart when we started our little family – we had no security, family back up or stability, but we did have the burning desire to make it work. And here we are, ten years into our marriage, moving between four continents and two kids later, still listening to the whisper in our hearts (when the kids are quiet enough to let us hear it).
Polina Volkova was born in USSR and is a wife to Jose and mother to two Russian Colombian boys, Elmer and Ivan. She was one of the first Russian students in an English boarding school in 1992 where she learned all the ways not to parent. Polina originally studied/worked in marketing and since having kids has developed her luxury brand and become a designer clothes reseller with her “fashion divas” eBay boutique. She is passionate about sustainability, preserving nature, nutrition and parenting. She dreams of rescuing a dog or cat once the other creatures at her home are older and wiser.
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