JOfi Baldrich

Who am I

 

I am happily married to Greta, my Panamanian wife for over 23 years and we have three amazing kids Maria Teresa and Ana Paulina, our 18-year-old twins and José Fernando who is 13. María Teresa is currently a freshman at Penn State at their main campus, a school she loves, and Ana Paulina is traveling the world in a gap year organized by an organization called Winterline Global Education where they travel the world and learn different skills everywhere they go. They are now headed to Asia and Europe before finishing in Boston. You can follow her through her blog at http://anapaulinabaldrich.wixsite.com/myyeartraveling. And yes, I know her blog is cooler than mine ;). And then we have José Fernando, currently an eight grader at Colegio San Ignacio de Loyola in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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After working in the insurance family business for over 13 years, the business was sold and I found myself in a unique situation. I was given the opportunity for a second career but I did not have the slightest idea of what I wanted to do.

 

I realized then, I did not know what actually made me happy. Living always along the “easiest” path, I needed now to dig deep inside myself and find out I actually wanted to do. It took me almost two years, but after learning about different things and doing a life retreat along with my wife, I realized I love helping people and that through coaching I can do a lot of good in this world. I then got certified as an integral coach™ with New Ventures West out in California, did a Positive Psychology Course with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar author of Happier and other books and also got certified as a Forum Facilitator for the Young President’s Organization (YPO).  I have concentrated my time mostly in working with YPO and their executives helping them live a more holistic life, being truer to themselves and finding a balance in their lives. I also have worked a lot with the YPO youth as they enter adulthood with a lot of pressure to excel but without any idea what is it that they want to excel about and how to go about it.

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At the same time, I have been following a passion of mine and educating myself with anything related to parenting issues, parent child relationships and their consequences in the education and upbringing of the kids. I have been fortunate to come and have a loving caring family and one of my passions is to help everyone I can to accomplish that as well. 

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Why do I write this blog

 

I been meaning to write a blog for a while now, and I would always come up with great reasons (which they were actually great excuses) to not do it. Either it was too expensive, or I needed to write it a certain way, do I write it in English or Spanish or what would I write about, or it has to be perfect in order to work, etc, etc. Always telling myself why not do it.

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Well, that stops now. Here is my blog, very true to myself. Cost? Nothing. It is free and I am learning on the go to do this. Yes, I am doing it myself believe it or not. (I learned this from my daughter Ana Paulina when she started writing her own blog). What do I write about? About anything I want to write about. I will write about things and topics that move me, which have a meaning to me. Parenting, parent child relationships, the college process for the kids as well as the parents, spirituality, education, authenticity, and others. I will even write some book reviews about books that I am reading or that have made a significant impact in my life. I also want to challenge people to think from another perspective and help them realize other ways they might not have been aware of. Will my blog be perfect? No, it actually will not be. But as I accept this, which anyways, nothing is perfect except God, I am giving myself permission to be true to myself and express my thoughts as I see fit. I will mostly write in English, but I am pretty sure sometimes I will write in Spanish and who knows I might even translate some articles here and there.

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For me, the most important thing is to get the process started, which is what I am doing as we speak. Everything else will fall into place. I look forward to writing this blog and hopefully some people might read it. (Please mom, will you read my blog?)