I haven’t stop thinking about 94-year-old Carmen Herrera ever since I read about her in The New York Times. Her story is such a shot of inspiration that I just have to write about it here.

The story goes that Carmen has a deep love for painting.  It was a compulsion, something she simply couldn’t stop doing.  She started painting back in the 1930s, when she was in her ’20s.  Her paintings focused mostly on geometrical shapes and lines, forms and colors, and were considered  “ahead of her time.”

Carmen Herrera's Painting, Image by cliff1066 via Flickr

Carmen was born in Cuba, lived in New York and Paris and eventually settled in New York.   Through the years, she labored quietly and produced a huge quantity of paintings.  But it was many, many years later, at age 89, that she sold her very first painting.  Today, her art is in in high demand and a recent painting sold at a whopping $44,000!

Now, at age 94, while homebound, resigned to a wheel-chair and afflicted with arthritis, she receives a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Walker Art Center.  The New York Times story quoted several people on her late-life success:

To bloom into full glory at 94 — whatever Carmen Herrera’s slow rise might say about the difficulties of being a woman artist, an immigrant artist or an artist ahead of her time, it is clearly a story of personal strength,” Mr. Zugazagoitia said.

We have a saying in Puerto Rico,” he said. “The bus — la guagua — always comes for those who wait.”   This came from her good friend Tony Bechara.

Indeed, the bus did come for Carmen and she is now basking in her success.  Reading Carmen’s story teaches me one thing:   If you have a passion, keep at it, keep at it, keep at it.  I’m willing to bet that even if Carmen didn’t receive the recognition she recently received, she will still paint, paint and paint and love, love and love it!

If you enjoyed this post, you might want to read these as well:

• Success Or Failure, Does It Matter?
• How Did A Poem Save Nelson Mandela’s Life?
• Moments Of Gratitude
• Wishing You Time… To Do The Things You Love

This post is dedicated to my friend and former colleague, Christina Cheang.

Image by ToniVC via Flickr

I was in a fancy Chinese restaurant in the Lion City, sitting across from Christina C., a dynamo of a woman and the new Singapore leader of our international public relations agency.  We were deep in conversation as the waiter filled our cups with Puér tea and served us plates of steamed sea bass and herbal black chicken.

I was wrapping up a two-week business trip.  My life in San Francisco seemed so far away.  Well, literally 8,500 miles away.  Yet my mind was a whirlwind of thoughts, twirling about everything I needed to do before I left, and everything that awaited me when I return.

“How am I going to find the time to do everything?”  I said as I wolfed down the sea bass and emptied the tea cup.  “Within the next week, I’ll be making five presentations.  Two here, and three back in San Francisco.”

Christina looked at me through her stern, maternal eyes.

“Slow down, Sharon.  Don’t you know that time is elastic?”

“Time is elastic?  What do you mean?”  I rested my chopsticks, momentarily.

“Well, you and I think that we only have 24 hours a day.  But have you ever been so engrossed in something that you lose track of time?”

“Well, yes.”  My eyebrows arched higher as I leaned toward her.

“Have you ever felt like hours have passed, when in fact, it had only been minutes?”

I nodded.

“You see, when you are inspired to act on something, you will always find the time and energy to dive into what you’re meant to do.  And when you get ‘in the flow,’ time becomes elastic.”

Inspired, I returned to my hotel room that night and whipped together a powerpoint presentation in under an hour, pleasantly surprising myself.  I experienced first hand the meaning of “time is elastic.”

Christina C. taught me an invaluable concept, and I have often reflected on those three simple words since our memorable dinner almost two years ago.

Tonight, I saw the Michael Jackson movie “This Is It” for the first time.  Those around me lamented that it was such a shame that he died so young.

Then, suddenly, the three words, “time is elastic” popped to mind.  I started thinking about his lasting impact on music, and on the millions of people around the world.

The “King of Pop” may have passed on, but his music will live on in our hearts and minds for a long, long time.  Michael Jackson has forever outlived his 50 years and succeeded in stretching time to its maximum elasticity.

I could almost see Christina’s smile as I pen this today.

“Great, you get it now.  Time is elastic, grasshopper.”

I had a boss once.  His name was Fred Hoar.  He taught me in small spades, and made me laugh in  big spades. These were some of his famous lines on PR:

* “In advertising, you pay for play.  In public relations, you pray for play!”

* Public relations has seven times the reach of advertising.  Advertising costs seven times more than public relations.”

Even after I left my old company and started my own public relations firm, he stayed in my life as my mentor and my firm’s advisory board member.  We met for our mentoring sessions regularly, often over a meal.  One day, we were sitting at an Italian restaurant when the waiter handed us the menus.  Fred took out his glasses, placed them on his nose upside down, looked down at the menu, then looked at me through those goofy glasses and said, “Things are looking up!” I laughed, instantly forgetting my troubles of the moment.

Fred was a Silicon Valley legend, having played important roles at seminal companies like Fairchild Semiconductor, Raychem, Apple and more.  He was one of PR Week’s top 100 influential PR people of the 20th century.  He was also a coveted public speaker.  Once, he started a speech with the following line, “My name is Fred Hoar. I know I have a challenging last name.  Well, I have four daughters, and I call this “character development!” The audience cackled.

These memories are still fresh in my mind, even though it has been more than five years since he passed away.  When he died, a friend said to me, “Fred’s PR DNA has been passed on to you and his mentees.  Make him proud and pass it on.” I look back now and wonder how many times I have quoted him in new business meetings or staff training sessions to underscore the value of public relations.  I think back to how many times I have literally fiddled with glasses over a menu, flipped them upside down and said to family or friends over a meal that “Things are looking up!”

I thank my lucky stars that I once had a mentor in Fred Hoar.  He taught me more than public relations knowhow. He taught me the value of laughter no matter the circumstances, and the gift of time and advice to those younger and seeking.

Do you have deep knowledge and skills in your industry? Are you a mentor?  If yes, thank you for making a difference. If not, why not start today?  Or do you long to learn more from a seasoned veteran in your field?  Then be a mentee.

A mentor-mentee relationship could be a structured one, like the mentoring programs offered through various professional networking groups.  Or it could be an informal one, where two individuals at a workplace pair up, one to mentor, and one to be mentored.  Do you know of a good mentorship program?  Have your life changed after you became a mentor or mentee?  Do share!

As an immigrant to the United States, I am not what one would consider part of the fabric of mainstream culture.  Of Asian descent, I belong to a group that makes up just 4.4 percent of the population.  I have dark hair, big eyes, a Singapore smile and an unique accent influenced by my British English education, American immersion and Chinese upbringing.

I realized I was “different” through occasional reminders such as this:  when walking to school in New York many years ago, someone yelled “Ni Hao Ma?” (i.e. How Are You?) from a block away.  I looked back and a fellow college student I didn’t recognize started waving frantically and flashing his electric smile and blazing white teeth at me.  I wondered what I’ve done to deserve such warmth and friendliness from someone I didn’t know.  Was it simply the color of my skin?

I learned in a flash that you could turn your “weaknesses” into your strengths.  In PR terms, you could brand yourself through your USP, your Unique Selling Proposition.  Instead of denying my background and experiences, I decided to embrace them.

• I would carve a career and eventually launch my own PR firm leveraging my understanding of Asia and Asian companies to support them in penetrating the American mainstream.
• I would pitch to reporters in my natural accent influenced by all the places I have lived.  And because it was slightly different from a pure American accent, the reporters seemed to remember my voice and my pitches, and soon became my friends and willing contemplators of story ideas.

Can you think of people you know who have turned their weaknesses into strengths?  Our current president Barack Obama did not have the pedigree of a Kennedy, but he leveraged his bi-racial background, his humble international upbringing to win hundreds of millions of supporters around the world.  Take a moment to contemplate your “weaknesses,”   perhaps they are really your strengths and can be turned into your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) with a little creativity and panache?