Lately my boss has been bringing topics like passion, excitement and aggression to work. Don’t you just love it when your boss does that?

“YEAH!“, says the silent Finn inside of me (ehem….)”.

No, seriously: YEAH! I feel like I would need to find my "American alter ego" since my Finnish ego's idea of expressing excitement is to shake. You know when a dog sees it's master it starts to wag his tail and shake with excitement? Well I just shake. 

I can not emphasize enough that I am Finnish and it’s already a big deal for me to laugh, jump and lift my arms. 

Sometimes the idea of living excitement scares the poop out of me, because it means a small death of a role I am so used to calling me. I’m pretty sure I would love to be more outgoing but each time I try, I feel like a part of me is dying… of shame.

It kind of feels like Bambi on ice.

So we started to take some steps on this “ice”…and we’re talking about excitement and passion while moving big projects ahead. 

At first I had a little trouble getting what that has to do with doing a good job or with business projects. Go figure… 

But now I think it’s brilliant. 

The other day we went to feed the goats (Yes – there are goats at our ranch-office…) and started talking about my life. I asked my boss why he feels it’s necessary to bring these topics in my work. I clearly feel afraid I will never be enough when someone asks me to express myself more, especially when I feel that there is a physical limit to this expression - and his answer was pretty amazing: 

“If you have trouble opening up and sharing what you have inside, if you reject the idea of sharing your passion and excitement then how do you expect to move other people and get your message out there? 

How do you expect yourself to become successful, if you will sabotage any attempt to share your inside with others?

And how do you expect to represent me, because if you present me less provoking than I actually am, then the people who really come in contact with me will be shocked. You need to open up and dare to be more and then you wont have a problem.”

COOL, HUH?

So I have started my path to become bigger and more excited while entering a world of leading a businees - maybe there is a latent Finnish excitement gene that I forgot to activate. 

Besides I think if I just add a little smile to my shake - I actually start to look pretty good!

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