We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Pavel Ferreri. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Pavel below.
Pavel, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.
Self-esteem should come from within, it’s a kind of inner love that comes from the gratitude and appreciation of being alive and unique, and having the intelligence of being aware of it. It shouldn’t require the acceptance or approval of anyone, self-esteem happens within you, by you, for you.
Confidence, on the other hand, comes from multiple sources, internal and external, from experience, knowledge, and personal achievements to physical attributes; like appearance, strength, and skills, to external resources; like assents, influence, and relationships, and it is very dependent on how all of those resources compare to those of others in a peer group.
The distinction is important because self-esteem should help you feel good about yourself -REGARDLES OF anyone else. Whereas confidence should help you feel good about yourself RELATIVE TO others in the same field. So, I have developed my confidence, in the best and only effective way for achieve sustained and substantiated confidence: by developing myself in my areas of interest. At an early age, I developed my confidence to defend myself by learning martial arts, kickboxing, and lifting weights, that is the kind of confidence that is not only optimistic, egocentric, or hopeful, but very practical. In the same way for public speaking, I developed the skills by first studying it and joining practice groups, that eventually led to an opportunity to have a job live on national TV in Mexico. Years later for my career in technology, I developed my confidence by spending 1,000’s of hours of study and education in the field, until I developed a wide and deep level of specialized knowledge and experience, that way confidence is backed by something tangible, not only optimism or enthusiasm.
I encourage everyone needing a boost of confidence to build it from a solid foundation, optimism is the right mindset to start from, but you need to take dedicated intentional action and effort to get better at anything, and only be actually becoming better you get the right kind of confidence that lasts and can stand the test of life. Focus on ‘getting better’, not on ‘appearing to be better’.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I am a leader of a specialized business unit at Microsoft, dedicated to serving Microsoft’s most Strategic Global Clients in the Retail and Consumer Goods Industries. The teams I lead encompass Microsoft’s most sr. Client Managers, Technical Strategists, and Specialist sellers across the entire portfolio of Microsoft Enterprise solutions.
My daily job is very different from one day or week to another, I spend the majority of my time facilitating action and resources for others to be successful, from helping close multi-million-dollar deals, to helping orchestrate complex engagements to help a client envision a roadmap for innovation, to coaching and mentoring people. What I enjoy the most about my job, is helping others develop their skills and be successful, and the continuous learning that comes from a fast-paced industry like high-tech where there are new innovations almost by the week, from Cloud, to blockchains, to collaboration technology, to AI, there is always something new and exciting to learn.
Outside of work, following the great principle of: ‘Have a hobby that improves your health, one that develops your creativity, and one that makes you money’ I have 3 hobbies: 1, I am a passionate Wellness practitioner, 2. I am an Art lover and enjoy exploring museums and art around the world, and 3. I am an investor in the tech sector from robotics to gene-editing, to AI – of course 🙂
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1. wholistic Wellness: For anything you want to do for a living, investing in your physical, mental, and emotional health is essential. Being physically and mentally fit are the foundation for sustained high-performance on ANY field of life. 2. Deep expertise: You can go a mile wide and an inch deep; that makes you good for a superficial conversation about anything, or you can go an inch wide but a mile deep, that makes you a highly sought after specialized expert. Going deep, on anything is a good thing, from business to relationships.
3. Resilience: The secret to success in life is not in learning how to avoid the punches from life, it is in developing the strength of standing back up and trying again, and again, with a Growth Mindset improving from your prior failures, until life gets exhausted of putting you down or your figure out the way in and seize the opportunity because you have outworked all your competition.
Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?
They allowed me to make my own decisions and fail since a very early age. They were always present, incredibly loving, and caring, but they did not overprotect me, they allowed me to experiment and pursue my interests for weird or dangerous they were. When you are exposed to adversity, failure, and making your own decisions at an early age, you get the amazing opportunity to learn accountability for your decisions and actions, develop a growth mindset to improve, and develop your own practical wisdom in life. Priceless.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pavelferreri/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavelgferreri/
