Erica Poyauan is a thirty-three-year-old single parent from the Philippines. She currently works in media relations and as a writer for a non-profit organization (My Heart Ph), a health and lifestyle magazine.
She began her travel blog seven years back, and still finds pleasure and inspiration in it every day. Her blog includes travel reviews, destination guides and other posts that resonates with her readers, reaching outside of travel and into lifestyle. Poyauan loves her family, the outdoors, reading and training in Muay Thai. Enveloping her passions as one, her lifestyle shows how to encompass empowerment and dedication.
Empowerment
Poyauan is inspired by a healthy exchange of ideas. She believes that inspiration doesn’t have to come from one individual, but an exchange of thoughts and motivations. That it comes by hearing themselves and coming to their own realizations. She explains, “it wouldn’t necessarily mean I inspired them with my own words, but it could be them feeling inspired because of the flow of conversation.” Her worldview of how inspiration can travel between us flows through her understanding of empowerment, passion and dedication.
Poyauan understands empowerment to be “gaining full confidence to accomplish what needs to be done, especially when you’re in doubt or feeling incapable.” Failure is progress under disguise, it can sometimes discourage us; however, Poyauan’s statement expresses that those moments of doubt and discouragement, are the moments that you have to keep pushing and making progress because that is what will empower others and empower yourself. She expresses that “feelings are energy. To feel empowered is to have the energy to be empowered.” It is the process of enveloping yourself in the same positivity that Poyauan explains.
Passion
There is a definite passion when it comes to reading and understanding Poyauan as an individual, in a world of people. Her passions carry her through and are a form of encouragement for her readers. She refers to passion as a necessary element in life “because it is an impetus to keep you going wherever you want to go.” This description can be explained in a way where we are a vessel, carrying us to our destination, the destination might be the focal point, but the work and the love goes into taking care of the vessel. Poyauan explains that living passionately, carries its roles, but it can be worth it. She goes onto to say:
“To live passionately is to do things you do daily with passion—with mindfulness, with zeal, with excitement, with joy… If I think of my own journey, I can say I wouldn’t be here without passion. I wouldn’t be able to sustain my blog. Wouldn’t be able to commute daily – brave the traffic for at least 3 hours a day to go to the office and go back home, that is also to say I wouldn’t have taken my full-time job. I wouldn’t be able to train Muay Thai without passion. It’s too demanding. Without passion, my single parenting would have failed. So yeah, I couldn’t emphasize its role and essence in my life enough.”
Dedication
We are like soldiers, soldiers that are “devoted to a task or purpose”, when there is the focus, there is nothing stopping us. This is how Poyauan defines dedication. To be dedicated is to tackle the obstacles standing in our way. She explains that “you can get what you wish for when you know to work towards getting it.” That, although it is not always the case in reality, and sometimes obstacles can stop us, the context of dedication is still there. Working towards your aspirations, dreams and passions is what Poyauan describes as commitment and devotion to the task that you want to accomplish.
She explains that the combination of the three, empowerment, passion and dedication can “produce massive success”. Success that is “enough to life a community of people” and grow both personally and together.