'Bold Living' - An Interview with Pedro F. Báez

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Pedro Baez, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

BL: Each Friday, a person who is making bold moves, living well, nurturing their creativity, following their passions, and making magic will be featured on Bold Living Today.

Today’s interview is with Pedro F. Báez, from (L)attitudes™ – A Life Coaching Alternative™, LLC.

Pedro is a skilled certified life coach, wayfinder, and writer. His energy and outlook on what it means to showcase your natural talents, in today’s world, have propelled me to take some creative leaps for programs I plan to develop.

BL: Question 1 – How did your journey, from Cuba to the United States, influence your decision to live a bold, full, and authentic life?

PFB: "This question really knocks the air out of my lungs, because I simply have never thought about this…

Let’s see…

I left Cuba when I was 19, in the midst of a very politically tense period in 1980′s Castro’s Cuba. I left on an overburdened yacht that almost capsized in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico on its way to Florida. I was a political refugee from the Mariel Boatlift. Google that. Most people under forty don’t know or even remember this ever happening, either here or in Cuba, where all information is manipulated by the State-controlled media. I was one among 130,000 Cubans that came between April and I believe October of 1980. Then President Carter challenged Castro and Castro called his bluff… But I’m getting entirely too historically entangled and lost in personal details…

Yes, short of loosing my mother 3 years ago, I suppose that leaving Cuba at 19, a land that I deeply love and where I left everything and everybody that meant something to me, is the biggest act of boldness I have ever gone through with… You have to have ‘cojones’ to do that, especially since I was more of a ‘personal choice’ refugee than a political one.

I left Cuba because I am a homosexual and in those days homosexuals were ridiculed, persecuted and relegated (for the most part) to non-visible, second and third class jobs and positions unless you were a collaborator of the communist regime. So I can say that I came to the United States to be doubly free: free from political tyranny and free from living a totally lackluster and hidden, double life.

I’ve never stopped being authentic and bold ever since, though thinking retrospectively, I have always lived a bold and authentic life: that’s why I had to leave. Stalinist-style Marxism was too dogmatic and restrictive as a philosophy for me. Cuba and Castro weren’t ready for me."

BL: I just got goose flesh, Pedro. Under-living is definitely not the way to go, and you clearly knew this at age 19.

BL: Question 2 – How do you capture your creativity, intuitiveness, and uniqueness in your writing and poetry?

PFB: "I’ve always had this belief that is almost a superstition: the first verse or the genesis of an idea is always given to you by divinity. The rest is up to you as a creator, whether you write, paint or compose music.

I’ve been a poet and writer since I was 9 years old and the process hasn’t changed that much for me: I have to FEEL the subject and the details of what I write. I have to be passionate about it and about the entire process. I have to laugh, fight, calmly float in space or crash… But I have to be there! I don’t know any other way to be a part of my creative process but to be right smack in the middle of it…

It’s very taxing… Very draining. I haven’t written any heavy duty poetry or short story in almost a year and it’s because I’ve been dedicating all my energy to becoming a Life Coach, which has changed my life for the better and will also help me with channeling this passion of mine to explore, experience, dissect, feel and narrate life, to then transform it and elevate it to an art-form with its own language, atmosphere and planetary system."

BL: Question 3 – As a Transformational Life Coach, you help people get out of dead spaces where they feel stuck, trapped, stunted and outperformed by life. What are two major reasons why people stay stuck?

PFB: "I truly believe the main reason why people get stuck is because they stop believing in themselves or they never believed in themselves, in the first place. It takes, sometimes, respect, compassion and a kick in the behind from a friend, a loved one, or, in this case, a Life Coach, to realize that you are your best possible ‘go to person’ and resource and that anything is possible if you believe it within yourself.

The second reason is that people lack faith. Not only in themselves and their immediate personal and social environments, but they stop having faith in God and in the Universe.

Now, I know I am getting into a rather touchy area bordering on religion and personal spiritual values, but even if you are an Atheist or an Agnostic, or both, having the certainty that ‘something’ is out there looking out for you and helping you out when you need it the most is a very comforting thing, even if you cannot see it, measure it, touch it and therefore, prove it.

Not being stuck is an act of faith, and living joyously, boldly and meaningfully is the biggest act of and commitment to faith, ever!"

BL: Question 4 – If a person is floundering in perfection – when they really should be striving for excellence – what would you guide him/her to do?

PFB: "It would depend on what ‘perfection’ and ‘excellence’ are to the individual. The problem is that most people confuse being ‘excellent’ with being ‘perfect’. Excellence is absolutely attainable and can always be distilled and further ‘perfected’ as an experiential and living standard of practice in bold living (both personally and professionally).

Perfection is a trap and a non-existent state of being, as much as this sounds like a paradox.

Perfection is pie in the sky; it’s the model in the latest trendy magazine that has been altered and morphed to appeal to most peoples’ senses, but it’s not real. Perfection is like the horizon: no matter how much you walk towards it and what devices you employ to approach it: you will never get to touch it because it does not exist. It’s an illusion. Perfection is not even an idea, but a canon, and as such and by definition, it’s static, irreflexive and unattainable, at least by means of this reality we live in."

BL: Great reminders, Pedro.

BL: Question 5 – What six words describe bold living for you?

PFB: “Have the balls to do it!”

BL: Thank you, Pedro!