Life lessons with Bibi Timmerman.
We welcome to Mavin’s team journalist Bibi Timmerman! For Mavin she will write her series of life lessons, that she started when she took her campervan on the road in Europe for 2 months. Realizing that actual wisdom can be found in the everyday person you meet on the street, she started writing down the answers people shared with her.
Her mission is to inspire people to be more vulnerable and open about the things they feel and think. In a world where everybody has to perform and show only their success to the outer world, we forget that everyone – even the most successful persons – has their struggles and problems. Trying to keep up with these perfect appearances can have serious effects on mental wellbeing. Read along with Bibi on her journey of finding out how to live life, how she became inspired and found out that adversity can be the school of life.
“Everyone has fears and unwanted things happening to you. If you can turn fear around into triumph and adversity into progress, it will help your life immensely.”
Why did you decided to travel around in a campervan by yourself?
‘’I had a burnout and felt some really depressed moment. I tried to reintegrate at my office job, but it did not work. I stayed sick, and the sleepless nights didn’t leave me alone. That was the starting point of this quest. I spent a year on the couch, couldn’t even get myself to go anywhere. So, I thought, I’m doing something wrong, apparently I don’t know how life works. I started pondering: how does life actually work and can you learn it? And what things can I learn from people to become happy?
This combination of no longer being happy and a great desire for freedom led me on this adventure. However, I harboured some paradoxical feelings inside me. My great urge for freedom and adventure was coupled with a lot of anxiety and insecurity for that very same freedom and adventure. That’s why I called myself the anxious adventurer. I had a fear of driving and of being alone. Yet I felt in my gut that I had to go, to face my fears. I knew that I had to surmount these fears to achieve living my dream.
The first 2 weeks I was with a friend, when she left the van broke down. My fears came true. I thought, I could just go home now and let the van be towed away. Or I will go through this, and with the confidence that it will work out. When I got through it and when I conquered my fears, my new life started.’’
How did you come up with the idea of asking people about their life lessons?
‘’I missed my time as a television maker where I was very preoccupied with many interesting people around me. Everyone has a story, everyone is an inspiration, and this question of asking people what their greatest life lesson just came to me. We all play the game that we call life, but is a difficult game, and everyone has experienced something that can teach us something for our own game. I was reading a lot about mental health and psychology, listening to podcasts with all different kind of ‘gurus’ who can you tell you lot’s of things. And I did learn a lot, but the real lessons are found in real life, on the street. With random strangers, if I just dare to approach them, see them for who they are and take the time to listen.
What did you learn from the interviews?
‘’What I've learned is that everyone goes through something tough in their life. All answers of the people I interviewed mostly started with: ‘I was sick, I lost my wife, I had an accident.’ People who have known pain, dark days and setbacks, have taken lessons from that. But only if you understand that the thing happening to you is a lesson, this happened to me as well because I had to learn something from this. And not consider yourself a victim. Everyone has fears and unwanted things happening to you. If you can turn fear around into triumph and adversity into progress, it will help your life immensely.
What’s next for you?
‘’Now I’m back in the Netherlands, I have recovered and am back to work and living life with a lot of energy and enthusiasm! I will continue interviewing people for this series, as there are many more inspiring stories to be found. I hope it will help other people as well in finding their way in life.’’
