IF IT COMES FROM THE HEART, IT ENTERS THE SOUL

From when I was very young I was addicted to reading. Although there was a TV at home, my parents almost never allowed my three brothes and I to watch it. We were fortunate to grow up in the countryside with a love of nature, the animals around us, to play sports, to study and enjoy family games.

Mom always put her sweetness, elegance, tenderness, temperance and understanding without limits, perhaps to counteract the austerity and iron discipline that Dad imposed on us, a person of deep honesty and strong principles. To them and to my constant effort, I undoubtedly owe everything I am today.

In my father’s study there were many books, some of them were forbidden for me until I became an adult, but I was often secretly taking them and reading them with a flashlight under the covers until dawn. It must be because I was born at midnight that I have always been a night owl!

One day I discovered Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize Winner for Literature in 1913, for whom I have a special admiration. Tagore has a poem called “SERVICE”, with which I always like to start the courses, when talking about our ROLE …

“I slept and dreamed that life was joy.

I wake up and see that the life was service.

I served and saw that the service was joy ”

It is poetry to reflect on … to think about it quietly.

In the luxury industry the VOCATION OF SERVICE is our main “attitude”. To be happy with the work we do, and in making our clients happy, to whom we owe our livelinhoods. If we think of them as “OUR OWN GUESTS“…. how different our work can be.

As a Property Manager, Butler, Executive Personal Assistant, Chief Steward, Steward, Hostess, Guest Experience, or in any other position in which we are performing our work, we develop many functions, countless tasks, the most important being, MAKING the guests HAPPY and providing EXCELLENCE.

I go further … first we have to BE HAPPY within ourselves, and this is a task that on a personal level can take us years and even a lifetime. At work level in the luxury industry the reflection is clear, if you do not like your job, find another one. If you do not enjoy dressing a table, taking care of the flowers, preparing a luggage, making a cocktail or serving champagne … if you do not feel pride when you deliver perfectly ironed shirts, if you don’t make the elegance your way of life, then, dedicate yourself to something else. We spend half of our lives working … be happy with what you do! Only then will you be able to share your joy in your tasks and you will make those around you HAPPY, your family, your colleagues, your bosses or your guests.

I thank God and life for making me a woman full of PASSION, a value that I could not live without, and that is a cornerstone at “Yachting Butler Academy”. Passion for learning, for details, for improving gradually every day, for offering excellence…. and always, always, always … supported by the other essential pillar, COMPASSION.

At the beginning of this turbulent 2020, we had the great opportunity to enjoy at YBA the first “COMPASSION CULTIVATION TRAINING” (CCT®), an eight-week program, taught and guided by a great friend of mine, whom I feel like a sister, Instructor Certified from the ECC program of the Compassion Institute and Nirakara. The objective was to offer a training in compassion, as a transforming tool of the human being, in what we want to be a silent revolution of social change that humanizes relationships.

This awareness of the importance of compassion towards ourselves and others is essential for our own evolution and the construction of a better world, because compassion is not feeling sorry or pity, compassion is feeling love, empathizing and looking with the eyes of the heart. Dalai Lama put it like this:

“If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion ”

With this PASSION and COMPASSION we started this new stage of Yachting Butler Academy, in which we launched a new logo and new website full of enthusiasm.

The main asset that companies have are the people who make them and YBA has the privilege of having the best…. the best teachers, the best students and the best clients. Those of us who are entrepreneurs often feel the loneliness in decision-making and the weight of the most demanding responsibility, so today I would like to warmly thank the support of all of you who have been at Yachting Butler Academy from the beginning and to those who have joined recently. I also welcome new collaborators, future clients and new students, who will be part of our great family.

At YBA, we carry out consulting and advice, we train and select the elite of professionals who are passionate about the luxury industry in the 21st century, something that we like to do with care and rigor, like a gently cooking … because everything that comes from the heart, it enters the soul, and that is how we are at YBA… pure heart.

Welcome to my home … please make it yours.

Mara López González

Founder&CEO Yachting Butler Academy