Thanks for visiting my blog. I am Ely Albalos. Ely’s Echo serves as the hub for the ecosystem that is my creative life. As a person that can’t sit still I have a ton of plates that I am balancing in the air. I am married (going on 21 years!), I have four sons, one daughter in law, one grandson, two dogs, and a horse. I work a full time corporate job in tech, I have two businesses that I am starting up (one is a consulting company, and the other is a cash to crypto ATM business), I am in contract with a publisher as I write my first book on leadership, I am a doctoral student at the University of Southern California (USC), I work as a mentor for a few up and coming professionals, and just bought, furnished, and manage a home as an AirBNB. As if all that wasn’t enough I decided that I should start Ely’s Echo Podcast and a blog. With all of those things going on I decided that I needed one source of truth to bring it all together, hence elysecho.com.
I hope to offer readers a glimpse into the madness that is my life so that it can help others laugh, learn, like, and love (Why four L’s, I have no idea but I like it)!
I consider myself a jack of all trades and a master of only a few. Like everyone else, I have had my fair share of trials and tribulations, but my faith as a Christian has helped to keep me grounded and focused on helping others. That is the main focus of everything I do. From the business, podcasts, mentoring, and blogs, my purpose on this earth is to help others. I will never purport to be an expert at all things but my gift is empathy and authenticity. If I did have to pick one thing that I am an expert in it is leadership, and as a leader you need to understand what others are going through and be genuine/authentic in your approach– this fits right in with my god-given gifts.
In this blog you will discover my attempt at sharing original thoughts, insight/opinions on current events in society, inside look into unique experiences within my life, and random posts that just allow me to vent via the written word. Ultimately, I do hope that readers are able to connect with my blog and I hope to be inspired by all of you as well. I will always do my best to make sure I write well written blog posts, but neither are they doctoral assignments nor are they my dissertation, so I will not be so precise that I sacrifice substance for structure.
All that being said, I did not know where this first blog was going to end up, but I have a burst of inspiration so let’s see where it goes!
I am not perfect, but neither are you, and that is ok!
It took me quite a long time to realize that it is ok to not have all the answers. Growing up as a kid, I had this idea that when “I am an adult” everything would be good and I wouldn’t have any more problems like curfews and homework (huge problems for a kid). As an adult, not only do I not have everything figured out, but sometimes I wish I was a kid again– to go back to when things were simpler. I have been through enough trials and tribulations in my life that my goal and what I want out of life has shifted significantly.
I am in my mid-40’s and I wholeheartedly still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up. For the longest time, I thought it meant that something was wrong with me. I mean I look around and it feels like so many of my friends and family members have their shit together. (Don’t worry I don’t cuss a lot, it is just sometimes it feels like you need a colorful word inserted now and then to drive a point home). Over time, I realized that I was completely wrong. We all do such a good job hiding our true feelings beneath a well composed exterior persona. Social media is a great example of that. Behind the smiling faces in a photo, that took a couple of seconds to take, there is an imperfection lying in wait beneath the surface. The problem is that everyone is afraid to admit that they are scared, sad, anger, lonely, hungry, or horny. (This will not end up being a foul post I promise, so stick with me.)
Think about that list of emotions that I just listed, including the taboo topic of being horny. All of those emotions have an impact on you every second of every day. Yet, we will not bring them up and instead suppress them. What ends up happening is everything ends up getting bottled up until there is an explosion. The explosion ends with a person sabotaging a relationship, experiencing depression, losing a job, or in the worst circumstances even suicide. In my opinion, it’s all because as social beings we are afraid of admitting we are imperfect and need help.
We live in a world that is full of social aids that are designed to help us out. Think about the GPS navigation built right into your phone. Heck, even Siri and Alexa are at your beckoning call. How many times have you asked Siri to identify a song or asked Siri to tell a joke? Personally, I love telling Alexa to play Linkin Park and without fail I am transported back to late 90’s grunge and am in heaven! On every website you visit you can find a help page or a contact us form. When you buy a new product you can’t get away from a “quick installation” guide and a full Users Manual. The bottom line of these implicit messages is that we are surrounded by a world that is designed to help us a the click of a button. Yet, if we are suffering from depression there is no user manual to help. If we are unhappy with a relationship, we can’t ask Alexa or Siri to tell me how to make our circumstances better.
No one is perfect and there are no easy answers but when we really need help we are afraid to ask for it (check out the other blog for tips on how to ask for help if you want to hear more about this topic). We all need to get over this assumption that everything needs to be perfect. If you follow me on Facebook (I know it’s Meta but old habits die hard), click the link on my website to check it out, you know I do what I call a “Daily Dose.” It’s a 5-minute Live video where I just touch on a topic that is top of mind for me. This week I mentioned that we all need to get over ourselves and start asking others for help more often. I think I came up with a new catch phrase when I said, “Ask for help, not for yourself but for others.” I really think there is a lot to that statement. Maybe if we all remove our “self” out of the equation and learned to ask for help to benefit someone else we would be more willing to ask for help more often. Think about something. How many times have we all been in a classroom, training session, or even a seminar and the host will say, “there are no bad questions?” or my favorite “if you are thinking about a question I am sure others are as well so ask it?” Then someone asks a question and magically it was the same question you had or another person announces they were thinking the same thing!
Consider the power of asking for help, not for yourself but for others. Maybe you need to open up about depression and confide in a close friend or family member, and it turns out they need to talk about something just as important but were afraid too. It takes one person in the communication binary, involving a sender of a message and a receiver, to take a leap of faith. What happens then if after you open up and have a productive conversation your close friend or family member takes the same leap in a conversation with someone else? Once a majority of people realize we are all imperfect, and all need help once in a while, they will be more willing to ask for help leading to a new wellbeing trend. I seriously think it’s that simple, just ask for help. The hard part is getting over the idea that we have to save face and can’t appear to be imperfect. But once we all know that everyone is imperfect, it takes the edge off.
Thanks for reading my first blog and I hope you come back for more. Please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts. Better yet share a time where asking for help ended up helping someone else.