Mary Jo Paloranta doesn’t just speak. She smiles. She laughs. She scurries from person to person, teasing, praising, sharing a quick joke.
In short, she doesn’t just exist. She lives. And on Tuesday, she urged a group of Emporia women to do the same. From her lapel flashed a pin from her husband with the same message: “Nobody Does It Better.”
“He had it made for me because he thought it was an important thing for me to start thinking about myself,” she told about 45 women at the morning session of the 12th annual Women’s Symposium. “If you don’t believe how good you are, how are you going to convince anyone else?”
“Surviving is cool,” she added. “You didn’t die. But I want to talk about growing and prospering.”
This is the second time Paloranta has spoken at the symposium, held each year by the Emporia Area Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Visitors’ Bureau. This year’s theme, “Thriving or Just Surviving” was hit repeatedly by both Paloranta and the day’s other speaker, life coach Julia McBride.
McBride recently moved to Matfield Green from Chicago. It took her exactly one summer to realize that gardening worked by different rules in Kansas — a pea plant that would have thrived in June in Chicago produced only three or four peas at her new home.
“I ate them, but that’s not how that pea plant was meant to be,” she said. “You have to plant yourself, fertilize yourself, develop, thrive.”
McBride called for a definition of “survive” and got several: getting by, running on empty, hanging on. Thriving goes beyond that, she said, to living with enthusiasm. A thriving life, McBride said, is successful, growing, healthy, even creative.
All of that can be reached a little at a time, she said. Working with the audience, she suggested several small things that could be done to grow in body, mind and spirit, from taking short walks to taking five minutes of quiet time each day. Pick something, she told the audience and try it until Thanksgiving.
“It’s not an exaggeration for me to say every person in this room is a shining light in the lamp of God’s love,” she said. “We can do great things. But we can’t do it if we’re exhausted, depressed, in survival mode.”
Paloranta, who last visited Emporia in 2001, focused specifically on the workplace and how to work with passion and pride.
“Do you remember the day you were hired?” she said. “I had to go to two interviews and I thought they’d better make up their mind — I only have two nice outfits!”
When the job offer came, Paloranta said, she got so excited that she forgot to ask how much it paid.
“That day, I didn’t care,” she said. “Two thoughts went through my mind: ‘They ... they need me’ and ‘I’m good.’”
“Somebody picked you,” she went on. “Somebody saw something in you, whether it was three months or 30 years ago.”
Thrivers, she said, don’t just keep up with changes or study the opportunities — they take the chances, lead the changes and look to the future as a possibility instead of a threat.
They also remember to show consideration for others, Paloranta said. An apathetic or hostile clerk at a cash register can ruin an entire day. But when she got a “Ms. Paloranta, thank you for depositing with us” from a drive-through teller, it made her day.
“The deposit was teeny-weeny,” she said. “But it made me feel huge.”