Voices that Inspire

What inspires you from WFSU public media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. My name is Sandy Pareda. I own a public relations firm here in Tallahassee. I teach classes at Florida State and I'm on the board of the local red cross chapter, the Leon County Humane Society and the Refire Culinary Project. The greatest thing that I can do is to look at someone or something in their worst hour and do something to make it better. Whether that's helping an animal that's been found on the street after a storm or bringing someone a hot meal or running someone's errands if they're quarantined and can't get out. When you look at the small things that you can do to make such a difference, it doesn't have to be on a grand scale. It can be something as small as picking someone's prescriptions up and delivering them to them. I very strongly follow the five love languages principles and if you're not familiar with that, there's ways that you show love and appreciate love and one of those is acts of service. And I know that that's mine because I feel loved when people do things for me and I show love by doing things for other people. Community service, in my opinion, is the best way to calm your mind and to give your heart joy. There's so many different things to do and so I find that when your mind is racing and your heart's uncertain, when you give back to other people, it tends to calm you down. I'm a very introverted person and so for me, the pandemic has been calming but I know there's a lot of outgoing people who have struggled and I wanna say there's a place for each of those types of personalities. Introverts, we have the ability to listen and to organize and extroverts, we have the ability to go out and spread joy. And so I would just encourage everybody to figure out who you are and figure out how to make that matter in your community. I'm Sandy Perreta, I own a public relations firm here in town, I teach college students how to write well and I work with dogs and disaster victims and reentry programs. You're listening to voices that inspire.