Tudo Tranquilo: A State of Mind

On the Brazilian island of Morro de Sao Paulo, the locals are famous for saying one thing. It seems no matter what you ask them, they will respond “Tudo Tranquilo.” The literal translation of this is “all quiet.” However, what they really are saying is “no worries, everything and anything is totally cool.” In all my life I’ve never come across a group of people who don’t seem to have a care or a worry in the world. The island itself is fairly remote, about 3 hours off the coast of Bahia, one of Brazil’s Northern States. There is probably one ATM on the island, and internet access is about the only other form of modern technology you will find on the island. There are no cars, and no roads, and upon arrival one of the locals will carry your luggage to your hotel room in a wheel barrow. If they don’t operate wheelbarrows, they sell handicrafts on the beach, or they work in one of the restaurants. So, what the heck do the locals of Morro de Sao Paulo have to do with self improvement and personal development?

Despite the simplicity of their lives, these have to be some of the happiest people I’ve ever seen in my life. If there’s anything they can teach us, it’s that you don’t really need much to be happy. When we finally manage to unplug from our modern information overloaded lives, and stop being programmed by the matrix, we find ourselves in a Zen like state of mind that really can’t be put into words. When asked what the best part of our entire vacation was, almost everybody in our exchange program cited Morro de Sao Paulo as the best place they’d visited. Yet, when people asked what we all did there, our answer was exactly the same: “Not a damn thing.”

It’s amazing what a few days of embracing simplicity can do for the quality of our lives. Imagine spending two-three days where you adopt the mind set “Tudoo Tranquilo.” Truly let go of trying to control anything and everything in your life. If you get cut off in traffic, don’t care. If your service at a restaurant sucks, don’t care. If somebody yells at you don’t care. If something doesn’t turn out the you want it to, don’t care. Just remember the words of the locals of Morro De Sao Paulo: Tudo Tranquilo.

Tags: peace of mind, zen, simplicity, islands,  Morro De Sao Paulo