The Ripples Guy enlightens CSC students

“You are enough. You are so enough, it’s unbelievable how enough you are.” This quote among other motivational quotes were printed on cards, which were passed out to students by Paul Wesselmann during his presentation on Thursday. Roughly 100 students showed up and joined him in his session.

Wesselmann is a leadership speaker and was invited to host an event from 7 – 8 p.m. in the Student Center and the topic was “Ripples of Leadership: How your actions can improve the campus and the world.”

He said comfort was necessary in class, but real learning could only take place when there was a balance between comfort and challenge. To start, he came up with an example.

Students who first entered the room, either alone or with peers, tended to find someone they knew to sit with. He explained that because people want to be comfortable, they wanted to surround themselves with people they knew and had the same visions as they had. Furthermore, by adding challenge, students would engage more and not get bored.

He also said we should think about and try to get a sense of why someone believed in something. In order to do so, students should think about what they can learn by looking at other people’s points of view. He suggested having conversations without the intent to change, so students could have a better knowledge about the world.

Another example was the famous #BlackLivesMatter. He said some people were angry because they failed to look at the hashtag from different perspectives. To avoid this, the hashtag could have been change to #BlackLivesMatterToo.

“I enjoyed it. I related almost everything with human’s psychology,” Melina Khadgi, 22, freshman of Kathmandu, Nepal, said after the session. “And I learned that it’s not always important to know people to have a conversation. We can just talk to anyone, walk by ourselves and explore our abilities.”

At the end of the presentation, Wesselmann sent out cards which had inspirational quotes printed on them. Then, he asked students to exchange the cards with people around them.

“Things happen for a reason,” Wesselmann said. “And every person has something to offer you.”