Aisha Makara, a remarkable global citizen and creative force, exemplifies the spirit of resilience and joy in the face of adversity. Orphaned at the tender age of two in Mongolia, Aisha has traversed over 60 countries, transforming her life's challenges into a vibrant tapestry of artistry and purpose. As the founder of a boutique hotel in Lisbon and a civil engineer in training, she embodies the essence of a multifaceted innovator. Notably, in 2023, her artwork was launched into outer space, symbolizing the boundless potential of human creativity. In this episode, we delve into Aisha's extraordinary journey, her philosophy of joyful living, and the profound impact she has made in inspiring others to find beauty and balance amidst life's chaos.

Aisha Makara's extraordinary journey unfolds as a testament to resilience and creativity, shaped by her early life experiences in Mongolia, where she was orphaned at the tender age of two. Growing up amidst the vast Siberian landscape, she developed a sense of adventure and exploration that has defined her life. Aisha's artistic journey began as a means of self-expression, a way to channel her emotions and experiences into vibrant, original works. With a passport boasting over sixty countries, she has embraced a nomadic lifestyle, selling her unique art from a personalized van across the United States. As a multifaceted individual, Aisha is not only an artist but also a civil engineer in training, a property manager in Lisbon, Portugal, and the founder of a boutique hotel. Her recent achievement of sending her artwork into outer space signifies her unwavering commitment to her dreams. Aisha's philosophy centers around joyful living, which she encapsulates in her latest creation, the 'Joyful Living Guidebook.' This guidebook serves as a beacon of practical wisdom and artistic expression, providing readers with simple actions to cultivate joy and balance in a fast-paced world. Through her journey, Aisha inspires others to seek beauty and purpose even amidst chaos, embodying the essence of a true global citizen.

Takeaways:

1. Aisha Makara's resilience is epitomized by her journey from being orphaned in Mongolia to becoming a celebrated global artist and entrepreneur.
2. She emphasizes the importance of remaining present in the moment, which has greatly influenced her approach to life and creativity.
3. Her artwork was recently sent into space, showcasing her commitment to pushing artistic boundaries and realizing her dreams.
4. Aisha's 'Joyful Living Guidebook' blends practical wisdom with original art, encouraging individuals to cultivate joy amidst life's chaos.
5. Throughout her travels, Aisha has learned to embrace both the beauty and challenges of forging connections with diverse communities.
6. She believes in the transformative power of art, asserting that it allows individuals to express their emotions and connect deeply with their experiences.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. aisha.today
2. amazon.com
3. joyfullivingguidebook

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Welcome to Trailblazers and Titans, the podcast. We celebrate bold innovators, fearless creatives and visionaries who are shaping the future. I am your host, Keith Haney.

Today's guest is a true global citizen and creative force, Aisha Makara. Born in Mongolia and orphaned at the age of two, Aisha has transformed adversity in artistry, purpose and joy.

With over 60 countries stamped on her passport, she's lived a nomadic, free spirited life selling one of her two kind one of a kind art from a personalized van across the US Aisha is the founder of a boutique hotel and a property manager company in Lisbon, Portugal and a civil engineer in training.

By training, she's also a member of the Burning Man Global Village and has participated in over 30 art, leadership and crypto conferences across Europe and the US.

Her latest creation, Joyful Living Guidebook, is a vibrant blend of practical wisdom and original art, offering simple actions to stay joyful, centered and vigorous in a fast paced world. Today we celebrate her extraordinary journey, her philosophy of joyful living and how she's helped others find beauty and balance in the chaos.

We welcome her to the podcast. How you doing today?

I'm doing good. I was very excited for our podcast. It seems like so wonderful to be in your podcast. Actually it feels very wonderful.

I'm so glad to have you. You're joining us from Lisbon, so we're looking forward to talking to you.

Thank you. Thank you. Yes, me too. Let's go, let's go.

I'm going to ask you my favorite question to get us started. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

The best? Be present in the moment, here and now. I feel like that was the best for me. Like be here and now. Enjoy the moment.

And as a global traveler, how has that shaped how you approach life?

Go with the flow. I feel like it's the best trust to the process of unknown and going with the flow.

It's the best you can do for yourself or you can leave, you know, because it's not easy when you're traveling so much and you know, like integrating yourself in a different environment, it takes time and that's why the travelings, it's beautiful and the same time it's challenging because you're not connecting in a deep level with people and it takes time to develop the relationships. And this is now I'm based in Portugal for almost a year. And I enjoy it very much.

It's very international community here, like people from around the world and many of them like a global traveler. So that's beautiful.

I'm guessing if you travel a lot too, because I know when I travel sometimes there's all kind of unpredictable things that happen. And if you don't, like, you just say, go with the flow. You can let those delays, those bumps in your travel really upset your day.

But if you can just kind of coast on the moment, stay present in the moment, you can just enjoy the adventure that you're on, no matter what situation's going on around you.

Exactly. It's the best. It's the best you can do for yourself.

And, you know, I'm doing my best as well to live like that and day by day and be present in the moment, take the opportunities that connected to my dreams. Because I believe, like, we're here to live our dreams and enjoy the life the way it is.

And I trust that, that the moment I have right now, it's the best moment of my life. And it's brought me here where I am today because of all the decisions I made through my life. And I get to love the good, the bad, the ugly.

So the all of it, it's life, you know, it's like, that's what we call it, like human life. Yeah. So you get to enjoy all of it. That's how I look at it.

That's awesome. So let's dig into your background. Tell us a little bit about early life in Mongolia and how that kind of has shaped your worldview.

We talked a little bit before you came on about your background.

Yeah, My mother abandoned me when I was a 2. So I grew up in the Russian side in Siberia, and it was completely different.

The lifestyle that I have now, of course, I live with, know, with the horses, with the animals, with like people and with nature around me. So I always exploring and I always feel safe to go on exploration.

So I just didn't feel so safe to be in, you know, with people because to live in orphanage is a little bit, you know, not so fun sometimes.

Many times it's fun, but like, sometimes it's not so fun because adults, like, they don't have time to give you that attention that you need and always, you know, trying to do the best. I trust that everyone doing the best in their life.

And so I didn't receive that, let's say, that attention that I needed and that love in my childhood. So I grew up kind of more like a wild child. And you know, it took me a while to kind of like learn what love is and imagining.

I'm imagining the way I want to give the love. And you know, so I've been like always this supportive, loving, caring, happy, joyful human being.

And for me, I. I did my best, you know, to help everyone at school, at, you know, my home that time. And I did my best all the time, you know, and I feel like that's the, that's my kind of approach to life.

And I believe like, you know, our best is like different from time to time. When you're tired, of course, and when you're sad, it's different. When you're happy, you can give more. You can be, you know, you can. I love to give.

That's kind of like the way I describe myself. I'm always like a giver than the taker. The things is people like life is about balance.

So you get to learn how to give and receive and it takes time to understand what it is, you know, give and receive and how to create that balance.

Because life is coming up and down and I feel as artists we are more sensitive and emotional and we, we feel, you know, we're really living with our heart and we allowed ourselves to leave with open heart. And I think like that what I believe I live all my life with open heart. Even so, it's not easy time to time.

It's very difficult and I still trust that is the best to do.

I'm curious, how has your travel impacted your art? Because I'm sure you've seen so many different forms of art as you travel. How has that impacted what you do as an artist?

You know, I was doing art since I'm a child, but I haven't been considering myself as an artist because I was doing it because, you know, I'm feeling a little bit sad. I get to express my emotions, I get to express my, you know, myself through the art and in different ways. It was not just like paintings or drawings.

It was like crafting, knitting, like different, different, completely different ways.

So I learned through life that art influences because we getting more grounded and more we grounded ourselves, we getting more structure and ideas the way we want to create and still experiment with our creativity and the way we see the world, the way we want to build or see the future. And my artists have developed so much. Like in the beginning, I always have this way of triangles and dots and.

But I always try to be like very, very colorful. Now I'm learning to be Way more simple. I still have a lot of colors. Like my colors is kind of like narrow itself.

Like I don't use too many colors as I used to do before. And now I'm like maybe the maximum like three to five colors in one of my art, in one of my artworks. And I believe like because of the.

We're working, I'm working at least towards the simplicity in my life. And I do my best to create as simple as possible, my reality.

And the same time I always want to add magic and because I trust we need more magic in this world and showing that anything is possible.

When I was a child and I started to read, you know, when I like learned to read, I spent a lot of hours in the library and Fairy Tales and Mythology was one of my favorites books to read. And I remember I really love fairy tales, I really enjoy fairy tales. And I was asking why life cannot be a fairy tale.

So I decided that my life is a fairy tale, adventure and comedy.

And when I look at my life like general, it is like that, like being orphaned, living nowhere, like 500, 700 people in the village, like traveling around the world, having nothing, no money, no relationship, no like you know, nothing, but still have a belief, have a like dreams and trust that it's possible. And I'm, you know, I'm always saying to the people, you get to trust that it's possible. You don't know when, you don't know how.

Just continue to trust that it's possible and you deserve it because you have these dreams. Because we have these dreams, we can leave them, we can create them and we can achieve them. Because why not? Simple. It is for me.

Yeah, I love that attitude. So what was it like having your art shot into space?

And I decided to be full time artist that time. And I went, you know when to create this, this, this reality for myself. And I was thinking why not Miami?

I was used to go to Miami every year just for vacation. And I was like never consider myself to live there.

I have friends like just, you know, kind of hang out with, party with, whatever. But, like, it was not like real friends friends. And that was how I learned that traveling sexually is good.

Because I interviewed so many artists and many of them was like, oh, I just do it for my money. I want to be famous. I want to be this. And I was like, what it is to be accomplished artist? And I created this idea to send my art to the space.

I sent three of my artworks to Elon Musk, to Jeb Basis, and to Richard Branson. And I asked Elon Musk to send my art to the space. And I asked Richard Branson to paint his rocket.

And I asked Jeff Bezos to send me to the space and be first astronaut artist in space. So I sent my artworks to this headquarters.

I've been in the local Art Basel for the, you know, like, local artists of Miami and Design District. And after what happened is it's like, what's next? So I bought a van, I started to travel.

I was one of the different festivals and I was sharing just my dreams, like, oh, what it is for you to. And I said, like, send my art to the space. I want to be in a space. I want to be the first astronaut artist.

It's like, you know, the collecting artwork from around the world because of this Pioneer 10 project that been 50 years ago. Because of that university of that project, they're collecting 50 artworks from around the world. So maybe you can apply.

And I sent all my artist friends to do that. None of them did it. I did of course, because it was connected to my dream. And I was completely like many things happened in my life.

I didn't have any money, nothing, no tools, nothing. But I still was living in the middle of nowhere with no Internet connection, nothing. So it was not challenging.

At the same time I managed that challenge, I started to ask for support. You know, that's first year, first time in my life I started to ask for support. It was not easy to be vulnerable, to learn to access.

Vulnerability was not easy as a human being. I learned that vulnerability was the difficult part of them to access. And I did it.

So they selected two of my artworks and eventually these two of my artworks been created as a like, I mean made it in a golden plates and they sent it to the space with a Falcon 9 transformer and a satellite. So now it's flying somewhere in space. So I accomplished one of my dreams. And you know, I still believe that I can accomplish the other ones as well.

I don't know when, I don't know how, I just know that I am. That's enough. So yes, it's like the story wow.

Behind that think this is like you get to go through something that's what's like the metrics want you like scary you all the time. You get to continue to believe because people like every time limiting themselves, they say like, oh, I don't have money, I don't have this.

I said like, no, you have you and it's enough. The angels will help you, the God who's always help you because you have a dreams and you're here to live your dreams. We all here to live our dreams.

And I believe like our dreams shouldn't be connected to the numbers, it should connect it to the vision, to the imaginary, you know. And I'm feeling like the imaginary is the best because Walt Disney used to say, if you can dream it, you can do it.

That's why we have a World Disney World. He was using his imaginary. He didn't think about how much money it will cost him. He was thinking that he can do it, he can create it, that reality.

And he just want make people happy because he was happy and doing what he loves.

And I trust that when we continue to do what we love, we creating a beauty in this lifetime, we inspire other people and we motivate other people by being authentic ourselves and continue to live our dreams and accept the good, the bad, the ugly. Loving ourself to the fullest, it's the best gift we can give to ourself.

It's just to live with our heart and with our soul and continue to explore with no fear, with no attachment, just abundance and joy. We get to continue to be in that space for ourself, giving that gift for ourself.

And I believe that gratitude get to be the foundation because be grateful that we're living in this amazing, beautiful world. Just so much to explore, so much to see.

And I want to live like 200, 400, 500 years to see all the world, all the places around the world, learn as much as I can because it's limitless, it's infinite.

Wow, so you wrote a book. Let's talk about that, because I can see the joy in it. I'm dying to get into your book. A book called Joyful Living Guidebook.

Tell us about what inspired you to write that.

I was in LA that time of my year, my life, and after I received this message or like this project to send my art to the space, I was like, all my dreams is true.

So I get to kind of like inspire the people to live joyful life and be just joyful, you know, always help, always being supportive, being the supportive source, always giving hugs, being a good mood, being great, you know, like saying yes, you can do it. Like really trusting from the heart, living, like giving from the heart, you know, like trusting that everyone deserve to live their dream.

So that's my kind of like a way to show people you get to continue support others no matter what. And no matter what the top people like, the projection people having, it doesn't matter.

I don't, you know, I decided I will continue to give, I will continue to inspire or continue to motivate because I am just enjoying it. I'm just enjoying my life. If people don't enjoy their life, it's up to them. I'm enjoying my life. That's the gift I can give to myself.

I enjoy all of it.

And I'm just feeling like when people learn to enjoy their life and enjoy their struggles, what would be way better, you know, like when people will be happy that they have a roof, they have a food even so, like sometimes maybe you don't Have a roof, maybe you don't have a food, but still be grateful that you're still alive and have these struggles, have these challenges that you can improve, but have a strength to ask for support when you need it and accept yes and nos. And you need just one. Yes, continue to ask for support and be vulnerable. It's not easy.

At the same time, it's important to show vulnerability, you know, to be vulnerable and just accept like life has a, you know, like how to say low points and, and high points. But the things it's one in the low point is not. It doesn't. It shouldn't define you. You know, you're still winner.

I believe like we all hear winners by being here and sharing this amazing life and this planet earth all together. We're all winners. We always have ways to improve and we always have the opportunities to be better.

So what are some things you would recommend people to do to find this joy you talk about in the guidebook?

I think like just to start it with some practices, you know, with mindfulness, positive thinking, do meditation, do affirmations. For me, like affirmations help a lot. Meditation helps a lot. I do mornings, walks. I do like a lot of like showers.

The cold showers have a habits, you know, like improve some habits in your life. Improve like what makes you happy. Maybe like morning walks make you happy. Maybe meditation.

Maybe it's a talk to the friend that you haven't talked for like a while. Maybe it's something else. Maybe it's like just listen to the podcast that you love. You know, just find the few things. Maybe sunrise, maybe sunset.

Like the, the. The most beautiful things is free.

The hugs, you know, the, the conversation to go and see the sunset, to go and see sunrise or do something meaningful. It doesn't cost you anything. You get to just focus on that thing that make that. That makes you happy.

It makes you joyful and start the day from that because it's so much in this world you can focus on why not to focus on the good things that lift your energy up.

Wow. So you also have a boutique hotel and you're property manager in Lisbon. What inspired that venture for you?

Well, it was moment of my life when I working as engineer in Norway and after I was kind of like sad and a little bit upset because I didn't feel that it's something for me.

And so when I moved to Portugal, I started to work in real estate because I fell in love with Portugal and I was like, I'm going to work on real estate and Slowly it moved towards property management because people started to give me keys and it was like, here are the keys from my property. From my property. And I was like, in the end I was like, what I'm going to do with all of this? And I'm like, why not to do something?

Why not to create a property management company? And eventually me and my partner, we rented like all floor. We created 12 rooms and we make it like a little boutique hotel that we call Dom d'.

Iniche. And it's like a. It was a one of the King of Portugal and it was very beautiful. Each room has our own team.

We created like everything by like from our imaginary and it was like very nice romantic experience. We were like imagining that people can have, can have romantic experience by staying with us. And it's still like that. It's like, I mean Covid hit.

We, you know, we get to kind of like free. Free ourselves from many things, but still like we have some, you know, rooms that we still renting. And it's not the same it was before.

It's more like, let's say simple. It's more like everything is just like online and everything is just like very simple in a simple way. Before when we started I.

We started with a construction, we were doing the whole, whole renovation and everything. So it's. It took me a while to realize do I really love to do that or not? I do like hospitality and boutique, like a general property management.

It's a lot of work, it's a lot of responsibilities. And at the same time you get to be very say stable like live in one spot. You cannot travel so much.

You have some or you get to have someone that you can trust that can do that work for you while you're away. And it's not easy. Generally it's not easy to find. You get to again build that trust and that relationship until you get to that point. Yeah.

So you've done so much, you've done travel, you've done business ventures, you've done all art. What's next for you?

Now I'm working to be a captain and sail around the world. I want to sail in some point of my life. That's what I'm you know, editing more like hours on the water on ocean.

It's been challenging here because it's not easy. It's very like family owned businesses and you know, I cannot just join like easily. So it's okay. I'm like working in some work in progress.

I just you know, kind of volunteering here.

And there sometimes I'm working, sometimes I'm, you know, just going with a friend who has a boat and, and it's been interesting experience this year. I'm grateful for that. And yeah, that's my next journey. I don't know when it's going to happen.

I just know, like right now I get to focus on my Portuguese more, you know, more solid in more solid way, create my base here in more solid ways while I, I decided that I, I will not travel so much. Like next, maybe two, three years, I will travel, but it's not going to be like for months and months that I was doing before.

It's going to be just maybe like months or two, maximum a year.

And mostly like, I get to continue to build my relationship here because I look at Portugal as my home and until I started to go like sailing around the world or doing other things that I want to do, like with travels, I, you know, I love travel. So I will continue to travel, but it's going to be more intentional when it's going to happen.

I have the solid base here, you know, I, I will build or I'm building right now, the solid base because it matters for me, my family, you know, like the family feeling that I have. Family.

Yeah, that is great. Important. I love to ask my guests this question. Aisha, what legacy do you want to leave behind?

One of my legacies I want to leave behind. I want to create visionary art museum here in Portugal.

I wanted to collaborate with Formula One, have my art installation there and you know, I want to leave that people can. I want to write a lot of books. I'm right now finishing my second book that's called like a Dream Life and the Flow.

And I want to continue to write books. I want to continue to inspire people and I want the people, like believe in themselves.

I want that won't have more creators who dare to dream big or dare to live big and don't look at their circumstances, look at their potential and express their voice and express their wishes. Loud. Wow.

So on season six of the podcast, we're doing something new. We're doing a surprise question. Pick a number between 1 and 10 for your surprise question.

7.

That's a popular number today. 7. What's something I would never guess about you?

Probably that I was married.

Oh, no, I would not guess that.

Live that dream as well. Failed. It's okay. I still working on, you know, number two. I believe in that again, but in a different way.

Not more idealistic way, you know, but more like real and human way. Cool.

So where can people connect with you and find you and learn what you're doing?

People can connect with me on my website through my website. Aisha. Today is a I s h a today and people also can find my book on Amazon, Joyful Living Guidebook by Aisha Makara. Yeah.

And also I have my mentorship program Collect Joyful Living program. It's also on my website. People can read about that. You know I have three months program, six months program and 12 months program.

Well, Aisha, thank you so much for being a guest. Aisha's life is a testament to the power of joy, creativity and global connection.

From Mongolia to outer space, her journey reminds us that beauty can be found in every moment and living joyfully is a choice we can all make. Thank you Aisha for sharing your story and being a trailblazer both at art and in life.

J for living. Namaste.