Maryam Rezaei
Chrissoula Manolakaki
Panos Chreppas
Stamatis Tsagias
Asimeni TountaKristina Palten
Each and every person is unique and each and every person is beautiful for their own “Unique” reasons… Each and every one of us has goodness and kindness in our hearts, some less and some more… Some of us don’t always find a way to express it or find excuses AND some go the EXTRA mile and cover for the rest of us! Kristina Palten hasn’t just gone an extra mile but thousands of miles… she is one who has found her purpose in life that doesn’t just concern her, but concerns the human being’s biggest enemy of all; FEAR… fear of not knowing… fear of trying… fear of believing… fear of the different… fear of different cultures, religion and fear of boarders…
Kristina Palten from a small town in Sweden, Pitea, was born in a Christian family and as you can imagine a quite closed society. She started out as an engineer and somewhere around 31 she found a new world through running! What started out as a challenge from a friend to run with her, is now her way of living… putting on her running shoes, from running to work to running thousands of miles in different countries fighting fear and prejudice and changing the world to a better place! But lets take it from the begging… A few years after her friends running challenge and having run for marathons, she came to realize: “wow I can really do this… and if I can run for marathons, I can run even further…”! And she did! Her first journey started out from a visit with her friend to Istanbul, Turkey, were they decided why not running back to Stockholm instead of taking an airplane back!!! So, they ran 3262 km from Istanbul to Tenhola in Finland, and then paddled 493 kilometres from Tenhola to Stockholm! Amazing! She says when passing through Romania, she was intrigued by the warmth and friendliness of the people, as back home they had a very different negative opinion about them. And that’s when she found her purpose; to run against prejudice and fear!
Kristina’s next journey was running 1144 miles through IRAN in 58 days! A Muslim country that in her books and for most western civilisations is a no go! She proved herself and most of her family and friends who advised her NOT to and some even threatening her with all they had not to do so, WRONG! She says she was very scared in the begging but… well I am not going to tell you more as you should truly watch the documentary… PLEASE WATCH!
Kristina Palten is coach, an author and a public speaker/lecturer… she is a beautiful and passionate woman spreading the world with love through her own experience and by changing first her fears into beautiful experiences and memories. Respect! She is a woman with a huge pure smile… you know how most of us use… : ) for smileys? Well Kristina uses : D!!!
Please spread the word and share her story and video and be a part of her cause! Also please work your way up from the bottom reading her blog, and look at all the lovely pictures with the people she encountered during her run.. and read the thousands of comments people kept leaving her as she blogged through her 58 days in Iran! It took more around 2-3 hours and a lot of tears of gratitude! After all I had missed my country…
http://www.alonethroughiran.comI believe that true change can only come from inside, and when I change I will affect others. I also believe that the change does not have to be big things - it does not have to involve a 1840 kilometer long run in a foreign country. It can be saying hello to a stranger, trying to understand that persons world a bit, or just being friendly. It can also be inviting someone to my home. I gave a beggar in the street money when I passed her, and when I passed her the second time she smiled big to me and waved.
