Jasenka Sabanovic a native from Bosnia moved to United States in 1999 after spending four years in the horrors of the civil war. Prior to coming to US Jasenka escaped to Germany, only to be denied the asylum. Confused, feeling rejected, and alone in this world she applied to come to USA to find her peace. After going through deep depression, she picked herself up, enrolled in college  supporting herself and her family by working full time. Four years later, she graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Economics.

Her experience in supporting people how to overcome obstacles, create vision, and find fulfillment come form amazing life experience, and coaching skills she learned by working for a company that coached CEO’s, and individuals from NASA, Shell, Sandia National Laboratories, Real Estate Brokers, Lawyers and many others.

    “My vision is to translate learning into purposeful action and to create quantum shifts one person at the time."

"I decided to be lucky"

My mom says I cannot play with you if you are not on our side. Are you on our side?” My mind was racing 300 miles an hour. What side? Why do I have to decide? And what does that have to do with my being able to play with my best friend? I was only thirteen, and my life had begun to be very unlucky.

In the late nineties, the world was making a huge transition. The overthrowing of communism in Russia had started a following of other Eastern countries to do the same. A religious awareness started rising in former Yugoslavia, and suddenly many of the people began to be “Big Catholics,” “Big Moslems,” and “Big Orthodox,” which meant that others must be “done away with.” Specifically Bosnia, because it was such a huge combination of the three religions. My parents were mixed and none of that mattered to them. We were children of love. Then that love became our curse.

I was unlucky.

So, there I was. After thirteen years my friend wanted to know what I was, so she could decide if I was worthy for her to play with. How could she not know that before anything else, I was her friend? I didn’t understand how anything else could matter?

I run home as fast as I could, to ask my mom what I was; hoping to get an answer that would satisfy all my friends, what a naïve little girl I was. She said: “Tell them you are a human being; a human being that loves and treats others as you want to be treated.” That was not the answer I needed to survive in that new world of hate and destruction. My brother, (who was two years younger) and I soon found it to be safer and easier to stay in the house more often then it was to go out.

We were unlucky.

In only two years, it had grown worse. My father was taken to a concentration camp, and a few days later, a grenade hit our house. It was early morning and we run out of the house in our pajamas and bare feet; scared and looking for shelter. My mom, hanging on for dear life to her fifteen and thirteen year old children; running through the streets, dodging bombs and gunfire; knocking on doors of people we had thought to be our friends. My Mom was begging for shelter for her children. Shelter to keep them alive. She cried, and knocked, and begged to doors that did not open.

We were unlucky.

Office Building where my family and I spent four years in war

The only hopes we had were to wake up alive day by day, and that our family would all live throughout that day. Our memories were futile, because they were merely pathways to remind us of where we currently were. Our only wants and desires were just life. And that, we had… we were lucky.

Our luck changed when our father was released from the concentration camp, and we were all able to escape to Germany. We lived in Germany for another four years where we learned the language, went to school, and felt safe for a while. Then our luck changed again. Germany was not an immigrant land, so we had to leave. We could not go back, we had no place we could stay here, and no place to go. Then. Lady Liberty used her torch to light our way. The United States opened their doors for people like us, in similar situations, a place to come and stay, and to finally find some peace, and to really feel safe. However, instead of feeling lucky, I fell into a deep depression. I suffered severely with nightmares, and sleeplessness. I no longer trusted life. I did not trust that there was not another trick up its sleeve and something else waiting to happen to us. I did not know if I was lucky, or if I was still unlucky. I didn’t even understand why I was still alive.

River “Vrbas” where I spent summers with my family and friends

My mission as a Life Coach is to use the “Butterfly Effect” to start supporting all people, in contributing to humanity and to themselves. My drive and my desire is for each and every one of us to find peace within, to find our purpose (we all have one), and to know who and what we are. Then for everyone to believe in themselves enough to create an environment and a space around them for this peace to spread to those they love, work with, and just say “hello” to as they pass them on the street. We are all one, like a piece of puzzle, and this world would not be whole without each and every one of us. We must contribute to each other.

True happiness and fulfillment in life is in the giving of love, the giving of respect, and the giving of compassion. Only when we have given from that depth, can we open our own hearts to receive and to be happy. I do not believe in lucky or unlucky people. We all have the choice to be lucky. There are three things that decide our luck: Number one, is to look deep inside ourselves and identify our patterns of living; identify our fears, and figure out what is stopping us from being lucky. Secondly, we need the ability to recognize the red flags and to be able to rationally distinguish “ego-danger” from real life threatening situations - there are only a few in our entire life. The third thing is the commitment to being lucky. We do that by setting the right goals for ourselves. Being on the path of luck is doing what is necessary to achieve what we want.

We always have a choice, even when it seems that there is none. Even when we are blinded by our own “misery or oppressions” the choices are still there, somewhere buried and waiting to be found. The only time we do not have a choice is being held captive in a basement with bombs, grenades, snipers, and mines outside, and you know that if you go out, you might die.
Even then, I had a choice - live or die - I decided to live.

Now I am lucky, because I chose to give back, to contribute to humanity and to create peace. I am lucky because I put myself on the path of luck, and everything I want in life, I write down. So far, it has been coming to reality. I am lucky, because I love, I respect, and I have compassion, and the more I through these things out there, the more they all come back to me.

Yes, I am lucky!

“We must be the change we want to see”