There are days when everything looks dark and depressing, even though everything around you is bright, inspiring and exciting. We often allow feelings to randomly capture us, without discovering the incalculable power in us to choose them.

I’ve heard this phrase: “Pain is temporary. Quitting is forever”, and I like it because it reminds us that pain is temporary while quitting would be for life.

When Cannes is rediscovered each year, it brings us all the spoonfuls of humility that are required to size up our challenge to be among the best in the world. From the Young Lions to the students at the Roger Hatchuel Academy, from those we compete against to those we represent, we all return from Cannes intimidated, cramped and small, and because of this, more than a few have dropped out.

Upon learning of Nike’s use of Twitter with Livestrong for the Tour de France, it was hard to recognize that there was a giant idea there that made Protecto’s our own as an ingenious application but without the weight, resources and name to have impressed the jury. There you feel in the shadows, limited, without resources and with little or no chance of making it to the world level.

However, there are also those of us who recognize that it is time to shake off the dust, look into the distance, set our sights on the goal and overcome the pain, the limitations and the apparent limits, to decide to continue. The pain is fleeting and what follows is a plan. More than a harangue, a motivation or a talk in the style of a dressing room in the World Cup, what follows is a detailed flight plan, with steps rather than programs, with work at 90% and inspiration at 10%, to return in a year, sneak several finalists and finally bring us our first Lion.

In Tribu we will have to look for opportunities with our clients, in the day to day and in the special time, we will do it as a team, with patience and determination, with clarity that only with daily training it is possible to run a marathon. There are no shortcuts, no free lunches, it is about continuing to be excited because in the process we will continue to have fun, enjoy the journey and have a good time, that although the goal is high and ambitious, we should never take ourselves too seriously anyway.

I am confident that our clients will be the main beneficiaries, while we are already preparing initiatives to get them on board the sailboat of competition, so that they can discover with us the endless stream of opportunities that social creativity brings us, as well as the turning point that moving from a 360º agency brings us to understand that we must connect people with people, around brands they want to spend time with, with the idea that the 6º of separation that exists between any two people on the planet brings us.

The fact that Seis Mil Colores was on a short list of 8 entries in its category raised our expectations and for a few hours we dreamed of a bronze, silver or gold. It didn’t happen this year and it didn’t happen without pain. The good thing is that it is temporary, and above all, we are all grateful and satisfied because we gave everything that could be given.

I don’t want to leave the keys without congratulating our team at Tribu, from Diego García to Giovanni Sánchez, from the creative heads at Tribu, Pablo Chaves and Javier Mora, as well as Rogelio Umaña in Interactive, to those who fine-tuned the Protecto case we brought in, which includes especially Paula Guevara, Frank Fernández, Yamileth Oviedo, Carlos Loría, Joaquín Brenes, Esteban Miranda, Marcela Artavia, Elena Rovira, Roxana Víquez, Leana Álvarez, Esteban Jiménez, the teams in Montevideo, The Electric Factory, in Buenos Aires, Pulse and the rest in Tribu that we all contributed in one way or another. We are the agency of the year in Costa Rica, for the second consecutive Volcán, and in the last Caribbean we swept more awards than any other participating agency, and those achievements didn’t come quickly or easily either. We know how to do it.

Now, looking high and far ahead, we are moving forward together, both in Tribu and in Costa Rica and in Central America as well. Cannes is scary but not impossible. The future is ours and we will continue to build it together.